Gadgets Future

The Stand Pouch is a simple yet effective idea for those who love casual photography - it not only functions as a camera case, it also comes with a built-in tripod connector, allowing you to capture self-portraits even when you’re in the great outdoors and uneven ground is all around. The tripod segment is fully adjustable just like a regular tripod. No idea on how much it costs, but you can choose from black, metallic grey and royal blue colors. Strange how I never thought of such a simple solution, as I could be rolling in Benjamins by now.

What lessons can we learn from founders of companies that either made a lot of money in the dot-com days or should have and missed the opportunity? A new book by Sarah Lacy, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good”, aims to show us by including lessons from Marc Andreessen and other notables from companies like Digg, Facebook, PayPal, and others.

If you’re looking for some instant lessons now, CNNMoney put together lessons learned from four New York City dot-com guys who are making a Web 2.0 play. The list includes Philip Kaplan (F**kedcompany.com), Jeff Dachis (Razorfish), Jason Calacanis (Weblogs Inc), and Andrew Rasiej (Digital Club Network) and shows what made them famous, what they’re doing now, and the lesson learned.

I know a few dot-com guys who could have made millions but the VCs blew their deals. Thankfully Geek stayed privately funded through the dot-com days and survived the ups and downs. We did entertain some offers back in the day, and thankfully we didn’t take them given what happened to those companies since then.

Read more at CNNMoney

In honor of the Big Day - of course, I’m referring to Mother’s Day this Sunday - Sony Electronics is offering a special package for all of you out there who are gift-challenged; the Sony DCR-SR45 Handycam camcorder with the DVDirect VRD-MC5. Tape those priceless family moments with the Sony Handycam camcorder and then transfer them to DVD with the DVDirect VRD-MC5 recorder. The VRD-MC5 recorder can transfer home videos to DVD without using a computer from virtually any camcorder, VCR or digital video recorder. Tthe Handycam camcorder has a built-in 30GB hard drive for storage and up to 20 hours of recording time (LP). A big 2.7″ touch panel lcd monitor keeps all the controls at your fingertips, while a 40x Optical/2000x digital zoom keeps all the action up close and personal.

As a nice little bonus: receive $180 in instant savings when purchasing them both together. Buy yourself a little something with the savings! We broke it down for you:

- HandyCam DCR-SR45: $499.99
- VRD-MC5: $229.99
- Total: $729.98

Instant savings: $180.00 when purchased on the same receipt. Available at Sony Style.

by Darren Murph, posted May 8th 2008 at 1:14PM
It’s not that we’ve never seen the insides of Pleo, it’s that we’ve never seen it splayed so inhumanely. During Maker Faire 2008, a middleweight ComBot known as Vicious Verdict was placed in the ring with UGOBE’s cuddly dinosaur, and suffice it to say, Pleo didn’t stand a chance. The entire death lasts about three minutes, but there’s a solid minute of taunting that goes on before the ComBot starts the decimation process. Straight up, this is one of the more haunting things we’ve ever seen happen to a poor, helpless, animated robot. Vid’s after the break for your sickos who dare.

[Via Tech Digest]

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Filed under: Robots

Fancy a tough-as-nails PDA? Datalogic has your back covered with the Pegaso. This PDA not only comes with a built-in barcode scanner, it also features the following specifications.

• Processor: Marvell PXA270 520MHz
• Memory: 64MB/128MB of RAM, 128MB of flash
• Display: 3.6″ screen display in VGA/QVGA resolutions
• WAN: GSM/GRPS/EDGE
• 802.11b/g connectivity
• Bluetooth 1.2 connectivity with CCX v. 4 extensions (optional)
• SD memory card slot

There is no word on pricing, but you can pick it up from Datalogic now.

I don’t care whether you’re a pilot or a frequent flier, there are still ways for the good old time zones to wipe your body clock clean of any past rhythms. Taking a trip from The U.S. to the U.K. is only fun once you’ve got your sleeping patterns back under control. At least enough so you can get a taste of both the night life, and the day light festivities.

The BC4 Flight Timer from Oris is a awesome way to keep tabs on up to three time zones at once right from your wrist. The BC4 features an automatic movement with the second timezone subdial, while the extra-large crown can adjust the third dial for yet another time zone.

One of the best things about the BC4 is its ability to both look awesome and be productive simultaneously. The leather wrist band and expertly designed face make the watch appear to be a unique, high-end time piece, rather than a tool for the jet-setting aviator. Looking good and feeling good are easy with the form and function of the Flight Timer.

But awesome style and expert features doesn’t come cheap. The Oris BC4 Flight Timer will set you back $3,300, so we’re thinking the best candidate for such a watch is a frequent flying CEO or business man. Someone who’s comfortable enough financially to fly first class on a regular basis, but who also needs to mind his sleeping patterns for those early morning meetings.

Product Page via Acquire

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The Vietnamese language plug-in for Mozilla’s Firefox browser has been found to be carrying a trojan virus.

The virus was reported on Tuesday as critical bug no. 432406 on Bugzilla. Since then the plug-in has been removed and Mozilla have been trying to figure out how it got through as all plug-ins are scanned for viruses before going live. A comment on the bug from Bugzilla maintainer Dave Miller stated:

The file is dated February 18, the virus signature is dated April 14, so we apparently had this in the wild for about 2 months before the scanners were detecting it.

It turns out that the trojan was Xorer.O, which when active on your system will usually just show unwanted adverts and does not spread past a local network. Mozilla estimated that the language pack had been downloaded 16,667 times since its initial release in November last year so the impact is minimal on users.

The reason the trojan was overlooked is because the anti-virus packages were not updated to look for the trojan when the file was scanned on February 18. Panda Security, for example, only detected it on February 28 thus allowing the plug-in to remain active with the malicious code as plug-ins are not re-scanned.

A posting on the Mozilla Security Blog by Window Snyder has asked that everyone who uses the plug-in disable it and wait for a new version to be released. She also said Mozilla are now working to add extra scans to plug-ins that are live on a regular basis to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Read more at PCWorld.com

Matthew’s Opinion

I think this just points to a flaw in the security used by Mozilla for checking plug-ins and its fortunate it happened with a trojan that isn’t too serious. If anything it shows how the community around Firefox works effectively as the bug was raised, identified, made public knowledge and stopped in under 2 days.

With regular checks being implemented this shouldn’t happen again, and I’m sure they are also checking the regularity of their anti-virus updates. It will hopefully also alert other software vendors that have downloadable plug-ins for their products to check security practices.

The Blu-ray format is getting a new supporter in legendary musician Neil Young, as the singer has recently announced that he will be releasing his entire music archive on Blu-ray. Mr. Young, who was surprisingly among those who spoke during the Java Conference in San Francisco, will release the first installment of his music archives covering his hits from 1963 to 1972 in a ten disc Blu-ray set through Reprise/Warner Bros. Records.

Mr. Young is set to maximize the full capacity potential of Blu-ray discs with the release of his music archives. These BDs will contain not only his popular songs, but previously unreleased songs, videos, handwritten manuscripts and other memorabilia as well. Of course, this is just one part of Blu-ray’s goodness, as releasing his collection in this format would also give out better picture and sound quality. This is aside from the fact that Blu-ray discs can hold more content.

Although this is not the first time that the Blu-ray discs were utilized for such purposes, most of those who released their own BDs have just released their concert videos and were not as comprehensive as Mr. Young’s plan of releasing his full archive.

Read [Associated Press]

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