Technology

So far, 2010’s been good for geekdom.

It’s the Year of the iPad, for a start. We’ve just about glimpsed a real habitable planet. Some people in the US got a goat to squirt spider webs out instead of milk.

Which all sounds grand for the life of zero-G shenanigans and free spiderwebs, but the real story of 2010 is getting lost among all this.

Continue reading '2010 - the year we launched Paris into space'

IS there a news story that’s raised your hackles? What about a blogger who just won’t shut up?

Now you can blow them away, 8-bit style.

Swedish teenager Erik Andersson has come up with the perfect antidote to internet rage — a script that turns any website into a game of Asteroids.

Just visit erkie.github.com, drag the “Kick Ass” button onto your Bookmarks bar and then load up your least favourite site and click it.

The larger and more complicated the website you choose to destroy, the slower the game will run. Best results are achieved on simple sites.

Keep reading below for an interview with Mr Andersson about his project and learn what noise the staff at Wired made when they discovered it.

Feel free to blow up news.com.au/technology in your lunch break. Then I can take the arvo off.

Continue reading 'Frustrated by news.com.au? Now you can blow it up'

WORRIED about spams and scams coming through the portal? Don’t know what to do about it?

Finally, someone has come up with a solution.

An Australian electronics company has taken the p*** out of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy by launching a bizarre new product.

Earlier this month Senator Conroy found himself tripping over his tongue while trying to explain to SBS News why cyber security was important.

“There’s a staggering number of Australians being in having their computers infected at the moment,” he said on camera.

“Up to 20,000… can regularly be getting infected by these spams, or scams, that come through the portal.”

Watch Senator Conroy on SBS News:

Continue reading 'Finally there’s protection against spams and scams'

SO you’re not impressed by Apple’s “magical” device?

Didn’t join the queue of rapid fanbois who lined up on Friday to buy a device that didn’t show signs of selling out until Sunday?

Here’s some heartening news for you - according to market research company Gartner, people are actually still buying laptops.

Continue reading 'Death of netbooks greatly exaggerated. Maybe'

TALK about walking the walk — one of the world’s biggest tech blogs is taking the idea of crowdsourcing to a new level by letting its readers decide whether or not to press charges against an alleged hacker.

Earlier this year, tech blog TechCrunch was compromised by a hacker who at various points redirected users to an adult site and defaced the homepage.

Now police think they’ve nabbed the culprit and TechCrunch has been asked if it wants to press charges.

But, in the spirit of Web 2.0, the blog is leaving that decision to its readers.

“We’re going to let you decide — do we press charges or just let this go? The poll is at the bottom of the post. Whatever you decide, we’ll do,” wrote founder Michael Arrington in a post.

A censored screenshot of the defaced TechCrunch homepage. Someone has a potty mouth / news.com.au

Continue reading 'Blog lets readers decide alleged hacker’s fate'

BOOBQUAKE founder Jennifer McCreight may have some serious questions to answer.

Her day of action calling on the women of the world to dress scandalously and prove wrong an Iranian cleric who blames natural disasters on cleavage has started, well, disastrously.

At 11am local time, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake hit Taiwan, no doubt causing thousands of Boobquake fans to hastily button up.

Boobquake has started ... and Taiwan is the first to feel its effects / news.com.au

Continue reading 'Boobquake gets off to shaky start'

HITLER isn’t happy his outbursts are being taken off YouTube — and it seems the video sharing site isn’t either.

Last week YouTube began removing the Hitler spoof clips — based on a scene from German movie Downfall — after complaints from the production company which owns the rights to the film.

Cue the latest clip — another Downfall parody showing Hitler’s reaction to the move.

Watch it below:

Continue reading 'Hitler not happy about Downfall parody ban'

IF you were about to throw out your broken electronics, you may want to reconsider – they could be turned into a robot.

A new video making the rounds on the web shows Togolese student Sam Tudo with his home-made robot, created almost entirely out of old TV parts.

The SAM 10 robot built by Sam Todo / JustGiving TV on YouTube

Continue reading 'African student builds a robot out of old TV parts'

HOW much cleavage does it take to move the world? That’s the question behind Boobquake, the latest Facebook protest to cause a stir.

Started in response to Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi’s claim that promiscuous women were to blame for earthquakes, the event asks the fairer sex to show off in the name of science.

From Facebook:

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that’s your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I’m sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn’t rumble.

After the event spread to tens of thousands of people in its first day, founder Jennifer McCreight told us what it was like to become “internet famous” overnight and what she planned to do next — assuming, of course, the world wasn’t destroyed in the process.

The Boobquake event page on Facebook / news.com.au

Continue reading 'Politics and push-up bras: Boobquake’s Jennifer McCreight'

SCIENTISTS have lent web chat a helping hand by creating a remote-control limb that can grip, shake and gesture over the internet.

The robotic hand, made by researchers at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, can act out the movements of someone on the other side of the world.

It costs about $US50 ($54) to build and is controlled by a bracelet that picks up electric signals in the muscles of the wearer.

Lead researcher Professor Liu Yunhui says:

“Due to residential limitations and migration, many families cannot live with their aged parents. Although they can show their care through phone calls, physical touch is still a better way to express love. With the system, elders and their children and grandchildren can touch and hold hands via the internet to show affection directly.”

The hand and the controller bracelet, left, and Professor Yunhui, right / Chinese University of Hong Kong

Continue reading 'Robot scientists lend a hand to internet chat'

FORMER Young Liberal Nick Sowden says he was joking when he tweeted that US President Barack Obama was a monkey, but his colleagues weren’t laughing.

He joins a not-so-elite list of social network nuffies to make career-limiting moves online.

Here an update on the ever-growing list of How To Get Fired in 140 Letters or Less:

Continue reading 'How Twitter got me fired'

TWITTER has finally settled on a plan to make some money – let companies pay for ads in search results.

The website is preparing to introduce “promoted tweets” this week, according to reports from The New York Times and Advertising Age.

They’ll be similar to Google’s sponsored links in that companies will be able to buy certain keywords to be associated with. Unlike Google’s system, only one ad will be displayed per search.

So, for example, Starbucks might buy the word “coffee”. Any searches for that word would then have a Starbucks ad at the top of the results.

The ad itself would be a tweet from the official Starbucks account. Users can retweet it or reply to it as normal.

Advertising Age said companies may use promoted tweets to start a discussion. In the Starbucks example, the company might promote a tweet asking: “Tell us something a barista did to make your day?”

Clearly, this picture shows where the ads will go. It probably didn’t need a caption / news.com.au

Continue reading 'Twitter launches ‘promoted tweets’ in search results'

IT’S not until you take off the clunky glasses and go back to 2D that you notice the finer points of 3D TV.

In a single line? It’s not brain-exploding, but it’s definitely more vibrant.

There’s no “omg wow!!!1” moment when you first put the glasses on, but after you take them off, normal TV does look a bit, um… flat.

At a media preview of Samsung’s line of 3D TVs in Sydney today, journalists were shown a clip from animated kids’ film Monsters vs Aliens.

Which was a bit silly because Samsung’s safety guidelines say young children shouldn’t watch 3D TV.

But anyway…

These are the glasses you have to wear. I suppose they could look worse / AFP

Continue reading 'What’s it like to actually watch 3D TV?'

UPDATE: News.com.au understands one of the names removed from the code of the minister’s homepage was at the request of family members for personal reasons.

SAY you’re a government minister in charge of a controversial plan to filter the internet that has been criticised for its secrecy.

Then imagine that you’re accused of obscuring access to information about that plan on your official website.

How do you respond? With the delete key, apparently.

Last week it was revealed that a script on Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s official site was removing references to the words “ISP Filtering”.

The script didn’t remove information about it from the whole site – just from the homepage. You can read more about it here.

But after being asked about the script and why it was there, the minister – or his staff – responded by obscuring even more information.

The name of the person who originally wrote the script, as well as the person who changed it and the date that it was changed have all been removed from the site in the last few days.

A screenshot of the tag cloud on Senator Conroy’s website, left, and the script removing the words “ISP Filtering”, right / news.com.au

Continue reading 'The web filter minister and the delete key'

THE little pickle that could has come out on top in the latest silly but amusing Facebook campaign.

A parody group called “Can this pickle get more fans than Nickleback?” reached its goal over the weekend with more than 1.4 million fans.

The group was started earlier this month as a joke by 19-year-old Coral Anne from Ontario.

“I never expected it to be successful and I was most definitely surprised at how quickly it took off. I was in disbelief when it was making news headlines,” the teenager told news.com.au.

“I started the group because I thought it would be funny. The idea of it came to mind after seeing the other successful page ‘Can this onion ring get more fans than Justin Bieber?’”

This unassuming pickle has more fans than the world’s leading purveyors of “post grunge” / Facebook

Continue reading 'Parody pickle’s popularity problem, or “picklegate”'