labs

The tinkerers at North Street Labs retrofitted an NES zapper with a ridiculously powerful laser capable of catching vulnerable objects like matches on fire.

The laser is strong enough to max out a 2W laser meter. That's some serious strength. As North Street Labs points out, goggles are an absolute must at all times when handling the zapper. There is a physical turn key safety switch to keep it from accidentally going off.… Read more

Kaspersky Lab has published an update in its investigation of the Flame cyber-espionage campaign, which the security experts discovered in May.

The research, which Kaspersky conducted in partnership with IMPACT, CERT-Bund/BSI and Symantec, identified traces of three previously undiscovered malicious programs.

Specifically, Symantec has highlighted forensic analysis of two of the command-and-control (C&C) servers behind the W32.Flamer attacks that targeted the Middle East earlier this year.

Here's what the group found after analyzing the C&C servers:

SAN FRANCISCO--A new iPad app announced today aims to give users instant contextual information based on nothing more than what's being talked about during a voice conversation.

Launched out of stealth today, the eight-person San Francisco startup Expect Labs unveiled MindMeld, an app designed to interpret what people using it are discussing and instantly deliver sharable useful information about it.

For example, explained Expect Labs CEO Tim Tuttle -- who previously built and sold video search engine Truveo to AOL -- if several people using MindMeld were talking about going out to a Blue Bottle cafe in San Francisco, … Read more

Polaroid cameras used to be the coolest things. You'd huddle around a little square of weird photographic paper, waiting for the image to magically appear out of nothing. You just don't get the same thrill from capturing a photo on your smartphone. Until now.

I'm at the Kickstarter page for the Impossible Instant Lab, watching the pledge numbers rise in real time. Backers are jumping in on the $149 early-bird price (regularly a $229 pledge) for a device that turns photos from an iPhone into Polaroid pictures.… Read more

Smartphones are the Swiss Army Knives of the tech world.

They're cell phones, music and video players, mobile Web browsers, and personal organizers, among other things. Not surprisingly, all this can take a toll on battery life, and when you depend on your smartphone for so much, the last thing you want is for it to run out of juice when you need it most.

Generally speaking, with moderate use, smartphones can give you a full day's performance before needing to be recharged, but not all gadgets are created equal -- some simply run out of steam early, whereas others will hang in there for the long haul. Here are eight smartphones with battery usage that really impressed us, whether it was because they scored well in our CNET Labs battery tests, or simply because their usage time stood out from the crowd of humdrum cell phone batteries we encountered (and believe us, we encounter a lot). Give one of these devices a try if you're looking for a phone that packs some decent juice.… Read more

Gauss, a new "cyber-espionage toolkit," has emerged in the Middle East and is capable of stealing sensitive data such as browser passwords, online banking accounts, cookies, and system configurations, according to Kaspersky Lab. Gauss appears to have come from the same nation-state factories that produced Stuxnet.

According to Kaspersky, Gauss has unique characteristics relative to other malware. Kaspersky said it found Gauss following the discovery of Flame. The International Telecommunications Union has started an effort to identify emerging cyberthreats and mitigate them before they spread.

In a nutshell, Gauss launched around September 2011 and was discovered in June. … Read more

In playing catch up with President Obama's social media savvy, Republican nominee Mitt Romney might have cut some corners. A new report by Barracuda Labs shows that more than 15 percent of Romney's Twitter followers may have come from bogus accounts generated by pay-for-followers services.

"We believe most of these recent followers of Romney are not from a general Twitter population but most likely from a paid Twitter follower service," Barracuda Labs research scientist Jason Ding wrote in the report.

It's important to note, however, that it's not clear if the Romney campaign, an … Read more

I have fond memories of the original Aragon 4004 power amplifier from my days when I worked as a high-end audio salesman. That was in the late 1980s and the big 200 watt amp sold for a lot less money than the reigning high-end amps of the period. The distinctive styling, with a "V" cutout in the 4004's chassis, made it stand out from rows of lookalike designs at the store. While the Aragon amps sold for a couple of thousand dollars, they were more affordable than most high-end amps. A few years after the 4004 arrived … Read more

Kids, meet Kate the robot. She wants to play with you, help you do your homework, or just give you a big metallic hug while Mom or Dad are deployed overseas. She can't replace your parent, but with her smiling ET-ish visage and gift for gab, she might be able to ease the distance a bit.

Dan Mathias of the Florida-based one-man FutureBots Lab thought up the humanoid telepresence robot specifically as a companion and communication device for kids of remote military service members.

He also thinks Kate (Kids Avatar Teacher and Entertainer) could, like Kaspar the friendly robot, help autistic children improve their social and communication skills or maybe be used in nursing homes to assist Alzheimer's patients. … Read more