Those crazy kids at the University of South Florida are at it again — they’ve given us ‘intelligent’ scarecrows and engaged an RFID network in the fight against Alzheimer’s, and now they’re doing some rather interesting work with the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). The device uses an electrode-covered head cap to capture P-300 brainwave responses and convert them into action, such as “typing” or manipulating a robotic finger. The team has developed a motorized “smart wheelchair” that allows users to pilot the chair and even control a robotic arm without any physical movement whatsoever. USF researchers say that this will be a great help not only for those with special needs, but also for the extremely lazy

See original here:
USF scientists develop brainwave controlled wheel chair

This week’s elevator pitch comes from Zumeo.com. The pitch gets points for being concise and presenting a clever idea: a social networking and job site for the Generation Y.

Zumeo.com is a social networking and online recruiting site for college students, recent college grads and first year hires. Users first take a “self-discovery” test that highlights strengths and weaknesses. Zumeo partnered with career consultant Career Key to develop an assessment test to help match a user with the appropriate job. The user then creates a “Live Resume” that can be updated and shared with recruiters, friends or colleagues or even shared with other social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

Zumeo has over 500 users; but only about 15 recruiters at the moment, which seems low for such a large amount of users. Zumeo’s recruiter and business list includes SOS Staffing, CDS Publications, and Consolidated Graphics and the CEO, Jared Booye, said Zumeo has matched many young adults with jobs in the past few months.

Zumeo’s current pricing model lets recruiters test drive the site and then pay if they see talent they like. The cost is $9 per post and $19 per month for unlimited posts. The number of recruiters seems low, even for a poor economy. I remember that I found my internships and first jobs through my college career services department, like many of my fellow classmates. Perhaps Zumeo needs to tap into those platforms to really expand, even in a job market that’s not ripe for employment.

It seems like Zumeo.com has a ways to go when it comes to building up a social and employment network of recruiters and experienced professionals across various industries. Maybe this comes through partnerships with established professional social network, like LinkedIn. Maybe not. But even with its shortcomings, Zumeo has a neat concept and may do well for itself.

Here are some screen shots showing Zumeo’s “Live Resume” :

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Original post: 
Elevator Pitch Friday: Zumeo Tries To Be Gen-Y’s LinkedIn

The TouchSmart tx2z isn’t the first multitouch laptop out, but HP’s pretty adamant that it’s the first multitouch “consumer” convertible tablet. Semantics aside, we’re interested in finding out just how impressed you early adopters are with what the company has crafted. Are the multitouch capabilities as awesome as you had hoped? If not, what areas could be improved

Go here to see the original: 
How would you change HP’s TouchSmart tx2z?

There’s not much of a surprise in store now, seeing as we’ve already seen official photos of Amazon’s newest iteration of its e-book reader (and gotten a handful of info on price and release date). Still, we’ll be there liveblogging and blowing it out Engadget style come 10AM ET Monday morning — and who knows, maybe Bezos will announce some other colors

Go here to see the original:
Amazon Kindle 2 launching on Monday — we’ll be there live!

If you’ve got an AT&T-locked iPhone and have plugged it into iTunes anytime in the past few hours, you may have noticed a dialog box pop up with the following:

“An update to the carrier settings for your iPhone is available. Would you like to download it now?”

.. And that’s it. No patch notes, no sign of what said update would actually do. Always inquisitive, we went ahead and pulled the trigger – then got to sleuthing.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Here is the original:
What was in that AT&T iPhone carrier update?

The first results are in for the well-mocked SanDisk slotMusic cards, and they don’t quite fit Engadget’s prediction of “disappointing holiday sales.” I don’t offer these as proof positive, either, ’cause there are some drawbacks in the methodology (more on that later). But they’re intriguing, at least.

The slotMusic cards are being sold at only two outlets, Wal-Mart and Best Buy. The data SanDisk offered this week comes from Wal-Mart, which sells cards and players separately (i.e., no bundles). According to Daniel Schreiber, who is the general manager of SanDisk’s audio and video business unit, Best Buy hasn’t coughed up numbers yet. And Wal-Mart’s figures don’t reveal how many copies of each title it sold, just the percentage purchased in the slotMusic format (based on same-store sales).

So, without further caveat, here are some numbers regarding the few dozen titles that were available at Wal-Mart on both CD and microSD card. After the first 60 days (mid-November to mid-January), more than 13% of the sales in those titles were in the slotMusic format — up from 5% in late December. The highest percentages were for albums by the Pussy Cat Dolls and Jimi Hendrix, each of which were overtaking their CD sales (or close to doing so). The slotMusic cards for Nelly’s “Brass Knuckles” and Usher’s “Here I Am” each made up close to 40% of those titles’ sales.

You could, of course, assume that the percentages were high because very few copies of those CDs sold — maybe urban titles don’t do well at Wal-Mart, and the Hendrix collection is more than a year old. But with Wal-Mart selling CDs and slotMusic cards for the same price — just under $14 (the slotMusic player sells for $19) — it’s safe to assume that people weren’t choosing one or the other based on cost. And who knows, maybe people really are using them to turn their phones into MP3 players.

I’d feel better about these numbers if SanDisk disclosed a dollar figure for slotMusic card sales. But Schreiber declined to give up that information, saying, “SanDisk doesn’t break out products on a revenue basis.” So haters can console themselves with the thought that there’s something fishy about Wal-Mart’s disclosure. The critics don’t matter. The audience that really matters to SanDisk is the record labels, because the format won’t last long without a lot more content.

– Jon Healey

Healey writes editorials for The Times’ Opinion Manufacturing Division.

See the original post here: 
slotMusic: People are actually buying

But, I hardly know you!   (Marco Gomes / Flickr.)

Warming up their underused love circuitry for Valentine’s Day, members of the online nerdocracy have begun feverishly passing around their best pick-up lines via Twitter.

“If I were an enzyme, I’d be DNA helicase so I could unzip your genes. [bphuff]

Whoa, there fella! Yes, in the nerd tradition of online sharing, all lines are open source and freely available. Browse them at HashTags.org, where the meme has become one of today’s most popular, generating more than 2,000 tweets. All that creativity must’ve taken a lot of nerd energon cubes!

I own an island…in Second Life [bitfaker]

One has to wonder, however, if in their excitement, the nerds aren’t doing themselves a romantic disservice. Come Feb. 14, the bars in Silicon Valley are sure to be teeming with self-styled Cupids — faces newly washed, pants pressed, Jägermeister quaffed — armed with a quiver of new lines and ready to deploy them. But then when a poor nerd lets his best shot fly, like:

“Roses are #ff0000, violets are #0000ff. all my base are belong to you,” [aleivag] [tshirt]

… he’s sure to hear the object of his desire, the one to whom his bases belong, answer back:

“Eww, nerd! That’s like the 5th time I’ve heard that tonight! What, are all you nerds sharing lines on Twitter or something?”

You see, my nerdy friends, a line is only as good as it is fresh, and by cycling and recycling all the good ones online, you’re just stepping on each others’ penny loafers. And that kind of un-smooth behavior will never get you in position to get to the last level, where you could drop a game-winner like this:

“I like Battlestar Galactica. Wanna frack?” [nuclearbastard]

Help us — I mean help these nerds out a little by offering a few original lines in the comments … Maybe if we add a few thousand more to the list, there won’t be as many repeats, and a few lucky nerds will gain some experience points.

Here’s mine, for you advanced nerd lovers out there:  0100100101110011001000000110100101110100001000000110100001101111011101
0000100000011010010110111000100000011010000110010101110010011001010
01011000010000001101111011100100010000001100100011011110010000001111
00101101111011101010010000001101010011101010111001101110100001000000
1101101011000010110101101100101001000000110110101100101001000000111001
001100101011000010110110001101100011110010010000001101110
01100101011100100111011001101111011101010111001100111111

Original Here: Los Angeles Times

Jajah isn’t the first VoIP app for the iPhone/ iPod touch , but it’s the first that let’s you send/receive SMS messages over wi-fi. I got a brief look at it, and so far, so good. Previously, the JaJah app for the iPhone was used as a middleman to connect people on VoIP to your cellphone, but it still required a mobile plan, and used minutes. Now, the Jajah app works entirely over wi-fi, meaning you can use the iPod touch, and make calls without a mobile plan. It also works on the iPhone, but won’t work over 3G or EDGE, because then AT&T wouldn’t make any money.

View original post here:
Hands-On With JaJah’s iPod touch VoIP App [VoIP]

SGN, the company behind many of the popular Wii-like games on the iPhone, has just released a new game to the App Store. Dubbed “Mafia: Respect and Retaliation“, the game joins a growing number of mob-based games on the App Store, some of which are growing to become immensely popular.

Among the features that differentiate Mafia:R&R from its competitors are the ability to play the game while offline (other games typically require a network connection), use of the iPhone’s accelerometer to train in a virtual shooting range, and 3D graphics. The game is available for free, but also comes in a half dozen premium versions available for 99 cents, $5, and denominations up to $50. Premium versions grant gamers more skill points and higher rank, allowing them to establish their dominance more quickly.

The app has been a long time coming. In January David Maestri launched a game called Mob Wars on Facebook Platform while he was employed by Freewebs, the company that later became SGN. The game has grown to become incredibly popular, with millions of users and rumors of monthly revenues topping $1 million. However, because Maestri was employed by Freewebs/SGN when he built the game, the company felt that the IP was theirs (as is commonly stipulated in tech employee contracts). For more on the legal drama, check out this post.

After months of legal wrangling, Maestri and SGN reached a settlement, granting Maestri control of the Mob Wars app but rewarding SGN with a undisclosed monetary payment along with the rights to develop Mob Wars-like games.

SGN’s Mafia game is one of the products of that agreement, and it certainly looks like it stands a chance at becoming another hit for the company. As with other similar mob-based games, Mafia:R&R is primarily text based, allowing gamers to complete jobs to rise through the ranks of organized crime, buying improved items along the way. These games can take some getting used to, but they can also be very addictive.

Other popular mob games include iMob (covered here and Mafia LIVE!, currently the 7th most popular paid app on the App Store.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Continued here:
One Lawsuit Later, SGN Releases Its Mafia Game For The iPhone

LEGO builder Matt de Lanoy created the incredible StarCraft Protoss model you see above. According to Blizzard, “the remaining dragoons [after the zerg protoss homeworld infestation] have become the immortals, refitted with twin phase disruptors and hardened energy shields that can shrug off the most powerful weapon strikes.” [via Brothers-brick ]

Read the original here: 
Protoss Immortal in LEGO