A quick face-to-palm worthy moment: The Register reports on a company suing Apple, Microsoft, and other big operators like Sony for infringing on their patent—or the “standard activation software used by a vast array of software”.

Consider this your monthly dose of patent trolls (BetaNet LLC in this case) seeking to profit off the hard work of others.

A development that will surely worry Barnes & Noble execs at best, and force the book retailer to come out with a firmware/software update at “worst”, a group of developers have managed to turn the nook e-reader into a sub-$300 web tablet—with free 3G access via B&N’s network access.

The process, which predictably violates the nook’s warranty and user agreement, first involves removing the e-reader’s internally stored 2GB microSD card. The next step requires connecting this card to a PC running Linux or Unix, editing an initialization file, and simply replacing the word “disabled” with—you guessed it—”enabled”.
However, that’s not the end …read more

Just in case you missed them, two rumors about the upcoming Google Phone (AKA the Nexus One, Dream, or the HTC Passion). From Android Guys:
Here’s the price: $199 unlocked in stores. $100 rebate online if you have an active and old Google account. That $100 rebate is either to buy it $99 online from Google’s online phone store, for using on Android Marketplace or for using on any Google Checkout stores. Can also be used for T-Mobile or AT&T pre-paid Data SIM card service at $29 per month, no contracts required.
From Reuters:
The phone, manufactured by HTC, has a number of …read more

Out of the 6000 plus fans of the Tom’s Hardware Facebook page, 94% are probably males (this according to the page’s admin, who I know personally). That’s no surprise, but I’d still like to see more women getting into computer hardware. This isn’t another drool-induced rant pleading for hotties to turn into geeks and spice up our socially-challenged online lives, mind you.
Nothing makes a community livelier than diversity, and geek circles desperately need a woman’s touch. So how do we get more women drooling over specs and components? Here’s my five-step plan.

A few weeks ago, right until the Black Friday-Cyber Monday retail orgy, Microsoft was selling a 3-pack of Office 2007 Home and Student edition at a discount. Pretty good on the surface, until you ended up on Microsoft’s shopping page, and see that there was an “optional” $10 addition to the final bill.

In any case, three licenses of Office 2007 Home and Student edition are still available at a discount, though at a higher price of $110 (compared to the previous discounted price of $90). That’s a bit below $40 for each license, the only limitation being that the three …read more

No worries, in case you haven’t taken advantage of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday promos recently featured on The Gadget Blog. Those retailers still want to move stock, especially as Christmas nears, so check out what Dell and HP have made available.

While estate planning is a must-do for anyone, especially for rich dudes who want to keep squabbling heirs in line, how many take the same approach with our online profiles? Inevitably, Swedish company My Webwill caters to this need (or “need”, for those who aren’t active online anyway).
There are already various online services that automatically send emails on the behalf of the dearly departed. Yet My Webwill hopes to differentiate itself by asking customers for access to their respective social networking accounts. A Facebook user could have his account deactivated upon his death, for instance.
My Webwill is free, but for …read more

The whole “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place” speech by Google CEO Eric Schmidt continues to have effects. Most recently it pushed Mozilla executive Asa Dotzler to tell Firefox users to ditch Google for Bing, praising the latter for having “a better privacy policy”.

This is big, because Mozilla and Google have had a historically strong relationship. Google has been the default search engine on Mozilla’s Firefox for many years now, and the browser has enjoyed exposure via Google’s push to attract converters from Internet Explorer—at …read more

Before Facebook rolled out its new privacy settings, Mark Zuckenberg promised that it would “create a simpler model for privacy control” and allow users to more control over access to their online profiles. Yet the general consensus is that the new model actually makes it harder to protect your privacy.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has even said the new model is to push Facebook users to share even more personal information with the general public. Much of the information you could previously control access to, such as your list of friends and the pages you are a fan of, is now …read more

Here’s a good attempt to attract viral attention from Epson:
A quick summary for those who can’t watch the video right now: guy gets into jumpsuit, then wears a specially-designed (and most likely heavy) harness that carries a HD-capable Epson projector, a PS3, and loads of batteries. Guy goes around the vicinity, playing games on the a building’s side wall, the road, and even the while floating in the air courtesy of a practice parachuting vertical fan. The video ends with a brief warning not to attempt said stunt in any way, anywhere.
Game played: An unspecified member of the Need for …read more