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Businesses

Submission + - Comcast Trying to Avoid Dubious Title 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The folks over at the Consumerist annually now run their "Worst Company in America Tournament", a light-hearted way to allow annoyed consumers to vent some of their accumulated angst. You'll perhaps recall that Comcast won the award last year, going so far as to beat out companies like Ticketmaster and Bank Of America for the "honor."

Eager to avoid a repeat, the Consumerist notes that Comcast has sent out numerous memos urging employees to stuff the ballot box over at the website.
Japan

Submission + - Crowd-Sourced Radiation Maps In Asia and US (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "In the past few weeks, several crowd-sourced radiation maps have arisen that attempt to give up to the minute looks at the threat level in the areas most likely to be affected by a catastrophe: Japan, Asia, and the US. These maps, available to the public for free online, are a timely example of how user-enabled systems are revolutionizing the way we solve problems. Tracking radiation levels is just the beginning. This is a preview of how accelerating technologies will allow us to monitor anything, anywhere, in realtime."

Submission + - What gadgets would you use for hunting meteorites? 4

Submitted by DrPeper
DrPeper writes: I *may* have an opportunity to assist a pair of renowned meteorite hunters (yes the ones on the Science Channel). Being the MacGuyver everywhere I've worked and a consummate geek, I thought I would pose a question to the UberGeek community. If you were to go meteorite hunting, what gadgets would you use?

I've already thought of using; a UAV with a radio gradiometer, or attaching a coil to a quadrocopter, blimp, or terrestrial robot. The point of which would be to have it automatically produce a gradient map of the density of ferrous metals in a given area.

Any crazy ideas out there?
Portables

Submission + - Wysips Turns Cell Phone Screens Into Solar Panels (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by jldailey618
jldailey618 writes: French tech start-up Wysips has created a transparent pv film that can turn any cell phone screen into a solar panel. The ultra thin coating is less than 100 microns deep, and contains strips of clear photovoltaic cells laid on the screen that capture enough solar energy to produce electricity. On top of the cells is a layer of cylindrical lenticular lenses, which allow the user to see the light from the screen undistorted. The coating can charge a typical cell phone battery in about six hours with a constant stream of sunlight.

Submission + - How to Built a Truly Silent PC (formortals.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last year, Slashdot covered Neuros's "Nearly" silent HTPC. Now, FM has built one that is truly silent. "It is possible to build a fast desktop PC without the slightest compromise in noise tolerance. Temperatures are reasonable even at full load and even with a poor case layout."
Earth

Gold Nanoparticles Turn Trees Into Streetlights 348

Posted by samzenpus from the elf-approved dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Street lights are an important part of our urban infrastructure — they light our way home and make the roads safe at night. But what if we could create natural street lights that don't need electricity to power them? A group of scientists in Taiwan recently discovered that placing gold nanoparticles within the leaves of trees causes them to give off a luminous reddish glow. The idea of using trees to replace street lights is an ingenious one — not only would it save on electricity costs and cut CO2 emissions, but it could also greatly reduce light pollution in major cities."
Cellphones

Pee On Your Phone STD Test 208

Posted by samzenpus from the there's-a-drippy-app-for-that dept.
Shakrai writes "British health officials are hard at work on a new app that will allow users to pee into their cell phones and find out within minutes if they have an STD. From the article: 'Doctors and technology experts are developing small devices, similar to pregnancy testing kits, that will tell someone quickly and privately if they have caught an infection through sexual contact. People who suspect they have been infected will be able to put urine or saliva on to a computer chip about the size of a USB chip, plug it into their phone or computer and receive a diagnosis within minutes, telling them which, if any, sexually transmitted infection (STI) they have. Seven funders, including the Medical Research Council, have put £4m into developing the technology via a forum called the UK Clinical Research Collaboration.'"
Movies

LimeWire Lives Again 278

Posted by Soulskill from the there's-a-lesson-here dept.
Slayer Silver Wolf writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "'On October 26 the remaining LimeWire developers were forced to shut down the company's servers and modify remote settings in the filesharing client to try to harm the Gnutella network. They were then laid off. Shortly after, a horde of piratical monkeys climbed aboard the abandoned ship, mended its sails, polished its cannons, and released it free to the community.' And so, LimeWire Pirate Edition (LPE) was born. Based on the LimeWire 5.6 beta that was briefly released earlier this year and then withdrawn when Lime Wire LLC lost its lawsuit, LPE is now in the wild. In many ways, it is better than the version killed by the RIAA."
Google

Submission + - Google Maps Blamed for Invasion of Costa Rica (google.com)

Submitted by longacre
longacre writes: A Nicaraguan military commander is blaming Google Maps for accidentally leading his troops across the border into neighboring Costa Rica for a river cleanup operation. The official maps of both nations agree that Calero Island is within Costa Rican territory, but commander Eden Pastora inexplicably used Google Maps to plan his operation, in which Nicaraguan troops allegedly destroyed a Costa Rican forest, scooped sediment out of a river and dumped the sludge on Costa Rican land. SearchEngineLand notes that use of Bing Maps would not have resulted in an international incident.
Idle

Submission + - Beware of the Radioactive Bunny! (tri-cityherald.com)

Submitted by richardkelleher
richardkelleher writes: It turns out that the character Anya (Emma Caulfield) had it right in the season 4 episode of Buffy (Fear Itself — IMDB link). Bunny's are scary! According to this article in the Tri-City Herald, a radioactive rabbit has been trapped and killed. They were unable to locate any rabbit droppings in areas of Hanford that are accessible to the public.

"A radioactive rabbit was trapped on the Hanford nuclear reservation, and Washington state health workers have been searching for contaminated rabbit droppings.

The regional director of the Office of Radiation Protection, Earl Fordham, said Thursday that no contaminated droppings have been found in areas accessible to the public.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's Silverlight damage control intensifies (infoworld.com)

Submitted by GMGruman
GMGruman writes: Microsoft exec Bob Muglia freaked out Silverlight developers when he suggested Microsoft's rich Internet application (RIA) technology was to be limited to Microsoft's own platforms sch as Windows Phone 7, and that Microsoft would rely on HTML5 to support the very-growing range of devices out there. He also seems to have freaked out Microsoft, so he backpedaled a bit. And this week, more Microsoft executives backpedaled on Muglia's statement, saying Microsoft is committed to Silverlight. But as Paul Krill reports in this InfoWorld story, they agree with Muglia's sentiment that when it comes to supporting the wide universe of devices, HTML5 is the way to go.
Idle

Submission + - How to become an old white guy and move to Canada (thestar.com) 1

Submitted by formfeed
formfeed writes: The Toronto Star has a story how a young man from Hong Kong disguised himself as an old white guy, so he could get on a flight to Canada, where he asked for Asylum.

Not only did he wear a — really believable — silicone mask, he apparently had also studied his role pretty well. Don' t know how he did it, but since he didn't wear a plaid shirt, his character can' t be based on the Red Green show.
Movies

The Home-Built Dark Knight Batmobile 87

Posted by samzenpus from the taking-the-little-jokers-to-school dept.
ElectricSteve writes "RM Auctions recently declared James Bond's Aston Martin DB5 to be 'the world's most famous car,' but there's no doubt that there is another contender for that title — the Batmobile. One thing that muddies the waters a bit is the fact that the term 'Batmobile' actually describes at least three different vehicles: the modified Lincoln Futura concept car from the '60s TV series, the vaguely Corvette-shaped 1989-and-beyond movie cars, and now the car from the most recent two movies, the military-spec Tumbler. Michigan-based movie props artist Bob Dullam really likes the Tumbler, so he did what any of us would do in his position — he built one of his own from scratch."
Image

Firefighters Let House Burn Because Owner Didn't Pay Fee 2058

Posted by samzenpus from the deadly-serious-homeowner's-association dept.
Dthief writes "From MSNBC: 'Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground last week because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee. Gene Cranick of Obion County and his family lost all of their possessions in the Sept. 29 fire, along with three dogs and a cat. "They could have been saved if they had put water on it, but they didn't do it," Cranick told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. The fire started when the Cranicks' grandson was burning trash near the family home. As it grew out of control, the Cranicks called 911, but the fire department from the nearby city of South Fulton would not respond.'"

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