Category: Tech news

Come on, we have all experience the dreaded “Satellite Lost” syndrome when using a GPS unit. A crafty hacker has created his own low-tech steampunk navigation system.

He soldered together a couple of brass tubes to a backplate and added a crystal face. Now all he has to do is print out step by step directions from Google maps and he will never have to worry about a lack of a clear sky view or even batteries. Plus, check out the resolution of that bad boy, perfect.

[Via Hack A Day]

Old School GPS originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/08/24.

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Is there anything an Arduino can’t do? Instructable user sketchk3tch built this Arduino Magstripe Emulator which can spoof a card reader into thinking a card has been swiped. I can’t even begin to list the possible uses for this tool. Can you say “Hollywood style hotel door hacking device”. Not that we are encouraging that type of behaviour, but it would be fun to write some code that would quickly cycle through all of the possibilities. Check out the video of it in action after the break.

Magstripe Hacking originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/08/24.

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Although the SEGA Dreacast wasn’t the most popular console on the market hardcore geeks everywhere hold it near and dear to their hearts. It took a nose dive shortly after being launched, but due to the fact that some of the games that were released for it are just short of awesome and the fact that pirating said games is super easy it lives on.

Modder Techknott took his Dreamcast and decided to cram it into a portable unit he could carry around. The unit holds the discs in the back, features a colour screen that was ripped out of a PSone and uses all of the original Dreamcast controls. It even has A/V output so you can still enjoy the game play on your TV.

It’s one-of-a-kind so you won’t be able to run out and buy your own, too bad.

[Link to Portable Dreamcast]

Hardcore Portable Dreamcast originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/08/23.

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Now that the Twitter API finally allows for retrieval of the number of times a Twitter user has been added to a list, celebrities can now brag about something other than their numbers of followers on the popular micro-sharing service.

Fan Page List noted the addition of the new fields in the Twitter API and quite rapidly came up with a handy ranking that gives you an overview of both stats for the most popular Twitter users, as well their number of fans on Facebook.

Unsurprisingly, celebrities (i.e. persons) rule the ranking, with musicians like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga topping the charts with over 264,000 and 106,000 counts on lists, respectively. Number three is Barack Obama, the only politician in the top 40.

The Twitter account for CNN Breaking News is the first media company in the ranking with an appearance in over 61,050 lists, while Microsoft founder Bill Gates makes it to the top 13 spot with nearly 50,000 list counts (and he’s a retired CEO, booyah!).

The company account with the most list counts is Google, ahead of Twitter, with close to 41,000 list appearances. Ricardo Kakà and Shaquille O’Neal are popular athletes, apparently.

TechCrunch made spot number 35 on the ranking, and we’re not resting until we surpass The Onion (#26), although admittedly they’re way more funnier than we could ever dream to be.

On a sidenote: a good place to start for great Twitter lists is Listorious.

As expected, EA’s <A HREF="http://www.crunchgear.com/tag/medal-of-honor/
“>Medal of Honor is coming under fire from all sides. The game, a first-person shooter, is scheduled to be released on October 12 for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC, takes place in Afghanistan, and puts you in control of U.S. soldiers on the ground there. It also, at least in the multi-player mode, lets you play as the Taliban. So, the natural line of thinking is, what kind of video game lets you shoot and kill U.S. soldiers?

Read more…

One of Zynga’s newest game titles, Mafia Wars Las Vegas, kicked off with a bang last week as rap star Snoop Dogg blew up a 4-ton armored truck in the middle of the desert in Nevada. The event, which took place last Thursday, broke a Ustream record for the most viewed original event with more than 2 million live views.

Zynga streamed the event, which commemorated the game reaching 10 million visitors in two weeks, live via Ustream, and more than 2 million viewers dialed in simultaneously, making the stunt the most viewed one-time event in 2010. This is actually pretty impressive considering that popular TV shows like The Office and 30 Rock generally get 2 million households viewing the television events. The Zynga event was also only surpassed by Ustream’s broadcast of Twilight: Eclipse in June, but this wasn’t an original web event created specially for Ustream.

Unfortunately, Zynga’s other marketing stunt for Mafia Wars, didn’t settle well with San Francisco politicians. After Zynga glued fake $25,000 bills to sidewalks in San Francisco directing people to check out the Mafia Wars website, San Francisco’s Deputy City Attorney Alex Tse called the marketing tactic “documented acts of sidewalk vandalism” and stated that the City “intends to pursue every available cause of action aggressively against Zynga for these illegal marketing tactics.”

It’s a little absurd for the City to use such aggressive language towards the marketing campaign; especially considering that the advertising agency responsible for the stunt seems willing to cooperate with officials.

On another note, it’s interesting to see Snoop Dogg getting involved with another social media event/campaign; the rapper seems to be turning into the new Ashton Kutcher these days. Snoop seems to have an affection for location based social network Fousquare and also recently partnered with PlaySpan to peddle his branded virtual goods.

While Google is testing search results that update as you type on its own, startup CloudMagic is bringing that functionality to Gmail and Google Apps – and other cloud-based services in the near future – by means of a Firefox and Chrome browser extension.

Installing the extension results in an extra search box in your Gmail interface that allows you to rapidly search for anything in your inbox, with results updating as you type and the ability to preview messages from a thread in a tab or open entire conversations with a single click.

If you’re a Gmail power user like I am, you need to hear no more to realize how useful that functionality is. It’s entirely free, so nothing should stop you from installing either (account credentials are stored locally, and not on CloudMagic’s servers).

I installed it, and while the speedy search and email conversation previews are nice and welcome, the one thing that will make me get used to CloudMagic very quickly is the fact that when you have tabs open with search results, they remain up on top on the right-hand side while you peruse other emails or compose new emails to people.

This basically means no longer having to open another tab to search for e.g. a telephone number in Gmail I’d like to pass on to someone else by email. And if you want to go back to the full Gmail interface, all you need to do is hit the shortcut key (Esc).

That feature alone will save me a couple of hours per month, and that’s a whole lot in my book.

The app is currently limited to Gmail and Google Apps, but will soon be introduced for Google Docs, Hotmail, Yahoo & other cloud services.

Magic? Nah. Terribly useful? Yes, Sir.

(Also check out Rapportive, another plugin that makes Gmail better).

Reports are appearing this morning about a major security hole in iTunes accounts linked to PayPal. At least one group of scammers has found a way to charge thousands of dollars to iTunes accounts through PayPal. One targeted customer told us, “My account was charged over $4700. I called security at PayPal and was told a large number of iTunes store accounts were compromised.” His email was filled with nearly 50 receipts from PayPall for $99.99 each. He was able to catch it before his bank disbursed funds to PayPal.

But others were not so lucky. A quick search of Twitter and Facebook shows that the problem is not isolated. Joey Bruce on Twitter laments:

Someone hacked my iTunes/paypal acct and drained everything from my bank account. Life is kicking me in the balls while I’m down.

A search of public status updates on Facebook uncovers more people with the same issue:

Darn…what a day! Someone hacked into my itunes account and bought a crap load of downloads and emptied out my paypal account….grrrrr. . . . Paypal is very cooperative but there is just about no way to get ahold of itunes. I did call paypal and they assured me that they had contacted itunes and it was going to be taken care of in my favor.

so apple/itunes had a security breach & someone bought over $500 worth of music through my paypal account. just what i wanted 2 b dealing w/ while in San Diego! AWESOME!!!

Everybody watch your itunes account closely. I just got hacked for almost $1000.00 worth of software, videos and music. Hopefully paypal will refund it all. . . . This happened within the last few hours. Once transaction after another.

AT least PayPal is aware of the issue, but it seems like the problem is on the iTunes side.

While the value of this information is fairly dubious and fraught with hidden factors, it seems that the Kindle store is outselling the iBooks store (on iPad) by 60 to 1. First, let’s look at the source of this information and then discuss why ebooks are winning and, more specifically, the Kindle store won.

A young man name J.A. Konrath, who seems to write mysteries, noted that he sells many, many ebooks, commenting that the Kindle store is literally making all of his boat payments for him. However, the iBook store is garbage. He writes:

That leaves Apple, and according to my numbers Apple is a very small part of the ebook market. I sell 200 ebooks a day on Kindle. On iPad, I sell 100 a month.

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Germany-based Brand Science Institute, a renowned think-tank focused on brand and consumer management, has carried out a fairly extensive study on corporate social media projects over the past 7 months.

Focal point of the research was a desire to understand why (most) social media projects tend to be utter failures. BSI questioned 560+ marketers representing 52 brands from some of the largest companies across 12 European countries, and poured the end results in a presentation.

Edging down Natchez Trace parkway, in the mountains just southwest of Nashville, a small convoy of journalists deftly put the new 2011 Ford Edge through its paces. When making passes along the route one couldn’t help but notice smiles gleaming on the faces of the other journos.

We tested both the 22-inch rolling Edge Sport and the $10K cheaper Edge SEL. This vehicle is the first from Ford to include the new MyFord Touch system – a fully interactive suite of tools for your driving experience – and it was an experience. Remember when you were younger and imagined cars that drove themselves, listened and talked to you and offered beautiful displays to showcase information, that’s MyFord Touch – sans auto-drive, for now.

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