iPad 2 Backseat Car Mount

Image from toucoul.com

After the success of the backseat car mount for iPad, TouCoul is releasing the new Coul Vue headrest mount for the iPad2. CoulVue can be installed to any standard backseat headrest of any vehicle. This will allow backseat passengers to use the iPad or iPad2 to watch movies, surf the web, play music and games. Why install a backseat LCD screen when you can use your iPad instead.

CoulVue headrest mount is very flexible and passengers can twist, tilt, rotate, and extend it. There is no major difference between the old and new CoulVue. The only change is for the new features of the iPad2. It will perfectly fit the slimmed down iPad2 and can accommodate the new back camera. And the best part is that CoulVue for iPad 2 is compatible with the new Apple Smart Cover. You don't to remove the smart cover to attach the iPad2 to the CoulVue. And in turn it also provides additional protection when not in use.

CoulVue for iPad and CoulVue for iPad 2 are available at toucoul.com for $79.99

Source: toucoul.com

Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Aftermath Aerial Images

Image from maps.google.com

Google Earth and Google Maps has just updated their satellite and aerial imagery of several places. The update includes high resolution aerial images. One of the most interesting update is the aerial images of Sendai, Japan. The recent tsunami to hit Japan caused devastation across the country and Sendai was among the hardest hit. I must warn you it's a bit depressing to look at. You can see in detail the destruction that the huge tsunami had caused.

In the image above you can see Sendai Airport in Sendai Japan. Notice the neighborhood beside the airport was flattened. Just few houses left standing. 

Places that received the high resolution aerial updates:

USA: Phoenix, Tuscon, Albuquerque, Amarillo, Wichita, Austin, Cape Cod

Japan: Sendai

Countries/Regions receiving high resolution satellite updates:

Antarctica, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chad, China, Croatia, Egypt, England, France, Georgia, Germany, Haiti, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Senegal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United States, Uruguay, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia

View Larger Map

You can compare the images of Sendai, before and after the earthquake and tsunami at the Google Earth Historical Imagery.

Source: maps.google.com; google-latlong.blogspot.com

FlyNano Water Plane, Flying without a Pilot's License

Image from www.flynano.com

Don't have a pilot's license but want to fly? It may come true with FlyNano. It's a light weight water plane that doesn't really qualify as an airplane. Aviation rules require a pilot's license when flying an airplane. So if it's not technically a plane then you can actually fly it even without a pilot's license. Cool yet dangerous.

The FlyNano water plane was unveiled at the Aero 2011 at Friedrichshafen in Germany. The aircraft was invented by Pilot Aki Suokas. It has a super lightweight body made from carbon fiber, measuring 3.5 meters with wingspan of 5 meters. It weighs under 70 kilograms and can carry only one person. It can reach speeds over 140 kph and a height of 3 kilometers. Which is pretty high.

It will soon be made available to the market to you better save up. It will roughly costs around $36,000 - $39,000. The company offers three models to choose from: electric, petrol and a racing version. Yet to see an actual flight video or photo.

Source: edition.cnn.com ; www.flynano.com

New Nintendo Wii 2 will be in High Definition (HD)

Nintendo is rumored to release its HD version of Wii. Nintendo Wii has been the best selling console in years but is starting to lose its grip to that title. According to sources, Nintendo plans to unveil the new Nintendo Wii HD in the E3 conference in Los Angeles this June. There are no solid information yet about the rumored new console. This comes after Nintendo announced that it will be cutting the Wii's price to $150 from $200. It is said that Nintendo has been loosing sales and profits with its Wii and DS. The new price cuts will be effective May 15 said Nintendo. So better not buy that Nintendo Wii just yet.

Source: mashable.com

You Can Cheat PayPal, Amazon and Google Payment Systems

Indiana University doctoral student Rui Wang and Associate professor XiaoFeng Wang together with a team of researchers discovered security flaws in e-commerce payment systems. Payment systems like in Amazon Payments, PayPal and Google Checkout are among those that are said to have "bugs". This allowed them to purchase products online for FREE or with huge discounts. 

They actually tested buying DVD's and electronic chargers and they successfully cheated the payments systems. But of course they returned the items after the tests has been done. These are the following ways they cheated the system:

1. Add discounts of their choosing
2. Shop for free after paying for one item
3. Purchase an expensive item for the price of the cheapest item

They said that the problem is with the third party services not that payment systems itself. Wang explained the logic of the bugs with a naughty child who wants a piece of candy scenario: "The child tells the mother that the father said it was OK, and then tells Dad that Mom said it was fine. If the two parents aren't communicating effectively, the kid gets the candy."


The said researchers reported the problems to the merchants and closely worked with them to fix the flaws or bugs in the systems. I guess they already fixed the problem so don't bother trying. Read more about this in CNN.




Source: money.cnn.com

NASA Released New Images of Planet Mercury

NASA released new closeup images of Mercury. The new images were taken by NASA's Messenger spacecraft which is now orbiting the planet using its Mercury Dual Imaging System. Messenger's mission is to research on the geochemistry, geophysics, geologic history, atmosphere, magnetosphere, and plasma environment of the planet. NASA is in partnership with The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Messenger is expected to take 75,000 images of Mercury.

Messenger is an acronym for  MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging. It was launched on August 3, 2004 and went on fly-bys of Earth, Venus and Mercury. On march 17 it has started to orbit planet Mercury.

Source: www.cnn.com ; www.nasa.gov

Android Phones Preferred Over iPhone and BlackBerry in US

The smartphone market today is pretty competitive. Consumers have lots of choices with variety of phones in the market. Even though there are many phones available, most of them are under the Android operating system. This is because there are only three leading types of smartphones. These are Android, iPhone  and BlackBerry. And Android is only an operating system, so under Android you'll find everything from high end to low end phones. 

In the US, Android is ahead by just 2% against rivals iPhone and BlackBerry base on Nielsen.

Source: www.cnn.com

Search Engine Bing Offers Daily Deals Feature

Screenshot of Bing's website

Microsoft's search engine, Bing, has introduced a daily deals feature. Microsoft claims that daily deals is what people are searching. They said: "Calling all bargain hunters, deal lovers, Groupon groupies and Living Social fanatics! Things just got easier."

Bing Deals arrived Thursday on desktop PCs and smartphones. How does it work? Try searching for a local restaurant in Bing, then they say that the search engine will let you know if there are any deals that establishment. This is a great feature, specially nowadays, we always try to find best deals on everything.

Even in the Philippines daily deals has become the latest trend in advertising promos and events. We have sites like dealgrocer.com, ensogo.com and metrodeal.com.

Source: www.cnn.com ; www.bing.com

Wordpress Cyber Attack Caused Massive DDoS

Wordpress went though a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack last Thursday. Wordpress' founding developer Matt Mullenweg called the attack "the largest and most sustained attack we've seen in our six year history." They suspected it to be politically motivated because of its non-English blogs but still has no evidence to support the claims.

Wordpress is one of the largest blog hosting sites and hosts 18 million sites and has an average of 600 million pageviews. Distributed denial of service or DDoS attacks are simple but

very hard to defend. Basically the attacks works by directing giant traffic to its target website and overwhelming the site's servers resulting to legitimate users not being able to access the website.

Source: money.cnn.com

Control a Prosthetic Arm with Your Mind

Scientists found a way to control a prosthetic arm with one's mind. They connect the nerves from person's stump(end of a limb left after amputation) to muscles in his chest. It gives a person a wider range of movements that was not possible before.

Nate Bunderson was the one who presented the findings to the Society of Neuroscience conference in San Diego in November. He said "If you transfer the nerves [from the stump] to healthy muscles, then you can amplify the brain signals used to control the arm." Instead of sending signals to the arm, the

chest muscles sends signals to the computer, then the computer interprets the signals and send it to the prosthesis.

Mr. Sullivan was the first to undergo the surgery eight years ago and is doing great. Most amputees lose control of the nerves over time, because they can no longer control the muscles but Mr Sullivan's signals appear to become stronger. Mr Bunderson said: "Instead of having muscles interpret the neural command, we now have a computer trying to interpret the neural command and the brain has to adjust to that."

The technology is there, with more support I think we could have a good enough prosthesis to be considered as a replacement for the real thing. 

Source: www.newscientist.com

Facebook Phone

Everything Mark Zuckerberg touches becomes gold. Facebook became a giant social networking site with over 500 million active users. Then the Social Network becomes a huge hit. Now a mobile phone manufacturer makes its next bet on Mark Zuckerberg as it set to launch the first "Facebook phone".

London-based INQ Mobile revealed two new Android smartphones for the UK market that are designed for Facebook users. The INQ Cloud Touch and the INQ Cloud Q. They have been working closely with Facebook for the phone's features. 

The home screen has visual feed that lets users quickly access updates, pictures, videos, and other Facebook content. The phone provides quick links to all the popular Facebook features, including chat, messages, wall postings and

notifications. The phones will also provide a single sign-on to access all of the Facebook features available.

Henri Moissinac, head of mobile business for Facebook, said: "INQ has built an innovative and easy to use set of features that enable people to use common Facebook interactions such as viewing photos and videos, chat, message, and check-in to their favourite businesses all from the home screen."

Phone's Hardware: 

- Cloud Touch is powered by a Qualcomm 600MHz 7227 chipset

- 3.5-inch HGVA touch screen

- 4MB of memory with an option to add more

- 5-megapixel autofocus camera.
- built-in Wi-Fi 802.11b/g

- built-in Bluetooth

- built-in GPS

- built-in FM radio

- accelerometer and  compass.

Prices has yet to be revealed. Cloud Touch will be on sale from April, with the Cloud Q launched in the third quarter.

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Controlling Humanoid Robot Using Kinect

YouTube - ikaziso

This is one of many Kinect story surfacing on the web. It usually involves hacking or modifying the Kinect Hardware. This impressive example involves a robot being controlled using Kinect. Watch the video below.

The video is titled "Control Humanoid Robot with Kinect"

Source: www.youtube.com/user/ikaziso

Knowing Your Credit Card Numbers

flickr - scobleizer

Have you ever wondered how credit card companies come up with those numbers on your card? I always assumed that it was randomly generated. Some people thinks that it depends on your location, bank or the day you get your credit card. Turns out that all credit card companies follow the same rules in generating credit card numbers. There's even a way to know if a credit card is fake or not.

The first digit is the Major Industry Identifier(MII). Its the category of the entity which issued the card.

1 and 2 : Airlines

3: Travel and Entertainment

4 and 5 Banking and Financial

6: Merchandising and Banking

7: Petroleum 

8: Telecommunication

9: National assignment

The first 6 digits including the MII is the Issuer Identification Number(INN). It will identify the institution that issued the card. 

VISA: 4xxx-xx 

MASTERCARD: 51xx-xx to 55xx-xx

DISCOVER: 6011-xx ; 644x-xx ; 65xx-xx

AMEX: 34xx-xx ; 37xx-xx

The next digits excluding the last digit are the account holder's number. 

The last number is the check digit or checksum. It is used to validate a credit card using Luhn algorithm or "modulus 10". It was created by IBM scientist Hans Peter Luhn. basically you just need to check if your credit card numbers, after doing some math will be divisible by 10. If its not, then its fake or invalid. You should try this with your credit card. Here how it works:

Multiply by 2 every other number starting from the second digit, from right to left. Then add all of these numbers including the one's you haven't multiplied. If the sum is divisible by 10 then the credit card is valid.

Image from byJess.net and mint.com/blog

Source: byJess.net ; mint.com/blog ; gizmodo.com ; www.flickr.com/photos/scobleizer

MySpace Redesign and Possible Layoffs

MySpace is rumored to make layoffs that could affect up to 50% of its 1,100 employees because of decreased in revenue and traffic. MySpace is based in Beverly Hills, California and also in international locations. While the details of the layoffs have not been finalized, almost all of the MySpace staff was given the last week of December off from work to save money. MySpace even partnered up with its former foe, Facebook, making it possible for users to log in with Facebook.

The social networking site MySpace has been struggling for years now and now faces huge problems. Despite this, MySpace has recently relaunched its site to become a social entertainment hub.

The new "Myspace", notice that the "S" now "s". launched its new beta version. It is now focusing more on music, television, movies, games, videos and photos. With the new image comes with a new logo. The new logo is now a “my” with an actual fill-in-the-space bracket after it. The new color palette is black instead of blue. The redesign is a risky, move, which could result in a dramatic decline of users and is not expected to result in a major turnaround of Myspace. 

Rumor has it that Facebook game maker Zynga as a potential acquirer of MySpace. MySpace is owned by News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns All Things Digital.

Source: news.cnet.com ; mashable.com ; www.myspace.com

Nintendo 3DS: Glasses No More

Nintendo 3DS is finally launching in Japan on February 26 next year and will be available in the US the following month. So what's new with the new Nintendo DS?

Nintendo 3DS will have new functions like a slide pad, a motion sensor and a gyro-sensor. It will have parental controls like in the Nintendo DSi series. The Nintendo 3DS is compatible with game cartridges in the Nintendo DS 

So why or how can Nintendo show 3D games without 3D glasses? Parallax barrier is Nintendo 3DS's secret. A parallax barrier is

one of the more popular ways for showing 3D without glasses. Nintendo worked with Sharp 3DTVs which are the ones who makes the Nintendo 3DS's screens. Instead of having glasses filter the image for each eye, the screen's parallax barrier directs different light into each eye and our brain turns it to a 3D image. It's like a barrier between your eyes and the screen which acts like a substitute for the 3D glasses. Using Sharp's techniques, you can turn off the parallax barrier and go back to regular 2D viewing.

Nintendo has issued warnings in using Nintendo 3DS Games for Children under six years old. Click here for full story.

For Gizmodo's Review on Nintendo 3DS Click Here.

Specifications:

CPU: 2 x 266MHz ARM11

GPU: PICA200 133MHz GPU by DMP

RAM: 64MB

Video RAM: 4MB

Storage: 1.5GB Flash-based

-Measured at 134mm by 74mm and 21mm thick

-Weighs 230 grams.

-The top screen is 3.53 inches and with an liquid crystal display of 800 x 240 pixels. 

-The button screen is 3.02 inches with a liquid crystal display of 320 x 240 pixels.

-It has two outer 0.3 megapixel cameras and one inside the portable's clamshell.

-WiFi Ready

- has a game cartridge slot, an SD card slot, a slot for the AC adapter and headphone jack. 

-built-in mic

-powered by lithium ion battery.

What's inside the box?

The Nintendo 3DS comes bundled with a charger stand (above), an AC adapter, a 10cm Nintendo 3DS touch pen, a 2GB SD card, six augmented reality cards as well as instruction booklets.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk ; gizmodo.com

Nintendo 3DS Games Bad for Children's Health?

Nintendo has issued a health warning on their hand held console 3DS. They say that a specialists revealed that eyesight of children under six years old could be harmed by playing 3D games which present different images to the right and left eye.

"Younger children should only play 2D versions of 3DS games", said Nintendo.

Warnings on 3D movies and games are not new. Sony and Toshiba has also started warning people of the side effects of watching 3D movies or playing 3D games. Sony has even went as far as telling parents to get medical advice first before letting children watch 3D contents on any devices. The companies have also warned that
watching too much 3D content can cause discomfort.

The 3DS, the new version of the popular DS handheld launches in late February in Japan and in Europe and the US in March. More on Nintendo 3DS.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk ; gizmodo.com

Accessing Multiple Gmail Accounts Now Easier to Manage

Have multiple Gmail Accounts? Well Google announced a new Gmail feature today, called e-mail delegation. The new feature will allow you to easily manage multiple Gmail accounts without signing in and out of Gmail to switch accounts. 

Originally, e-mail delegation was made primarily for personal assistants and the likes. Now with the latest changes, the feature is useful to any Gmail user with multiple accounts of his or her own.

If you want to use this great feature, just sign into your primary Gmail account then grant access to your other Gmail accounts. Click "settings" in the top right corner of Gmail's web interface. Under the "Accounts and Import" tab, there's now a new section entitled, "Grant access to your account." Here, you can add any other Gmail accounts you control to your primary Gmail account.

When you add an account, you'll have to accept access from a verification e-mail sent to the to-be-added account. Once the account is successfully added, you can simply toggle between your Gmail accounts without logging in and out. You can see the toggle beside the settings tab. You do have to wait for few hours for the toggle to take effect and be seen.

Here is a short video on how to set up "Gmail Delegation" for multiple Gmail Accounts

Source: www.mashable.com

Facebook Global Friend Connections

Ever wonder what a graph of Facebook friend connections around the world will look like? A Facebook intern Paul Butler wondered and made the Facebook Social Graph. In the graph you can see the connections and concentration of friendships. Notice the graph, U.S. has the highest concentration of Facebook friendships, and Africa has the lowest concentration. As expected, most of Russia and China has almost no facebook users at all. The rest of the world is easily identifiable.

Although looks not that much but this was hard to make. Butler explained in a Facebook note some of the challenges he faced creating his visualization:

"I began exploring it in R, an open-source statistics environment. As a sanity check, I plotted points at some of the latitude and longitude coordinates. To my relief, what I saw was roughly an outline of the world. Next I erased the dots and plotted lines between the points.

After a few minutes of rendering, a big white blob appeared in the center of the map. Some of the outer edges of the blob vaguely resembled the continents, but it was clear that I had too much data to get interesting results just by drawing lines. "

Source: www.cnn.com

Call of Duty Cyber Attack Caused by a 17 Year Old Boy

A 17 year old boy was arrested in the Beswick area of Manchester by the Metropolitan Police's central e-crime unit in connection with a cyber attack which put the online Call of Duty game out of service.

The attack is aimed for "denial of service" which in other words causes the website unusable. This caused large numbers of users unable to play the game online. Activision contacted police in September this year.

"The attack came about via a malicious program called "Phenom Booter", which was also being offered for sale on a web forum which allowed those playing Call of Duty to score more points while stopping other people playing the game."[BBC]

The teenager is arrested on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act and is currently in police custody.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Millions of Twitter Accounts Compromised

A website called Gawker was hacked last Sunday and 1.3 million user account passwords compromised that enabled spammers to break into thousands of Twitter accounts where users had used the same passwords.

A file containing those details was then published on a file-sharing site "Bittorrent" by a group "Gnosis". The 500MB file contains data taken from Gawker.

Gawker published a statement on its homepage regarding this matter. They say that although the stored passwords were encrypted, simple passwords are very much vulnerable.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk