The US Embassy is warning of a possible terrorist attack on Bali on New Year's Eve.

I put off buying a Kindle for a long time as I wasn't sure I would like the device and I was worried about vendor lock in with Amazon. I regret that decision now. I should've bought my Kindle 2 sooner. Over the last few months I've been enjoying reading on my Kindle 2. I devoured Stephen King's Under the Dome, a massive book at 1,088 pages, as well as the free autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and the new release from the 37signals team, Rework. In addition to books I've loaded sev

NVIDIA has certainly been more active in 3D than ATI/AMD has as of late, but it looks like the situation may be starting to change, as AMD has taken advantage of the just concluded GDC to lay out its new Open Stereo 3D Initiative. While the company isn't yet drumming up too much fanfare about it (or even issuing a press release), it does seem to have gotten things started on an ambitious note, with the initiative promising to provide consumers with "more choice, more innovation, and lower cost." In the nearer term, that will apparently translate to products like 3D-enabled ATI Eyefinity technology, 120Hz displays, stereo 3D notebooks, and various bundled solutions and shutter glasses. Of course, any actual product announcements are still a little ways off, but it looks like AMD does already have quite a few partners lined up.

AMD lays out Open Stereo 3D Initiative at GDC originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filmmaker and crafter Holly Klein combined her talents to produce this short, Maggie and Mildred. All of the set pieces and characters were cross stitched by hand, then scanned into a computer and animated. [via fem!n*Ally]

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BlackBerry users may be ready to move on to other smartphone platforms, suggesting that RIM isn't keeping up with consumer demand in its efforts to combat growing encroachment from the likes of iPhone and Android. In fact, two in five BlackBerry owners plan to swap their current device for an iPhone when it's time to upgrade, according to market researcher firm Crowd Science.

The iPhone has had a lasting effect on the smartphone market, changing the conception of what a smartphone should be almost overnight after the launch of the original iPhone in 2007. Despite RIM's entrenchment among business users, however, the iPhone platform has grown at a faster rate than the BlackBerry over the last year.

Perhaps the trend can be explained by Crowd Science's findings that many are using their smartphones for both personal and business use. Nearly a third of iPhone owners use their device for strictly personal use, versus just 16 percent for BlackBerry users. Just one percent of iPhone owners use their device for business only—no surprise there—so two-thirds are using an iPhone for business and personal use. And, while the BlackBerry has a reputation as the best enterprise mobile device, a scant seven percent of BlackBerrys users dedicate the device to business use only. That leaves over three-quarters of BlackBerry owners using their device for dual purposes.

The iPhone isn't the only platform attracting the attention of BlackBerry users, though. Interest in Android-based devices has grown since the introduction of Google's Nexus One, with 32 percent of BlackBerry users surveyed saying they would swap their current device for a Nexus One.

"These results show that the restlessness of BlackBerry users with their current brand hasn't just been driven by the allure of iPhone," John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science, said in a statement. "Rather, BlackBerry as a brand just isn't garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems."

About 90 percent of current iPhone and Android users plan to stick with their current platform for their next phone upgrade.

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I don't think I've blogged this yet but a blog entry from Dan Wilson earlier today reminded me I needed to mention it. Dan, and others, are running a 100% free ColdFusion/Flex/AIR/etc conference in North Carolina. NCDevCon will be held May 22-23rd a...

Yesterday I took a Sunday Scroll over at the North American Handmade Bicycle show site, drooling over the bikes pictured with their enthusiastic creators. With categories like "best fillet brazing" and "best carbon fiber," it's clearly a maker's kind of tradeshow.

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The biggest chunk of eye candy we've seen out of Microsoft's MIX10 event so far today has been the unveiling of the significantly-retooled Windows Phone Marketplace that'll debut in Windows Phone 7 Series -- and needless to say, it's a looker. It's got support for credit card purchases, operator billing, and ad-supported content -- a hot topic right now with Google's and Apple's mobile advertising acquisitions -- and a try-before-you-buy scheme not unlike Android Market's policy (though WP7S devs can choose what kind of trial period they want to offer; Android devs have no such option). We've been offered some video of the new Marketplace in action, and it looks super polished and well-integrated with the typical WP7S way of getting around -- you're given a "panoramic view" where you can browse categories and titles, see featured items, and get details with ratings, reviews, screen shots, and pricing information. Purchased apps can be pinned to your Quick Launch screen, saving you a couple taps for your favorite and most frequently-used items. Watch the full video after the break -- and keep an eye out for the trick "tilting" of menu items based on finger location toward the end of the clip, something we haven't seen before.

Gallery: Windows Phone Marketplace demo

Continue reading Windows Phone Marketplace for Windows Phone 7 Series unveiled

Windows Phone Marketplace for Windows Phone 7 Series unveiled originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Unpopular Gordon Brown lags behind David Cameron on every question in today's survey

The prime minister's deep unpopularity is continuing to harm Labour's election chances, according to today's Guardian/ICM poll, which shows the gap between the two main parties has grown to nine points.

Voters remain unconvinced by the Conservative alternative, with 29% thinking a clear Tory victory would be best. Only 18% think Britain would be best served by a strong Labour win this spring. Both groups are outnumbered by the 44% who want a hung parliament in which the government works with smaller parties such as the Liberal Democrats.

Only 38% of people who voted Labour in 2005 want to see the party win a strong majority now, while 43% would prefer a hung parliament.

One explanation is that many voters, even Labour ones, dislike Brown. He lags behind Cameron in every question in today's poll. The Tory leader is 15 points ahead of the prime minister as the man who most want to win and 20 points ahead as the leader best campaigning for "the votes of people like you".

Cameron has a 14-point lead as the most competent prime minister, and an 11-point lead as the man most likely to lead Britain in the right direction.

He also has a 31-point lead as the man who most has the support of his party – which may indicate the harm done to Brown's standing by Labour rows and plots.

Today's poll puts the Conservatives on 40%, which should be enough to give the party a small majority if marginal seats outperform the rest. Uniform national swing calculations suggest the Tories would fall slightly short.

The latest figures call into question recent excitement about a Labour fightback. The Tories are up three on the February Guardian poll, and up two on another more recent ICM poll last weekend.

Labour, at 31%, are up one on the February poll and unchanged since the weekend survey. The party's advance seems to have stalled.

The Liberal Democrats are on 20%, unchanged since the last Guardian/ICM poll, while support for other parties is 9%.

Public opinion seems fixed in roughly the place it reached before Christmas. Conservative support has been within three points of 40% in all ICM polls since October. Labour support has been within two points of 30% since November. Liberal Democrats have been within two points of 20% since October. Westminster dramas over such subjects as Lord Ashcroft's tax status and the prime minister's alleged bullying have made little difference.

Today's figures are an almost exact reverse of the March Guardian/ICM poll in 2005 before the May election. Then, Labour was on 40%, the Conservatives on 32% and the Lib Dems on 20%. The only difference between then and now is that the Conservative lead is one point bigger than Labour's was in 2005.

• ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1,002 adults by telephone on 12-14 March 2010. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules

• Opinion polls
• Labour
• Conservatives
• Gordon Brown
• David Cameron
• General election 2010

Julian Glover
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Microsoft's flavor of push notifications for Windows Phone 7 Series -- the so-called Microsoft Notification Service -- was just demoed using an MLS (Major League Soccer) app, and it fits in really well with the "Metro" UI motif. Notifications come in via an unobtrusive bar across the top of the display -- better than iPhone, and not unlike webOS -- and tapping them takes you into the app where you're presumably taken to a fuller view of the relevant information. The notifications are available regardless of whether the app is open, a model that mirrors Apple's and likely a heavy dose of foreshadowing that multitasking -- at least, multitasking as we know it -- won't be available.

Microsoft demos push notifications on Windows Phone 7 Series originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An obese mother in the US is trying to put on weight in order to become the world's fattest woman. Donna Simpson, from New Jersey, ...

Classmates.com — the website that promises to reunite people with their mullet-haired friends of youth — has agreed to pay out a $9.5 million settlement for a lawsuit dating back to 2008 accusing the company of “false advertising” through “deceptive” marketing emails.

Kate Winslet and her film director husband Sam Mendes have separated after nearly seven years of marriage, their lawyer announced today.

Keith Schilling of legal firm Schillings, said: "Kate and Sam are saddened to announce that they separated earlier this year. The split is entirely amicable and is by mutual agreement. Both parties are fully committed to the future joint parenting of their children."

He added: "They ask that the media respect the privacy of the family."

Winslet, who won an Oscar last year for her role in The Reader, married Mendes, who won a best director Oscar in 1999 film debut, American Beauty, tied the knot in a secret ceremony in the West Indies in May 2003. Later that year Winslet gave birth to the couple's son, Joe. She has a daughter, Mia, from her first marriage to assistant director Jim Threapleton. They divorced in December 2001 after three years together.

• Kate Winslet
• Sam Mendes
• Celebrity

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When independent filmmaker David Hoffman set out to make a documentary on the Sputnik hysteria that swept the US in the 1950s, he styled the piece as an hour-and-a-half feature film. He relied heavily on old news clips from the time, none of which were provided by the networks themselves (most didn't even know what they had). Hoffman spent months tracking down bits of footage from collectors on eBay and from uploaders on YouTube. Whenever he made contact with someone who had posted one clip, Hoffman asked them what else they had.

When he was done, he took all this material back to the networks—who promptly billed him the per-minute feature film rate for reusing their copyrighted material. The fact that Hoffman was making an independently financed documentary and not a traditional feature film was irrelevant, and the total bill for clearing rights came to $320,000.

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A fossil amphibian has come to light on land owned by FedEx and has been named Fedexia striegeli

Fossil hunters have named a 300m-year-old amphibian in honour of the courier service FedEx, after unearthing the creature on land owned by the company near a US airport.

The remains of the ancient amphibian, which lived 70m years before the first dinosaurs, were recovered in 2004 from a slab of rock near Pittsburgh International Airport by Adam Striegel, an amateur fossil enthusiast on a geology field trip.

Researchers at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh described the creature on the basis of its remarkably well-preserved 12cm-long skull, which survived fossilisation without being crushed.

A group led by David Berman, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the museum, identified the amphibian as a new genus and species, Fedexia striegeli, in the institution's journal, Annals of Carnegie Museum.

Fedexia belongs to a family of extinct amphibians called trematopidae, which lived at a time when the Earth's climate was in the throes of a dramatic transition. The planet's oceans were increasingly becoming locked up in polar ice, causing sea levels to drop and vast swathes of land to become drier and warmer.

Gradually, some groups of amphibians, including the trematopids, left their mostly aquatic environments and became more adapted to a terrestrial habitat, returning to the water perhaps only to mate or lay eggs.

The remarkable preservation of its skull allowed palaeontologists to identify Fedexia as a trematopid, mainly by a hallmark feature of the group: an elongated external nasal opening.

When it died, what is now Pittsburgh was situated near the equator and experienced huge downpours, making an ideal environment for amphibians to flourish.

"What is particularly amazing about this discovery is that it was made by an amateur who had no prior experience in recognising vertebrate fossils in the rock, a talent that usually takes years to develop," said Berman.

• Fossils
• Zoology
• Evolution
• United States

Ian Sample
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digg_url = 'http://digg.com/microsoft/Windows_Phone_7_Series_dev_partners_announced_at_MIX10'; Microsoft just dropped its first press release of MIX 10 on us, and in addition to detailing the Sliverlight and XNA-based Windows Phone 7 Series development situation, we've also got a list of launch software partners and some screenshots of apps in action. There's some heavy hitters here, and everything from games to enterprise apps are represented -- notables include the Associated Press, Citrix, EA Mobile, Foursquare, Namco, Pangeonce, Pandora, Seesmic, Shazam, and Sling. We're slated to see some demos of these in action, we'll let you know how things look. Full list after the break.

Updating with impressions after the break!

Gallery: Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Series apps

Gallery: Windows Phone 7 Series app demos

Continue reading Microsoft announces Windows Phone 7 Series dev partners: Sling, Pandora, Foursquare and more (updated)

Microsoft announces Windows Phone 7 Series dev partners: Sling, Pandora, Foursquare and more (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ZDNet (blog)
40% of Blackberry users willing to trade in for an iPhone
Ars Technica
BlackBerry users may be ready to move on to other smartphone platforms, suggesting that RIM isn't keeping up with consumer demand in its efforts to combat growing encroachment from the likes of ...
New Google man slams Apple's 'Disneyfied walled garden'TG Daily
Tim Bray joins GoogleInquirer
Apple's Spat With Google Is Getting PersonalNew York Times
DailyTech -Computerworld (blog) -Wired News
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You read that right. You better get your porn now before the whole operation crashes.

We just got a quick at Netflix for Windows Phone 7 Series, one of the third-party apps Microsoft's showing off here at MIX10, and it looks... well, very Netflixy -- it's red to the bone. Unlike other mobile Netflix apps, this one's got Watch Instantly support and it looks great -- a real testament to the capabilities Microsoft's bringing to the table with it Silverlight-based dev platform. Video after the break!

Gallery: Netflix announced for Windows Phone 7 Series

Continue reading Netflix announced for Windows Phone 7 Series

Netflix announced for Windows Phone 7 Series originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OSCAR-winning couple have separated after almost seven years of marriage.