Technology

Toy delivers 'date-rape' drug when ingested

The CNN article about the Aqua Dots product recall says:

U.S. safety officials have recalled about 4.2 million Chinese-made Aqua Dots bead toys that contain a chemical that has caused some children to vomit and become comatose after swallowing them.

We immediately did our own product recall, removing the unsafe toy from our house last night after our daughter went to bed. But how did this product get into our house in the first place?… Read more

The power of invisibility--at home!

Lately, my daughter has been begging to see the new show iCarly, a spinoff of Drake and Josh.

Now, I'm not a big TV watcher, but I was a huge fan of it when I was a kid, and I do think that iCarly could have all the makings of a 21st century Zoom, given what we have available in the form of consumer technology around the house.… Read more

Virtual library helps outsource brainpower

I'd been intrigued by Delicious Library software ever since I saw the program featured on David Pogue's video blog. This Macintosh cataloging program allows you to create a virtual library of all your books, movies, music and video games. Then you can browse or search your collection, and keep track of books you lend to others. Best of all, you have all your books visually represented together in one place, regardless of where they are physically located.

This was the breakthrough for me. As a writer, I have over 1000 books on shelves all over the house. Along with the advantages of working at home comes the clutter of the office, ported into my own dining room. With Delicious Library, I could box up books I don't need very often and put them out of sight, but not out of mind.

The genius of Delicious Library is that you can quickly, automatically catalog entries for your media by scanning the bar code on each project. Delicious Library connects to Amazon.com to import each item's information and cover art.

Delicious Library worked really well with the optional Flic Wireless Laser Barcode Scanner--which is a necessity for creating a large library--but although this was a virtual project, I still had to deal with the question of how to organize, lug, and store over a thousand books. More on the reality of the project after the jump.… Read more

Google gives social networking another go

Though almost everything Google touches seems to turn to gold, there is one project that never quite became ubiquitous (at least here in the U.S.). Orkut may have found a following in Brazil and Asia, but I don't know anyone who uses the service. As Erick Schonfeld reports in TechCrunch, that may be about to change.

Known internally as Maka-Maka, the project will provide a means for all of Google's existing applications to work together within a social-networking landscape. Google is also building a series of APIs that will allow developers to integrate their own applications into the Google universe.

Walking to lunch...safely

My wife, Amy, has done a fairly good job of convincing our daughter to wear sunscreen, at least when the sun is shining and the temperatures are soaring.

Amy also does a fairly good job of convincing her to wear sunscreen on cloudy summer days, arguing that just because you can't see the sun directly doesn't mean the rays cannot reach you. … Read more

I'm not technophobic, I'm techno-saturated

How much information can one person absorb? I have reached the point where I feel like the kid in the classic Far Side cartoon who asks, "Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full."… Read more

Moms on Facebook?

Teens may be reacting with horror to the idea that Facebook is now open to everybody, so their parents may be showing up to butt into their social network.

I find myself on the other side of that equation, wondering "Why would I bother joining Facebook?" Fast Company recently discussed Facebook's growth, noting that "60 percent of the site's users are not in college networks, and the fastest-growing demographic is 25 and over." I had to laugh a bit at the broad swath covered by this statistic. Age 25 is a relatively recent college grad who is probably experiencing social networking as part of their peer experience.

As for those of use who are over age 30...well, let's say that no matter how wired we are, we did not exactly make a seamless transition from a yearbook to Facebook. … Read more

Making sense of the million-dollar iPhone lawsuit

When Apple announced that it was dropping the price of the iPhone by $200, some jumped for joy and immediately headed out to their nearest Apple store. For others--early adopters who had already purchased Apple's gadget--the price drop was nothing short of a slap in the face. Some were satisfied when Steve Jobs said that these loyal customers would be provided a $100 credit toward their next Apple purchase, but many felt the credit didn't suffice. One of these unhappy shoppers has filed a lawsuit against Apple to the tune of $1 million dollars.

It's unclear how the litigant, Dongmei Li, plans to justify a million dollars in damages over a $200 price drop, but Li's argument is that "the price reduction injured early purchasers like herself because they cannot resell the product for the same profit as those who bought the cell phone following the price cut," according to CNN's account. So I guess that comes out to $200 in actual losses and $999,800 in pain and suffering.

Verizon refuses to carry activist text messages

This news may hit CNET tomorrow as a New York Times cross-post, but I haven't seen anything about it yet so I wanted to be sure it was reported here.

According to the Times, Verizon, one of the nation's two largest wireless carriers, told NARAL that it would not allow the reproductive rights organization to send text messages through a program using Verizon's mobile network, on the grounds that Verizon has the right to block "controversial or unsavory" text messages.… Read more

Suit exposes flaws in Creative Commons

When Creative Commons first surfaced, it was heralded as a means to share media without being ensnared by the complications accompanying traditional copyright.

With six different licenses available, media creators were provided the opportunity to dial in the exact rights they wanted. Or at least that was the plan.

In reality, this bevy of choices has led to significant confusion and as CNN reports, 16 year-old Alison Chang recently learned her picture is being used for a Virgin Mobile ad campaign in Australia. She didn't give her permission, and it appears that the ads exploit confusion around Creative Commons.