Alison DeLauzon thought the snapshots and home videos of her infant son were gone for good when she lost her digital camera while on vacation in Florida.

Then a funny thing happened: her camera “phoned home.”

Equipped with a special memory card with wireless Internet capability, DeLauzon’s camera had not only automatically sent her holiday pictures to her computer, but had even uploaded photos of the miscreants who swiped her equipment bag after she accidentally left it behind at a restaurant.

“I opened up the Eye-Fi manager on the computer and, lo and behold, there are the guys that stole our cameras,” said DeLauzon, a native of New York’s Long Island suburb. “Not only is it the guy who stole our camera … but the guy took a picture of (his accomplice) holding our other camera.”

DeLauzon received the Eye-Fi, a 2-gigabyte SD memory card that fits into millions of digital cameras, as a holiday gift to go with her Canon camera.

Priced at about $100, the card automatically uploads pictures to a home computer or online photosharing service as soon as the user is linked to a familiar wireless network.

Luckily, the culprits passed by an unsecured network, whose factory-installed setting matched that of DeLauzon’s home system, and the Eye-Fi automatically shipped the photos: first baby pictures, then the snap-happy scoundrels.

Her experience reflects the rise of technology that empowers everyday gadgets to protect themselves or the priceless personal data — from family phone numbers to business budgets — that consumers keep on portable electronics devices.

Cameras are perhaps the most common home-phoning gadget used to thwart criminals.

An eerie case occurred last month, when a Japanese man set up a hidden camera because food was disappearing from his kitchen. While he was out, the camera sent pictures to his mobile phone of the intruder — an unknown woman living secretly in his closet.

Click above thumbnail to see newspaper scan.

I currently run Microsoft Windows Vista Business, with Internet Explorer 7 (7.0.6001.18000). I’ve been using IE7 since its beta stage (on Windows XP to begin with) and have never had this problem… After I upgraded to Windows Vista, I’ve noticed serious memory leak / problems with the browser.

IE has been running for about 3 hours. In total, I’ve opened (and closed) between 30 - 40 tabs. Then suddenly, when inspired to check the news online, my computer started to feel extremely sluggish… So I opened up task manager, expecting to see IE7 eating up all my resources as I’ve seen before. And that’s exactly what I found.

Good lord, what is going on? So I closed IE, and waited several seconds for the system to free up some memory. Then restarted IE7 to write this entry.

As far as I can see, it seems to be a problem with AJAX (as I’ve noticed IE7 feasting on my memory most often after I’ve been on Facebook and other AJAX websites), and after some digging, found:
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=105535, which seems to be a bug Microsoft refuses to address. I have also tried running IE in safe mode, or without any add-ons but to no avail.

Speaking of which, I currently have one IE7 window opened, running for less than 20 minutes with 6 tabs running… And memory usage has jumped to 144MB. What?!

I really do want to stick with IE7, and doubt I’ll ever fully convert to an alternative such as Firefox, as it’s just not to my taste. I don’t wish to turn this post into a IE7 vs. Firefox debate, but am really needing a solution!

So, has anyone else found they also have this problem? I would love to hear any advice anyone has on fixing this!

Police helping a German man track down a nuisance caller discovered his tormentor for two years was a faulty card payment system in a hairdresser’s shop.

The 58-year-old man in Frankfurt did not recognize the Hamburg number that kept ringing him and had it blocked.

After several months, he got tired of paying for the blocking service and the calls began again on working days.

Police traced the number to a Hamburg hairdresser whose payment system dialed the man whenever it accepted a card. Staff were oblivious to the problem, which is being fixed.

“When he picked it up he got no answer, and there was no response when he called back either,” said Frankfurt police spokesman Manfred Fuellhardt on Tuesday.

An Italian man was jailed for more than two years for putting pornographic pictures of his ex-girlfriend on the Internet and sending them out in more than 15,000 emails.

The 32-year-old man had created a Web site that appeared to show his ex-girlfriend offering sexual favours and erotic games, with her phone number also on display.

The man, who also sent threatening text messages to the woman and her parents, was accused of aggravated defamation, threatening and violence.

In its ruling, the Milan court said the man had publicised photos and data that should have remained private, and done so without his ex-girlfriend’s consent.

The court sentenced him to 2 years and 4 months in jail.

If you are like me – an audio gadget fanatic – then you’re going to be in love with the Buddha Machine. It’s a simple device that contains a bunch of audio loops, an amp and a speaker. The Buddha Machine is a project started by audio artists Christian Virant and Zhang Jian. They’ve put together a set of audio loops that represent the type of ambient sounds one might expect in a Buddhist temple.

Each loop is only about six seconds long, but you get the choice of choosing your tone from up to nine different ones enclosed in this beast. A switch on the side lets you flick through each loop randomly.

What makes the device irresistible is that audio is played through a cheap sounding amp and speaker. Adding to this, the cheap plastic casing is available in a variety of colours. The lo-fi quality also adds to the unique ambient feel you get when listening to it. It even has a volume control and headphone output. Now where are my Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting Speakers?

By Timothy Wong, July 2006

A drop in reputation scores for hundreds of prominent Web sites this week has bloggers buzzing that Google has tweaked its PageRank algorithm. Although Google hasn’t admitted to tweaking PR (PageRank), which appears in the Google Toolbar and is Google’s system for weighing a Web page for its relevance to a specific query based on the number of links that it has to it, Search Engine Land, one of many search-oriented sites to notice the move, pointed out the PR drops on Oct. 24, noting that Forbes.com, WashintonPost.com, SFGate.com, SunTimes.com and Engadget.com all dropped from PR7 to PR5.

http://www.timw.com itself has dropped from PR4 to PR1. I’ll admit I’m annoyed, but as long as my daily visitor count doesn’t drop, I’ll keep quiet.

Korg’s original Electribes appeared in 1999, and caused uproar. Musicians everywhere tried to get their hands on these ultra portable, pattern-based step programming and tweak-friendly knobbed devices. In 2001, Korg released the first of the Electribe family, designed as an all-in-one dance music production device. This device however, was split into an ES-1 synth device, and an ER-1 drum machine. Now, with the EMX-1, synths, drums and more are combined into one sleek blue machine.

Functionally, the EMX-1 has several similarities with its predecessors. The first thing you will notice when you take it out of the box however, is the more modern backlit display, and the most distinctive feature – the Valve Force vacuum-tube circuit, which consists of 2x 12AX7 tubes, placed like trophies behind a small panel of glass. The Valve Force vacuum tubes are tied directly to the analogue circuit, which is in turn connected to the Tube Gain control to the right of the Master Volume knob. With this knob, you can add as much warmth to your overall sound as you wish. When you power on the device, you will notice that the tubes begin to glow. However, looking further, I noticed that these tubes weren’t actually glowing themselves, but instead by two orange LED’s connected to the circuitry behind the Valve Force vacuum tubes. This was obviously placed for cosmetic purposes. Also, Korg’s use of the words Valve and tubes in the set up is rather ambiguous – are they tubes or are they valves? Both are quite distinct devices.

The rear of the machine is fitted with the standard three MIDI connections (In, Out, Thru), a mic/line gain switch, two individual ¼-inch outputs for independent bus routing, a pair of ¼-inch outputs for your monitors or mixer, and a ¼-inch mono (why not stereo?) audio in. Inside the device, there are 207 PCM drum sounds and 76 PCM synth sounds. The previous EM-1 held only 16MB of song memory; the EMX-1 has been boosted to 64MB. The EMX-1 runs on an engine Korg calls Multi Modelling Technology (MMT). This engine allows the user to choose from 16 different synthesis types, allowing both analogue simulations and digital synthesis types. There are plenty of synth filters too, including the notable lowpass, highpass, bandpass, and an additional bandpass type that adds the dry signal back into the sound. Indeed, the EMX-1 is covered in plenty of sounds for the average user, however, it lacks the inability to load samples onto it, and so you’re going to be stuck with the Korg provided sounds. Nevertheless, plenty to tweak and work with.

The top panel is well divided into different sections – the main section, which contains all the mode and control (play, pause, record) buttons. This area also holds the very useful BPM Tap Key, which allows you to manually select your sound tempo. Alternatively, the Auto BPM Scan button can be switched on, which syncs your music with the tempo coming from the audio in jack. The ‘restart’ button is great fun to play with, sections can be repeated and mixed as though you are on turntables, by simply hitting the button. The machine seems as though it lacks a rewind / fast-forward button, but in fact, Korg cleverly placed these with the bar select buttons. Holding shift and a direction button will do as required – less buttons, less clutter.

The Part Common area contains all the things you need to tweak both drum and synth sounds. Effects allow you to make and adjust all your sounds, giving you the power to create truly unique patterns. There are three effects processors that handle individual effects – a unique feature of the EMX-1 is that you can chain up such processors, so that multiple effects work together, in any order. When changing any settings on the EMX-1, the display shows ‘Original Value’ when you return to it – another handy little feature. One problem I found when constantly editing different parts was that values would jump. For example, if I set my piano synth pitch to 50, and I switch to edit my formant pitch, it would instantly jump to 50, and begin changing accordingly. Pressing shift whilst turning the knobs prevented this – at times annoying, but probably the product of physical limitations. Effects are currently turned on or off. An effects fader would have been much cooler. An easily overlooked feature, the 16 step keys are set up in way to represent a keyboard – with black and white keys. With this, pianists rejoice!

At the bottom left is the Arpeggiator, which features a smooth feeling ribbon controller and slider. On synth parts, the ribbon controls note duration and the slider controls the pitch. With drum parts, the ribbon controls the drum duration, and the slider nothing. This is a truly unique feature that definitely adds touch to your music. However, it’s a part that with much more potential. Although users can select the note range the slider works with, and alternate functions between the two, its about as much as it can do. Korg could have thrown in a little more to this, for example assigning the ribbon the control tempo.

Pattern making is easy – you can hit the record key, and jam along in real time, or place notes / drum beats manually on the 16 step bar – there are 8 bars that can be used per pattern. The EMX-1 is great for live performances too; each of the 16 step keys can be assigned to a pattern, so patterns play at the press of a button. After hitting off some patterns, they can be strung together to create full compositions or songs. A total of 64 songs, each with up to 256 patterns can be stored on the EMX-1. Song creating is fun, but can be tiresome, as it requires a lot of knob turning. Real time effects and changes can also be recorded in songs – so all knob movements and adjustments are recorded and played back in the final song.

The EMX-1 is undoubtedly one of the most user-friendly music production devices I’ve laid hands on. Included in the box is the user manual and quick-start guide; I only had to refer to these once or twice. Making music is an absolute breeze – sounds can be a bit ‘digital’ at times, but, but accents can be used. Velocity pads would also have been a much-welcomed feature; but for beginners and intermediates, the buttons are enough. Although an ace at producing techno, hip-hop, DnB and house music, it is equally gifted in producing jazz music a like.

The endurance of the Electribe line seems to be holding fast, and with the addition of the EMX-1, Korg has taken another step toward winning the continued devotion of users who don’t necessarily feel that software provides all of the answers to their tone-generation needs.

By Timothy Wong, January 2006

YouTube has secured an agreement with the UK societies that collect royalties for 50,000 composers, songwriters and publishers to legitimise the use of recorded music on Google’s popular video-sharing website.

The agreement to license 10m pieces of music to YouTube – in return for a flat fee which has not been disclosed – is the first of its kind, said Steve Porter, chief executive of the MCPS-PRS Alliance. “This is the first fully formed agreement,” he said, although some US collecting societies had reached interim arrangements with YouTube.

The agreement marks another milestone in YouTube’s attempts to win over owners of media content, who have expressed alarm at the amount of material available on the site that is either pirated or that generates no revenue for the companies that created it.