Kids these days with their telephones and their artificial intelligences…they’re just plain spoiled. Why, in my day, when we wanted to communicate with our personal digital assistants, we had to use the telegraph. And it worked just fine. Now they can just use their high-tech phones to talk to Siri. No doubt it’ll lead to dancing or worse.

Link -via DVICE

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Hacked Rotary Phone Accesses Siri

Windows Live Messenger may not be as popular as it used to be, but it’s still accessed by 300 million users, and Microsoft is now hoping to grow that by making it a little more open. The service now supports XMPP and OAuth 2.0, paving the way for other chat software and services to connect more easily (some already do, but by using unofficial methods). XMPP is a messaging protocol (previously known as Jabber and used by Google Talk) and OAuth 2.0 is an open standard for authorization that both Google and Microsoft have stepped out with early support for. Maybe by opening Messenger up a bit, Microsoft is trying to avoid what happened with ICQ.

Microsoft adds open standard support to Messenger, third-party clients now welcome originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft adds open standard support to Messenger, third-party clients now welcome

If you were to suggest that members of Elasmobranchii — the subclass of cartilaginous fishes that includes sharks, rays, and skates — look incredibly different from us humans, I doubt that many people would argue the point. In fact, one look at the alien-like skeleton of Leucoraja erinacea, the species of skate pictured up top, would drive your assertion home rather nicely, wouldn’t you say? More »

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This alien-looking fish just rewrote the book on developmental genetics [Genetics]

Facebook finally rolled out its much-anticipated Timeline feature today, which brings a snazzy new interface to your profile, not to mention the ability to see every post anyone’s ever made back to their first day on Facebook. Here are the things you need to know about using it. More »

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How to Use Facebook’s New Timeline Feature (and Hide Your Embarrassing Old Posts) [Video]

At the French site Anecdote du Jour you can listen to the world’s first audio recordings, made in 1859 and 1860 by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. The recordings, one of a tuning fork being struck and two of de Martinville singing, are scratchy and thoroughly eerie. All the more so because de Martinville himself never heard them. In fact, nobody heard them until 2008.

The reason we credit Edison with the invention of recorded audio and not de Martinville is that de Martinville failed to invent a way to play back his recordings.

De Martinville’s phonautograph turned sound waves into 2-dimensional squiggles on soot-blackened paper or glass. It was meant to be a lab instrument, to help study acoustics, not a method of recording and playing back sound. Apparently, several decades passed before anybody even realized the sounds could, theoretically, be played back.

Via Greg Gbur

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The world’s first audio recording is creepy, not made by Edison

I saw pictures of this place last year and could not find enough information about it to share, so I am delighted to find this article. Taichung City in Taiwan, a military dependents village founded over 50 years ago, is one of the most colorful places in the world, thanks to 86-year-old artist Huang Yung-fu.

Huang Yung-fu first picked up a paintbrush about two years ago. He started to paint for his own pleasure using the remains of the equipment from the art classes he attended when he was a child. Students of a university not far from the “painted military dependents’ village” seem to be among the first who discovered this old man’s talent and started to spread the news. Some even took pictures of the paintings and published them online. Information about his paintings went viral, to the point where tourists have flown in from Malaysia, Japan, and Korea to see them. The dull and drab military dependents’ village is now recognized as one of the must-see spots in central Taichung City.

See more pictures at Amusing Planet. Link -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user Steve Barringer)

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The Rainbow Village of Taichung

Get ready for a This Is Your Life-style recap available online, as Facebook’s Timeline feature is now out of beta and available to all users worldwide. Originally announced during the f8 conference back in September, it wraps up all the information you’ve posted, friendships you’ve made and embarrassing photos you were tagged in, in a neat, date organized package. If you’re worried it may uncover some things better left private — and posted years ago before you were more savvy about social media — you can enable the feature and still wait a week before it goes public for viewing by others. Currently timelines are visible on the main site, via the recently updated Android client and the mobile version of the site. If you want to turn it on right way, head to the Introducing Timeline page and click Get It Now.

Update: Facebook has just rolled rolled out a fresh version of its Android app that you’ll need to grab for Timeline access there, the change log (after the break) also mentions changes including access to games & apps, new push notifications and a new photo viewing experience.

Continue reading Facebook rolls out Timeline feature worldwide, it’s time to untag some old photos

Facebook rolls out Timeline feature worldwide, it’s time to untag some old photos originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook rolls out Timeline feature worldwide, it’s time to untag some old photos

Square Enix stated yesterday that somebody “may have gained unauthorized access to a particular Square Enix server” and took its members service offline in both Japan and the U.S. Today, the company clarified that 1.8 million customer’s accounts had been affected. More »

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1.8 Million Square Enix Accounts Were Hacked [Square Enix]

Nate the greatest writes “Got a Kindle Fire? Here’s your chance to try the new Kindle Format 8. The new format is in beta testing right now with a limited number of publishers, and a few days ago one of those publishers leaked the tools and the guidelines to me. It turns out KF8 isn’t all that new. I’ve looked at the code, and I’d call it an attempt to graft a number of Epub features onto the existing Kindle format. It simply adds a lot of new formatting and is only slightly more capable than Epub. There’s a number of screenshots at the link as well as a demo file. You can probably also find more KF8 ebooks in the Kindle Store; look for the Kindle Fire exclusive magazines and graphic novels.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Taking a Look At Kindle Format 8

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery right? Well, in an attempt to keep its tenuous grip on the browsing crown, it’s borrowing some tricks from its plucky upstart competitors. Microsoft’s announced that Internet Explorer will now tie into future Windows Update releases. The new system will start in the new year in both Australia and Brazil — no, we don’t get the connection either — with a graduated roll-out from there throughout 2012. Microsoft says that this will help keep their browser secure and on the cutting edge of all those HTML5 developments. Fortunately, according to the Windows Team Blog, auto-update antagonists will still be able to opt out of the system. See how Ryan Galvin, Internet Explorer’s General Manager, explains the reasoning over at the official blog; the link’s just below.

Internet Explorer to start automatic upgrading across Windows 7, Vista and XP originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Internet Explorer to start automatic upgrading across Windows 7, Vista and XP