Nathan sez, "I've posted a photo comic I created explaining Cruxy.com's support for DRM-free digital comic publishing. We believe fans will pay if you give them open formats at fair prices, and are looking for indie publishers to help us prove that point." Link (Thanks, Nathan!)

Lucas123 writes "HD DVD proponent Toshiba remains defiant that its format will not succumb to the mounting tsunami of support for Blu-ray Discs. Akio Ozaka, head of Toshiba America Consumer Products, said at CES today that he was surprised by Warner's decision." It should also be noted that the HD DVD group has cancelled many of their meetings at CES.

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destinyland writes "The first collection of Perry Bible Fellowship comics has racked up pre-sales of $300,000 due to its huge online following. Within seven weeks the volume required a third printing. Ironically, the 25-year-old cartoonist speculates people would rather read his arty comics in a book than on a computer screen, and warns that 'There's something wonderful, and soon-to-be mythic, about the printed page...' He also explains the strange anti-censorship crusade in high school that earned him an FBI record!"

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Croakyvoice writes "Sony has finally officially announced that Skype is coming soon to the PSP. The VoIP service is slated to hit the company's handheld at the end of January. The application will be available via a firmware update and is only compatible with PSP Slim & Lite Consoles. After the announcement the PSP homebrew scene released a new application called Furikup which will allow you to make phone calls with your PSP and is compatible with the original phat PSPs."

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CES 2008: Sony has today revealed it latest Alpha digital SLR, the A200. This new entry-level digital SLR has a ten megapixel APS size CCD (note the switch back from CMOS), Super SteadyShot (sensor-shift image stabilization), three frames per second continuous shooting, Sony's Dynamic Range Optimizer (DRO) and a 2.7" 230,000 pixel LCD monitor. The A200 is set to ship in February for $700 with the 18-70 mm lens or $200 more for a dual-lens kit which adds the 75-300 mm. This model appears to be very similar to the A100 apart from higher sensitivity, faster AF, a new Fn button and other subtle control changes.

Hugh Pickens writes "As many as three American Airlines passenger jets will be outfitted this spring with laser technology intended to protect planes from missile attacks. The tests, which could involve more than 1,000 flights, will determine how the technology holds up under the rigors of flight. The technology is intended to stop attacks by detecting heat from missiles, then responding in a fraction of a second by firing laser beams to jam the missiles' guidance systems. A Rand study in 2005 estimated it would cost about $11 billion to protect every US airliner from shoulder-fired missiles. Over 20 years, the cost to develop, procure and operate anti-missile systems could hit $40 billion."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CES 2008: Casio today announced its EXILIM EX-F1 - a six megapixel camera with 12x zoom and some very impressive burst shooting capabilities. Capturing up to 60 frames per second at full resolution and a staggering 1200 fps if you drop the image size to 336 x 96, this innovative camera will also shoot 1920 x 1080 Full HD movies at 60fps. Helping to ensure the moment isn't missed is a buffer system which continually updates then saves the contents to card when the shutter is released. Illumination is taken care of by a conventional strobe which works at up to 7 fps and a cellphone-style LED for 10-60 fps. The EX-F1 will be available from March 2008 priced at $999.99.

News.com notes that the social sites have been burning up in the wake of the debates, as users create more content than it's possible to follow. Facebook specifically set up an area for debate viewers to post messages and take surveys during the events. Some participants found it a bit worthless, and the article refers to the experience as 'information overload'. "No doubt, the political twitterers must've felt empowered to know their Soundboard comments were being beamed out to an audience of potentially millions of Facebook users, and, if plucked by ABC's designated Facebook-monitoring reporter on TV, millions of offline viewers as well. Still, it's a little unclear whether the comments will prove all that useful for campaigns looking to boost their candidates' standing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Internet doesn't have time zones, and while my colleagues in the blogosphere who happen to be located in the Eastern or Central time zones were watching the debate live on TV, we in the western states were left to either wait three hours, or DIY a Ustream webcast of the debate, which we did. About half way through we figured out how to make the local New Hampshire ABC affiliate webcast work on a Mac, and it was a little easier to understand what was going on.

In 2008, sixteen years into the web, there's no excuse for not broadcasting a political event live to the world. If ABC News hasn't got the ability to do it, then ABC News shouldn't be running it. That Facebook lent its name and reputation to this fiasco is amazing. Why didn't they speak up?

BTW, otoh, Charles Gibson was a great moderator and the format was, in every way, fantastic. What a shame we all couldn't experience at the same time.

theodp writes "The problem with Microsoft Word, writes the NYT's Virginia Heffernan, is that 'I always feel as if I'm taking an essay test.' Seeking to break free of the tyranny of Microsoft Word, Heffernan takes a look at Scrivener and the oh-so-retro WriteRoom, which she and others feel jibe better with the way writers think. 'The new writing programs encourage a writerly restart. You may even relearn the green-lighted alphabet, adjust your preference for long or short sentences, opt afresh for action over description. Renewal becomes heady: in WriteRoom's gloom is man's power to create something from nothing, to wrest form from formlessness. Let's just say it: It's biblical. And come on, ye writers, do you want to be a little Word drip writing 603 words in Palatino with regulation margins? Or do you want to be a Creator?'"

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Two new bits of news for FlickrFan users.

1. Change Note #22. If FlickrFan is opening in the wrong browser, there's a new preference that tells it to open the desktop website in the default browser, and not to bother launching a browser. You should use this feature if you find it annoying that FlickrFan launches Firefox or Safari. Eventually, if everything goes well, we'll phase out the feature. Didn't want to do it all at once because it's a dangerous place for breakage. One step at a time.

2. Change Note #23. If for some reason your copy of FlickrFan isn't updating, you can always get the latest version, quickly, without losing any of your data or prefs or downloading any pictures again. (Key point.)

Bug Labs moves closer to shipping. Yesterday they announced pricing for their component, open source gadget hardware kit.

NY Times: "Neuros Technology International, creator of a new video recorder, has decided to go in a different direction. The company, based in Chicago, is providing full documentation of the hardware platform for its recorder, the Neuros OSD (for open source device), so that skilled users can customize or 'hack' the device -- and then pass along the improvements to others."

Phil Torrone, a longtime champion of open source hardware, must be happy.

Me, who's always looking for, and never finding the perfect podcast player, has more hope if the users get to develop the products.

An anonymous reader writes "CE Pro magazine interviewed Steve Venuti and Les Chard of HDMI Licensing, LLC to get a preview of all things HDMI at CES. The duo addressed some of the more controversial issues surrounding HDMI, including 'Wireless HDMI' (There's no such thing); Consumer Electronics Control (There will be interoperability); competitor DisplayPort (No traction in CE); and the complications of HDMI ('It is not an HDMI problem. It's a digital issue.')"

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The Huffington Post's round up of "must see" online videos for the week includes this clip from the TV show Wife Swap, about a spoiled teen and her doting parents. Link

An anonymous reader brings us this article from Wired about a new method to produce fuel with the help of concentrated sunlight and carbon dioxide. The process "reverses" combustion, breaking down the CO2 into carbon monoxide, which is then used as a building block for hydrocarbons. Quoting: "The Sandia team envisions a day when CR5s are installed in large numbers at coal-fired power plants. Each of them could reclaim 45 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air daily and produce enough carbon monoxide to make 2.5 gallons of fuel. Coupling the CR5 with CO2 reclamation and sequestration technology, which several scientists already are pursuing, could make liquid hydrocarbons a renewable fuel."

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This product makes big claims, but it's hard to tell through the hype how it works or even what it actually does.

Here's what it sounds like to me. It's an iPod-like device with a built-in hard disk that somehow synchs with a desktop or laptop PC (or Mac?). It also has a transmitter of some kind (FM, wifi, ???) and proprietary receivers can be anywhere in the house, with speakers attached, and you can control any or all of the systems with the hand-held unit.

Screen shot of the back of the unit.

CNET Australia has a review (they seem to like it).

There is an Amazon page for the product ($299) and 11 user reviews. So this isn't a new product? Huh?

Earlier this week we covered the Xbox Live outages over the holidays. Several users have pointed out that Microsoft has acknowledged its lack of performance, and is now offering a free game to compensate its users. Unfortunately for Microsoft, disgruntled patrons have already filed a class action lawsuit over the recent difficulties. Quoting the PC World article: "Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten said that the problems with Xbox Live downtime were caused by an influx of new users who had gotten an Xbox 360 over the holidays. It's been a record-setting season for Xbox Live. 'This included our largest sign-up of new members to Xbox LIVE in our 5 year history and just yesterday you broke the record for the single biggest day of concurrent members ever on the service,' said Whitten."

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Marilyn sez, "A family doing chores in their recently purchased suburban house in South Carolina discovered a hidden room behind a bookcase, which revealed the truth about their house: it was permeated with toxic black mold."

Inside the room was a hand-written note.

The note said "You Found It!"

It turns out, the note explained, that the house was infested with "the worst types of mold including Stachybotrys, the so-called Toxic Black Mold," which can cause "respiratory bleeding" in infants.

The stunned homeowners, thinking they might be the victims of a weird hoax, hired an environmental engineer – only to discover that the problem was even worse than they thought; the house contained "elevated levels of several types of mold, including Aspergillus, Basidiospores, Chaetomiu, Curvularia, Stachybotrys and Torula." The town's local news station calls this "the horrible secret of Number 6 Whitten Street."

Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Update: Sam sez, "That picture seems to be something the blogger you linked to added himself/herself. I don't think it's a real picture from the house in the story. If you look at the original story, it seems like the secret room merely had the note in it... not all that huge, obvious mold growth that's in the picture. And actually, the originally story seems to indicate the folks that left the note were really trying to help the new homeowners in the only way they could. "

Update 2: Destiny sez, "The couple will be refunded the full cost of their house by Fannie Mae -- in exchange for removing them from their (still pending) lawsuit."

radioweather writes "Solar physicists have been waiting for the appearance of a reversed-polarity sunspot to signal the start of the next solar cycle. As of Friday, that wait is over. A magnetically reversed, high-latitude sunspot emerged on the surface of the sun. Just a few months ago, an 'All Quiet Alert' had been issued for the sun. This reversed-polarity sunspot marks the beginning of the sun's return back to Solar Maximum. Solar Cycle 24 has been the subject of much speculation due to competing forecasts on whether it will be a highly active or a quiet low cycle. If it is a low cycle, it may very well be a test of validity for some CO2 based global warming theories. Only time will tell."

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Cock: Indian Firework Art is a beautiful collection of artwork that has adorned the packaging for Indian fireworks, presented as a long, fold-out, two-sided continuous seven-metre fan of heavy coated card. The subject matter varies wildly -- religious iconography, of course, but also medieval knights, contemporary tanks and materiel, innumerable sexy starlets, wild animals facing down brave hunters, flexing strongmen, holy men and circus scenes. For all the variety, they all share a common trait -- they are garish, exuberant and infinitely alluring. Frankly, they make me want to blow stuff up. About half of the images come from Cock-brand fireworks, the rest from a variety of Indian manufacturers. All are lovely -- not a dud in the bunch. Link to Cock on Amazon UK, Link to Cock on Amazon US