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| 3D Printer Creates Copies of Your Live Fetus | | Thursday, August 09, 2012 8:02 PM | Allegra Tepper |
|  Who needs ultrasonic baby pictures when you can have a resin-cast 3D model of your live fetus? That's the latest development in 3D printing, now available at a health clinic in Tokyo. The clinic, Hiro-o Ladies, is working with a 3D printing company called Fasotec to create what they call "Tensi no Katachi," or "Shape of an Angel." The printer renders the model in various shapes and sizes, all of which float in clear lucite. It's kind of like a snow globe -- of your unborn child. The service costs 100,000 yen, or about $1,300. A dual-resin extruder makes the baby part and the hardened amniotic part at the same time. Clients can choose to have a 3D image captured of the baby's entire body, or just focus on a single body part. So if you're not ready to start the baby buzz around the office with your new full-body fetal paperweight, you can just opt for a foot or an ear. Much more subtle. Perhaps the most novel part of all? The 3D models are also available as cell phone charms -- so you can get your baby hooked on technology before they even leave the womb. Would you want to print a copy of your fetus? How much would you pay for such a thing? Let us know in the comments. |
| Meet the Fastest Teen Texter in the U.S. [VIDEO] | | Thursday, August 09, 2012 6:00 PM | Samantha Murphy |
|  Who knew texting at the dinner table, during class and all hours of the day would eventually pay off? Seventeen-year-old Austin Wierschke from Rhinelander, Wis. -- a high school senior who can type up to six characters in just one second -- won $50,000 for the second year in a row at the sixth annual texting event LG U.S. Texting Championship held on Wednesday in New York City. Standing on a stage in the middle of Times Square, Wierschke beat out 10 other finalists, who competed in a series of rounds using a LG Optimus Zip QWERTY keyboard smartphone. The preliminaries started several months ago when the competition had about 100,000 contestants. Finalists ranging in age from 16 to 24 were tested on three skills: speed, accuracy and dexterity. Challenges included spelling out texting abbreviations as quickly as possible and completing texting tasks while blindfolded. In one round, competitors had to text with the device behind their backs. SEE ALSO: Are Text Messages Declining Worldwide?/a> There were a few technical glitches that happened throughout the competition, and some finalists questioned whether or not the results were largely dependent on the carrier used to send the texts to the judges' room. (LG hasn't responded to a request for comment). But glitches aside, it was clear Wierschke was the one to beat after soaring through each round. He beat New York City-native Kent Augustine in a final showdown to clinch the title. In August 2011, MTV featured an hour-long documentary called Thumbs that chronicled teen texting culture in America and young competitors' journeys to become the fastest in the country at the LG U.S. National Texting Championship. In collaboration with this year's event, LG teamed up with Cartoon Network's "Stop Bullying: Speak Up" campaign to help raise money for anti-bullying toolkits that will be sent out to middle and high schools across the U.S. During a "Text for a Cause" round in Wednesday's event, the crowd was asked to help prevent bullying by texting "Join LG" to 27777. For every text received, LG will give $1 to the campaign. Do you think these contestants would be just as fast using a touchscreen? Should there be a round for such devices? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. |
| Startup's Newsroom Lights Up With Every Twitter Mention | | Thursday, August 09, 2012 3:53 PM | Lauren Indvik |
|  Zach Seward, like several of us at Mashable, is qualifiably obsessed with "The Internet of Things" -- connected objects that email you when your clothes are dry, or turn on your sprinklers when the temperature gets hot. To indulge his obsession and distract himself from work, Seward, social media editor at Quartz, a mobile-first business publication The Atlantic is planning to launch next month, has engineered a lightbulb that lights up every time someone mentions @quartznews on Twitter. "Now, when you interact with us, our newsroom is literally brightened," Seward explained in a Tumblr post. The lightbulb also goes off when Facebook's share price drops below $20, and every time China wins a medal in the Olympics. How'd he do it? The lightbulb, per Seward's description, was plugged into a $49 Belkin WeMo Switch, which is designed to let users turn appliances on or off from their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch devices. He then used web-based service ifttt ("if this, then that"), which allowed Seward to set parameters for the lightbulb: i.e., if someone mentions @quartznews, then the lightbulb lights up. Pretty neat, right? His project has certainly given us some ideas for our own newsroom. How about you? Front-page thumbnail courtesy of Flickr, radioedit |
| Want an iPhone 5? Sell Your Old iPhone Now | | Thursday, August 09, 2012 2:46 PM | Chris Taylor |
|  Let's get the caveats out of the way: no one knows anything for sure about the next iPhone, not even its name. (Sure, iPhone 5 is a pretty good bet, but it could just as easily be "the new iPhone.") There have been no official announcements from Apple. The best launch date report we have, September 12, is based on some (very good) guesswork. Apple's top suppliers have recently reported a massive jump in sales, prompting suggestions of one of its biggest launches ever, but it's guesswork still. Got it? Good. Now: are you an iPhone owner who's prepared to roll the dice on a new model coming out in a little over a month? Do you want one? And most importantly, can you do without your current phone for that long? If the answers to all of those is yes, then it may be time to sell your current iPhone -- as it will only decline in value from here on out. That's according to eBay resale data compiled by NextWorth, an electronics recycling company. Prior to last year's iPhone 4S launch in mid-October, the resale value had been declining steeply since early August. By the time the new phone launched, the previous models had lost between 15% and 25% of their resale value: If hanging on to your old iPhone for a month isn't too much of a burden, however, other electronics resale sites suggest you'll still get a good price for them. "There is an optimal time to sell your old iPhone to make the biggest profit -- the month before and after the new version is released," says Drew Lieberman, CEO of Glyde. "We'd suggest selling your old device as soon as the new version is announced and in most cases you'll pay nothing for the new device, if you're upgrading." "That being said, the great thing about iPhones is that they retain their value for up to two years - you'll still get $200 for an 16 GB iPhone 4S a year from now." Lieberman's site has seen a 340% increase in inquiries from people looking to sell their old iPhones (3GS, 4 and 4S) this month, compared to October 2011. Glyde's current resale price estimates for an iPhone 4S: between $380 for a 16 GB model, and $460 for the 64 GB version. On NextWorth, you can get between $263 and $330 for the same model. What are your iPhone upgrade plans: sell now, wait until September, or hold on to your current model regardless? Let us know in the comments. |
| Will Microsoft's Police Surveillance System Violate Your Privacy? | | Thursday, August 09, 2012 1:56 PM | Alex Fitzpatrick |
|  The Microsoft-powered police surveillance system being installed in New York City is an impressive bit of innovation: It connects a wide variety of technology already in use by the New York Police Department in a way that gives police a powerful new tool in preventing and solving crime. The system, dubbed the Domain Awareness System (DAS), sounds like science fiction: Part Minority Report, part 1984. It connects thousands of security cameras in the city owned by the NYPD and private businesses, collecting and archiving up to 30 days worth of their archival footage at a time. Meaning: If there's a crime committed, police can use the system to see the crime but also backtrack, easily following the movement of people involved in an incident before it even occurred. It can do the same for vehicles, which can also be tracked by law enforcement's smart license plate readers. SEE ALSO: Microsoft is Giving Police an All-Seeing Digital Eye Microsoft's business plan for the system involves selling it to other cities worldwide. The City of New York has an interest in this too, as it receives a 30% cut in future sales. But if it came to your city, would it be a violation of your privacy? City of New York officials, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, are hailing the system as a state-of-the-art counter-terrorism tool. But per the City's guidelines, it can also be used for any "legitimate law enforcement or public safety purpose." Additionally, the City's guidelines stress that the system will be used "only to monitor public areas and public activities where no legally protected reasonable expectation of privacy exists" based on previous court decisions including Katz v. United States. Its use will be also subject to periodic audits -- but those audits will be carried out by the NYPD's own Counterterrorism Bureau. For some privacy advocates, that's not good enough. NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn argued that the system ought to be overseen by a non-police entity. "We fully support the police using technology to combat crime and terrorism, but law-abiding New Yorkers should not end up in a police database every time they walk their dog, go to the doctor or drive around Manhattan," said Dunn in a statement. "The NYPD's massive surveillance systems should have strict privacy protections and independent oversight." Some citizens expressed their concern about the new system on Twitter and on their personal blogs: New York Welcomes Big Brother | Bill Gates Steals American Privacy, Sells It to Police google.com/url?q=http%3A%. #privacy #internet— Sterling Voth (@sterlingvoth) August 2, 2012 Helloooo Big Brother news.techworld.com/applications/3. via @techworldnews #NYC #freedom #capitalism #terrorismComing soon to a city near you— Nicky Wiers (@NickyWiers) August 9, 2012 New post: Privacy Died in NYC Thanks to Bloomberg and Microsoft - wp.me/pUM7k-sf— Jaison De Montalegre (@JaisonDM) August 9, 2012 Would you support an advanced police surveillance system in your own city or town? Share your thoughts in the comments. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, adventtr |
| Samsung Series 9: Now This Is an Ultrabook [REVIEW] | | Thursday, August 09, 2012 12:19 PM | Pete Pachal |
|  Too many so-called Ultrabooks render the label nearly meaningless. The thrust of the idea is a category of extremely thin and light laptops that also perform well. However, Intel owns the trademark, and its standards sets the bar laughably low (case in point: the bulky HP Spectre actually qualifies). That's why it's so good to see Samsung taking the idea seriously with the Series 9: a laptop that is very much in the spirit of the original concept. The "ultra" is supposed to allude to ultra-thin design, and the Series 9 isn't just a good example -- it's a head-turning one. At its thickest point, the notebook measures just 0.64 inches, which is 0.04 of an inch thinner than a MacBook Air with the same screen size. It's also 2.88 pounds to the Air's 2.96. Incremental differences, to be sure, but the competition to be the lightest and thinnest among mobile devices is akin to an Olympic sport -- those hair's-breadth victories matter. In fact, thanks to clever tapering along the edges, the laptop feels even thinner than it is. The overall design isn't new (Samsung debuted the Series 9 last year), but it's still beautiful. The Series Advances What's new is on the inside: the third-generation Intel Core processor (a.k.a. Ivy Bridge). We checked out a Series 9 with a 1.7GHz Core i5 chip, right in the middle of the line. The new Series 9 also differs from its predecessor by building the connectors right into the side edges -- the old model had them flip out from drop-down flaps. Those connectors constitute a pair of USB ports (one per side), mini HDMI and mini VGA connectors, a headphone jack, and a mini Ethernet port that you use with the included adapter (since the machine is just too damn thin to include a regular Ethernet port). Unfortunately Samsung kind of cheaped out on the USB ports, and only one of them adheres to the newer, faster 3.0 spec. There's also an SD card slot. The keyboard and trackpad on this machine are simply awesome -- some of the best I've used on any laptop. The chiclet-style keys, which have rapidly become the norm on laptops, have just the right amount of resistance, and the Elan trackpad feels great, a bit more "matte" than other pads, such as the one on the Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook. The result is smooth scrolling and tracking at all times. There's support for multi-touch gestures as well, something that I've never found Windows machines do as well as Apple laptops. The Series 9, however, snapped the PC side's losing streak in my eyes -- two- and three-finger scrolling were excellent. (more after the gallery) Speed and Power In keeping with the Ultrabook ethos, the Series 9 has no optical drive and it uses a solid-state drive (SSD) for storage instead of a hard disk. That gives it impressive speed, particularly at startup, which was a mere 12 seconds. And it wakes up from sleep virtually instantly. To get a more quantitative sense of how well the Series 9 performs, we ran a couple of quick benchmarks, on the Series 9 and compared them to the 2012 MacBook Air. Like the Series 9, our MacBook Air had 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD. Geekbench, which gives a fairly good overall picture of performance, gave the Series 9 a score of 6,213, while the Air scored 6,735 -- a notable difference but still fairly close. We also tested read and write speed to the SSD, which is a good measure of just how nimble the machine will perform when you tax it. Here the Series 9 fell even further behind, reading 388 MB per second to the MacBook Air's 504 MB/s. Write speed on the Samsung was 258 MB/s while the Air's was 412. Something I really appreciated is that the Series 9 has very little bloatware. While other manufacturers (such as Acer) preload lots of software that you don't need, Samsung keeps its software build relatively light, with very few shortcut icons on the default desktop. It's not 100% clean, though, throwing in apps for Kindle, Norton and Skype, along with a few others. The 13.3-inch screen has a resolution of 1,600 x 900, which makes everything a bit squinty for my taste, but things like photos and YouTube videos look great on it. Samsung is big on the brightness of its displays, and Series 9 brings the dazzle, ready to light things up when you need it -- like when you're in a park on a sunny day. And for when the sun goes down, the keyboard is backlit. Let's talk battery life. I used the Samsung Series 9 on both legs of a round trip from New York to San Francisco, about a five and a half hour flight. On each stretch, the machine had power to spare, clocking in with about 15% power left, and that's even after using in-flight Wi-Fi. Nice. The Epitome of Ultra After using the Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook for a couple of weeks, I could see why Microsoft selected it as the test laptop for reviewers of the Windows 8 Release Preview. It's instantly become my favorite Windows laptop. While the $1,299.99 price tag is steep -- especially considering that's for just 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM -- you're paying for one well-crafted machine. If only it performed a little better, it'd be perfect. Samsung isn't really known for laptops, but if it keeps building beauties like the Series 9, that should change. Ultrabooks, here's your poster child. Christina Warren contributed to this review. |
| If a Google Employee Dies, Spouse Gets Half of Salary for 10 Years | | Thursday, August 09, 2012 11:19 AM | Samantha Murphy |
|  It's been long reported that Google treats its employees well, from offering them free food and fitness classes to laundry service and car washes. But according to a recent report, Google recently rolled out death benefits to employees, including a generous offer to pay the spouse or partner of a deceased staffer half of their salary for a decade. The news of these death benefits -- which was first reported by Forbes -- also comes with "no tenure requirement," which means each employee in its 34,000 workforce qualifies. It was put into place earlier this year. Mashable confirmed with a Google spokesperson that the benefits don't just stop at salary. The surviving spouse or partner of a deceased employee will also acquire vested stock benefits, and children will receive $1,000 a month until the age of 19. The timeline can be extended if the child is in school full time. SEE ALSO: 6 Companies With Awesome Employee Perks Google said it is taking this approach because it is the right thing to do, ensuring that each employee's family is taken care of if an unforeseeable event were to occur -- even if there is no direct benefit to the business. Although it might attract more candidates to apply for a position, Google said that is not the reason why it implemented the benefits -- more potential hires would just be a side effect. Do you think more companies should take a similar approach? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. BONUS: Google Jazzes Up New York Office As It Hunts for Hires |
| Siri Rival Google Voice Search Coming to the iPad | | Thursday, August 09, 2012 10:59 AM | TabTimes |
|  Watch out Siri, Google is bringing its Voice Search app to the iPhone and iPad. As with the Android version, the app taps into Google's Knowledge Graph function to consider the user's location and the context of what is being searched. This means that the app can suggest films at nearby cinemas when users ask "What movies are playing this weekend?" or understand that a search for 'Rio' could mean a city, movie or casino. Comparisons with Apple's Siri are bound to be made -- not least because both apps can respond to direct questions -- but in reality Google Voice Search is someway off its Apple rival. After all, Siri is able to search and carry out other functions across the Internet, apps, calendar entries and messages. The free Google Voice Search app is currently available for Android on the Google Play store but will come to Apple's App Store in the coming weeks. |
| The Queen's Stunt Double Drop-Tests an iPhone From 1,000 Feet [VIDEO] | | Thursday, August 09, 2012 10:42 AM | Pete Pachal |
|  Who is Gary Connery? He's the skydiver who doubled for the Queen of England in the awesome stunt that kicked off the 2012 Olympic Games. But he's also the star of this video, shown gliding in a wingsuit and then dropping an iPhone from 1,000 feet. Just one day before his Olympic stunt, Connery joined a couple of other base jumpers to launch themselves off the Eiger mountain in Switzerland. During the descent, they dropped the iPhone and kept the camera active, recording its entire free fall. SEE ALSO: iPad Survives 100,000+ Foot Fall From Space/a> The iPhone survived, but with a little help in the form of a smartphone case made by G-Form. G-Form builds cases from the same RPT (reactive protection technology) material that it uses to create protective suits, which the jumpers in the video happen to be wearing, too. Yes, this whole thing just might be a publicity stunt, but with such a huge emphasis on "stunt," we have to give kudos. If you want one of those fancy cases for yourself (called the Extreme X), it'll set you back about $40. BONUS: Waterproof iPhone Cases |
| Meet the 'Gauss' Virus, Stuxnet and Flame's New Cousin | | Thursday, August 09, 2012 10:42 AM | Alex Fitzpatrick |
|  A new virus capable of spying on bank transactions and stealing sensitive data such as browser passwords, cookies and network information has been discovered infecting computers in Middle East. Called "Gauss," the virus was designed to siphon data from several major Lebanese banks as well as users of CitiBank and PayPal, sending the stolen information back to its still-unknown creator. It was detected by Kaspersky Lab, the same security firm that found the Flame virus earlier this summer. Gauss is very similar to Flame -- in fact, it was discovered by Kaspersky exactly because the two share so much DNA. Flame and the new virus have "similar architectural platforms, module structures, code bases and means of communication with command & control (C&C) servers," according to Kaspersky. However, Gauss can infect USB drives in a "more intelligent" fashion, storing collected information in a hidden file on removable drives. Kaspersky believes Gauss was likely built in the same "factory or factories" as Flame and Stuxnet, both of which also targeted computers in and around the Middle East. However, neither Lebanon nor banking systems were previously considered a target -- Flame and Stuxnet were reported to be products of a secret joint American-Israeli effort targeting Iranian nuclear facilities. SEE ALSO: Meet Flame, the Nastiest Computer Malware Yet Gauss' exact method of infection, along with some other details about the virus, is not yet known. However, By Kaspersky's estimation, Gauss has already infected tens of thousands of computers -- less than Stuxnet, but more than Flame. Kaspersky has been tracking Gauss since June, when it was discovered as part of a United Nations-backed effort to reduce the global impact of cyber weapons. It was likely released into the wild in September of last year. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PashaIgnatov |
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