Camera Phone Saves Basketball Players From False Accusation of Rape
A former flight attendant named Sherri Ann Urbanek-Bach accused five St. John's University basketball players of raping her. Doubt was cast on her accusation, however, after one of the players replayed video from his camera phone of both the "encounter," which police say appeared "consensual," and of the woman demanding $1,000 for the sex ($200 each, I guess). This may be the first ever case in which a cell phone video exonerated people accused of rape. "Note to self: Buy camera phone," said Lakers star Kobe Bryant, in a statement.
Prosecuters filed a motion yesterday asking Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville to seal search warrants and affidavits that would say what they're looking for on 12 hard drives seized from Jackon's Neverland range. RIAA probably wants a peek, too.
MIT graduate student Sommer Gentry's two passions are swing dancing and the creation of complex decision systems. So, naturally, she invented a swing-dancing robot. Swing dancing, it turns out, requires a lot of subtle, improvisational communication between partners. So Gentry wrote a paper detailing how robots could be built to engage in such communication with human partners.
Web Site Proves Janet's Wardrobe Didn't Malfunction
A closeup posted on a Philadelphia radio station's web site appears to prove that Janet Jackson's Super Bowl "wardrobe" didn't malfunction, as claimed, but instead worked exactly as planned.
A project called Mentor/Pal at Sandia National Laboratories has sensors that monitor your perspiration and heartbeat, interprets your facial expressions and head motions, analyses the stress in your voice and then whispers in your ear how you're behaving and feeling. The computer tells you things like, "you're talking too much" or "you're getting too angry." It's like having your wife with you at work.
Samsung is reportedly developing a mobile phone that can receive satellite TV broadcasts. The phone will be designed for compatibility with a new satellite broadcasting service that will be launched soon in South Korea and Japan. I suppose the trick will be to hold still while you point the phones giant antenna at the satellite...
Google watchers are buzzing about subtle and not-so-subtle changes to the Google layout randomly made public, then withdrawn. Has anyone here noticed this?
Sharman Networks (which owns the Kazaa filesharing network) and Brilliant Digital Entertainment offices were raided this morning in Australia, as well as the homes of key executives and ISPs, in order to "gain evidence about the operators of the Kazaa network." An Australian law allows copyright holders to conduct such raids to look for copyrighted material without telling the target in advance. Unfortunately for investigators, Kazaa is a peer-to-peer network, which means that if they want to shut down Kazaa, they've got a lot more raiding to do.
Gartner is guestimating that 510 million cell phones were sold in 2003, and that 560 million will be sold in 2004. I hope they're wrong about the brain damage thing, because if not we're toast.
Microsoft Launches 'Preview' Version of 64-Bit Windows XP
Microsoft has posted a "preview" version (a.k.a. "beta version") of its Windows XP 64-bit Edition for 64-bit Extended Systems. Now your PC crashes twice as fast.
AOL Wants Refund for Super Bowl Halftime Sponsorship
AOL wants its money back. As sponsor of last Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show, it paid $7.5 million, but now wants some or all of its money back from CBS because of the Janet Jackson breast-oriented publicity stunt, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The company has also cancelled plans to stream the show over its online service (I guess moral outrage is preferable to admitting that you couldn't handle the traffic...).
Japan Suspends Online Tax Return Site; Personal Data Exposed
Japan's National Tax Agency suspended its online tax return printing service Tuesday night after discovering that in three cases, somebody else's tax returns were printed. Whoops! Still, it's nice to have a choice when filing returns...
The percentage of e-mail that is spam has increased to 60 percent of the total -- up from about 40 percent just a year ago, according to Brightmail. Send me your e-mail address and I'll tell you more...
"LifeLog," a research proposal of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) designed to trace the "threads" of an individual's life in terms of events, states, and relationships, has been killed. I first told you about it in Mike's List 65 in May, 2003. I guess it dawned on someone in Washington that "1984" is not a good model for the collection of data by governments.
Janet Jackson Breast Baring Most Searched Event Since September 11
Janet Jackson's Super Bowl halftime antics shattered previous records for Internet searches -- by far. The top 20 search phrases on Lycos related to the halftime show on Monday were:
1. Janet Jackson
2. Janet Jackson Superbowl
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4. Janet Jackson breast
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8. Drudge Report
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11. Janet Jackson's breast
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Nobody knows where it went, but Silicon Valley is poised for a major come-back, according to people who get paid to guess about this kind of thing. The Association of Bay Area Governments rpojects that 17,000 jobs will be added to the Bay Area economy this year, and 33,000 job next year. Meanwhile, VCs are flush with cash and looking for "restarts."
HP Invents Hand-Written E-Mail Gadget for the Poor
HP researchers in Bangalore, India, have developed a cheap prototype called Script Mail, which allows people to send handwritten e-mail. It's designed to make e-mail possible for millions of people whose language is not based on the Roman alphabet. The gadget looks like -- what else? -- a calculator with a "scribble" area for writing notes. The mail is then sent as a jpeg and recieved as an attached file. Such a gadget would not work here, as we've all forgotten how to write with a pen.
Janet Jackson Single Spills Out for Public Enjoyment
One of Janet Jackson's big, if artificial, hits was exposed to the public yesterday. A track called "Just a Little While" from her new album was leaked onto the Internet just hours after Justin Timberlake leaked another Jackson hit to the public at the Super Bowl. In response, Virgin Records digitally rushed the song to radio outlets around the country. The FCC is investigating the latter but not the former.
Eggheads from Canada's York, McGill and Dalhousie universities, the Canadian Space Agency and MD Robotics (funded by the Ottawa-based Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems) are collaborating on a unique, underwater robot that swims like a shrimp -- a combination of swimming and walking on the sea floor with its six flippers. It's designed to move around in the ocean, scanning and photographing whatever is down there. The robot, called the Aqua Robot, was tested this week for the first time in Barbados.
Human rights group Amnesty International has criticized Microsoft and other firms because they sold software to the Chinese government that was used to censor the Internet and jail democracy activists. The Chinese government bans web sites that use objectionable words like "democracy," "human rights," "Tibet," "Taiwan" and "Backstreet Boys." (You can't blame them for that last one...) According to the group, web surfers are jailed, tortured and even executed for posting or downloading information related to democracy and other touchy subjects. Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Websense and Sun Microsystems were also named as co-conspirators in the snuffing out of free expression in China.
Digital Camera Prices: How Low Can They Go? 
MIT Student Creates Swing-Dancing Robot
The Ultimate Child's Toy: A 550 Porsche Spyder
Canadian Robot Swims Like a Shrimp
Human rights group Amnesty International has criticized Microsoft and other firms because they sold software to the Chinese government that was used to 
