(photo: AP)

This sounds like a hoax, but the Associated Press is reporting on a species of ant called “crazy rasberry ants” that have appeared in the Houston area by the billions and that are apparently attracted to electronic devices:

[T]hey, like some other species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment, for reasons that are not well understood by scientists.

They have ruined pumps at sewage pumping stations, fouled computers and at least one homeowner’s gas meter, and caused fire alarms to malfunction. They have been spotted at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and close to Hobby Airport, though they haven’t caused any major problems there yet.

Ladies and gentleman, we’ve just lost the picture, but what we’ve seen speaks for itself. Houston has been taken over — “conquered”, if you will — by a master race of giant space ants. It’s difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth gadgets or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here.

And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted newspaper personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.

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Anyone who knows me knows I love Bluetooth headsets. Currently I’ve been using an original Jawbone. I’m one of those annoying people who wears it most of the day.

Today I got an email announcing the new generation Jawbone and telling me to look for one in the mail.

Sure enough it’s here.

So I present the first look at the new Jawbone.

I’ll post some comparison photos after lunch. I’m sure a review will be forthcoming.

One thing I will mention now that I’ve unboxed it and its charging…the charger is vastly improved. It’s no longer fork-like. The new charing cable connects to the Jawbone magnetically.

Popularity: 21% [?]

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If you’re looking for a home in a certain location, you have a new search option: Google maps. Enter an address and click on the “show search options” link, which is right next to the “Search Maps” button. You can set whatever limits you want on size, price and other variables.

Another improvement to Google Maps adds geo-tagged photos and Wikipedia entries that are associated with specific locations. To see these, click on the “more” button on the map — it’s right next to the “traffic” button.

An entry from the blog Google Operating System has the explanation for all these improvements, direct from the source:

As a Google employee recently said, “Google Maps is evolving from a driving directions and business search tool, to a comprehensive representation of all the world’s information, on a map.”

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Personally, I think the “ribbon” interface that comes with some programs in Microsoft’s Office 2007 makes it a lot easier to find formatting features, but folks who hate the ribbon now have another option.

Cnet blogger Dennis O’Reilly raves about the new Search Commands download from Microsoft Office Labs:

After you download and install the add-on, the Search Commands tab is added to the ribbon. Click it (or press the Windows key and Y) and type the name of the command you need.

For example, the other day I was looking for the Reveal Formatting option in Word 2007. I eventually found it under the Display tab in Word Options (off the Office button menu). It would’ve been much faster for me to simply open Search Commands, type “reveal formatting,” and enter the number that appears next to that option (”5″ in this case)…

I don’t know about the other Office Labs projects, but Search Commands is an add-on I expect will save me quite a bit of time by slicing the ribbon to ribbons.

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Fire Eagle, Yahoo’s effort to broker location data for users and sites wanting to add where-in-the-world features, appears to be gaining traction, judging by a presentation at the Where 2.0 conference.

Tom Coates, leader of the project that launched the Fire Eagle beta two months ago at Yahoo’s experimental Brickhouse offices in San Francisco, gave a long list of sites now using or about to use the software

Coates described Fire Eagle as helping users to control their data and privacy by sitting in the middle of services providing location data and those services trying to use that data. He used the analogy of it being a lens that allowed the user to look through and see location-specific applications on social networks, search engines and other sites.

The list of Fire Eagle-enabled services includes Dopplr, social networking for travellers, Navizon, which uses Wi-Fi and cellular tower triangulation for its positioning service, the MyLoki location service, ZoneTag which location-tags photos from cell phones, Firebot’s Twitter direct-messaging updates of your location, Plazes and Brightkite, which offer location-based social networking,  Fireball, for finding people at conferences and Proximizer, which shows how close a person is.

Others that he hoped would include Fire Eagle in the future included Wikinearest, an idea to tap the 1m geotagged articles in Wikipedia and show the five nearest locations to you, and a pair of Compass sneakers from Isaac Daniel, which have built-in GPS.

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Microsoft has just announced a couple of Xbox milestones - 10m of its Xbox 360 game consoles sold in the US now and 12m members globally of its Xbox Live online service.

The company says the 360 is the first next-generation system to pass the 10m mark in the US.

The latest figures from the NPD research firm, up to the end of March, showed the 360 leading with 9.9m units, the Nintendo Wii second with 8.8m and Sony’s PlayStation 3 in third with 4.06m units sold.

“History has shown us that the first company to reach 10m in console sales wins the generation battle. We are uniquely positioned to set a new benchmark for the industry,” said Don Mattrick, head of  Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business, in a statement.

But given the 360 had a year’s head start over the Wii and only sold 262,000 units in March to the Wii’s 721,000, it seems only a matter of time before the 360 is overtaken.

Even so, Microsoft can boast that it does a better job of selling software with its consoles. It has a US “attach rate” of 7.5 game titles per console, compared to 5.3 for the Wii and 4.6 for the PS3.

That figure could increase with the new line-up of Microsoft Games Studios titles, which were previewed for the gaming press in San Francisco yesterday. Gears of War 2, Viva Pinata 2, Fable 2 and Too Human were among those demonstrated.

Microsoft is also well ahead of its rivals in online services, with the 12m figure for Xbox Live representing a doubling of membership in the past year. The company said the prospect of playing Grand Theft Auto IV online, which will include episodic content exclusive to Xbox Live, had given a recent boost to membership.

The best news for Sony is in Europe, where Kaz Hirai, head of its console division, told us earlier this month that the PS3 had overtaken the 360 with more than 5m units now sold.

Popularity: 46% [?]

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Anyone looking for juicy new details today about the in-fighting between craigslist and eBay would have been sorely disappointed.

As expected, craigslist countersued eBay after itself being sued for allegedly trying to reduce the influence that the internet giant has as a large shareholder of the classified advertising concern (we wrote about it earlier this week, here.)

Lawsuits are often the place where you get a behind-the-scenes look at how messy corporate break-ups like this really work. In this case, though, there have been few vicarious thrills.

eBay, which bought its 28 per cent stake from a former craigslist employee, courted the company hard to try to enhance its rights as a shareholder, according to the lawsuit. Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO, apparently first buttered up craigslist’s controlling shareholders (founder Craig Newmark, pictured above, and CEO Jim Buckmaster) with the tale of how her own son found an apartment on their website. She played on the fact that both companies thrived by building strong communities. Then eBay won them over by putting its own founder, Pierre Omidyar, on their board. What sealed the relationship, according to the craigslist lawsuit:

“[Newmark and Buckmaster] believed that Mr Omidyar had a moral compass very similar to their own.”

How touching. Now the craigslist duo have decided that eBay is not so cuddly after all, accusing it of “unlawful and unfair competition, misappropriation of proprietary information, deceptive passing-off, business interference, false advertising, phishing attacks, free-riding, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and breaches of fiduciary duty.”

That’s quite a laundry list. Newmark and Buckmaster frequently seem to play on their public image as well-meaning innocents in an online world increasingly dominated by unfeeling corporate powers, but it seems they can at least play legal hardball with the best of them.

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Samsung 15 inch Blue Phase LCD panel  above

In its bid to provide consumers with more natural screen action, Samsung has announced the world’s first Blue Phase technology that moves at 240Hz speed. Faster speeds means faster action on screens and less flicker to the human eyes. Samsung says the design of the Blue Phase panel is called extremely cost efficient and that the Blue Phase panels don’t require liquid crystal alignment layers like today’s most widely used LCD modes.

Samsung also says that the Blue Phase panels will resist bruising, which occurs when pressure on the screen causes an area of impaired brightness compared to the majority of the screen.

source

Tags: Samsung 15 inch Blue Phase LCD panel

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Looks like a new sibling to the existing Asus Eee PC 900 is coming soon. The Asus Eee PC 901 may have the same specs as the 900 and the difference is only a new row of buttons between the keyboard and battery, along with a power plug on the left side.

Nothing much is different from the 900, but apparently Asus has thrown in a new row of buttons between the keyboard and battery, along with a power plug on the left side.Guess the measurements were not tampered with this time. I wonder if the innards will be different.

source

Pic source = Asus.com

Tags: Asus Eee PC

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You may be surprised at how much protection you can get for your PC at practically no cost. As they say: The best things in Life are free. Sure, complete and full security suites are still encouraged but for true value, you cant beat some of these products especially for the everyday user.

The latest versions of the popular free antivirus products from avast! and AVG both now include spyware protection as well, and they’re quite effective. ThreatFire 3.5, from PC Tools, eliminates malware by monitoring its behavior: It doesn’t need any advance knowledge to stop a threat from harming your computer.

You do have to pony up cash for the paid version to use these products in a commercial setting, but you can get a very good idea of their power by running the free versions at home first. Of course, not every free app is a huge success, so read our reviews carefully before deciding which one’s right for you.

Read the full article here

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