Watching the Old Time Spooks, Watching You…

Following on from last weeks excitement, when the Americans managed to blow up one of their dud spy satellites, you might like to know that the shadowy organisation behind these aerial snoopers has come out of the closet, just a little way…

The NRO or National Reconnaissance Office has its own web site and is publishing some of its satellite imagery. Read More »

N96 Here

Mobile World Congress 2008, Barcelona, Spain/Espoo, Finland - Nokia today unveiled the Nokia N96, a multimedia computer truly optimized for video and TV. With a large 2.8″ screen, 16 gigabytes of internal memory and support for high-quality videos in a wide range of formats, the dual-slide Nokia N96 represents an exciting new chapter in mobile media. The Nokia N96 multimedia computer is expected to begin shipping in the third quarter of 2008 with an estimated sales price of approximately 550 euros, before subsidies or taxes. Read More »

Tosh’s Dinky Dongle

Actually it’s a mobile phone with some clever extras. The G450 is officially known as a Four-In-One Mobile Device, the four elements being the aforesaid mobile phone, a high-speed mobile modem, MP3 player, and USB Pen Drive, which it most closely resembles in terms of size and shape.

Just pop in a SIM card and you have a small but still quite useable mobile phone. The tiny OLED display is limited to just phone numbers and a line of text but what more do you need? Plug it into the USB socket on your laptop and you have a mobile modem connecting through 3G/HSDPA networks giving broadband like connection speeds. Read More »

MSN Direct for Windows Mobile Technology Preview

* Available for download today.
* Get up to the minute news*, weather and stock info directly on your Smartphone home screen
* No waiting for web pages to load.
* No typing urls.
* Updates automatically.
* It’s simple to install and fun to use!
Read More »

Surfing with Onions….

A growing number of people, concerned about personal privacy and security are opting to get off the grid but that’s always been a bit difficult with the Internet. It knows where you are, and what you are doing, but there are ways to become totally anonymous.

One way is to use TOR, or The Onion Router. It’s a network of virtual connections or relays, dotted around the world, operating in complex ‘layers’ (that’s where the Onion bit comes in) that stops you from being identified or tracked when you are online. Ironically much of the development work for TOR was sponsored by the US Naval Research Laboratory but now it’s gone independent, and it is free to use. Read More »

Is This The One? £99 Laptop Launches next Week

It had to happen sooner or later. We’re already accustomed to laptops costing less than £300, and if you don’t mind downsizing there’s the excellent Asus Eee PC for £200 or thereabouts but now Elonex have beaten everyone with a laptop selling for just £99. It’s called The One and it’ll be on sale from next week. It’s aimed at school students, which also explains why it is being launched at the 2008 Education Show on February 28th.

Like the Eee PC and OLPC X0 it runs on Linux, and has a compact 7-inch screen but don’t let that put you off. It can do almost anything a full blown Windows or Mac PC can do, including surf the web, send and receive emails using its built-in wi-fi adaptor, it can play and share multimedia files and it comes with a full office suite of programs. Read More »

Gmail Login Error 502

Depending on email for a big part of one’s life can sometimes come and bite one in the arse. Gmail users experienced this first hand over the past weekend, when many turned to Google Groups and reported that they could not sign into their mail accounts and that they were greeted with a ‘friendly’ 502 error when attempting it.

Google started addressing the issue as soon as they found out about it, but it was only this morning when the problem ceased to exist. Over the weekend complainers were met by a Google Guide posting in the respective thread and saying that “I’m sorry to hear that some of you are unable to access your accounts due to 502 errors. Our team is currently aware of the problem and we are working to get things back up and running for you. Please visit our Gmail Updates and Alerts subgroup for up to date information on this problem.” Read More »

Machine Translation Bot for Windows Live Messenger

The MTBot prototype is by all means not a new project from Microsoft. In fact, the project for the Windows Live Messenger machine translation bot debuted quietly in the summer of 2007. To this date the initiative remains nothing more than a prototype and, despite this, it is available to all Windows Live Messenger users for test driving. The brainchild of Helvecio Ribeiro, SDET w/ MSR Machine Translation, the Machine Translation Bot is designed to break the language barriers via Windows Live Messenger. The bot is a clear indication that machine translation technology can be seamlessly combined and integrated with instant messaging. Read More »

Icon Finder General

As I am sure you know you can change your desktop icons by right-clicking on them and selecting Properties and clicking the Change Icon button, but what do you change it to? Of course you can go on line and search through the thousands of free and paid for icon banks but you may be surprised at how many icons there are sprinkled around your PC.

A freeware utility called IconsExtract managed to find no less than 18,000 icons and cursors on my office PC, and this is on a machine only three months after a full re-install! Read More »

Shirt Power for iPods

A week or so ago you may recall many newspapers carried a story about an odd looking contraption that you strapped to your legs, which generated power as you walk, enough to power up to 10 mobile phones one report said. Well, here’s something a tad more elegant. Researchers at the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology have come up with an idea that generates power from nano fibres, that can be incorporated into everyday items of clothing, like shirts and trousers. Pairs of fibres are coated with zinc oxide nanowires and as they rub against each other they generate tiny currents using a piezoelectric effect. Read More »