Archive for the ‘interesting facts’ Category
7dayshop Wireless Stereo Headphones
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011
Well, here’s a thing. Two weeks ago (MacUser, 1 April 2011, p34) we reviewed a set of Bluetooth headphones from Jaybird. They were good, but a little pricey at Ј100. Now here they are again, with the same features and the same design, except that the plastics are a slightly tacky silver and black instead of Jaybird’s bold matt colours. But 7dayshop’s own-brand version costs less than 20 quid.
As we noted before, these stereo headphones may not be quite impressive enough in their audio reproduction to convince the audiophile fraternity, but for Bluetooth they’re really pretty good. There’s plenty of bass, and the midrange is clear enough to please all but the fussiest listeners (our Editor in Chief, for example, who reviewed last issue’s version, but you probably stopped listening to him when he mentioned Bjork anyway). The unusual headband is a broad, flat strip a fraction over 30mm wide that curves over the head in a single piece. At the ends are two rectangular speakers with corresponding foam padding. The speakers have metal extensions that slide into the headband to adjust to almost any size of head. The result is not quite as sleekly minimalist as Jaybird’s Sportsband 2, but equally pretty comfortable to wear, although we found it did grip the head a shade more tightly than we liked.
Pairing the headset with our iPhone involved the same process of holding down the button at the centre of the right earpiece until the light flashed the right way, then choosing the product in the iPhone’s Bluetooth menu. The same button starts and stops tracks and answers and ends calls. Holding it down while the phone is ringing will reject a call. Four other buttons let you choose the next or previous track and adjust the volume. The previous track button, if held down, will also initiate voice dialling on the iPhone.
The tiny mic built into the right speaker can be used for hands-free calling. Last time we thought its quality was OK; this time we found it a little muffled, but acceptable. The rechargeable battery promises 10 hours of music or talk time or 250 hours standby. Since 7dayshop is based in the Channel Islands, it doesn’t have to charge VAT on sales under Ј18, which helps explain the ridiculously low price. An amazing deal.
Forget-Me-Not
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
Id games don’t gracefully fade away, they just get ported to new platforms. However, if you’re a fan of classic gaming, you’re probably sick of playing (and paying for) games such as Pac- Man and Space Invaders time and time again. Luckily, iOS has enabled indie developers with old-school sensibilities to mash classic games into a sticky pulp and see what emerges from the goo.
In the case of Forget-Me-Not, you get Pac-Man dot-munching, procedural mazes from Rogue and chaotic maze-based battles from Wizard of Wor. The mix is truly sublime, ‘The game propels itself into the “must buy” league by way of countless lovely touches’ supremely playable, and, because every new maze is unique and generated on the fly, hugely replayable.
As in Pac-Man, the aim is to eat all the dots – here, they’re flowers – but you’re also constantly shooting, enabling you to blast maze-roaming foes. Adversaries also shoot back, and the maze is wraparound, so unleash a torrent of death out an exit and you might shoot yourself in the back. To add to the mayhem and confusion, enemies explode into bonus items (fruit, energy, weapon power-ups), and there’s a key to seize before heading to the maze’s exit, which only appears once you’ve collected all the flowers.
As a modern take on a dungeon-crawl/ Pac-Man mash-up, Forget-Me-Not’s basic gameplay would be enough to gain a recommendation, but the game propels itself into the ‘must buy’ league by way of countless lovely touches. The mazes feel alive, due to the vibrant pulsating colours that give the crystal clear old-school characters a modern sheen, and because the creatures populating the maze have individual ways of behaving. Some lurk, others go nuts shooting everything in sight (in this game, there’s no ganging up on you – it’s a free-for-all) and some take chunks of the maze with them when they explode. Add to this the crunchy sound effects, simultaneous two-player mode and the universal nature of the app, and you’ve got a game that could feasibly last for as long as the classics that inspired.
Google Whacked by Hack Attack
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
When a multibillion-dollar corporation gets quietly and spectacularly hacked, the last thing you expect it to do is announce the breach to the world. Yet that’s exactly what Google did last January after discovering hackers had breezed past its security measures to burrow deep into its network.
The well-coordinated attack, dubbed Operation Aurora, began with an instant message to a Google employee in China that included a link to a malicious Web site. When the employee clicked on the link, the nefarious code downloaded to a computer, enabling the attackers to control it and hop to other machines in the company’s U.S. network. e intruders accessed a software repository used by Google developers, siphoned intellectual property, and viewed basic Gmail account information for at least two human rights activists who focus on China.
No fewer than 27 other companies— financial institutions and defense contractors among them—were also attacked, but most remained mum. Google went public in part to counter the silence of its fellow victims. Google cofounder Sergey Brin said in February that “if more companies were to come forward with respect to these sorts of security incidents and issues, I think we would all be safer.” Google’s admission made other companies realize the sophistication of the attacks they might face, says Alan Paller, director of research at the sans Institute, which trains computer security professionals.
Although determining the precise source of a hack is often impossible, fingers pointed at China as the likely origin, sparking a volley of political posturing from Beijing, Silicon Valley, and Washington, D.C. In its blog post reporting the cyber attack, Google announced it would stop censoring search results in China and threatened to pull out of the country entirely. In the end, the company only added a link to its Chinese search page, allowing users to view uncensored results through its Hong Kong-based search engine, Kim Zetter
FAMILY GENOMICS LINKS DNA TO DISEASE
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
A DECADE AGO, SEQUENCING the dna in a person’s entire genome cost up to $1 billion, a pr ice so prohibitive that only a few genetics pioneers had the honor of having it done. In 2010 the cost per genome tumbled to less than $10,000, making it possible to study dna variations within a single family. Almost immediately such familial genome sequencing proved its value, uncovering mutations responsible for diseases caused by defects in a single gene. “There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of diseases falling into this category. is approach will allow us to very quickly find the genetic culprit,” says Leroy Hood, a geneticist at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle.
Earlier efforts to hunt down disease-causing genes— so-called genomewide association studies—frequently came up empty-handed because medical researchers had to take cost-saving shortcuts. Instead of trolling an individual’s entire genome, they limited their search to dna regions where variations are most often seen across large populations. “It was assumed that common variants might be responsible for common diseases, but many diseases turn out to have many different rare variants at their root,” says James Lupski, a medical geneticist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. That’s why the power of whole-genome sequencing blows us away. It’s the only way we can get at these rare variants.”
Lupski himself suffers from Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy, a rare hereditary disorder that reduces sensation in the limbs. Although neither of his parents had the condition, three of his seven siblings are also affected by it. “For 20 years we’ve been looking for the gene and mutation behind my family’s neuropathy, but we never found the variant,” he says. Then, in 2010, collaborating with his colleague Richard Gibbs and other Baylor geneticists, Lupski sequenced his own genome —and “Boom! We found it,” he says. (Each of his parents, it turns out, carried a different recessive mutation of the same gene. Consequently, only their children who inherited one from each parent developed the disorder.)
Other groups are finding similar success with whole-genome sequencing. A 2010 study led by Hood in collaboration with the University of Washington and the University of Utah sequenced the entire genomes of four family members. The mother and father were healthy, but their son and daughter both suffered from a rare hereditary disorder called Miller syndrome, which causes craniofacial deformation. The gene responsible was unknown until Hood’s team identified a recessive gene inherited from both parents. If you could diagnose the disease in utero, you might be able to provide preventive drugs before symptoms appeared, Hood says. Still unclear is whether whole-genome sequencing will work as well at identifying the culprits for cancer, heart disease, and other disorders believed to involve multiple genes rather than a single mutation. Progress may be slower on that front, Duke University geneticist David Goldstein says. But even when the genetic mechanism is more complex, he adds, the new approach might yield insights into underlying disease processes that could pave the way for more finely targeted treatments.