Technology

As is part of the annual tradition, millions of people around the world rang in the New Year with more than a few adult beverages. But unlike any other year to date, after the partying had ceased thousands reached for their mobile phones to ... determine whether or not they were capable of driving home. Apple App Released by Colorado DOT R-U-Buzzed, a free application released by the Colorado Department of Transportation (DOT), helps users determine their blood alcohol level in a matter of seconds. All an individual has to do is spin the virtual wheel to match weight, alcoholic beverages consumed ... (view more)

Waterloo-based Research In Motion's (RIM's) is receiving plenty of flak from its users after a second outage in less than a week. The outage left users of the popular handheld without service from Tuesday evening until the following morning. "One ... outage is bad enough, but when potential customers hear of two in one week, they get very nervous," said one poster on the Crackberry blog, a forum that keeps users of the handheld in touch with one another and updated on recent events related to the device. (Source: informationweek.com ) Most concerning of all the negative sentiments were threats by ... (view more)

The BlackBerry is one of the most popular handheld devices in the world today because it offers instant and reliable access to email, instant messaging and of course voice communication. Unfortunately, none of these lovely features were available ... during a recent outage -- the second of its kind in the past week. Let's face it -- there isn't much advantage to having instant access to your friends, family, and colleagues when the handheld network you use is out of service. That was the case on Tuesday night, when for the second time in less than a week the BlackBerry service went out of service ... (view more)

Think you can multitask while driving? Think again. According to a recent report, drivers who use their cell phones to text while behind the wheel are six times more likely to crash their rides. "When people talk on the phone while driving they are ... four times more likely to get into an accident," says University of Utah psychologist Frank Drews. And thanks to Drews' last study, we now know texting behind the wheel means you're actually six times more likely to crash. (Source: com.au ) Studies Push Legislators to Act Talking on your cell phone while operating a vehicle has become illegal in ... (view more)

Hewlett Packard has acknowledged a complaint that its webcam technology discriminates against darker-skinned users. But it doesn't address the racism issue directly -- instead, HP points to a technical limitation. Technology Locks onto Faces The ... allegations involve a feature in the webcam which recognizes faces and then "locks on" to them, automatically moving to keep the picture in the shot as a head moves around. The assertion comes shortly after a YouTube user uploaded a clip which appears to show that the feature fails to lock-on his face. (Source: youtube.com ) In a company blog post on ... (view more)

With email messages favored over hand-written letters and online news sources being read as opposed to the daily newspaper, those individuals working in pulp and paper mills have good reason to be fearful of the longevity of their employment. ... However, these people now have a glimmer of hope for the continued existence of their industry, thanks to modern research that looks to transform ordinary paper into a lightweight battery . At Stanford University in California, scientists announced the successful creation of the first line of "paper batteries" in existence. 10x The Power of Lithium-Ion ... (view more)

What could have been the first mass-market Internet tablet-PC-based device has been abandoned in a copyright dispute. Michael Arrington, the man behind the CrunchPad, says the firm physically manufacturing the product wanted to go it alone, but the ... two sides are locked in an irresolvable dispute. The original concept of the CrunchPad was to produce a simple Linux-based tablet PC for easy web access, filling the gap between accessing the web on a smartphone and carrying around a full-blown portable computer such as a netbook or laptop. CrunchPad: a Blogger's Brainchild One of the most notable ... (view more)

Since the " Swine Flu " can infect a person at any moment, many companies have beefed up their remote access capabilities to enable their employees to work from home in the case of sudden illness. More specifically, remote access technologies ... provide companies with secure access to applications from any location. These applications can be retrieved using a number of Internet-ready devices and enable IT administrators to enforce security and information usage policies. These policies are then used to ensure that the devices connected to a corporate network from a remote location meet internal ... (view more)

Apple's iPhone continues its assault on the Nintendo DS with the release of id Software's legendary shooter, Doom. Originally released in 1994, the game still looks great on Apple's uber-popular smartphone. The original Doom was released on PC in ... 1993. It wasn't the first first-person shooter (FPS) -- that distinction arguably belongs to id's own Wolfenstein 3D, released in 1992 -- but it might just be the most memorable. The game's storyline wasn't exactly Shakespeare (futuristic teleportation experiments on Mars go wrong, unleashing hell's minions on unsuspecting space marines), but it sure ... (view more)

As part of the Japanese Science and Technology Agency's "Erato" project, students at Keio University have created a robot designed to alleviate the burden of performing one specific household chore: folding the laundry. Visitors at the Digital ... Contents Expo in Tokyo were greeted with a plethora of new tech-based innovations this year. The exhibitors demonstrated ideas that were necessary, practical and futuristic. Foldy the Robot Folder For example, "Foldy" the robot works with a camera mounted above a flat surface, like an ironing board. A person comes along and places an article of clothing ... (view more)