Archive for: June 2007

Researchers have successfully lit a 60-watt light bulb by transferring energy through the air from one specially designed copper coil to the bulb, which was attached to a second coil seven feet away The ultimate goal: to shrink the coils and increase the distance between them so that a single base station emitting “WiTricity,” as the inventors refer to the effect, could power a roomful of rechargeable gadgets, each containing its own small coil.

Physicists have known for more than a century that a moving magnetic field produces an electric field and vice versa in an effect called electromagnetic induction, which makes motors turn and allows your, say, electric toothbrush to recharge when placed on its base station. But induction normally works only at very short distances, which is why the toothbrush and base station must touch.

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To get the USB drive you have to be a member of Bob Marley Passport Club for $45 a year, the USB drive comes with the entire Exodus album, three video of 1977 performance at London’s Rainbow Theatre, and an exclusive carrying case and lanyard for the drive. You’ll have to act fast to get one, only 4000 available.

This new service will find music stored on your PC’s hard drive and make it available online on a “digital locker”. If Lala already has the same songs on its servers, then lala’s version is used. It’s like iTunes, but on the web. You can create Playlists and manage it, and your iPods can be sync directly from the site.

Similar services have been introduced before, but nothing quite like this. MP3.com tried out the “digital locker” concept in the past but was promptly sued by labels and lost. Lala, which is in talks with all the major labels, doesn’t believe that this will be a problem, in part because it plans on paying the labels so much in order to stream full versions of their songs (though it won’t pay for the “digital locker” versions of tracks that consumers already own). The reincarnation of Napster also offered free streaming of its catalog, with the caveat that no song can be listened to more than five times in a single month. Napster was also selling subscriptions to music, not music itself, and Lala believes that ownership, lack of DRM, and iPod integration make them different.

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iPhone by June 29th, I just so this commercial but it seems that to own an iPhone you will need a two year contract with AT&T.

It doesn’t matter my contract is up anyways.

More commercial

Humanity’s earliest ancestors did not drag their knuckles along the ground before mastering life on two feet, but learned to walk upright while still living in the trees, according to a team of British scientists. The claim challenges the belief that humans evolved from chimp-like creatures that descended from the trees to roam the savannahs of east Africa, using their knuckles for support, before slowly rising to the upright posture of more modern humans.

The theory marks a dramatic twist in evolutionary thinking that suggests some of our earliest ancestors may have begun walking on two legs up to 24m years ago, rather than shortly after the human lineage split from chimpanzees around 6m years ago. It suggests early humans adapted rapidly to open landscapes by honing the basic walking skills they developed to move around the forest canopy.

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Walt Mossberg and Steve Jobs Q&A about all things Apple including, DRM-free music, iPhone and YouTube on Apple TV.