A few days ago, two teens that dropped out of high school hacked Comcast’s domain.  Comcast’s registrar holding the Comcast.net domain is Network Solutions.  The two teens said they found a “flaw” on Network Solutions website allowing them into Comcast’s account to change the domain configuration.  They called the technical contact at Comcast to tell them they found a flaw in their system but the guy hung up on them.  They then proceeded to change the DNS settings for the Comcast.net domain to point it at their own servers.  Although a lawsuit is probably eminent they should hire these two as security consultants.  Unfortunately the incriminating picture on Gizmodo’s website may not allow them to land the job!

Intel today announced a super-small34nm process based 32Gb flash chip in a joint venture with Micron.  Intel plans to integrate the chip into solid state drives in the 80GB-160GB arena.  Unfortunately with the declin(ed)ing economy consumers will not be willing to pay extra hard earned cash for the more expensive SSD units with minimal performance enhancements.  Intel’s flash memory business has been in the dumps lately but they’re hoping this technology takes off in the enterprise sector first to drive down prices for consumers later on.  As soon as the units reach the sub $1/GB price arena with significant performance increases over standard hard drives then the consumers will jump on board.

I saw this article over at hdguru.com and thought it was worth a post.  The article explains how to research and haggle the HDTV of your dreams to an affordable price.  The members over at hdguru.com are not fans of extended warranties, accessories like overpriced Monster HD cables, or any of that nonsense.  Apparently, local and regional chain stores are the best bet as the salesmen are paid on commission.  Here you can actually haggle the price if you walk in the store knowing exactly what you want.  They all want to make a sale so chances are they will work with you.  Keep in mind, they’ll lower the price of the HDTV to lure you in but make up that lost profit by trying to sell you the extended warranty, delivery, installation, accessories, etc.  Read the article over here for more.

Google Android project leader Andy Rubin did not officially announce this type of online store but he almost guaranteed that it’s on the way.  The Android community will be a field day for open source developers but the Android store is supposed to allow consumers to purchase these applications and forward those funds to the applicable developers.  A perfect harmony of buyers and sellers uniting in one happy open source world or so we think.

“It would be a great benefit to the Android community to provide a place where people can go to safely and securely download content and where a billing system would allow developers to get paid for their effort,” he said. “We wouldn’t have done our job if we didn’t provide something that helps developers get distribution.

Of course, if Google opens an Android app store, there’s no guarantee it will actually show on every Android phone. There’s no guarantee any of Google’s tools will actually show up on phones.”

Originally brought to attention by Gizmodo, I thought the video was worth a post.  Don’t try this at home kids.

Samsung has announced the fastest 2.5″ SATAII 256GB Solid State Disk drive in the world.  Boasting impressive specifications that blow any other SSD on the market out of the water.  It can also hold its own on the performance side with a 200MB/sec sequential read speed and a 160MB/sec sequential write speed putting on top of even standard 3.5″ hard drives out today.  Samsung showed off that it is also the thinnest SSD unit to date with a very low power consumption of 0.9 watts while active.  SSD will eventually revolutionize the computing and mobile industries to make them faster while consuming less power.  But we are still a few years away as the prices are still out of the realm of consumers.  Samsung expects mass production of these units by the end of this year and a 1.8″ equivalent is expected by Q4 of 2008.

Gamestop has announced they will discontinue selling the Microsoft Zune multimedia player due to lack of sales.  Microsoft has sold 2 million Zune’s since their inception in November 2006.  Apple has sold 10.6 million iPod’s last quarter alone.  TechCrunch reports:

“We have decided to exit the Zune category because it just did not have the appeal we had anticipated,” said a GameStop spokesperson. “It (also) did not fit with our product mix.”

Steven Spielberg is jumping on the social network bandwagon by creating a niche social network.  A social network catering to the paranormalities of Ghosts and UFO sitings.  It has been dubbed with a name called “Rising” or “The Rising”, both domain names have been registered while they figure out which to call it.  They’re probably sifting through trademarks and corporate catch phrases to make sure they don’t get sued first.  This social site will be a feeding ground for paranormal activities with users having the ability to share stories as well as upload photo’s and movies of such events.  The site is dubbed to be launched at the end of the summer.

Control Lights with Twitter from Justin Wickett on Vimeo.

So someone found another use for Twitter besides looking at some one’s everyday boring life.  This guy was able to to setup an INSTEON light switch hooked into his computer to turn his room lights on and off by text messaging “lights off” from his cell phone.  A useless setup for most(and i mean most by 99.9%) of all users because unless you have a dedicated machine(home server?) setup for this by the light switch, this just isn’t going to catch on.  Now if INSTEON or some other Home Automation maker happens to integrate this type of technology into their switches(802.11b/g integration maybe?) then I can definitely see this becoming popular.

The boys over at Engadget have spy shots of the upcoming Palm Treo 850.  Not a bad looking unit although when brisking through the comments some say it resembles Research In Motion’s Blackberry units.  But what do you expect?  Most cars on the road have the same usable features in roughly the same spots too.  In any case, the Treo 850 will be sporting a 400MHz CPU and 100MB of RAM as another contender in the Windows Mobile arena.  Now if only you can install Linux on it.

The health care system in the United States is out of control.  Exactly the same reason why there’s so many credit problems right now because the credit system is also out of control.  Perhaps the first step in redefining the health care system here in the states is by giving some of that control to the people.  Google Health Beta launched yesterday(5/20/08) with the intentions of just that.  It gives everyday people a platform to help them track their medical records, prescriptions, allergies, medical conditions, and so on.  Perhaps in the future Google will add additional features like a Google Health Analytics.  Such a feature could have an analytic and graphing system that tracks your blood pressure, sugar levels, PSA levels, white blood counts, and so on all on a easy readable pie or bar graph with a time line.  So every time you go for a checkup this information updates with the new data.  Did I mention Skynet is self aware?

I have been using Xobni Beta for the past month and like what it offers in terms of email management.  It does have a few quirks here and there(after all, it’s beta) but for the most part it does help being more productive.  I find myself spending less time digging around in emails when I was emailing someone back and forth on a particular subject or project.  This is due to its ability of grouping together replied and forwarded emails into “conversations” which you can easily see all those emails with one or two clicks.  There now seems to be another player in town that does something similar called ClearContext as stated in this Tech Crunch article.  Although it does not look as intuitive as Xobni, I may give it a whirl to check it out.

Google is holding a presentation party, or Factory Tour of Search, today at its Mountain View headquarters location.  They have invited the press as well as representatives from Cleveland Clinic, Harvard Medical School, MedCo, Quest, Walgreens, CVS, Longs, RxAmerica, and others.  Could today mark the day in history where GoogleNet(See Skynet) becomes self aware of its users medical records?  Maybe or maybe not since Google has been trying to release this project since 2006.  See more details about the event including what will be discussed, who was invited, and those that will be presenting over at Tech Crunch.

As everyone now knows, the talks of a Microsoft-Yahoo merger have recommenced after this weekend.  So now what?  Well, first of all, Microsoft will put in a lower bid because all the lawyer and analyst fee’s have soured the deal a bit.  Not to mention, it appears that Yahoo will be losing their Bebo advertisement contract which will further diminish the company and its value.  AOL is finalizing the Bebo buyout for $850 million and once this is done they’re most likely not going to allow Yahoo in their advertising network because they will reserve it for themselves.(the whole point of the buyout)  It is now even more likely that Microsoft won’t even consider a buyout all together.  They may just work out some sort of advertising deal for the various Microsoft networks such as Windows Live.  I’m sure all the caretakers in the industry between both companies want a resolution already.  Jerry Yang seems to be taking the brunt of the heat on this deal, all fingers from Microsoft, analysts, shareholders, and exec’s seem to be pointing in his general direction.  Can he redeem himself?  Probably not, the initial bids from Microsoft are gone and will never come back.

Verizon has announced that sometime next year they will roll out a Linux based cell phone on their US wireless network.  The Linux based phone will NOT be the Google Android.  Although Verizon said they are not ruling out the Android and may or may not include devices running the operating system.  Verizon also accuses Google that the Android is not as “open” as they say it is.  Verizon’s company spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said that Google is calling the shots.  Which would mean less control for Verizon: “Google said ‘Here’s the plan. Sign on the dotted line if you support.’ It may end up being collaborative. It may end up being collegial. But it need not be.”