5:40 PM
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/leaking-well-may-be-sealed-ahead-schedule
California company has offered an interesting IED solution--a flying car. If soldiers are in a tactical situation that requires a quick escape, they can flip a switch and the car will shoot up in the air and avoid IEDs:
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/new-counter-ied-approach-flying-car
Remember the 2008 health scare scandal over melamine-tainted milk products that killed at least 6 children and sickened 294,000 others? Chinese inspectors just found *76 tons* of dairy products that were tainted with melamine, some at 559 times the legal maximum! It appears that these tainted products are leftovers from the 2008 recall...some company stashed them and was going to sell the tainted products 2 years later:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/world/asia/10china.html
Scientists found that they can turn a female mouse into a lesbian by deleting a single gene. Taking away that disabling that gene causes the female mice to behave as if they were male as they grew up, rejecting the advances of male mice and attempting to mate with female mice:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7877774/Female-mice-can-be-turned-lesbian-by-deleting-gene.html
Infineon's stock rose after reports that Intel is close to buying Infineon's mobile-chip unit for up to $1.4 billion:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-09/infineon-shares-rise-after-die-welt-report-about-sale-of-mobile-chip-unit.html
There are now 5 billion mobile subscriptions (with 2 million more added per day) in the world, amazing when you consider that there are just 6.9 billion people in the world. In the year 2000, 720 million people had mobile subscriptions...which is less than the number of mobile users China has today!
http://www.ericsson.com/thecompany/press/releases/2010/07/1430616
Interesting interview with the man credited as the inventor of the cell phone--people who got to try it out (including Pres. Reagan and VP Bush) were amazed at being able to walk around and make a phone call. It should be noted that he invented the cell phone *before cordless phones existed*:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/07/09/cooper.cell.phone.inventor/index.html?hpt=C1
NTP currently has lawsuits from 2007 against Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint and now they have sued Apple, Google, Microsoft, HTC, LG and Motorola over NTP's claim that they own the rights to wireless e-mail. Critics call NTP a patent troll because they have never made any commercial products and have never produced any services:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/technology/09patent.html?_r=3&ref=technology
The Chinese government informed Google today that they have renewed Google's Internet Content Provider license so Google can continue to provide web search and other local products in China:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/google-says-china-has-renewed-its-content-provider-license-775
Apple has approved the 3rd-party video calling app Fring, which is great because it allows for video calling over *3G* (not limited to WiFi!) and enables the iPhone 4 to have video calls with non-iPhones that use Fring:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/08/fring-update-approved-for-iphone-does-video-calling-with-front/
Numerous complaints over reception and dropped calls for the iPhone 4 are apparently due to the iPhone 4's proximity sensor, which can be thrown off by a reflective ear canal:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/gadgetreviews/iphone-4-proximity-sensor-could-be-thrown-off-by-reflective-ear-canal/16227
One man was able to use an off-the-shelf Lego robotics kit and his Motorola Droid phone to add sensors to his Lego robot, utilizing the camera, GPS, and compass on his Droid. He did an amazing job and is proving his source code for free to anyone who wishes to do this in their home!
http://www.androidcentral.com/android-gives-eyes-ears-and-sense-direction-lego-nxt-robot
This woman apparently turned *130* yesterday--she was born on July 8, 1880!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100708/ap_on_re_eu/eu_georgia_oldest_person