mattie

News Corp. axes The Daily.

The Daily, which was an ambitious tablet-only news publication backed by News Corp., is shutting its doors December 15. Launched back in February 2011, The Daily was an interactive newspaper stylized for consumption on the iPad. Best of all, a year's subscription went for only $40 and offered a wide variety of sections. While there will be no more issues of The Daily, its brand will live on other channels within News Corp.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the first text message. On December 3, 1992, SMS pioneer Matti Makkonen successfully sent … Read more

TxtN trns 20 2day. Hw willya celebr8?

The so-called father of SMS commemorated the occasion via a rare interview that appropriately enough was conducted via text messages.

Chatting with the BBC yesterday, Matti Makkonen took credit for conceiving and fleshing out SMS, or short message service. But he lived up to his title as its "reluctant father" by making it clear that others actually developed the technology.

"I did not consider sms as personal achievement but as result of joint effort to collect ideas and write the specifications of the services based on them," he told the BBC.… Read more

We're back from San Diego Comic-Con 2012 with a wrap-up show of everything we saw at the show. This being our first year, it quickly became obvious that we missed the first rule of Comic-Con: leave your civilian clothes at home!… Read more

The hoverboard floated onto the big screen in "Back to the Future II" and broke the hearts of geeks worldwide when director Robert Zemeckis announced that the technology would not be available until the year 2015. Decades later, we're all still waiting for power laces, hydrator machines, power laces, and a real hoverboard, but Mattel was on-hand at Comic-Con 2012 to show off the next best thing: a 1:1 scale replica of the original hover board ridden by Marty McFly.

While it's still unacceptable that the thing doesn't actually glide through the air (don't even think about water), the prop retains the exact look and feel of the real thing, replete with a scooter handle hole, Velcro ankle strap, motion sensors, and "whooshing" sound effects pulled directly from the movies.… Read more

YouTube this week handed authorities in Finland an opportunity to stop a mass killing.

After spotting several threatening videos allegedly posted to YouTube by student Matti Saari, Finnish police tracked down and questioned the 22-year-old man on Monday. Authorities there are now answering questions about why they freed Saari, who on Tuesday gunned down 10 classmates and then killed himself at the vocational school he attended.

The sick trend of school shootings continues: Columbine, Virginia Tech, and last November's Jokela High School Massacre, also in Finland. What was different this time was that police were in a position to … Read more

Following up on the success of their FireWire Speakers, LaCie has announced another collaboration with designer Neil Poulton. This model retains the same minimalist design aesthetic but draws power from USB instead of Firewire for plug-and-play compatibility with most PC and Mac computers.

Created with the "en vogue" consumer in mind, the USB Speakers let you forgo standard audio cables and replace them with a single USB cord. All the juice needed to power the set is drawn from the computer's bus, and a single wire connects the left and right speakers.

The speakers are shaped like … Read more