A German company that fired a man for the theft of 1.8 euro cents (two U.S. cents) worth of electricity had no grounds for sacking him, a court ruled, dismissing the firm’s appeal against his reinstatement.

Network administrator Oliver Beel lost his job after charging his Segway, a two-wheeled electric vehicle, at work in May 2009. After he connected the vehicle to the firm’s power source for 1-1/2 hours, his boss asked him to remove it.

Twelve days later Beel found himself without a job.

The court ruled that dismissal was disproportionate to the offence, especially given the “minimal electricity cost involved, the plaintiff’s 19-year employment by the company and the fact other employees charged mobile phones and digital photo frames at the firm’s expense without punishment.”

Apple chairman and CEO Steve Jobs is going around offering free cases to all iPhone4 users to make amends for perhaps the biggest engineering flaw in Apple’s history to date about the design of the smartphone antenna which loses signal strength and drops more calls when held in a certain way without a case.

Users who have already bought Apple’s cases, called “Bumpers,” will get the US$30 price refunded.

Jobs also said that iPhone 4 owners who are still unhappy with the device can exchange them for full refunds.

The data shows that the iPhone 4 drops more calls per hundred than the iPhone 3GS, Jobs explained in a press conference. However, the iPhone 4 drops about one call more per hundred than the iPhone 3GS, he said.

The problem is not unique to the iPhone 4, and most smartphones behave exactly the same way, he said. It’s a challenge for the entire industry.

Jobs also said Apple was “stunned and upset and embarrassed” by the comments from Consumer Reports, which earlier this week refused to endorse the iPhone 4 because of its reception problems. The publication called on Apple to take action.

“Consumers deserve answers and fairness,” Consumer Reports spokesperson Lauren Hackett said about Jobs’ speech. “Providing free Bumpers and cases is a good first step toward Apple identifying and finding a solution for the signal-loss problem of the iPhone 4.”

Jobs’ speech at the press conference was “classic brand protection”. You admit that you have a problem, you put out the facts as you see them, you recognize that not everyone will agree with you and you make them feel good anyway.

“Apple’s clearly managing the situation well.”

Dipped in clarified cyborg testosterone as it comes off the assembly line, The DROID X is simply sci-fi machismo at its best, and all of this packed into a phone. Surely its the purest of coincidences that Verizon, Motorola and Google introduced the Droid X smartphone the day before Apple’s iPhone 4 shipped. And certainly, the companies’ ability to get actual shipping units into reviewers’ hands before most of them could see Apple’s latest had not even a whiff of calculation.

Well, that being said, Droid X is one nice phone. It comes with a 1-GHz processor and 512MB of memory. It’s (comparatively) bigger than an iPhone 4, especially in width .The display is a WVGA 480-by-854-pixel screen — I found it to be very clear and sharp, plus its got an 8 Mega Pixel camera with 720p Video Capture. Sheesh ! If you like physical keypads, you’ll mourn the Droid X’s move to a soft keyboard only. But softkey fans will enjoy the inclusion of the Swype input software, which lets you type quite quickly without having to lift your finger from the keyboard.

The external usb storage can be used to save game profiles, user data, demos and other content from xbox360 marketplace. It sounds like a pretty useful feature, but at present, the support for  usb device  is limited to 16GB but you might use two usb drives to extend the storage capacity to 32GB.

In order to use the new feature you need to get the latest version of xbox live update and and configure your system accordingly.Both USB flash drives and USB hard drives van be used after the update.

This is a direct repercussion of the growing demand and popularity of smart phones and the growth shows that the data traffic will continue to increase as more and more people get access to mobile broadband and start accessing  email, web traffic, music and video via their phones.

via | Telegraph

Techcrunch posted yesterday about the possibility of the extension of Facebook connect feature and facebook API to allow web publishers to add a  ‘like’ button to their websites, thus enabling the users to communicate with any website like a facebook post.

This might sound of little importance but this is actually a part of Facebook’s Open Graph API project that is supposed to help Facebook interact with third party sites effectively and allow them to share content with more ease.

What this would mean is that all the pusblishers will rush to adapt their content according to facebook’s preference and effectively, they will be indexing the web for Facebook, just like Google indexes the entire web.

The change that stands out the most is the one involving third part websites and applications. Here is what facebook describes this policy :

Today, when you use applications such as games on Facebook.com or choose to connect to Facebook on sites across the web, you are able to find and interact with your friends. These applications require a small set of basic information about you in order to provide a relevant experience.After feedback from many of you, we announced in August that we were moving toward a model that gives you clearer controls over what data is shared with applications and websites when you choose to use them.

In the proposed privacy policy, we’ve also explained the possibility of working with some partner websites that we pre-approve to offer a more personalized experience at the moment you visit the site. In such instances, we would only introduce this feature with a small, select group of partners and we would also offer new controls.

So, this pretty much suggests that in case you have not made changes to your profile and it is open for view for anyone – which is by the way the default option- then all your information will be available to any third party website facebook wants. Facebook’s privacy policy DOES suggest that you will be able to opt-out of these changes ‘entirely’ but it is  not the default option How convenient is that. Furthermore, there is yet no information as to which third party sites in particular will be granted access to the user data which is also a big concern with these new privacy policy tweaks.

If you are a Facebook user then you better be careful about what to put in your general information area. Because your “General Information’ will be shared with sites you never signed up for. Here’s the Facebook’s definition for ‘General Information’ :

The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. We may also make information about the location of your computer or access device and your age available to applications and websites in order to help them implement appropriate security measures and control the distribution of age-appropriate content.

Tonight, the NHL game between Newyork Rangers and Newyork Islanders will be available for viewership to the costumers who have subscribed to the local MSG sports channel and have television sets that have the ability to receive 3D picture.

While talking about this latest technology being introduced to NHL, CNET technology analyst Larry Magid said, “Sports is one area where it’s going to be interesting. I’m not convinced that it’s going to take over sitcoms” .

“But movies like Avatar, when they come out on 3D BlueRay, that’s going to jumpstart some sales.” Magid said.

The game will be shot using 3ality’s special Digital Image capturing technology that provide pixel perfect 3D imagery according to MSG. The audience watching in 3D is expected to be small since only a few people have the sets.

via | CBS news