HP TouchSmartTx2z

From our better late than never dept: HP has followed up its multi-touch desktop PC with a multi-touch convertible Tablet PC, the HP TouchSmart tx2z. This lets you manipulate onscreen objects with your fingers, as with an Apple iPhone or HTC Touch etc.

HP first started selling touch-screen PCs running MS DOS back in the early 1980s, but the TouchSmart isn't based on HP technology. It's based on N-trig's DuoSense panel, which fits in front of any LCD. (DuoSense means both pen/stylus and touch/multi-touch.) Although Microsoft has said it will add multi-touch features to Windows 7, N-trig's is designed for Vista. The company says:

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The mediocre quality of YouTube's video and sound hasn't stopped its fantastic success.

However, it now faces challenges from Hulu et al, and from its Google bosses, who must be wondering when it's going to start making some money. The answer, of course, is to follow Hulu and provide some good quality official content that it can put adverts against. So that's what it's doing.

Meghan Keane at Wired Blogs has posted some normal and HD videos of Where the Hell is Matt? and pointed out that:
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A selection of Gmail themes

This morning I noticed that my Gmail graphics have been upgraded so my mailbox now looks even more like Hotmail used to look a few years ago. As the Gmail blog put it:

So I immediately went to Settings, to click Themes, to try one or two of the 30 new themes that are being rolled out across Gmail servers. But it turns out I don't have Themes yet. Do you?

Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert at Wembley in 1992. Photograph: Robert Paul/PA

I want to rid the internet of Axl Rose. But what would you excommunicate from the web?

It's been coming for a while, but Google has launched its search listing recommendation system, SearchWiki.

Right now users who are logged in can push results up, or ban them from future listings (but only for themselves)... or they can leave comments attached to listings (which anyone else can see).

Here's a grab from a Guardian search I ran earlier - note the up arrow and cross icons.

Have you used it yet? What do you think? Useful? Pointless?

I'm very undecided - largely because, at the moment it's a very limited implementation. While I suppose it's not bad, for now the benefit is just limited to you... which seems to be a waste of the effort people will be putting in.

Why wouldn't Google expand it so that your recommendations helped inform the company's famous ranking algorithm? A number of reasons spring to mind: gaming the system and spamming are just two. But perhaps there's also a philosophical problem here - after all, on many occasions before we've heard about the company's blind faith in the machines, in the religion of automation.

But wouldn't improving search through human interaction undermine belief in the system? Shouldn't Google, with all its power and technical prowess, simply be able to build a better algorithm?

Of course, I might be getting a little over the top. Perhaps it's simply testing how people use the system before using it to harness the wisdom of crowds. But it'll certainly be interesting to see where this one goes - especially since, as we saw just yesterday, not every new idea from Mountain View makes it out alive.

Way back in May, I posted Yahoo tries Glue in India, which said: "Most big search companies are experimenting with the idea of comprehensive search pages that show lots of different results -- text, images, video etc -- instead of just text. Google calls it Universal Search. Yahoo's is Glue, and a beta version has just been launched in India."

I'm sure that you have been on the edge of your seat, brimming with anticipation, ever since.
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We've been getting lots of traffic for Richard Wray's Hands on with the BlackBerry Storm, published on October 8, but there's a flood of new hands-on reviews with the Storm going on sale in the US tomorrow.

The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg has a review+video (BlackBerry's Storm Presses Into the Touch-Phone Fray) that refers to the iPhone and Google/HTC G1. Wired News gives the Storm 6 out of 10 in RIM's First Touchscreen Device Almost Eclipses the iPhone. ZD Net offers Hands On: The BlackBerry Storm, and is undecided. PC World isn't all that impressed, and goes for BlackBerry's Storm: Awkward and Disappointing. PC Magazine has a handy list of Your Top 20 Questions, Answered.
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It's only a few months since Google announced Lively, an avatar-based system and one of those 20% projects from Google Labs. Well, it looked more like a knock-off of IMVU, and IMVU's boss Cary Rosenzweig said Google had tried to buy the company then hired away one of its co-founders. Whatever the background, Google Lively flopped, and The Official Google Blog now says Lively no more:

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This week's videos include a treadmill that moves, the second videogame and the robot to rule us all. Um..

For several years now, Hossein Derakhshan has been at the forefront of Iran's burgeoning blogging scene. Better known as Hoder he's been writing about the country and its politics online since - and, from time to time, he's also contributed to the Guardian.

After living in Canada for some time, he recently headed back to Iran - where now, it seems, he's been arrested and accused of being an Israeli spy. Details remain unclear; the only report appears to be from Jahan News, but a summary here gives the flavour of that report:

We know that Iran has been clamping down on internet use again recently, blocking millions of websites in its attempt to keep dissenting voices out of circulation.

Brian Whitaker's already over on Comment is Free, while the issue is also being picked up by Global Voices Online and on a dedicated Facebook group.

Let's hope for the best.

There's been some discussion about whether Microsoft still wants to buy Yahoo's search business, but it may not have to. Maybe it can just hire it away. Microsoft has already picked up Qu Li, Yahoo's top search scientist, and a memo leaked to Valleywag says it has hired Sean Suchter as well. Valleywag's tipster says:

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Microsoft has announced plans to change its strategy on anti-virus software, in an attempt to upgrade PC security, particularly outside the developed countries. It's a tacit admission that its OneCare strategy hasn't worked: it hasn't gained significant market share, and it hasn't impacted the malware industry.

Microsoft says it will keep OneCare going until it releases new software code-named Morro in the second half of 2009. This "will provide comprehensive protection from malware including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans. This new solution, to be offered at no charge to consumers, will be architected for a smaller footprint that will use fewer computing resources, making it ideal for low-bandwidth scenarios or less powerful PCs."
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When Dan Lyons joined Newsweek, it appears he had to give up his popular Fake Steve Jobs persona*, and in July, Fake Steve started blogging at Real Dan instead. This has included some pretty pungent stuff, but recently the pungent stuff has started vanishing. And according to The Industry Standard -- The Real Dan Lyons bails on blogging -- he may have stopped altogether.

One post referred to Jerry Yang's decision to step down as boss of Yahoo. Lyons had been assured that Yang wasn't stepping down and that the Google deal was "a sure thing" but neither turned out to be the case. On his blog, he intemperately referred to Yahoo's "PR operators" as "really an unsavory bunch" and a "crack team of lying sacks of shit". (Come on, Dan: PRs just tell you what the company tells them to tell you. That's their job.) Not surprisingly, this post has now been withdrawn.
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The leak of the details of 10,000-odd members of the British National Party could almost have been made for a mashup. (Insert your own joke about the BNP trying to appear ready for government by having a data leak.)

And so someone has, although as its author notes - and you should too, please -

AdmitOne's Security Scout can tell users apart based on the way they type keystrokes when logging into an account. This is a form of biometric password checking, and we've seen the same kind of approach applied to writing signatures. Online, there's another benefit: it helps identify password sharing. According to Venture Beat:

The story says:
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