The Technology Cafe :: Technology News and Reviews Daily

  Slendor, crescent moon will illumninate two brightest planets Space.com / Starry Night Software Look to the southwest after sunset on Dec. 1 for a close conjunction between three bright solar system objects: the moon, Venus and Jupiter. If you have binoculars, you might even be able to fit all three of them in the field of view. Between now and then, you can see Jupiter and Venus getting closer together each evening. Every once in a while, READ MORE...

  BOULDER, Colo., Nov. 29 (UPI) — The Wilkins Ice Shelf is showing new rifts and an ice bridge holding it to two Antarctic islands is closer to collapsing, U.S. and European scientists say. The European Space Agency says the shelf, a floating mass of ice about half the size of Scotland, is showing new rifts after losing around 772 square miles of mass so far this year, CNN reported Saturday. Agency scientists say the new rifts indicate an READ MORE...

  Blockbuster has launched their brand new service to customers which will allow them to download movies directly to their computer.  The "Blockbuster On Demand" service requires the use of a box, which is free if you rent 25 movies in advance for $99. The move is, undoubtedly, in order to keep up with other companies, such as Netflix, who have the service already available to their customers.  Over 2,000 movies and READ MORE...

  The saga of the MySpace suicide case is not yet over. Tina Meier, the mother of Megan Meier, a 13-year-old who hanged herself in response to cruel messages sent as part of a hoax, will press for the maximum charges against Lori Drew, 49, who was convicted by a jury of three misdemeanor counts of computer fraud, according to AP. If the jury throws the book at Drew, she faces three years in prison and a $300,000 fine. But Drew’s attorney has READ MORE...

  Barack Obama is hoping to find a way around the rules that ban communications equipment in the White House so he can keep his beloved BlackBerry when he takes office. In an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC the president elect explained that he is "in the process of negotiating with the secret service, with lawyers [and] with white-house staff" to get information from "outside the 10 or 12 people who surround my READ MORE...

  Troublemaking investor Carl Icahn has doubled his stake in Yahoo! despite sitting on a billion dollar loss from his first stake in the firm. Icahn built up a huge stake in Yahoo! in May when shares were floating around $25. He tried, and failed, to get the board to accept a $33 a share offer from Microsoft. According to an SEC filing Icahn has bought another 6.9 million shares – for less than $10 each. Founder Jerry Yang is taking a back READ MORE...

  Yahoo!’s European managing director Toby Coppel is joining the exodus from the firm. Coppel was previously chief strategy officer for the ailing internet firm. Rich Riley is replacing Coppel. Riley has been with Yahoo! since it bought the company he co-founded, Log-Me-On.com. He will be based at Yahoo!’s European headquarters in Rolle, Switzerland. Coppel will stay for the handover to his replacement and leave the company in the READ MORE...

After Baidu was identified by the state media to be allowing unlicensed medical services in order to buy high search rankings for more customers, China’s search kingpin said it will soon overhaul it’s operations as a result to the media announcement. Baidu was criticized on national TV for rigging it’s pay-for-performance (P4P) search platform, resulting in a slump in the stock price of Baidu. We have removed the key words of all four clients READ MORE...

  Mac users are finally being offered their own version of µTorrent, the most popular BitTorrent client. µTorrent for Mac came out in beta yesterday. Version 0.90 is compatible with OSX Leopard only and the developers warn there may be "serious bugs". The port boasts the "lightweight power and performance" that saw the PC version quickly overtake more established software following its release in 2005. Exponents praise READ MORE...

Danish ISP Sonofon (part of Tele2) has once again been ordered by a Danish court to block the controversial Swedish BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay. The record industry represented by The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) calls it a landmark ruling and says the decision confirms the illegality of Pirate Bay. The judgment delivered Wednesday by the Danish appeal court upholds the decision earlier this year requiring access to READ MORE...

  Last week we announced Project Silk Road, our vision for delivering a broad suite of products and services for publishers and web developers, including a customizable Live Search API, rich content, multiple media and source types, and the ability to monetize through ad-serving. Today we’re expanding our toolkit with two important updates to Webmaster Center: the ability to detect malware on your site and the sites you link to, plus a READ MORE...

  On Nov. 19, Microsoft (MSFT) released a totally overhauled operating system for its Xbox 360 video game console. The free update includes a slick makeover of the graphical user interface and new features such as the ability to install games directly to the console’s built-in hard drive as well as to stream movies from Netflix (NFLX). After a little more than a week with the update, dubbed the New Xbox Experience or NXE, I can say READ MORE...

  Though many previously bundled applets now will ship separately to Windows 7, Windows Media Player remains part of the core OS. Windows 7 will ship with Windows Media Player 12, which includes some surprising new features. The UI itself is brighter and lighter than WMP11. Some buttons and toolbar items have been moved around, but the experience should be pretty familiar to users of version 11. What does represent a big change is the removal of READ MORE...

Sling Media, the company behind the popular Slingbox TV-streaming hardware devices, has opened the gates to its video portal Sling.com. The site pits Sling directly against Joost and Hulu (though Hulu is a Sling partner), allowing users to stream a variety of television shows and movies for free through an intuitive Flash player. Sling’s selection of media is pretty comprehensive, offering content from most of the major networks and studios READ MORE...

  It’s no big surprise that the Mozilla team decided for sure to release a third beta of Firefox 3.1 before moving to release candidate mode. That was all but voted on at last week’s meeting (I thought) but Mozilla “corporate” PR folks informed me that no decision was made. The formal proposal for beta 3 was only issued today. With that, beta 2 is now expected to be available in early December and beta 3 in early January, according to READ MORE...

  Opera Mini has found its way onto the Android Market with version 4.2, an incremental release that increases execution speed as well as linking to native media players and bringing back the skinning feature that vanished with version 4. Non-Android owners can download the browser in the old-fashioned way, but Android users can use the Market to get their copy direct and experience faster web browsing than that offered by the Ajax-based browser READ MORE...

  Google’s Android platform appears to be a much hotter seller than first anticipated by HTC, maker of the T-Mobile G1 phone. The Taiwanese handset manufacturer is almost doubling its G1 shipment expectations for the year. HTC believes it can ship about one million G1 phones by the end of 2008, upped from figures of around 600,000 units made earlier this year. The upped figure comes from HTC’s CEO Peter Chou in a report by READ MORE...

Microsoft Corp., engrossed in multi-million dollar marketing blitz to counter comical ads from rival Apple, Inc., is now using a portion of its budget to fuel guerilla retail tactics near the Mac maker’s stores. AppleInsider reader Tom submits the following photo, which shows a large Microsoft-branded kiosk parked outside a shopping center-based Apple retail store. "It’s a friggin booth where you can record your own I’m READ MORE...

    Google is reportedly thinking about cutting deals with PC makers to have its Chrome browser pre-installed on new computers, a move that could position the Internet giant to not only boost its presence in search but also put some of its branded apps – Gmail, Google Docs, Google Reader and others – in front of new users. According to a report in The Times, Google will likely start working those deals after it pulls the READ MORE...

    Two pieces of malicious software affecting Apple’s Mac OS X appeared this week: a Trojan horse with the ability to download and install malicious code of an attacker’s choice, and a hacker tool for creating backdoors, according to security vendors. The Trojan — called ‘OSX.RSPlug.D’ by Intego, the Mac security specialist that discovered the threat — is a variant on an older piece of malicious code but with a READ MORE...

    The "standards-compatible" next edition of Internet Explorer has been bumped into 2009 by Microsoft. A third Internet Explorer 8 beta will now be released in the first quarter of next year and be followed by a final release, IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch has blogged. Hachamovitch did not give a date for that final release but spelt it out more clearly than the usual IT vendor message of "we’re taking feedback READ MORE...

  Computer systems at three major London hospitals are largely back online on Friday morning, three days after a major computer virus outbreak forced staff to disconnect the network. IT systems at St Bartholomew’s (Barts), the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel and the London Chest Hospital in Bethnal Green were taken down on Tuesday following infection by the Mytob worm. The three hospitals make up the Barts and the London NHS Trust. A READ MORE...