JENSEN BEACH, Florida - Florida investigators say a man accused of downloading child pornography is blaming his cat. Keith Griffin is charged with 10 counts of possession of child pornography after detectives found more than 1,000 images on his home computer. According to a sheriff's report Friday, Griffin told investigators that his cat jumped on the computer keyboard while he was downloading music. He said he had left the room and found "strange things" on his computer when he returned. Griffin is being held on $250,000 bond in the Martin County jail. It is unclear if he has an attorney.
- Justin Wah Kan
from Bookmarklet
"It may not have beaten the likes of Australia's Telstra to the 21Mbps mark, but Rogers Wireless has still earned some pretty impressive bragging rights as the first carrier in North America to move on up to HSPA+, which (theoretically) more than doubles the maximum speeds of the current 7.2 Mbps network. According to Rogers, it'll begin to "progressively increase" download speeds starting in August, with the Greater Toronto Area expectedly first on deck to get a taste of all that bandwidth -- although Rogers does say that it'll "expand quickly over the coming months" in other cities across Canada and eventually cover the entire country. Those south of the border shouldn''t feel too glum about the situation however, as last we had heard, AT&T was "likely" to bypass HSPA+ altogether and move straight from 7.2Mbps to LTE and the ludicrous speeds it promises."
- Justin Wah Kan
from Bookmarklet
"LONDON — The British government has told civil servants: Go forth and tweet. The government published guidelines Tuesday for its departments on using the microblogging service Twitter. In contrast to Twitter’s limit of 140 characters per message, the document runs 20 pages, or more than 5,000 words. It tells civil servants their tweets should be “human and credible” and written in “informal spoken English.” It advises government departments to produce between two and 10 tweets a day, with a gap of at least 30 minutes between each “to avoid flooding our followers’ Twitter streams.” The advice says Twitter can be used for everything from announcements to insights from ministers, and in a crisis could be a “primary channel” for communicating with the electorate. The document warns against using Twitter simply to convey campaign messages, but notes that “while tweets may occasionally be ’fun,”’ they should be in line with government objectives. It also says departments should not follow...
more...
- Justin Wah Kan
from Bookmarklet
"VIENNA -- The International Mozarteum Foundation said Thursday it has discovered two more works composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The previously unknown works are piano pieces composed by a young Mozart, the Salzburg-based foundation said in a brief e-mail statement. The website of the organization said its department of research had identified the works, long in the foundation's possession, as Mozart compositions. Mozart, who was born in Salzburg, lived from 1756 to 1791. He played piano from an early age, began composing music when he was five, and eventually created more than 600 works, ranging from operas to chamber music, choral pieces and piano concertos. The foundation declined to provide more details Thursday, saying specifics would be made public during a presentation in Salzburg on Aug. 2. During the event, Austrian musician Florian Birsak will perform the pieces on an original Mozart piano. The foundation, established in 1880 and a prime source for Mozart-related...
more...
- Justin Wah Kan
from Bookmarklet
his site is pretty cool though i wish photographers wouldn't watermark their pictures. i know why they do it, but it takes away from the really great photos
- Cee Bee
i wonder how many times he's gotten really caught up in a bad wave
- Cee Bee
San Onofre SB had shore breakers with pebbles on the beach. Hurt like a motherF'r. Granted the water was warm from the near by Nuclear Plant.
- Santa CW™
I rode a 20 footer like that in Hawaii on a boogie board... Dropped me straight onto the sand, and then proceeded to drench me with 3 million gallons of water... In retrospect, I'm probably lucky to be alive right now.
- LarchOye
that might be "thrilling" the first time around, but after continually getting pounded like that i'm sure it can become a bit of a "challenge" to deal with
- Cee Bee
"Thank you for your comment Jessica. Its true, many companies are working hard to create a productive social web presence. I wanted to make the point about TVO because they creating a broad range of entry points to their brand. I guess the best example would be the TVO Kids gaming site which in itself brands TVO with no necessary connection to the television. Thank you for the link, I've already added all the networks and channels on Twitter :) Please add me as well @jwahkan, I would love to discuss further."
- Justin Wah Kan
Andy, is that "(no mcdonalds) makes me sick, or "no, (mcdonalds makes me sick)" ? =) (If it's the latter, which I guess is likely, I'm with you there. McD's makes a pretty bad burger.)
- Andrew C
Omg you haters! I love McDonald's. The dangers of microwaving is the bun gets hard - fast. So I would have to inhale it, thus risking burning my mouth. Therefore, I came to the conclusion it would be better cold.
- Mona Nomura
from IM
'Not that I have ever done this' but adding sun dried tomatoes, fried mushrooms and bacon to it, wrapping it in aluminum foil and baking at 150 degrees celsius for about 15 minutes is yummers.. :P
- Johnny Worthington
I wouldn't eat anything from McDonald's warm or cold.
- Jason Shultz
from twhirl
I don't know, probably not. I think they taste "odd" after they get cold...
- J. Abdul-Qahhar
I wouldn't eat a McDonald's cheeseburger smothered in money.
- Fleagle
"No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken. Three months later he committed suicide due to depression"
- Kol Tregaskes
from Bookmarklet
I totally remember that picture and it's tragic for everyone involved. I thought I had heard the child died and that was why many thought Carter committed suicide. Not sure where I heard that though, it was likely speculation.
- Kenton
Instead of throwing it out, how could you have use it to help starving people in Africa? I agree that we should only buy what we need, but I also think it is important to help feed people in my own back yard and I donate to charities locally that help feed those that can't afford to. We also donate to organizations that help people in other countries as well. I don't typically feel guilty for throwing out a couple of carrots that got lost at the bottom of the crisper or that I didn't eat because I was full.
- Kenton
Tina, I have a god who is a bottomless bin, plus some things can go out with the birds but generally I hate waste food,
- Kol Tregaskes
It's more the awareness than anything, Kenton, I'm not trying to say your rotten carrots would have kept this kid alive. About half of what winds up in landfills in the US is food. That food could have been donated locally, or the money that bought it to begin with could have been donated, either locally or abroad.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Good point Tina. I wonder how much of the food that goes to waste is from restaurants that server ridiculously large portions of food. I'm always amazed by what they throw out.
- Kenton
I've seen many cook-related programmes on TV and see how wasteful they are, terrible. :-(
- Kol Tregaskes
My father-in-law works at a Publix supermarket, and I'm stunned by stories of how much food they throw out. They don't donate any of the deli or bakery food they throw out. Daily it just gets tossed in the bins. Employees can't take any of it home either. There are a variety of reasons for this, but I don't buy any of them.
- Jen (SquirrelGirl)
I had a vista box here. did the auto-upgrade. went flawlessy almost. Had two issues. Printer and TV card. Not really MS fault, as I had to hack around to get them to work in Vista as they are old. Anyway, I got them working. Everything else worked right after install. Using it right now to type this.
- Ian May
32 bit systems have that limitation, quite simply because they are 32 bit.
- Ian May
I also have Win7 running in virtualbox but on my Vista machine, no probs. I would like to see it installed on my eee 1000, but havn't made that plunge yet.
- Eric
Indeed. It's either that, or ask my little cousin to read me the 64bit Vista key off the bottom of his laptop as I pop in my "Anytime Upgrade" disc. Hehe.
- Drew Chapman
I put it on 2 machine (slow laptop & fast desktop). Fast machine great! I first I thought laptop was fine but then tried to play a video from Rev3. Yes I did install codecs! Fast desktop worded fine.
- MarK
Windows 7 has worked pretty well for me. I've got it running in Bootcamp on a Macbook Pro. I have run into a few issues though and get a BSOD daily. Despite the few apps that won't work (Google Gmail Gadget, LogMeIn, Evernote Clipboard) it's been worth it
- Jim Easley
from twhirl
@ Jim Easley: LogMeIn works, You need the zip file, check the LogMeIn forums...
- Dr. Apps
from twhirl
I have been using it for a week or more ... naturally, there are some issues, but that is not unexpected with a beta. I am finding myself getting addicted to the "superbar" already.
- Robert Couture
Yes. Works both on my X61T and my Asus 901 EEE
- Santa CW™
XP/Vista/Win7 32-bit can address 4 gig of memory, but it is always less because the BIOS, PCI bus, graphics card, etc are allocated address space, limiting available RAM to 3 to 3.4GB (HP Whitepaper -- warning .DOC!) http://bit.ly/Rf17
- Chris Mayer
I have windows 7 installed on the NC-10 (netbook) and don't' hate it. Its much improved over Vista and possibly XP.
- Sloan Bowman
@eldon agreed with self-hosted wordpress... plugins and themes are crucial if you want more customization.
- Goktug Gedik
Wordpress is better in most respects, but I went with blogger. I can set up a custom domain name without having to pay for the privilege. If the blog generated revenue to pay its hosting costs, I'd likely move it to wordpress.com (I don't want to deal with self-hosting administrivia).
- DGentry
I vote blogger,that's easy enough,and good enough for most users.
- Chris Qie
Blogger is much easier for people who don't know shit about code.
- Orli Yakuel
i like blogger plus google apps for domain. lower cost and customizing code are the reasons. wordpress requires server and hosting knowledge (but wordpress plug-in is the wonderful, no doubt)
- ClubEddy - clubeddy.com
Agreeing with @Eldon. Self-hosted WordPress installs are extremely flexible, customizable, and have excellent feature documentation. Nearly every plugin imaginable is available for it and most seamlessly integrate with the platform.
- Glenn Batuyong
I love the flexibility of Wordpress. Although Blogger has improved, it just can' t match the features available in WP,
- Sharon Hurley Hall
Blogger for first-timers who are basically non-techie. Wordpress for just about anyone else. Drupal can be a blogging platform also, with highly flexible ways to build community, but there's a steep learning curve and more set-up time.
- Laura Norvig
Wordpress, because it's a lot more flexible and extensible. Unlike Blogger, you can host it on your own server.
- Mike Hussein Cohen
Thanks for all the feedback on the blogging platforms. Much appreciated.
- Shawn Hickman
It depends on how you define 'better' and what your needs are. For the slightly techie blogger looking for self-hosting, Habari is a great choice, with great code and community, and hugely flexible extensibility, though lacking the breadth of themes and plugins at the moment. (I must disclose that I'm a Habari developer :)
- Michael C. Harris
Going to have to agree with the mass adoration of Wordpress, flexible, feature packed, extendable. Great to use
- Robert Davies
I have been using Blogger because it is simple and associated with Google which as lots of great stuff like Picasa and Google Docs. I do want a provider with some staying power. It does everything I need and can handle all kinds of media. I have learned to do small tweaks to the template. I do like what I see on WordPress and may start a project there for my education.
- John Foss
from twhirl
Self hosted Wordpress for sure with all the wonderful tweaking and plugins you can get free of charge
- Nestor
I'm a fan of self hosted Wordpress, especially for customizability. But if you're comparing Wordpress.com hosted to Blogger they are fairly similar.
- Justin Wah Kan
"MySpace is building a fully functional webmail product, we’ve learned from sources with knowledge of the product. MySpace mail will compete with services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and AOL Mail, and will on launch be the third largest webmail provider in the world. All MySpace users will be assigned an email address of [username]@myspace.com. The product is still in development, and we don’t know when it will be released."
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
It takes a special kind of journalist to use the headline "Confirmed:" on an article that is based on anonymous "sources with knowledge of the product" and closes with "MySpace won’t confirm or deny this report." : )
- DeWitt Clinton
I'm surprised Myspace didn't do this years ago.
- Justin Wah Kan
Yet further proof that MySpace has lost it's way.
- Tim Young
The assumption that all 125M users would suddenly start using this as their email seem a bit questionable.
- Paul Buchheit
@Paul - of course. Though a scary huge number of people share their myspace URL the way other people would share a phone number or email address. "What's your myspace?" is such a common refrain that there's even a popular song titled that. I wouldn't be surprised at all if many people did use myspace email, but they wouldn't even necessarily be conscious of the the fact that they were doing so.
- DeWitt Clinton
My guess is that it will be just as much of a black pit as my Facebook "inbox". I have a hard time imagining that the number of MySpace users without an active email address elsewhere is anything other than 100%. So unless they have some great trick up their sleeves, they're going to have a hard time getting people to switch.
- Joel Webber
@Joel - I bet many myspace users already use the existing myspace messaging more than email to communicate among their friends. Their inbox is one you see in that screenshot. Hooking it up to RFCs 2821 and 2822 and the rest of the internet is more icing on the cake.
- DeWitt Clinton
So ... does MySpace think that users don't have a current email address? I mean, has MySpace usage been crippled because users can't communicate via email?! Build and maintain an email system for an audience that is nearly blind to ads ... yeah .... makes *perfect* sense *shakes head*
- AJ Kohn
I will never understand MySpace. It is a huge collection of people's first effort on the web and is a giant web ghetto.
- Craig Mische
Isn't your MySpace login your e-mail address?
- Victor Ganata
AJ, I think the point is that if you already think of yourself as myspace.com/hothobokitten82 it's only a small leap to become hothobokitten82@myspace.com. Their users will love this.
- DeWitt Clinton
if facebook isn't already working on this they're a bunch of dumbasses
- felix
@felix doesn't matter if Facebook is working on it or not. they need to be focusing on turning some profit instead. servers and good engineers ain't cheap.
- Rudolf Olah
Will their webmail client come with auto-playing music, hard to read text on brightly colored background, acute angles applied to all incoming pictures and increased stalking abilities?
- Dean Clark
social networks are a lot about communication so this is not a surprise. I guess it will be interesting to see whether they will succeed with making people switching from existing email services (as everybody who signed up to my space must have at least one email account already)
- Davide D'Incau
Nortel Networks Corp., North America's biggest maker of telephone equipment, filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, as the global economic downturn further erodes its once high-flying business. Its shares plunged more than 76% to 7.5 cents in ... // via popurls.com
- Kol Tregaskes
I'd hope that this made bigger news today than Steve Jobs, but who knows.
- Justin Wah Kan
This is quite big news for me as I work in telecoms Nortel supply a lot of hardware to the industry. Basically for me this means that Ericsson and to come extent Nokia will get huge gains from this
- Kol Tregaskes
strange... I thought FriendFeed was a Techy geek bloggers dream. Nortle was once one of the largest vendors of infrastructure equipment in the market.. competitors such as Cisco, Juniper, HP, 3COM etc etc.. the day it files for Chapter 11 and we get literally 10 twitters and 8 other stories in the feed..
- Jez Arnold
I was talking about this yesterday with my Boss after my father told me about it. Turns out that client #2 (who we were sharing an office with) uses Nortel as their number one supplier. Looks like we made the move out at a very good time.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
duh.. i should have checked advanced settings. Lots of twitters! at least 35 pages on this.. but not many comments..
- Jez Arnold
IMHO.. this company is going to lose most of its business units in a firesale. I really don't think anyone is going to save them, inc the Candian Govt.
- Jez Arnold