Cloned card could allow unlimited parking Black Hat Hackers have figured out a way to trick San Francisco's computerized parking meter system into giving away unlimited free parking by cloning the smart cards used to pay fees.…Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing Full published article at: Read More »

It's not really that surprising given its investment in Clearwire, but Time Warner Cable is now ready to join in on the WiMAX fun. The company plans to resell the mobile broadband in four US cities by the end of the year, but so far it's only revealed two of them: Charlotte, North Carolina, and Dallas, Texas. Meanwhile, cable competitor Comcast has already opened up its WiMAX shop in Portland, Oregon, and plans to hit Atlanta, Chicago, and Philadelphia by the end of this year. No word on prices, but we don't expect it to...Read More »

Did you know that waking up by natural light is a lot less stressful than doing it with sound? Yes, apparently your toast tastes better too. Philips has long been a proponent of light alarms and, in an effort to stay hip with the kids, it's added a detachable iPod / iPhone dock to its latest offering. The HF3490 might never serve as your music station, but it tries hard, bringing an FM radio and some soothing sounds along. With 30 different levels of brightness and a "dusk simulator," this device has enough tweaking options...Read More »

Back at E3 2009 it was announced that Nintendo would roll out the capability to upload photo to Facebook from the DSi. Well, we're hearing from Engadget Japanese that that firmware updating is now occurring. It's a pretty minor update which includes the aforementioned ability to upload photos to Facebook, and brings a faster "image display speed" in the DSi's camera. We're sure there's some behind the scenes tweaking going on too, right? No word on when this update will hit elsewhere, but we'll keep our eyes on our DSi until it happens. You know, for work....Read More »

Concedes Windows Mobile 'uncool' FAM Microsoft has killed any lingering hopes, fears, dreams, suspicions, or conspiracy theories involving a Zune challenge to Apple's iPhone.… Full published article at: Read More »

Man, these Copyright Office triennial DMCA hearings seem to be some kind of competition for media-industry lawyer to present ridiculous arguments -- just a couple months after the MPAA tried to convince us that videotaping DVDs was an acceptable alternative to ripping, the RIAA's claiming that consumers shouldn't expect their DRM servers to stay online and allow them to play their music to play forever. No joke. The argument comes as the Copyright Office decides whether or not to allow a DMCA exemption for breaking DRM, and RIAA lawyer Steven Metalitz's position is that copyright owners...Read More »

It seems we have yet another reason to volley complaints in Amazon's directions. 17-year old high school Justin Gawronski had apparently been taking electronic notes and annotations on his Kindle for a summer assignment on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Yeah, you can probably guess where this is going -- after the retailer remotely pulled the plug on that particular version of the book, Gawronski's notes were lost in the ethers, rendered useless. The suit, which is seeking class action status, asks that Amazon be legally blocked from improperly accessing users' Kindles in the future and punitive damages...Read More »

Touts 'real-time' RDB Groovy Corporation has launched a SQL database acceleration appliance, boasting of extreme speeds.…What is your recession sales strategy? Full published article at: Read More »

Feeling a little envious of the Android-based Samsung Galaxy now available in Germany and soon to be available in other parts of Europe? Then you're in luck, sort of, as a new "A3LGTI7500L" model complete with US 3G has now sailed through the FCC. Unfortunately for those of us 'round these parts, that "L" at the end of the model name signifies that this particular model is intended for Latin America, but it's still about as close as you'll get to a practical option for the time being -- at least until...Read More »

So I was out of town last week when Apple and Palm got into it over the Pre syncing with iTunes, and the more I think about it, the more ridiculous the situation has become. If you'll remember, the Pre shipped with a hack that allowed it to appear as an iPod, which was inevitably blocked by Apple, and Palm's latest move was to spoof the Pre's USB Vendor ID to make it look like an Apple product while simultaneously complaining to the USB Implementor's Forum that Apple improperly uses the field. Yeah,...Read More »