Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wireless

We always knew Tesla was right: MIT physics professor Marin Soljacic and his team of researchers behind the latest wireless electricity scheme have reportedly demoed their magnetically coupled resonator technology on a 60-watt lightbulb that wasn't plugged in. Of course, no technology should be without a name, and so they've dubbed it WiTricity. Apparently Soljacic thinks it's possible to commercialize WiTricity within the next few years, which would be totally amazing if it was powered by Steorn's humanity-saving infinite energy device. [Warning: subscription req'd for link]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Robots

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Home Entertainment

As some of you may remember, a couple years back we (begrudgingly) posted a TiVo deathwatch, which was to remain active until TiVo becomes consistently profitable (or gets bought, or dies). Well, as of two days ago TiVo did in fact post its first profitable quarter, taking in $835k. (TiVo broke even once in 2005, but that's about as good as it's gotten.) Whereas we're really stoked for the crew in Alviso, the fact is less than a million bucks is chump change considering how much they lost in Q106 ($10.7 million); and unfortunately, TiVo also lost 102,000 subscribers from DirecTV (whereas Q106 they added 53,000). That means TiVo is down subscribers to 4.3m from the 4.4m they had this time last year.

We've spent the last couple days thinking this over, but as much as we'd like to plant a flag in the ground for TiVo, we're just not ready to lift the deathwatch yet. We just still haven't seen consistent profit, the Comcast rollout has been pending for over two years, and while TiVo cut some dead weight and lightened costs, it's still losing -- not gaining -- customers. On a more positive note, we have a feeling that as soon as these Comcast STBs DO start rolling out TiVo is going to rack up crazy amounts of happy new TiVo users, and will hopefully start turning a real profit in turn. But until then we can still only stay cautiously optimistic at best. Fingers crossed, TiVo folk, we're still with you. [Warning: PDF link]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

A few years ago, when stories hyping up the security risks of WiFi were commonplace, articles about "evil twin" access points were a favorite. "Evil twins" were access points given SSIDs that made them appear legitimate, only they were controlled by a malicious actor rather than a real hotspot provider. The FUD was then that these malicious actors could steal anything that went across the access point -- even though most sensitive information is transmitted with encryption, a point the articles never bothered to mention. It looks like the evil twin -- or at least hype about it -- is making a comeback, as the head of a trade group of IT security professionals says such attacks are on the rise. He says it's due to the growth in the use of WiFi, but doesn't offer up any real evidence that the attacks are a problem, just saying that they present a risk for people's passwords that are sent as clear text, skipping over the fact that any service provider worth their salt doesn't send passwords in the clear if they're protecting any sort of sensitive information. Instead of harping on about a largely mythical "problem" with WiFi, wouldn't this guy's energy be better spent drawing service providers' attention to the need to encrypt passwords, thereby cutting out the supposed problem?