theodp writes "Microsoft was just granted U.S. Patent No. 7,392,326 for Text Entry in an Electronic Device. From the patent: 'the invention may automatically add a 'www.' and a '.com' to the text the user is entering and display this combined text'. To get the point across, Microsoft included an illustration showing the 'invention' in action, transforming 'foo' into 'www.foo.com'. Sure it's not sorcery we're dealing with?" The specifics of the
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Toyota, already considered a leader in producing hybrid gas-electric vehicles is apparently preparing to make that hybrid a bit more hybrid: it's going to add solar panels to some models, using the solar energy to power air conditioning. It's not much, but it's a start. I've actually been fascinated with solar vehicles since the fifth grade (yikes) when I convinced some engineers at GM to send me some cheap solar panels to build a tiny solar-po
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While plenty of people worry about the possibility of government censorship online, some are noticing that the real issue isn't with government censorship but the fact that various intermediaries, in the form of service and application providers have the power to make content disappear online -- and they are often being pressured to do so, even if it's perfectly legal. This means that various hosting companies or other services, such as MySpace
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We've already talked about how low it appears some ISPs are making broadband "caps." Doing so seriously destroys the value of a broadband connection and will likely backfire on the ISPs who provide it. But, for those companies that are putting in place such low broadband caps -- a small suggestion: when discussing how much the caps allow, listing out how many emails you can send or receive under the cap is probably a bad idea. If the cap is so
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New Zealand, land of LotR and high-priced data plans Over at CG we’ve been watching the iPhone pricing plans whiz by, from the onerous Rogers tariff to Vodafone New Zealand’s $200 per month for 1 GB data plan. A lot of folks have been complaining about these prices but in light of these international plans, including [...]

Cardinal George Pell responds to sex abuse man's complaints about priest.

Talks underway as Industrial Commission declines to call off rail dispute.

Julian Assange's Wikileaks site is helping change nations and sparking international scandal.

jlmcgraw was the first to alert us that Hans Reiser has lead police to the location in the Oakland Hills where he buried the body of his wife Nina. (We discussed the rumor that he would do so last month.) SFGate.com reports that remains were recovered but have not yet been identified. Reiser is to be sentenced on Wednesday. CBS5 claims that Reiser made a deal for a reduced sentence, to 15 years, in exchange for revealing the body.Read more of thi
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Rareshare is a social network for people coping with rare diseases like adrenomyeloneuropathy or erythromelalgia. Rareshare was created by David Isserman, in cooperation with Nutra Pharma. Rareshare currently features communities for about 600 diseases and expects to expand this to about 1,000 by fall. Since the site launched about a month ago, a number of very active communities have already formed around quite a few of these disorders. The ide
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Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Sony PSP, BusinessSony Computer Entertainment's president of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida, isn't blind to the fact that exclusive games are becoming a rarity these days. In an interview with UK blog ThreeSpeech, the man who replaced Phil Harrison says that, given the trend towards multi-platform releases of major titles, first-party studios and games become "more important" - and that Sony is focusing its ass
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Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3 Dual-layer Blu-ray discs are so 2006. The new hotness is Pioneer's just-developed, 16-layer Blu-ray disc (pictured above) with a whopping 400GB of writable storage space. For reference, that disc could hold roughly eight copies of Metal Gear Solid 4, 187 copies of Final Fantasy VII, or 1.25 million copies of the original Super Mario Bros.The new discs require a special "wide-range spherical aberration compensator a
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Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Simulations, Video Ludwig's on vacation, but we're sure he'll check the site sooner or later and see that we have news to report on his most wanted game ever. Sony's lovely, yet elusive safari sim, Afrika, has surfaced again (albeit briefly) in a new behind-the-scenes clip of its soundtrack being recorded in Hollywood.Afrika's score is the work of Wataru Hokoyama, who is new to games but not other media. In additi
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A ceremony welcomed Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell home after their time in captivity.

The kids today sure do love the hip hop music, so let's be sure to cram as much of it into our movie as possible. Thrill as MC Hammer jams with the Addams family, Bobby Brown preaches the word of the Ghostbusters via bluescreen, Rodney Dangerfield cuts loose, Ronald McDonald busts a move, and Tom Hanks & Dan Aykroyd dance their way through a criminal investigation. [Previously]

"My name is a combination of 'take photo' and the letter 'C' for Charlie. How on earth do you pronounce that, you might ask. Well the answer is you don't. You sign it."

AP - As with most new parents, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban might have difficulty telling what day it is.