The Great Geek Manual News

Amazon’s Kindle 2 is slimmer, faster and has longer battery life than its predecessor. But the newly launched e-book reader falls short when it comes to how well it displays text, say some users.

“When you read a lot of text on the screen, the contrast on the text drops as the font size gets smaller, which is the exact opposite of what the reader wants,” says Ted Inoue, a Kindle 2 owner from Pennsylvania who has extensively analyzed the issue.

It’s a problem that didn’t exist for the first generation of Kindle owners. Kindle 2 has font smoothing algorithms and its screen offers more levels of gray in order to better render text and pictures. But the changes have backfired by making text more difficult to read at smaller sizes. The problem seems especially acute for older users.

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Source: Wired Blog

The Amazon Kindle 2’s release in February was attended by much fanfare and controversy: Kindle customers were delighted to discover that Amazon had upgraded the Kindle’s feature-set so that it could use a credible text-to-speech synthesiser to read the books aloud.

This set off the Authors Guild (an organisation that is also on record as opposing making books searchable through Google, and making used books available through Amazon), who claimed that Amazon was in violation of copyright, since only the rightsholder could authorise an “audiobook adaptation” of a book.

As a point of law, I think that the Authors Guild is just wrong here, for the obvious reasons that:

1. It’s not an infringement for a Kindle owner to use technology privately to modify a copyrighted work. If you own a painting, you can take a photo of it to carry around in your wallet – without paying the painter any extra. You can rip your CDs at home without the musician’s permission.

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Source: The Guardian

Picture this: you’re sat down for the Football World Cup final, or a long-awaited sequel to the “Sex and the City” movie and you’re watching all the action unfold in 3-D on your coffee table.
The future of television? This image is an impression of what 3D holographic television may look like.

The future of television? This image is an impression of what 3D holographic television may look like.

It sounds a lot like a wacky dream, but don’t be surprised if within our lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions of your gaming heroes.

The reason for renewed optimism in three-dimensional technology is a breakthrough in rewritable and erasable holographic systems made earlier this year by researchers at the University of Arizona.

Dr Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university’s Optical Sciences department, told CNN that scientists have broken a barrier by making the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory.

“This is a prerequisite for any type of moving holographic technology. The way it works presently is not suitable for 3-D images,” he said.

The researchers produced displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.

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Source: CNN

So you think junior is a little too lead-footed when he drives the family car? Starting next year, Ford Motor Co. will give you the power to do something about it.

The company will roll out a new feature on many 2010 models that can limit teen drivers to 80 mph, using a computer chip in the key.

Parents also have the option of programming the teen’s key to limit the audio system’s volume, and to sound continuous alerts if the driver doesn’t wear a seat belt.

“Our message to parents is, hey, we are providing you some conditions to give your new drivers that may allow you to feel a little more comfortable in giving them the car more often,” said Jim Buczkowski, Ford’s director of electronic and electrical systems engineering.

The feature, called “MyKey,” will be standard on an unspecified number of Ford models when the 2010 cars and trucks come out late next summer. The feature will spread to the entire Ford, Lincoln and Mercury lineup as models are updated, spokesman Wes Sherwood said.

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Source: The Associated Press via Yahoo! News

Camera makers are jumping into the 3D photo market more than 20 years after the format was laughed out of town and ended up as Michael Jackson’s sidekick in Captain Eo.

Last week, Fujifilm announced a two-lensed camera that takes images and movies in 3D and captures wide-angle photos of single scenes simultaneously. As a result, we’ve heard some rumbling in the wires about other camera manufacturers coming out with their own version in the next year or so.

Since the lenses are 6-7cm from each other (or about the same length between most people’s eyes), the Real 3D’s camera processes the images in real time to produce the stereoscopic ‘trick’ effect that makes them look as if they’re floating in air. This is where the processing update of Fujitsu’s ‘Real Photo Processor 3D’ chip comes in.

The chip blends the dual images and all the important metrics (focus, zoom range, and exposure) at once and pushes them out to the LCD, which is also on a 3D-display. By the time this camera is released next year, the company is promising to be able to shoot HD video on it as well.

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Source: Wired Blog

T-Mobile has rolled out Google’s answer to the iPhone as the Web search giant makes its biggest stab yet at leaping from consumers’ computers into their pockets with a device cheaper than rival Apple offers.

The widely-anticipated G1 phone, introduced on Tuesday made by HTC Corp (2498.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), has a touch-sensitive screen, a computer-like keyboard, Wi-Fi connections and uses Google’s new Android operating system.

Available in three colors — black, white and brown — it includes familiar Google services, such as Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube. Like the iPhone and other “smartphones” the device is meant to broaden the appeal of Web surfing on the go.

“If we see more mobile Web usage we’ll be happy,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin told Reuters after arriving at the launch on roller-blades.

His company, a powerhouse in Web advertising, would benefit if Android led more cell users to spend time on the Web, no matter which phone they are using.

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Source: Reuters

A thin and smiling Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs launched a much thinner, curved iPod nano music player and joked about the state of his much-discussed health on Tuesday.

But shares of Apple fell more than 4 percent after the presentation, which had no major surprises for investors, amid a broad decline in the stock market. Apple last week invited reporters to a music-related event, stoking expectations of new players. Some had hoped for new computers as well as iPods, but that did not happen.

Jobs appeared thin but jaunty as he walked around the stage in his trademark outfit of jeans and long-sleeve black shirt in front of a screen that flashed “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” — a quotation borrowed from Mark Twain.

Jobs introduced a curved aluminum and glass nano — the best-selling iPod — for $149 with 8 gigabytes of storage, $50 less than the predecessor model and a 16-gigabyte version for $199, capable of playing back 24 hours of music or four hours of video. He also showed off a thinner, $229 version of the Web-connected iPod Touch with rounded edges and 8 gigabytes of storage. At the high end, Apple is charging $399 for 32 gigabytes.

Apple dominates personal digital music players, with nearly three-quarters of the U.S. market in July, Jobs said, adding the product line-up was strong for the gift-giving season.

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Source: Reuters

It appears that Apple’s ever so popular music machine may was actually developed by a Brit back in the 70s.

Hertfordshire based Kane Kramer, now 52, came up with and patented the design of a digital music player when he was just 23. Dubbed the IXI, the original music player had only enough capacity to store three and half minutes of music – although Kramer expected this to increase over time. However, the idea fell into the public domain in 1988 when he couldn’t raise enough cash to renew the international patents.

Because of this Kramer has never previously received any recognition or money from his design.

This all came to light when Apple used his designs and patent papers to settle another copyright infringement case with Burst.com. Apple took Kramer in as a consultant, flying him to California to give a deposition about his creation.

“To be honest, I was just so pleased that finally something that I had done which has been a huge success and changed the music industry was being acknowledged. I was really quite emotional about it all,” Kramer told the Daily Mail.

The dispute between Apple and Burst.com has since been settled confidentially out of court. Apart from this brief acknowledgement of his design and the payment for his time at the hearing, Kramer has received no other compensation from Apple, although he is apparently in talks with company and is seeking some payment from the copyright that he owns on the drawings used in the case.

Source: iT News

Apple has finally admitted that a British man who left school at 15 is the inventor behind the iPod.

Kane Kramer, 52, came up with the technology that drives the digital music player nearly 30 years ago but has still not seen a penny from his invention. And the father of three is so hard up he had to sell his home last year and move his family to rented accommodation. Now documents filed by Apple in a court case show the US firm acknowledges him as the father of the iPod.

The computer giant even flew Mr Kramer to its Californian headquarters to give evidence in its defence during a legal wrangle with another firm, Burst.com, which claimed it held patents to technology in the iPod and deserved a cut of Apple’s £89billion profits.

Two years ago, Mr Kramer told this newspaper how he had invented the device in 1979 – when he was just 23.

His invention, called the IXI, stored only 3.5 minutes of music on to a chip – but Mr Kramer rightly believed its capacity would improve. His sketches at the time showed a credit-card-sized player with a rectangular screen and a central menu button to scroll through a selection of music tracks – very similar to the iPod.

He took out a worldwide patent and set up a company to develop the idea. But in 1988, after a boardroom split, he was unable to raise the £60,000 needed to renew patents across 120 countries and the technology became public property.

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Source: Daily Mail

Japan’s trade ministry said on Tuesday that three fires had been caused by overheating Apple iPod nanos, which it said could be due to a battery defect.

No one was injured in the three fires involving the music players made by Apple Inc but the government said in a statement Apple had reported two other cases where people had suffered minor burns.

Apple officials were not immediately available for comment but the ministry said the firm had said a possible defect in iPod nano battery cells could have caused them to overheat.

The trade ministry said iPod nanos with known overheating incidents were sold in Japan between September 2005 and September 2006.

A semi-governmental body specializing in product safety will look into the cause of the incidents in cooperation with Apple, a trade ministry official said.

“We are not in the position to speculate on the outcome of the investigation. But after several incidents like these, it would be appropriate for Apple to take some measures to raise the public’s awareness,” the official said.

Source: ZDNet

At the Digital Experience press event on Wednesday, two companies in the GPS tracking applications sector took center stage: While Zoombak seems focused on the consumer, FindWhere offered similar services aimed at the business set. Both companies’ products use GSM networks, which are publicly accessible. While FindWhere has not specified whose network it is using, Zoombak representatives told BetaNews that it has an agreement with T-Mobile to use its towers.

In both cases, a device is equipped with a GPS, which sends a packet at regular intervals to the servers of either service. From here, those data points are plotted in real time on a map where interested parties can track it.

Tracking like this is nothing new, but mass marketing of such a service is. Amateur radio operators have been using a system known as APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) since about 1992, when GPS first became affordable enough to be used by average consumers. However, without a ham radio license, such tracking was unavailable. Companies are now looking to change that, as is evidenced by the surge of new products now being released, and a growing appetite by the consumer to use GPS as more of a one-way technology.

For the most part, tracking systems have existed similar to this for several years for cars, shipping crates, and other valuable assets (besides people). However, historically, the information was downloaded not in real-time — not while the car or asset was traveling. Thus connectivity is key for this latest generation.

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Source: Beta News

Alison DeLauzon thought the snapshots and home videos of her infant son were gone for good when she lost her digital camera while on vacation in Florida.

Then a funny thing happened: her camera “phoned home.”

Equipped with a special memory card with wireless Internet capability, DeLauzon’s camera had not only automatically sent her holiday pictures to her computer, but had even uploaded photos of the miscreants who swiped her equipment bag after she accidentally left it behind at a restaurant.

“I opened up the Eye-Fi manager on the computer and, lo and behold, there are the guys that stole our cameras,” said DeLauzon, a native of New York’s Long Island suburb. “Not only is it the guy who stole our camera … but the guy took a picture of (his accomplice) holding our other camera.”

DeLauzon received the Eye-Fi, a 2-gigabyte SD memory card that fits into millions of digital cameras, as a holiday gift to go with her Canon camera.

Priced at about $100, the card automatically uploads pictures to a home computer or online photosharing service as soon as the user is linked to a familiar wireless network.

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Source: Reuters

Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was born 100 years ago Wednesday in London.

While that historical footnote passed with hardly any mention in Silicon Valley, Fleming’s spy novels deserve a place on the shelf in the section titled “history of technology.” Fleming, who rose to the rank of commander in the British Admiralty during the World War II, introduced Bond in 1953 with the publication of Casino Royale. The subsequent Bond books and films brought to public notice everything from luminous watches to car phones and pagers–long before they became commonplace commodities in contemporary society.

We also can thank Fleming for the popular phrase, a “James Bond gadget.” For a look back, take a look at the list compiled on Wikipedia.

So let’s raise a glass–shaken, not stirred, of course–to Q and the rest of the team. Happy birthday, Mr. Fleming. the man whose imagination contributed mightily to popular thinking about all those cool high-tech toys.

Source: CNet

It’s safe to say Jeremy Snyder gets a charge out of the two-seat Tesla Roadster whenever he pulls one off the lot — and not because it’s equipped with an all-electric engine. As he pulled one of the sleek new automobiles down a side street Thursday and put the pedal to the metal, its lithium-ion battery-powered engine didn’t give off sparks. It just emitted a powerful hum, something like a much quieter version of a jet taking off.

“Accelerate pretty good?” asked Snyder, head of client services for Tesla, who knew the answer.

“I call it a turbine sound,” he said of the sound. “Because it’s an electric motor it’s got 100 per cent torque all the time. So it just pulls you like when you’re taking off in an airplane.”

After several years of development, the Roadster — with sleek lines like a Ferrari or Porsche and a sticker price of $109,000 (U.S.) — officially moves from the drawing boards to the market next week when Tesla’s first store opens. It’s near the University of California, Los Angeles, in the city’s toney Westwood neighbourhood where Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Hollywood practically intersect. “Because it’s Hollywood and glamorous, this is the flagship store,” Snyder said.

The next store is to open in a couple months near Tesla’s headquarters in the Silicon Valley city of San Carlos, where the car was developed with venture capital of more than $40-million from such investors as Google Inc. founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. More stores are planned for Chicago, New York and other cities by early next year.

Although a fully loaded model can set a buyer back as much as $124,000, that’s still cheap compared with a high-end Ferrari. And its 6,831-cell lithium-ion battery pack gives off no emissions.

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Source: Canada’s The Globe and Mail