Monday, October 08, 2007

Adult Alternative: Facebook and iTunes Teaming Up?

akon-jack1.gifTo fight off the evil empire that is MySpace, tiny entities Facebook and iTunes may be teaming up to bring a musical component to Facebook's offerings (while offering Apple another venue to sell their music).

According to the unconfirmed rumblings, Facebook is working on expanding their interface. Musical artists will now have special pages with integrated widgets for promoting band events. The upcoming iTunes widget will allow users to sample and even eventually buy music through Facebook (in support beyond the current iLike software). iPod owners who use Facebook will surely take glee in this new integration, but honestly, many of us avoid MySpace like the plague because it's full of a bunch of losers with crappy bands. Now all those losers with crappy bands are going to set up pages on Facebook, find their way into our networks and infiltrate our clean social networking. Not that we're paranoid or anything. [paidContent via macworld]

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Sunday, October 07, 2007

MIT students' Biocell creates electricity from biomass on the cheap

Five MIT students under the team name BioVolt have created a $2 gadget that uses biomass to generate electricity. The output of the device isn't particularly significant -- six months to charge your cell means you shouldn't throw away that charger just yet -- but the low cost of the components, the availability of "biomass," and the capability for chaining multiple devices together means this is the perfect solution for isolated areas or poor communities. It's good news for the researchers too, who happened to win $5,000 in a design competition for their efforts. Good show lads.

 

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Thursday, October 04, 2007

1mm Thick Flexible Plasma Display Debuts at CEATEC

plasma_tubes3.jpgRecently at CEATEC in Japan Shinoda Plasma Corp unveiled a plasma screen that tops out an an extraordinary 1mm in thickness. Plasma tubes aligned between film-form electrodes not only make the screen thin enough to be bent (as the image above demonstrates), they also make it extremely light. In fact, the 43-inch screen prototype weighed in at only 800g. This could set the stage for truly gigantic displays--79 x 118-inches or more created by seamlessly combining screens during the manufacturing process. Naturally, I would love to hook an Xbox up to something like this right now, but chances are it will take the better part of a decade before we can get our hands on it. [TechOn via Technabob]

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Launch: Microsoft Launches HealthVault Medical Record Manager

healthvault.png Today Microsoft unveils new web application HealthVault, a medical records manager that will let users—and their doctors—store and track personal health information online. As for privacy? The NY Times reports:

The personal information, Microsoft said, will be stored in a secure, encrypted database. Its privacy controls, the company said, are set entirely by the individual, including what information goes in and who gets to see it. The HealthVault searches are conducted anonymously, Microsoft said, and will not be linked to any personal information in a HealthVault personal health record.
Microsoft's secured a few major partners in the health industry (with more to come, they hope) who will be able to zap your blood pressure or cholesterol level right into HealthVault during your checkup. You willing to entrust the big MS with your medical records? Let us know in the comments.

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The AT&T Tilt, October 5 for $299.99

Bringing all of the HTC Kaiser's joy to AT&T, the Tilt has finally been set for an October 5 launch. Besides the obvious feature of a tilting display -- hence the name -- the spec sheet reveals a 3 megapixel autofocus camera, HSDPA, stereo Bluetooth, Windows Mobile 6 Professional (the first AT&T device to officially rock it -- can ya believe it?), microSDHC slot for cards up to 32GB, WiFi, an integrated GPS receiver, and BlackBerry Connect support. Last time we checked, that pretty much covers the "superphone" checklist. Grab it starting Friday for $299.99 on contract after the full suite of rebates has been applied. Follow the break for a bonus shot of the Tilt in its upright and locked position!

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