Yes, we all know the Wii is still an elusive bugger and the DS is hot stuff (it’s outselling the PSP), but the novelty of both have warn off. I don’t touch the Wii anymore, but I am learning Spanish via My Spanish Coach at the moment on my DS. The NYT has a fancy, yet bloated, article on the success of both devices for Nintendo and the only thing worth noting from the whole thing is the following:

Mr. Fils-Aime said that future DS device will be more tightly integrated with its Wii console. Complete games as well as game samplers will be able to be downloaded into the Wii using its broadband connection, and then transferred wirelessly to the DS.

With Wii and DS, Nintendo Has 2 Hit Game Devices [NYT]

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Still in stealth mode, Hooja has been around for well over a year. As of August 2007, the company was still bringing on new team members, so it was speculated that Hooja received some sort of funding. Whether or not that was the case, Hooja can consider itself in some pretty good graces, now that Peter Thiel has thrown in $1.5 million, according to Globes. As a famed founding member of PayPal and early investor in Facebook, Thiel brings some serious legitimacy to the potential of this startup.

So what is Hooja all about?

I’ve seen some changing reports on what Hooja will reveal itself as upon launching at some point in the future. A few months ago, Hooja was being hailed as a mobile updating tool for compiling your input data within an “instantly” accessible account–similar to Twitter, resembling some concepts behind BoredAt. More recently, Hooja has been portrayed as a future search engine for gathering info on all your cronies across various social networks, on the go–sounds like some semblance of a search profile aggregator wrapped up in a mobile tool.

You’ll note that neither of these definitions have anything to do with certain private parts or acts of love making, which is promising in and of itself. But the more common usage of the word “hooja,” in my experience, has been more along the lines of “thingamajiggy,” which is a very vague reference that can be applied to just about anything. And given Hooja’s evolving definition of its core service, the name is quite fitting.

If Hooja did start out as a possible micro-blogging tool, perhaps the success of Twitter and the acquisition of Jaiku influenced Hooja to shift gears a bit, incorporating the vast sea of possibilities that open platforms have brought about in recent months. Whatever the case, out interest is even more piqued now that Thiel has thrown in a cool $1.5 million. The new funding is reportedly going towards an R&D facility in Israel, as well as for the hiring of new team members.

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The LG Rumor for Sprint appears to have major issues. Big time problems. A debugging menu has been found on the device that triggers a complete wipe of the phone including its firmware. For the time being, Sprint has halted all shipments of the Rumor pending LG’s firmware update that will remove the code to access the debugging menu. The specific details on how to access the menu are unknown, so I suggest you put it under your couch cushions until the update. Heh. Current Rumor owners will have to wait for an OTA while prospects looking to pick one up should wait till the firmware has been updated.

Not a Rumor, the LG Rumor has Issues [Phone News]

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Filed under: Cellphones

Plenty of waterproof phones and other small weatherproof devices have made it off the assembly lines and into our clumsy clutches, but P2i, a small spinoff company using tech originated within the Defence Science and Technology Lab in England, could be bringing waterproof gadgets to the masses. The Ion-Mask is a special invisible coating that is chemically bonded to the device and repels water. It should allow waterproofing to make it into devices that are too small for the seals that are usually used to do the trick. Devices can have joins and gaps coated for a general level of water repellence, or have individual components treated for even more protection. The tech was originally designed to repel toxic vapors and liquids from soldier uniforms, and could also be making its way into athletic shoes. Three leading phone makers are apparently in discussions over using the tech in upcoming phones.

 

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Australia has announced plans to require local ISPs to filter pornographic and other “inappropriate” content in the name of protecting children. Users will still be able to “opt-out” of the filters, but nonetheless the move marks a fairly significant policy decision that could potentially create a domino effect for other democracies around the world. With that, today’s poll question:

How do you feel about Australia's decision to censor pornographic content?
• Strongly Agree
• Moderately Agree
• Not Sure
• Moderately Disagree
• Strongly Disagree
View Results

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It appears some anti-virus software is pinging mootools — a Javascript script that is running on this site now — as a SNZ.A virus. I discovered that this has been happening recently and isn’t a virus but I have some nerds working on it so you won’t get the computer-herp.

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I don’t do well under pressure so I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. Maybe I need some coffee. My only gripes are HTML e-mail and something else that I just forgot. I need some coffee. In the meantime, feel free to add to the list in comments.

1. Don’t shut off the red led light for new alerts after a while, let the user shut it off to acknowledge the alert
2. Alarm Utility - More then one alarm, more snooze options, unlimited ringing option
3. Postponed Events and Task by a number of minutes you select when they come on, preset snooze times are lame
4. Add birthdays and Anniversaries to contact, synchronize with outlook
5. Phone numbers with extension are not showing in the caller ID with the name associate with that number
6. When you dismiss or postponed something on the Blackberry it should impose it to Outlook and vice versa
7. Have the same outlook fields for contacts
8. Led behaviour determined by profile
9. Have the ability to change the timezone on the device without affecting the Calendar records

My List of Suggestions [Pinstack]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We haven't yet heard of any problems with the RFID tags increasingly being used to monitor inmates in prisons, but it looks like the electronic tags used to keep watch on early release offenders are decidedly less reliable, at least according to a recent investigation into the matter in Scotland. As The Scotsman reports, out of a total of 987 tagging orders issued, there were 285 incidents where the tags failed, with dead batteries the biggest culprit. That rather obvious problem accounted for 185 of the cases, with damage to the unit by the offender, problems with the black box in the offender's home, and a weak signal rounding out the technical difficulties. That, as you might have guessed, has lead some to question the Scottish government's practice of relying on electronic tags to monitor early release offenders, but the government seems to be sticking to its guns, with a spokesman saying that "a breach does not necessarily equate to reoffending," although, as the Scotsman reports, it did recently scrap a plan to tag suspects who were allowed out on bail.

[Photo courtesy of The Daily Mail]

 

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Seeing as it’s the absolute last day of 2007, I can still say the following: “Yahoo has lost how many executives this year?”

The latest to jump ship is Steve Souders, Chief Performance Yahoo. And of all the places to leave Yahoo for, Souders is headed to Google, according to Alley Insider. That’s a change from the most of the other Yahoo execs we saw depart in the past few months. Others like Jacki Kelly, Matthew Heist, and Cammie Dunaway have left Yahoo for more interesting ventures with smaller companies and a corporate challenge that doesn’t involve saving Yahoo from itself.

Souders, who had been with Yahoo since 2000, is moving from one large corporation to another. Google’s been having its own problems holding on to execs, with some leaving for fresh blood at Facebook, and even having helped raised the question of too much stock too early potentially leading to an inability to hold onto good executives. After Yahoo tried switching its executives around on its own terms, some Yahoo execs took matters into their own hands (a.k.a. “saw the writing on the wall and found new jobs”).

What does it mean for Yahoo? Just more fuel to the fire that Yahoo’s been fighting for some time now: can the long-standing company truly turn things around, or is the loss of several executives a sign of times to come?

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I sure hope this works because I haven’t been able to use one of my Sprint dongles for months. Sprint has updated their drivers for Novatel EV-DO Rev. A devices (S720, U720, EX720 and U727) to play nice with Leopard and its WWAN framework. Sprint is even allowing your dongles to be used as GPS devices free of charge. High five, Sprint. Version 2.0 is a hefty 12MB and I hope it’s worth the time to download. Just wish I brought my U727 with me.

Of course, it’s not all peaches and cream. It appears that the WWAN interface doesn’t want to show you signal status, which is a real bummer consider that’s the only thing I really care about.

Download Page

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