Tory's plan health record giveaway - The Register

The Tories are today releasing more details of their plan to get Google and Microsoft involved in holding medical records.

The idea is that patients will be given some control over their own records, which could then be stored online. But the Tories seem to think that it would be a good idea to have a locally stored version too, for your doctor to use. Which seems to us to add another layer of complexity and cost. Admittedly, no one could claim the government has done a good job of looking after our data, but that doesn't mean that everyone in the country is able, or willing, to look after their own data.

Read the whole story on The Register

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Bank Will Allow Customers to Deposit Checks by iPhone - New York Times

The Internet has taken a lot of the paperwork out of banking, but there is no avoiding paper when someone gives you a check. Now one bank wants to let customers deposit checks immediately — through their phones.

USAA, a privately held bank and insurance company, plans to update its iPhone application this week to introduce the check deposit feature, which requires a customer to photograph both sides of the check with the phone's camera.

Read the whole story on New York Times

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Samsung Invades HTC Territory With Android Handset - PC World

Samsung Electronics on Monday joined with network operator Taiwan Mobile to try to steal the spotlight from rival High Tech computer (HTC) by launching a handset with Google's Android mobile software, the Samsung i7500, in Taiwan.

HTC, the Taiwanese company that worked with Google to develop the first smartphone based on Android, the T-Mobile G1 (also called HTC Dream) had already sent out invitations to a Tuesday press party to launch its third and latest Android handset in Taiwan, the HTC Hero.

Read the whole story on PC World

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WD speeds up 2TB rollout - The Register

Western Digital appears to be accelerating its 2TB 3.5-inch drive from 5400rpm to 7200rpm if a weekend wave of European hard disk drive etailing mentions are to be believed.

WD introduced a desktop 2TB Caviar Green drive at the beginning of the year. Then there came an enterprise WD RE4-GP 2TB drive in April, and both rotated at 5400rpm. There have been rumours of a 7200rpm 2TB Caviar Black drive, with a Japanese promotion card mentioning it in June.

Read the whole story on The Register

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MoD website outflanked by XSS flaws - The Register

Hackers have discovered cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities on the UK's Ministry of Defence website.

The security shortcomings create a means for miscreants or pranksters to present content from a website under their control in a pop-up window that appears to come from the MoD. This class of flaw is very serious on banking or ecommerce websites, because it enables the creation of more plausible phishing attacks, and is best described as embarrassing in the case of the MoD. Affected portions of the MoD's website include the search engine of the MoD contracts sub-domain and the search page for the sub-domain of Sandhurst, the prestigious Army officer training college.

Read the whole story on The Register

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El Reg space paper plane christened Vulture 1 - The Register

It's official: The El Reg "Paper Aircraft Released Into Space" (PARIS) vehicle has been christened Vulture 1 by popular vote, and with this formality out of the way we can move on to pondering just how our audacious upper atmosphere programme is actually going to work.

We're grateful to all those readers who chipped in with suggestions and opinions, and we can summarise your thoughts thus:

This all sounds plausible enough, but we have one serious possible restriction. According to a couple of readers, the CAA has a limit on the weight of a weather balloon payload, which could be critical. We're making enquiries to see what the state of play is there.

Read the whole story on The Register

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WideNoise: Monitor Noise Levels on Your iPhone - ReadWriteWeb

We've been writing a lot about Internet of Things this year. It's when everyday objects become connected to the Internet - taking us beyond the Social Web where people talk to each other, into a Web where things talk to each other (and us) as well. We've analyzed some of the theory, and experiments from the likes of MIT, but it's also interesting to track emerging commercial products.

The iPhone just happens to be a fertile ground for Internet of Things, as a product called WideNoise shows. WideNoise is an iPhone application that samples decibel noise levels, displaying them on an interactive map.

Read the whole story on ReadWriteWeb

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SHORTURL SAVIOR: Bit.ly Swoops in to Save Tr.im - Mashable

he announcement this weekend that Tr.im will shut down has deeply worrying implications for URL shorteners: when these services go away, tens of thousands of links on the web simply stop working. Some sites will lose hundreds of inbound links, and the traffic that comes with them.

After a recent decision by Digg to simply redirect their shortURLs to their own site, there's a great deal of concern that other services will simply shut down and kill their links, or worse, redirect them to somewhere else entirely.

Read the whole story on Mashable

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Cal Tech, Berkeley and UCSB working on 'iPhoD' - The Register

The US military has handed out triple multimillion-dollar contracts to Californian university tech labs, aimed at developing a device called an "iPhoD".

The iPhoD is not, as one might have supposed, something to do with a famous nibbled-fruit hardware'n'lifestyle firm. Rather, it stands for "integrated Photonic Delay" - essentially an optical component, in this case a delay, on a chip rather than in a conventional fibre device.

Read the whole story on The Register

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King Of The Apple Geeks - Silicon Alley Insider

John Gruber's Daring Fireball is the homepage for Mac nerds. Even top Apple (AAPL) brass tune in regularly. And it's a real business, too, now in its fourth year as Gruber's full-time gig.

Daring Fireball's influence was in full display last week, including the rarest of public responses from an Apple executive.

Last Tuesday, Gruber broke the news that an iPhone dictionary app called Ninjawords had apparently been censored by Apple. This at a time when Apple is getting the most flack it's gotten in years -- mostly because of its sometimes heavy handed management of the iPhone App Store, which has even drawn an official FCC investigation.

Read the whole story on Silicon Alley Insider

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HTC Hero Android smartphone - The Register

Review HTC is currently balancing its prodigious smart phone output between its long-established Windows Mobile series of handsets and those running Google's Android operating system. The Hero follows the G1 and the Magic in HTC's Android line-up and comes with a fistful of updates. These include a new user interface, multi-touch screen, 5Mp camera and enhanced social networking functions, as well as the usual Wi-Fi, A-GPS and the ever-growing Android Market app store.

Read the whole story on The Register

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Firefox 3.6 trots into first alpha - The Register

Mozilla squirted out the first alpha version of Firefox 3.6 late on Friday.

The browser maker is also pretty confident that the next iteration of Firefox will rock up quite soon.

"Unlike the year that passed between Firefox 3 and Firefox 3.5, we expect that this 3.6 release will be released in a small number of months," said Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard.

Indeed, Firefox 3.5 became synonymous with the word delay, so-much-so that Mozilla changed the browser's name. It had carried the moniker Firefox 3.1, natch, considering it would follow Firefox 3.0.

Read the whole story on The Register

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Dell mobile phone launch just days away? - The Register

Dell is poised to launch a mobile phone within days, it has been claimed.

A source with “knowledge of the situation” has said that Dell will announce the handset in China within the next day or two, according to a report by website TechCrunch. If the source’s information is correct, the launch will mark Dell’s entry into the mobile phone market.

Aside from saying that the handset is touchscreen operated, the source doesn’t appear to be blessed with much data about the mystery device’s technical specifications.

Read the whole story on The Register

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Scribd Goes Social, Adds News Feeds and Followers - Mashable

Scribd has quietly become one of the world's most popular websites. The service lets you share documents, presentations, and PDFs online; its embedding feature alone has revolutionized how documents are used and shared. Still, many pieces of Scribd have been a silo; many users search for a document (often finding it via GoogleGoogle), download it, and leave. So how do you keep users engaged with your product? By launching a new wave of social features, of course.

Read the whole story on Mashable

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Learn How to Work a Crowd - Lifehacker

When you think of "working a crowd," you might think of entertainers at best, and shifty multi-level marketing salesman at worst. There are, however, non-jerky ways to meet people and benefit from casual networking.

Why would you want to work a crowd? Because nobody makes new friends or finds a great business contact by standing over the punchbowl. The following video is a presentation from Ignite Show, a series of 5 minute powerchats given by people on varying topics. In the following video Alexis Bauer shares a step by step guide to working a crowd and how you can be the agent at any party or gathering who causes the social scene there to blossom.

Read the whole story on Lifehacker

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Who Has the Right VC Numbers and Who Cares? - ReadWriteWeb

We started tracking VC funding in October 2008, as the financial markets were melting. What caught our eye in those dark and gloomy days was True Ventures' announcement of its Series A investment in Syncplicity. The more we looked, the more we found that the headlines were wrong. It was not all doom and gloom, not in our corner of the universe: early-stage Web tech ventures. So we figured that getting (and passing on to you) good reliable data on a timely basis would be a good idea. Searching for that turned out to be harder than we thought, and herein lies a tale.

Read the whole story on ReadWriteWeb

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The Trap Door Desk - Lifehacker

At first glance, today's featured workspace might appear to be yet another so-hip-it-hurts, ultra-spartan Mac workspace. This space, however, has a secret.

How do you maintain a completely uncluttered workspace, but also keep access to basic tools and peripherals? You build, as Lifehacker reader Roitsch did, a desk with a large storage compartment in the middle.

He had the good fortune to find an old clerical desk with a sturdy frame he could work from...

Read the whole story on Lifehacker

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Hey, Where’s Twitter For Families? - TechCrunch

Since I joined TechCrunch I've seen more Twitter clones and derivatives then I'd care to remember, most of which haven't really gone anywhere. But there are a few gems that have managed to tackle markets that Twitter has, for whatever reason, ignored. One of these is Yammer, the "Twitter for businesses" that won the top prize at last year's TechCrunch50. And in the last few days, it's become increasingly clear to me that there's another niche market just waiting for a Twitter-like service: Family.

Read the whole story on TechCrunch

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Tr.im Closes, Says Twitter Partly to Blame - PC World

The tr.im link shortening service was shutdown by operator Nambu Network on Sunday after the company failed to find a buyer for the service.

"We regret that it came to this, but all of our efforts to avoid it failed," the company wrote on its home page. "No business we approached wanted to purchase tr.im for even a minor amount."

The tr.im service was one of a number that will convert a conventional URL into a shorter alphanumeric string. When the tr.im URL is kicked the service redirects users to the original URL. The services are primarily designed for Twitter users who face a 140 character limit in messages they send although can be used in any application.

Read the whole story on PC World

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China Detains 13 Over Death at Internet Addict Camp - PC World

Chinese police have detained 13 people over the death by beating of a teenager at an Internet addiction camp in southern China, according to state media.

The Qihang Salvation Training Camp, one of many boot camp-style centers for Internet obsession in China, was found to be unlicensed and closed down Friday, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Parents of 122 other students took them home from the camp in Guangxi province and police are investigating the case, it said.

Read the whole story on PC World

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10 Incredibly Geeky YouTube Videos #geeks4good - Mashable

Last monday, we announced Global Geek Week, an initiative by the Society for Geek Advancement and the Summer of Social Good to show the world how geeks can change the world for the better. Core to the Global Geek Week initiative was a YouTubeYouTube competition that asked you to show off not only how geeky you are, but how geeks can help the world. The result? A wave of amazing, hilarious, inspiring, and geeky YouTube videos.

Read the whole story on Mashable

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Microsoft’s Addition By Subtraction: Goodbye Razorfish, Hello Bing Customers - AllThingsD

Give this to Steve Ballmer: After getting roundly hammered in the past few years for either missing out on deals (see: AOL/Google) or paying too much for the ones he did land (see: Facebook at $15 billion), he seems to be on a roll.

Last week, Microsoft was roundly praised for the way it structured its Yahoo (YHOO) deal. And today, the company seems to have struck a smart pact with Publicis, which will pay $530 million for Redmond's Razorfish digital ad agency, which Ballmer never wanted anyway. And the French ad giant will agree to buy a certain amount of search and display inventory from Microsoft over the next five years.

Read the whole story on AllThingsD

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Try out Clipstart, win an iPhone - TUAW

Clipstart, a handy little Mac app for cataloging your small video clips and sending them to Flickr and Vimeo, has been out for a little while now. If you own an iPhone, Flip video camera or any device which has left you with an accumulation of video clips, it's worth a look. It's something like iTunes or iPhoto, but for video clips.

Clipstart can import your videos, tag and search them, and trim, convert and upload them to your preferred video service(s). Currently, Clipstart works with Flickr and Vimeo, but more services are planned, and the author, Manton Reece of Wii Transfer fame, is looking for feedback on which services are in highest demand. If Clipstart would be useful to you if only it worked with [insert video service], be sure to drop him a line.

Read the whole story on TUAW

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Why You Shouldn't Rely On URL Shorteners - Silicon Alley Insider

Thanks to Twitter's rising popularity -- and its finite, 140-character message length limit -- free URL shortening services have been all the rage recently. But they should not become a critical part of your company's infrastructure.

Why not? Because there's no guaranteeing they're going to work. Most of today's short URL services are run by small, modestly funded startups that could easily shut them down -- or change the way they work. Both have recently happened.

Read the whole story on Silicon Alley Insider

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San Francisco to Get Clearwire WiMAX in 2010 - GigaOM

Silicon Valley might be the hub of technology innovation, but that doesn't guarantee its residents access to the latest in wireless broadband. Clearwire's WiMAX service, like competing 4G wireless broadband technology Long Term Evolution (LTE), isn't going to arrive in the San Francisco Bay Area until sometime in 2010, according to Bill Morrow, chief executive officer of the Kirkland, Wash.-based company. Morrow is widely viewed as a turnaround CEO who in the past has worked for PG&E and Vodafone.

Read the whole story on GigaOM

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Source: Dell Mobile Phone Launching In China Within Days - TechCrunch

A source with knowledge of the situation tells us that Dell is launching a mobile phone in China in the next day or two. We are trying to verify the information and gather more details on the hardware and operating system now.

Our sources on new hardware coming out of Asia tend to be spot on (we broke the news of the second and third generation Amazon Kindles, the launch of the Palm Pre and the existence of the second Palm WebOS phone and generally have good information on sales figures for iPhones, Kindles and other devices). But in this case the information we've received is extremely thin.

Read the whole story on TechCrunch


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Rogers Wireless Web Page Appears to Confirm 8 GB iPhone 3GS - Mac Rumors

A Rogers Wireless web page appears to confirm last week's alleged screenshots of the company's internal retail software revealing a forthcoming 8 GB iPhone 3GS model. The "iPhone Comparison" tab on Rogers' iPhone 3GS page contains a chart listing the features of the iPhone 3G and 3GS, noting near the bottom that the 3GS is available in 8 GB, 16 GB, and 32 GB capacities.

Read the whole story on Mac Rumors

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Can a Scientific Job Search Find You a Better Job? - Mashable

Before today, UpMo primarily focused on providing its members with a guided road map for success in their professional endeavors. They asked you questions about your networking style, combined that info with your professional role model, and presented you with an action plan designed to get you from novice to notable mover and shaker status.

Now they're expanding their personalized career service to not only push you down the right path, but actually land you a better job. The company has just launched Intelligent Job Hunt, and the new product aims to do one very useful thing — find you a dream job within reach.

Read the whole story on Mashable

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Toshiba to Launch Fuel-cell Charger Soon - PC World

Toshiba plans to launch an external battery charger based on a DMFC (direct methanol fuel cell) in the next two months, its new president said on Wednesday.

The charger will be a portable device that can be used to charge the batteries in portable gadgets such as cell phones, music players and portable game devices instead of plugging them into an electrical outlet.

DMFCs produce electricity from a reaction between methanol, water and air. The only by-products are a small amount of water vapor and carbon dioxide, so DMFCs are often seen as a greener source of energy than traditional batteries. Another advantage is that they can be replenished with a new cartridge of methanol in seconds.

Read the whole story on PC World
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Obama's CTO Gets Warm Welcome in Silicon Valley - PC World

The Democrats aren't usually seen as the party of business but the United States' first national CTO, appointed by President Barack Obama in May, got a warm welcome at his first public appearance in Silicon Valley Tuesday.

CTO Aneesh Chopra talked for 90 minutes at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, outlining an agenda that tries to balance short-term achievements that can be made "in 60 or 90 days" with longer-term policy efforts.

Read the whole story on PC World

Google Voice for iPhone: Missing in Action - PC World

Big Brother is a little late in arriving, having been expected by 1984 at the latest. But he has shown his face twice recently in the world of mobile technology: First, in the mass removal from Amazon Kindles of George Orwell's 1984 (oh, sweet irony) and Animal Farm e-books. Second, when Apple banished all Google Voice-related apps from its App Store--including one excellent app, GV Mobile, which Apple had approved and which had been available in the iTunes store since early May.

Read the whole story on PC World

In The Pre-Chrome OS World, Google Optimizes Gmail For Netbooks - TechCrunch

Google is clearly enamored with the netbook space. We already know that it's serving as an entry point for the new Chrome OS, but Google isn't just going to sit around and wait for that, it's starting to optimize its experience for netbooks already.

Tonight, Google has just released a small new feature in Gmail Labs so that users can optimize their email service for viewing on netbooks. It's a small, but noteworthy setting as netbooks have become popular, yet most still run sites just as full-sized laptops would. Gmail's engineers apparently had a problem with that, so they launched the new "Remove Labels from Subjects" feature.

Read the whole story on TechCrunch

nero 9 for free

Now you can get latest version of the most famous CD/DVD burning software "Nero" absolutely free. Yup, you heard it right. Actually Nero is providing a stripped down version of Nero 9 absolutely free to download

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Since its a stripped down version, only basic features like data burning and disc copying features for CDs and DVDs are available. To get additional features and functionality you'll need upgrade to Nero 9 full version

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