Author: Duncan Geere
RUMOUR: Samsung cameraphone hits 12 megapixels
In a couple of weeks, Mobile World Congress will hit, and we’ll have more mobile phone news than you can shake a stick at. Until then, we’ve just got all the rumours of the stuff that phone companies will release – continuing with this one. Samsung may be unveiling a 12-megapixel cameraphone at MWC.
What’s startling is their urgency to get this on the market. Sources suggest that it’ll hit production lines this month, arriving in Europe shortly after. I can’t help but think, however, that this is more of a marketing move than a technological one, and the image quality won’t be fantastic.
(via Engadget)
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$250 kit lets you clone passport RFID chips just by driving past
Chris Paget isn’t a hacker, but he’s got the means to clone the RFID chip in your passport. Think of it as him doing you a favour. Using $250 of off-the-shelf components, Chris built a machine to sniff and clone RFID tags. During a 20-minute drive in downtown San Francisco, he managed to copy two passports completely unbeknownst to their owners.
Paget claims he only built it to show that it’s possible:
“It’s one thing to say that something can be done, it’s another thing completely to actually do it. It’s mainly to defeat the argument that you can’t do it in the real world, that there’s no real-world attack here, that it’s all theoretical.”
For a video of the device in action, click over the jump.
Koreans to get ultra-fast broadband – 1Gb/s by 2012
In contrast to our Government’s pledge for 2Mb/s broadband for all by 2012, South Korea’s government is promising 1Gb/s! At present, they’ve got 100Mb/s pipes, and as a result their digital culture is more advanced that almost any other nation on the planet.
As well as a wired speed increase, their wireless broadband will be going up to 10Mbps, using Korea’s own WiBro standard. The whole plan will cost the country $24.6bn (£17bn) and generate 120,000 jobs. Now if they can do it, why can’t we?
(via GigaOM)
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DJ Hero coming this year
Not really into guitars? More a fan of the humble DJ? Well, don’t worry – Activision’s got a videogame for you too. The games publisher’s CEO, Bobby Kotick, has confirmed that DJ Hero is in production. He told CNBC:
“We have this product called DJ Hero coming out later this year which is a turntable that you can actually play competitively, spin discs and mix on”
He also talked up the benefits of online play and tacky plastic peripherals. I’m with him on the former, but I’m not sure about the latter. I’m hoping that DJ hero will cater for Indie DJs, too.
(via Gamesindustry.biz)
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Google blacklists ENTIRE INTERNET
Over the weekend, between 2.30pm and 3.25pm on Saturday, Google managed to blacklist the entire internet. I know that it’s a dangerous place, Goog, but that’s ridiculous. Next to every single one of its search results appeared This site may harm your computer”, and users would have to go through a warning page.
Normally, Google only flags pages this way if the site is known to host malware. Google updates its list, though, and during the weekend’s update, the website “/” was accidentally added to the list. Because that covers every website in the world, every website in the world was blocked. Nice work Google – I’m glad I’m not trusting you with pretty much all my important data. Oh… hang on a sec…
(via Official Google Blog)
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Zumba phone promises secure, accurate voice control
Designed on an industrial estate in Hereford, the Zumba is the world’s first fully hands-free mobile phone. It comes in two sections – an earpiece and a body. The body is about the size of a credit card and looks a bit like an MP3 player. The earpiece is more like a hearing aid.
Voice recognition tech navigates you through the menus and your contacts are securely stored on a website called “Zumba Lumba”(!). The manufacturers claim that if lost, the phone is useless to anyone but you. It’ll be in shops before the end of the year, and there’s no price tag yet.
(via Reg Hardware)
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NOISE GATE: Napster 4.6 – the return of Napster?
Ahhhh, Napster. Back in 1999, I sat there for days, on a 56kbps connection, downloading music. As a result of that, and Audiogalaxy, I became an enormous music fan and I’ve spent thousands of pounds on music over the years that I’m very convinced that I wouldn’t have spent if it hadn’t been so easy to ‘try before you buy’.
Today the news broke that Napster’s relaunching in the UK. Of course, it’s not the real Napster – it’s what was formerly Roxio – a DRM-based subscription service. The company has just released version 4.6 of its player, which purports to allow subscribers to access and play their music on any internet-connected computer, without downloading any software.
Samsung cranks out 32GB DDR3 RAM sticks
Samsung has managed to cram 32GB of memory onto a single RAM stick, by developing a 4Gb RAM chip (4Gb = 512MB). The 32GB capacity is possible by shoehorning two 16GB modules onto one unit. Of course the real effect will probably be an increase in the availability of 16GB RAM sticks, which are much easier and cheaper to create.
Considering most people still run 32-bit operating systems, which can cope with a maximum of 3.8GB of RAM, this development is one to file under ‘wait a few years’, especially as most people will likely plump for 32-bit Windows 7 for compatibility reasons. Despite the scientific progress, the market is still stuck in the 2GB – 4GB range that it has been for a couple of years.
(via Gizmodo)
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World of Warcraft – a religion?
A student from Colorado University has a rather left-field suggestion regarding Blizzard’s insanely popular MMO – it’s a religion.
Invoking French sociologist Danil Hervieu-Lger’s definition of a religion as consisting of community, ethics, culture and emotion, Theo Zijderveld determined that World of Warcraft fits the bill. Find out how over the jump.
Epic Fail: DRM expiry date makes Gears of War unplayable
Yesterday, anyone attempting to play the PC version of Gears of War will have run into problems. The digital signature on the DRM that certifies the game as ‘legal’ expired on the 28th January, meaning that anyone trying to play runs into a message saying:
“You cannot run the game with modified executable code. Please reinstall the game.”
Currently, the only fix is to turn your system clock back. An administrator has posted a message on Epic’s forum to the effect of “We have been notified of the issue and are working with Microsoft to get it resolved”, but in the meantime, it’s another example of DRM only punishing legitimate customers. Anyone who pirated the game won’t have run up against this problem.
Forum thread (via Ars Technica)
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