Eideard

A technology startup backed by Google has unveiled the world’s first personal base station for international travelers, enabling them to cut roaming fees and make mobile calls like in a home country. Ubiquisys said the timing of devices reaching consumers depended on telecoms operators and it was in talks with several operators.

The telecom network base station, which is plugged into the travelers computer, is slightly larger than a smartphone, and needs an Internet connection…

The new device, called attocell, is designed for use with Apple’s iPhone, but it works also with Google’s Android phones, RIM’s Blackberry and Nokia’s smartphones.

Ubiquisys is one of the top firms in the new market for femtocells — small, low-power indoor base station for 3G mobile phone networks — enabling operators who struggle with network capacity to improve indoor coverage at a much lower cost…

The devices are plugged into a customer’s broadband Internet connection, like a wireless Internet base station, and allow users to make calls or use data services with their regular 3G mobile phones.

Phone service providers generally end up charging you their regular rates – even for home use. Home femtocells are especially useful for folks with mediocre service, insufficient tower coverage. This truly portable device seems like it should be a hit with business travelers.

In fact, there probably is a market for vacationers renting something like this to carry along on holiday.

In response to calls for increased security from enterprise clients, Apple has hired cybersecurity expert and author David Rice as its director of global security…

A “deeply respected name in IT security circles,” according to those who know him, Rice is reportedly being brought on to bolster Apple’s security and gain the trust of corporate CIOs.

Rice graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1994 and received a master’s degree in Information Warfare and Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. He previously worked as a Global Network Vulnerability analyst for the National Security Agency and as a Special Duty Cryptologic officer for the Navy…Rice is also the author of “Geekonomics,” a 2007 book which likens software security vulnerabilities to weakened bridges and other physical infrastructure.

Apple has ramped up its security efforts in recent years, in part to gain the trust of corporations and government agencies who have begun adopting the iPhone and iPad. As the iPhone maker has upgraded the security of iOS, it has found itself gaining ground on Research in Motion, the self-professed leader in “CIO friendliness…”

A recent partnership with Unisys is also meant to boost Apple’s security reputation. In an interview last October, a Unisys executive said the deal came about because his company had “put a lot of heavyweight engineering into securing the [iPhone], which, frankly, no one else has figured out yet.”

My experiences with government security types lead me to believe that Rice’s own top-level clearances are somewhat compromised by the fact that he went to work with geeks at Apple. That has nothing to do with the realities of security or politics. Just bureaucratic silliness.

BTW – if you’d like a look into his public brain, drop by his blog.

The product combines a bottle opener-equipped iPhone case with a free app that keeps count of how many bottles or cans you’ve opened, while announcing to the world that you’re opening yet another.

The ABS hard shell case has a rubberized outer coating, and a stainless steel bottle opener on the back. If you’re worried that an over-exuberant beer might foam all over your $200 phone, well … yeah, it might. Caution should definitely be exercised. That said, the company claims that one of its openers has opened over 3,000 bottles since 2009, and that the phone inside of it still works fine.

The accompanying app uses the phone’s accelerometer to detect when the opener has been used, then displays your choice of any image from your phone’s album (such as a taxi), while playing a chosen song from your iTunes library (such as anything featuring Keith Richards) or a sound effect already programmed into the app – choices include such classics as “Burp,” “Funky Monkey,” and “Annoying Mother-in-Law.” You can also record your own sound effects, should none of those meet your high standards.

Be a Headcase is available in Black or Pink – if you wondered. No doubt it will be available for Android phones and anything else that’s close to the same dimensions.

Think there might be anything interesting in there?

A frozen human body was found Monday evening by two people cleaning out the home of a deceased relative.

According to a news release from the Eddy County Sheriff, the body was discovered around 7:50 p.m. in a chest-type freezer. The remains were first thought to be those of an animal, but after further inspection were determined to be human remains.

The two loaded the freezer into a pickup and drove it to the offices of the Carlsbad Police Department.

After further investigation, the case was turned over to the sheriff’s department because the body had been located outside the city limits…

Although the sheriff’s department has not released the name of the victim, a source close to the investigation has said it may be the husband of the home’s deceased occupant. The man reportedly went missing in 1997.

News from downstate usually doesn’t get much traffic in central or northern New Mexico. When there’s real “human interest” like this – well, it gets more play than UFOs or the latest lawsuit by someone whose neighbor’s wifi network makes their brain buzz.

A massive star is caught fleeing its former companion, careening through space behind a brilliant yellow arc of gas and dust, in this exquisite new image from NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer telescope.

Named Zeta Ophiuchi, the bright blue star in the image’s center is about 20 times more massive than our sun. Were it not shrouded by dust, it would be one of the brightest stars in the sky — yet long ago, it orbited an even more massive star.

When that star exploded in a supernova, Zeta Ophiuchi took off like a shot. When WISE caught it, Zeta Ophiuchi was flying at 54,000 miles per hour.

As it plows through space, the star’s powerful winds shove gas and dust out of its way into a bow shock, much like a boat’s prow displaces water. Although this bright arc is hidden in visible light, matter in the shock is so compressed that it heats up and glows in wavelengths visible to WISE’s infrared eyes.

RTFA about its projected life and death. A stunning photo.

Luckovich most always does a good sendoff.

China is planning to create the world’s biggest mega city by merging nine cities to create a metropolis twice the size of Wales with a population of 42 million.

City planners in south China have laid out an ambitious plan to merge together the nine cities that lie around the Pearl River Delta. The “Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One” scheme will create a 16,000 sq mile urban area that is 26 times larger geographically than Greater London, or twice the size of Wales.

The new mega-city will cover a large part of China’s manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. Together, they account for nearly a tenth of the Chinese economy.

Over the next six years, around 150 major infrastructure projects will mesh the transport, energy, water and telecommunications networks of the nine cities together, at a cost of some $300 billion. An express rail line will also connect the hub with nearby Hong Kong…

Ma Xiangming, the chief planner, said no name had been chosen for the area. “It will not be like Greater London or Greater Tokyo because there is no one city at the heart of this megalopolis,” he said. “We cannot just name it after one of the existing cities…”

Twenty-nine rail lines, totalling 3,100 miles, will be added, cutting rail journeys around the urban area to a maximum of one hour between different city centres…

“Residents will be able to choose where to get their services and will use the internet to find out which hospital, for example, is less busy,” said Mr Ma.

Pollution, a key problem in the Pearl River Delta because of its industrialisation, will also be addressed with a united policy, and the price of petrol and electricity could also be unified.

I’ve never been a fan of big cities – with few exceptions: New York City back in the 1950′s. Music and food made it worth it. London and Geneva in the 1960′s. No doubt there were more. I’ve inevitably chosen to domicile in suburban or preferably rural areas. Access to urban accoutrements are useful; not necessary.

Now, I wonder if they’ll have a naming contest? I’d be first in line to enter.

“Don’t worry, George – no one really cares about honesty”

The Bush White House, particularly before the 2006 midterm elections, routinely violated a federal law that prohibits use of federal tax dollars to pay for political activities by creating a “political boiler room” that coordinated Republican campaign activities nationwide, a report issued Monday by an independent federal agency concludes.

The report by the Office of Special Counsel finds that the Bush administration’s Office of Political Affairs — overseen by Karl Rove — served almost as an extension of the Republican National Committee, developing a “target list” of Congressional races, organizing dozens of briefings for political appointees to press them to work for party candidates, and sending cabinet officials out to help these campaigns…

The Office of Special Counsel, a relatively obscure federal agency, is charged with enforcing the Hatch Act, a 1939 law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. Certain members of the White House political staff — including the top aides at the Office of Political Affairs — are exempt, as are the president, vice president and members of the cabinet. But the law still prohibits the use of federal money, even by these officials, to support political causes.

The report found that during the Bush administration, senior staff members at the Office of Political Affairs violated the Hatch Act by organizing 75 political briefings from 2001 to 2007 for Republican appointees at top federal agencies in an effort to enlist them to help Republicans get elected to Congress…

“These briefings created an environment aimed at assisting Republican candidates, constituting political activity within the meaning of the Hatch Act,” the 118-page report said…

The investigators also found evidence that the Bush White House improperly classified travel by senior officials as official government business, “when it was, in fact, political,” and the costs associated with this travel were never reimbursed.

A spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel said Monday that because the administration officials had left office, it no longer has jurisdiction to file any charges. It also said that it had not made a formal referral to the Justice Department to ask it to pursue any possible charges.

Obama’s version of the same Office of Political Affairs hasn’t conducted business with federal dollars – and has been moved to Chicago to assure functioning with political party funds. Just another area of “change” Republicans hate – and would reverse if they were once again in charge of the White House.

Corruption and deceit as a lifestyle is hard to leave. Just ask Dick Armey.

Picking up a packet of chicken in a supermarket is more likely to give you food poisoning than handling a raw bird, a pioneering survey has found.

Food standards officials discovered that 40 per cent of packets of chicken in a range of supermarkets, convenience stores and butchers were covered with bacteria on the outside.

Of 20 packets of chicken studied, eight had food poisoning bacteria on their wrapping while seven chickens were contaminated inside the packet. One tested positive for salmonella.

Shoppers are now being warned to wash their hands after handling chicken cartons to combat the risk of catching the campylobacter bug which can induce vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain.

Birmingham Food Safety officials…is believed to be the first to test packaging and it has reported its findings to the Government’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) and major retail chains…

“These findings reinforce our advice to avoid cross-contamination when handling and storing raw chicken even if it is still in its packaging…”

The contamination is believed to take place during the manufacturing and shipping.

Which is why as soon as we return home from our weekly shopping, we remove the packaging from most meat, fish and poultry we buy – wash the food and repackage it in clean plastic bags – washing our hands in the process as well.

This also cleans off some of the solutions used – even by reputable firms – to help preserve foods before sale.

Two British pensioners landed in hospital in southern Germany after their car’s global positioning system directed them to drive into a church.

While driving their Renault in the evening on a back road near the Austrian border, the navigation system instructed the couple to turn right where there was no road.

“They were confused and didn’t notice that the navigation system was faulty,” a police spokeswoman said.

The 76-year-old driver then plowed into the side of the village church, writing off the car, knocking a picture off the wall and damaging the building’s foundations. Total damages were some 25,000 euros, police in the nearby town of Immenstadt said.

The couple, who were traveling to France, spent the evening in hospital recuperating from minor injuries.

That’s got to leave a mark.