Michael Santo
Recent posts
Are you a university professor having trouble keeping track of which students are attending your classes and which ones are blowing them off? Well, Japan's Aoyama Gakuin University has a plan for you, using one of the most desired electronic devices around to sucker, we mean, give students an incentive to attend. The plus of joining the project:...
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According to a report in the New York Times, Google has its sights trained squarely on the e-book market. This move would pit Google against Amazon.com, which has a big head start in the e-book market with the versions it sells for its Kindle device (pictured below). The report stated that Google had discussions with publishers at the annual...
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Waiting for official, non-TechNet, non-MSDN access to Windows Vista SP2? Well, you can now download it. Remember, this is a combined service pack for both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Service Pack 1 is a prerequisite for installing Service Pack 2. Highlights of the changes, many of which have already been delivered separately, include:...
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Wikipedia has decided enough is enough. After too many self-serving edits by the Church of Scientology, Wikipedia has decided to ban edits from IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates.Here's a word for the church though: proxy server. At any rate, regardless of whether or not the Church manages to get...
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A high-definition version of the Zune, Zune HD, which we wrote about earlier when images and specs were leaked to the Web, has been finally confirmed by Microsoft. For more on our earlier speculation, check out our own Daniel Beguns' conversation with TechVi's Randall Bennett and Macworld's David Chartier here. As far as official word from...
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Is this the business plan that Twitter has been searching for? At the very least, it's something. On Monday, Twitter, Reveille Productions and Brillstein Entertainment Partners announced a plan to develop an unscripted (i.e. reality) series based on the service. Few details about the series have emerged. We know that it’s going to be a “competitive...
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Colony collapse disorder (or CCD) is a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or European honey bee colony abruptly disappear. One might think the employees of this video game store in New York City were wishing CCD would happen outside their store. It was a GameStop store in New York City near Union Square. Workers were trapped inside...
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What appears to be an official Sprint Palm Pre "Launch Guide" has now apparently been leaked in full. The first appearance of the document was at the Precentral forums, by a poster who said "The rep sent me a Pre Launch Guide intended for Sprint internal use only." The 23-page document has a lot of what can only be called "advertising," but...
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The Pope has embraced social networking. No, you can't poke him or send him a private message, but the Vatican has indeed launched a Facebook page for the Pope as well as a Facebook application called "The Pope meets you on Facebook" which will allow users to "receive the messages of Pope Benedict XVI through the most important social network...
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Microsoft's Laptop Hunters ads are making an impact on the perception of Windows computers vs. Apple computers in terms of value, according to BrandIndex. That's been the key point in Microsoft's ads, that there are more choices and lower prices among Windows PCs. The data from BrandIndex shows that Apple's value score among the key 18 - 34...
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Video:ASUS VH236 LCD Monitor @ PhoronixGalaxy GeForce 9600 GT LP Review - Low Power, Low Profile @ PC PerspectiveMotherboards and Chipsets:Asus M4A79T Deluxe AM3 790FX Motherboard Review @ FuturelooksMemory and Storage:6GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR3 Memory Kit Review @ Club OverclockerKingston SSDNow M Series 80GB SATA 2.5 Bundle Kit @...
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Leveraging its Google Translate service, Gmail Labs has added yet another feature: automatic translation of incoming email. You can turn the feature on by going to Settings, Labs, Message Translation. Remember, this is a Labs feature, so consider it "beta." Unfortunately, the only messages we have readily on hand that are not in English...
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Although it's still having trouble getting people to move from Office 2003 to Office 2007, Microsoft said a week ago at the TechEd conference that it would launch an invitation-only Technical Preview Program of the new Office in July. Never let that sort of thing stop BitTorrent downloaders, apparently. Leaked copies of the Technical Preview...
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Google's Street View product has gain notoriety worldwide, but not always for good reasons. People at some locations have even chased the Street View car out of the area. But in Japan, due to privacy reasons (and short fences), critics have risen to the fore. Yes, Google was using cameras which were just a tad bit too tall for Japanese fences,...
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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that contrary to reports, Best Buy will not have retail exclusivity on the Palm Pre as many have reported. Instead, Wal-Mart will also sell the expected-to-be-hot new device. The tidbit of information comes from a story that focuses on Wal-Mart's plans to fill the gap left by the closure of Circuit City,...
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Video:PowerColor Radeon HD 4670 Review @ Digital Trends20.1" Soyo MT-NI-DYLM2086 DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor w/Speakers @ TestFreaksMotherboards and Chipsets:ASUS Maximus II Gene Intel P45 mATX Motherboard Review @ ThinkComputers.orgASRock M3A790GXH/128M AMD 790GX+SB750 Review @ OCWProcessors:AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Review @ Hardcoreware.netMemory...
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Doesn't anyone use a press release any longer? It was bad enough that press releases were being supplanted by blog posts, but now they are being replaced by tweets. Microsoft engineers announced on Thursday via Twitter that Windows Mobile 6.5 has been completed. Our assumption is that it has been released to manufacturing. It's done, and we...
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Video:Gigabyte GV-R477D5-512H-B Radeon HD 4770 Videocard Review @ PCSTATS.comASUS ENGTX260 Matrix GeForce GTX 260 @ BmRECS GeForce GTS 250 1GB Graphics Card @ TweaktownNvidia GeForce GTX 275: Worthy Rival to Radeon HD 4890 @ XbitLabsSparkle Calibre 9800 GTX+ Video Card Review @ TechwareLabsProcessors:Phenom II Processors and DDR3 Memory @...
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Video: Sapphire HD4850 Vapor-X 512MB Video Card Review @ Club Overclocker ATI RADEON HD 4890 1024MB @ iXBTMotherboards and Chipsets: DFI LanParty JR X58-T3H6 MicroATX LGA1366 Mainboard Review @ XbitLabs ASUS ROG Rampage II Gene X58 Micro ATX Motherboard Review @ FuturelooksProcessors: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHz 1333MHz FSB Processor Review...
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Fennec, or Firefox Mobile, has finally reached the magic Alpha milestone. Prior to now, it was only available for the Nokia N800 / N810, or you could use a pre-Alpha version on the HTC Touch Pro. It wasn't all that encouraging that the first pre-Alpha release had a showstopper bug.On Friday, Mozilla announced that the Windows Mobile version...
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Well, has it only been since October since the last high-profile recall of laptop batteries? Indeed it has. On Thursday, HP announced a recall of 70,000 laptop batteries due to overheating issues. In fact, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission's announcement, there are two reports of batteries that overheated and ruptured, resulting...
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Google's services outage today was apparently Google mucking with something on the backend, in a sort of "don't touch if it ain't broke" mistake. Admittedly, we're being snarky, as Google was working on something that definitely needs addressing, but it still made a major impact on systems around the world. It's the old "we are running out...
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