3 hours ago by Techi Team
Kevin Mitnick became notorious for his use of social engineering – the act of manipulating people into divulging information, rather than breaking in or using technical cracking techniques used to commit identity theft, steal credit card information and so on. To clarify the myth and the reality surrounding Kevin Mitnick, our friends at Credit Score sent us the following timeline of both alleged and confirmed criminal acts.
more »
4 hours ago by Ty Dunitz
Today is a great day for tech and design coming together. This one’s a bit of advertising. You’re already looking at it, so I may as well just ask outright: is this not the most clever packaging for a pair of earphones you’ve ever seen? If you answer no, you are clearly a soulless husk of a person, content with your suffocating silence. You’re horrible. Get out. Just, get out.
Anyway, the design is by ad agency Scholz & Friends in Germany, and their goal was to ‘attract new target groups’ for Panasonic’s music tech products. Imagine seeing these on a wall of headphones at Best Buy. I’d say Scholz and his friends have more than achieved their task. Simply brilliant.
5 hours ago by Ty Dunitz
You know what’s too cool? This is.
In an exploration of digital content delivery, record label Ghostly International is debuting a new label format: the Totem. Looking more like an otherworldly obelisk, this monolithic object serves as much more than a simple sculptural keepsake. Each Totem is embossed with its own three-character code that grants the listener access to a unique, private page where they can stream or download the album.
Check out what Ghostly has to say about the debut Totem, for Matthew Dear’s Black City: The MDBC Totem is both a sculptural representation of the themes explored in Black City and a symbolic conduit to the music itself. Vaguely reminiscent of one of the soot-blackened skyscrapers that might populate Dear’s creeping, nameless city, the stacks upon the totem also call to mind the many shaped prongs of a universal power adaptor. more »
6 hours ago by Ty Dunitz
If you’ve ever used Yahoo Answers, you’re painfully aware of the human wastelands that populate the internet, and the unfortunate questions they’re prone to ask. They make you facepalm. Sometimes groan a little. Occasionally, you’ll do that thing where you’re suddenly aware of your posture, and will reshuffle your butt around in your seat a bit from sheer amazement at the stupidity presented before you. Well, lucky you – now you don’t even need to go as far as Yahoo.
Facebook Questions is Yahoo Answers, only for Facebook. You may be able to see it now, in fact. Run! Check it! Should be in your sidebar. Anyway, Questions is pretty well the same as Answers – ask a question, get community answers. With a pool of 500 million users to draw knowledge from, that’s a pretty rad prospect. more »
7 hours ago by Ty Dunitz
I have a feeling Apple’s FaceTime is going to play out just fine. How can I be sure? Because now, the adult industry is on board. Steve’s gonna be so pissed.
Like it or not, the adult industry has always been a (and arguably the) major player in deciding which entertainment technologies live, and which die. After all, it was porn that popularized the VCR. It was porn that championed VHS over Beta. It was porn that helped usher in the DVD. While unsavoury, porn is nothing if not on the cutting edge of tech – adult film producers are some of the earliest adopters. And now, they’ve got their sights set on FaceTime. more »
Yesterday by Ty Dunitz
Oh, hi there. You okay? You look a little red. Y’know what, that’s probably the burning desire you have to know about everything Apple released yesterday that wasn’t a trackpad. You look bloody awful. Here, let me tell you about this stuff so you can cool down a bit, yeah? Yeah. Let’s go over the key features.
The New iMac $1299+
A dual- or quad-core Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 now rocks out with its socks out, meaning the Core 2 Duo is now relegated only to the Mac Mini. Graphics are now discrete, which means dedicated memory on its own card. The screens have adopted the iPad’s IPS technology, giving the iMac a positively monstrous 178-degree viewing angle. more »
Yesterday by Navneet Alang
Whenever someone talks about how the internet is making us stupid, I tend to get a little skeptical.
After all, for all the worry about how our attention spans are being shortened by the fast pace of the web, or how the internet is full of trash, there is another side.
The internet is also absolutely chock full of smart, challenging material: philosophy videos on YouTube, descriptions of Chinese classical music, sites dedicated to intellectuals or entire sites meant to spread cultural theory. There is tons of this stuff everywhere.
But there is another aspect to having access to so much stuff. more »
Yesterday by Ty Dunitz
Eric Schmidt (guy who runs Google, if you’re new to this ‘inter-net’ thing) was quoted this week as saying that Google was, in fact, not developing a service to rival Facebook. “The world doesn’t need a copy of the same thing,” he said.
Oh really, Eric? Because be your inescapable charisma and otherworldly good looks as they may, that’s not what I heard. I heard you’re doing exactly the opposite of not creating a Facebook-like service. I heard it’s called Google Me. I heard it’s coming soon. So while you’re for sure the slickest, most hunkalicious snake charmer I’ve ever seen, I gotta go with everybody else on this.
Maybe Schmidt’s just a little jaded. After all, Google has pretty well struck out three times now in the social arena (Orkut, Wave, Buzz), – it’s entirely possible he’s just shielding his ass in the event Google is developing another bomb. more »
Yesterday by Ty Dunitz
Isn’t the iPod Touch the worst, guys? It’s an iPhone for all intents and purposes, save the notable exception of, y’know… the phone part. That’s gotta be frustrating.
Enter the Apple Peel 520. Developed by a company fit to call itself Yosion, the Apple Peel is a fancy hack which attempts to do the impossible: turning your (presumably jailbroken) iPod Touch into… well, not an iPhone proper, but close enough. Retailing for a rumoured ¥300 – ¥500 ($44 – $74), the case allegedly also acts as a beefed up battery (800mAh) to account for all the calls you’ll be making.
That is, of course, if you’ll be making them. With no available information of any kind, not even a website, it’s understandably difficult to believe. more »
Jul 27 by Ty Dunitz
“I believe that Chatroulette was great in the first honeymoon days after it was launched,” says Andrey Ternovskiy, the founder of Chatroulette, “before it was discovered by a strange people, who started to abuse the true freedom and democratic nature of the service.”
Andrey’s been feeling a bit down lately. Wouldn’t you, after the app you so lovingly hand-crafted to create “a perfect video world” had devolved into a wretched hive of scum and villainy, with more users willing to expose their unmentionables than their face? Yeah, you would. Stop giggling. Seriously, stop it. Can’t you see he’s fragile?
Actually, Andrey’s tougher than we think. After several meager (and hopelessly failed) attempts at slowing Chatroulette’s tide of …er, jewels, Andrey may have found a solution that could more or less punch the issue in the proverbial groin. more »
