- Engadget

According to two reports, Sony Ericsson and HTC are both semi-confirming Android handsets for 2009. An SE spokesman by the name of Garfield Brusewitz was quoted as saying that the company would introduce higher-end models of the Google-powered devices to start with, then supplement those handsets with cheaper versions aimed at a broader market. In another article, HTC says that it will launch one “or more” Android phones in the new year, aiming to have them on shelves by Summer. This hardly comes as a surprise from either of these companies, as HTC has been on-board since day one of the OHA and, you know, already has an Android handset out, and Sony Ericsson’s announcement of participation was naturally going to lead to some actual hardware. Now it’s just a matter of getting these out the door, and… sneak peaks at CES, anyone?

[Via Phandroid]

Read - Sony Ericsson chooses Android
Read - Google phone to Denmark this Summer

Viva La Vida: Coldplay Need A Good Lawyer

Coldplay, one of the world’s hottest bands is being sued by rock n roll guitarist Joe Satriani. Satriani is accusing the British band of plagiarizing one of his songs.

Never heard of Satriani? We hadn’t either until this law suit (but then guitar instrumentalists aren’t really our thing), but musically he is pretty well known. Satriani’s filed the copyright infringement law suit, late this week in the Los Angeles federal court. The suit claims the Coldplay song Viva La Vida (which is a rockin track) incorporates “substantial original portions” of his 2004 song “If I Could Fly.”

Satriani is seeking a jury trial, damages and “any and all profits” attributable to the alleged copyright infringement. We know why he wants the jury trial, he wants to play them the youtube clip below. Someone has helpfully done a mashup of the 2 songs and its pretty convincing. Coldplay, you bastards!

Popout

Coldplay recently cleaned up with 7 Grammy nominations including for Viva La Vida which was nominated for song of the year. On the album Viva La Vida is attributed to the band’s four members, Chris Martin, lead singer; bass player Guy Berryman; guitarist Johnny Buckland; and drummer Will Champion.

This is definitely a “bum note”, for the band, it ensures news of their grammy nominations falls “flat” and the argument over the “riff off” will continue for sometime. Boom tish. Massive sales of Coldplay’s album and the Viva La Vida single will ensure they can afford the best lawyer possible, which is good because we think they might need it.

Best Of 2008:

Now that you’ve seen all the big names and launches of 2008, it’s time to give a nod to the apps that didn’t get the attention they should have this past year. If you’re sick of hearing about Firefox and the iPhone and Gmail and Chrome, you’re in the right place. Let’s take a look at the least hyped software that launched or saw great improvements in 2008, and give ‘em the love they deserve. Photo by ckroberts61.

Songbird

The open-source, cross-platform music player Songbird was supposed to do for your tunes what Firefox did for your web browsing: free you from the claws of iTunes and offer extensibility and general awesomeness. Back in November, the first release candidate of Songbird didn’t quite deliver, but the final 1.0 release this week absolutely did, now that the bird plays iTunes Store purchases and ironed out its major wrinkles. Songbird was the application most readers cried foul about for being excluded on our first list of best apps in 2008.

Dropbox

Cross-platform, file-syncing-via-the-cloud web service and application Dropbox debuted this year, offering 2GB of free storage for non-paying users. If that’s not enough space for all your documents, Dropbox at least is a fabulous tool for syncing your passwords across all your computers.

Ubiquity

The most impressive prototype that came out of Mozilla Labs this year, the Ubiquity Firefox extension is an ambitious attempt at offering smart and extensible keyboard access to data between applications, so you can, for example, include a Google map to an address inside a new Gmail message without ever switching tabs. Users have complained that the still-fetal Ubiquity prototype slows down Firefox, but the Quicksilver-like concept behind Ubiquity is way impressive. Hopefully we’ll see a more fleshed-out and speedy implementation in the coming year.

Picasa 3

Our favorite free software for managing your photo library on your desktop, Picasa, got an upgrade to version 3 this year that added several new features and reduced the need for a separate photo editing tool even more. Picasa’s the software you want to install on your parents’ computer over the holidays so they can make a photo-mosaic of the grandkids.

VLC

A perennial reader favorite and number two on our list of free software packages we’re most thankful for, the open-source, cross-platform VLC media player continues to just get better. VLC will play anything you throw at it; check out how to master your digital media with VLC.

Evernote

Note-taking tool Evernote is one of the best ways for a student or human with an overactive frontal lobe to capture ideas and randomata on any platform—from computer to iPhone to back of the napkin—wherever you are. See more on how to expand your brain with Evernote.

Fedora

Always living in the shadow of the more popular Ubuntu distro must be hard for Fedora, yet the user-friendly Linux package soldiered on this year with two new releases (Fedora 9 and this week, Fedora 10). Fedora came in a distant fourth in our battle of the Linux distros, but it’s user-friendly live USB creator and attractive desktop makes it a worthy contender for the Windows user interested in trying out a flavor of Linux.

OpenOffice.org 3

Often poo-pooed for its slowness and bloat, free, open-source office suite OpenOffice.org’s 3.0 release this year did impress. While it’s not Microsoft Office 2007, it IS the go-to solution for poor students and starving artists who just need to edit that Word document.

Opera

While our current browser stats show usage numbers that trail behind newcomer Chrome, Opera users are almost religious about their love for the free browser. This past year we said Opera 9.5 was still in the browser race, and then the update to version 9.6 added more features. Opera 10’s first alpha became available this week as well.

Space Food:

Today, millions of Americans are traveling to spend Thanksgiving Day with their loved ones. But for the astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station, going home for the holiday isn’t an option. The station will host a Thanksgiving meal of its own, but while we’ve come a long way from the powders and edible goo of early spaceflight, the irradiated turkey and freeze-dried beans are a far cry from home cooking.

When John Glenn first when into space, the sustanance astronauts were expected to eat could hardly be considered food: pastes, cubes, and powders provided the necessary protein and vitamins, but were found universally unpalatable. Although the food options more closely resemble what you’d find on Earth, foods sent into space still need to be pre-cooked, preserved, and rendered bacteria free. And the relationship between NASA’s Thanksgiving dinner and the traditional feast are largely superficial:

For the Thanksgiving dinner, the smoked turkey was irradiated and the green beans and dressing were freeze-dried, a form of dehydration. The candied yams and dessert were heated.

A week before Thanksgiving, NASA gave reporters a taste-test of the astronauts’ holiday dinner. The smoked turkey was slightly stiffer than deli meat, like after it has been left in the refrigerator a week past its expiration date. The candied yams had a syrupy sweetness outside that dissolved into blandness in the middle. The green beans with mushrooms tasted like they have been frozen and then microwaved to an inch of their life.

The saving grace was a sublime cranapple dessert. There was a tartness to the apples and sweetness to the cranberries mixed with pecans and syrup in a dish that resembles cobbler filling.

The crew of the space shuttle Endeavour, which is currently docked at the Space Station brought the meal with them along with them the station’s first-ever food refrigerator, so the occupants might enjoy another Thanksgiving tradition: leftovers.

[Discovery News]

LOL:  | /Film

Those who saw The Simpsons Movie know that Homer Simpson’s oft-advertised singing of the song “Spiderpig” encapsulated either everything that was awesome with that film, or everything that was wrong with the Simpsons franchise as a whole (depending on how big of a fan you were at that point). I happen to fall in the latter category. Apparently, police from Blairgowrie, Perthshire may agree with me.

After a summer night of drinking, 22-year old David Mullen broke curfew while on bail and assaulted a police officer, which netted him eight months of jail.  But on top of that, while sitting in the police van, he started singing the song “Spiderpig,” which he claimed to do because it was his ringtone. He also called an officer “ginger.” For breaching the peace through these actions, he was recently sentenced to an additional three months in jail. This is unquestionably a stunning rebuke of The Simpsons Movie by the legal system. However, sadly, those around us that continue to quote The Simpsons ad nauseam remain unpunished.

source: BBC

Space-age Architecture:

This futuristic-looking gas station in L.A. was supposed to be completed in June 2007, but the client became “indecisive.” Did United Oil decide that an optimistic, future-looking design wasn’t the right look for a gas station in this day and age? Or did they wake up and realize that “futuristic,” in this case, means “retro” and “googie”? (Which isn’t a bad thing at all, I hasten to add.) More pics and details below.

The design, by Kanner Architects, is supposed to capture the momentum of nearby freeways, using two swooshy features: “a concrete ramp to the car wash that winds around, over, and behind the market, and a steel structure that forms the roof of the market, then curves around to become a soaring canopy over the pumps.” Is it scrapped for good, or will we one day be able to pump our gas under that soaring space ramp? More pics at the link. [Curbed L.A.]

TBO.com - Entertainment From AP

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) — Lightning struck only once - but 52 cows are dead at an Uruguayan ranch. The newspaper El Pais reports that the cows had pressed against a wire fence during a storm when the lightning bolt struck in the northern state of San Jose.

A photograph released by the San Jose Police Department shows the black and brown cows lying dead in a long row.

The newspaper said Friday that veterinarians at the scene confirmed the cause of the deaths, which happened Wednesday. The veterinarians told the newspaper that cows often crowd around fences to seek protection during storms.

Meteorologist Fernando Torena told the newspaper he wasn’t surprised that a single lightning bolt killed so many cows. But he called it “very bad luck.”