Author: TechDigest writer
Linden Lab announces Second Life in-world to out-world phone calls
Thats equal to 28,539 years. If we put those minutes end-on-end and launched them back into the mists of time, they’d reach the Pleistocene era – then they’d probably get eaten by a giant sloth, or Madonna – zing!
The success of VOIP in Second Life is marked by the fact 50% of Second Lifers, including educators, consumers and large enterprises use voice in their everyday in-world activity.
More interesting though, is the annoucment that Linden Labs, the white-coats behind the Second Life experience, are lauching a service called AVLine which allows people to make calls from a landline to a user in Second Life, and users to make calls out of Second Life to a landline – to a non-Second Life user.
“We’re launching a beta-testing programme today with the full service launching later this year,” said Linden Labs.
Does anyone else feel like the lines are starting to blur? Does anyone else feel pretty excited? Does that arouse anyone else? No? Just me then.
Santok release USB charger for yo' dope wheels (that's car – in street slang)
Those clever little devils at Santok have been up to more cunning in-car japes – this week launching a nifty little in car charger with two 12 volts plugs and two USBs, interesting no?
The STK may look like the disembodied head of Johnny 5 (can a robot be disembodied? can it even have a head?) but it’s infinitely more uselful. The two 12 volts cigarettelighter-size sockets let you plug in your in-car goodies, your sat-nav and ipod dock, while also charging those USB gadgets that you normaly find tethered to your computer.
The STK has a jointed arm so you can wiggle it into whatever position most fits your wheels’ dash. You could also plug a USB splitter into one of the USB ports, giving you even more USB ports, and then plug another into that one, and another into that one, until your car starts to look like the Dolorian from Back To The Future and you start calling everyone Maaarty. That would be sweet.
Tech Digest's Guide to the world of Jailbroken iPhones
To jailbreak or not to jailbreak? That IS the question.
Whether it is nobler to remain under the hawkish glare of Apple omnipotence or cast off the shackles of UI oppression and embrace customizable interfaces, 3rd party apps and video-streaming!
So you’ve had your iPhone for a while now, and things, like in any relationship, are getting a little stale. The app store isn’t the treasure trove of fun and surprises it once was. You’ve played one tilt-to-drive go-kart game, you’ve played them all. What are you going to do?
You’ve heard people talking about this thing – jailbreaking. You know people with jailbroken iPhones, you’ve seen them playing ROMs of California Games and Super Mario World; texting without closing down the app they’re in; running several apps at the same time. And you want that. Who could blame you? It’s not wrong to want that. But you want to know the risks.
TO JAILBREAK
No one likes to feel like someone else own’s their phone. With Apple thats how I started to feel. It started with the iRail app – a free train time app that was unceremoniously axed from my phone without my permission. I thought it was a software error, but then other apps started disapearing, my tethering app, a poor-taste game. What was going on?
An hour of googling later and I was miffed. Apple, in their infinite wisdom had anexed them and this trend contiuned. It seemed that Apple’s reign over their App Store was becoming at best, undemocratic and at worst tryanical and oppressive.
It was the tethering that broke the camels back for me. I needed tethering for work, and if I’m paying £45 a month for unlimited data, surely the means by which I view that data is incidental.
I broke free. I jailbroke free. The process is relatively painless, just download the appropriate version of QuickPWN, plug your iPhone into a USB and follow the instructions and minutes later you’re free. If you’re anything like me, after you’ve jailbroke, you’ll feel like a massive badass, the underbelly of tech-society, a renegade living outside the law – Arnie in Total Recall, Tom Cruise in Minority Report, Will Smith in Enemy of the State, Peter Sallis in Last of the Sumer Wine.
Rebooting your phone for the first time you’ll find two new App tiles. One called Cydia and one called Installer, these are your gateways to a world of Apps to which Apple said, “no”. Some because they stretch copyright laws, roms and emulators, dtunes (a torrent downloader (and awesome)) and other because they were pretty flat out illegal. But some just because Apple think they know best.
With no opportunity to customize your interface, the Apple springboard eventually becomes a dull and desolate place. Winterboarder – available from Cydia allows it user to customize their springboard entirely, installing themes and backgrounds of whatever they like.
And that’s just the beginning. Once jailbroken the scope and the real potential of the iPhone soon becomes apparent. What becomes less apparent though is why Apple would stymie the genius of some developers, blocking their Apps and forcing them to resort to flogging them to the jailbroken underbelly.
Intelliscreen being the most pertinent example. An app that allows you to view your email and SMS inboxes, Calendar and RSS feeds in neat little boxes on your phone’s locked page. Its awesome and ridiculously handy. Its the kind of thing that if it had been on the App store everyone would have it, it would be one of those ubiquitous Apps, like Remote or Air Mouse. But it’s not, it’s been cast out, like a lame fawn, to the cold, and it doesn’t make sense.
Top 3 Jailbroken dos
1. Do get Flixwagon – free live video streaming. The applications of which are potentially enourmous. Your own live web-TV show anyone?
2. Do download Cycorder a free video recorder for the iPhone.
3. Do ROM your ass off with ZodTTD’s emulators.
NOT TO JAILBREAK
So sheepishly, after exhausting all the free alternatives, you return to your local Apple store, hoping for some redemption. And in the shop you feel like you don’t belong. You remember how it felt to belong. But now you’re an outsider. You broke away. You book yourself a time with a ‘genius’ and patiently wait, looking at the prices of all the software you’ve torrented – which makes you feel better.
“My phone’s not working, I woke up this morning and it just wouldnt turn on,” you lie. They look at you and you know they don’t believe you, but you persevere as jovially as possible. “Can you guys just wipe it and restore it or something.” Anything would do now, all your jailbroken goodies, all your music, it can go aslong as you can get your little iPhone back working. They plug it in and press some short cuts – they wait. The tension is unbearable.
“This is a…jailbroken iPhone?” You’ve been rumbled. You’ll feel like you should take a hostage, they’re going to grab you. “I’m sorry we can’t help you” – bit of an anticlimax.
Out on the street again you wander through those back-street mobile phone shops, none of them know what you’re on about, no one can help you, and all of a sudden your sexy 21st century media and communication device is gone and you’re holding £100 paper-weight.
Top 3 jailbroken don’ts
1. Break your iPhone.
2. Drop your iPhone.
3. Break your iPhone.
SO WHAT YOU GOING TO DO PUNK?
When all is said and done it really is up to you. Either you’ve got the ball or you haven’t. The advantages of jailbreaking are numerous and palable and when it’s working a jailbroken iPhone is a massive improvement on the normal iPhone. But you’ve got to be prepared for the fact that if things go wrong, and they might, it’s gone – forever and ever and ever and Apple won’t lift a finger to help you.
This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Jailbrokenland and find out how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
Smug as Frenchman who’s just found a bag of horizontally striped t-shirts in just his size, you galivant about town showing off your new jailbroken iPhone with its 5 App dock to your lame, normal or “oppressed” iPhone friends. Until one night, probably drunk, you drop it. You’ve dropped it loads of time before. It’ll be okay. But as you turn it over the screen is blank. Pants! Pants o’clock! It’s okay, it turns on, but just that Apple icon, two minutes later still the Apple icon, five minute later, 10, still the Apple logo. It’s broken. And the Apple logo is mocking you. It’s saying: “You turned your back on me, you thought I was gone, but I’m still here, you’ll never get rid of me…I know all your secrets.”
Palm Pre to be released in US on 6th June
We’ve seen the unboxing videos, we’ve seen the UI demos, we’ve heard all the rumours – 5th June, 8th June. Well, it’s finally official the Palm Pre will be released stateside on the 6th of June for £199 yankeedoodle money, on a two year contract with Sprint.
Surely it can’t be long after that until the sleek little sod gets to these shores.
My iPhone is getting nervous. Yeah you should be getting nervous you take-too-long-to-boot-up, crap battery, rip off! No I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry, I love you, you know I do. Don’t be like that.
Who wants a Palm Pre? Leave a reason why you most deserve a Palm Pre in the comments, I’ll decide a winner, and I’ll send them a prize in the post. The prize is a pencil. Not a Tech Digest pencil. Just a pencil. A plain HB pencil. A blunt one.
(Via Engaget)
London business babe makes money with twitter
Internet publishers have long complained, like a bunch of ninnies, that they can’t turn high traffic into high profit. Alicia Navarro’s skim links company allows online publishers and bloggers to create affiliate links automatically.
And after tweaking this technology she’s found a way of making money from tweets. Using her good.ly service, which like tinyurl.com, shortens URLs, Navarro’s users link to say, a book they enjoyed and someone else buys it – cablow, Navarro is in the money.
But being the caring, conscienouss and frankly pretty sexy businesslady she is, she’s giving the money to charity. Fancy her a bit? I do.
“I’m a huge fan of Twitter, but I really wanted to use it for something a bit more useful. I had already developed most of the technology for a commercial version so it was relatively simple to alter it for Twitter,” said Navarro, probably very sexily.
The entrepreneur, who has been shortlisted for a prize at the National Business Awards and in our opinion deserve to win it, said: “There is an incredible number of internet firms around.
“It’s amazing how London has become a real world centre for dotcom entrepreneurs, and there is a real feeling that despite the economic climate, people are beginning to set up firms and use technology to save money.”
Swoon.
(Via London Evening Standard)
Sony Cybershot DSC-W290 released to industry-wide hysteria – ish
The new Sony Cybershot DSC-W290 was released this week. The Carl Zeiss lens wielding compact, packs a punchy 12.1 megapixels and a boat-load of software features all for around £240.
In black or blue and weighing in at 160g, the W290 isn’t going to be strain in your pocket but does come with all the features of an altogether more expensive compact.Boasting multi-face detection, anti-blink reduction, smile shutter and red eye reduction, the W290 has a feature set not to be sniffed at.
Though whether this means it will be any good at taking pictures is another thing entirely. Too often the practise with compacts seems just to wedge them full of megapixels, vaguely helpful and occasionally, entirely useless features with the quality of the snaps playing second fiddle.
Megapixels do not maketh a compact. A lens does though.
The thing that should set the W290 apart is Dynamic Range Optimization, which works by automatically figuring out the best exposure and contrast levels to give more natural looking photos.
Sounds like the same old shtick you’ve heard a bajillion times before? Me too. Hopefully we’ll get our hands on one soonish and find out. If you’ve got a W290 tell us what you think about it in the comments, go on. Do it. I freaking dare you. What are you scared? You chicken…Go on.
Facebookers phished in hack-attack
200 million facebookers have they’re accounts targeted by hackers. Facebook were yesterday frantically identifying compromised accounts and blocking their asses.
Infected users had their passwords ‘phished’ and then their accounts were used to spam their friend lists.
Facebook-chap, Barry Schnitt, wouldn’t say how many accounts had been compromised but confirmed those that had were being blocked.
It’s not the first time facebookers have found themselves on the sharp end of a hackers keyboard; last year the Koobface virus hit the site, tricking people into downloading it to their computers.
Security experts say the problem is that all too often passwords are all too simple, the names of pets, old school, football teams and spouses which tend to be on profile’s frontpage.
It’s lucky then that my account is private and my cat is called (shnucky[21mittens%
(Via BBC)
Scribd to offer paid-for web content
Scribd, for those of you not familiar with it, is a bit like Youtube, but with words instead of video. Sounds a bit tedious? You’d be right. Finding anything worth reading is frankly a chore. But this week Scribd launched a function that will allow its users to upload a document and charge others to view it.
In the new Scribd store, authors will be able to upload document, set their own price and keep 80% of the profit. Users will be able to download copies in PDF for use with the soon-to-be released in the UK, Kindle 2. And, with an iPhone application in the offing, Scribd look to have their bases covered.
“One reason publishers are excited to work with us is that they worry that publishing channels are contracting as Amazon and Google are gaining control over the e-book space,” said Jared Friedman, chief technology officer and a founder of Scribd.
The announcement comes hot-on-the-heels of Rupert Murdoch’s plans to start charging for access to NewsCorp’s newspaper websites and may mark the start of paid-for web content.
“That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal’s experience,” said Murdoch.
“The current days of the internet will soon be over,” added the eery media mogul.
But rest assured, Techdigest has no plans to start charging its handsome and intelligent readership anytime soon. Yeah that’s right – you guys! What do you think? Do Murdoch’s plans NewsCorp’s web content have legs? Or will you just get your news elsewhere if you have to pay for it? Could this be the rebirth of the newspaper? Let us know in the comments.
Google unleash pedal power trikes to map more
Continuing with it’s relentless campaign of digitization, Google this week unleashed a fleet of “Google trikes.” The camera-laden bikes are designed to access those parts of the undulating European expanses that the google car can’t.
The first places to get the “Google trike” treatment will be three landmarks chosen by the public in a scheme with VisitBritain, if the current tests on the streets of Geneo go to plan.
Justin Reid from VisitBritain said: ‘The new trike will enable us to showcase even more of Britain’s wonderful destinations and we look forward to some great ideas from the public.’
The trike, which weighs a mighty 18 stone or two Theo Walcotts, will be hauled across Europe by ultra-fit Google cyclers.
“Depending on what the public vote for, users will be able to virtually tour castles or monuments before visiting – or check out which side of a football stadium they need to be on before leaving the house,” said a Google spokesman.
But as google oil their trikes chains ready to send them out, whiffs of a backlash were begining to perculate, as angry villagers in Broughton, Cambrighshire blocked a google car from entering their affulent village. The angry mob chased the car with pitch forks and torches – no they didn’t really, but they probably wanted to.
Wolfram|Alpha – A new dawn in search?
This morning hailed the launch of Wolfram Alpha, sorry “Wolfram|Alpha”. A new type of search that looks to provide you with concrete answers, rather than referring you to another site which might have the answer.
Wolfram|Alpha is the brainchild of British-born Stephen Wolfram. Despite having a name that makes him sound uncannily like a Bond villain, Dr Wolfram’s aim for the Wolfram|Alpha project is to, “collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything”. Well it’s good to be ambitious.
So does it work? Ish, would be my answer. Can it tell you how big the US is in square miles? Yes, down to three decimal places (3.179 million square miles or about 1.037 x 10 to the power of 14 feet squared). Can it tell you the population of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso? Yes – 1086505.
But can it tell you how big Wales is? Or how much the moon weighs? Or, as John Humphrey’s asked on this morning’s Today program – which population is shrinking faster, the population of Sparrow or the population of Haddock in the north sea? No, no it can’t.
Wolfram’s aim is to create a compendium of knowledge, not with the intention of rivalling Google to provide answers, think of Wolfram as an encyclopaedia with a search bar. But is it better than Google?
We asked both: what were the results of the Scottish devolution referendum? Google’s top hit gave us the answer, in figures and as percentage and by unitary authority and how that compared against the 1979 ballot.
Wolfram gave us…”try Scottish.” Google 1 – Wolfram 0.
Dinner party dorks will have a field day with this, and I’m sure it’s got plenty of wholesome practical applications but for now Wolfram seems too US-centric and fiddly for it to be a really useful internet tool.
(via BBC)
