PlayOn’s media server software — capable of streaming Internet video from YouTube, Hulu , CBS, Netflix, CNN, ESPN and others to your PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or other DLNA compliant hardware via a PC — is finally out of beta. Going official means the trial period resets to 14 days for all users, keeping it after that will require $29.99.

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PlayOn media server is out of beta, 14 days to decide if Netflix & Hulu on your PS3 is worth it

Since the day the original Helio Ocean hit the shelves, rumors were abound that a followup was in the works. 2 years have since passed, countless rumors and leaks have come and gone, and the company that birthed the original has since been acquired – but it’s finally here. Has the wait been worth it?

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Review: Virgin Mobile Helio Ocean 2

By Andrew Liszewski I’m still finding stuff from CES to write up, and one of the very first gadgets I had the chance to play with was the new Logitech Harmony 1100 universal remote. In fact, it turns out the person I was sitting next to on my flight to Vegas was the Logitech ‘demo guy’ for this product, so I had an ‘in’ even before the plane touched down. The Harmony 1100 is an upgrade to the 1000 model, and features a 3.5 inch color touch screen that’s complimented with a set of ’soft’ buttons on the sides, and dedicated volume and channel buttons to the right. Now these buttons technically duplicate functionality already found on the touch screen, but I like the fact that you can adjust the volume and change the channel without having to look away from the screen

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Logitech Harmony 1100 Advanced Universal Remote

As one of the few tablet lovers here, I’m going crazy waiting for the Eee tablet netbook . Maybe instead, I ought to just make my own out of Eee 900HA like these guys. A member who claims to have “very little knowledge on computer things” managed to take about his 900HA and turn it into a touchscreen notebook. All you need is a screwdriver, some tape, a plastic card, a solderless touchscreen kit and some extra wires.

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Give Your Eee PC 900HA a Touchscreen [Touchscreen Eee]

NASA, Google, and some of the foremost authorities in science and technology have teamed up to create a new school, dubbed Singularity University, that is looking to solve “humanity’s grand challenges”. The university is named after the idea of the singularity – an extremely rapid period of technological progress. And damn if it doesn’t sound like the coolest school ever.

The roster behind Singularity University is beyond impressive: it was founded by Dr. Ray Kurzweil (author, technologist, and futurist), Dr. Peter Diamandis (XPRIZE), Pete Worden (Director of NASA Ames), Dr. Robert Richards (co-founder of the International Space University), Dr. Robert Richards (ISU President), Dr. Michael Simpson, and a number of sponsors including Google. And to run the school, Singularity brought on board Salim Ismail, the founder of Yahoo’s innovative Brickhouse team.

Modeled after the International Space University, the school is meant to expose some of world’s the most promising graduate students and professionals to a broad range of cutting-edge technologies and research with subjects including bioinformatics, networking, genetics, law, heath, and entrepreneurship (you can see a full listing of topics covered here).

The first three weeks of each session are devoted to forming a basic understanding in all of the fields, following by three weeks spent seeing how each of these fields can possibly intermingle (for example, you might study how 3D printers traditionally used in prototyping could be used to build organs out of stem cells). The final three weeks of study are spent applying the newly-learned knowlege to solving real-world problems.

Sessions will be held at the NASA Ames Research Campus, near Mountain View, California. Unfortunately, space will be extremely limited – the initial class will consist of around 30 students, with around 100 for the school’s second year. It won’t be cheap either: fees run around $25,000 per student, though there will be scholarships available. There will also be brief sessions available for students who are already in the workforce.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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World-Renowned Scientists Team With Google And NASA To Launch Singularity University

Odds are there’s not a lot of point in checking your own G1 for the update at this point — it’s just in the hands of a select few so far — but T-Mobile has confirmed that firmware 1.1 / RC33 is just around the corner with some unspecified pre- Cupcake features and fixes in the mix. At this point, at least one inordinately lucky recipient has reported that the phone now supports Google voice search like we’ve seen on other platforms ; don’t get us wrong, that’s cool and all, but we’re still waiting for our virtual keyboard. ‘Bout ready to go whip up some batter and bake it ourselves, if you know what we’re saying. [Via TmoNews ] Filed under: Cellphones , Handhelds T-Mobile G1 firmware RC33 (also known as “not Cupcake”) trickles into reality originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:19:00 EST

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T-Mobile G1 firmware RC33 (also known as "not Cupcake") trickles into reality

FairShare, a new site launching today in private beta, is looking to help bloggers keep track of their content online. The free service allows users to specify what kind of Creative Commons distribution license they’ve previously assigned to their material, and uses a vast index of the web to see where their content has been distributed and how it has been used. TechCrunch readers can grab one one of 1,000 invites by going here and entering the code “TechCrunch”.

In many ways FairShare is a toned-down version of Attributor (an enterprise-grade web service that helps large media companies search the web for copyright infringement). The two services share the same massive and frequently-updated index of the web, which claims to search 35 billion pages. But while Attributor features a suite of analytics options suited for large companies like the Financial Times and CondéNet, FairShare is a bit more bare-boned, offering a listing of every post that includes your content along with the number of words copied, the percentage of the original article copied, and Yes/No indicators describing if the blog is following the license rules you’ve set.

Getting started with FairShare is straightforward. After entering the URL of your blog’s RSS feed, FairShare will ask for the type of Creative Commons license you’ve assigned to your content (the most common of which will be the ‘Attribution’ license, which requires that other blogs link back to your article whenever they’ve quoted it). The system will then automatically monitor its large index of websites, flagging any sites that have included your content and indicating whether they’ve abided by the license you’ve set.

The service will appeal to two very different groups of people. Established bloggers can use FairShare to see where their content has been copied without attribution, and can respond accordingly. On the other end of the spectrum, fledgling bloggers can use the system to see how their content is being distributed and can use that information to form relationships with other blogs or change the focus of their writing to appeal to their audience. It sounds like FairShare is hoping to appeal more to the latter set – while it will help bloggers find possible cases of copyright infringement, VP of Marketing Rich Pearson says that it’s unlikely that the site will ever offer any tools to help them request take downs.

It will be nice for bloggers to easily look up when other sites are reposting their content, but I doubt many of them will have time to hunt down any offenders, and it’s already fairly easy to tell who is linking to your site using trackbacks. Still, the site’s future plans are promising: FairShare plans to eventually introduce a revenue-sharing system that would allow sites that have distributed their content under appropriate licenses to get a cut whenever their material is published elsewhere.

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FairShare Helps Bloggers Track Their Content Across The Web; Grab An Invite Here

Some technologies are so complex and have so many frequent breakthroughs that few people can keep up. Now comes a new nine-week summer program in Silicon Valley for super-smart people. Dubbed Singularity University, its founders hope it will help close the gap in understanding and applying fast-developing technologies to solve what they called

Some scientists are claiming that the Sichuan Earthquake , which killed over 70,000 people, might have been caused by a 511ft-high dam constructed just 550 yards from the fault line. The Zipingpu dam , located about three miles form the epicenter of the quake, holds 315 million tonnes of water. Some geologists believed that the weight of the water, and its ability to penetrate rock, could have changed the pressure on the fault line. The reason scientists want to look into it further is because an earthquake of that magnitude is incredibly unusual for the area. In fact, according to Christian Klose of Columbia University ’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory , there had been no “major seismic activity ” on the fault line for millions of years.

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Massive Hydroelectric Dams Could Have Caused the Sichuan Earthquake [Sichuan Earthquake]

Video: Hacker war drives San Francisco cloning RFID passports Think of it this way: Chris Paget just did you a service by hacking your passport and stealing your identity. Crackulous released, promises to bust iPhone app protection scheme If Apple’s sat back and let the iPhone hacking community do its thing in peace (well, relative peace) so far, this little gem just might be what the doctor ordered to stir up the crap. Elton John’s Swarovski-encrusted charity iPod nano Taking his cue from the classy ‘n’ sassy Swarovski crowd, the players are bedazzled in the aforementioned crystals, and are available in black, green, orange, pink, purple, red, silver, or yellow. Other news of import Real life Halo Warthog goes for a test drive Eee PC 1000HE with 9.5 hour battery seeks friends, pre-orders Tesla can’t get funding, postpones plans to build new factory LG BD300 Blu-ray player review It’s taken over two years and we’ve finally came to a point where a standalone player easily out classes the PS3 as a Blu-ray player. Helio Ocean 2 Review Now that we’ve spent a few days comparing it to its predecessor, check out some of the the highs and lows of this new handset

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The Daily Roundup: here’s what you might have missed