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Toys

Submission + - Robotics for the Younger Set

Submitted by Cruciform
Cruciform writes: My seven year old niece has developed an interest in robotics, and I was wondering what books and projects are recommended for a child that age. I don't want to hold her back, but I also don't want to overwhelm her with overcomplicated projects and douse her enthusiasm. What would you put under the tree this Xmas?
Announcements

Journal SPAM: OpenOffice.org Template Contest Winners Announced 3

Journal by stoolpigeon
Well the judging is done and the winners have been announced for the template/clipart competition. 10 Winners are taking home cash prizes, there were 159 submissions. Many of the winning templates are available to download and they say all submitted entries will be available soon. I think it can safely be said that this contest generated some great resources for OpenOffice.org users. Thanks to the c
Announcements

Submission + - OpenOffice.org Template Contest Winners Announced

Submitted by stoolpigeon
stoolpigeon writes: Well the judging is done and the winners have been announced for the template/clipart competition. 10 Winners are taking home cash prizes, there were 159 submissions. Many of the winning templates are available to download and they say all submitted entries will be available soon. I think it can safely be said that this contest generated some great resources for OpenOffice.org users. Thanks to the contest sponsor Worldlabel.com.

There is a page listing all participants in the contest. I'm not sure what determined the sort order for the names but mine is first. (JR Peck) After winning nanowrimo last night, I think that I'm now pretty famous. I'd probably better get an agent. I expect the media to be calling any time now.
Google

Submission + - A code review tool Mondorian released by Google

Submitted by
Rockgod
Rockgod writes: "From the article:
Guido van Rossum unveiled his first Google project, Mondrian, tonight during a Python tech talk at the Google campus in Mountain View. Mondrian is a web-based code review system built on top of a Perforce and BigTable backend with a Python-powered front-end. Mondrian is a pretty impressive system and is currently in use across Google.
"
Data Storage

Submission + - e-discovery rules take effect today

Submitted by
bednarz
bednarz writes: "Amendments to the U.S. court system's Federal Rules of Civil Procedure go into effect today, Dec. 1. The upshot for IT departments is a formalization of electronic document retention, retrieval and deletion requirements. Half of the companies LexisNexis surveyed weren't aware of the compliance deadline, and the majority are unprepared to comply. Network World has a story. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/113006-disco very-rules-amendments-compliance-challenge.html"
The Internet

Submission + - MMO Guildsites launches new service!

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "There's a new guild website hosting service on the block: MMO Guildsites.

From their home page: "MMO Guildsites simplifies the process of managing a guild site and helps your guild to build a stronger community. Our staff are gamers who understand the importance of community within a guild and we hope to help enhance yours!"

Looks like it's powered by RoR and has many useful Ajax enhancements such as no-page-reloading and drag-and-drop components. Features include: custom theming, permissions, private messaging, instant chat, guild application management, event calendars, forums, etc. You can take a tour on the site or sign up for a free, 7-day trial membership with no strings attached.

Here's an example of a fully-implemented "guildsite" on MMO Guildsites: Enmity's WoW Guild."
Biotech

Improving Gaming Through Biometrics 34

Posted by Zonk from the maybe-now-they'll-stop-with-the-escort-missions dept.
PreacherTom writes "Programmers have long used the feedback of gamers to determine how to improve what they put on the market. British company Bunnyfoot aims to take things to the next level. Their assessments take pains to record the heart rate, respirations, facial tension, and eye patterns of the test audience in order to fine-tune the games. If only their motives were completely altruistic: one of the primary goals of their project is to maximize the efficiency of embedded advertising." From the article: "What Bunnyfoot specializes in has implications for gaming that reach far beyond in-game ads. Being able to analyze the way a person reacts to a visual is thoroughly useful for gameplay as well. Their technology works as sort of a 'super focus group' allowing them to collect feedback on not only what the person mentions afterwards, but also how they react during the game."
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft makes testing IE6 and 7 easier

Submitted by
davidmcg
davidmcg writes: "Finally, Microsoft has made steps to make testing IE6 and IE7 easier for Windows users. Previously, you had to pay for an additional Windows licence to legally run both versions of IE for testing purposes. Now Microsoft is making available free Windows XP/IE6 images available for VirtualPC (also free as MS is competing with VMWare). This means that you can run IE6 in a virtual machine while running IE7 on your host machine. The drawback is that the download is set to expire April 2007 although we are promised new versions will be released.

What Microsoft doesn't mention is that Virtual PC also runs on Windows 2000 (and IE7 doesn't), therefore it's possible to install this Windows XP VPC image on your Win2k machine, update IE6 on the XP image to IE7 and then it means you can test IE7 without upgrading from Win2k, this is excellent news for web developers."
Software

Submission + - Human Rights OSS Provides Uncensored Internet

Submitted by JaiKim
JaiKim writes: Linuxlookup.com has an interesting article on some Open Source software freeing up the internet to countries like China. "Upwards of forty countries now censor Internet traffic. Most of this censorship takes place in secret, without any public accountability or civilian oversight. Psiphon Open Source censorship circumvention tool is bringing a free Internet back to the people!"
Businesses

New Email Rules Effective Friday 193

Posted by Zonk from the kiss-your-conversations-goodbye dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As of today [Friday], certain U.S. companies will need to keep track of all the e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees, in accordance with new federal rules. In April the Supreme Court began requiring companies and other entities involved in federal litigation to produce 'electronically stored information' as part of the discovery process of a trial." From the article: "Under the new rules, an information technology employee who routinely copies over a backup computer tape could be committing the equivalent of 'virtual shredding,' said Alvin F. Lindsay, a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP and expert on technology and litigation. 'There are hundreds of "e-discovery vendors" and these businesses raked in approximately $1.6 billion in 2006, [James Wright, director of electronic discovery at Halliburton Co.] said. .'"
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Halo 3 Beta Sign Up Starts Dec 4th

Submitted by
aplusjimages
aplusjimages writes: "1up.com is reporting that Dec. 4th, 2006 will be when www.halo3.com will start taking registrations for the Halo 3 Beta test. This is also the date that the new 60 second commercial will air. From the article:

"There will be multiple ways to get involved with Halo 3's public beta and next week's online registration is just the first way." The registration program will be set up at Halo3.com and will give players a chance to be one of the "select members to join the unprecedented Halo 3 public beta program." If you don't get in to the beta via this method, relax, there will be numerous other opportunities to participate in the beta.

Also there are sightings of gamer tags playing Halo 3 Beta online. One such gamer tag is New 001, who is currently not online. But if it is true, then this person will most likely jump back on the game and play later today."

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