The state of Utah has launched an interesting new program, one that lets residents sign up for daily e-mail alerts that list all the crimes that took place near them over the previous day.

Those e-mails provide link to a free site, www.crimereports.com, that maps crimes and tracks when they occur. The site also provides up-to-date information about where sex offenders live, along with offender photos.

“This website will give Utahns an important tool to learn if their neighborhood is safe. A better informed public will also help individual neighborhoods work with law enforcement to tackle crime problems,” says Speaker of the House Greg Curtis.

Sadly, the site will not be comprehensive, according to a press release from the state’s attorney general:

CrimeReports.com has 38 different law enforcement agencies signed up for the program and hopes to have all agencies on board during the first year of service. Local agencies will still have the ability to control the data that is released to the web site.

Washington, D.C., San Jose, California and several other cities are already using the Web site. Utah will be the largest geographic area ever to use the service.

There’s also a similar service here in Dallas, which Victor wrote about last month.

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So my ThinkGeek.com newsletter lands in my inbox this morning (what, you don’t subscribe?) and I see they’re pitching the ultimate in nerd couture.

The “8-Bit Dynamic Life Shirt” is designed to recall old-school, 8-bit video games, when your character’s health status was measured in pixelated hearts, but really any geek should appreciate these threads.

You wear one shirt, and your main squeeze dons the other.

As you get closer, the hearts on the chest actually light up.

Nerds, your Valentine’s Day shopping is over.

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How do you announce your presence when you invade a colleague’s cubicle?

Most of us knock on the wall or make a meaningless noise of the “ahem” variety. But a company called RingDing Electronics apparently hopes to change that with a doorbell that attaches to the wall of your cubicle.

Dubbed the CubiCaller, the device costs $15, runs on batteries and lets you select from 12 different rings.

I guess I can see the thinking behind this thing, but I’d hate to work at an office where everybody used these things. I find ringing cellphones annoying enough. Doorbells could drive me over the edge.

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The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History will be offering on February 17 and 23 a hands-on engineering display for students and guests.

The display is sponsored by Lockheed Martin and IBM and includes activities like an F-35 computer flight simulator, Lego Mindstorm construction sets and other nifty stuff.

Full details below.

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The search engine Ask.com recently rolled out a privacy feature it promised several months back. Dubbed Ask Eraser, the new feature lets users tell Ask not to keep any information about them. (Most search engines keep detailed info about queries and track them via IP addresses.) AskEraser FAQ.

The new feature doubtless reduces the amount of information you generate online, but privacy advocates complain that Ask still sends partners such as Google (and possibly federal agencies) enough info to track of your searches.

As someone who worries little about whether advertisers get a lot of info about me, I can’t say Ask Eraser will make me abandon Google, but folks who’d like a bit more privacy may wish to give it a try. Just go to the main Ask site and click at on “Ask Eraser” at the upper right.

Other folks may enjoy reading some of the back-and-forth between Ask and its very outraged critics. Here’s a combat-laden article from Wired. Here’s a Cnet story that says the privacy advocates went a bit overboard with some of their claims.

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The Sony Ericsson W760 was unveiled earlier at CES 2008 but I did not manage to post it up. Here’s goes.
The Sony Ericsson W760 offers a 3.2 megapixel camera as well as the following features:
* GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
WCDMA 850/1900/2100MHz
* GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA
* 2.2″ 262k color TFT, 240�320 pixel resolution
* Video
* MMS/SMS/IM
* POP/IMAP/SMTP
* Bluetooth
* 40MB internal memory
* Memory Stick […]

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I seriously doubt I will ever get a Garmin nuvifone cellphone since its pretty fat and I might need to carry a big handbag in order to bring a charger for it too. Sure its got a awesome 3.5″ touchscreen, internet browser, HSDPA, pre-loaded maps of either North America, or Eastern and Western Europe but […]

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The headline pretty much says it all. The Apple TV update that enables HD movie downloads should be available “within two weeks.”

So there.

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MySpace has confirmed that Josh Berman, COO, will leave the social networking site to take on a ’senior role’ at Slingshot Labs, a new venture backed by News Corp, whose mission will be to incubate internet startups. Rumours of the move had been circulating since last week when Chris DeWolfe, the MySpace founder, told the New York Times about the incubator.

MySpace also said it would brief reporters next week on details of its bid to open up to outside developers. The FT revealed in June that MySpace that the popular social networking site hoped to take a page from Facebook, its smaller rival, by launching its own equivalent of the Facebook Platform. In November, MySpace announced that it had joined forces with Google on OpenSocial, an open alternative to Facebook’s platform.

Now that MySpace is preparing to launch its platform, internet-watchers will be looking for further details about the kinds of incentives it will offer to developers. Facebook set a high bar by allowing its developers to advertise freely within their apps - just not on the Facebook home page. The pressure will be on MySpace to follow suit.

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Desert Springs, California. Exactly one year ago at the DEMO 2007 technology conference, Adobe showcased Adobe AIR (then code-named ‘Apollo.’)

While many software developers have been focused in recent years on ways to move desktop applications onto the Web, Adobe Air makes it possible to move internet applications to the desktop.

Technically speaking, Adobe Air is a cross-operating system application runtime that enables web developers to use their existing web development skills in HTML, AJAX, Flash and Flex to build and deploy rich Internet applications for the desktop.

At Demo 2008 now underway in Desert Springs, California the first batch of applications based on Adobe Air are being unveiled.

They include:

Acesis which is using Adobe AIR and Adobe Flex to create point-of-care applications for its target market of small medical practises with up to 10 doctors. The company’s physician information system provides two interfaces – an AIR-based interface for physicians designed to replace pen and paper, and a browser-based interface for patients.

Fabrik’s next generation online service, Joggle, uses Adobe AIR to provide a single, aggregated view of a user’s personal content, no matter where it resides. Joggle finds and catalogues digital content whether it is stored locally or remotely on a web-based server and makes it easy for people to find, mange, access and share their photos, music, videos, and files.

2Win Solutions’ KonoLive is instant collaboration software that aims to make it easier to collaborate with colleagues and share knowledge. The service uses Adobe AIR and Flex to facilitate instant and uninterrupted collaboration across a wide range of systems.

Among the advantages, Fabrik’s CEO Mike Cordano claimed using Adobe Air had enabled the company to build a desktop application without forcing the company to hire a new team of desktop developers.

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