Technical News - 26 November 2010

• Churchill Club: PARC at 40 and the business, innovation intersection
  November 26, 2010
  In this latest installment of the Churchill Club podcast series, a panel talks about 40 years of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and innovation lessons.
  
• Black Friday in the online world
  November 26, 2010
  About midnight last night, the deluge of commercial come-ons, product pitches, and obvious attempts to collect personal information started filling up my junk mail folder. A few of these pitches...
  
• Gifts That Keep On Giving: Offbeat Gadgets, Toys and Tech
  November 26, 2010
  Before I tell you about my favorite offbeat tech-flavored goodies and culty gadgets of the season, let me tell you that as is true for all good technophiles, I am a hoarder. Like a squirrel...
  
• Gingerbread Loaded Nexus S to Take On Galaxy S
  November 26, 2010
  Filed under: News : Smart
  
  
  
  
  This time you get a look at it too. Read more
  
  
  
  
• Michael Jacksons First Single in 9 Years Up For Free Download by Nokia
  November 26, 2010
  Filed under: News : Entertainment
  
  
  
  
  Download the King of Pops brand new track, Hold My Hand from the Nokia Ovi store. Read more
  
  
  
  
• Apple Launches the New 11 and 13-Inch Macbook Air in India
  November 26, 2010
  Filed under: News : Laptops
  
  
  
  
  This is the Macbook Air that is touted to be just an expensive netbook. Read more
  
  
  
  
• Lenovo Launches the Lenovo IdeaCentre B300 for All In One Home Computing
  November 26, 2010
  Filed under: News : Desktop PCs
  
  
  
  
  Its powered by Intel Core 2 Duo 7600s/5400s/Core i processor range. Read more
  
  
  
  
• Sony Ericsson PSP Phone to be Announced on December 9th
  November 26, 2010
  Filed under: News : Mobile Gaming
  
  
  
  
  Its got some specs revealed too. Read more
  
  
  
  
• CA Sues Over DB2 Migration Tool
  November 26, 2010
  aesoteric writes "Software giant CA has filed suit against an Australian software developer over a program that allegedly enabled companies to migrate off CA database platforms onto IBM DB2. It claimed the software 'reproduced' portions of confidential source and object codes without permission and deprived CA of license fees. CA also disputed claims that its database platform was 'dying.'"
  Read more of this story at Slashdot.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Shoppers come to spend on Black Friday
  November 26, 2010
  PRINCETON, N.J./MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (Reuters) - Early-bird bargain-hunters scooped up "Black Friday" deals on everything from TVs to toys across the United States, but many said discounts were not as deep as those offered last year.
  
  

  

  
  
• Prison terms of Pirate Bay executives' shortened (AFP)
  November 26, 2010
  AFP - A Swedish appeals court Friday shortened the prison terms of two founders and a financier of Swedish filesharing site The Pirate Bay, but increased the damages to be paid to movie and music firms.
  
  
  
• Useful ReadySteady Flip Camera Image Stabelizer
  November 25, 2010
  Despite the amazing advances in hi def video devices there are still huge issues with the competence of the person behind the camera. Lighting and camera stability are two fundamentals of...
  
• Pirate Bay activists lose court appeal in Sweden
  November 26, 2010
  STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A Swedish appeals court on Friday upheld a ruling against three men behind file sharing website Pirate Bay, cutting their prison sentences and raising the fine.

  

  
  
• Pirate Bay founders lose appeal
  November 26, 2010
  Three founders of The Pirate Bay have lost an appeal against a conviction for illegally sharing copyrighted content.
  
• Convictions upheld in Pirate Bay file-sharing case (AP)
  November 26, 2010
  AP - A Swedish appeals court on Friday upheld the copyright convictions of three men behind The Pirate Bay, a popular file-sharing site that remains in operation despite attempts by authorities to shut it down.
  
• Readers Respond to "When the Sea Saved Humanity" and Other Articles
  November 26, 2010
  Blowing the Whistle In “ Danger in School Labs ” [News Scan], Beryl Lieff Benderly lists four fatalities from lab accidents. She notes that the Protecting America’s Workers Act would expand the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 to include state employees, in particular those of state colleges and universities. Whistleblower protections would also improve. Sadly, 5,000 Americans die every year from workplace hazards. Sadder still, although dead bodies
  
  
• Tandberg Attempts To Patent Open Source Code
  November 26, 2010
  An anonymous reader writes "As if the current situation with software patents wasn't bad enough, it appears a new phenomenon is emerging: companies are watching the commit logs of open source projects for ideas to patent. In this case, Tandberg filed a patent that was step-by-step identical to an algorithm developed by the x264 project — a mere two months after the original commit. The particular algorithm is a useful performance optimization in a wide variety of video encoders, including
  
• The Energy-Poverty-Climate Nexus
  November 26, 2010
  Almost two-thirds of the poorest people in the world inhabit rural areas. A Policy Forum in this week’s Science points out that using the appropriate analytical tools to evaluate methods for helping them could reduce poverty while confronting climate change, too.
  More than 1.5 million people on this planet live without electricity, and billions more have only unreliable access to it. Getting electricity to them will not solve all of their problems, but the improved lighting, labor
  
  
• China issues warning ahead of U.S.-South Korea drills
  November 26, 2010
  SEOUL (Reuters) - China warned on Friday against military acts near its coastline ahead of U.S.-South Korean naval exercises that North Korea, days after shelling a South Korean island, said risked pushing the region toward war.
  
  

  

  
  
• Egypt Facebook pages vanish before vote: members (Reuters)
  November 26, 2010
  Reuters - Two Egyptian opposition pages on the social network Facebook have been deleted from the Internet ahead of Egypt's parliamentary election on Sunday, web activists who run the pages said on Friday.
  
  
  
• Export Your Facebook Contacts with New Google Chrome Extension
  November 26, 2010
  Filed under: News : Websites
  
  
  
  
  In yer face, Facebook! Read more
  
  
  
  
• EU denies pushing Portugal towards bailout
  November 26, 2010
  BERLIN/LISBON (Reuters) - European officials denied "absolutely false" reports Portugal was under pressure to seek a bailout and Spain ruled out on Friday needing help to manage its finances, despite fears of a spreading euro debt crisis.
  
  

  

  
  
• Police seek domain closure powers
  November 26, 2010
  Domains deemed to be "criminal" by the police could be shut down, if proposals before the overseer of the UK's net addresses come into force.
  
• Accurately weighing a pulsating giant
  November 26, 2010
  
  Cepheid variables are a class of stars with a luminosity that changes as a function of time. Cepheids are well-studied astronomical bodies—they were first discovered in 1784—and subsequent work has been able to identify a precise relationship linking their luminosity and pulsation period. Because of this well-defined relationship, they have been employed as standard candles and used to accurately measure intergalactic distances. In fact, it was calculations based on Cepheids
  
  
• Dear Santa: Please Send Owl Puke
  November 26, 2010
  1. Geomag magnetic building set From $11 at reevesintl.com ; ages 3 and up . William Shih of Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering suggests discussing with kids what makes some structures (such as a cube) less stable than others (a tetrahedron).
  2. Galileoscope $30 at galileoscope.org ; all ages . Cameron Hummels, a Ph.D. candidate in astronomy at Columbia University and head of outreach for the department, says that these are by far the best-quality
  
  
• Micromax's First Android Phone Coming Soon
  November 26, 2010
  Micromax Andro is expected to be unveiled by the end of this month
  
• Apple Planning to use Retina Display in iPad 2
  November 26, 2010
  Front camera for FaceTime, smaller Retina glass display, USB port and 3-axis gyroscope
  
• Lenovo IdeaCenter B300 Launched
  November 26, 2010
  A new All-in-one PC with good specs to boot
  
• Tech-com Releases 36-in-1 Card Reader for Rs. 175
  November 26, 2010
  Packs in a three year warranty at that price
  
• Epson Releases Four Multimedia Projectors
  November 26, 2010
  Features USB connectivity to display image over the USB cable
  
• Should you wait for Intel's Sandy Bridge laptops?
  November 26, 2010
  Systems based on Intel's 'Sandy Bridge' processors are coming soon. Should consumers sit tight until laptops arrive sometime in the first quarter?
  
• Ask Maggie: Holiday smartphone deals and iPad-iMac choices
  November 26, 2010
  This week's Ask Maggie helps readers find the best smartphone deals of the season and advises one reader who can't decide between buying an iPad or an iMac.
  
• BlackBerry Torch Review
  November 26, 2010
  Only a die hard BlackBerry fan may want to get this phone. Others can stay away
  
• First Windows Phone 7 Jailbreak Tool Released
  November 26, 2010
  Unlocks the WP7 device and intends to open doors for Homebrew applications
  
• Make Use of Mobile Number Portability From Jan.
  November 26, 2010
  January 20, 2011 will see the arrival of MNP across India
  
• Net-dedicated satellite to launch
  November 26, 2010
  Hylas-1, the first satellite dedicated to delivering broadband services to Europe, is all set for launch from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.
  
• Can sky-high broadband take off?
  November 26, 2010
  A broadband satellite is about to launch but experts bring the technology back to earth.
  
• Opera report: 10 mobile web facts about the Generation Y
  November 25, 2010
  10 mobile web facts about the Generation Y, according to Opera in a new study, show some salient facts but also some interesting, unexpected ones too.
  
• Smartphones, Twitter top Japan hit product survey
  November 26, 2010
  TOKYO (Reuters) - Smartphones and Twitter were the hottest products in Japan in 2010 and travel and leisure were back on the menu, an ad agency survey showed, as penny-pinching consumers rediscovered their fun side.

  

  
  
• Create 84 GUI Icons Using Pure CSS
  November 26, 2010
  Pure CSS GUI icons is an experiment that uses pseudo-elements to create 84 simple GUI icons using CSS and semantic HTML. Shared as an exercise in creative problem solving and working within constraints.
  
• HTML5 and CSS3 for the Real World
  November 26, 2010
  In the world around us, people want solutions to their problems. They want to use stuff that works and they want to get things done quickly and efficiently. But more importantly, they want to be able to focus on the things that really matter.
  
• 17 Elegant And High Quality HTML5 Website Templates For Free Download
  November 26, 2010
  HTML5 – the next big version of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and major competitor of Adobe Flash. HTML 5 surely opened new doors for web designers and developers for creating rich applications.
  
• Playing with Lithium
  November 26, 2010
  I decided that I would spend some time looking at a new framework. I haven’t looked hard a new framework since I really started working with Zend Framework a few years ago. I decided to take a look at Lithium, an up-and-coming 5.3 only PHP framework.
  
• 25 years and counting
  November 25, 2010
  Microsoft Windows turns 25 this month, and by happenstance it's also the 25th anniversary of my first job in the computing industry. Quite a few milestones for me since then have been November events.
  
• Sony to return to Japan e-reader market in December
  November 25, 2010
  TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp will re-enter Japan's electronic book market and open an online bookstore offering 20,000 titles, almost all in Japanese, in time for the year-end shopping rush, it said on Thursday.