Remember that whole “birther” movement that sprung up during the 2008 campaign and somehow managed to hang around even after an outpouring of facts confirmed that President Obama was actually born in the U.S.? Yeah, we’d forgotten about it, too. One U.S. Army doctor, though, hasn’t let it go, and now finds himself in hot water because of it.

Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin refused to show up to work at Fort Campbell, Kentucky on Monday, because he still has questions about Obama’s citizenship. Lakin, a doctor in the Army, instead reported to his old job at a Pentagon clinic before being immediately reassigned to Walter Reed Hospital, where he’ll await a military investigation to unfurl. In a video he posted to YouTube, the 18-year Army veteran defiantly spoke of his plans to disobey orders, which he considers to be illegal, including a recent one to go to Afghanistan for a second tour of duty.

Continue reading Army Doctor Questions Obama’s Citizenship, Takes His Campaign to YouTube

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Army Doctor Questions Obama’s Citizenship, Takes His Campaign to YouTube originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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From now on, Gmail users won’t have to go digging around their hard drives to manually attach files to e-mails, nor will they be forced to twiddle their thumbs while waiting for the attachments to upload. That’s because Google has introduced a new “drag and drop” attachment feature for those Gmail users who employ either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox 3.6. It means pretty much what it says: all you have to do is drag a photo or document into Gmail, drop it, and that’s it. Sounds simple, but, as Lifehacker reports, that’s what makes it so great — especially if your hard drive is as hopelessly disorganized as ours.

In conjunction with its Calendars system, Google has unveiled a slightly more complex but equally useful feature, effectively allowing users to automatically check each others’ availabilities without having to compare schedules. As long as you have access to another person’s Calendar, you can now click on a special invitation link under the subject line before you send an invite to an event, thereby checking to see when he or she might be available. Once a common space of free time is determined, a preview invitation will pop up within the message. After it’s sent off, the event will be automatically added to the Calendars of both sender and recipient. While event coordination may have just gotten easier, making excuses to get out of going to brunch hasn’t. [From: GmailBlog, via: Lifehacker]

Filed under: Google, Web

Gmail Adds Drag-and-Drop Attachments, Calendar Event Coordination originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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From now on, Gmail users won’t have to go digging around their hard drives to manually attach files to e-mails, nor will they be forced to twiddle their thumbs while waiting for the attachments to upload. That’s because Google has introduced a new “drag and drop” attachment feature for those Gmail users who employ either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox 3.6. It means pretty much what it says: all you have to do is drag a photo or document into Gmail, drop it, and that’s it. Sounds simple, but, as Lifehacker reports, that’s what makes it so great — especially if your hard drive is as hopelessly disorganized as ours.

In conjunction with its Calendars system, Google has unveiled a slightly more complex but equally useful feature, effectively allowing users to automatically check each others’ availabilities without having to compare schedules. As long as you have access to another person’s Calendar, you can now click on a special invitation link under the subject line before you send an invite to an event, thereby checking to see when he or she might be available. Once a common space of free time is determined, a preview invitation will pop up within the message. After it’s sent off, the event will be automatically added to the Calendars of both sender and recipient. While event coordination may have just gotten easier, making excuses to get out of going to brunch hasn’t. [From: GmailBlog, via: Lifehacker]

Filed under: Google, Web

Gmail Adds Drag-and-Drop Attachments, Calendar Event Coordination originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For this week’s round-up of the best in Internet-based Flash games, a casual gamer took the helm. In the interest of complete disclosure, the author has a weakness for cute animals, fun soundtracks, satisfying bouncy noises and a job well done. Our entries this week are neither mind-blowingly hard or incredibly fast-paced, but are rather relaxing, charming and craving-for-sushi-inducing games. From RPGs to battle reenactments, here are our top five favorite ways to waste time.

Continue reading Games on the Go: Our Next Round of our Fave Flash Games

Filed under: Video Games

Games on the Go: Our Next Round of our Fave Flash Games originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Highlights from this morning’s other big tech headlines….

• We’ve previously written about what could now be considered “antique” game consoles, along with their cartridges, fetching auction prices that put our yearly salaries to shame. Well, now some guy has sold a copy of a hard-to-find Atari game called ‘Air Raid’ for $31,600. Apparently the game, one of only thirteen known copies, kind of blows, which is why the cartridge is in such unused condition. [From: Technabob]
• The theater geeks among you may know of playwright Mike Daisey’s off-Broadway show about Steve Jobs that was scheduled for the stage next year, but Christmas has come early. A preview of ‘Notes Toward the Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs’ will hit the Ensemble Studio Theatre in NYC next week, due to the popular demand of… we don’t know who. Will the production be magical and revolutionary? Maybe after the next update. [From: Valleywag]
• Before USB 3.0 has really even had a chance of being implemented on any kind of significant scale, Intel’s Senior Fellow Kevin Kahn is already telling us that Light Peak connectivity is actually going to be the way of the future. Kahn said at a recent developer forum, “We’d… like to build the last cable you’ll ever need.” It’s not like we’ve never heard that before (SCSI, Firewire, ahem). [From: DVICE]
• Philly schools are going Big Brother on you! Harriton High School is facing a federal lawsuit in which parents claim that it surreptitiously captured thousands of images via the Web-cams on school-issued laptops. District officials say that they were tracking down 42 laptops that had gone missing, and that secretly activating the cams was simply a means to locate the culprits. At least one family isn’t buying that story. [From: HuffPo]
• People still use Ning? Well, apparently not, because the free social networking site is going all-premium-or-die, and even laid off 40-percent of its staff in an effort to cut costs. Where will all of those stranded social networkers go? Oh, yeah. Facebook. [From: TechCrunch]
• IBM is embracing transparency in an effort to stay green. The tech giant will now require its 28,000 worldwide suppliers to track their carbon footprints and set environmental impact goals. By imposing these strictures on their suppliers, IBM will be able to more accurately assess its ecological bottom line, and, hopefully, set the trend for other major manufacturers to do the same. [From: Treehugger]

Atari ‘Air Raid’ Game Sells for $31K, Steve Jobs Play Hits NYC Next Week originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For journalists, winning a Pulitzer Prize is the ultimate crowning achievement. For Apple, though, it’s still not enough to let an app past its App Store guard dogs.

Political cartoonist Mark Fiore made history this week by becoming the first exclusively Internet-based cartoonist or journalist to take home a Pulitzer Prize. Both the achievement and Fiore’s sense of satire, however, were apparently lost on Apple, which has rejected the cartoonist’s iPhone app on the grounds that it “ridicules public figures.” In December, the company sent Fiore an e-mail informing him of its decision to reject his ‘NewsToons’ app, which Apple interpreted as a clear violation of its iPhone Developer Program License Agreement. Attached to Apple’s e-mail were screenshot examples of particularly offensive illustrations, including Fiore’s rendering of the White House gate crashers, as well as images pertaining to torture and last fall’s Balloon Boy hoax.

Continue reading Apple Rejects Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist for ‘Ridiculing Public Figures’

Filed under: iPhone, Web

Apple Rejects Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist for ‘Ridiculing Public Figures’ originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to the BBC News, a Japanese virus is spreading across Winni, a popular file-sharing site. The trojan horse targets people who are downloading illegal copies of Hentai files, which are an explicit form of Japanese anime. Yes, cartoon-porn fans are being plagued by malware.

If you download an infected file, the virus prompts you to a game installation window on your PC and asks for your personal information. While this is happening, the virus, dubbed Kenzero, takes a screencap of your browser’s history. Once it has proof that you were illegally downloading files, the virus sends an e-mail or another pop-up that threatens legal action if you don’t pay $15 to “settle your violation of copyright law.” In essence, the virus blackmails porn addicts into forking over some cash.

Continue reading Kenzero Virus Blackmails Those Who Illegally Download Anime Porn

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Kenzero Virus Blackmails Those Who Illegally Download Anime Porn originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We wrote about Organovo’s game-changing human tissue printer back in January, and the company’s endeavor has gained a ton of attention since then. But organs are rather complex chunks of meat, and we’ve got a while to go before we see freshly printed livers shooting out of tissue machines in operating rooms. Skin, by comparison, is relatively simple stuff. Researchers at the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine have teamed with researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and have developed a human skin printer out of a regular old inkjet.

Since traditional inkjet cartridges dispense a drop of ink roughly the size of a skin cell, it doesn’t take much, tech-wise, to turn your old HP Deskjet into a Frankenstein-style life machine. (Of course, technicians thoroughly clean and sanitize old cartridges before loading them with cellular matter.) The team has had success so far with mice, but have yet to move to human trials. The potential for this kind of device, however, is enormous. The Armed Forces is interested because battle casualties frequently include severe burns, and those soldiers may have little untouched skin from which to graft. Check out the video after the break to see an explanation by one of the researchers himself.

Continue reading My Printer’s Jammed With… Skin Cells?

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My Printer’s Jammed With… Skin Cells? originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Foursquare, the location-based social network, has officially jumped the shark. This could be attributed to the swarm of politicians that recently joined the site, or maybe when reality TV stars started using the service. Regardless, Foursquare has moved from, “Wow, that’s neat,” to “Kill me, she’s trying to become ‘Mayor’ of this place.” But Gawker, which has done its share of Foursquare bashing, recently discovered a new mobile Web app that helps you avoid places where Foursquare users flock and gather. Created by an engineer named Matt Langer, Nosquares searches for Foursquare losers users and shows you safe spots, risky spots and spots you should flat-out avoid. All you have to do is register on Foursquare, enter your location, give Nosquares permission to use it and run like hell from any places listed in yellow or red.

Langer was inspired to create this app after reading a New York Times piece about a blogger bar. As much as anybody, we appreciate our smartphones and laptops (as well as having a place to work besides our dark, dank office), but we can’t blame Langer for wanting to hang out at a place where every face isn’t glued to a blue glowing screen. [From: Gawker and Nosquares]

Filed under: Cell Phones, Social Networking

‘Nosquares’ Helps Users Avoid Annoying Foursquare Addicts originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 08:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How does a Russian get around the frozen countryside during sub-zero winters? He builds an awesome snowmobile that looks like something out of ‘Mad Max.’ According to the English Russia website, an unnamed retiree built the pictured snowmobile, which is powered by an old Yamaha motorcycle engine and constructed from pieces of scrap metal. The gearshift is fashioned from a wooden Coke bottle [Ed. Note: Those exist?], and the seat was pulled from an old carousel. Plus, the engine is positioned to give off some heat to the driver. Rather than use rubber treads, like traditional snowmobiles, this guy threw on a metal wheel, much like what you’d see on the back of a riverboat. The rear positioning makes the snowmobile faster and lighter, making it easier to travel across fresh snow without getting bogged down or stuck.

That’s a handy feature when you need to high-tail it to the store for a bottle of vodka, outrun James Bond, or, you know, just get out of the freezing cold as quickly as possible. [From: English Russia, via: DVICE]

Filed under: Car Tech

Russian Builds ‘Mad Max’ Snowmobile From Scrap Parts originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In ’20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,’ Captain Nemo and his crew roam the depths of the ocean aboard their Nautilus submarine, enduring whirlpools, giant squid attacks and less than luxurious living conditions along the way. In 2010, though, traveling aboard a new, revamped Nautilus VAS is bound to be a substantially more comfortable experience — assuming you’ve got the $2 million or so to drop on it.

Designed by Nautilus Submarines & Divings Systems, the VAS Mark III luxury submersible claims to be the only submarine on the market that boasts a lavatory, a full-size staircase, digital video, music players and, of course, the all-important minibar. The VAS can also travel at speeds of up to 6 knots, features a diver lockout for scuba enthusiasts, and, according to DesignBoom, has an air supply that can last up to four days — which is totally great for those weekends when we all just need to get away from the oppressive, day-to-day stress that comes with living aboard a luxury yacht. [From: DesignBoom and JamesList]

Nautilus Luxury Submarine Takes You Under the Sea and Over Your Budget originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 06:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can’t cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web.

• Remember when Science decided, willy-nilly, that Pluto wasn’t a planet anymore? People went bat-guano crazy! According to Wikipedia, “The U.S. state of New Mexico’s House of Representatives passed a resolution… which declared that Pluto will always be considered a planet while in New Mexican skies.” Even some third-graders decided to register their protest by sending hate mail to the American Museum of Natural History. From now on, we’re totally going to start all of our correspondence with “Dear Scientist.” [From: Kottke.org]
• So, you got your fancy new iPad and you’re all like, “Yeah, I’m gonna go hop a plane and multi-touch the hell out of Haifa!” Guess again, nerd! The Israeli government is currently confiscating iPads that attempt to cross its borders because their wireless broadcasting is too powerful for the country’s standards. The Communications Ministry is supposedly reviewing the device for approval, but for now you’ll have to Skype on your ‘Pad from the West Bank. [From: Consumerist]
• Speaking of iPads, it turns out that animals love them! Well, cats do; dogs seem more suspicious. The touch-screen is apparently an intuitive-enough interface for kittehs to get their paw on — but this Corgi is wary of the device, obviously worried that humans have come to rely on technology too much. But, if you think about it, there’s a reason that the Internet is made of cats: kittens and technology work together much better than your dumb dog, who’s more interested in eating poop, anyway. [From: Buzzfeed, and: DVICE]

Got a tip? Want to talk to us? In need of more choice links like these? Drop us a line on Twitter and check out our Tumblr blog

Disgruntled Children Protest for Pluto, Animals Can Haz iPads originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like someone inside Dell is just desperate for the company’s tablet plans to escape.  After one exec confirmed that the Dell Mini 5 (aka Streak 5) was just the first of “a family of tablets“, a shot of two new Dell Streak models – one with a seven inch touchscreen, the other ten inches – has landed on Engadget’s desk, with the smaller expected to arrive late this year and the latter to make its debut early in 2011.

Meanwhile the image was accompanied by some internal launch documentation that apparently tips release dates for the Dell Aero on AT&T and for the Dell Mini 5.  The AT&T Android smartphone will apparently make its debut in June 2010, while the Mini 5 – as the Streak 5 – will drop later in the summer.

Specifications and OSes for the new Streak 7 and Streak 10 tablets are unknown, but we’re assuming they’ll run Android like their Streak 5 counterpart, with a custom Dell UI on top.  The company has previously said that it was looking into data packages similar to those for Apple’s iPad, to drive the growth of integrated 3G use.

[Thanks Andy!]

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According to The Washington Post, a 9-year-old boy hacked into the Fairfax County, Virginia, school system’s Blackboard Learning System. He changed teacher and staff passwords, edited course content and toyed with school enrollment numbers. For those who don’t know, Blackboard is an online classroom where teachers can track grades and post assignments for students to complete and submit. The hack was discovered at the end of March by the school system’s network security manager. This employee contacted police, who tracked down the IP address and found the computer used in the prank. After first suspecting the child’s mother, police soon learned who was the real culprit. But since no real damage was done (except causing an administrative nightmare), police decided to leave the kid’s punishment up to the school system. “He’s a very intelligent 9-year-old with no criminal intent,” Officer Don Gotthardt told the Post.

Both the school system and police have been tight-lipped about just what sort of punishment this precocious youngster has coming his way. But weighing this situation against other student hacks against school systems, it seems like this kid is getting off pretty easy. After all, a few weeks of after-school detention sure beats facing serious time in jail. [From: The Washington Post]

Update: The Washington Post reported on Friday that the boy didn’t hack into the school’s network. Instead, he somehow obtained a teacher’s password to the Blackboard system.

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9-Year-Old Boy Hacks School’s Blackboard Network originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Given they’ve just announced a new line of MacBook Pro machines with Intel’s latest Core i5 and Core i7 processors, Apple probably aren’t too impressed with today’s rumor that they’re in negotiations with AMD to use the latter’s processors.  According to AppleInsider’s sources, AMD executives have been spotted leaving meetings with high-level Apple employees, while Cupertino engineers are apparently already testing out AMD chips in their labs.  Apple are believed to be looking to AMD so as to broaden their choice of processors, having been frustrated recently both by Intel’s shortage of Core-series chips and their refusal to standardize chipset designs.

Intel and NVIDIA have had a legal spat over the past few months, after Intel refused to license chipset designs to the graphics company.  That meant Apple was forced to use Intel’s own chipsets in their latest MacBook Pros, rather than using a more capable NVIDIA chipset; in the end, Apple modified a standard Intel HM55 Express chipset to work with their own Automatic Graphics Switching (AGS) technology.

Apple’s choice to go with Intel when it switched from PowerPC has been put down to the company having privileged insight into the Core-series roadmap; the assumption now is that AMD have granted Apple similar liberties, and they like what they see.  AMD could be promising specially adapted versions of chips, or alternatively Apple could be doing it all to make Intel jealous and more willing to negotiate in future.

[via Electronista]

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Bad news if you’ve set your heart on a Viliv S10 Blade, with word coming from importer Dynamism that the convertible touchscreen netbook has been delayed from its original April 22nd ship date.  The retailer is now showing various estimates, ranging from April 27th for the Atom Z530 models with the 64GB SSD, through to May 10th for the Atom Z550 variants.

The 32GB SSD models, which have an Atom Z530 CPU, are delayed until May 5th, while the entry-level machine – with a 60GB hard-drive and Windows XP rather than Windows 7 as found on the other S10 versions – is due May 7th.  No word on the exact cause of the schedule change beyond that the S10 Blade has been “delayed by the factory”, according to an email sent to a preorder customer.

[via Engadget]

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We all know that lurking inside the Zune HD is NVIDIA’s potent first-gen Tegra chipset, but what isn’t so well publicised is that Microsoft’s XNA development platform for the PMP doesn’t allow access to the hardware’s full capabilities.  In fact, it means no 3D, no internet access and performance apparently an order of magnitude less than what the Zune HD is capable of.  That wasn’t good enough for the ZuneBoards team, and so they’ve come up with OpenZDK, an alternative development platform to XNA.

With OpenZDK, developers can create Zune HD apps – as well as apps for the original Zune models – that take advantage of the Tegra APX2600 chipset, including using custom vertex and fragment shaders with OpenGL ES 2.0 and programming in C++.  The resulting apps run on top of the regular Zune firmware, and shouldn’t impact your Microsoft warranty at all.

The end result is the ability to make games that match up to Microsoft’s own titles, such as PGR: Ferrari Edition and Audiosurf Tilt, rather than the more mundane possibilities that the dumbed-down XNA allows.  More information on getting started at the OpenZDK wiki, and the ZuneBoards guys have a special forum (currently empty) for apps created with the new framework.

[Thanks Nurta!]

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Of Pentax’s most recent range of point-and-shoots, the Optio H90 particularly caught our eye with its vaguely 70s stylings.  Over at PhotographyBLOG they’ve been putting the budget shooter through its paces, and it turns out to be surprisingly capable.  Not only are its 12-megapixel stills decent, it has a broader focal range than similarly-priced rivals and can also record HD video.

That’s all squeezed into a smaller-than-average chassis which uses a Li-Ion battery rather than the more typical (for this point of the market) pair of AAs.  PhotographyBLOG did have some issues with their review unit, which only managed around half the shots on a full battery that Pentax promise.

Nonetheless, it’s good enough overall for them to describe it as a “recession buster”, and if you’re in the market for a distinctive digicam that can fit neatly in your pocket then perhaps the H90 is it.  The Pentax Optio H90 is available now, priced at around $179.95.

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Apple’s Near Field Communications (NFC) plans don’t just stop at wireless payments; according to a new patent from the company, described as “Concert Ticket +”, Cupertino would like to replace your paper tickets (or, alternatively, your wedding invitations or press event passes) with your iPhone or iPod touch.  Tickets could be bought on the device itself, using a Concert Ticket + app, and then the NFC used to allow you through the venue turnstiles.  Meanwhile you could preview and locate your seat on the iPhone’s screen, together with getting discount vouchers or freebies “paid” for via NFC and charged to your iTunes account.

Apple envisage gilding the lily by offering Concert Ticket + users added extras like video downloads of the event they’ve just been to, direct to their handset, together with other multimedia and merchandising discounts.  You could also look at sony lyrics and band information.

As for conferences and weddings, Apple reckon people could preview keynote speakers and register for different presentations, all from their iPhone, or alternatively read hymns from it as well as the order of service.  Patently Apple have an incredible in-depth breakdown of the whole patent, as well as some speculation on how Apple might commercialise it, which is well worth a read.

[via Patently Apple]

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After the first – surprisingly promising – hands-on report about the WePad, there’s now a second video of the 11.6-inch tablet in action.  Just as the last video had a little oddness to it (in that the WePad looked to be occasionally doing things of its own accord, because it was actually running a UI demo video rather than being locally controlled), this time around the tablet’s touchscreen isn’t working and so navigation is via a plugged-in USB mouse.

Video demo after the cut

Still, it’s an opportunity to see what the Neofonie custom UI looks like, and if you were disappointed by the lack of widgets on the iPad desktop then you should be overjoyed with the WePad.  Icons can be mixed up with widgetized information and customized on a big grid, while the extra screen size is put to good use with two persistent columns of controls on either side.

Later in the video there’s a brief demo of a prototype WePad – with a less curvy case but a working touchscreen – just to prove that everything does work together.  Whether it’s worth €450 ($609) remains to be seen, but at least this is a tablet that’s actually functional.

[via CrunchGear]

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