Thursday, November 8, 2007

iPhone Firmware Drops Tomorrow, Apple Confirms

11:50PM Charlie White | If you been scampering about with all kinds of jailbroken applications on your iPhone, the party will be over tomorrow when Apple releases its 1.1.2 iPhone firmware update. At first we heard it was going to be included on the new European iPhone, but now word has it that Apple has confirmed that the 1.1.2 firmware will be released internationally via iTunes tomorrow (November 9th). Although Apple wasn’t confirming that compatibility with unauthorized applications and unlocked iPhones will be broken, it looks like the situation will be similar to what happened last time the company released a firmware update with version 1.1.1. This new update won’t bring much new stuff, except support for more languages and access to The Cloud Wi-Fi hotspots for UK users. And so another round of hacking on the iPhone begins, all on the sly until the eagerly awaited SDK hits in February. [Pocket Lint] More »

TiVo Offers Cheaper Service Plans, Brings Back Lifetime Service

11:30PM Wilson Rothman | Billed as “promotional pricing” for the holiday season, TiVo is now offering pay-as-you-go service for $12.95 to everybody, not just people planning to keep it for three years. That’s a savings of $4 per month. Also 1-year prepay is now $129, down from $179, and 2-year prepay is $249, down from $279. Three years up front is still $299. The new multi-service deal is $9.95/month or $99/year. More »

Video: The AT&T Wiretapping Dealio Explained in Two Minutes

8:00PM Matt Buchanan | This clip, featuring AT&T whisteblower Mark Klein, was thrown together by Senator Chris Dodd’s staff and neatly wraps up the basics of the snooping allegations the EFF’s pursuing against AT&T. He’s apparently rubbing elbows in DC this week to explain the issue to Congressional types. If his spiel gets at all technical, God help him. [EFF via BoingBoing] More »

AMD Launches FireStream 9170, First Stream Processor With Double-Precision Floating Point Technology

7:00PM Matt Buchanan | AMD’s launching “the world’s first Stream GPU with double-precision floating point technology,” the FireStream 9170, and the AMD FireStream SDK for Stream processors. Running a cool $2000, the 55nm chip pulls less than 150 watts of juice while pumping out 500 GFLOPS of computing power. Also packed onboard is 2GB of GDDR3 memory, which, combo’d with asynchronous direct memory access, “ensures data can flow freely without interrupting the stream processor or CPU.” This parallel-processing piece of badassness will hit the market in the Q1 2008. More »

Tivo PowerWatch Program Sells Detailed User Info to Advertisers

6:15PM Matt Buchanan | Tivo’s been selling data about people’s viewing habits—what shows and commercials they watch (or skip), when they pause, fast-forward, rewind and so on—to advertisers for around a year. Now they’re adding personal info to the Chex Mix of ratings data they sell: age, income, marital status and ethnicity. More »

PS3 Firmware 2.00 Is Live (Right Now)

5:00PM Matt Buchanan | The sort-of awaited 2.00 firmware update for the PS3, featuring remote start, customizable themes and other fancy newness is now live. If you’d like a video demo (for whatever reason) before clicking update, click here. Or you could just go ahead and download it. [Destructoid] More »

HP to Outsource Digital Camera Business

4:30PM Matt Buchanan | Hewlett-Packard’s shifting the focus of its digital photo business from cameras to home printing and online photo services. Future cameras will still bear the HP branding, but they’ll be designed and manufactured by a licensed third party. The HP-but-not camera deal should be set with the ghost producer halfway into 2008—HP will keep selling their own through the end of this year. [NYT, HP Press Release] More »

Gizmodo AU is hiring!

1:32PM Chris Janz | Know cutting-edge technology? Crave to break news first? Gizmodo Australia’s on the hunt for a new editor. If you think you fit the bill, get in touch now.  This is a full-time Sydney-based role. (PS – SB’s off sick today, but the regular US feed is streaming through.) More »

Netrunner Allows You to Use Your Laptop While Jogging

1:00PM Sean Fallon | The Netrunner is a device that allows you to affix your laptop to a treadmill — and I don’t think I need to tell you why this idea falls short of genius (although I will anyway). I’ll admit, they had me with the ability to play DVDs. I can see how that could be useful in certain situations. But if you can surf the web using this thing, you are not working hard enough my friend. Plus, if you are interested in this, you might as well go all out with the treadmill desk from Steelcase. Available for $US99. [Product Page via BookofJoe] More »

Solar Ships May Carry Passengers in San Francisco as Early as 2009

12:40PM Sean Fallon | The concept of solar ships is nothing new, but it appears that Australia’s Solarsailor may be on the brink of bringing the technology to the mainstream. Hornblower Yachts in San Francisco is in the midst of negotiations with the Coast Guard to install a Solarsailor sail on one of their commercial ferryboats. If all goes well, the boat will be operational in 2009. Solarsailor has also won contracts in Shanghai and Hong Kong for similar vessels. In its current form, solar sails are an ideal solution for boats designed for short trips. Tests in Sydney have illustrated that ships equipped with the sail can go around 6 knots on wind power alone or 6 knots on solar power. When combined, speeds of 10 knots are achievable. [Crave] More »