Apple this week launched Ping, a new social network that runs within the iTunes software.

Facebook is apparently testing a new subscription feature that would allow users to receive alerts any time a specific friend takes certain actions on the social network.

It's been two weeks since Facebook users took to blogs and message boards to voice their concerns about Places, a location-based service that allows people to check in to gathering spots via the social network.

Four years ago, Nintendo's gesture-tracking Wii system proved the power of motion controls to extend the mainstream appeal of video games.

Panasonic's gone on a real tear here, releasing two new Toughbook models at once. While you grapple with the implications of such a thing, let's get down to details. The new 31 and 19 Series Toughbooks are 13.1-inch and 10.4-inch models, respectively, and as far as specs go, they both pack in a 160GB hard drive, up to 6GB of DDR3 SDRAM (with 2GB coming standard), and Intel QM57 Express chipset, and 1024 x 768 resolution displays. Both come with Windows 7 Professional pre-installed, and the Toughbook 31 has a 2.4GHz...

The CDMA-equipped Samsung Galaxy Tab has so far been nothing more than a sticker in a random snapshot and some whispers about Verizon, but Boy Genius Report is saying that the Tab's also bound for Sprint's network this November, on both its 3G and 4G (i.e. WiMAX) network -- à la the Galaxy S / Epic 4G. No word from Sammy HQ on this one, but it's worth noting that in our briefing, a Samsung rep mentioned that an American carrier could put Qik on...

Verizon's teaser site for the Droid 2 R2-D2 edition has been teasing a series of locked spokes, accessible by all as soon as anyone in the community solves the "puzzle." We don't know exactly what the magic code was, but regardless, thanks to David H. yesterday, we've got a new gallery of devices pics and -- oh, lookie -- a special edition Droid R2-D2 dock. We don't see room for a hyperdrive anywhere, nor wings, photon torpedos, or a cockpit for future Jedis to blast orbital space stations. So, let's just call...

Welcome to Engadget's Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we're here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. Today, we've got printers in our sights -- and you can head to the Back to School hub to see the rest of the product guides.

MeeGo's official user interface guidelines could easily end up determining whether the platform sinks or swims -- no one wants a phone whose UI looks like junk, after all. The minions at Nokia and Intel's little pet project have posted new OS shots as examples of how to properly implement the interface in third-party apps, and we've got to admit -- things are looking a lot cleaner, prettier, and generally more modern than the first round of pictures we saw back in June, thanks in part to a demonstration of the...

Boy, we've gone from rumor to hands-on experience in just a couple of days with this thing. Microsoft's November 9-bound Xbox 360 controller refresh couldn't escape the clutches of Joystiq, who have put together a neat photo gallery and video overview. That chrometastic new D-pad is clearly the headliner here, and the early feedback is that it works well -- it takes a bit of effort to transform from a flat button to the elevated four-way navigator you see above, but that's apparently a good thing as it means you'll never...

You may never have heard of auto electronics provider Rydeen Mobile, but it certainly knows of you -- or more specifically, your desire to obtain a slick new tablet PC -- and has thus created an 7-inch Android tablet that integrates the dedicated map functionality of its GPS machines. The "gPad" GCOM701 won't be a terribly high-end device, mind you, with an 800MHz ARMADA 166 SOC, 256MB of RAM, bring-your-own-microSD-storage and what we're led to believe is a resistive touchscreen, but it sounds like at least Rydeen isn't being stingy on the...

A New Jersey Transit spokesperson has announced that its seeking a company to install WiFi on its rail lines and at its train stations. The installation would make New Jersey one of the few major transit systems in the country to have WiFi on its 165 stations and 12 lines. The spokesperson also said they hope to get the installation under way quickly, and to have the hotspots available to riders by next year.

New Jersey transit looks to add WiFi to its rail lines and stations, New Yorkers to pretend...

No surprise that iHome is first out of the gate with a speaker dock that's compatible with Apple's newly-open AirPlay music streaming system, but unfortunately the teaser page is maddeningly light on details -- all we know is that it'll have a rechargeable battery and be available for the holidays. We're actually pretty stoked for AirPlay gear -- the idea of setting up a quick mix-and-match whole-home audio system that can stream lossless audio straight from iTunes seems awfully hard to resist -- so we're eager to hear more about this...

There are no hard and fast rules in the gadget game, but there is one bit of wisdom we generally stand by: everything benefits by being ruggedized. Sure, we know this speaks to a deep-seated need to smash things, drown things, run 'em over in a truck or shoot them -- and we're not making any excuses. Housed in vandal resistant stainless steel, the Stealth KYBX-400-DT-BL-TB-USB keyboard feature an optical trackball mouse, and NVIS-compliant red adjustable backlighting (just the thing for when you dig out the night vision goggles). If that weren't...

Rory Cellan-Jones tries out 3D video equipment and looks at the latest ultra thin and bright OLED TVs.

Sony has won a permanent ban in Australia of a hack for its PS3, but the code behind it has been released for free on the web.

Ian Hardy discovers how top researchers and companies are using today's devices and data to make the world a more interesting place

How the tech savvy help victims cope in a crisis via the web

Samsung's Galaxy Tab and Toshiba's Folio 100 are amongst the gadgets showcased at the world's largest consumer electronics fair in Berlin.

Toshiba’s UK business manager says its Foilo 100 tablet PC complements trends in media usage.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab and Toshiba's Folio 100 are among rivals unveiled at the Berlin gadget exhibition.

The Royal Mail launches the world's first "intelligent" stamp, the first to work with image recognition technology.

Tablet computers to rival Apple's iPad are creating a stir as one of Europe's largest technology shows, the IFA, gets under way in Berlin.

Dell withdraws its bid for 3Par after rival Hewlett-Packard raises its offer for the data storage company to $2.1bn.

A potentially revolutionary circuit component, once a laboratory curiosity, is to be mass-produced for the first time.

The global disparity in access to broadband around the world and the cost of a connection is revealed by UN figures.

Samsung has become the latest manufacturer to enter into the tablet computer market with its Galaxy Tab.

US net users are being asked for their opinions about what ISPs should be allowed to do with web traffic flowing through their networks.

Apple launches a music-based social network called Ping as part of its latest upgrade to the iTunes music software.

Relax this Labor Day Weekend in style with a 60" Sharp LCD HDTV, a Roku HD Netflix Player, and a free "Man Day" T-Shirt. Don't you just love long weekends? Rumor: Galaxy Tab Might Also Be On Sprint As 4G and 3G Device [Rumor]

That's what he said to designer Joshua Kopac when he told him that the

Apple has always sucked at the internet. With Ping and the new Apple TV, Apple sucks a little bit less at it. But Apple could be good at it. Apple's New Patent Barrage [Apple]

iOS 4.0 was so slow on our 3G, we promptly downgraded after updating. Earlier this...

Let the grand effort to bring wireless music to every room in your house...

The consumer advocacy group's anti-Google commercial seems to alarmist rather than raising privacy awareness.

Considering the Magic Mouse's ( Macworld rated 3.5 out of 5 mice ) futuristic, gesture-controlled appeal, replacing its dead AA batteries with new ones might...

A clever spammer found a glitch in Facebook's photo upload service that allowed him to spam thousands of users.

Since Facebook has yet to release a native iPad app--or give any real indication that one is in the works--third parties have capitalized on the opportunity to...

Hewlett-Packard swooped in with the better bid to overtake Dell and win 3Par, so now we can all sit back and wait for the next acquisition battle to roll around...

A Massachusetts high school is using specialized software for reporting bullying incidents after a student's suicide.

Twitter now has more than 145 million registered users and many of them still use Twitter's under-whelming Website as a primary access point.

Toshiba is the latest to recall laptops that pose a fire hazard or risk of injury--highlighting the growing concern of excessive heat generated from cramming more processing power into smaller portable computers.


Nigerian Advance-fee Scammer Gets 12 Years

A widely used program for Web spidering can be hijacked for malicious purposes.

crimeandpunishment writes "It was the big deal Dell wanted in a big way. But now that it has lost out to Hewlett-Packard in the bidding war it started for 3Par, where does Dell go in its effort to diversify its business and move into the higher-profit area of selling technology to other companies? The company faces significant challenges, largely due to its lower-end focus, and because many of its competitors beat Dell into branching out. One analyst says, 'People see [Dell] as box-pushers'."

Read more of this...

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Consumer Watchdog is running a 540-square-foot video billboard advertisement in Times Square, New York that shows Google CEO Eric Schmidt as an ingratiating ice cream truck driver who knows everything about everyone and happily offers free ice cream in exchange for full body scans. The group says its goal is to push Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to create a Do Not Track Me list, similar to the Do Not Call list developed to prevent telemarketers from aggressively calling consumers. 'Do you want Google or any other online company looking over...

jamie writes "A grassroots campaign has begun to get Stephen Colbert to hold a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to counter Glenn Beck's recent 'Restoring Honor' event. The would-be rally has been dubbed 'Restoring Truthiness' and was inspired by a recent post on Reddit, where a young woman wondered if the only way to point out the absurdity of the Tea Party's rally would be if Colbert mirrored it with his own Colbert Nation.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "'Always bet on Duke.' It seems he was right about himself, at least. The longest, most storied in-development game in history seems like it's finally going to be released by Gearbox Software sometime within the next year. 'According to Pitchford, Gearbox began finishing Duke Nukem Forever in late 2009. "Clearly the game hadn't been finished at 3D Realms but a lot of content had been created," he says. "The approach and investment and process at 3D Realms didn't quite make it, and it cracked at the end. With Gearbox Software we brought all those pieces together....

Jake writes with this excerpt from Ars: "Microsoft is warning about a new piece of malware, Rogue:MSIL/Zeven, that auto-detects a user's browser and then imitates the relevant malware warning pages from Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome. The fake warning pages are very similar to the real thing; you have to look closely to realize they aren't the real thing. The ploy is a basic social engineering scheme, but in this case the malware authors are relying on the user's trust in their browser, a tactic that hasn't been seen before. Beyond the warning pages, the actual malware looks like the...

waderoush writes "On top of all the other features that it has crammed into iTunes, Apple this week added Ping, a Facebook-like social network for music discovery. It's all part of the company's plan to dominate the world of consumer media, but Xconomy argues that this time, Apple may have gone a bridge too far. iTunes, nearing its tenth birthday, started out merely as a program for ripping CDs, and has grown increasingly creaky and impenetrable as Apple has added more and more cruft, the article argues. The company won't have a stable base for its new media empire until...

Lucas123 writes "After a storage area network in a data center run by Northrop Grumman went down last week, crippling 26 state agencies' websites — some for more than a week — Northrop Grumman has now apologized to Virginia, saying it will learn from its mistakes in order to recover systems faster in the future. Northrop's $2.6 billion service contract with Virginia's government has come under harsh criticism in the past for service outages, along with project delays and cost overruns."

Read more of this story at...

Dangerous_Minds writes "Drew Wilson has been following HADOPI (France's three strikes law) a lot lately, and the latest developments are that the French ISPs and the French government are edging closer to a full-on war over compensation. The French government apparently requested that ISPs send an invoice of the bills after a certain period of time, but the French ISPs don't feel this is good enough — probably because of worries that the compensation the government will ultimately provide won't be enough. The ISPs are demanding adequate compensation, and if the government doesn't give it to them, they simply will...

In May we discussed news that producers of the film The Hurt Locker filed a lawsuit against 5,000 John Does, known only by their IP addresses at the time, for sharing the movie over peer-to-peer sites. Now, reader suraj.sun notes that subpoenas for the lawsuit are finally going out. "Qwest Communications on Monday notified a customer in Denver that the Internet service provider has received a subpoena from lawyers representing Voltage Pictures, the production company that made The Hurt Locker. ... In legal documents, Voltage Pictures has blamed the movie's relatively poor domestic performance on illegal file sharing. As of...

neo12 writes with news that Hewlett-Packard is teaming with Hynix Semiconductor, the world's second-largest producer of memory chips, to mass produce memristors for the first time. Quoting the BBC: "HP says the first memristors should be widely available in about three years. The devices started as a theoretical prediction in 1971 but HP's demonstration and publication of a real working device has put them on a possible roadmap to replace memory chips or even hard drives. ... Steve Furber, professor of computer engineering at the University of Manchester, explained that the potential benefits lie in the fact that memristors are...

Ole Miss quarterback Jeremiah Masoli, who was told he wouldn't be eligibile until the 2011 season earlier this week, has been cleared to play immediately, a school source told ESPN's Joe Schad.

Kim Clijsters beat Petra Kvitova and Hurricane Earl with a quick victory at the U.S. Open.

Nyjer Morgan's wild week has landed him an eight-game suspension, one of nine punishments handed out Friday by Major League Baseball following a brawl between Washington Nationals and Florida Marlins.

The NCAA has declared Alabama defensive end Marcell Dareus ineligible for two games for accepting improper benefits.

Twelve players from North Carolina won't play in the 18th-ranked Tar Heels' opener against No. 21 LSU in Atlanta on Saturday amid an ongoing NCAA investigation.

The New Jersey Devils' revised 15-year, $100 million offer to star forward Ilya Kovalchuk will be approved by the league as part of a bigger agreement between the NHL and the NHLPA, a league source told ESPN The Magazine's E.J. Hradek.

Ben Roethlisberger's suspension cut from six to four games by the NFL.

Broncos running back LenDale White tore his Achilles tendon Thursday night and will miss the regular season, a team source told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter on Friday.

The NFL has fined Lions rookie defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh $7,500 for slamming down Browns quarterback Jake Delhomme last week during a preseason game.

Floyd Mayweather Jr., who has steadfastly refused to answer questions about the most recent round of failed negotiations for a fight with Manny Pacquiao, has unleashed a racist and homophobic rant against the Filipino star.

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A first look at iOS 4.1 Gold Master, the latest release of Apple's mobile operating system due out next week. A developer sent me a copy and I have it installed on my iPhone 4. Major new features are the HDR photo mode and Game Center.

As we go backstage at the IndyCar Grand Prix of Sonoma, we ponder what's more important to fans -- the drivers' skill, or the cars' technology?

While winding down from Wednesday’s iPod announcements, Apple CEO Steve Jobs appears to have taken some time to respond to an e-mail criticizing the new look of the iTunes icon.

Joe Sylvester wants to set a new record for longest jump by a monster truck. Clearly he's still got some work to do.

In addition to the usual cadre of satellites, NASA is using a small fleet of unmanned aircraft into, over and around the hurricane as it tracks north from the Caribbean. While flying into a hurricane is nothing new, Earl is the first hurricane that NASA has observed using their unmanned...

Wired.com contributor Jeremy Hart is driving around the world in a Ford Fiesta. Along the way, he'll be testing gadgets from some of the most extreme — and amazing — locations.

EA Sports, publisher of the Madden NFL videogame franchise, has taken its latest game iteration, Madden NFL 11, and run through the upcoming 2010 NFL season, offering at least a simulated insight into who’ll be celebrating in Arlington, Texas, after Super Bowl XLV.

Six Apart is shutting down its Vox blogging service. Users have until Sept. 30 to export their data to another free blog publishing service like Six Apart's TypePad. After that, Vox will be gone.

This morning, the Smithsonian National Zoo launched a live webcam of the zoo's four new baby African lion cubs and their mother. The cubs were born during the late evening and early morning between Aug. 30 and 31 and will remain inside until late fall.

This week's episode of the Gadget Lab podcast is heavy on fruits. High on vitamin A, Dylan Tweney gushes over the pluot, a plum-apricot hybrid, while Brian X. Chen dishes out this week's announcements of brand new Apple gear. They also share our impressions of Samsung's iPad rival, the 7-inch...