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Dell Tech Swipes Nude Photos of Gullible Customer

Tara FitzgeraldDell is apparently eager to compete with Best Buy and Walmart for the title of most despised retailer in the country. A few months back, a tech support rep got in trouble for turning on a woman's webcam without her permission. Then, last month, the company got nabbed knowingly shipping faulty PCs. And, just this week, the Texas-based manufacturer was caught shipping motherboards infected with malware. Now, a woman from California is alleging that a support technician for Dell stole nude photos of her from her PC and posted them online, and then charged $800 worth of computer gear to her credit card for another woman in Tennessee.

This is not a cut-and-dry case of a misbehaving tech rep, though. This drama has actually been going on for almost a year, and only now is Tara Fitzgerald coming forward with her accusations. Try and follow the sequence of events, and make sense of Fitzgerald's often questionable judgment.

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RIM's 'Blackpad' 9.7-inch Tablet Rumored to Debut in November

BlackPad For quite some time, rumor had it that RIM has been wanting to get into the tablet game, and who can blame it? Microsoft has had a long history in the market, Apple's iPad has proven popular, and it seems that just about every other manufacturer is trying to cram Android into the form-factor. A couple of days ago, we heard that RIM had acquired Blackpad.com, and the world collectively cringed at what we hoped was a purely defensive move to keep domain squatters at bay. Now, according to Bloomberg, there is confirmation that RIM plans to call its 9.7-inch tablet the Blackpad.

According to "people familiar with" the situation, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-capable device will be unveiled in November with front- and back-facing cameras. While there is no indication of when the Blackpad will find its way into customers' hands, the RIM tablet is expected to cost about as much as the iPad. Like our friends at Engadget, we're seriously hoping for a Microsoft-like change of heart when it comes to the name. [From: Bloomberg, via: Engadget]

Obama Says Presidential BlackBerry Is 'No Fun,' But His iPod's Stocked With Jay-Z

Obama and Hist BlackBerry
It's a well known fact that President Obama has a bit of a BlackBerry addiction -- so much so, the man fought long and hard to keep his beloved device once he entered the White House, making him the first sitting president to use one of the e-mail centric smartphones. But Obama revealed on 'The View' Thursday that, perhaps, it wasn't worth all the trouble. Though White House security and IT personnel eventually succumbed to the president's desires, only a select few are authorized to contact him on the device. A grand total of ten individuals know the President's BlackBerry info. As he told the coven round table on 'The View,' it's "no fun" because people refrain from sending him the "real juicy stuff" in order to avoid being archived under the Presidential Records Act.

There are some other tantalizing tech bits. "Some 20-year-old" person tweets for the presidential Twitter account. And, while he hasn't "made the switch" to an iPhone, he does have a fully loaded iPod upon which he's dependent. His music choices? "You name a song, I've got it," the President explains, mentioning Jay-Z, Frank Sinatra and Maria Callas -- but definitely not Justin Bieber. [From: AFP, via: Engadget]

Redbox Taking $1.50 Blu-ray Rentals Nationwide

Redbox Logo
We're sure you're familiar with Redbox's kiosks, which offer DVD rentals for $1, and can often be found on your way out the door of your local mega-mart. Now the company is updating its services to offer high-def Blu-ray rentals. Of course, the HD discs will set you back slightly more than the $1 DVDs, but, at $1.50, the price bump is hardly a deal breaker. Roughly half of the company's 26,000 kiosks are now offering the Blu-ray rentals, and the remaining machines are scheduled to be upgraded by the fall.

Even though discs are going the way of MySpace -- as streaming services from Netflix, Blockbuster and even Hulu are replacing traditional rentals and DVD purchases -- plenty still get their video fix from a disc. While we're sure Redbox customers appreciate the HD option, renters had better not get too cozy; the company hopes to rapidly shift to streaming video in order to be a competitor, and not a relic of a bygone, disc-laden era. [From: Engadget]

'Congress' App Brings Voting Records and Political Tweets to Android

Congress Android App

There is more than one political junkie on the Switched staff, and the lot of us get pretty excited whenever we see a cool app that makes it easier to keep on top of the happenings in Washington. iPhone owners already have a host of options for tracking Congress, but, until now, Android users have been largely left in a lurch. Thanks to the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to government transparency, that has changed.

The simply entitled 'Congress' app puts almost any information you could possibly desire at your fingertips, delivering your representative's contact information, voting record and Twitter handle. While you can manually search for a particular congressperson from the home screen, you can also set the app to pull up your district's elected rep using GPS.

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New ATM Hack Turns Cash Machines Into Jackpots

The ubiquitous ATM has quickly become a favorite, and often easy, target for hackers looking to make a quick buck. At the Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas, security researcher Barnaby Jack recently demonstrated a pair of hacks that allowed him to force an ATM to literally spit cash at him like he'd hit the jackpot on a slot machine. In the demonstration, Jack attacked ATMs from Triton and Tranax, ...

Nerdy Do-Gooder Brings R2-D2 to Hospitals, Much Better Than Animatronic Seals

Usually when hospitals want to cheer up patients who are suffering from terminal diseases and spending large amounts of time within the confines of a medical institution, they turn to man's best friend. Bringing dogs to hospitals is old news, though. If you don't want to deal with the unpredictability of a live animal, you can bring in Paro, the rather creepy animatronic seal. But, if you've got ...

Mobile Apps Could Be Exposing Your Personal Data

Lookout, a mobile security company, embarked on an absolutely massive study that examined the code of some 300,000 Android and iPhone apps. Dubbed the App Genome Project, it looked at a large cross-section of mobile apps and found that an unsettling number of them were accessing your personal information, and sometimes without alerting you. According to Lookout, 33-percent of iPhone and ...

Nazi Hackers Target Concentration Camp Sites

Hackers recently defaced the digital "Book of the Dead" and other portions of a website dedicated to the Buchenwald concentration camp, and completely erased all traces of a second site dedicated to the Mittelbau Dora camp. The attacks, targeting these grim reminders of Nazi horrors, were carried out by people who, we assert, are technically called "scum." Gone were the digital memorials and in ...

Microsoft Launches Web-Connected 'Hohm' Power Monitor

Microsoft and Blue Line Innovations have teamed up to bring another eco-conscious gadget to the marketplace, aiming to help consumers conserve energy and money. The Hohm PowerCost Monitor and WiFi Gateway is being sold for $249, and connects with Microsoft's Hohm service. Hohm tracks energy usage throughout your home, and converts that raw data into real-life dollars and cents. The combined Wi-Fi ...
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