By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

netomat, a beta service that allows you to get, create and send content to your “hub”, has announced that they have optimized their service to work with Flickr. Of course, most people know about Flickr, one of the most popular photo-sharing sites. netomat allows you to create a hub, which is an online space you can create to get and share pictures and text messages. Each hub you create is a private group with you as the owner. You and your friends can view and update your hubs via a PC or your phone. And it’s free.

Now when a Flickr group - ranging from the funky to the sublime - has new content, netomat subscribers can receive the image resized for mobile phones along with any associated text. netomat hub members can also invite friends to their Flickr hub for group chat about the Flickr content.

To receive Flickr updates simply sign up with netomat and click “Start a hub” Members can then choose the netomat Flickr news feed or start a new hub with the unique RSS 2.0 or Atom feed link found at the bottom of each Flickr group page. The new content will then be sent to members’ mobile phones, PCs or both, whichever they prefer. Source: netomat Press Release

We Say: The press release itself isn’t due to go out until tomorrow, so you, our readers, are getting a jump on the rest of the Web. I hadn’t heard of netomat before getting the press release, but reading through their FAQ, it sounds like a great way to interface with friends. And the Flickr tie-in is a great idea as well.

By Chief Gizmateer
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Apple released a few new products to their arsenal today including the iPod Hi-Fi and a couple new Mac Mini’s featuring the Intel chipset. Unfortunately for me, the “iTablet” was not released (nor will this year).

According to the press release, the iPod Hi-Fi is a “high-fidelity” (how 50’s is that!) speaker system that integrates with all iPods via a dock connector which recharges your iPod and allows from control from a remote control and is Apple’s vision to redefine the home stereo system.

iPod Hi-Fi also features a dual-purpose 3.5-mm auxiliary input that accepts either analog or digital signals for easy connection to a wide range of audio sources. You can power the gizmo via AC or 6 D-cell batteries making the device portable as well.

The Apple iPod Hi-Fi is available now from the Apple Store for $349.

If you get one, let me know how it sounds…

Not to be overshadowed by Apple’s iPod announcements, Apple announced new computer products too including two new Mac minis powered by Intel. According to the press release, the new minis base configuration include 512MB of memory expandable to 2GB, Intel GMA950 graphics processor, AirPort Extreme wireless, gig ethernet, four USB 2.0 ports, one audio in and out port, DVI and the infared Apple Remote.

The new 1.5 GHz Mac mini starts at $599 and features a 1.5 GHz Intel Core Solo processor, a 60GB SATA drive running at 5400 RPM and a slot-load combo featuring a DVD-ROM and CD-RW drive. Starting at $799, the new 1.66 GHz Mac mini features a 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, an 80GB SATA drive running at 5400 RPM and a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support.

According to Apple, the new system architecture should provide performance enhancements up to four times as fast than last generations Mac mini. I’m sure we’ll see specs on that from independent sources soon enough.

Both are available from the Apple Store and start at $599 and $799 respectively.

The new Mac minis look to be very competitive with similar PC component setups but include very user-friendly software and overall seem to be a really good deal and huge step forward for Apple’s Intel initative. With that said, we’d really like to make a change to the graphics processor… apparently the Intel GMA950 graphics processor does not perform well (unlike the older Mac minis that had an ATI Radeon 9200 graphics processor). Also, who in their right mind would purchase a single core processor when your could purchase a dual core processor machine especially with Mac OS X’s threaded nature? If you get a new Mac mini, save yourself grief and at least snag the dual core machine!

Source: Gizmos for Geeks

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Ever send a text message and forget to address it? If you’re sending it to the Verizon system, Stan Bubrouski may be reading the result. He thought he was being clever when he signed up for null@vtext.com as his vText account address, but he has paid for it since.

Bubrouski has gotten messages from ESPN, from OnStar, from people sending “Call Mom” and “Fix Car”-type messages. These are sometimes just silly (or annoying), and if he starts to get tons of messages from one address (like ESPN) he simply blocks it. But he’s also seen more private information such as medication reminders, SAT scores, and more.

SMS users, like e-mail users, rely on the fact that carriers like Verizon won’t accidentally deliver improperly formatted messages, such as those with no addressee, to an unrelated address, said John Pescatore, a vice president at Gartner. “There’s no way that this should be happening. No e-mail system would ever do that,” he said. Verizon should be rejecting messages with improperly formatted addressee information, not forwarding it to an account, he said. “I’ve received thousands of text messages over the past five years,” he (Bubrouski) wrote. “Probably only about 200 or so were actually meant for or even sent to me directly.” Source: eWeek

We Say: This is funny, but also interesting how being flippant and clever can get you into trouble. Equally interesting is that Bubrouski says he could change his address, thus stopping the flood of messages, but he actually enjoys them for the most part.

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

The technology world is a world of extermes. When there are no jobs, you can’t throw a rock without hitting an out-of-work engineer. When times are fat, comanies do whatever they can to pull away talent from well respected companies. Case in point: Yahoo! Inc. While this is not news, the fact that the defecting employess used Yahoo’s own IM software - Yahoo! Messenger to chat and scheme their departure, is just too ironic for words. It’s also stupid. As in lawsuit stupid. So Yahoo is suing sartup Mforma and its own ex-employess on theft of trade secrets. And no - switching to AOL’s AIM didn’t help the situation at all.

According to the suit, the defection of the tight-knit group of Yahoo engineers and business development staffers began with a single employee, who then began recruiting his former colleagues, in violation of contracts he’d previously signed with Yahoo. As the team left, they took with them financial forecasts, business strategy documents and even Yahoo source code for technologies designed to send content efficiently to cell phones, the suit alleges. Much of the evidence is drawn from back-and-forth instant messaging conversations conducted on company laptops. At several points, the employees switched to using similar chat software from AOL, apparently in an attempt to avoid detection, the suit claims. Source: news.com via TechDirt

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Rant of the Week: At this very moment I am unable to install my new Slingbox via powerline Ethernet because I don’t have a bare wall outlet that is a) not too far away from my router and b) not already taken by plugs that lead to surge supressors. The one plug I did find just won’t accommodate the shape of powerline adapter, so I am screwed, unless I go out and buy a huge spool of ethernet cable. The same thing happens when I want to charge my phone, laptop, and Blackberry the night before a trip- the chargers fight for space on the wall outlets in my kitchen and I end up having to unplug the toaster, or scatter them throughout the house. Today there’s a little progress to report in the socket side of electricity - a wall outlet where the plug positions can rotate to accomodate today’s larger plugs.

One of the legacy items in every home that just never seems to get updated is the electrical wall outlet or power socket or whatever you call it. Designed in the dark ages before low voltage transformers and other humungous devices became commonplace, we’ve seen an elegant solution for a powerboard in the Powersquid but we haven’t seen an elegant solution to overcome this problem for the wall outlet until this revolutionary re-take by 360 Electrical. More

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

A new technology using the Face Sensing Engine (FSE) by Oki Electric will be offered on a Vodafone Group handset in Japan this April, according to a press release by Oki. The technology will be able to complete verification in 1 second, and will use a 3.2-megapixel camera with 2X optical zoom for the verification. It will be included in the Vodafone 904SH handset, which is manufactured by Sharp.

“An owner’s face can be instantly verified,” said Masao Miyashita, president of Oki’s Network Systems Company, in a statement. “Going forward, we will provide such solutions to the embedded market for entertainment devices as well as to the mobile phone market.” Source: TechWeb

We Say: I’ve never been that big a fan of biometrics, and not because of scenes like in the movie Demolition Man. More because of interviews like a recent one on NPR recently, which outlined many errors that still exist in verification. I’m wondering what will happen if you decide not to shave for a day … or two … or go on vacation and come back with a full beard.

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Last week Apple sent emails to journalists telling them that today, Tuesday February 28, they should come to a special event to learn about some “fun new products”. One of those “fun” (?) products is a revamped Mac Mini, with either an Intel Core Solo or Core Duo CPU.

Apple also announced its own brand of leather iPod cases, available in mid-March for $99.

Jobs announced two models of the Mac Mini. One, for $599, has a 1.5-GHz Intel Core solo processor with a 60GB hard drive, combo drive that plays DVDs and burns CDs and 512MB of memory. The other, which goes for $799, has a 1.67-GHz Core Duo processor, an 80GB hard drive, 512MB of memory and a SuperDrive that burns CDs and DVDs. Both will be available starting today. Source: Gadgets Blog (News.com)

We Say: I was expecting there would be some sort of Mac Mini update, to flesh out the product line, and here it is. Apple has done a good job of rolling out its Intel-based computers quickly. I wasn’t expecting (nor am I all that excited by) the iPod cases, as there are plenty of those to go around from 3rd-party vendors.

By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Here’s one of those news articles you’d like to see more often, the more we get these big companies involved in spam, phishing and the like, the better off we will all be.

America Online is taking advantage of a first-of-its-kind anti-”phishing” law in Virginia to sue three international groups that allegedly stole information from unsuspecting AOL users by sending e-mail that appeared to be legitimate messages from the company.

AOL’s three lawsuits, filed Monday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., seek $18 million for the unit of Time Warner Inc.

The suits allege that the 30 phishers, who have not yet been identified by name, violated the 2005 Virginia anti-phishing act, which covers AOL because it is based in Dulles, Va. The suits also cite federal computer fraud law and the Lanham Act, which protects trademarks.

The phishers cited in the suits are accused of sending tens of thousands of e-mails and setting up Web sites that purportedly were from AOL customer service. Source: Yahoo.com.

We Say: So, all you AOL people, keep forwarding this stuff to AOL so they can keep suing these losers. I’ve trained my mom to do it on eBay, now that she’s been taken advantage of TWICE, so make sure your forward all of those emails asking for login info, etc, as, most likely they are not from AOL themselves.