Author Archives: Samia Perkins

Sony's CEO, Howard Stringer, did several interviews today, with Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He said that Sony is no closer to finding the culprit behind the attack, and is focusing on security challenges ahead. He told Bloomberg, "Nobody's system is 100 percent secure. This is a hiccup in the road to a network future." The PlayStation Network went down on April 20th, and only came back online on Saturday. Sony is still working to sort out issues with the Network and to regain its users' trust.

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If you are stuck inside a cubicle all day and wish you could hear the birds singing, or the fountain in your garden at home, Siara might be the solution for you. Siara was designed by Navid Gornall, and is meant to bring a "familiar experience to an unfamiliar place". It is designed to be used by normal, non technically-inclined people, and be easy to use and set up. Plus, it looks beautiful, being made with walnut and aluminum.

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The planet Gliese 581d looks like it might be a great vacation destination in the future, if Virgin Galactic gets its spacecraft up to speed. The planet is 20 light years away, so saying that something is confirmed is a little sketchy at that distance. However, the planet does orbit in the "Goldilocks zone" which is not too near and not too far away from the star to support life. 581d orbits a red dwarf star, leaving the surface of the planet in perpetual "murky red twilight".

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Oh dear. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss just can't catch a break. First their $65 million Facebook settlement turns into $100 million, and now the courts have turned them out on the street. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals want nothing to do with them. In fact, they said this: “The petition for rehearing en banc is denied. See Fed. R. App. P. 35, 40. No further petitions for rehearing or rehearing en banc may be filed.” Harsh, eh? What that means is, "go away and stop bothering us, YOU DON'T HAVE A CASE!" Now the poor twins have nowhere to go, except the Supreme Court.

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Space Shuttle Endeavour launched today, on its last mission and the second to last mission of the Space Shuttle program. On board this time were three postage-stamp sized mini satellites. These tiny satellites will be mounted on the outside of the International Space Station, and will perform the same mission that the Russian Sputnik spacecraft did in 1957. They will monitor space conditions and broadcast them back to Earth.

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Back at the beginning of May, we had gotten an invitation to a Samsung Mobile event in New York on May 24th. After the Infuse 4G was announced on May 5th, we had hoped to see either the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or the Galaxy S II being announced at this event. But today, we received a terse message letting us know that the event has been postponed to "a later date".

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The PlayStation Network went back online on Saturday, so PlayStation fans can again play video games online. Sony is also working on getting the password reset problem sorted. But the service is far from being completely restored. The PlayStation Store, for example, is still behind on updates. Full information on the Welcome Back Package, and the ID theft protection Sony is offering is still to come also. Today, Sony published a new Q&A on its official PlayStation blog answering some questions and promising answers to others "soon".

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Bees are very handy little creatures. Of course they pollinate plants, making possible our agricultural system, and they make great stuff like honey and beeswax. But researchers from MIT have found a new role for bees, or rather bee venom: explosives detectors. Yes, really. We've seen reports of bee venom used in China for curing rheumatism and arthritis, but this is a new one.

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With evidence mounting that the iPhone 5 is coming in the fall, here is some more fuel for the fire. A new Chinese case design found on Alibaba.com, which is a business-to-business trading site for Chinese manufacturers and suppliers, claiming to be for the iPhone 5G. It is worth taking a look at as Chinese manufacturers often get design specs before the official launch.

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We love robots here at SlashGear, especially when they can help people do things they wouldn't normally be able to do. This weekend, a paralyzed student at UC Berkeley was able to walk across the stage to receive his diploma thanks to a metal robotic exoskeleton developed at Berkeley. It was an exciting moment for the student, and for the researchers who have been working on this technology for over a decade.
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RIM has issued an official statement saying that it has determined that one thousand BlackBerry PlayBook tablets, the 16GB model shipped with an OS build that resulted on the devices being unable to properly load software on initial set-up. This is another hiccup in the somewhat rocky launch of the PlayBook (review here), calling into question the confident tagline RIM is using: "Amateur hour is over." More on this story after the cut.

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This week's SlashGear Science Week in Review is all robot. We always try to include at least one robot story in each edition, but this week, there were so many robot stories to choose from, we decided to feature all of them. These robots range from robotic arms engaging in an epic lightsaber duel, a cute and cuddly robot toy, a jumping robot (kind of) named after a famous frog, and one robot that seems to be channeling Rosie from the Jetsons. Then, those crazy German engineers who brought us the Rollin' Justin robot are back and this time, they're coming out swinging, as in gleefully whacking a robot with a baseball bat. Also, a couple of robot concepts that we encountered at Google I/O this week. And last, a rolling trash can that isn't a robot, but plays one on TV. Of course, there are lots of videos included as well. Read on for all the robot goodness.

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