TechBlogger

Thanks to one of our ever-sneaky sources, we’ve just learned that Motorola will be holding a “virtual media briefing” for media at 9AM EST on October 14th. That’s this coming Tuesday for all your early weekend party starters. We’ve explored the Motorola Krave ZN4 in depth with our exclusive hands on review a while back, and we weren’t thrilled about it. In fact, we were pretty disappointed. Let’s hope they have polished it up a whole lot or else this thing is going to be one single raindrop of a Storm. Ya’ dig?

Thanks, P-Nut!

Original post by The Boy Genius

Discover Magazine is running a story detailing the search for planets like Earth orbiting other stars. While we’ve been able to locate a few “super earths” so far, none of them really compare in size or the potential for habitability with our own world. Fortunately, advances in data analysis and new space-based telescopes — such as Kepler, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the already-launched CoRoT (PDF) — have some astronomers predicting we’ll find such an exoplanet by 2010, and a habitable one by 2012. Earth-based telescopes are also in the hunt, though the article notes, “even if a habitable Earth-like world is found first from the ground, it will most likely take a space observatory to search for the chemical signals that tell us what we really want to know: Is anything living out there? If the planet is one that can be observed transiting, it just might be possible to provide a hint of an answer in the next few years.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Soulskill

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from MarketWatch: “A one-megaton nuclear bomb detonated 250 miles over Kansas could cripple many modern electronic devices and systems in the continental US and take out the power grid for a long time. … A solar storm similar to the one that occurred in 1859, which shorted out telegraph wires in the United States and Europe, could wreak havoc on electrical systems. Each of the above scenarios can create a powerful electromagnetic pulse that overloads electronic devices and systems. IAN staff and Frostburg State University physics and engineering professor Hilkat Soysal are teaming — through a $165,000 project recently approved by the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program — to create renewable energy-powered, electromagnetic pulse (EMP)-protected microgrids that could provide electricity for critical infrastructure facilities in the event of a disaster.” Also available are an EMP threat assessment (PDF) written for the US Congress and an estimation of economic impact (PDF).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Soulskill

r2k writes “While the Apple rumours posted yesterday highlight some of the most commonly talked-about opinions, a writer for CNet UK sat down with Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis, who told CNet he knew for a fact that Apple is developing fully networked LCD TV sets. As the writer points out, Apple dropped ‘Computer’ from its company name for a very good reason.”

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Original post by timothy

Master of Transhuman writes “Seems like nobody can keep their data under wraps these days. On the heels of the World Bank piece about massive penetrations of their servers, the British Ministry of Defense has lost a hard drive with the personal details of 100,000 serving personnel in the British armed forces, and perhaps another 600,000 applicants. This comes on the heels of the MoD losing 658 of its laptops over the past four years and 26 flash drives holding confidential information. Apparently the MoD outsources this stuff to EDS, which is under fire for not being able to confirm that the data was or was not encrypted.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by timothy

An anonymous reader writes “Our wonderful government here in the UK has decided we’re not being surveilled enough, and agreed to spend £12 billion on a programme to monitor every Briton’s phone calls, e-mails, and internet usage. According to various sources, upwards of £1 billion has already been spent on the uber-database. Rationale? Terrorism, of course (no prizes for guessing). Needless to say, not everyone is as happy as Larry over this: Michael Parker pointed out how us Brits are being ’stalked.’ I’m just looking forward to when the data gets lost.”

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Original post by timothy

I know there are still many shopping days left before Christmas, but I’m trying to turn over a new leaf this year and actually get my shopping finished before 11:59pm on December 24th. This will be a first for me if I can actually do it. I figure there are other gadgeteers out there that have procrastination problems like I do, so I wanted to share a fun item that I came across recently. It’s the Tokibot Robot Clock from TOKYOBay.

(read the full review…)

Original post by Julie Strietelmeier

Missed this week’s hot news? Check them out here in this weekend’s roundup!

Original post by Julie Strietelmeier

bsk_cw writes “Sprint’s newly launched Xohm service is now offering America’s first WiMax network. Computerworld’s Brian Nadel went to Baltimore to try it out, and he reports that Xohm delivered data smoothly to a car moving at highway speeds, played YouTube videos flawlessly, and on average, pushed through more than 3Mbit/sec., compared with 1.3 Mbit/sec. for the AT&T network Brian used as a comparison. But right now, coverage is only planned in a few U.S. cities; if Sprint isn’t able to ramp up its coverage quickly, it may lose its advantage.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by timothy

What could be more efficient for game programmers than by using a graphics engine that’s able to create content on the fly? Enter ProFX. Continue reading to see more. Click here for first picture in gallery.

Original post by TecheBlog Staff