death

Here's proof entrepreneurial spirit is alive and kicking in the U.K.: And Vinyly will press your (or your pet's) cremated ashes into 30 custom LPs, for a rather hefty fee!

You can record anything you want; just don't exceed the maximum playing time of 12 minutes per side. You can use a recording of your voice, play a banjo, or recite your last will and testament. Some And Vinyly customers opt to just press the ashes in the grooves and let the clicks and pops "speak" for themselves. Hey, it's your sound after … Read more

Consider it a sign of the times, or even just success that Twitter now has a policy in place to handle ownership of a user's account once they've died.

As expected, interested parties need to send in several pieces of information about how they relate to that person before Twitter will take action. Once the proper credentials have been sent to the company (via e-mail or snail mail), Twitter is then able to do one of two things: either remove a deceased user's account entirely, or provide an archive of all that user's tweets so family … Read more

It's probably not a good sign that the first thing people ask me when they notice I'm holding an iPhone 4 is always something about how I deal with the reception issues. I've said here before that I have yet to experience dropped calls or any other issues related to "Antennagate" (yeesh, will we--as a society--ever get over the whole "Whatevergate" meme?), but that's probably largely just luck; maybe I'm fortunate that where I go in my daily life is covered pretty well by AT&T. I suspect I could be a rare exception.

The interesting thing to me is that the reception issues and "Death Grip" have been all over the news here in the U.S., but reports trickling in from other countries are quite the opposite. An Australian publication, The Daily Telegraph, gave a very positive review to Apple's iPhone 4 today saying finally about the reception issues, "Is the antenna an issue? No it's not. Have I dropped calls? No, I have not." Another story out of Norway (via AppleInsider) had similar results, with the writer concluding that the issues are more about weak U.S. mobile networks than they are about the iPhone 4 itself.

So my question is, even though the "Death Grip" might reduce your signal by a bar or two, if Apple had announced a deal with Verizon (or some other carrier) at launch, would we even be talking about "Antennagate?" I think I know what Steve Jobs would say if he thought nobody else was listening.

This week's iPhone AppsGate includes a fun tool to make stop-motion movies and a water-racing game sequel that is a huge improvement over the original.… Read more

This is turning into one of those charming cage matches in which wrestlers desperately try to maim each other with chains and chairs and blows to very private regions.

In a new video, posted to both its own Web site and to YouTube, Apple attempts to show that the dazzling new Motorola Droid X, which many seem to rather appreciate, also has something of an issue when it comes to being held in the Death Grip.

You know, the grip where you wrap your fingers round your cell phone, and the onscreen signal bars drop like a swooning '50s starlet?… Read more

I used to live in a haunted house. The lady who wandered around it in a white nightdress seemed benign enough. She never deliberately startled me or said "boo" and never made a mess. I think she was simply looking for something or someone she'd left behind. It wasn't me, as she had died, I believe, somewhere around 1672.

Facebook now has a similar issue to deal with. Around its vastly populated house, there are people who waft away to the next firmament without leaving a note or even saying goodbye. But they're still there. … Read more

The mountain of damning evidence is incontrovertible: Apple's iPhone 4 antenna design is flawed. Consumer Reports is only the latest publication to complete a battery of testing and declare what other reviewers have discovered as well: holding the phone a certain way causes repeatable reception problems that, in weaker signal areas, can lead to dropped calls.

Those lucky folks who live in areas with rock-solid AT&T reception likely won't run into the problem. Those less fortunate can reproduce it virtually at will. Here at CNET, Kent German demonstrated in video how dramatically a hand over the … Read more

Even if your new slim Xbox 360 console malfunctions, you won't be getting the now-infamous "red ring of death" error. That's because Microsoft has actually eliminated all of the red LEDs from the system's internal make-up. Instead, any sort of problem with the console will now be displayed using various combinations of green lights, GameSpot reports.

While we're relieved to witness the end of those dreadful red flashing lights, we're still skeptical about the new 360's reliability. Microsoft made a point to mention the new system's "whisper quiet" operation, … Read more

Whatever happened, no one may ever truly understand.

The facts, as reported by the Daily Mail, suggest that two students from Scotland checked into a hotel around 80 miles from Edinburgh University, where they were both studying.

When staff were concerned that Robert Miller, 20, and James Robertson, 19, were still in their room after check-out time, they reportedly opened their door and discovered them both dead.

Police reportedly examined a laptop in the students' room and, after police said they were not treating the deaths as suspicious, there are reportedly fears in the students' home communities that the dead … Read more