By Martin Regtien
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

The hField Wi-Fire long range antenna has received some attention in recent times here at digitalreviews.net.

With Windows Vista support hot off the press, the good folks at hField have very kindly provided a unit for our evaluation. Thanks guys!
So just how well does the Wi-Fire live up to the claims, asks Kevin Cheng. Read his report here.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

How does everyone feel about dynamic in-game ads? OK, now how are you going to feel about ad-laden PDF files?

Publishers first upload PDF files to Adobe. Once digital content gets associated with the publisher for purposes of payment, it gets analyzed so that Yahoo knows what type of ads to place in the document. The files then get ad-enabled and e-mailed back to the publisher to be distributed as the publisher chooses. Thereafter, when opened, ad-enabled documents will call out to Yahoo to fetch dynamic ads for display, provided the PDFs are being read on an Internet-connected device.

As with ads on Web pages, publishers get paid per valid click.

The ads will appear in a sidebar, without altering the layout of the content beyond the addition of the sidebar. Source: Information Week

We Say: Not going to alter the document layout beyond the addition of the sidebar, eh? Whatever happened to WYSIWYG in PDFs, then? Aagh. I really don’t need to see more ads.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Facebook is one of the uber-social networking sites, and acknowledging its popularity, My Yahoo! has created a Facebook module that you can add to your page. As the My Yahoo! Product Manager Joseph said in a blog post,

As an avid Facebook user, I’m happy to tell you that My Yahoo! now has a Facebook module available!

We Say: While this is all great, I seem to recall that Yahoo! just released a beta social networking service, Mash.

While it’s still invitation-only, it’s not hard to get an invitation, either through your friends or of the sites I wrote about earlier. So why wouldn’t adding a module for their own site be a top priority over Facebook?

Oh, and lest I forget, what about Kickstart?

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

In the wake of the Megan Meier case comes a study that says that all forms of cyber-bullying, including text message as well as Internet-based bullying, are on the rise.

Hateful text messages, abusive e-mails and cyber-gossip are giving bullies new power over their victims — even in the supposed safety of their own homes, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

“Internet bullying has emerged as a new and growing form of social cruelty,” Kirk Williams and Nancy Guerra of the University of California at Riverside wrote in one of a series of reports published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The reports, from researchers organized by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, show a 50 percent increase in the number of kids aged 10 to 17 who said they were harassed online — from 6 percent in 2000 to 9 percent in 2005. Source: Reuters

We Say: What surprised me the most was that 2/3 of the victims had never been bullied before. So what, are we opening up a new way of bullying and a new population of victims, due to the anonymity of a lot of these methods?

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

If you had checked out Google Maps yesterday, you’d have seen added something new: Terrain View. Check the above image, or go here to play with it in the SF Bay Area.

But where’s Hybrid View? It’s still there, but hidden. Click on the Satellite View button, and you’ll get Hybrid View; you can uncheck the “Show labels” box to get back the original Satellite view.

We Say: While it won’t get people as excited as Street View (nor will it get privacy advocates or Canadian authorities stirred up, either), it gives users an interesting topological view of a map area.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

This’ll teach Al to post more often, I guess (his last blog post at the time of this writing was late 2006). As Al Gore was meeting with President Bush yesterday, in the tradition of American Nobel Prize winners getting a photo-op with the Prez, it was revealed that the blog on Gore’s site, ClimateCrisis.net, has been hacked.

It looks, as far as I can tell, like just the blog section has been hacked. However, looking at it, a user couldn’t see a difference — unless they looked at the source code (above).

We Say: Obviously hackers got in through a hole and hacked the source. But invisible, what good is it? Well, for one thing, hidden like that, it’ll take some time for people to catch it (hello, Webmaster, that hack is still there!). But the important thing for the hackers is that a search engine like Google will pick up the links as they crawl the site. And, since Gore’s site has such a high PageRank, Google will rank the links higher.

Of course, no one really searches for Nexium or Cialis online anyway, do they?

By Martin Regtien
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Not long ago Digital Reviews Network took some time out from playing with technology to check out some gadgets for the great outdoors.

With many thanks to Tool Logic, we can now bring you a review of the Tool Logic SL Series. They include a unique fire starter insert.

Looking for a great Christmas present? Check out our findings here.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

You’ll recall Vodafone’s court case against T-Mobile’s iPhone exclusivity in Germany … and the subsequent response by T-Mobile (unlocked iPhones, for a mere $1478). You’re probably also aware of how many hoops have to be jumped through for hackers to unlock or jailbreak their iPhones. Apparently, if you’re connected to the right infrastructure, it’s easy — T-Mobile iPhones, after the IMEI number is recorded and “processed” by Apple, unlock in seconds via iTunes.

The scenario is thus: you go to the T-Mobile store, pay the exhorbitant, er, extra fee for unlocking. T-Mobile records your IMEI, which presumably goes to Apple and is entered in some central database. Approximately 24 hours later, you connect your phone with iTunes, and viola, unlocked “in seconds.”

Besides the fact that it’s only taking seconds, the software version, when checked, remains at 1.1.2, so Apple isn’t making any firmware changes. So, what’s likely happening is iTunes sees the IMEI on Apple’s servers, says “ok, unlock” and there you go. Might it be too much of a stretch to say that hackers might be able figure out just what is being done via the iTunes unlocking, now that it’s available? Probably not.

We Say: Also, remember that France has a law which requires unlocking of phones, and that their launch is Nov. 29th, so this was already in iTunes and just required a flick of a switch, if that, for Germany.

T-Mobile plans to appeal the original court ruling which started all this, by the way. If you can read German (my friend can, and thus clued me into this — but I can’t!) you can see a screenshot (in German) at a German site.