Obviously the iPhone could always make phone calls, but that required a contract from ATT and included luxury rates just because the user was on an iPhone. Well, for those looking for an economical alternative, look no further than Fring! Fring is a Voip application that provides instant messaging as well as voip calls.

The user can place calls to land line phones through either Skype or a SIP server. Also, if the desired party being contacted is on their computer, Skype to Skype or MSN voice chat can also come in handy.

All this boils down to, whenever the user is in a WiFi hotspot, he can call just about anyone for free or near free. The nice thing is that since the Internet knows to international boundaries, a user in Europe, Asia, or wherever can call his friends no matter where they are and still get charged the same. Skype does not function this way but SIP services usually do.

Next time I go to Rome, I’m just going to walk to my favorite hotspot and talk to all my peeps for free! After all, if it can work theoretically, why not put it into practice and profit from it!

Since the release of Apple’s Iphone/Ipod touch SDK, we really haven’t heard very much news about its developments. At least, not until this video came out. Demonstrated above is a revolution in mobile gaming. The iPhone and iPod Touch have unique hardware for a slew of purposes. Mobile gaming is one neither have ever seen. OpenGL and accelorometers working in perfect harmony deliver a mobile gaming experience second only to a console.

Could this be the start of a mobile gaming revolution? Nintendo changed the console market when it released Wii-mote. At first glance, you don’t know what the heck it is, but over time it lends to a thrilling gaming experience. The secret of the Wii-mote were the accelorometers and the advantage of the iPod Touch is, you guessed it, ACCELOROMETERS!!

I believe that looming in the ether of the not-so-distant future are hand-held gaming devices based on accelorometers. Sure the grapics might not be up to par but the experience will be unique and origional. So, kudos to the SDK for unlocking these abilities.

Years ago, nokia dazzled us with the arrival of the N-gage. Well, it was that spectacular. The half phone, half portable gaming device couldn’t find a middle ground between the two functions and decided to take the form of a bulky phone that could play second-rate games. Needless to say, such a device tanked it big time with consumers.

However, a glimmer still shone for the fanboys as Nokia decided to relaunch the N-gage a few months back. The underhanded thing is that Nokia made many of its new smart-er phones compatible with N-gage software with little notification of the buyer. It must’ve been in some basement at Nokia because no body expected any more of come out of the N-gage project. Just this week, Nokia released the N-gage service enabling users with designated phones to buy and play slightly-better-than-average cell phone games.

I guess this step by Nokia doesn’t exactly hurt anyone since most compatible phone owners will choose to ignore it and continue to use the features they know, love and trust.

Puma might be all fine and dandy, but it’s having a very difficult time of getting out of the factory and into laptops. Puma was initially announced last year but it never came. Its “relaunch” in Q2 is expected to be delayed as well.

The only thing definite are Puma’s specifications, which haven’t changed since last year at its first announcement. For ideal power efficiency, Puma will be able to dynamically scale each core independently while executing a thread. Puma also sports a DirectX 10 graphics controller that puts Intel’s X3100 controller to shame. Puma-based systems will range from $699 to $2,500 later this year….hopefully

Recently, Intel announced the first step to a new generation of mobile processors, the Centrino Atom. Although mobile processors have been around for decades, the intention of the Atom is much different. Today’s mobile processors in cell phones, mp3 players, and hand-held gaming devices can only handle one task at a time efficiently, however, if they are commanded to preform a extensive task, they fail miserably. This is not so with the Atom.

Intel engineers are constructing a seamless integration in not only the hardware, but the software as well. Their final objective is to achieve the performance of a PC and the simplicity of….any product made by Apple (pretty darn simple). A processor of this power and capability will revolutionize the mobile market. Soon, all devices utilizing this technology will have abilities far greater than the iPhone for hundreds of dollars less. Such a device would combine: Navigation, Entertainment, Communication, and stunning user interface without the user noticing any limitations. One universal device would greatly assist the nerd who fills his pockets with many “necessary” gadgets by freeing up some pocket space and lightening his load (just in case he has to run away from a jock).

Example: Wifi, it became a standard in laptops some years back. Since then, engineers have been able to shrink it down to fit inside of cell phones and other small devices. All this development to add a convenience to your life and another chip in your pocket.

Moore’s Law states, “The number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially, doubling approximately every two years.” Basically, all electronics are inherently becoming exponentially more complicated, expensive, and smaller. Moore’s Law was originated by by Intel’s cofounder Gordon E. Moore in 1965.

Today, Intel still holds true to Moore’s Law. It costs $3 billion to $5 billion to build a single semiconductor fabrication plant but in a few years, that number could rise to $12 billion. Processors are simply becoming smaller and smaller, to the point that transistors in a high-end chip are no wider than the nucleus of a small cell. Intel is destined to carry on this process till it’s death or until another, more economical, process is discovered.

The Facts

• Traffic Preemption systems are activated by a 10-14hz flashing light
• Once the Preemption system is activated, it stops traffic in other directions safely and turns the user’s lights green
• Newer lights use a Encryption System so homebrewers can’t active Preemption
• This is illegal in most states and i do not condone its usage. I only know information

What is a hz?
1hz=60flashes per minute. Therefore, 1hz=1 flash per second. Theoretically, if you were to possess a strobe light, able to flash 10 times a second and bright enough to be detected, then the light should turn green.

Why 10-14hz?
The faster the flash, the higher the priority, the faster the light turns green. Police and EMS use different frequencies because they have different priorities.

Wouldn’t the encryption kinda kill the fun?
Yes it would. But, out of the hundreds of thousands of Traffic Signals in this country, only a very small hand-full use the encryption. Since the encryption is expensive, it’s doubtful that you’ll run into more than 1 in your preemption fantasies.

How can I get me one of those?
2 choices, either you
Buy One OR
Make One

Drawbacks of buying
Costs $300 dollars for a very simple rig.

In fact, behind the housing, This is all it is

Drawbacks of Building
Can you read schematics? I’m sort of in the dark about those things. The I-hacked page on how to build one is the closest thing you can get to building a pretty good one but it’s very difficult to follow. If you understand the bizarre nomenclature of electronics then be my guest, but i’d prefer something much more simple.

Vital Components
In the end, all you need is,
1) A power source
2) A controller device that can open and close a circuit 10-14 times in one second
3) An LED Array. The more LEDs the better!

Please Help ME!!
If you know of a controller device, something commonly found, please be so kind as to leave a comment I would greatly appreciate it!

This spontaneous development strikes me as a plee by Yahoo for preserving its sovereignty from Microsoft. In fact, Yahoo has fired 1000 of its employees, including the entire design team! Yahoo is going to shove every idea through development as fast as possible to shun Microsoft’s plans of take-over and to prove that it’s still alive. Ultimately, we as consumers have the most to profit because with such rivilaries, many creative and hopefully free products are created for our explicit use.

Now you might be wondering, how fast is 1.2gb/s? Well, with that kind of speed, you could probably download files faster than a server can…..well, SERVE them! But keep in mind that this is no ordinary wired internet connection. Blazing fast speeds hundreds of miles from the source of the connection? I wish i could do that with my wireless router.

The coverage of this satellite is projected to reach Japan and Southeast Asia in June this year. It’s going to be hard to believe that it’ll be possible to play WOW in Vietnam Rice Paddies…assuming thats the kind of thing you like to do JUST because you CAN!

People who hate bittorrent and want to squash it

Government
The Pirate Bay was temporarily shutdown last week because the Swedish government finally decided to sensor Gottfrid Svartholm’s (owner of the pirate bay) ports. This action was in violation of EU law therefore winning Gottfrid’s “Largest Bittorrent Tracker,” back online. The Government wants to do something, but are poorly managed.

RIAA and MPAA
The two most militant groups in the battle against online piracy are the RIAA(Recording Industry Association of America) and the MPAA(Motion Picture Association of America). These two and constantly hammering trackers trying every way possible to shut them down. Even now, in some cubical in some office building, there is a task force of people dreaming up of a new way to kill the infamy. The RIAA and MPAA have righteous intentions of protecting the profits of Albums and Movies, however i believe that the internet is one frontier they can never fully conquer.

ISP
Your Internet Service Provider is probably the most powerful organization of counter-pirates. Some ISPs, like comcast, have a history of blocking seeder’s upload speeds, slowing bringing downloads to a halt. My ISP, cox, sends users letters to inform them that they’re downloading copy-written material and then threaten to temporarily shut down the user’s internet if they do not comply. These instances are rare but extremely effective, how the heck am i gonna check my email with interweb?

Why they’ll never succeed

Volume
There are MILLIONS of transfers in bittorrent every MONTH. Out of those prodigious numbers only a small handful are arrested a year. If the Government really wanted to get then we’d have in increase our penitentiary capacity.

Inability for laws to allow a Tracker to be shutdown
Gottfrid operated thepiratebay.org in the same building as Scandinavian IRAA. They couldn’t do anything about it because it was difficult to find a law that he was breaking. There is no cookie-cutter law that says that bittorrent trackers are in violation of anything.

Failure of DRM
DRM (Digital Rights Management) was originally intended to solve all the RIAA’s problems by equipping encryption onto song files making them only playable on certain machines. The supposed product was that only the buyer could hear the song he bought and no one else. Well, thats and fine and dandy but the RIAA never realized that people can still download MP3s (which have no encryption) and still listen to shared music with minimal loss of bit-rate.

Nature of the Internet
The movie, “Steal this movie,” alluded to this fact. The Internet was created for the spread of information and data without restrictions. It was built so that no one computer could be superior to any other. The Government’s idea of stopping this flow of information is simply not compatible with the protocol of the entire internet. It can never be controlled or stopped unless the masses of people do it willingly.

But how does this all apply to mobile gaming? The with all the piracy occurring on the internet some of it is bound to spill out onto mobile platforms. Mobile game makes might pursue a course of DRM to protect their games from freeloaders