Friday, March 13, 2009
Sirius XM to iPhone; MPAA Suit; JPEG Snoop

If carrying around regular old business cards seems really old-fashioned (or you've just run out), Contxts is your SMS alternative. Hand out a username, and anyone can text for your contact details.

The concept is pretty simple, and requires only a cell phone capable of sending text messages. Sign up at Contxts with a username and phone number, then customize the information you want to be given out over SMS. You can write whatever you want within 140 basic characters, and add social network contacts for visitors to Contxt's web site who want more info.

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The Studio One 19 PC allows users to choose between Intel's Celeron, Dual Core Celeron, Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad Core processors for their machine.

It also allows users to choose between Nvidia's GeForce 9200 or 9400 graphics, up to 4GB of memory, 750 GB of hard disk drive, six USB ports, web camera and optional Blu-ray disc player. What is unique about this home PC is the use of fabric as a material in the design. The Studio One 19 comes with fabric frames in different colors including blue, black, red and pink. An amazingly stylish PC, this one is definitely awesome.

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Alabama is set to receive more than $127 million from the Obama administration to fund weatherization and energy efficiency grants.

The $127.3 million initiative, announced today, is part of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The funding includes $71.8 million in home weatherization funding for low-income families in Alabama. The state energy program will get another $55.5 million.

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The MPAA is following in the footsteps of the RIAA -- who recently laid off a bunch of folks. Apparently the MPAA quickly followed suit and drastically scaled back after the studios cut the MPAA's funding by about 15 to 20%. Apparently some of the entertainment companies are finally realizing that the strategies employed by the RIAA and MPAA (lobbying for favorable laws and suing the crap out of anyone who dares to innovate) aren't actually helping them build a stronger business.

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JPEGSnoop is a small and portable application that sleuths through images determine if the image has been altered or edited.

JPEGSnoop starts by reading a JPEG/JPG file's EXIF data to give you a wealth of information about the photo: time it was taken, what kind of camera, lens settings, and so forth. Then it compares the compression patterns in the image against the patterns of known image editing applications—the program has a feature where you can report new patterns to the app database, if you find ones it is unfamiliar with.

The tool reports an enormous amount of data, but if you're not interested in the fine details, you can scroll to the bottom of the report for a simple assessment, such as "Class 1 - Image is processed/edited" or "Class 3 - Image has high probability of being original". I took an original image straight off my camera and ran it through JPEGSnoop, and it returned all the EXIF data and an evaluation that it was highly probable that the image had been unaltered. I then threw the image in Photoshop and made a small alteration, taking a few seconds to add fake "steam" to the latte. JPEGSnoop changed the assessment to indicate the image had been processed and reported the fix was made in Adobe Photoshop.

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Sirius XM is planning to launch an iPhone application by June, in a move to expand the market for the struggling satellite service provider, according to a Reuters report.

The iPhone application will not only be available to Apple's U.S. iPhone users and Sirius XM customers, but also iPod Touch Wi-Fi users, according to the report.

The application is designed to allow iPhone and iPod Touch users to stream Sirius XM stations over the devices, according to a report in AppleInsider.

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  • Written by: Christy"
    • | 10:27 AM | 0 comment(s)! |