While the devices don't noticeably stray from RIM's design choices from the past decade -- they're instantly recognizable as QWERTY keyboard BlackBerrys -- the 9900 and 9300 pack some impressive guts. While the 2.8-inch VGA touchscreens won't impress many in today's world of 4-inch screens, but the devices are RIM's thinnest yet at 10.5mm.

Continue reading BlackBerry Bold 9900, 9930 Will Run BlackBerry OS 7

BlackBerry Bold 9900, 9930 Will Run BlackBerry OS 7 originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 20 May 2011 11:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BlackBerry fans that have been frustrated by the operating system's chronically sluggish Web experience will be pleased to know that OS 7 offers a "significantly enhanced" browser with HTML5 video support and speed updates.

Interestingly, OS 7 won't have any legacy support, meaning that even the current generation Bold or Touch that you bought last year will be left behind -- you'll need to have one of RIM's brand new 9900 or 9930 devices to run it. SlashGear writes that according to RIM, "the reasoning behind the absent upgrades is that the new OS is so dependent on the hardware graphics capabilities of its new handsets."

RIM's new BlackBerry Balance application, though, will work on any device running OS 6.0 or later. First detailed in January, Balance is RIM's solution for combining both your personal and corporate accounts -- and all the security requirements that those require -- on a single device. For example, you can wipe all of the enterprise data from your phone, while still leaving the personal accounts intact. Or, social networking apps like Facebook and Twitter can be given limited access to anything from your corporate accounts.

BlackBerry OS 7 Features Announced--But It Won't Run On Older Devices originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 02 May 2011 10:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Farewell, Internet originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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"They've been caught flat-footed," said Jean-Louis Gassée, a former Apple executive, the former chairman of Palm's software spinoff and a partner at Allegis Capital in Palo Alto, Calif. "They've built a tremendous company; they are people with distinguished backgrounds. They are not idiots, but they've behaved like idiots."

Of course, most everyone, when challenged at a conscious level, will correct this mistake, and agree that no, Google only aggregates, it doesn't think, that the Internet is just a compilation of human endeavors. But how often do you hear someone say something like "ask Google", "Wikipedia says", "Facebook told me..."? Before the Internet, there was no tool with which people interacted linguistically.

Watch:

• unicode
• Inventor Portrait: Steven Sasson
• Showtime: Forrest Oliphant, 'Slithering'
• GAME BOY MUSIC

Know:

• The latest scam sweeping Facebook pretends to tag you in photos from the Olive Garden restaurant. [From: Sophos nakedsecurity]
• Lifehacker counts down the 10 best micro-apps (often uni-tasking tools for controlling image uploads, desktop settings or clipboard history) for Mac and Windows. [From: Lifehacker]

Interview with Digital Camera Inventor, Making Game Boy Music originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yesterday the Internet lit up for a bit with news of a new track from the draggy, divisive outfit Salem. "Nite Daze," according to the email blasting it around the Internet, was "all about the drag environment of being incredibly tired, in a dream-state, wasted or on something, and forcing something creative from the mutual confused experience," and it sure sounded like at least one of those words.

A relevant question to ask at this moment is: Why would anyone bother to invent a new aesthetic for such a retrograde form? This is an exciting time for innovation in new media: interactive forms for active consumers. Radio, in contrast, just washes over you or drifts by in the background.

Watch:

• The AWESOME button
• F35 Ejector Seat Trials
• The Social Web of Things

Know:

• The torrenting turtle knows what's up about downloading full albums to preview just one song. [From: Geekosystem]
• The new 3Frames app lets you make simple animated GIFs with your iPhone. For more detailed animations, check out our guide. [From: Gizmodo]

Ericsson's Hyper-Connected Vision of the Future, The Torrenting Turtle Weighs In originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Do not leave me a voicemail. I will not listen to it. I'm going to press the corresponding number to delete your message as soon as the automated voice recording concludes. I'm going to press it with conviction, like a little boy who just won a raffle to implode an old baseball stadium.

The best analogy for Eve is this: 1% of the time, when you take part in a massive fleet fight, or take part in some epic espionage caper or something, it is the most fun game you will ever encounter. 99% of the time you're just waiting for something to happen. But it's that 1% that hooks people like crack cocaine. I mean, you don't get interviewed by the BBC when you win a WoW raid.

Watch:

• The Evolution of Mobile
• Blit Terminal (circa 1982)

Know:

Cell Phone Evolution, Say Farewell to Voicemail originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 18:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you look at most websites the commenting page is down way at the bottom after all the links to other stories and the ads and other stuff. Down way at the bottom is this little tiny box with a tiny font with no extra tools that says leave your comment here. That already sends the message that the publication doesn't value commenters as much as they value their own stuff.

Etsy itself grew out of a freelance design project that Kalin and two friends, Haim Schoppik and Chris Maguire, undertook for GetCrafty.com, an online bulletin board for crafters run by the wife of an NYU professor. While working on GetCrafty, Kalin noticed two things: first, that there were a lot of crafters on the Internet, and, second, that many of them hated eBay.

Watch:

Know:

• Easter egg of the day: Open Mobile Safari on your iPhone, search for 'tilt' in the Google search bar and watch what happens. [From: @conorfromorange]
• Power up your Mac's maximize button with the Moom utility, which lets you quickly rearrange and move windows without the need to click and drag. [From: Moom via: DownloadSquad]

Girl Rides a Roomba, iPhone 'Tilt' Easter Egg originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While verification can be a minor obstacle for photojournalists using social media as a resource, it lies at the heart of the ethical and aesthetic issues of crisis reporting

Life invariably seems to find a way to imitate art, but as the world's computer systems and networks continue to fall prey to hackers, the resemblance has become eerie. The Internet has transformed many things in the world, but one of its most remarkable effects has been to change the balance of power, not between states, but between entire nations and their citizens.

Watch:

• Internet Outage Forces Public Into Street to Voice Their Inane Opinions
• Introducing: Suwappu
• Skataz electric skates

Know:

• Is your Firefox crawling? Mozilla suggests you trash some of your add-ons. [From: webmonkey]
• Kotaku's got an early look at the real-time beard and lighting effects made possible in the new Unreal Engine. [From: Kotaku]

An Augmented Reality Toy, How to Speed Up Firefox originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 05 Apr 2011 19:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The catch is that plenty of new research suggests that forcing Internet-addicted employees to go cold turkey may make them less productive, not more.

I take representing digital culture in film very seriously in lieu of having grown up in a world of very badly researched user interface greeble. I cringed during the part in Hackers (1995) when a screen saver with extruded "equations" is used to signify that the hacker has reached some sort of neural flow or ambiguous destination. I cringed for Swordfish and Jurassic Park as well.

Watch:

• holocene
• augmented reality orange carton
• Purdue team submits world record claim for Rube Goldberg Machine

Know:

• The ARPANET Dialogues archive captures a series of late '70s Internet chats between Edward Said, Jane Fonda, Francis Fukuyama and other notable political and cultural figures. [From: The ARPANET Dialogues]

Building TRON's Computer Interfaces, Augmented Reality in Your OJ originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What we have here, setting aside the fancy editing involving the time travel, is something that looks like hard science fiction. That's a threatened genre. Movies with plots are threatened in general; much modern "science fiction" involves blowing stuff up. The good classic sci-fi involved starting with an idea and exploring its implications.

"The idea was that you would have people vertically ascending, and you would have items and blocks that you could pile up to go higher, or you could grab your friend that you were playing with and throw them to try and continue to ascend," Tanabe said. Unfortunately, "the vertical-scrolling gimmick wasn't enough to get us interesting gameplay."

Though Google prides itself on giving engineers access to its code base to invent new products, it blocked the engineers in China because it said government officials might force them to reveal private information. Experienced engineers, who felt distrusted, could not work on new products and had to spend time on tasks like testing Google searches, something that less-qualified people do at other Google offices.

Watch:

• Seattle Doctor Folds and Throws Paper Airplane Using da Vinci Robot
• Kinectified 'Ghost in the Shell'

Know:

The History Behind 'Super Mario Bros. 2,' Robot Folds Paper Airplanes originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It's familiar logic - the same kind of analog-economics-for-digital-content thinking that fuels all those "People! Don't you realize that X months of The New York Times is just X Starbucks lattes?" comments. What it overlooks, though, is the very real possibility that, not just physically but economically, atoms have different properties than bits.

Instead, Google chose to make its opponents its partners in a gigantic new library and book business, Google Book Search. The business plan led to a second misstep, because it included a dubious opt-out clause. Authors of out-of-print books who failed to notify Google of their refusal to participate in its project were deemed to have accepted it.

But rest assured, robots that resemble their flesh-and-blood creators are on their way to the world's battlefields. According to a 2004 Darpa survey, US military officers believe that humanoid robots will begin filling out infantry units as early as 2025. Those android grunts will likely be descendants of Petman, a bipedal Boston Dynamics robot funded by Darpa that walks more gracefully than C-3PO.

Watch:

Know:

• Why can't we just have simple, minimal calendars? Looks like Apple is bringing the luxurious leather-bound, torn paper of the iPad's calendar to iCal in OS X Lion. [From: TheNextWeb]
• The much criticized QuickBar has been banished from Twitter for iOS. [From: Twitter Blog]

Twitter Kills the QuickBar, Why Google Books Failed originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We have been outsourcing our intelligence to machines for centuries. Now they are much quicker at calculation and infinitely more adept at memory than we have ever been. And so now we decide that memory and calculation are not really part of mind.

The bad thing about computers is that they make everything run very fast, so fast that you can have a baby in nine weeks instead of nine months. But you still need nine months, not nine weeks, to make a baby.

The same kind of thing happens in the opening scene. Every once in a while, during Mark and Erica's conversation, a little white light appears over her shoulder. We may or may not register that it's a guy using a little flashlight to check IDs as people enter the pub.

Watch:

Know:

• Writers David Carr, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Molly McAleer and Anthony De Rosa discuss working in today's impossibly distracting media environment at SXSW. Listen in. [From: Huffduffer]
• The new fugly android tumblr should fulfill your daily need for Android design atrocities. [From: fugly android]
• The LA Times profiles Mark's dad, Edward Zuckerberg. [From: Los Angeles Times]
• Extend the battery life of your iOS 4.3 device by turning off Apple's Ping music social network. [From: Lifehacker]

'The Social Network' Frame by Frame, Disable Ping to Save Your iPhone Battery originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Google's New +1 Social Search Button Puts 'Likes' in Your Search

Google's New +1 Social Search Button Puts 'Likes' in Your Search originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the case of the Kinect, there was also an element of history involved. Wiens and the iFixit team tend to look at designers and engineers almost the same way other people look at bands or film directors--analyzing their new work in comparison to their old work, seeing how they've improved, how their voice is changing.

This was something I knew but didn't really want to admit: in the evening, when I'm reading on my laptop or iPad, my eyes are hurting a little. After 8-9 hours spent in front of a 24" screen blasting light in my face at work, my eyes feel a bit like two sun dried tomatoes. They are tired. As I'm writing this, after work, I can feel it.

Watch:

• The creation of Nokia's new 'Pure' typeface

Know:

• Desktoday keeps your Mac tidy by throwing all the files on your desktop into a dated folder. [From: Lifehacker]
• 4Chan's Christopher "moot" Poole took questions from the community at reddit's IAmA section today. [From: reddit]

The Need to Go 'No Glow,' Christopher Poole Drops by Reddit originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gallery: Vimeo iPhone App

Vimeo App Finally Hits the iPhone With Video Editing and Watch List originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One evening this week, my husband and I had a discussion that mirrors others we've had over the past few years. "Sometimes, it's like you're here and you're not here," Joe said to me. "Your mind and soul are in cyberspace, and all we're left with is the husk."

"However," Calder continued, "at roughly the 91-second mark, when the phenomenon has been remixed, set to a dance beat, and Auto-Tuned, that original sense of pleasure begins its inevitable, precipitous decline."

Watch:

• NASA Astronauts Perform the Spacesuit Ballet
• SWITL scoops oozy goop with amazing robotic precision (video)
• The Flash Mob Sensation

Know:

• American Express jumps into the mobile payments game with Servce, an e-wallet program similar to PayPal. [From: Bloomberg]
• Matthew Battles explores the ghosts and goblins that haunt YouTube. [From: The Atlantic]

The Web's Ghouls and Ghosts, Flash Mob Sensation Coming to TV! originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Tech-Savvy Victim Tracks Laptop Thief, Has Lulz at His Expense
• 'Blinky' Offers Glimpse of Future Robot 'Helpers'
• Censorship Goes Both Ways: The Case for an Ex-Gay App
• AT&T Buys T-Mobile: What Does It Mean for Consumers?
• Haters Gonna Hate, But Rebecca Black Still Makes Stacks of Cash
• Prankster Duo Lovingly Retouches Facebook Photos, With a Splash of Derp
• Film Buff Uses Google Maps to Display Set Locations of 2,000 Movies
• 'GhostExodus' Hacker Sentenced to Nine Years in Federal Prison
• Google Goes Gaga When the Lady Drops by Mountain View
• NATO Psyops Broadcast Over Libya Caught by Amateur Eavesdropper

Switched Roundup: Gaga Drops by Google, AT&T Buys T-Mobile originally appeared on Switched on Sat, 26 Mar 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ive's lab is Apple's inner sanctum. Here, touch screens control the glass-sided machines in which new products take form. Desks are bare bar the aluminium sheets that slot together to form the familiar lines of iconic products such as the MacBook Air.

Watch:

• Badminton Jedi
• Changing Threats to Privacy from TIA to Google
• Future of Travel

Know:

• Ernest Hemingway takes a shot at Yelp reviews. [From: McSweeney's]
• Grab Apple's new iOS 4.3.1. update, chock full of bug fixes. [From: TUAW]
• Owners of the Kindle 3 can now download (over Wi-Fi) and listen to audiobooks. [From: Amazon, via: Wired]

Lightsaber Badminton, Ernest Hemingway Weighs in on Yelp originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook is too stagnant to convey anyone's personality and as users start to realize how much richer their network is through sites which focus on genuine representation, they'll drift away.

Molly Dilworth thought having images of her rooftop paintings on Google Earth would get people talking about art. "I was a little frustrated with the hermetically sealed universe of painting," she explained. "Of course people care about it, but it's not like music or movies; people have a favorite song, but not a favorite painting."

Watch:

Know:

• Today OS X celebrates its 10th birthday, marking a decade since we first fired up those Public Beta discs. [From: Engadget]
• Superbrothers' 'Sword & Sworcery EP' 8-bit adventure is finally available for iPad. [From: iTunes]

Facebook Is the Most Successful CIA Plan Ever, OS X Turns Ten originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading 'Color' App Takes Your Photos Public, Shows Users in 150-Foot Radius

'Color' App Takes Your Photos Public, Shows Users in 150-Foot Radius originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yes, it would be nice to share Google's view of itself as a selfless, righteous defender of the public's right to unbridled creativity, but the fact that the company just grabbed a frivolous patent on the use of logo doodles makes it clear that its governing point of view is not societal but commercial.

Watch:

• Paranga Adding Tactile Feedback to E-Reader Devices
• Retractable kitchen island controlled by iPhone

Know:

• DownloadSquad details how to setup and manage your torrents on your home computer from your phone. [From: DownloadSquad]
• The Guardian's incredible 'Guitar Hero'-style infographic helps you make sense of four months of Middle East protests. [From: The Guardian]
• Artist Stephan Tillman's 'Luminant Point Arrays' project documents old tube televisions getting switched off. [From: Stephan Tillman, via: Kottke]

Stephen Tillman's Dying Tube TVs, 'Guitar Hero' Infographic Traces Middle East Protests originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Through the sheer force of its numbers, 4chan has somehow managed to establish the Internet's top memes-some of which are as important to the American consciousness at this point as Hollywood movies, and they've done it over and over.

Big conglomerates may be growing ever powerful, but haven't they at least brought the internet to a much wider audience than the academics and techies of the early 90s? "It shouldn't be a trade-off," Wu replies. "There is some truth to the idea that companies are interested in consumers, and so they bring [the internet] to a broader marketplace - but it is still important to stand up for the original values of the internet."

Just think what else could have been done with the time and resources that the company devoted to the pay wall: entirely new news products could have been developed, products that could engage a wholly different kind of audience and expand the company's reach by several orders of magnitude. Flipboard was born in roughly that same time span; The Daily, for all of its imperfections, was conceived and launched within less than half that time; Groupon skyrocketed to prominence and tremendous revenue in that time, and over the course of the past eighteen months any number of other information-based startups and new products debuted and captured the public's imagination.

Watch:

• TEROOS: the shoulder-mounted telecommunications avatar
• LED Strobe Animation Device

Know:

• Save these xtranormal costumes for Halloween '11. [From: BetaBeat]

xtranormal Costumes Spotted at SXSW, TEROOS Puts Telepresence on Your Shoulder originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today's quiz: What company derives 96 percent of its revenue from advertising, has a video platform that is currently negotiating with the National Basketball Association, a movie studio and various celebrities, and is developing a subscription service that would be plug-and-play for publishers and consumers the world over.

While there is still ongoing debate about the exact definition of cyber warfare there is a growing consensus that the threats posed by both state-sponsored and non-state actors to power grids, telecom systems, water supplies, transport systems and computer networks are reaching critical levels.

My ideal composition class would include assignments like "Write coherent and original comments for five YouTube videos, quickly telling us why surprised kittens or unconventional wedding dances resonate with millions," and "Write Amazon reviews, including a bit of summary, insight and analysis, for three canonical works we read this semester (points off for gratuitous modern argot and emoticons)."

Watch:

• The Projector - 8mm Direct to 5Dmk2
• My Favorite Color via The Hairpin

Know:

• In honor of Twitter's fifth birthday, the Atlantic Wire rounds up the best in fake Tweets, Twitpics and 140 character arguments. [From: The Atlantic Wire]
• Our friends at DownloadSquad explore the hype behind group messaging apps. [From: DownloadSquad]

Twitter Turns Five, Kutiman Returns with 'My Favorite Color' originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 19:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When crises like this are happening, its easier to turn off Twitter and look to media that demand less participation, like video streams.

I, for one, prefer the experience of reading nytimes.com on the web on my iPad, rather than reading an iPad app which has no search, no links, no archives, no social recommendations, etc etc. If the NYT wanted to kill any incentive to read and develop its iPad app, it's going about it the right way.

Larry Page isn't on Facebook, he doesn't trade one-liners on Twitter, and if he has ambitions of becoming the Foursquare mayor of the Googleplex, he'll have a hard time unseating Ty Lim, a Google attorney who has racked up 32 'plex check-ins in the past 60 days. Page's apparent lack of personal interest on the web's major social sites creates a convenient narrative for Google's dreadful record in the space -- a string of failures that include Dodgeball, Jaiku, Lively, Buzz, and Wave.

Watch:

• First Person Mario
• Dev Harlan's Eye Popping 3-D Light Shows
• ESPN analyst's Super Mario ringtone goes off on air

Know:

• Citypages digs into the history of 'Oregon Trail,' which first debuted in 1971 in one of the 21-year-old creator's high school classes. [From: Citypages]

The Future of Larry Page at Google, First-Person 'Mario' originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It's Nick's meddling girlfriend again: Brian is in Austin jail, for real. Gave me his twitter password on his one phonecall. Go help him!

But you can develop a problematic addiction to anything: there's no reason to exclude the internet, and many real geeks in Austin (as opposed to the new-media gurus who claim to speak for them) readily concede they know sufferers. One of the most popular talks at the conference, touching on these subjects, bore the title Why Everything Is Amazing And Nobody Is Happy.

Watch:

• History of the Wah Wah Pedal
• First Five Minutes of 'Fez'
• A Brief History of Title Design

Know:

• Here's a handy tool: Instagrid creates a gallery out of your Instagram photos. [From: Instagrid]
• Fortune dug into its archives to unearth a 1986 cover story about the deal that netted Bill Gates $350 million. [From: Fortune]

Behind Bill Gates's $350M Deal in 1986, Five Minutes of 'Fez' originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Soon we'll roll out a train of warring investor buses. Like, Union Square Ventures will have this tricked-out John Madden-style bus with purple-tinted windows. The Betaworks bus will be called the RSS Real Time and will serve high tea every three hours. This sounds nice except the buses will all have gunnery. Like in Mad Max. And at the back of the line will be the remora investors, in a little short bus, which doesn't even have MiFi.

He views book publishing as a meritocracy, where the traditional metric of success is earned by producing work of high quality, a metric he did not hit with his early work. "I don't write fiction because I was told I'm not good at it. Books should take a lot of time-you have to make it worth existing, worth killing all those trees, or all those Nooks or whatever."

Watch:

• Peptone
• Simon Pegg and Nick Frost swede 'Star Wars'
• The Super Mario Bros. movie that should have been

Know:

• The geniuses at Geekosystem whipped up a lyric generator so you can come up with your own Rebecca Black-style song. [From: Geekosystem]
• The Big Picture documents space shuttle Discovery's final mission. [From: The Big Picture]
• This incredibly faithful 'Link to the Past' iOS theme is reason enough to jailbreak your iPhone. [From: DeviantArt]

Super Mario Bros. 'Garden State' Edition, Discovery's Final Mission originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Sci-Fi Movie Interfaces: Why Transparent Screens Are Miserable to Use

Sci-Fi Movie Interfaces: Why Transparent Screens Are Miserable to Use originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 16 Mar 2011 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, it's hard to make female characters. First of all, in order to accommodate female characters in our pipeline, you'd basically need to re-code the entire engine from the ground up. Because the technology we have today just wasn't built to be able to handle stuff like that. I'm thinking about it now and I have no idea how you'd even start making those kind of changes in our low-level architecture.

Finding the 1-in-5 figure online, Mr. Drake led the news release with the headline: "Don't let your marriage be among the 1 in 5 destroyed by Facebook." By the time Mr. Drake became aware of the error and alerted the news release's recipients, news articles had appeared around the world.

Watch:

• Lessons from 11 years of community from MetaFilter's Matt Haughey
• 5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation
• William Shatner explains what microprocessors are and do... from way back in 1976

Know:

• Qik Video Connect, a long available Android video chat app, is now up for download on iOS. [From: iTunes Store]
• Grab your glasses and convert the Web to old school red/cyan anaglyph 3-D with the 333DDD bookmarklet. [From: Mark-Beasley, via: Rhizome]

William Shatner Explains Microprocessors, Surf the Web in Anaglyph 3-D originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 19:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I know that whenever I read on a multi-purposed networked screen like a laptop, there's this kind of nagging awareness in the back of my mind that one or two alt tabs would bring me to a man putting a lemon up his nose on Youtube. You need to have iron willpower.

Watch:

• Camera trickery turns Polish city into a whirring Lilliputian metropolis
• Kinect Hack Turns You Into an Evil Genius

Know:

• Grab the Sidestep utility for Mac to keep your data safe when browsing on unsecured Wi-Fi networks. [From: Sidestep]
• While they can't wipe the floor with humans like Watson in Jeopardy, poker robots are finding some success on online gaming services. [From: New York Times]

Geeks Find Kinect Tesla Coil Hack Glory, Sidestep Secures Your Mac Over Wi-Fi originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Google Previews Updated Blogger Interface at SXSW

Google Previews Updated Blogger Interface at SXSW originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 14 Mar 2011 12:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading 4Chan's 'Moot': Zuckerberg's Single Identity Is 'Totally Wrong'

4Chan's 'Moot': Zuckerberg's Single Identity Is 'Totally Wrong' originally appeared on Switched on Sun, 13 Mar 2011 18:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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eBay was a life saver in this regard. Everything that would be considered obsolete quickly proved its value ten times over. Computers, networking systems, development hardware and external drives being shipped from around the world became the norm. What was old quickly became new again.

Watch:

• Japanese Skyscrapers Swaying During the Earthquake
• 'Super 8' Theatrical Trailer

Know:

• Ars Technica details how to stream media to your iDevice via iTunes Home Sharing, a handy new feature enabled with iOS 4.3. [From: Ars Technica]
• Popular retro photo app Instagram just added a tilt-shift filter, so get ready for a week of tiny people photography coming out of Austin's SXSW. [From: TechCrunch]
• The endlessly hyped indie platformer Fez, under development since 2008, is finally playable at this week's PAX East Festival in Boston. Don't miss the trailer. [From: Vimeo]

Instagram Adds Tilt-Shift Mode, The Difficulty of Archiving Old Video Games originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 11 Mar 2011 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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"Probably the biggest fallout from the downloading mentality is it became more a singles market. People were willing to pay a couple dollars for the songs off an album. But they're not willing to pay 18 for a new CD," Lambert says.

She has set up Gmail accounts for her six-year-old daughter and four-year-old son to ensure they'll be able to have email addresses bearing their names, which are increasingly difficult to obtain.

Watch:

• The Origins of Control-Alt-Delete
• Domo Kun WobblyBot

Know:

• A great thread on MetaFilter looks at the future of video games and computer graphics in every year since 1989. [From: MetaFilter]
• Simply re-sync your photos if you're having iTunes troubles with your recent install of iOS 4.3. [From: Lifehacker]

The Birth of Control-Alt-Delete, How to Fix iOS 4.3 iTunes Syncing Issues originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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And modern filters don't just organize that information for us; they push the information at us as alerts, updates, streams. We tend to point to spam as an example of information overload. But spam is just an annoyance. The real source of information overload, at least of the ambient sort, is the stuff we like, the stuff we want. And as filters get better, that's exactly the stuff we get more of.

Read This: Digital Filters Give Us Too Much of a Good Thing originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Every time that box comes up from a new app asking permission to send me push notifications, I've said no, because none of them have ever been important enough to interrupt me at any time of day.

Watch:

• MIT Media Lab Identity, 2011
• The Fantastic Mr. Star Fox

Know:

• Microsoft's body-flailing peripheral Kinect has beat out the iPhone and iPad as the world's fastest-selling consumer electronics device. [From: Guinness World Records]
• If hours of mining for diamonds hasn't given you your 'Minecraft' music fix, C418's official soundtrack is now available for just $4. [From: C418 at Bandcamp, via: Kotaku]
• Clement Vella's glitchy Google Earth images warp and bend bridges, highways and roads in 3-D space. [From: Clement Valla, via: Geekosystem]

'Fantastic Mr. Star Fox' One-Ups Wes Anderson, The Trouble With Notifications originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gallery: Zite

Continue reading Zite's 'Smart' Personalized iPad Magazine Lags on Launch

Zite's 'Smart' Personalized iPad Magazine Lags on Launch originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The North Korean government has always been of two minds when it comes to technology. Despite its guiding philosophy of "self-reliance" (juche), it has relied on neighbors to enable it to enter the information age. Its official YouTube videos, Twitter feed, and Facebook accounts are registered in China. Until the late 1990s, all international phone calls were routed through Beijing or Moscow.

At an individual level, I think the "distracted Americans" scare will pass. Either people who manage to unplug, focus, and fully direct their attention will have an advantage over those constantly checking Facebook and their smart phone, in which case they'll earn more money, get into better colleges, start more successful companies, and win more Nobel Prizes. Or they won't, in which case distraction will be a trait of modern life but not necessarily a defect.

Watch:

• 'Super Mario Bros.' scored with modern-day effects
• Stephen Colbert really wants an iPad 2
• NES flash drive and USB port
• Visualization of an attack on a VOIP Server

Know:

• Tune in to Facebook on Thursday at 12:00 p.m. EST for a live stream of the Conference on Bullying Prevention at the White House. [From: Facebook]
• Co.Design digs into Facebook's plans to architecturally update its new home in Menlo Park's Belle Haven neighborhood. [From: Co.Design]

'Super Mario Bros' Gets an Audio Update, North Korea's Digital Resistance originally appeared on Switched on Tue, 08 Mar 2011 18:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I believe in the power of information-the world is a better place when more information is available to more and more people; it's crucial to a functioning democracy. For me, there's no better place to get accurate, fresh information-well-reported information-than a newspaper.

Physicists, too, started to sense that the matter of the universe may be nothing more than the physical manifestation of information, that the most fundamental particles may be carriers and transmitters of messages. The bit, Gleick reports, could well turn out to be the basic unit of existence. The entire universe may be nothing more than "a cosmic information-processing machine."

Watch:

• Conan O'Brien Plays the World's Largest Game of Angry Birds
• Robochef

Know:

• Subscription music service Rdio just launched a free, full-featured native app for Mac users, complete with Growl updates. [From: Rdio]
• Al-Jazeera's new Twitter dashboard displays the day's top four most tweeted about countries (and an accompany livestream of relevant tweets) and a breakdown of the most important keywords in each of those countries. [From: Al-Jazeera]

Conan Takes on the 'Angry Birds,' Eric Schmidt Details His Favorite Reads originally appeared on Switched on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 18:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A black, nine-inch tattoo, in the shape of a thick S, runs down Jack Dorsey's left forearm. But one can ignore the outlaw implications: this is a man whose first act each day is to text his mother. Dorsey intends the tattoo as a reference to his interests in math, music, and anatomy. First, it represents an integral. "It symbolizes integrating everything," explains Dorsey, somewhat cryptically.

Read This: Jack Dorsey Profile Details Early Days of Twitter originally appeared on Switched on Sat, 05 Mar 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It is strange that the web, which in every way attempts to cater to the fantasies of its audience (we're drooling at your photos of dinner at Momofuku, watching six-hour marathons of television shows that we would never admit to our TiVos that we enjoy, airbrushing our profile pictures), would ask us to be so honest about which coffee shops we frequent enough to earn a mayor badge or how we look on any given Wednesday.

It's not that the web is making us less intelligent; if anything, the evidence suggests it sharpens more cognitive skills than it dulls. It's not that the web is making us less happy, although there are certainly those who, like Carr, feel enslaved by its rhythms and cheated by the quality of its pleasures. It's that the web may be an enemy of creativity. Which is why Woody Allen might be wise in avoiding it altogether.

Watch:

• Apple Gets Cocky About iPad 2
• Inside Google's Self-Driving Car

Know:

• 'Jeopardy!' champion Ken Jennings stopped by Reddit yesterday to talk trivia, old people and the Alex Trebek enigma. [From: reddit]
• With Facebook planning to share users' personal data with app developers, you'll find The Atlantic's guide to locking down your phone number and contact information handy. [From: The Atlantic]

Testing Google's Self-Driving Car, Ken Jennings Stops by Reddit originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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