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Panasonic picks up Which? Award

Panasonic has been awarded the Best Audio Visual Brand by Which? at their annual awards, with the most number of Which? Best Buys than any other manufacturer over the last 12 months. In addition, Panasonic's widescreen TVs have also been rated as the most reliable by Which? members.

Priceline to Open Michigan Customer Contact Center

Priceline.com Inc. signed a long-term lease and is moving forward with plans to establish a new customer contact center in Wyoming, Michigan, which is located southwest of Grand Rapids. Priceline.com said its new Michigan call center, which will occupy 45,670 square feet of an existing office building, will provide support for customers who make hotel reservations through Booking.com, Priceline.com's international business unit. Priceline.com believes that Booking.com, which is based in Amsterdam, is Europe's largest and fastest growing hotel reservation service. The facility also will house credit control operations and writers, translators and editors responsible for generating content for Booking.com's Web sites, which are available in 18 languages in 65 countries.

Consumers more likely to accept nanoparticles in packaging over food - study

Consumers have fewer concerns over packaging using nanoparticles than food utilizing the same technology, according to new study. The goal of the study from ETH Zurich's Institute for Environmental Decisions (IED), which was published in the journal Appetite, was to identify which food applications are more likely to be accepted by the public and which ones less likely. The researchers argue that it is important to take public views of nanotechnology into account at its early stage of development to avoid some of the problems that genetically modified (GM) technology has been faced with. They claim that their findings can help identify the food applications for which future public debates on nanotechnology could focus on.

Which Open Source Video Apps Use SMP Effectively?

ydrol writes "After building my new Core 2 Quad Q6600 PC, I was ready to unleash video conversion activity the likes of which I had not seen before. However, I was disappointed to discover that a lot of the conversion tools either don't use SMP at all, or don't balance the workload evenly across processors, or require ugly hacks to use SMP (e.g. invoking distributed encoding options). I get the impression that open source projects are a bit slow on the uptake here? Which open source video conversion apps take full native advantage of SMP? (And before you ask, no, I don't want to pick up the code and add SMP support myself, thanks.)"

Google Trends Reveals Which Tech Trends Are Hot (Or Not)

If you want to know which trends are growing more popular and which are sinking toward “jump the shark” status, look at Google Trends.

Turkish company excels at nano oil technology

A TURKISH company which has created an eco-friendly lubricant for vehicles using nanotechnology continues to impress the motor trade and is selling well in the UK. NNT Nanotechnology AS in Turkey, the parent company of Nanoboron Ltd in the UK, produces Borpower, a unique oil additive which brings a range of advantages to engines. Borpower is added to motor oil to make engines cleaner, more efficient and longer lasting, and has a unique and patented nanotechnology formula. It reduces friction in an engine and corrosion on working metal surfaces. Managing director Ismail Cikci told London Turkish Gazette that up to 15 per cent less petrol is used as a result of the lubricant being added to petrol, diesel or LPG. The innovative product, which is environmentally friendly and suitable for all engines, including heavy goods vehicles, is current

Flixwagon and Qik Offer Livestreaming From "Hacked" iPhones

Here’s a case in which you can’t help but think what would happen if the wireless industry made things easy. Both Qik and Flixwagon released applications this week that allow people to live stream video from their iPhone to the Internet (even though Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) doesn’t allow iPhone developers to create applications using the camera). Although the concept sounds pretty cool, I’m not sure what business sense this makes. The applications only work on “jailbroken,� or hacked iPhones, which means the two companies are fighting over a sliver of the overall iPhone market, which will likely hit 10 million before the end of this year. Still, these applications are good examples of what innovative things companies are trying to do, if only the handsets and processes were easier.

Softbanks Q1 profit up 8% on reduced subsidies; plans to cut iPhone fees

Japan’s third biggest mobile operator by subscribers, Softbank Mobile, which is part of Softbank Corp, today reported an 8% year-on-year rise in first-quarter profit for the three months ended 30 June, aided by a reduction in handset subsidies and strong subscriber growth. Softbank Mobile, which is beating larger rivals NTT DoCoMo and KDDI in terms of monthly net new subscriber gains, is now looking to cut contract fees for people taking the Apple iPhone in an attempt to attract even more users. The cuts, which will come off data fees, will mean Softbank’s iPhone customers will pay as little as JPY2,990 per month to use the device, down from JPY7,280 now. The operator posted operating profit of JPY85.1 billion (USD786.5 million) in its fiscal first quarter, compared with JPY78.

Softbank?s Q1 profit up 8% on reduced subsidies; plans to cut iPhone fees

Japan’s third biggest mobile operator by subscribers, Softbank Mobile, which is part of Softbank Corp, today reported an 8% year-on-year rise in first-quarter profit for the three months ended 30 June, aided by a reduction in handset subsidies and strong subscriber growth. Softbank Mobile, which is beating larger rivals NTT DoCoMo and KDDI in terms of monthly net new subscriber gains, is now looking to cut contract fees for people taking the Apple iPhone in an attempt to attract even more users. The cuts, which will come off data fees, will mean Softbank’s iPhone customers will pay as little as JPY2,990 per month to use the device, down from JPY7,280 now. The operator posted operating profit of JPY85.1 billion (USD786.5 million) in its fiscal first quarter, compared with JPY78.

Mobile Developers Still Favor .Net and Java, But The Popularity Of Linux And Android Is Growing

One way to look into the future to see which cell phones will be popular is by figuring out what platform developers are building applications for today. Developers tend to pick platforms that are easy to work with and present the biggest market opportunity. Likewise, if developers gravitate to particular platforms, consumers will be drawn to the same ones because they’ll offer the greatest choice of applications. Today’s favorites aren’t surprising, according to Evans Data, which polled nearly 400 developers. The top phone manufacturer is Nokia (NYSE: NOK), while the top platforms, are Microsoft’s (NSDQ: MSFT) .Net and Sun Microsystem’s Java ME. This is interesting to note because the media is constantly writing about a handset war developing between RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) or Mac OS, which could indeed be brewing, but on a fairly sma

"War On Terror" Board Game Confiscated In UK

An anonymous reader writes "The board game The War On Terror is a satirical game in which George Bush's 'Axis of Evil' is reduced to a spinner in the middle of the board, which determines which player is designated a terrorist state. That person then has to wear a balaclava (included in the box set) with the word 'Evil' stitched onto it. Kent police said they had confiscated the game because the balaclava 'could be used to conceal someone's identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act.' Balaclavas are freely sold all over the place in the area." Schneier has blogged this stupidity, of course.

MP3 Player wins design award, donates proceeds to charity

University professor Bae Sang-min led his team to create a music player which bagged a silver prize at the 2008 International Design Excellence Awards. The product was named as CrossCube Nanum foldable MP3 player which resembled a cross but when folded, it would turn up like a dice. Pretty neat! Not only the professor showed his team’s innovative side but the winning amount (KRW 400 million) which they won was donated for the education of children coming from weak financial background.

Free Fire Zone: A Playwright's Adventures on the Creative Battlefields of Film, TV, and Theater

Given the decidedly mixed reviews for some of Theresa Rebeck's recent plays — including Mauritius, which was produced on Broadway, and The Water's Edge and The Scene, which were each mounted regionally before opening Off-Broadway — one might understand if the prolific scribe has axes to grind. By its title alone, Free Fire Zone implies that some score settling will be in order. Rebeck hardly disappoints in this sense; without being so crass as to cite specific names, she takes unswerving aim at the befuddled bosses of the entertainment business to which she's often been beholden, pulls the trigger, and rejoices in it. Yet even as this is a memoir of a dramatist toiling in various mediums, it's also very much a how-to — a brilliant one — for anyone eager to follow in her footsteps.

Robot software shootout -- the sequel!

Today's nascent robotics market has engendered nearly two dozen general-purpose software development frameworks, many of which run Windows. This article reviews ten, and briefly describes a few others, before concluding with an analysis of which platforms are best-suited to which uses.

New Electrostatic-Based DNA Microarray Technique Could Revolutionize Medical Diagnostics

BERKELEY, Calif., June 30 (AScribe Newswire) -- The dream of personalized medicine — in which diagnostics, risk predictions and treatment decisions are based on a patient's genetic profile — may be on the verge of being expanded beyond the wealthiest of nations with state-of-the-art clinics. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has invented a technique in which DNA or RNA assays - the key to genetic profiling and disease detection - can be read and evaluated without the need of elaborate chemical labeling or sophisticated instrumentation. Based on electrostatic repulsion - in which objects with the same electrical charge repel one another - the technique is relatively simple and inexpensive to implement, and can be carried out in a matter of minutes.

Robot software shootout -- the sequel!

Today's nascent robotics market has engendered nearly two dozen general-purpose software development frameworks, nearly all of which run on Linux. This article reviews ten, and briefly describes a few others, before concluding with an analysis of which platforms are best-suited to which uses.

Using Sun's Energy to Split Water Means Solar Power All Night

phorm writes "Reuters is carrying an article about a recent MIT development which may pave the way for solar-energy to be collected for use in low-input periods. According to Reuters, the discovery of the a new catalyst for separating hydrogen+oxygen from water requires only 10% of the electricity of current methods. This would allow storage-cells to function as a form of battery for other forms of energy-collection, such as solar panels. The new method is also much safer (and likely environmentally friendly) than current methods, which require the use of a dangerously caustic environment, and specialized storage containers." sanjosanjo points out coverage of the process at EE Times, which features the MIT group's press release.

Brightnets are Owner Free File Systems

elucido writes "OFF, or the Owner-Free Filesystem is a distributed filesystem in which everything is stored in reference to randomized data blocks, as opposed to a 1:1 copy of the original data being inserted. The creators of the Owner-Free Filesystem have coined a new term to define the network: A brightnet. Nobody shares any copyrighted files, and therefore nobody needs to hide away. OFF provides a platform through which data can be stored (publicly or otherwise) in a discreet, distributed manner. The system allows for personal privacy because data (blocks) being transferred from peer to peer do not bear any relation to the original data. Incidentally, no data passing through the network can be considered copyrighted because the means by which it is represented is truly random.

Sony PS3's VidZone Service Gives You Free Music and Video

Sony's just announced a video service for their PS3 called VidZone, which somehow offers up free music and videos, albeit only in PAL regions for the time being. It'll allow you to streaming unlimited music on demand for free, but it's unclear whether it'll be ad-supported, or whether the catalog will be full of only Sony BMG tracks, or whether these are horrible tracks that nobody wants to hear anyway. We'll update with more info when we get it, but this is separate from the current PSN service which already lets you buy and rent movies (which is shown in the screenshot above). [Maxconsole]

XBOX 360 - Live Silver for xbox allowing online play?

OK, this is hard to run down exactly, because there's a Live Weekend going on right now, which means you can play online for free on Xbox Live. But reader Draco, a Silver level gamer, says that he's been playing cross-platform multiplayer games for free since Wednesday night, which precedes the Live Weekend (which started at midnight Friday.)

New Olympics Scoring: No More Perfect 10.0

Dekortage writes "If you watch the Olympics gymnastics this year, you may be confused by the new scoring system which will let athletes score 14, 17, or even higher. The new rules are 'heavy on math' and employ two panels of judges: one for technical difficulty, which adds points up from a score of zero; the other for execution and technique, which starts at 10.0 and subtracts for errors. The two numbers are then combined for the final score. As one judge put it, 'The system rewards difficulty. But the mistakes are also more costly.' The new rules were adopted after South Korea protested a scoring at the 2004 Olympics." Now I'm sure that no Slashdot reader will intentionally watch any "sport" that has judges determine the winner, but their wives/girlfriends might seize control of the remote because they want to know who is the best at tha

Alnylam Provides Update on "Glover" Patent

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced today that the Glover patent (EP 1230375), which is exclusively licensed to Alnylam from Cancer Research Technology Limited (CRT), has completed initial oral opposition proceedings in Europe. Through these proceedings, the Opposition Division of the European Patent Office has overturned the previously granted claims of the patent which covered certain features of RNAi therapeutics. Alnylam intends to appeal any decision which does not result in the patent being maintained in its present form or scope. The Glover patent is one of many issued or granted so-called "fundamental" patents in Alnylam's broad intellectual property (IP) estate for RNAi therapeutics.

Alnylam Provides Update on "Glover" Patent

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALNY), a leading RNAi therapeutics company, announced today that the Glover patent (EP 1230375), which is exclusively licensed to Alnylam from Cancer Research Technology Limited (CRT), has completed initial oral opposition proceedings in Europe. Through these proceedings, the Opposition Division of the European Patent Office has overturned the previously granted claims of the patent which covered certain features of RNAi therapeutics. Alnylam intends to appeal any decision which does not result in the patent being maintained in its present form or scope. The Glover patent is one of many issued or granted so-called "fundamental" patents in Alnylam's broad intellectual property (IP) estate for RNAi therapeutics.

The End of Internet Privacy? A Look at the Viacom-Google Order

Last week, in the context of Viacom’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google’s YouTube, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton ordered Google to turn over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube. To give you an idea of how many users might be affected by the order, the WSJ reports that, according to comScore, Google sites, which include YouTube, were the top U.S. video property in April, with more than 4.1 billion videos viewed, or 38% of all online videos. (Here’s more on the order from the NYT.)

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