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The Media

Submission + - A to Z of the Social Media Landscape Reaches P (ulitzer.com)

Submitted by jg21
jg21 writes: Only a brave soul would attempt an A-Z of the social media landscape but John Ryan has attempted just that at Social Media Journal. He begins with A-H and has already reached Part Two (H-P). Ryan adds market research based on Alexa, Compete and Quantcast, and both parts have some intriguingly eclectic choices. Worth glancing at to see if there's something out there you're missing...like CouchSurfing for example. [From the article: "If the stickiness [of a particular site] really impressed me, I issued the Social Glue Award to the site."] Such awards are given to, for example, Bebo, Fotolog and LiveJournal, but not to Digg, Ning or Orkut. When he gets to S, however, Slashdot should be safe in the stickiness stakes.
Cellphones

Submission + - iPhone & Pre locked to UK's patchiest 3G netwo (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "Ofcom has published detailed maps of Britain's 3G mobile data coverage — and they make grim viewing for owners of the iPhone and the forthcoming Palm Pre. Both Apple and Palm have decided to lock their devices exclusively to the O2 network. But as Ofcom's network-by-network maps show, O2 has by far the patchiest 3G coverage of any of the UK's five mobile networks. Even parts of London and the Home Counties are not covered."
Google

Submission + - Google reveals Chrome hardware partners (itpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
nk497
nk497 writes: "Google has announced the hardware partners for the Chrome OS — so we can expect to see netbooks running the operating system next year from the likes of Asus, Acer, and HP, as well as Toshiba. Dell didn't seem to make the list, at least yet. Google also said it had teamed up with Adobe, which could mean Google is looking to include the Acrobat.com web-based software suite in some way."
Microsoft

Submission + - How Microsoft has changed without Bill Gates (silicon.com)

Submitted by mightysquirrel
mightysquirrel writes: It's been a year since Bill Gates left Microsoft in his official capacity. At the time many speculated his departure would spark a significant shift in Redmond. But how much has really changed during Microsoft's first year without Gates?
Transportation

Is Sat-Nav Destroying Local Knowledge? 519

Posted by samzenpus from the go-where-now dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Joe Moran writes in the BBC News Magazine that Sat-Nav clearly suits an era in which 'map-reading may be going the way of obsolete skills like calligraphy and roof-thatching.' Sat-Nav 'speaks to our contemporary anxieties and preoccupations about the road,' writes Moran. 'More roads and better cars mean we can travel further, and so the risk of getting lost is all the greater.' But do real men use sat-nav? Moran says that men seem to recoil from being given digital instructions by a woman, and read the satnav woman's pregnant pauses, or her curt phrases like 'make a legal U-turn' and 'recalculating the route', as stubborn or bossy. Still we don't quite trust the electronic voice to get us where we want to go. 'Since before even the arrival of the car, people have worried that maps sever us from real places, render the world untouchable, reduce it to a bare outline of Cartesian lines and intersections,' writes Moran. 'Sat-nav feeds into this long-held fear that the cold-blooded modern world is destroying local knowledge, that roads no longer lead to real places but around and through them.'"
Mozilla

Submission + - What Extensions for a FoxOS? 1

Submitted by
Daengbo
Daengbo writes: "If you had to try to create Chrome OS using only a basic X setup, a WM, Firefox, and extensions, what WM and extensions would you include? Would you use FF3.0 or 3.5?

How do you leverage everything on the net without a file browser or local apps? Without downloading, saving, and uploading to a new service?

These last two are probably the kinds of questions that Google engineers have been asking themselves and something I struggled with last year as I tried to make it 30 days without any apps but a browser."
NASA

Submission + - SpaceX's DragonEye to Fly on STS-127 (quantumg.net)

Submitted by
QuantumG
QuantumG writes: "Shuttle Flight STS-127 Detailed Test Objective 701B will test the sensor SpaceX's Dragon vehicle will use to approach the International Space Station. Called DragonEye, it will use a flash Light Intensification Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), which provides a three-dimensional image based on the time of flight of a single laser pulse from the sensor to the target and back. It provides both range and bearing information from targets that can reflect the light back such as the Pressurized Mating Adapter 2 and those on the nadir side of station's Japanese Experiment Module. SpaceX also will perform a ground-based space qualification program to ensure the sensor can withstand the rigors of launch and operation in a space environment, including tests such as vibration and thermal-vac. No-one seems to be reporting this, so I am!"
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Los Angeles City Website Crashed by MJ Memorial (latimes.com)

Submitted by
Spy Handler
Spy Handler writes: "The City of Los Angeles spent $1.4 million to provide security for Michael Jackson's memorial service on Tuesday, mostly in overtime pay for approximately 3000 police officers. Since the city was already in the midst of a severe budget crisis, it actively sought out donations from MJ fans, by asking them to go to the city's website and sending them money. (there is a prominent link at the top of the home page that says "JACKSON EVENT DONATIONS")

Unfortunately the website simply could not handle the surge in traffic and crashed repeatedly on Tuesday and Wednesday, one of them lasting for 12 hours. As of Wednesday the city has only received $17,000 in donations.

A quick check of the city's website reveals that it is running Sun Java Web Server 6.1"
Portables

Atari 1200XL Stacked Up Against a Dell Inspiron 253

Posted by timothy from the ok-it's-actually-stacked-on-top dept.
Bill Kendrick writes "My first computer was the short-lived 1200XL model of the Atari 8-bit computer line. I finally got ahold of one again, after having to settle with a lesser Atari system. My immediate reaction was: 'Damn, it's as big as my Dell Inspiron laptop!', and I couldn't resist doing one of those side-by-side comparisons, complete with photos of one system sitting atop the other. (I also put the 1983 storage and speeds in 2009 terms, for the benefit of the youngin's out there.) While in many ways the Atari pales in comparison to the latest technology they cram into laptops, I do get to benefit from SD storage media. It also still boots way faster than Ubuntu on the Dell, has a far more ergonomic keyboard, and is much more toddler-proof."
Security

Submission + - New Mac OS X rootkit to be revealed at Black Hat (threatpost.com) 7

Submitted by
Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: "Both Windows and Unix have been hit with numerous rootkits in the last few years, but Macs have been immune. Until now. Mac hacker and author of "The Mac Hacker's Handbook" will unveil a new Mac kernel-mode rootkit that takes advantage of OS X's Mach OS heritage. The rootkit, called Machiavelli, gives the attacker complete control of a remote machine and is quite difficult to detect, according to an interview with Dai Zovi on Threatpost.com."
Security

Online Attack Hits US Government Web Sites 199

Posted by Soulskill from the world-war-three-point-oh dept.
angry tapir writes "A botnet composed of about 50,000 infected computers has been waging a war against US government Web sites and causing headaches for businesses in the US and South Korea. The attack started Saturday, and security experts have credited it with knocking the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC's) web site offline for parts of Monday and Tuesday. Several other government Web sites have also been targeted, including the Department of Transportation."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Google annouces plans for OS (businessweek.com)

Submitted by
digmshiphter
digmshiphter writes: "Google has finally annouced its plan to rule to known universe by creating an OS of its own called Chrome OS based on the Chrome browser. The new browser will focus on making the computer an interface between the web and the user, making speed a priority, and making the browser the main application in the OS. The official press release states, "Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.""
Privacy

BT Drops Phorm, Citing More Pressing Priorities 94

Posted by kdawson from the absurdly-invasive dept.
Tom DBA notes a story up at The Register that begins "BT has abandoned plans to roll out Phorm's controversial web monitoring and profiling system across its broadband network, claiming it needs to concentrate resources on network upgrades... BT's announcement comes a day before MPs and peers of the All Party Parliamentary Communications Group are due to begin an investigation of Internet privacy. Their intervention follows the EU's move to sue the UK government over its alleged failure... properly [to] implement European privacy laws with respect to the trials, drawing further bad publicity to the venture." We've discussed Phorm many times in the past.

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