Sharp’s Blu-ray player loads discs in 10 seconds

There are a whole bunch of Blu-ray players being announced at CEDIA, but for the most part there’s not too much to differentiate them. Sharp’s new Blu-ray player, the BD-HP20U, the company’s first ever and while it’s mostly the same as other players, the press release claims that it will load Blu-ray discs in ten seconds. For those of you not used to the sluggish speeds of high-def media, that’s very fast — we’re used to it taking closer from 40 seconds to well over a minute on other high-def players.

We definitely love the Quick Start mode, but we’re disappointed that the BD-HP20U doesn’t offer bitstream output for DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks. On the other hand, the $550 price tag is pretty attractive, considering the only other $500 standalone Blu-ray player we’ve reviewed–the Sony BDP-S300–was extremely sluggish.

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SanDisk Unveils ExpressCard Flash Media Reader

SanDisk has introduced an ExpressCard-based flash media card reader that fits into the expansion slot on MacBook Pros. The new card is expected to hit store shelves in North America and Europe in September; it’ll cost $29.99.

The device supports SD, SDHC, MMC, MMCplus, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro Duo and Memory Stick Pro-HG Duo card formats, enabling the MacBook Pro to read and write to those cards without need an external adapter and without wasting a USB port.

The card is plug-and-play. No software driver is required.

Want a job at Google? Try these brainteasers first

Dream of landing a coding job at an A-list tech company? It might be a good idea to prep for your interviews by pondering how many golf balls can fit inside a school bus. Or how much you would charge for washing all the windows in Seattle. Or why, exactly, manhole covers are round and not, say, square.

Seemingly random questions like these have become commonplace in Silicon Valley and other tech outposts, where companies aren’t as interested in the correct answer to a tough question as they are in how a prospective employee might try to solve it. Since businesses today have to be able to react quickly to shifting market dynamics, they want more than engineers with high IQs and good college transcripts. They want people who can think on their feet.

Microsoft often gets credit for bringing so-called open-ended logic-problem screening tools into vogue in the late 1980s, when Redmond interviewers peppered job candidates with offbeat questions like How much does a 747 weigh? “We want to gauge people’s creativity,” says Warren Ashton, recruiting manager at Microsoft. The manhole cover problem is Ashton’s personal favorite.

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Cheap HD DVD player coming…

The format war far from over, but HD DVD is on roll — at least as far as PR is concerned. Last week the big news was both Paramount and DreamWorks becoming HD DVD-exclusive studios, and now Venturer Electronics has announced it will release a budget HD DVD player–the SHD7000–by the 2007 holiday season. There have been several reports indicating that cheaper, off-brand HD DVD players were on their way, but Venturer is the first company to make a formal announcement.

Details are a little slim at the moment, but here’s what we know. The SHD7000 has an HDMI port capable of outputting video at 1080i. That’s comparable to Toshiba’s HD-A2, and as long as your HDTV has decent 1080i deinterlacing, you should still get very good image quality with a 1080i signal (assuming it is of comparable quality to the HD-A2).

According to the press release, the SHD7000 also has onboard Dolby TrueHD decoding. The HD DVD spec only requires players to be able to decode two channels of Dolby TrueHD, so we don’t know for sure if the SHD7000 will be able to decode multichannel Dolby TrueHD soundtracks (to date, all HD DVD players have handled 5.1 TrueHD decoding.) Like all other HD DVD players, the SHD7000 also has an Ethernet port, so it should be capable of playing networked enabled special features, as seen on titles like Blood Diamond. The press release also states that it will be able to upconvert regular DVDs and play standard audio CDs.

Adobe releases RawShooter migration tool

Adobe Labs has released a tool to let customers of the RawShooter software convert image-editing settings to equivalents in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

The RawShooter conversion tool is a free download and works on Windows systems. However, because the two programs operate differently when it comes to features such as noise reduction, tone curves and color balance, images won’t necessarily appear the same, Adobe cautioned.

RawShooter, software used to convert unprocessed “raw” images from higher-end digital cameras into more portable formats such as JPEG, was discontinued after Adobe bought its producer, Pixmantec, in 2006.

Photoshop Senior Product Manager John Nack announced the new software Saturday on his blog.

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Australian Internet Porn Filter Cracked By Kid; Politicians Get The Wrong Message

Remember a few weeks ago how the Australian government was getting ready to spend many millions of dollars on internet porn filters? We ridiculed the second part of the plan, which was to force ISPs to filter the internet, but the first part of the plan was to hand out free client-side filters that could be installed on computers by parents. The cost to the government was a mere $84 million Australian (about $70 million US). It should come as no surprise, though, that a teenager claims it took him all of about half an hour to crack the filter.

Even better, he says he did so in a way that the icon still shows on the computer, so parents will think the software is still working. Of course, there are always ways to get around filters and it’s not hard for many kids to figure them out. Still, rather than recognizing that the government has wasted many millions of dollars on a futile program, one of the main political backers of the program said it only highlights why the country needs to spend even more on filters, including those ISP filters that won’t work either.

Yahoo to shut down photo service, push Flickr

Yahoo Inc is shutting down Yahoo Photos, its first-generation photo storage site, and asking users to move instead to Yahoo’s Web 2.0 photo sharing site, Flickr, a Yahoo official said on Thursday.

In June, tens of milllions of registered users of Yahoo Photos will be notified of various options including upgrading to Yahoo’s Flickr service or various outside-photo storage sites, according to Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield.

Yahoo also will offer consumers the option of loading their photos on competing sites when users are notified next month.

These include PhotoBucket, the most popular online photo sharing service among users of social network sites like News Corp’s MySpace or more conventional photo printing and storage site such as Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly Inc or Snapfish, he said.

“Flickr will get top-billing, of course,” he said in an interview about the plan to give users mulitple alternatives.

The move follows the explosive surge in growth by PhotoBucket, an independent photo storage site based in Palo Alto, California, from a quarter of the market a year ago to around 40 per cent last month, according to Hitwise Inc data.

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IBM reveals data masking service

Just a few weeks after it announced plans to buy data management specialist Princeton Softech, IBM has introduced a service to mask sensitive customer data so it can safely be used for application testing and QA.

Yet despite the generation of test data being one of Princeton’s core strengths, IBM said that the new service is instead based on its own Websphere business intelligence technology, with the addition of consultancy from its Global Business Services group.

It said the consultants would study the client’s needs, and then apply data masking algorithms to identify sensitive data and overlay it with other values – false ones, but ones which look realistic, so that applications using the data continue to work normally.

Motorola RAZR2 V8 Mobile Phone Launched in India

Today Motorola introduced the RAZR2 V8 mobile phone in the country. The new phone belongs to the RAZR series of handsets. The mobile is as thick as 11.9 mm.

The V8 is a flap-styled phone and thus is equipped with two displays of 240 x 320 pixels. The 2-inch external display is made scratch resistant. And the internal display measures 2.2 inches.

Besides, the phone incorporates a 2.0 mega pixel camera with 2GB of internal memory. Also it offers connectivity options such as 2.0 USB and Bluetooth A2DP compatibility. Other features of the V8 handset are ARM 11 processor and a full HTML browser.

Motorola has made the new handset fully equipped with entertainment capabilities. It is compatible with Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 and enough memory to store music files.

“With the modern style and powerful performance of RAZR2, Motorola is once again redefining the cell phone,” said Ray Roman, Motorola’s Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Mobile Devices.

“This device takes the world’s best-selling feature phone to the next level. Combining groundbreaking new features and an even slimmer exterior than the original icon, the RAZR2 is capable of giving Indian consumers the ultimate mobile experience,” Roman continued.

The RAZR 2 V8 will be available in the Indian market in two packs. The RAZR V8 deluxe pack is priced at Rs 20,428, while the premium pack comes along with an in-box Bluetooth S705 headset at the price of Rs 21,549.

Orkut Has a New Look

Orkut, the social networking site now has a new look. The site has come up with several changes since its inception.

Orkut has brought people closer to each other and users can now tell the world their story as to how the site has helped them. When users change their profile picture, they can crop it as per their requirements. The format of sending scraps has also been enhanced. Now, users can add pictures and videos as against the earlier form of text scraps. Thus birthday wishes can be uploaded on YouTube and this video can be attached to so the friend can experience a live birthday wish. When a user views their friends list of communities, there is a new tab “mutual communities” where common communities between the user and the friend can be viewed.

The interface displays security tips for users.

Users in the United States of America have the additional tab “friends map”. The user just has to click on the area and can see friends in that area.

Orkut users can now start blogging as Orkut have promised to introduce a new feature for blogging.