Can Big Brother Hear Me Now?

Neatorama:

Surprise! The government can listen to everything you say, even when your cell phone is turned off:

A recent court ruling in a case against the Genovese
crime family revealed that the FBI has the ability from a remote
location to activate a cell phone and turn its microphone into a
listening device that transmits to an FBI listening post, a method
known as a “roving bug.” Experts say the only way to defeat it is to
remove the cell phone battery.

“The FBI can access cell phones and modify them remotely without
ever having to physically handle them,” James Atkinson, a
counterintelligence security consultant, told ABC News. “Any recently
manufactured cell phone has a built-in tracking device, which can allow
eavesdroppers to pinpoint someone’s location to within just a few
feet,” he added.

Link

Battlestar Galactica Online for Xbox 360 confirmed by Vivendi games

And yet ANOTHER reason to get a 360……

Destructoid:

Hot on the heels of the recent Firefly MMO announcement, it appears there’s a Battlestar Galactica Online in the works.

While little information has been revealed (other than a listing by EB Games/Gamestop and a subsequent confirmation by Vivendi Games to French gaming sites), it seems the game will be exclusive to the Xbox 360. By tacking the word “online” to something, one can only assume we’re speaking about an MMO. But I guess it’s not out of the realm of possibility that we might see a Battlestar Galactica kart racer. No word on whether Lt. Starbuck will have a pee pee or a vagina.

EB Games/Gamestop has listed the game for an October 2007 release. More details and an official announcement are sure to follow shortly.

Corporate Logos and Their Meanings

Neatorama:

From FunOnTheNet, a collection of corporate logos and their “meanings,” like this one from Amazon:

You might think the arrow does nothing here. But it
says that amazon.com has everything from a to z and it also represents
the smile brought to the customer’s face. Wow, that is quite deep.

Link - via digg

Download of the Day: Driver Collector (Windows)

Lifehacker:

Windows only: Freeware tool Driver Collector finds the currently
installed drivers for hardware currently installed on your PC, then
copies the files to a pre-defined folder.

If you’ve re-installed Windows before, you know how handy a tool
like Driver Collector could be - whether you’ve long since lost your
driver disks or you just don’t want to go through the hassle of
searching through all your install disks for the correct drivers. With
tools like InstallPad
for automating your software installations and Driver Collector for
taking care of your hardware, re-installing Windows on your computer
gets easier by the day. — Adam Pash

Driver Collector 1.2 [Major Geeks via Technibble]

Free audiobook podcasts ready for download

Digg:

You’ll find here 40+ major literary and philosophical works. Mark
Twain, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka,
Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allen Poe, etc.

LINK

Download of the Day: Hazel (Mac)

Lifehacker:

Mac only: Automated file management utility Hazel organizes your files using rules you set up.

Using Hazel you can, for example, delete any files more than a week
old in your Downloads folder, clear documents you haven’t touched in a
month off your Desktop or automatically add MP3’s to your iTunes
library (even a specific playlist!.) Set up rules the way you would in
Mail.app and have Hazel label, trash, move or color-code any file that
meets specific criteria in a given folder. Hazel reminds me of rule-based list processing,
but for files, and with an easy-peasy point and click interface. If
only there was something like this for Windows! After the jump, a few
screenies of Hazel in action.

Here’s Hazel’s main interface (in System Preferences), with the folders that have rules set up for them.

What’s really neat about Hazel is that it can execute AppleScript or
a shell script on files that meet your criteria, if what you want to do
isn’t already built-in. Here’s what a particular rule setup looks like
(similar to iTunes Smart Playlists or Mail.app rules):

A 14 day free trial of Hazel is available for download; a license’ll set ya back 16 bucks, Mac only. — Gina Trapani

Hazel [Noodlesoft via 43 Folders]

Guy at Best Buy caught dancing (badly)

Repost due to previous issues…

Download of the Day: PermaTabs (Firefox)

Lifehacker:

Firefox only: PermaTabs creates “permanent” tabs that appear every time you start Firefox and stay open indefinitely.

Think of it: Instead of having to manually load Lifehacker, Gizmodo,
eBay and all the other sites you revisit throughout the day, PermaTabs
makes them appear automatically. And they can’t be closed unless you
remove their PermaTab designation.

To create a PermaTab, just right-click an open tab and select
Permanent Tab, which turns the tab yellow (or the color of your
choosing) and removes its close button. Right-click again to remove the
PermaTab.

This crazy-useful extension just won a (sorry)
permanent home on my system; you’ll definitely want it for yours, too.
PermaTabs is free; it requires Firefox 2.0. — Rick Broida

PermaTabs

Add a dash of color to black-and-white photos

Lifehacker:

The geniuses at Digital Photography School show how to create some
pizzazz by adding a small area of color to a black-and-white photo.

The process involves “desaturating” the color from an image and then
using the History Brush to “paint in” the desired area. It’s pretty
simple overall, though you’ll need to go slowly and exercise care
around the edges. This tutorial leverages Photoshop, though it should
work similarly in any image editor that has the same desaturate and
history-brush tools. — Rick Broida

Mono, with a Dash of Colour - Photoshop CS2 Tutorial [Digital Photography School]

Reading Shakespeare Excites the Brain

Neatorama:

Researchers at the University of Liverpool discovered that reading Shakespeare excites the brain:

Professor Philip Davis, from the University’s School
of English, said: “The brain reacts to reading a phrase such as ‘he
godded me’ from the tragedy of Coriolanus, in a similar way to putting
a jigsaw puzzle together. If it is easy to see which pieces slot
together you become bored of the game, but if the pieces don’t appear
to fit, when we know they should, the brain becomes excited. By
throwing odd words into seemingly normal sentences, Shakespeare
surprises the brain and catches it off guard in a manner that produces
a sudden burst of activity - a sense of drama created out of the
simplest of things.”

Experts believe that this heightened brain activity may be one
of the reasons why Shakespeare’s plays have such a dramatic impact on
their readers.

Link