Technknowledge

Forget those compact fluorescent bulbs, or even fancy LED lighting. Scientists in Sweden and the USA say they have developed lighting panels using the wonder material graphene, which one day could make the basic lamp redundant.

The material can be fashioned into large energy efficient flexible sheets called LECs (light emitting electromechanical cells) that can cover an entire wall or ceiling, filling the room with an adjustable and even source of light. We've seen how OLED technology promises a similar approach to lighting, but the scientists say the graphene panels are much cheaper to produce, and don't contain the metal alloy indium tin oxide that makes OLED panels tricky to recycle.

No word on how long we'll need to wait before you can buy LEC panels at your local hardware store.

ScienceDaily.com, via Treehugger.com

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Want to impress your Super Bowl visitors this weekend with more than 7-layer dip and mini-sandwiches? Have some extra time on your hands? Happen to have 66 feet of salvaged particle board sitting around?

Well, even if you don't meet all of those requirements, this is still a pretty neat project. Roommates Jandra, Priya, and Ruella cobbled together their very own apartment photo booth for pretty cheap, though they got a little help and used their heads to keep the price down. Still, none of it is stuff you couldn't find at a hardware store or IKEA.

Check out the full list of instructions here.

Via Apartment Therapy

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Ah, children: those lovable balls of built-up energy. If only there was a way to harness that force? That's exactly what designers Aaron Tsui, Irina Kozlovskaya, Jasen Mehta and Sergio Silva had in mind when they came up with "Rocco, the energy pal."

Rocco is a rocking horse that, when rocked, charges up its flashlight ears. These ears can then be used as a regular old flashlight, or — appropriate for kids — as a nightlight. It's a great idea, but, like all things designed for kids, I could imagine it backfiring. You're sleeping, say, while your little terror is up too late with way too much energy. What happens next? One of the runts, now armed with a fully-charged flashlight, barges into your room and wakes you up.

Still, let's just imagine we go the nightlight route instead, and Rocco's power is something used only for good.

Rocco is one of the entries in the Greener Gadgets Competition in NYC.

Rocco, via Inhabitots

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Yelp's first foray on Google's Android phones wasn't much to look at.

The initial feature set of Yelp's business review app for Android, which debuted December 7, was minimalist. It contained enough features--read-only access to Yelp.com, click-to-call, and a hyperlink to get directions from the browser or Google Maps--to avoid a user riot, but one would hardly call it the answer to Yelp's iPhone app.

On Tuesday, Yelp is making good on its promise to quickly pad the app's features. Version 1.2, an update available through the Android Market app on your smartphone, now lets you upload pictures from your Android phone to Yelp's site.

If you're meeting someone at a restaurant, bar, or museum, you can now share Yelp's business listing with others over SMS, e-mail, Facebook, and other third-party apps you may have installed on your phone, like a Twitter service. As a third addition, you're also free to sign in to your Yelp profile from the smartphone.

These changes may seem like small potatoes at first--you still can't add your own rating, write tips, or review a place from the phone--but they reverse two of our complaints. Yelp tells us we should expect to see more interactive features in early 2010, like drafting a review for later publishing, and bookmarking a business.
Originally posted at Android Atlas

Earlier this week I wrote a post about how I didn't like that I couldn't alter the Facebook Connect privacy settings for updates from Foursquare, an iPhone app that shares my location through a GPS-enabled city directory. It didn't make sense to me that Facebook Connect information was automatically visible to anyone who had access to posts on my "wall," whereas privacy settings on a third-party app embedded directly on my profile were much more fine-tuned, allowing me to restrict them to specific subsets of friends.

I've been e-mailing back and forth with Facebook, and I've gotten some clarification on how the process works. Privacy controls for embedded apps aren't as simple as I'd thought. I can opt to block the "box" for a third-party game like Mafia Wars or Farmville, as the privacy controls indicate, but activity from those apps--i.e. if I just picked up a new weapon in Mafia Wars--will still show up to anyone who can see what I post on my Facebook wall, like status messages and new friend connections. (You can, however, block individual Platform apps from posting to your wall in the first place.)

"Activity from apps and Connect sites are grouped with the activity you take on Facebook (which then appears on your wall), all of which can be blocked from a select group of people using publisher privacy," Facebook representative Malorie Lucich explained to me via e-mail. "So, for example, if you don't want your boss seeing your Mafia Wars activity and your usual Facebook activity, you can block her/him from viewing your wall."

Everything on the wall, therefore, is treated as a single unit. Except not quite: With status messages and content posted directly through Facebook, as part of Facebook's new privacy controls there's now a drop-down menu that lets me choose exactly who can see that message--the public Web, friends of friends, only my friends or "networks," or stratified groups of friends. That's great, because I can post a status message asking for Christmas present suggestions, and opt to block it from my family or other potential gift recipients.

For third-party apps, I'm not so lucky. I'm sure I wasn't the only Facebook member who figured that blocking the Mafia Wars "box" from a certain list of friends would also block activity updates on my wall. According to Facebook, it doesn't.

I'm also sure I'm not the only one who would like to use Facebook Connect with a service like Foursquare that isn't normally public; I liked some of the comments that would appear on "check-ins" pushed to Facebook (when I checked into a restaurant, for example, a few people responded with their favorite menu items, and another asked about the variety of beers on tap). But wanting to keep them restricted to half or a third or a quarter of my Facebook friends is not always just a matter of privacy--the majority of my Facebook friends have no interest whatsoever in which coffee shop I just checked into on the likes of Foursquare or Gowalla, and out of courtesy I don't want to plaster it all over everyone's news feeds. I'd like Foursquare's implementation of Facebook Connect, theoretically, to only be visible to close friends and people who live nearby.

Facebook is, and should be, proud of the wealth of data that gets shared on members' "walls." On Friday morning, I used my status message to solicit tips for an upcoming tropical getaway, and got some terrific suggestions from people in my "social graph" whom I hadn't talked to in ages. This was a great example of something that I'd like to open up to my entire Facebook network. But when it comes to information that's local, sensitive, or otherwise private, I'd like to be able to restrict it. As Facebook Connect grows bigger and more diverse, these instances are likely to come up more often.

So if I had to come up with a most-wished-for new Facebook feature, this might have to be it.
Originally posted at The Social

Google is turning its sights squarely on the local ad market, with plans to promote its local business listings in storefronts around the U.S.

Stickers bearing Google's logo and a QR code have been distributed to 100,000 of the most popular businesses in Google's Local Business Center database, and starting this week consumers will be able to use code-scanning applications on modern phones to look up the Google listing for that particular restaurant, store, or dry cleaner. The stickers will be prominently displayed in store windows of participating businesses, and represent a shot across the bow of companies like Yelp which offer similar branded services.

Google's Local Business Center allows pizza joints and dress boutiques to place listings on Google Maps with basic information such as hours and location and also get access to data about how Web searchers are hitting their profile, such as the ZIP code from which searches originate, said Michaela Prescott, head of geomarketing at Google. Over 1 million businesses in the U.S. have listed themselves with Google, she said.

Much has been made of Google's interest in courting the big-name advertisers of the corporate world, but the company is also very interested in the mom-and-pop stores of the world, which fit nicely into its strategy of delivering targeted advertising to specific niches. Later this week, Google plans to hold an event in San Francisco for small business owners in hopes of educating them about the services that are available on Google.

The company analyzed which local listings were generating the most activity, and declared those to be "Favorite Places on Google," and therefore eligible for the sticker promotion. Shoppers who happen by the store can scan the sticker to bring up the business' Place Page with listing information as well as reviews, photos, and links to sites with more information about the business.

Prescott said those links will include reviews hosted by Yelp, perhaps the most well-known local listing, and reviews on the Internet. Yelp also distributes window decals to local businesses that reassure visitors that "People love us on Yelp!" (whether that's true) in hopes to promoting the site as the place to look for local reviews.

Google has taken the concept a step further, however, in the use of the QR codes to link to the Place Pages. Owners of smartphones with a camera (Google specifically said that iPhone, Android, and most BlackBerry owners would be supported, but others may work as well) and QR code scanning applications will be able to launch this information in their phone's browser.

So why is Google getting into the decal business? "I think it comes down to (the fact that) mobile is fundamentally different; it is about connecting the person to the physical place," Prescott said.

Obviously, lots of people search for local information on Google, but this program gives Google a way to capture eyeballs that aren't sitting in front of a desktop or laptop PC, promoting its mobile sites and therefore driving additional traffic to ad-supported sites. Expanding its local presence also allows Google to sell even-more targeted ads to other companies, since they know they'll be advertising to people in a position to take advantage of their services.

Google has been ramping up its local presence for quite some time, but seems to be experimenting with different strategies these days. It recently suspended a trial of a program called "Local Listing Ads," which was designed as a simple entry into Google that didn't require the business to manage a regular AdWords campaign.

And it also recently introduced a service that lets businesses put coupons in the Local Business Center that smartphone owners can redeem from the screen of their device, rather than having to clip them out of a newspaper circular.

In what could be a blow to its image, Microsoft's main Bing search site suffered through an outage on Thursday evening.

Visitors to Bing.com were getting a browser error message rather than a search bar. Service was down for at least 45 minutes before being restored around 7:10 p.m. PST.

Microsoft acknowledged the issues it on its Twitter feed and said it was looking into the matter. It later offered the following explanation, posted to a Bing blog by Satya Nadella, senior vice president of the Online Services division:

The cause of the outage was a configuration change during some internal testing that had unfortunate and unintended consequences.

As soon as the issue was detected, the change was rolled back, which caused the site to return to normal behavior. Unfortunately the detection and rollback took about half an hour, and during that time users were unable to use bing.com.

We strive to maintain a high standard of operational excellence at Bing. We are running a post mortem to find out how our software and processes need to be improved to prevent anything like this from happening again.

A Microsoft representative did not immediately return an e-mail seeking comment.

The outage comes after a big week in which Microsoft announced new search abilities for Bing as well as improved mapping.

Updated at 7:13 p.m. PST to reflect site's return. Updated at 11:13 p.m. PST with Microsoft statement.

In mid-September, Opera surprised us with a redesigned Opera Mini beta browser for Java phones, including BlackBerry. It had tabbed browsing, a first for Opera Mini, and Speed Dial, a carryover interface from Opera desktop browser (Windows|Mac) that you encounter each time you start the browser or open a new tab. Two things it didn't have: a download manager and Opera Link, the account-based tool that syncs bookmarks, Speed Dial options, and browsing history among your Opera browsers. With it, Web surfers can quickly get to favorite sites on their desktops, laptops, and smartphones.

On Wednesday, both Opera Mini 5 beta and the similar Opera Mobile 10 beta that followed it for Symbian Series 60 and Windows phones get an update that includes both Opera Link and a download manager.

These new beta builds aren't the first adjustment Opera has made to the redesigned betas. A previous tweak partially resolved a problem where Opera's mobile browsers weren't inputting the font style needed to render several Asian languages.

Plenty of other known issues still exist, including the browsers' tendency on Symbian phones to pop open a virtual onscreen keyboard when you flip the phone into landscape mode and start typing away on the phone's physical QWERTY, and the lack of support for non-touch-screen Windows phones. Opera provides a full list of known issues for Opera Mobile 10 beta here. I've also noticed that Opera Mini 5 beta rarely loads a page I've linked to from some other application on the BlackBerry I've been testing with. You may encounter the occasional bug as well in this not-quite-set beta release. If you find others, share them in the comments.

If you're curious how Opera Mini 5 beta and Opera Mobile 10 beta look and work, you can cash in on some instant gratification with this video. If you don't have a Symbian phone, don't let the fact that Opera is modeled on one in this video bother you--the builds are exceedingly similar for Java, Symbian, and Windows phones.

You can try the free cell phone browsers for yourself by pointing the mobile browser on your Java-based cell phone to http://www.opera.com/mini/next/. Download Opera Mobile 10 beta 2 for Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 phones by navigating to http://m.opera.com/next/.

Digg on Wednesday introduced a small change to its developer API that could have a big effect on the need to visit Digg.com.

The company is now allowing third parties extended write access to the site, which will give users the option to Digg and bury both stories and comments from outside applications. Short of allowing users to submit and comment on stories, these new changes will provide much of the same experience as visiting Digg.com with whatever interface third-party developers have created.

Along those same lines, the company has also launched a reference page for what developers can now create called "DiggLite." This is a stripped-down version of Digg.com's home page that includes all features developers can implement in their own tools. But it's missing many of the bells and whistles found on Digg proper. The company is also planning to update its Firefox toolbar add-on to let users Digg any page they are on without having to visit Digg itself.

DiggLite is a less featured version of Digg that makes use of Digg's new writeable API calls. It also features no advertising.
(Credit: CNET)

Prior to Wednesday's tweak, Digg had updated its API back in mid-June, giving developers access to its overhauled search engine, as well as tweaking its usage terms to allow for commercial applications. It also allowed third-party apps to view some user data, including stories any particular user had favorited, which paved the way for third-party recommendation tools.

The move to give developers more of Digg.com's features is an exciting one for developers, but a bit odd given Digg's current business model of pushing advertising on its users. In recent years, the site has filled in with more ads, including a recently-released (and notably experimental) advertising model that has users control how long certain ads get to stay on the site by voting on them as if they were regular news stories. There was even a campaign from McDonalds a few weeks ago that placed certain upcoming stories within the context of being as fresh as a breakfast sandwich.

So it does seem a little odd the company would be willing to risk losing a few users to third-party Digg front-ends that offer up a (now richer) Digg experience. This could become even more muddled when the company extends its API to allow users to submit new stories and comments--something it hinted at in Wednesday's blog post. Then again, between this and the launch of its real-time Trends experiment, it could just be a sign that Digg's real-time home page overhaul is ready to roll.
Originally posted at Web Crawler

When we saw the Samsung Messager earlier this year, we thought that it was an adequate messaging phone, but we were disappointed it didn't offer much else. Fortunately, Samsung took a little more care in designing the new Samsung Messager II. With a more appealing design and a stronger feature set, the Messager II, aka the SCH-r560, offers messaging and multimedia in one easy-to-use package. Call quality is decent and the photo quality is good. The Messager is available with both Metro PCS and Cricket Communications. We tested the former, but with the exception of some performance differences, the two handsets will be largely similar. Also, as neither carrier requires contracts you will have to shell out more for the Messager II than you would at a standard carrier. At MetroPCS the price is $149.99, while Cricket charges $129.

Design
The original Messager wasn't unattractive, but we couldn't get over the fact that we thought it looked like a toy. In contrast, the Messager II is larger with a sturdier feel. Its profile and blue-gray color scheme aren't particularly striking, but for what it lacks in pizazz, it makes up for with a bright display and well-designed controls.

The 2.2-inch display supports 262,000 colors. Its graphics and photos are more than presentable, and its colors are bright. It lacks the impact of the some of the higher-resolution displays, but it's a good match on a phone of this caliber. The menus are easy to use as well, and we like the shortcut icons on the standby display. However, we'd prefer to have more controls over which icons we'd like to appear. Also, though you can change the backlighting time, no other display options are customizable.

The Messager II's nifty navigation array is one of its biggest draws. The circular control functions as both a four-way toggle and a scrollwheel. Indeed, we could move our finger all the way around when navigating menus. The control in the middle of the toggle opens the menu when in standby mode and functions as an OK key when inside menu pages. Its remaining controls are spacious and tactile. You'll also find two soft keys, a speakerphone shortcut, a clear button, and the Talk and End/power controls.

Below the phone controls is the standard numeric keypad. The keys are flush, but you have enough space for dialing and even texting. The individual buttons are also separated from each other, though the numbers on the keys are somewhat small. Users with visual impairments should test the phone before buying it.

A volume rocker and the microSD card slot are on the left spine, while the camera shutter and the Micro-USB port are on the right spine. The latter is used to connect a USB data cable and the charger. On the top of the phone is the 3.5-millimeter headset jack--that's a nice touch on a music phone. The camera lens and speaker sit on the back of the handset. The Messager II lacks a flash and a self-portrait mirror.

The Messager II has a spacious, comfortable keyboard.

To find the Messager II's keyboard, just tip the phone to the left and slide up the top face. The slider mechanism is neither too stiff nor too loose--you can open and close it with one hand and it clicks into place at either end. The display will rotate to landscape mode when opening the keyboard, though the Messager II doesn't have an accelerometer. The keys are flat, but the keyboard's spacious layout makes it easy to use and comfortable. What's more, the top row of keys is not too close to the bottom of the sliding face.

The large space bar is conveniently positioned in the center of the bottom row. On its left side, you'll find the messaging shortcut and the shift and function keys. On its right side are the arrow directional buttons. As on many messaging handsets, the numbers share space with letters and symbols. We didn't like that the soft keys are at either end of the bottom row. Though they're a different color, they are a long way from the corresponding commands on the display. Also, though the buttons are backlit, they numbers are difficult to see on the sliver keys.

Features
The Messager II has a 1,000-contact phone book with room in each entry for five phone numbers and an e-mail address. You can save callers to groups and you can pair them with a photos and one of 13 polyphonic ringtones. Other essentials include a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, an alarm clock, a calculator, a calendar, a tip calculator, a voice recorder, a world clock, a stop watch, a unit and currency converter, and a notepad.