Archive for October, 2012

Diesel fuel drums outside the Peer1 data center in Lower Manhattan. Just before 5 p.m. on Monday, the team behind New York’s Fog Creek Software announced in a blog post that its services would be online during Hurricane Sandy, despite the fact that the company’s main data center was located in an evacuation zone in the low-lying Financial District. “Given the preparation work that’s gone into this, we are confident that all of our services will remain available to our customers throughout the weather,” systems administrator Bradford Ley wrote. “Consider this the ‘Everything is Perfectly Fine Alarm.’” The storm hit.

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Post-hurricane, New York’s internet industry runs on diesel

Walking 3 miles from Mulberry Street to Grand Central on the night after Hurricane Sandy. Everything south of 38th street was dark.

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Downtown After Sandy: Walking 3 miles in blacked-out NYC, the night after the storm

In our Epic Halloween DIY Costume thread, Boing Boing reader Shannon Stewart says, “My husband and I went as Mars and the Curiosity Rover. Had a ton of fun making these babies and the costumes were a huge hit everywhere we went!”

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BB Readers’ DIY Costumes: Mars and the Curiosity Rover

With “Infinite Gangnam Style,” Paul Lamere provides an infinite, intelligent remix of Psy’s viral classic.

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Infinite Gangnam Style: realtime, beat-matched remix that goes on forever

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is stepping up its open wireless campaign, which encourages people and businesses to leave their Internet connections open to the public, and offers advice on doing this safely and sustainably. As EFF points out, most WiFi networks are latent for most of the time, and there are a million ways that

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EFF’s Open Wireless campaign: help your neighbors, improve anonymity, support innovation

Boys and girls of every age, wouldn’t you like to see something strage. Watch this show and you will see 90 Seconds of Halloween . This is Halloween — let’s talk about technology. Smartphones bleep in the dead of night. This is Halloween, spotty connectivity.

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90 Seconds on The Verge: AT&T / T-Mobile, Boxee, Kickstarter, Paper

We thought that the Wikipad, a surprisingly comfortable $499 Android tablet with detachable gaming controls , might actually have a chance in the market. Perhaps not: Today was the day the Wikipad was supposed to go on sale at GameStop , but the company has just announced the tablet will be delayed until further notice. According to Wikipad’s statement, which you can read in its entirety below, the tablet apparently wasn’t quite ready for launch. The company claims that it’s planning to “enhance the Wikipad bundle” and make a “minor refinement,” and will also throw in a “special bonus gift” of some sort for those who pre-ordered at GameStop

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On eve of launch, Wikipad gaming tablet is delayed

After making its long, complicated, and controversial journey to Los Angeles, space shuttle Endeavor’s public exhibition is now open. The shuttle, which flew a total of 25 missions from 1992 to 2012, is in a temporary housing at the California Science Center, where it will remain for about five more years. At that time, the shuttle will be relocated into a new, permanent air and space wing at the museum, which will house the shuttle in takeoff position, with its twin solid rocket boosters and external tank, according to The Los Angeles Times . The exhibit’s behind-closed-doors opening ceremonies were held yesterday, but tickets are now available for those wishing to see the shuttle at its temporary home, where it is placed horizontally m..

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Space shuttle Endeavor exhibit at California Science Center now open

In our Epic Halloween DIY Costume thread, Boing Boing reader Chris Spurgeon says, “My daughter rolled her own Tardis dress!”

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BB Readers’ DIY Costumes: Tardis Dress

Penurious Penguin writes “Your curtilage may be your castle, but ‘open fields’ are open game for law-enforcement and surveillance technology. Whether ‘No Trespassing’ signs are present or not, your private property is public for the law, with or without a warrant. What the police cannot do, their cameras can — without warrant or court oversight. An article at CNET recounts a case involving the DEA, a federal judge, and two defendants (since charged) who were subjected to video surveillance on private property without a warrant. Presumably, the 4th Amendment suffers an obscure form of agoraphobia further elucidated in the article.” Read more of this story at Slashdot

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Federal Judge Approves Warrantless, Covert Video Surveillance

Now that Microsoft’s officially flooded the world with good tidings of Windows Phone 8 , it’s the turn of OEMs and carriers to get the word out about their own Microsoft-flavored smartphones. We finally got a chance to play with Nokia’s previously leaked and recently announced Lumia 822 for Verizon , a mid-range handset similar to the Lumia 820 on AT&T and the Lumia 810 for T-Mobile that will cost $99 with a two-year contract. Availability is slated for sometime in November — it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a Nokia device on Verizon (sorry, but those Pantech-built models don’t count), so this is rather exciting news. Spec-wise the Lumia 822 features a 4.3-inch WVGA ClearBlack AMOLED display, an eight-megapixel autofocus Carl Zeiss camera, a 1.2MP front-facing shooter, a Qualcomm dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, 1GB or RAM, 16GB of internal flash, microSD support for additional storage, and optional Qi -compatible wireless charging.

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Nokia Lumia 822 for Verizon hands-on (video)

HuffPo posts “Pickpockets at Work,” an essay from Melville House’s reprint of Harry Houdini’s wonderful collection, The Right Way to Do Wrong: A Unique Selection of Writings by History’s Greatest Escape Artist , which includes an introduction by Teller. In the outskirts of London, among the small shops, a rather unusual trick has been played

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Houdini on pickpockets

Southern-African charity LifeLine has started a new initiative to try and rid a Johannesburg township of rats. Alexandra has been overrun by rodents for years now, making its residents’ daily struggle for sanitary living conditions that much harder. In an attempt to spark a community movement, LifeLine is offering a free cellphone to any resident that manages to capture 60 rats. One resident told the Mail & Guardian that he had already “won” two phones through the scheme, which has been running for several months, and planned to get one for all of his family members

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Charity trades rats for cellphones in South African township

As we pointed out , European gamers will be able to pew-pew or grapple on the go with the Neo Geo X alongside their US counterparts on December 6th, and now we know for how much and where: £175 in the UK and €199 elsewhere at Funstock . For that sum you’ll get the handheld with a 4.3-inch screen, joystick, game card, AES-style charging dock with HDMI output and 20 pre-installed retro games — with more arriving soon. So, if you’re up for kicking it 1990s style that side of the pond, grab it at the source. Filed under: Gaming Neo Geo X coming to Europe December 6th for £175 / €199 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Oct 2012 07:39:00 EDT.

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Neo Geo X coming to Europe December 6th for £175 / €199

Oakland police chief told a court that he never saw emails from city officials and a federal court monitor who emailed him about police brutality and other illegal actions by his force in its response to Occupy Oakland. That’s because, he says, he used a spam-filter to automatically spam-filter all messages containing phrases like “occupy,”

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Oakland’s chief of police blackholed all emails mentioning "Occupy," trashed official condemnations and sanctions unread

Building off of the web search capabilities of its research pane for Docs, Google is now giving users the ability to search for and insert their own personal content. For example, if you’re working on a presentation in Drive and want to add a photo from your Picasa album, or a quote from a friend’s Google+ profile, you’ll now have the option of adding personal content from within the research pane without leaving your project. This new search feature pulls information from your personal Picasa albums, Drive and Google+ accounts, and users will also find that the research pane has been extended to Presentation and Drawings. Unfortunately, Google Apps customers will still be limited to web-only search results, as personal content search is intended for individual accounts.

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Google research pane for Docs adds personal content, integration with Presentation and Drawing

Just as promised , Kickstarter has today officially launched in the UK. Eager creators and entrepreneurs are now able to submit their ideas to the crowdfunding site, with around 190 UK specific projects so far happily sitting alongside American alternatives. Projects can be filtered out by city too — anyone looking for potential products can switch from London to Manchester, for example — while UK-based projects will display the pound sterling symbol instead of the dollar. “In the past launching a Kickstarter project for a UK based company meant you had quite a few hoops to jump through.” Brendan Dawes, British designer behind the Kickstarter-backed Red Pop , welcomes the arrival of Kickstarter in the UK.

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Kickstarter launches in the UK, eyes global expansion

Julius Genachowski has revealed that Hurricane Sandy has knocked out a full quarter of cellphone towers and cable services in the 10 most affected states. The FCC chief believes that, as more towers expend their battery back-ups and the storm’s continued presence, the situation’s going to get worse before it gets better. He’s also reiterated that users should avoid making non-essential calls and use e-mail or social media to avoid overloading the straining networks. One point of interest in the call, was that land line phone outages were much less widespread — which might be something to remember if you’ve ever considered cutting the cord .

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Hurricane Sandy has knocked out 25 percent of all cell towers, cable services in 10 states

Walmart will start exclusively selling the $99 Boxee TV in more than 3,000 stores from tomorrow, according to Bloomberg . The Boxee TV is a DVR that offers access to basic cable or terrestrial TV services as well as web services like Netflix, Vudu, and Pandora. Perhaps its main selling point, however, is a subscription service Boxee is calling “No Limits DVR.” For $14.99 a month, Boxee will let you record an unlimited amount of content directly to the cloud, ready for playback on your Boxee TV, computer, smartphone, or tablet.

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Boxee TV coming exclusively to Walmart tomorrow

While it was pretty clear that Asustek’s Google-partnered Nexus 7 contributed heavily to the Taiwanese maker’s healthy Q3 results , there was no official confirmation on its exact sales figures so far. Asustek CFO David Chang has now come clean and told the WSJ that the 7-incher is close to touching the one million per month mark, just about double the rate of sales at its launch. While this number is a fraction of the iPad’s sales (14 million in the last quarter alone), it could well go up due to the recent price drop and the addition of new 32GB models to the portfolio.

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Nexus 7 sales clocking in at close to a million per month

HP couldn’t help but harsh the mellow of cutting-edge workers when it revealed the ElitePad 900 wouldn’t ship until January. Still, there’s less chance of any setbacks now that we know the FCC has rubber stamped the Windows 8 tablet. The version passing through the agency is a 3G model for mobile road warriors and touts the 850MHz, 1,700MHz and 1,900MHz bands we’d expect to for HSPA on AT&T, T-Mobile and Canadian networks. Few other surprises exist; we’re mostly happy to know that NFC exists alongside dual-band 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0. No, the approval won’t be much consolation to the suits and ties wanting a tablet of their own as of yesterday, but it should be a relief to IT managers planning a much more creative use of the company budget in 2013

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HP ElitePad 900 travels to the FCC, brings pros closer to Windows 8 tablet utopia

Asus Chief Financial Officer David Chang told the Wall Street Journal this week that his company is selling nearly one million Nexus 7 tablets every month. On Tuesday, the manufacturer announced a dramatic increase in Q3 tablet shipments, which jumped by nearly 200 percent over the second quarter, though both Asus and Google have been reluctant to disclose precise sales figures for the Nexus 7. “At the beginning, it was, for instance, 500K units a month, then maybe 600, 700K. This latest month, it was close to one million,” Chang said

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Asus selling nearly one million Nexus 7 tablets per month, CFO says

The inside of a MacBook Pro certainly isn’t for the faint of heart, but if you’re willing to pair your recklessness with a side of wild abandon, then you might just have what it takes to upgrade the storage of the Retina-equipped 13-inch model. OWC is more than willing to test your limits with its 480GB Mercury Aura Pro , an SSD module that’s now certified for use with Apple’s latest laptop. While its $580 price will deter many, the 480GB option compares favorably to the 512GB upgrade from Apple, which rings in at a healthy $800. OWC says that additional capacity sizes will be announced this November, which is reason to remain hopeful if this one has priced you out of the market. Filed under: Storage OWC certifies 480GB Mercury Aura Pro SSD for 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Oct 2012 00:01:00 EDT.

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OWC certifies 480GB Mercury Aura Pro SSD for 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display

Epcot renovation now underway. (via FP)

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Lucasfilm acquisition inspires Epcot renovation

Needless to say, we’re all well aware of Yelp’s popularity amongst people who love a thing or two about visiting restaurants and, in turn, eating some good ol’ food. And while the service could be considered relatively great as is, it never hurts to see a few new features added here and there — especially one as useful as the new “Explore the Menu,” which is made possible by everyday users like yourself. The newfangled menu system will allow folks to upload pictures of any grub item they’ve tried at frequented restaurants, making it easier for future goers to have a slight idea of what to expect should they be interested in trying a particular dish from one of the many places listed within Yelp.

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Yelp’s new picture-heavy menus give you a better look at that Baby Back Rib Tickler