Coolest business card ever

Coolest business card ever

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Rickrolling iPhone

Well, this hacker has quite the sense of humor.

Reports started spreading this weekend that iPhone users in Australia had been falling victim to "ikee," a worm that replaces default wallpaper with a picture of Rick Astley, the British pop singer whose song "Never Gonna Give You Up" has gained eternal infamy thanks to the mainstreaming of the "Rickrolling" prank craze. The photo is accompanied by the message "ikee is never gonna give you up," and it's apparently quite difficult to remove. According to security firm Sophos, this is the first worm detected that targets the iPhone.

The vulnerability is pretty specific: the phones must be jailbroken in order to be affected, and it appears to spread by searching an infected phone's contacts to find other jailbroken-phone users who have installed the Unix software SSH (secure shell) but haven't yet changed their passwords from Apple's default root password, "alpine."

Sophos says that it has not heard of any occurrences of the worm outside Australia, and that while it doesn't appear to do anything worse than irritate and embarrass affected users, that it highlights the vulnerabilities that jailbroken phones face.

Man sells T-shirt ad space for $90K

A T-SHIRT a day has kept unemployment at bay for an American man who is making about US$83,000 ($90,000) a year by selling advertising space on his torso.

Jason Sadler, 26, a former marketing professional from Florida, founded his own company, www.iwearyourshirt.com, in 2008 with the idea to wear a T-shirt supplied by any company and then use social media tools to promote the firm.

For his human billboard service, Mr Sadler charges the "face value" of the day so January 1 costs $1, while December 31 costs $365.

Mr Sadler said this may not sound like a lot but it adds up to $66,795 a year if he sells out every day, which he did this year.

He also sells monthly sponsorships for $1500, adding another $18,000 to his income.

"I walk around, take photos, wear the shirt all day," he told Reuters.

"I blog about those photos, I put 'em up on Twitter, I change my Facebook profile ... and then I do a Youtube video.

"I made about $83,000 this year."

The average US wage is about $615 a week or about $32,000 a year, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Mr Sadler has already begun filling his 2010 calendar so, in true entrepreneurial fashion, he is expanding services by hiring another individual to wear a shirt a day on the west coast of the United States - and is doubling his price.

Xerox develops silver ink for wearable or throwaway electronics

Xerox researchers have invented a kind of ink that can conduct electricity and be used to put electronic circuits on top of plastics, film, and textiles. That means in the coming years we’ll be able to wear or bend our electronics. You could even print out your electronic gadget on plastic sheets, as if you were printing a document.

Silicon chips have long been too expensive or heavy to use in devices that are extremely lightweight. The Xerox team solved this fundamental problem with lighter materials, and it plans to sell the new materials to other businesses that could make wearable electronics.

With plastics, you can unroll a sheet and then deposit electronic circuitry on top of it, building it up layer after layer. It helps to have conductive ink. That is, you need something that contains metal but that you can print with or spray on. The Xerox team created what they call a “silver bullet.” It’s a silver ink that melts at 140 degrees celsius.

Normally, metals melt at 1,000 degrees or so. But plastic itself melts at 150 degrees. So an ink laid on top of plastic can’t melt at a higher temperature or it will melt the plastic, said Paul Smith, lab manager at Xerox Research Toronto, Canada.

“This opens a whole new world for electronics,” said Angele Boyd, an analyst at IDC. “With printable electronics, the future of electronics will include plastics and fabric. The Xerox technology opens up opportunities for lower cost applications in traditional electronics and for new applications around plastics and fabric.”

The applications include plastic circuits could be used to build plastic electronic book readers, such as one being built by Plastic Logic, that are flexible enough to bend and can withstand damage. They would also be very lightweight. The plastic circuits could be used to weave a computer into your clothing or make intelligent boxes for pills that could tell you whether they’ve been tampered with during shipping.

Scientists have dreamed of this for a long time, and Xerox has been researching it since 2001. Hewlett-Packard has also been working on plastic electronics for a decade. Xerox says it has now been able to fabricate cheap and lightweight components that are necessary to print circuits on plastic: a semiconductor, a conductor and a dielectric element.

The fabrication plants for these kinds of plastic chips will be cool. The circuits can be printed by printers, just like a document, without the need for an elaborate clean room as is used in current chip factories. Xerox has research samples available now and is in discussions with manufacturers who could use the plastic electronics.

Beyond the applications we’ve mentioned already, Xerox says the printed plastic circuits could be used in low-cost radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, light and flexible signs, sensors, solar cells and novelty fashions.

Microsoft Data Centre Unvielled

On the outside, Microsoft's massive new data center resembles the other buildings in the industrial area.

It's what's inside those trailers, though, that is the key to Microsoft's cloud-computing efforts. Each of the shipping containers in the Chicago data center houses anywhere from 1,800 to 2,500 servers, each of which can be serving up e-mail, managing instant messages, or running applications for Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched cloud-based operating system--Windows Azure.

"I think, I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think this could be the largest data center in the world," said Arne Josefsberg, general manager of infrastructure services for Microsoft's data center operations.

The center has 30 megawatts of capacity.

The software maker also won't say exactly which services are running in each facility, but the many Bing posters inside the upstairs server rooms in Chicago offer a pretty good indication of what is going on there.

Ferrari theme park opens

This remarkable six-pronged red building is Ferrari World, the maker's first theme park and a sight sure to have would-be owners giddy with supercar-based excitement.

Set to open in Abu Dhabi, Ferrari describes it as 'an intense multi-sensory experience and a must-visit for enthusiasts, fans and families'. Its design is apparently inspired by the side profile of the Ferrari GT body, but in case you're thinking this is just a puffed up Ferrari showroom, think again: Ferrari World will host some of the most thrilling rides this side of Disney World.

Appropriately, the site will boast the world's fastest rollercoaster when its doors open in early 2010, which will hit speeds in excess of 124mph. There's also a 'G-force experience' that goes through the roof and back down again, a journey 'into the heart of a Ferrari 599 engine', and a racing school for young drivers.

It will become the world's largest indoor theme park when it opens, with over one million square feet of floor space containing two restaurants and, of course, a massive Ferrari shop, claimed to be 'a retail experience that celebrates Ferrari's rich heritage in a way never seen before.'

Bondi flashmob stunt

While the idea – and indeed the execution – may not have been entirely original, video footage of a dancing flashmob on Bondi Beach on Friday afternoon is close to going viral.