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Le Roi Est Mort, Vive le Roi!

3:44 PM Friday, January 27, 2012

Apple reclaimed the top spot in a brand listing by collecting an estimated $900 million worth of traditional media, social media and Twitter coverage in the fourth quarter of 2011, a measurement company said today.

New York-based General Sentiment, which tracks the online coverage of 100 companies each quarter, said that Apple’s return to the No. 1 spot was fueled by media reports and individuals’ comments about the iPhone 4S and the death of former CEO Steve Jobs — events that took place in the final three months of 2011.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs

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Travelin’ Man

3:42 PM Friday, January 27, 2012

Hewlett-Packard on Friday confirmed that Jon Rubinstein, who came to the company through its $1.2 billion purchase of Palm, has left the company.

“I’m Batman!”

Prior to joining Palm, Rubinstein played an important role at Apple as the head of the company’s iPod division. Rubinstein was instrumental in the creation of the iPod and discovered the portable hard drives that were used in the first models.

Incestuous

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Dr. I. M. Miffed

3:37 PM Friday, January 27, 2012

If you’re like most people, you’re annoyed by passwords. You’ve got dozens to remember — some of them tortuously complex — and on any given day, as you read e-mails, send tweets, and order groceries online, you’re bound to forget one, or at least mistype it. You may even be one of those unfortunate people who’ve had a password stolen, thanks to the dodgy security on the machines that store them.

But who’s to blame? Who invented the computer password?

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Print from You iPad Why Don’t You?

3:16 PM Friday, January 27, 2012

Hewlett Packard is showing off a range of new printers at Macworld|iWorld 2012, largely aimed at the home office and small-to-medium business segments. However, a new feature of its latest printer models is what really caught our eye on the show floor. HP’s Wireless Direct makes it possible to print documents and images from an iOS device via AirPrint without even knowing the name or password of the local wireless network.

All of HP’s printers now include the company’s ePrint feature, which enables options like wireless printing, sending documents to print via e-mail from anywhere in the world, and directly accessing documents in the cloud. These ePrint capabilities also enable support for Apple’s AirPrint standard, according to Marketing Manager Annamaria Pardini, which lets iPhones and iPads to print to a networked printer without any setup, configuration, or driver installation.

In theory, I can print from my iPad to my networked Artisan 710. Apple just makes it so difficult that I have to call them to find out how.

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Popcorn in No Time At All

11:12 AM Friday, January 27, 2012

Department of Energy scientists have built the world’s hottest laser, delivering temperatures hotter than the corona of the sun.

The team at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has created the shortest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, by aiming the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at a capsule of neon gas. This sets off an avalanche of X-ray emissions to create the world’s first atomic X-ray laser – and temperatures of two million degrees.

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HP 2311x 23-inch LED Monitor

10:13 AM Friday, January 27, 2012

The good: The HP 2311x includes the trifecta of connection options, all placed in an easily accessible spot. Don’t expect world-beating performance, but for $230 it’s quite good and even more impressive currently from Amazon.com for $180.

The bad: The monitor has no ergonomic support beyond tilt, its Movie and Gaming presets are too dark, and it has a plastic-feeling build quality. Some audio options would have been useful.

The bottom line: The HP 2311x is a great monitor deal, with good performance and a great assortment of connections for its price.

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Why Can’t Apple Get Americans to Do The Jobs?

5:32 PM Thursday, January 26, 2012

After unveiling profits that smashed expectations and broke revenue records, it’s been a big week for Apple, but a recent investigative report brings the company’s rosy report crashing back to earth. After a string of highly publicized suicides at Foxconn in 2009, Apple pledged to clean up its act and tighten policies on worker health and quality of life.

The company’s decision to release its list of suppliers after years of stonewalling is a positive step towards this goal, but evidence shows there’s a long way to go.

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PCNowhere

3:11 PM Thursday, January 26, 2012

It’s not often when a developer tells you outright not to use its software, but that is exactly what Symantec is forced to do in light of the theft of source code. Last month, Hacktavist group Anonymous bragged that it had possession of code that powers several applications, including Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security; Norton SystemWorks and pcAnywhere.

Symantec says the code theft originally occurred in 2006. While at first security experts believed the theft to only be a black eye for the company’s reputation, it now appears that the incident is far more serious. Symantec recommends users of pcAnywhere stop using the software immediately until there is a solution to address any security concerns.

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To Every Season, Sperm, Sperm, Sperm

3:09 PM Thursday, January 26, 2012

Scientists have discovered that all sorts of females – from birds to reptiles to insects – have a nifty trick to prolong the lifespan of sperm, letting them store it for weeks, months or even years on end.

They found that females do this by lowering the metabolic rate of sperm, so it can survive in their bodies almost indefinitely. In one extreme example, biologists have shown that queen ants fertilise their eggs with sperm they’ve stored for up to 30 years. Normally, once it’s outside the male’s body, it doesn’t survive for long.

But not humans, right?

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Apple on the Cheap

1:51 PM Thursday, January 26, 2012

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook reportedly informed employees this week that later this year they will be able to buy an iPad with a $250 discount, while Macs will be available for $500 off.

Starting in June, the discounts will be available to employees who have worked more than 90 days at Apple, according to The Register. Employees will be able to obtain the $750 in discounts once every three years. The announcement was made by Cook in a “town hall” meeting put on by Apple with its employees. It came a day after Apple announced a record quarter, in which it earned $13 billion.

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The Five

1:48 PM Thursday, January 26, 2012

From The Inquirer:

SOURCES at Foxconn China are leaking details about Apple’s upcoming Iphone 5 device, saying the smartphone will look completely different than the Iphone 4 and Iphone 4S.

According to 9to5 Mac, the handset is referred to as the Iphone 5 and is gearing up for production. Apparently there are a few sample devices that vary from each other, but they have a few things in common.

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Just As Long As There’s No Original Content!

11:34 AM Thursday, January 26, 2012

Netflix beat Wall Street expectations when it posted fourth quarter earnings on Wednesday, signaling that the online rental service was in recovery mode following a very bumpy 2011.

“Just let them keep wondering!”

While his company continues to push its streaming service front and center, CEO Reed Hastings made it very clear as to what we won’t see in the coming year — or ever — from Netflix. Here’s a glance at a few of the topics covered during the Q&A conference call with analysts and investors yesterday…

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But Can It Make a Phone Call?

11:30 AM Thursday, January 26, 2012

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is building a low-cost Linux computer with a 700MHz ARM11 CPU. The board, which is roughly the size of a pack of playing cards, entered the manufacturing stage last month. There will be two models, priced at $25 and $35, with different specifications.

The board is built around the Broadcom BCM2835 chipset, which is designed to handle intensive multimedia. In a recent interview, Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton claimed that the Broadcom graphics hardware in the Raspberry Pi offers twice the performance of the iPhone 4S GPU and soundly beats NVIDIA’s Tegra 2. Upton worked for Broadcom on the team that developed the hardware.

Back in the day, that would have been, “which is roughly the size of a pack of cigarettes. Sigh…

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1935 One-off Mercedes 500K Is As Old As I Am

10:48 AM Thursday, January 26, 2012

Being agriculturally inclined to build barns in the country, we dont expect barn finds to turn up in the middle of a high-turnover metropolis. Yet thats been happening more regularly of late, and writer Michael Mraz has found another example in South Central, Los Angeles: a one-of-one Mercedes-Benz 1935 Caracciola 500K built especially for Silver Arrows race driver Rudolph Caraccioloa.

-oldster-

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Smile

9:46 AM Thursday, January 26, 2012

NASA released this incredible new high-res image of the Earth, taken by the recently launched Earth-observing satellite, Suomi NPP.

The image, which centers on North and Central America, has been nicknamed “Blue Marble 2012″ after the famous “Blue Marble” image (below) taken during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The original Blue Marble, featuring the Arabian Peninsula and Africa, is one of the most well recognized photographs of all time.

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