TiVo Saves Bomb Suspect

This is quite funny. J 

Just as TiVo is launching a huge new marketing effort (and cutting their prices drastically) in something of a hail mary pass to gain new customers before the cable companies suck up the entire market themselves, here's an amusing story that TiVo might want to incorporate in their advertising. Found over at Dave Farber's Interesting People list is a story about a musician who had a home-made microphone is his luggage, which freaked out security, shutting down five gates last week at Dallas Fort Worth-International Airport. That part isn't all that interesting. What is interesting is how he proved his innocence. Arriving back at his home in Alabama (sans luggage, which he assumed was just lost) he was quickly surrounded by all sorts of law enforcement types. He explained what the microphone was, and noted that he had just used it on the Craig Kilborn Show -- which he still had on his TiVo. So, with law enforcement officials huddled around his TV, he replayed his appearance on the show, so they could see that the microphone was, in fact, a microphone and not a bomb. The advertising campaign writes itself... "How TiVo proves you're not a terrorist..."

 [Techdirt]

Morfeo Couch with Eyestalk Lights

Now all you need to do is put a red blanket or pillow in the center and it will look like some strange alien frogtype couch. 

There's not a whole lot of detail available about this Morfeo couch with hide-away bed, but really, how much information do you need? It's a couch with two bendy lights at the corners to be easily positioned for reading and other couch-bound activities. No word on price or availability, or if there will be other version that don't look like slug heads.

Read - Morfeo [FunFurde]

[Gizmodo]

NASA To Get 10,240 Node Itanium 2 Linux Cluster

Yowzers!  That’s kind of cool!! 
[Slashdot:]

Bad Date? Use Your Cell Excuse

Hehe.  This works for bad meetings or any situation where we long for some excuse to be somewhere else. J 

Two cell-phone providers offer fake rescue calls to help the mobilely connected wiggle out of an uncomfortable situation. One company calls the service a 'lifestyle accessory.'
[Wired News: Unwired News]

Windows XP Service Pack 2 Finally RTM

 Well, I would love to download it but the URL is reporting HTTP 500 errors.  Oh well.

In a letter just sent to testers, "Final testing is complete and at 10:08am this morning we signed off on build 2180 as Windows XP Service Pack 2, releasing it to manufacturing. The final build will be available to beta sites immediately at http://windowsbeta.microsoft.com/download/dl3.asp. You will find both English and German versions there, Japanese will follow early next week. Next week the service pack will be available on the Microsoft Download Center for general download. In the interim we're making the update available to you via the beta web site. If you are running RC2, or any other build released to beta sites, we invite you to turn on Automatic Updates, and starting on August 10th your system will automatically download the express version of Windows XP SP2. For typical home users this is about a 75 MB download; for those on RC2 it should be less than 30 MB. "
[ActiveWin.com Headlines]

Files to exclude from Antivirus Scanning

 News to know if you are installing Exchange 2003!!!

823166 - Overview of Exchange Server 2003 and antivirus software:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;823166

Okay do those

822158 - Virus scanning recommendations on a Windows 2000 or on a Windows Server 2003 domain controller:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;822158

Hmmmm......Okay don't do those.  Okay looks like I'll be adding more files to the exclude section.  Thanks to Merv for the heads up on Ray's post in the newsgroup today.

[E-Bitz - SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS "Diva"]

Spin: Persistence of Vision Keychain Watch

Ohh, I want one too!!  Looks neat. 

"Spin" is a persistence-of-vision keychain prototype that, when spun through the air like, say, a lasso, displays a clock face in the air. There are even three different display modes, including an 'analog' mode that displays a highlighted arc of the circle, with the leading edge indicating the current hour and the trailing edge indicating minutes.

There is talk of this design being picked up and mass produced by a couple of different companies; make that happen, boys, because I want it.

Read - Project Page [MLEIE via DailyGadget]

Related
Nokia's 3220 Airtexter [Gizmodo]
[Gizmodo]