“The NewYork Times” reports that on Thursday, the group took its objections to a new level with a 540-square-foot video advertisement in Times Square in New York that shows Mr. Schmidt as an unctuous ice cream truck driver who knows everything about everyone and happily offers free ice cream in exchange for full body scans.

In the past, Mr. Schmidt has defended how the company views private information by saying “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

The group says its goal with the videos and an accompanying Web site, InsideGoogle.com, 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.

In a blog post promoting the videos, Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, made his case for the campaign. He wrote:

Do you want Google or any other online company looking over your shoulder and tracking your every move online just so it can increase its profits? Consumers have a right to privacy. They should control how their information is gathered and what it is used for.

The video is embedded below:

Cha Sa-soon with her new car.

This  woman, now known nationwide as “Grandma Cha Sa-soon,” has achieved a record that causes people here to first shake their heads with astonishment and then smile:  She failed her driver’s test hundreds of times but never gave up. Finally, she got her license — on her 960th try.

For three years starting in April 2005, she took the test once a day five days a week. After that, her pace slowed, to about twice a week. But she never quit.

“When she finally got her license, we all went out in cheers and hugged her, giving her flowers,” said Park Su-yeon, an instructor at Jeonbuk Driving School, which Ms. Cha once attended. “It felt like a huge burden falling off our back. We didn’t have the guts to tell her to quit because she kept showing up.”

WHEN word began spreading last year of the woman who was still taking the test after failing it more than 700 times, reporters traced her to Sinchon, where the bus, the only means of public transportation, comes by once every two hours on a street so narrow it has to pull over to let other vehicles pass.

They followed her to the test site in the city of Jeonju, an hour away. There, they also videotaped her in the market, where she sells her home-grown vegetables at an open-air stall.

Once she finally got her license, in May, Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group, South Korea’s leading carmaker, started an online campaign asking people to post messages of congratulations. Thousands poured in. In early August, Hyundai presented Ms. Cha with a $16,800 car.

Ms. Cha, whose name, coincidentally enough, is Korean for “vehicle,” now also appears on a prime-time television commercial for Hyundai.

The girls were only caught when one of them was so excited about the scam that she blabbed about it on her Facebook page, according to news website The Local.

The teenagers, who were not named, came up with the plan after finding a key to the teachers’ lounge. They then went to a spy shop, bought bugging equipment and planted it in the staff room the day before teachers were due to have a meeting about how to grade students’ work.

The pair reportedly thought the plot would give them an advantage on upcoming tests and school work — but after one of the girls mentioned their clever plan on Facebook, teachers found the bug.

The girls were charged with trespassing and fined 2,000 kronor ($270) each in Stockholm District Court.

So he’s started a project, named Gilpin Family Whisky, which turns the sugar-rich urine of elderly diabetics into a high-end single malt whisky, suitable for export.

The source material is acquired from elderly volunteers, including Gilpin’s own grandmother, Patricia. 

It’ll be exhibited, with tasting sessions, at 100% materials, a design and architecture event in London in September, and the Abandon Normal Devices festival in Manchester in October. Dare to try this new kind of   ‘pisskey’ ??

]]> http://techkraze.com/uncategorized/gilpin-family-whisky-made-from-diabetics-urine/feed/ 0 http://techkraze.com/gadgets/touchless-gesture-user-interface-for-tablets/ http://techkraze.com/gadgets/touchless-gesture-user-interface-for-tablets/#comments Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:49:48 +0000 Humza http://techkraze.com/?p=178 Elliptic Labs , a spin-out from the signal processing environment at the University of Oslo was established as a company in 2006. Currently, they are jointly creating solutions with partners who feel that touch less interaction is an important part of the user experience. this Touchless Gesture User Interaface is their new product named as Mimesign™.

By providing a set of gestures mirroring the continuous, free and unrestricted hand movements, Mimesign enables a body language more alike to what we experience in everyday human-to-human conversation. Mimesign’s natural depth-sensing capabilities results in the ability to mirror natural and individual motions, in contrast to more rigid and ‘posed’ gestural systems.

For a demo of the technology see the video below

For more details visit   www.ellipticlabs.com

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.”

Wow. . and I thought you just needed a knife. . .

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 eBay link has now been removed but the pics have hit the internets so there is no way you are going to miss the chance to see them. Fake or not, its for you to decide.