Carabiner Key Snaps On and Off, Fast

There’s no stopping serial inventor Scott Amron. After a list of innovations including the water-fountain toothbrush, the Endo fridge magnet and the painful-sounding Split Ring, he has finally solved the annoying problem of quickly putting keys onto a ring. Behold, the Carabiner Key, a key with a carabiner built into its top loop. Now, instead of [...]

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/07/carabiner-key-snaps-on-and-off-fast/

Hans-Jürgen Haake Arno Zimmerling Jacqueline Kiesel Michel Rohr

Labs Go Dark as Google Puts Away Childish Things

In a continuing effort to streamline product development, Google announced Wednesday the company will be shutting down its Google Labs project. The Google Labs initiative was the tech giant's testing facility, where employees and engineers were given creative freedom to tinker with experimental projects that perhaps didn't necessarily fall within their job descriptions.

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/72919.html

Emma Sauter Rosemarie Ramsauer Jörn Domenighini Marion Dallmeyer

Evoluce Win&I brings Kinect gesture controls to Windows 7

evoluce win&i windows 7 gesture control kinect
We've been looking at some pretty cool Kinect and Windows interactions for a while now, but we were hoping that the release of an official SDK would lead to even more coolness. Evoluce has stepped up, and is now offering Win&I -- a full-featured gesture control system for Windows 7.

The company claims that a range of up to four meters is supported, which should be perfect for just about any home theater setting. In the video embedded after the break, you can see an Evoluce demonstrator flip through a photo album, pan through a map, rearrange application windows, browse the Web, and control media playback. Two versions of Win&I are offered -- the home version goes for about 20 Euros, the business version for 40.

Anyone else having fun pretending his stance is a little "Iron Man"? We're tempted to put a repulsor on that hand.

Continue reading Evoluce Win&I brings Kinect gesture controls to Windows 7

Evoluce Win&I brings Kinect gesture controls to Windows 7 originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/01/evoluce-winandi-controls-windows-7-with-a-kinect-sensor/

Angelika Frey Mika Bernhardt Ingeburg Liebermann Elsa Alexander Furtmann

Shot Shot Pirate is a fun, simple physics game

shotshotpirate
Shot Shot Pirate is very satisfying, because each level is short and to the point. You know what you have to do and you just do it.

As you may have gathered from the name, you're cast in the role of a pirate. Your goal is to shoot at a diamond and make it fall off a tower of bricks. The height of the tower changes as you progress through the levels. It's not enough to just make the diamond fall off the tower of bricks - it has to fall below a certain line (drawn on the screen) for the level to be completed.

There are also different kinds of bricks, with some heavier than others, and different kinds of ammo. You only get a certain amount of ammo for each level, and when it's gone, you lose. But don't worry! If you don't make it on the first try, it's very easy to restart the level and just give it another shot (or three).

All in all it's a cute game. I've seen similar games with better graphics and music, but the game delivers on its main promise - a few minutes of pure time wasting!

Shot Shot Pirate is a fun, simple physics game originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 24 Feb 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/02/24/shot-shot-pirate-is-a-fun-simple-physics-game/

Fiona Henschel Joshua Heinlein Markus Wigger Alexander Berner

Gargantuan SQL injection infects 3.8 million URLs, installs rogue antivirus

LizaMoon SQL injection rogue AV
Over the last few days, a mass SQL injection attack has been quickly gathering speed. Just three days ago only 28,000 URLs were affected, but at the time of writing, there could be up to 3.8 million infected URLs.

Websense
has a complete write up the attack, dubbed 'LizaMoon,' but here's the basic gist: it looks like someone is exploiting a vulnerabilty (or vulnerabilities) in hundreds of thousands of websites running on Microsoft SQL Server 2003 and 2005. It's not yet known whether this is a vulnerability in SQL Server, or simply a case of outdated, unmaintained, and easily-exploitable CMSes.

The attack takes the form of an SQL injection, which then inserts a link to a JavaScript file hosted on the attacker's server. This is repeated over and over until every Web page in the SQL database has been infected -- and considering 3.8 million URLs have been infected, you can see that this is a very easy, and automated, attack.

Fortunately, the JavaScript isn't particularly malicious: it pops up a rogue AV program called Windows Stability Center, but that's it. Better yet, the rogue antivirus is already recognized by a bunch of real antivirus suites, including Avast, Panda and Microsoft Security Essentials.

The real problem with SQL injection attacks is that there's nothing we surfers can do about them. There will always be old and unmaintained websites, and thus SQL injections will remain one of the easiest and most lucrative tools of hackers and spammers alike. All you can do is keep your antivirus and anti-malware software up to date, and pray.

Gargantuan SQL injection infects 3.8 million URLs, installs rogue antivirus originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 05:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/01/massive-sql-injection-infects-3-8-million-urls-installs-rogue-a/

Henrik Brenner Karla Reusch Wilhelm Klassen Nathalie Füllgraf

Review: LogMeIn for iPad

I’ve been a user of LogMeIn free version for PC for many years. It’s been amazingly helpful at various times so I was very pleased to see them bring out a version for the iPad. What is LogMeIn? LogMeIn for iPad is a remote access application that allows you to link any two computers or [...]

Source: http://tabletbuzzblog.com/review-log-me-in-for-ipad/

Heidemarie Frick Maike Beetz Fiona Henschel Joshua Heinlein

Shot Shot Pirate is a fun, simple physics game

shotshotpirate
Shot Shot Pirate is very satisfying, because each level is short and to the point. You know what you have to do and you just do it.

As you may have gathered from the name, you're cast in the role of a pirate. Your goal is to shoot at a diamond and make it fall off a tower of bricks. The height of the tower changes as you progress through the levels. It's not enough to just make the diamond fall off the tower of bricks - it has to fall below a certain line (drawn on the screen) for the level to be completed.

There are also different kinds of bricks, with some heavier than others, and different kinds of ammo. You only get a certain amount of ammo for each level, and when it's gone, you lose. But don't worry! If you don't make it on the first try, it's very easy to restart the level and just give it another shot (or three).

All in all it's a cute game. I've seen similar games with better graphics and music, but the game delivers on its main promise - a few minutes of pure time wasting!

Shot Shot Pirate is a fun, simple physics game originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 24 Feb 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/02/24/shot-shot-pirate-is-a-fun-simple-physics-game/

Steven Walnsch Lennart Tonn Simone Temme Heidemarie Stegmann

This Week's Top Web Comedy Video: The Dark Side of Being a State Farm Agent [Video]

You know those State Farm commercials, the ones where all some sad sack has to do is sing the jingle and their insurance agent pops up out of thin air? Man. How miserable if you're that agent. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/jNolxMEa9G4/this-weeks-top-web-comedy-video-the-dark-side-of-being-state-farm-agent

Tobias Leinenbach Olga Kreibich Nathalie Donnerhacke Anna-Lena Baumgärtel

Samsung studies 3D viewing discomfort, finds out bloggers don't read

Judging by the headlines today, Samsung's 3D R&D department made a huge mistake, just check them out: "Who Could Have Guessed: 3D Hurts Your Eyes", "Samsung-funded study finds 3D video causes extra eye strain, fatigue", "Samsung study finds that 3D video causes eye strain, fatigue". It seems obvious that Samsung's research grant financing a UC Berkeley study published in the Journal of Vision was wasted, except for one minor issue -- all of those headlines are wrong. "The zone of comfort: Predicting visual discomfort with stereo displays" is actually trying to find out why 3D-related eyestrain happens. That it can and does happen with poorly formatted video, whether 2D, 3D or otherwise, is already known.

Scrolling down beyond the abstract reveals the prof's data actually indicated a wider comfort zone than 3D video producers commonly assumed with their percentage rule of thumb. It's a Friday night and you don't have to pick thumbing through dry descriptions of experiments over whatever your plans are, but that's why you have us. Shockingly, companies desperately hawking 3D tech are busy making it better instead of undermining their own products, but you'd have to actually read the study to find out for sure.

Samsung studies 3D viewing discomfort, finds out bloggers don't read originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Jul 2011 21:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/9UYgYaxSkyg/

Lea Linden Kevin Fickenscher Amelie Schweizer Elfriede Oltmanns

Wall-E meets his Canadian DJ maker, turns into a real robot toy (video)

What do you get when you cross a dj with a "Canadian roboticist?" An almost true-to-fiction Wall-E, that's what. In this rendition of garbage-bot gone cute, amateur robotics enthusiast DJ Sures (yes, he makes music) hollowed out a U-Command Wall-E toy and fixed him up with some servo guts. The voice-activated, semi-autonomous modjob has a built-in eye camera that recognizes motion, colors and faces, coming the closest we've seen to replicating the CG-romantic. The whole AA-battery powered affair runs on the EZ-B Robot Controller software shown off by Sures in the video below. And unlike other past recreations, this little guy knows how to get down without the need for sped up video tricks. Clearly, the Pixar-bred bot's become the unofficial icon of the homebrew robotics community, so where's his official counterpart? You listening Disney? Get cracking.

Continue reading Wall-E meets his Canadian DJ maker, turns into a real robot toy (video)

Wall-E meets his Canadian DJ maker, turns into a real robot toy (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Jul 2011 05:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Hack a Day  |  sourceDJ Sures  | Email this | Comments


Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/J2IHU3rUank/

Hans-Jürgen Haake Arno Zimmerling Jacqueline Kiesel Michel Rohr