New Xbox 360 250GB Limited Edition Halo: Reach

This is the very first special edition based on the new model with 250GB HDD, built-in 802.11n WiFi, a silver (presumably matte, based on the picture) finish, and custom, Halo-inspired sounds.


The $399 price tag also nets you two special edition wireless controllers and, naturally, a copy of the game itself. Look for this September 14th.


Irish prices should be inline with this too.

Social Network - Trailer

The movie about the rise of the social networking site known as Facebook will soon be released, staring Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake but to name two.

What is a social network:

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes," which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige

This is the Wikipedia definition of a Social Network, to all of us, its described in one single word, Facebook.

Fireforx 4 Beta Is Out

Firefox Beta 1 just go released, expect that some of your add-ons may not work as yet with this version, download it though and let me know your thoughts.

Download | Changelog

It's Good To Work At Google

Google have gotten some MetroNap Energy Pods for their employee's to take naps in should they get a little tired from all their googling.

Hands up, who wants a job in Google, meeeee

Source via 

Bring Gravity To Nokia N900 Petition

Following on from a feature I did on Mobileways super application Gravity which you can read here, I think its about time that Mobileways bring Gravity to the Nokia N900.  To date I think they have not developed for the N900 simply because of the smaller user base, so I have decided to setup a petition to bring Gravity to the N900.

I paid for Gravity on my S60 device, one of only two apps I have ever paid for and it was a revelation, its the most complete Twitter/Facebook/Foursquare and now Flickr application there is.

So please sign the petition at the link below

http://www.petitiononline.com/05061328/petition.html

I will present it to Jan Ole Suhr

Ireland's Technology Blog

Hulu Coming To Xbox360 ?

Hulu will be coming to Xbox360's this year, read more after the break......

HP Cutting 9000 Jobs

HP isn't afraid to spend cash and take big steps to reinvent itself lately: it just spent $1.2b on Palm in order to strengthen its consumer device portfolio, and now it's announcing another billion-dollar outlay designed to streamline its enterprise services business and fully consolidate its $12.5b acquisition of EDS. 

Part of the process will involve cutting some 9,000 workers over several years as HP moves to automate more and more of its data centers and integrate more of EDS, but the company is planning to add some 6,000 jobs in different areas over the same period of time, so the hurt isn't as bad as it seems initially.

Source

Acer netbooks and tablets to run MeeGo

Intel's just released its Computex press release, which beyond detailing its new Oak Trail and Canoe Lakeplatforms, reveals that Acer is about to take a bite out of MeeGo. 


Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci is quoted saying that the company plans to run MeeGo on its future Atom-based tablets and netbooks. There's no word on using the Intel / Nokia OS on its phones, but we'll be keeping an ear to the ground on that. 


Acer was rumored to launch Chrome OS netbooks at the show, but now they seem to have ditched that and gone with Nokia and Intel's new OS, looks good for MeeGo


Press Release After The Break ......

Foxconn raising wages, relocating 20 percent of Shenzhen workers closer to home (updated)

After a string of highly localized suicides at Foxconn's manufacturing campus captured the world's attention -- again -- the company has decided to increase worker wages by about 20 percent. .......

Apple iPad launches globally: lines form to the left

It's May 28th somewhere, and for all those places, the iPad is now officially launched -- not that the UK cares anymore, cake was served early across the pond. Keep tabs on data prices, check out the app store, and be sure to let us know your launch day experiences below!


Note To Steve: Global Release means Global, why July for Ireland.

Facebook's new privacy settings explained

Sure, it took Facebook a little too long to realize its users wanted easy-to-use privacy controls instead of an ever-increasing array of complex and granular settings that most people ignored until it was too late and photographic evidence of their drunken deeds was being emailed directly to their employers, but even the new system has some quirks, and it's always going to be up to you to manage what information you're publishing. 


It's not complicated stuff, but we promise you a quick peek at this little intro course over at Switched put together will be worth it in the end -- you don't want Ibiza 2006 to ruin your life all over again, do you?

Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division getting a 'shakeup,' J Allard expected to leave

I'm surprised enough to hear tales of J Allard possibly leaving Microsoft, but the Wall Street Journal is  saying "the organizational shakeup is further reaching than Mr. Allard's departure." 

Nokia and Yahoo announcing partnership Monday?

"An exciting announcement about providing global consumers with rich online and mobile experiences, and bringing forward a new era in keeping consumers connected."

Google Wave Available To Public

Google Wave has now opened its doors to the public via Google Labs, this time last year I would have sold my wife to get an invite and then when I did get one, what a let down.

I dont think it was Wave's fault, it just wasn't what I needed in my day to day life.

Wave is open now to the public at http://wave.google.com and to Apps users in the next few hours or possibly tomorrow.

Enjoy !!

Source

Hackers can remotely disable your car's brakes, create sensationalist headlines

I think you're going to be hearing a lot about this one in the near future. A team of researchers at the University of Washington and the University of California San Diego have determined that, with physical access to your car's ECU, a hacker could

"adversarially control a wide range of automotive functions and completely ignore driver input -- including disabling the brakes, selectively braking individual wheels on demand, stopping the engine, and so on." 

For example, the team was able to connect a computer to a car's ODB-II port, access that computer wirelessly, and then disable the brakes in the first car while driving down the road in a separate vehicle. The conclusion is that these in-car systems have few if any safeguards in place and, with physical access, nearly anything is possible.

The obvious solution, of course, is to prevent access. So, if you see a hacker hanging around in your car looking all shady, or a laptop computer sitting in the footwell that wasn't there before, well, you know who to call.

Source

Bug Leaves Twitter Users With No Followers

Celebrities with millions of followers on Twitter were left bemused when they logged on to find every last one had disappeared.

Bosses at the social media networking website were forced to reset accounts after a major security loophole was uncovered.

That meant celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, who has built up a massive list of 3.5 million followers, were left with no followers at all.

The bug allowed Twitter users to force a celebrity to follow them.

That would also have opened up high profile users to spammers and abusive messages.

Twitter was forced to wipe people's accounts to fix the problem.

"We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to 'force' other users to follow them," the social networking site said.

"We're now working to rollback all abuse of the bug that took place."

Users eventually saw their followers return later in the day.

Twitter allows users to post messages - known as tweets - up to 140 characters long.

By "following" people, users can see what others are writing - but the relationship does not have to be reciprocal.

Twitter was launched in 2007 and now has more than 100 million users.

Source

First Non Latin Domain Name Goes Live

ICANN decided late last year that URLs would finally be allowed with non-Latin characters, but it wasn't until this week that the first one was set free onto the world wide web. 

The new hot place to visit is http://موقع.وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر/, and while you'll need to know a bit of Arabic to actually pronounce it, you don't have to have any foreign language skills to click the link and see what happens. 

As of now, the site loads as http://xn--4gbrim.xn----rmckbbajlc6dj7bxne2c.xn--wgbh1c/ in pretty much every browser we've tried here in the US, but all of the site content seems to populate just fine. Remember that URL gold rush from last century? Round two is officially on.

neverknowtech A site I can't pronounce

Facebook Chat Is Not Secure ?

The social networking site, which has more than 400 million users worldwide, took down the chat feature for a number of hours while engineers worked to fix a software bug.

Private chats between some users were briefly viewable on a privacy settings feature that allows a user to see how their profile will appear to other users.

The problem was first reported by the TechCrunch blog.

A spokesman for Facebook said: 

"For a limited period of time, a bug permitted some users' chat messages and pending friend requests to be made visible to their friends by manipulating the 'preview my profile' feature of Facebook privacy settings.

"When we received reports of the problem, our engineers promptly diagnosed it and temporarily disabled the chat function. We also pushed out a fix to take care of the visible friend requests which is now complete.

"We worked quickly to resolve this matter, ensuring that once the bug was reported to us, a solution was quickly found and implemented."

The company also issued a statement on the site explaining the absence of the chat feature to users.

"Chat is unavailable as we work quickly to fix a bug reported to us," it said. "It should return to normal soon… We apologise for the inconvenience."

At one point, some 5,000 people said they "liked" Facebook's comment.

The mistake happened as Facebook comes under increasing scrutiny from privacy campaigners.

It changed the way users' personal profile information is treated last month. It now requires that data about an individual's home town, education and hobbies be tied to public pages devoted to those topics.

Four US senators wrote to Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, last week to take issue with some of the changes.

Source

Google Updated

There's a new look Google to ogle, coming to a computer near you soon.

The look and feel of search results have changed thanks to a handful of tweaks - a few major, some minor.

Google says today’s metamorphosis responds to the increasing richness of the web and the increasing power of search — revealing search tools on the left and updating the visual look and feel throughout.

There are apparently some colour changes - although you might have to look hard to spot them.

In true nerd-speak the big G says these 

"changes are slight, keeping our page minimalist and whimsical, but make our overall look more modern."

The big new feature comes down the left hand side of your page of search results.

There is added contextually relevant, left-hand navigation - the new side panel highlights the most relevant search tools and refinements for your query.

The top section of the new left-hand panel builds suggests the most relevant genres of results for your query and lets you seamlessly switch to these different types of results.

Underneath - in a Google Labs powered 'Something Different' section - there's a list of other entities that are related to your query - so you can explore other related topics.

A Google search for Rolling Stones could deliver information in the left-hand toolbar about other classic rock bands from the1960s and 1970s including Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix, according to a Google.

Google says: 

"We want to ensure that the Google you use today is better than the one you used yesterday, and these latest changes open up many possibilities for future features and enhancements."

The new look is being rolled out from today across all countries.

The Spring clean isn't going to cause a web sensation - indeed some tech bloggers are already writing that they hate the changes.

But we all need to evolve. Even the giants of the world.

HeyStaks - Web Search Shared

The Problem with Web Search

 

The average Web user spends nearly 18 hours per month using search engines, with so-called "information workers" spending up to 60 hours per month searching for information online. That's a lot of time spent searching. Wouldn't it be better to spend less time looking for information and more time using it?

Often when we search we are actually looking for information that we have already found; up to 70% of our searches are seeking information that we or a friend or a colleague has previously found. Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to waste time re-searching for information, or if we could take advantage of the searches of colleagues and friends to get relevant information faster?
Did you realise that even with the leading search engines, such as Google, 50% of your searches are unsuccessful. That's a lot of wasted search time. Wouldn't it be so much better if search engines were better able to answer our queries first-time, everytime?

The HeyStaks Solution

 

HeyStaks has been developed to solve these problems and to make a real difference to the way you search. HeyStaks is not a search engine, but it does work with your favourite search engine; today that means Google, with more to follow.

HeyStaks is a browser toolbar that adds a number of missing features to Google:

1. HeyStaks allows you to organise your search experiences. You can store your frequent searches, and the results you like, in a type of folder called a search Stak.
2. HeyStaks allows you to easily share your search experiences with friends and colleagues. You can invite them to share in your search Staks so that their search experiences can be added to your own.
3. HeyStaks helps you and your friends to benefit from each other's search experiences. It does this by promoting relevant results from your search Staks as you search.

The HeyStaks Technology

 

HeyStaks has been developed by researchers in University College Dublin. Its patent-pending technology helps HeyStaks to manage, share, and harness your search experiences. And it has been shown to improve the success rate of Google searches by up to 50%, saving you time and effort every day.

Source: HeyStaks