Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Online
Is Google’s Next Product Google Poo?
11:45PM Matt Buchanan | You know, one of the most common typos I make when I try to go to Google is googlemotherfucker.com. Happens all the time. Luckily, Google actually owns that domain name, so I won’t happen upon a bed of pop-up nastiness. Uptime monitoring service Pingdom has come up with a massive list of domain names Google owns after analysing the root zone file and some WHOIS snooping. Other domain treasures include gmailsucks, gmailblows, googlepoo, fuckengoogle, omgoogle and thesecretofburritos. There’s a freaky porn-obsessed Google domain underbelly too. Check these out. More »
Music
The Shiniest Pebble: Samsung’s S2 MP3 Player
11:38PM Wilson Rothman | On paper, the Samsung YP-S2 is just another shuffle-beater, a 1GB player for US$39. But in person, it’s the most stylish of its class, in five colours, including those below and a white with faux marble grain. (Sadly Samsung didn’t have that one on hand.) It charges via a removable USB dongle that plugs right into the 35mm headphone jack, saving space—just don’t lose the extra piece. It’s not fully see-through, like Sony’s similar OLED-screen MP3 players, but it does have a glowing multicoloured LED that is supposed to indicate status. As you can see in the gallery, it’s not totally fingerprint-proof, but US$39 doesn’t guarantee perfection. [Samsung] More »
Networks
AT&T’s U-Verse Screwing With Network Says Comcast
11:24PM Gizmodo US Edition | Leaky signals from badly-installed AT&T U-Verse systems are squeezing up into the cable network and degrading broadband performance for others on some nodes, according to Comcast. About 40 cases of the problem have been reported since AT&T began supplying U-Verse in the Chicago area, with about 17,000 Comcast customers being affected. And though at first it sounds a bit like a schoolyard tussle, AT&T’s lack of response has led Comcast to seek a restraining order from a court in Illinois. More »
Peripherals
LaCie Rugged Portable Hard Drive Now Squeezes in 500GB
11:00PM Matt Buchanan | LaCie’s Rugged line of portable hard drives isn’t the first to cram 500GB into your pocket, but they’re betting it’s the most protected 500GB you’ll ever hold, with a shock-resistant (and ugly) orange rubber bumper padding the internal shock protection. Buffalo’s 500GB option is sleeker and has thwack-thwarting tech of its own, but the brickier Rugged probably has more brick-like durability, and it’s US$30 cheaper, so assess your needs accordingly. [LaCie] More »
Peripherals
GPS Tracker Defence Hides Your Global Position
10:50PM Mark Wilson | In our Gizmodomobile (a sort of cross between the Batmobile, those cars from M.A.S.K. and every other awesometastic vehicle you’ve ever read about, dreamed about or just imagined), sometimes we need to disable all 238 installed GPS tracking devices to go off the grid (namely while we park for hours on end outside of Bill Gates’ mansion). You know what would free up our hands for our thermal binoculars? This GPS Tracker Defense. More »
Computers
Negroponte Moots Windows XP Version of OLPC-Is It a Case of So Long, Sugar?
10:30PM Addy Dugdale | The founder and chairman of OLPC has admitted that only using open-source software has not been good for the project. Just a day after the resignation of group president Walter Bender, Nicholas Negroponte admitted that the choice of the Sugar operating system has hit the XO laptop project in two places: usability; and popularity. More »
Computers
Crooks Rig ATM with Eee PC to Steal Credit Card Info
8:30PM Jesus Diaz | In yet another demonstration of the never-ending hacking possibilities of the ASUS Eee PC laptop, three criminals in Brazil rigged an ATM with the little low cost computer to grab credit card information and personal information numbers to clone cards. Smart, except that one of them was a total moron. More »
Peripherals
Century DIY SSD Now Goes Up to 2TB (in Theory)
8:09PM Gizmodo US Edition | While both Intel and Samsung are promising big drops in SSD prices by the year’s end for now they still cost plenty. Unless you want to take the DIY route, and use this nifty gizmo from Century which uses compact flash cards for storage. The new version now accepts CF 3x cards and can create drives between 2GB and a crazy (and impossible, for now) 2TB in size. So you could buy a pair of 32GB CF cards for around US$270, add in US$192.57 for the DIY drive and you’d have a 64GB SATA SSD for about US$460— less than half the cost of the 64GB MacBook Air’s drive. Not bad, eh? Available from May 1st. [GeekStuff4U via Akihabaranews] More »
Peripherals
Optimus Maximus Keyboard Now for the (Expensive) Taking on ThinkGeek
8:00PM Addy Dugdale | ThinkGeek is shipping Art Lebedev’s Optimus Maximus keyboard at last. Price is US$1,589.99. [ThinkGeek] More »
Peripherals
