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SAN DIEGO--For better or worse, text messaging has become, according to a company called Scientific Media, the most popular mobile application on Earth. And while many companies are trying to build marketing efforts around people's use of texting, it's clear there is a long way to go before those efforts are coherent.

At the DemoFall 09 conference here Wednesday, Scientific Media unveiled its Dot Go service, a tool it hopes large numbers of companies will employ to try to boost their text messaging-based marketing.

The idea? Blow apart the current texting/marketing dynamic, in which companies try to … Read more

A group of engineering students has developed a portable, low-cost Braille printer that lets the blind and visually impaired easily label objects that feel similar to the touch, like DVDs.

The 6dot Braille Labelmaker is cheaper and easier to use than other label makers, according to the students from MIT, the University of Toronto, and Stanford University. Still in development, it might cost as little as $200 when released, less than half the cost of some other Braille label makers.

Users push six keys on the ergonomic device--one for each of the dots that make up a Braille character--to emboss … Read more

The real estate market is in trouble and housing prices are plummeting. In other words, it is a great time to buy a house.

That's why we've compiled a list of real estate search sites and examined how well they can help you find your next home.

DotHomes If you're looking to find homes, but you don't know where to start, DotHomes might be it. It's not the best real estate search site in this roundup, but it does a fine job of taking listings from across the Web and getting them to you quickly.… Read more

As Microsoft's Peter Galli recently noted, the open-source Web content management project DotNetNuke has moved to Microsoft's CodePlex, citing CodePlex's "reliable and dependable infrastructure, cleanest user experience, most advanced project administration tools, and highest commitment to future innovation" as its rationale.

This is the first move by a high-profile open-source project to Microsoft's open-source code hosting site. Is it a one-off example of a sell-out, or a harbinger of more movement to Microsoft's open-source site?

It's too soon to tell, but I suspect this move signals the open-source community's gradual thaw … Read more

Updated at 8:25 p.m. PST with preliminary test results, and at 10:36 p.m. PST with another photographer's results.

Canon on Wednesday released new firmware for its EOS 5D Mark II camera that the company said "improves and mitigates" the "black dot" problem that marred some images from the high-profile, high-end SLR.

Version 1.0.7 of the 5D Mark II firmware software is downloadable from Canon's Web site. (I encountered some dead ends on the site, but eventually found the 9MB download on the U.S. site at this address.)

I've just run some tests. My preliminary opinion is that there's grounds for optimism that the firmware indeed seems to have taken care of the problem. See the shots below taken at ISO 800 and 3,200, magnified to three times regular size. … Read more

Updated 9:27 and 9:45 a.m. PST with further details from Canon USA announcement.

Canon has acknowledged the "black dot" problem that mars some shots taken with its new 5D Mark II camera and is preparing "correction firmware" designed to deal with the problem, the company said.

"We are currently investigating ways to improve and/or mitigate these phenomena. An announcement will be made on the Canon Web site when measures to address these phenomena have been decided," according to a statement dated December 17 that appeared on Canon's Australian support and service Web site.

A later Canon USA service announcement was largely identical, but also said Canon is "examining measures to reduce or eliminate these phenomena by providing correction firmware."

Firmware fixes can be downloaded and installed, a much cheaper and easier process than the physical repairs the company undertook to help with Canon 1D Mark III autofocus problem.

Canon described the problem the same way many who've complained about it have: "When shooting night scenes, the right side of point light sources (such as lights from building windows) may become black. The phenomenon may become visible if the images are enlarged to 100 percent or above on a monitor or if large prints of the images are made." For some examples, check farther down this post.

The company also said it's looking into vertical banding noise that can show when shooting files in the sRAW1 mode, which produces a smaller file size than regular raw images.… Read more

Dots Free is a free game that lets you play the classic pencil-and-paper game Dots and Boxes (aka Dots and Dashes, the Dot Game, Squares, and so on).

Players take turns placing horizontal or vertical lines between dots on a five-by-seven grid, and the player that places the last line to close off a box scores a point and takes another turn. In Dots Free, you can play with one or two players (or, if you're particularly risk averse, you can even watch the game play by itself), and you can choose between Easy and Medium artificial intelligence settings. … Read more

A colleague recently asked if I knew why semiconductor stocks significantly underperformed the market over the past five years, even though chip sales have seen double-digit growth during the same period. Being a veteran of the industry, I surprised both of us by not knowing the answer. So I decided to find out.

First, the facts. The PHLX semiconductor sector index (SOX) declined at a rate of 2.9 percent per year over the past five years, while Merrill Lynch's semiconductor index exchange-traded fund (SMH) declined 1.0 percent per year.

The Nasdaq, on the other hand, experienced a 4.8 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) during the same period. Likewise, the Dow and S&P 500 respectively grew 3.7 percent and 3.9 percent annually.

Indeed, the semiconductor sector has significantly underperformed the broad market. … Read more

Are you a .Mac subscriber who's been using the built-in bookmark syncing app? Come Sunday that service will no longer exist as part of the MobileMe transition, so if you want to do one last sync you've got to get it done this weekend.

Shortly after the MobileMe announcement last month Apple sent out an e-mail to current .Mac subscribers detailing this change. Friday, the company extended the transfer deadline to July 6, along with providing a how-to guide to make sure you've got everything synced up one last time. You can get full instructions on how to do the sync here. … Read more