Last summer we broke the news that Engadget editor-in-chief Ryan Block would team with former editor-in-chief Peter Rojas to create a new gadget startup. Today that new startup, GDGT, launches. Gadget lovers rejoice - this is a social site. GDGT is a highly structured wiki that centers on tech gadgets. Like our own Crunchbase, anyone can edit any information on the site, but everything is structured which allows for lots of slicing and dicing of the data. The site includes intensely detailed specs on each product and groups products into logical categories. There are over a dozen categories and thousands of products in GDGT now, and users will quickly add more. All that structured data also allows for an incredibly useful Gadget finder tool as well. Users select gadgets that they own, used to own, or want, and can add reviews and ratings.
Apparently, since gas consumption is going down and fuel efficient cars are becoming more popular, the government is looking into a new form of taxation to create revenue for transportation projects. This new system is a 'by-the-mile tax,' requiring GPS in cars so it can track the mileage. Report has shown up in the Kansas City Star - and with a target date a little over ten years from now, it's being tested right now- field-tested by the University of Iowa to iron out the wrinkles should a by-the-mile road tax ever be enacted. A $16 million federal grant is beginning the field test that will eventually include 2,700 vehicles in six states. The vehicles equipped with computers and GPS devices will keep track of the miles traveled and send the data through wireless technology to a billing center that will compute “simulated” tax bills. A federal commission, after a two-year study, concluded earlier this year that the road tax was the "best path forward" to keep revenues flowing to highway and transportation projects, and could be an important new tool to help manage traffic and relieve congestion. The commission pegged 2020 as the year for the federal fuel tax, currently 18.5 cents a gallon, to be phased out and replaced by a road tax. One estimate of a road tax that would cover the current federal and state fuel taxes is 1 to 2 cents per mile for cars and light trucks. Read more…
The latest changes to Twitter are simple and unnoticeable at first, but they can make a world of difference for some users. Twitter aficionados may be more excited with tweaks to the site’s user interface. These aren’t drastic changes, but they make it easier to cull spammers and drop friends who used the site for a day and then wandered off. When viewing your list of followers or followees, their most recent tweets are put on display; that speeds the process of determining who is a real person or and who's just a marketing bot. Read more…
We regularly hear how rotten our broadband is in the US. It's not hard for Americans to work themselves into a lather over the state of broadband in this country, which is improving but still not on par with the 100Mbps fiber lines widely offered in countries like South Korea and Japan. But it's worth taking a step back every once in a while to consider the global picture. Much of the world has broadband penetration rates under 20 percent, and the largest single group of countries has penetration rates of between 0 and 5 percent. The consultants at TeleGeography track broadband deployment in 127 countries and they've released a chart that shows world broadband deployments by percentage of households that have service. Out of the 127, only 10 countries are above 80 percent—mostly small places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Denmark, and South Korea. Together, 10 countries in this bracket account for only two percent of the world population. While the survey tracks home usage, plenty of people without home access can still access the Net at home or at an Internet cafe, so the gap between Internet haves and have-nots is not quite as wide as it might first seem. Read more…
Cooliris, the visually-compelling browser plug-in, now supports tabbed windows and sharable URLs.Cooliris, the visually-enthralling free browser plug-in that allows you to navigate through online photos and video via a 3-D image wall, has been updated to version 1.1.1. New to this version is support for displaying Cooliris within tabbed windows, sharable URLs, and greater support for Flickr information and MySpace content. Cooliris is compatible with Firefox (Windows XP/Vista, Mac, and Linux). Internet Explorer, and Safari. Read more…
The iPhone 3G may, at least for some users, have an additional, undocumented feature: It can be used to toast bread. Other reports across the Web seem to point at GPS use and playing games as the culprits. Of course, there are problems with product launches all the time, and Apple users tend to be more vocal than most. White cases on the phone turn a brownish pink. Starting to hang together with reports of shorter battery life on the original iPhone hardware with the new iPhone 3.0 Software. To add to the confusion, I have noticed my 2G iPod Touch getting a lot hotter than usual since updating to the v3.0 software. This happens while Web browsing, and the battery is draining fast, too. I have no idea if this is related, but if it is, it could point at some bad power-management software in OS 3.0. and change to 3.0.1. Read more…
Business models of states as well as newspapers and the music industry are coming under attack. Amazon.com has now added Rhode Island to its blacklist of affiliates in response to its proposed budget changes to enforce a tax on Internet sales, which includes commissions on their affiliate program by content providers based in Rhode Island.
The first state to be blacklisted was North Carolina, for the same reason. If you go to a Rhode Island-based or North Carolina-based Website that advertises Amazon.com goods as an affiliate, that Website will no longer have the goods available because otherwise Amazon.com would be forced to pay sales tax to the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations or the State of North Carolina. The state's rationale is, if someone clicks to buy a good from Amazon.com via a site based in Rhode Island, that's equivalent to buying a good from a brick and mortar chain store located in Rhode Island. Read more…
Technically it is known as damning with faint praise, but the tests prove it to be the third-fastest browser in the world, and over twice as fast as Firefox 3. In terms of Javascript performance, Firefox 3.5's new rendering engine places it squarely above Opera 10's beta and Internet Explorers 7 and 8 (based on previous benchmarks), plus it's getting on for being almost as quick as the original version of Google Chrome. JavaScript powers some of the most important Web sites in the world, from complex Web-based email, to online mapping services such as Google Maps, to social networks such as Facebook. Browser developers are using JavaScript rendering benchmarks as weapons with which to fight off the competition, even to the extent of giving them cute names -- Safari has SquirrelFish, Google has V8, Opera has Carakan. So it makes sense that Firefox 3.5 called its rendering engine TraceMonkey. Perhaps the most interesting new feature is location-aware browsing. This is a feature that lets Firefox detect your position on the planet, then pass that location to whatever Web site you're on. It sounds like a privacy nightmare, right? Except it's not. Not really, anyway. You have to grant permission to every site, should one ask for it, and your location is discovered either based on your IP address or the geographical location of the Wi-Fi hotspots in your vicinity. Firefox works with Google's Location Service to do this, as it knows where on a map these hotspots are. Read more…
The Boston Review talks about the hyperbole and the reality of "cyber war." At the end of May, President Obama called cyber-security 'one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation. His words echo a flurry of gloomy think-tank reports. Unfortunately, these reports are usually richer in vivid metaphor — with fears of 'digital Pearl Harbors' and 'cyber-Katrinas' than in factual foundation. So why is there so much concern about 'cyber-terrorism?' Answering a question with a question: who frames the debate? Much of the data are gathered by ultra-secretive government agencies — which need to justify their own existence — and cyber-security companies — which derive commercial benefits from popular anxiety.
Or consider an April 2009 Wall Street Journal article entitled “Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated By Spies.” The article quotes no attributable sources for its starkest claims about cyber-spying, names no utility companies as victims of intrusions, and mentions just one real cyber-attack, which occurred in Australia in 2000 and was conducted by a disgruntled employee rather than an external hacker.
Interesting to note that many people have accepted the White House’s assertions about cyber-security as a key national security problem without demanding further evidence. The administration’s claims could lead to policies with serious, long-term, troubling consequences for network openness and personal privacy. The question goes back to ancient Rome: Qui Bono? Just asking, who benefits? Read more…
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That's this episode of SDR News and finishes out the week. In fact, a long holiday weekend - Friday through Monday. I will continue on mobile travels for family holiday over the 4th of July weekend. Although will probably post some videos from H-P Technology Forum and Drupalcamp. This is Andy McCaskey. You can check out show links and additional comments on today's news at SDRNews.com. Mobile distribution by Stitcher at Stitcher.com. SDRNews is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks for listening -- see you tomorrow.
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