pang's Blog

A functional Meizu M8 UI

After what feels like centuries of waiting (and suffering through that painful CeBIT demo), we finally get to see the Meizu M8's OS in action... and it's not as bad as you think. Sure, the interface is totally derivative of the iPhone, and there is that pesky cursor floating around, but all-in-all it looks like the company has managed to knock out a decent -- if incredibly familiar -- UI for its long-delayed phone. Still, there's some low rent hilarity in this video. Our favorites? The smattering of soft porn pictures and video, and Meizu CEO and all-around bon vivant Jack Wong revealed in a reflection...

Do you download more than 250GB of data per month? If you're a Comcast customer, you'll likely want to get out of the habit--quickly. Beginning October 1, the Internet provider said customers that use more than 250GB per month, per account will get their account disabled. It's got a lot of people in an uproar. Make sure to check out Webware.com's coverage of the news.

Also on Friday's podcast: Apple and AT&T could be looking at a plan to allow tethering of the iPhone, Nintendo Wii sales continue to propel the company forward, and is Napster for sale?

credit : http://news.cnet.com/8301-11424_3-10029116-90.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

The Guardian reports that a television ad for the Apple iPhone has been banned by the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority after receiving complains about misleading claims.

The television ad which can be viewed online claims that "all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone." The complaints about the ad pointed out that the iPhone does not support Flash or Java which may be required for some websites. The Advertising Standards Authority concluded that "the ad gave a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone".

Apple responded by saying that the purpose of the ad was to point the iPhone's ability to access standard websites and that it could not ensure compatibility with "every third-party technology in the marketplace".

credit :  http://www.macrumors.com

Susanne Miller, the biologist in charge of the polar bear project for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, said 8 of the 10 bears spotted in the aerial survey had been within 15 miles of shore. One was 35 miles from shore and another one 50, but neither was more than 20 miles from the nearest arctic ice.

Bear sightings in open water were infrequent until about 2004, Ms. Miller said, but rising temperatures have melted much of the ice platform on which they live and hunt for seals.

In May, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne put the United States polar bear population under the protections of the Endangered Species Act, primarily because of the loss of its habitat.

“It’s not unusual for bears to be swimming,” Ms. Miller said, “but depending on their condition and how much time they’re spending in the water, this could be problematic. It’s going to cost them more energy to swim through water than travel on land.”

In addition, more bears have been sighted on land in July and August than in the past — a possible result of the retreating of the sea ice. But “it’s not a clear-cut situation,” Ms. Miller said, noting that most bears captured this spring on the ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas have been in good condition. So have several bears caught on land.

Biologists are concerned that bears, particularly pregnant ones, will exhaust themselves on long open-water swims.

“There were some years when some bears may have had to swim as far as 100 miles,” Steven C. Amstrup, the senior polar bear scientist with the United States Geological Survey in Anchorage, wrote in an e-mail message. “Now the ice is much farther offshore, more consistently and for longer. So the possibility of long distances between land and sea ice is much greater.”

In some past cases, Mr. Amstrup added, bears have been known to “arrive so spent energetically that they literally don’t move for a couple days after hitting shore.”

Biologists made the new sightings from a plane on two flights on Aug. 16 at an altitude of 1,200 feet. The survey was looking for bowhead whales in an area of the Chukchi Sea that includes tracts the federal government leases to oil and gas companies.

credit : http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/science/23bears.html?ref=science