This article from the St. Petersburg Times talks about a man who was arrested for “hacking” into a wireless network in a residential area near Tampa Bay, and how it is increasingly becoming a problem nationwide. The technology has made life easier for high-tech criminals because it provides near anonymity. Each online connection generates an Internet Protocol Address, a unique set of numbers that can be traced back to a house or business. That’s still the case with Wi-Fi but if a criminal taps into a network, his actions would lead to the owner of that network. By the time authorities show up to investigate, the hacker would be gone. Read more »

Planning on hitting the beach sometime soon and want to keep up with the latest tropical developments? Maybe you live near the coast and want to know what is happening with that big storm sitting a few hundred miles offshore. The National Hurrican Center is reporting on Tropical Storm Bret via RSS. Link below goes to XML feed. Too bad they don’t put any actual information in the feed. C’mon guys, stick some coordinates and a satellite image in there. Read more »

Google has released an API for its Google Maps service. The Google Maps API lets developers embed Google Maps in their own web pages with JavaScript. You can add overlays to the map (including markers and polylines) and display shadowed “info windows” just like Google Maps. Not sure how this affects those sites that are already utilizing Google Maps by screen scraping or other means. Read more »

One question I always seem to get from friends and family is how to convert VHS tapes to DVD. There are lots of ways you can do it, and each process has their pros and cons. Here is a site that talks about several of those methods and gives you pointers on how to get the highest quality end product. One of the easiest ways is to just plug a DV camera into your VCR and either copy the tape to a DVC tape or use it as a pass-through device to your computer via FireWire. Anyone have any tips or tricks that aren’t mentioned in this article? Read more »

Griffin Technology consistently delivers some of the best add-ons for the Apple iPod. Looks like they have done it again with their new product, iFill. iFill streams mp3 files from thousands of free radio stations directly to your iPod. You can choose several stations at once and select from many different genres. And since iFill goes directly to your iPod, it won’t clutter up your hard drive with extra files. This makes it easy to create Podcasts of those stations that don’t offer one yet. Read more »

According to this Reuters article, Cingular Wireless may carry the yet-to-be-released Motorola iTunes phone. It appears that the decision is down to finding out how Cingular can make a profit from the deal once the phone is in the customers’ hand. This probably means some sort of revenue sharing deal for songs purchased from the iTunes store via the phone. Cingular seems to be the only natural choice. Verizon Wireless has announced that it plans to develop a mobile music service that will compete with Apple’s iTunes. Read more »

So if you are like me, you are wondering what to do with your Xbox after the 360 is released. Assuming that the Xbox 360 is backward compatible, why not just install OS X on it? Here are the steps you need to take to install PearPC and OS X on your Xbox. You have software modded your Xbox and put Xebian Linux on it. You have purchased a copy of Mac OS X and made an image of it. Download the source code for PearPC at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/pearpc/pearpc-0.3.1.tar.gz. As of this writing, 0.3.1 is the most recent version. Use tar to decompress the file with tar -xzvf pearpc-0.3.1.tar.gz. A directory Read more »

This is just too goo to pass up. Bennie Smith, the privacy chief for online advertising company DoubleClick, is speaking out against tools that block online advertising. He said if a similar tool could be produced for newspapers, it would not be accepted by consumers. “You’d go to your local corner shop and buy the daily paper, and you’d have these large holes where the ads were. “You’d somehow feel like your 25 cents had not gotten full value,” he said. I think he is failing to realize that when I open my newspaper to read it, I don’t have 50 other newspapers dropping in my lap and advertising viagra Read more »

Logitech has announced the release of wireless Bluetooth headphones for the iPod. They are compatible with any iPod that uses a dock connector, which includes the 3G and 4G iPods and iPod Photos, as well as the iPod Mini. The Logitech wireless headphoens are equipped with 40mm full-range neodymium drivers. Controls on the headphone let users adjust volume as well as control what’s playing, using track forward, track backward, play and pause buttons. The wireless headphones use a behind-the-head headband design and weigh 3.2 ounces (the adapter adds another ounce). The headphones also use a rechargable battery that lasts up to 8 hours and recharges in about 2.5 hours. Read more »

Yep. That is the circuit board of an iTrip inside the case of a Sony Playstation Portable. This site has directions on how to connect it so that you can listen to music in your car from your PSP in the same fashion that iPod owners do using the iTrip. Read more »