20 Hottest Gadgets From the Consumer Electronics Show

This year's Consumer Electronics Show included plenty that was new, significant, or just plain bizarre--here's a list of some of the best of what CES had to offer.

Controlling How search engines access and index your website

Ever wonder how Google and search engines work. One key question is: how does Google know what parts of a website the site owner wants to have show up in search results? Can publishers specify that some parts of the site should be private and non-searchable? The good news is that those who publish on the web have a lot of control over which pages should appear in search results.

Can't Touch This

Working all but alone from his hardware-strewn office, Jeff Han is about to change the face of computing. Not even the big boys are likely to catch him.

Web 2.0, 3.0, 4.0...

“Web 2.0” is a much discussed and debated phrase. It was in Time Magazines Top 10 Buzz Words of 2006. Apparently (according to wikipedia - so this must be right), the phrase was coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004 and “refers to a perceived or proposed second generation of Internet-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users”.

Welcome to Wi-Fi-Ville Pop. 300 towns and growing

As municipal wireless pops up, so do questions: Who pays for it? Who runs it? Who's looking over your shoulder?

Make

MAKE brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. MAKE is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home. This is a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.

High-Tech Dream House

PopSci has built a house in California equipped with the most advanced materials, cutting-edge technologies and incredible household gadgets available today. Take a look inside with their virtual tour...very impressive.

Winning-And Losing-The first Wired War

U.S. forces in Iraq are waging a pivotal campaign in modern warfare—combat on the first “networked” battlefield. One problem: the enemy has a few networks of its own.

Hacker's Delight

Make the open-source Nokia 770 Internet tablet do anything.

A New Internet Radio Browser

Musicovery is a new Internet radio browser service that combines streaming music with some really neat visual navigation for discovering new (to you) music.

Musicovery is controlled with a sidebar and a song list that's strung together by genre in small clusters. Each color represents a different genre, and you can dig even deeper by selecting your mood. The playback controls are shown on each individual song, along with the title and the artist.

Joseph Vella: Passionate Podcasting

All hardcore fans dream of meeting their musical heroes. “What is more beautiful than being able to listen to the behind-the-scenes workings of your favorite artist?” asks Joseph Vella.

Search Engine Room

Search Engine Room is a website, along with associated entities, exist is to deliver high-quality information on the new economy industries of search engines and online publishing to curious individuals and businesses.

Getting close to the iPhone: how it will go down

Apple Computer (AAPL) is more determined than any other company in Silicon Valley to use secrecy to its advantage – and the result is that product announcements from its CEO awaken a glee in the tech press that can be compared only to a kid under the tree on Christmas morning.

Continue reading "One month to the iPhone: how it will go down" »

Location-Based Services Heading in the Right Direction

Turn-by-turn directions on mobile are hot. Hotter than stand-alone GPS-enabled devices, and definitely hotter than rolling down the window to ask for directions. Just look at the flurry of recent announcements — from Cingular to Sprint, everyone's launching location-based services (LBS). And, actually, I'm not talking just turn-by-turn directions. GPS chipsets, an increasingly common component of cell phones, are enabling a host of other features, like family finder services for kids and seniors (haven't seen granny in a week? Buy her a cell phone, and you'll never again have to worry about her whereabouts).

Continue reading "Location-Based Services Heading in the Right Direction" »

Does Microsoft Own RSS?

If you've added headlines from a news site to My Yahoo, or subscribe to blogs on a site like Bloglines, you've used RSS, a technology that's growing increasingly popular for distributing headlines and articles from blogs, news websites, and more. But now, two recently published patent applications reveal, Microsoft (MSFT) is claiming it invented RSS.

The applications, filed last June but just made public yesterday, cover subscribing and discovering what Microsoft calls "Web feeds." That comes as a bit of a shock to anyone who's been working on RSS, which has its origins in a format developed seven years ago at Netscape Communications.

Continue reading "Does Microsoft Own RSS?" »

Nokia E62 for Cingular

Are smart phones ready for the masses?

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Browsers go head-to-head

The top two browsing programs of net users got a big update this month as Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and Mozilla unleashed Firefox 2.0. Here we take a quick spin through some of the features to be seen in the new versions.

Copying own CD's should be legal

A think-tank has called for outdated copyright laws to be rewritten to take account of new ways people listen to music, watch films and read books.

Wallflower at the Web Party

Did Friendster miss out by not taking Google's offer. Judge for yourself here.

Google in talks to buy Web video site YouTube

The WSJ reports that Google's in talks to buy up YouTube, most likely to supplement or replace their flailing Google Video.