Al Gore Caught Speeding

Former Vice President Al Gore paid a $141 fine for speeding on a highway last month near Oregon's coast, a state police official said on Friday.

Gore, who carried Oregon in the 2000 presidential election, was driving in a rented car to visit family when he was issued a speeding ticket for going 75 miles (120 kph) per hour in a 55 mph (88 kph) zone on a highway between Portland and the Oregon coast, a popular summer destination.
"He was cooperative, polite and respectful," said Dale Rutledge, spokesman for the Oregon State Police.
Gore mailed in his check for the ticket, well ahead of the deadline for contesting it on Sept. 13, Rutledge said.
Source: Yahoo!

PluggedIn: HDTV 'Starter' Kit for PC Comes with Some Kinks

High-definition television can show the sweat beading on an athlete's brow, but the cost of all the necessary electronic equipment can get a shopper's own pulse racing.

Instead of dropping more than $1,000 for a new TV, set-top box and antenna to bring in the signals that dramatically improve TV picture quality, look not in the living room, but in the home office.

A $200 upgrade can turn a personal computer into a "starter" high-definition television.
The new product from ATI Technologies Inc. puts high-definition versions of "Law and Order," "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and other hit TV shows within the budgets of far more households.

Indeed, the Markham, Ontario, company bills its HDTV Wonder as "the home's first HDTV device," able not only to show HD-video, but also to record scheduled programs onto a hard drive.

Still, some experts say it may be better to start saving for the real thing.
"It's a tricycle with training wheels," said Gartner Inc. media analyst Laura Behrens.

Source: Yahoo!

Calif. Academy of Sciences Holds Tag Sale

The California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park held a one-of-a-kind yard sale Sunday, offering rock-bottom prices on everything from antique wooden incubators to six-foot-tall prehistoric bird replicas.

Early shoppers got rock bottom prices on everything from globes to maps to specimen jars.

"I wanted a stuffed polar bear," said Gordon Drake, of Redwood City, as he cruised the crowded shopping aisles with his girlfriend. He ended up with some wall art instead, as the stuffed life-sized creatures went fast.

Academy members who help fund the popular park attraction got an early 8 a.m. look at the goods before the general public was admitted two hours later.

Source: Yahoo!

Big Brother says: Buy this!

Well, Big Brother is about to move one step closer to making Hollywood fantasy a reality.

Meet the Human Locator. It's a new technology developed by Canadian ad agency Freeset Interactive that purports to detect when humans are near, track their movement, and then broadcast messages directed at them on a nearby screen.

The Human Locator is essentially a camera and computer that collects data on the number of people walking within a certain target area, the direction they're headed, and their speed.

Imagine, for instance, walking down the street and passing by a blank wall. Suddenly the image of a car appears. As you pass by, the image shifts as you move. A voice greets you with "hello!" As you start to move away, it says "don't go," as it launches into the latest marketing pitch.

Source: CNN

Laser mouse conquers new surfaces

The Swiss-American mouse king will announce an optical mouse Wednesday that uses an Agilent Technologies laser, rather than a light-emitting diode, to track its movements. Because the laser light used in the MX 1000 relies on a short wavelength, the MX 1000 mouse is approximately 20 times more sensitive to surface details than conventional optical mice, according to the company.

As a result, the mouse can accurately transmit information about its motions to the computer when traveling across shiny or slick surfaces. By contrast, traditional mice can be confounded by subtle surfaces such as highly polished wood; optical tracking images sent back to the computer do not readily indicate that the mouse has moved, nor do they accurately replicate the movements.

"With a laser, (the mouse) is able to get more surface structure detail," company spokesman Nathan Papadopulos said. The mouse also tracks better over rough surfaces than regular optical mice, he added.

Source: ZDnet

Gmail Creates Email Storage Competition

In the same way it rocked the Internet-search world, Google has caused a stir in the Web-mail arena, this time with its recent introduction of Gmail Beta. At the time of Google's announcement of its new online mail service, leading services such as Yahoo Mail and MSN Hotmail were offering free e-mail accounts with one or two megabytes of storage, while Gmail boasted a whopping one gigabyte of storage for free.

Not surprisingly, the competition took notice. Yahoo was the first to take action, upping the storage maximum for its free service to 100MB. Microsoft has said it will dole out roomy 250MB in-boxes for its free Hotmail service later this summer, but for now, you're still stuck with the minuscule 2MB max. Lycos and Netscape have yet to respond to the Gmail threat, keeping mum about their 5MB in-boxes.

Right now, the only way to get a Gmail beta account is to be invited. Gmail account users are provided with a certain amount of invites every so often. So far (during my first month as a user) I've recieved 6 invites that I can give out. While the method google uses to send invites to its users is not really known for sure, it is estimated that each account receives 6 invites per month. To quote from the Gmail help section:

As we make way for more accounts, we may periodically allow you to invite others to join Gmail. When we do so, you will see an invitation link in your inbox. If you do not see the invitation link, that means that we are unable to provide you with additional invitations at this time.

Source: Cnet

Archos ships video, audio, gaming handheld

Archos has begun shipping its Gmini400 personal multimedia device, taking the French company into the increasingly crowded mobile gaming market.

Pitched primarily as a portable media player, the 400 sports a 2.2in, 18-bit colour screen backed by 20GB of hard drive storage and a CompactFlash slot for content storage.

But with a five-way navigator control and the Mophun games engine, Archos is also aiming the 400 at the same well-to-do adult gamers the likes of Tapwave, Gizmondo and Nokia are also gunning for.

Source: The Register

eBay domain hijacker arrested

Police in Germany have arrested a 19 year-old from Helmstedt for hijacking the site of eBay Germany about a week ago. Visitors to eBay Germany were redirected to a site hosted by internet provider Intergenia AG. Initially, phishers were suspected of the domain hijack.
The boy admitted he requested a DNS (domain name server) transfer for several high-profile sites, including Google.com, Web.de, Amazon.com and eBay Germany. While most of these transfers were denied, somehow eBay slipped through. It remains unclear how the domain could have been transferred without the consent of the existing holder.

Source: The Register