Town braced for Hurley wedding
Traffic restrictions are placed around Sudeley Castle, ahead of the wedding of actress Liz Hurley.
Kenwood summer gigs cancelled
English Heritage cancels its outdoor concerts at Kenwood House in London after noise and traffic complaints.
Hackers attack heart of the net
Servers that managed global internet traffic have been subjected to a concerted attack by hackers.
Network Fogies Getting Into YouTube-Like Racket
What do NBC, News Corp., CBS, and Viacom have in common? YouTube. In an effort to dethrone their young Web-based competition, they’re joining forces on a new venture/website that would host videos from their respective video vaults. This in turn would draw traffic away from YouTube, and put extra cash in the already fat pockets of TV execs. The problem is….
Each company has their own hidden agenda/reason for launching a YouTube competitor. News Corp, for instance, is doing this to sink YouTube before it draws more traffic away from MySpace (which is owned by News Corp.), whereas CBS on the other hand sees this as a way of getting closer to Google, who they’re trying to strike a separate deal with on a completely different venture. The YouTube “killer” could be announced as early as this week. The question is–do you care or will YouTube remain being your personal TiVo? – Louis Ramirez
Old Model Versus a Speedster [New York Times]
Web sales down on Black Friday
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - EBay was the online winner this
“Black Friday,” data published on Saturday showed, but overall
Internet traffic growth was well below last year’s even as
bargain hunters tracked down sought-after toys and electronics
on the Web before “Cyber Monday.”
Sanyo 42-inch LCD: Now Pee-Proof
Are you the proud owner of 42 inches of unoccupied outdoor space that you would like to fill with LCD monitor? Then pay off that credit card balance, because here comes your next splurge purchase: the Sanyo CE42LM4WPR 42-inch weather-resistant LCD. If you often find your monitors being pelted by blowing dirt, snowflakes or pressurized water streams, the IP56 standard weatherproofing on Sanyo’s new baby will ease your worried mind. While I foresee limited home user application (maybe a TV atop the Jacuzzi), I can see universities and cities selling ad space on outdoor screens at bus stops, municipal parks and other high-traffic areas in the near future.
If you want your next monitor to be element-proof, expect to shell out enough cash to buy three of the non-weatherproof model.
[via CrunchGear]
Top 5 Early Bird Luxo-Gift List
As soon as Halloween is done, it’s a sprint until Christmas. Never mind all that talk about Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that launches the holiday shopping season. If you’re planning to buy a luxo-sport gift for that special someone this year, you’ll want to avoid that herd of sheep, and get your shopping done early.
That’s why we’ve put together this quick list for the smartest shoppers of all: The Top 5 Early Bird Luxo-Gift List, with gifts priced from $1300 down to $200 listed in descending order. Start now. Avoid those maddening crowds, the relentless pressure, and avoid that sinking feeling when you hear that clock ticking, counting down the minutes until Zero Hour.
After the jump, pick out one of the top 5 luxo-gifts you can get right now, and get it all done ahead of time.
This is looking like the hot digital SLR for the season, with its 10.2-megapixel CCD, bigger and brighter viewfinder and excellent lenses from Nikon. It has an 11-area through-the-lens autofocus system, improved color metering, smaller size than its predecessor, and we don’t even mind that it uses SD memory cards instead of CompactFlash. You get your money’s worth for $1300.
4. Garmin Nuvi 660 GPS
We’re big fans of Garmin’s Nuvi series of GPS navigators, and this latest model stretches that screen out to 4.3 inches, the perfect compromise between portability and readibility. Like its brandmates, it gives you hands-free mobile phone calls and then there’s that outstanding Garmin user interface, easy enough to use in traffic but powerful enough to get you where you want to go. With its integrated FM traffic receiver that will warn you about heavy traffic or construction, and an FM transmitter that sends its navigational commands through your car stereo, it’s tough to beat for $999.
3. TiVo Series 3 HD Personal Multimedia Recorder
We’ve had one of these babies in-house for the past two months, and it’s the best digital video recorder we’ve ever seen. It’s the only THX-certified PVR and its video and audio consistently demonstrate that fact, plus it has that famed TiVo user interface that has no equal. Too bad it’s so damned expensive, at $800, but you can find one for $680.
2. Canon PowerShot SD900 10MP Digital Elph Camera
The form factor of the Digital Elph cameras from Canon is hard to beat, and this is the best one yet, the PowerShot SD900, with its 10 megapixels of quick-starting goodness and 3x optical zoom, you’ll see it all clearly now on a 2.5-inch LCD viewscreen. Sure, you can’t use many manual settings with this camera, but one of those digital SLRs can be awfully hard to fit in your shirt pocket, too. Best of all, you can find one of these trinkets for $383.
1. Motorola KRZR Cellphone
We know you want the latest smartphone, but that special person in your life is probably looking to simplify her cellphone situation. The KRZR is the way to go, fitting easily in the pocket ’cause it’s a lot smaller than the mainstream-popular RAZR, and will only set you back around 200 bucks with a two-year contract.
TomTom and Vodafone to launch real-time traffic info
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Mobile phone signals sent from
traffic jams will enable a real-time travel information
service, British telecoms group Vodafone and Dutch navigation
systems company TomTom said on Friday.
Sony NV-U71T GPS Likes Finger Caresses
Sony’s second generation GPS came out today, building upon the solid, if not a little boring first system.
This one has a few tricks up its sleeves, though.
Most notably traffic monitoring, and finger gesture reading. Traffic is par for the course, but the finger gestures are something we”ve never seen before. Essentially, you can do things like draw an upsidedown V on the touchscreen to set the nav to bring you home. (Sony told us it was the shape of a teepee or roof, so it should be easy to remember.)
The downside is that…
D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme Draft 802.11n Router
D-Link’s jumping into the Draft 802.11n pool with the DIR-655 Xtreme N router, which has three antennas that are, coincidentally enough, not used for MIMO. The router is supposed to be the first Gigabit Draft N router that has “Intelligent Wireless Quality of Service” technology to prioritize bandwidth, meaning your VoIP calls are of higher priority than your BitTorrent traffic.
The router supports WEP, WPA, and WPA2, but is also backwards compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g as well. Compared to the Linksys WRT350N Gigabit Draft N router, we’ll have to say the lack of MIMO and missing network storage puts this below Linksys’ offering. However, the DIR-655 router is available now and for around £100, whereas Linksys’ router has no price and no availability information.
Press Release [D-Link via eHomeUpgrade]