SlashGear Week In Review - Week 32 2011
It's that time again; the SlashGear Week in Review is back. One of my favorite stories from last week was the LEGO DIY R2D2 robot. The robot was remote controlled and even the little dome turned making for a very cool project. The teen LulzSec hacker that was arrested in Britain recently was found to have details on hundreds of thousands of people on his computer. The exact number according to the police was 750,000 different personal records on people.
Researchers into new methods of networking have discovered a way to use LED lighting to distribute full HD films and other content to computers. The LED lights are used as a wireless networking solution that delivers up to 800 Mbit/s download speeds. Anonymous is apparently testing a new attack tool called #RefRef. The tool was apparently tested on Pastebin and a 17-second test shut down the website for 42 minutes.
Last week Britain signaled that it intended to make it legal to copy a CD or DVD by owners. The intent is to allow the moving of a digital copy of the music or film to computers or other digital devices. A rumor surfaced that the iPhone 5 was already sent to carriers for testing. The rumors are still pointing to a launch of the new smartphone in September or October.
Intel Ultrabooks were supposed to hit the market at under $1000. Insiders are saying that the new machines are being sabotaged by Intel greed with a bill of materials that forces the machines to sell for more than Intel says they should. Chris spent some hands on time with the Blackberry Torch 9810 and shot a video of the device for us to check out. He was concerned that there may not be enough different here to help Blackberry get back to where it once was in the market.
Android Ice Cream Sandwich will be tied up with Texas Instruments as the chipset reference platform .TI has offered up a photo that they will be using to promote the tie up and it's cute. The interesting bit is that we expect to see some awesome chipsets form TI next year. MotoActive surfaced last week showing off a cool Android watch for the athletic folks out there. The little watch appears to have a 1-inch screen and offer all sorts of details on your run or workout along with media playing.
The FCC went out and measured the actual interent speeds around the country and offered the data this week. The survey found Verizon's fiber connectivity the fastest and Cablevision was the slowest. ComScore's latest numbers show that there are now 25 million Google+ users around the world. Google has only offered that it has 10 million registered users so far.
The Juno space probe that will head to Jupiter will take with it three different LEGO minifigs. The minifigs are likenesses of Galileo, the pagan god Jupiter, and Juno the sister of Jupiter. Microsoft announced that it had invited Google to bid with it Novel patents. Google denied the claim and then Microsoft offered up emails to show they did in fact invite Google.
A new study that surfaced recently claims that our moon may be the result of two moons that collided and formed one. The theory explains why the near and far sides of our moon are so vastly different. The Nyko Zoom for Kinect hit pre-order at Amazon and other retailers last week. This is the accessory for the Kinect that shortens the distance you need to be from the Kinect to play.
The Skype app for Android was updated last week. The update brought with it support for video calling on several new handsets. Rue reviewed the Motorola Droid 3 smartphone late in the week. She liked the phone and the main quibble was that the phone didn't support 4G.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance orbiter has found evidence of liquid water on the surface of Mars. NASA says the black streaks it thinks to be water only show up in spring and summer. A hacker at the Black Hat conference has shown a way to hack the wireless connectivity for insulin pumps. The hack has the potential to do harm to the diabetic wearing the pump.
Google's robot car that needs no driver got into an accident last week. The accident was blamed on the human though; the car was being driven manually when the accident occurred. An awesome old school sit down Outrun arcade game was hacked into a real driving game. The arcade game was put onto a chassis and can really take to the roads with eh driver watching the screen to see where he is going. Thanks for reading this week's edition, see you next time!