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Scrabulous game back on Facebook

Scrabulous is back on Facebook but the popular word game has a new name, new rules and circular tiles.

Developers suspended the game for users in US and Canada on Tuesday, after legal action by Hasbro, the makers of Scrabble.

But developers have resurrected it and called it Wordscraper, a change which may help them beat legal action.

Hasbro is suing the Calcutta-based founders of the game, claiming they are infringing its copyright and trademark.

Lost for words

Scrabulous has been one of the most popular applications on Facebook, regularly racking up more than 500,000 users each day.

But its similarity to Scrabble had raised the hackles of Hasbro, the owner of Scrabble’s North American rights.

It sued Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the Indian brothers behind the game, in federal court.

The tweaks to the game - which includes allowing users to design custom boards -may give the Scrabulous developers an advantage in any legal action.

“It’s going to come down to the little things like squares and circles and double, triple and so on,” said Ethan Horwitz, an intellectual property lawyer at King and Spalding in New York. “What they have done is taking a big step in the right direction, but I don’t think it’s a big enough step.”

In a statement, Hasbro said “it will evaluate every situation individually and take actions as appropriate”.

Fans have mounted a vigorous defence campaign since the joint owners of Scrabble, Mattel and Hasbro, announced their intention to sue the Facebook developers back in January.

Hasbro had asked Facebook to block access following the launch of its own official version of Scrabble.Facebook said the developers took the decision to suspend the game

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation

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MyUninstaller 1.42

Chris Wiles, vnunet.com, Thursday 31 July 2008 at 16:05:00

Use an alternative software uninstallation tool

This is the software publisher’s description. MyUninstaller is an alternative utility to the standard Add/Remove applet of Windows operating system….

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Nokia N96 to hit the UK in October

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Winning Laptop Accessories

Innovative Office Products from Easton, USA, won a honorable mention at the Red Dot Product Design Awards 2008, with its Cricket Laptop Stand, which is categorized as a laptop arm on the company’s website. It features adjustable height for comfortable viewing at up to 60 degrees, adjustable width for all laptop sizes, weighting up to 12 lbs, and is collapsible to be ultra portable in a pocket or laptop case. In addition it is made 70% of recyclable materials.
It is available at $39.95.

Innovative Office Products is specialized in developing ergonomic and extremely practical arms and mounts for monitors, laptops and tablet PCs, with clients like New York Stock Exchange, NASA and IBM.
Cricket was designed by Bradley Derry and David Van Duzer and comes in black, silver, and lime green to match all laptop colors.

The second laptop computer accessory is no other than XO Yoyo, created by fuseproject and Potenco for One Laptop per Child. It won Bronze at the International Design Excellence Awards 2008, for being one of the most innovative computer equipment concepts, and, as you’ve probably already guessed, it is an XP laptop companion.
XO Yoyo would be used by children in developing countries, who own an XO laptop for easy learning, providing them with a practical and fun way of producing power for the mobile computer. Yoyo concept is considered to be robust, highly functional and expressive, besides being highly efficient.

Potenco named it the Pull-Cord Generator because it works by pulling the cord with one hand to generate energy. It powers the rechargeable batteries for continuous use, not only of the OLPC laptop but also of lighting devices, cell phones, radios, GPS, PDAs, and even water purifiers.
As an example, if you pull for a minute, it generates power for 20 minutes of cell phone talk time, 1 hours for ultra bright LED flashlight, and 3 hours for playing on an iPod Shuffle. One pull is enough for a song, so let’s say that to have 4 minutes of power you need to pull just once.

Now let’s see the specifications. Yoyo laptop computer accessory measures 2.5 x 3.5 inches in height and diameter respectively and weighs 14 oz. It features 40W peak power, 25W on average, 59dB at 1 foot, and <50dB at 5 feet. It highly adjustable according to the user’s fitness and energy level, is ergonomic supporting different muscle groups, and is also rugged with resistance at water, dust and drops.
I don’t know why, but i don’t enjoy seeing those kids pulling it over and over again… How do you see this?

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O2 Launches Complete Broadband Experience with Joint Mobile and Home Broadband Offer

O2 has become the first established broadband player to offer customers high speed internet access inside the home and on the move with a combined home and mobile broadband package. Whether customers are looking for convenient web access on the move or a high quality experience in the home, the combination of O2’s home and mobile broadband offerings creates a complementary service which will provide high quality, fast, convenient and value-for-money internet access regardless of location.

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Google Street View gets go ahead

Google’s controversial Street View photo-mapping tool has been given the all clear by the UK’s privacy watchdog.

The system takes pictures of streets and adds them to online maps to let people see what locations look like.

The project drew criticism from privacy campaigners worried it could breach data protection laws.

But the Information Commissioner said it was “satisfied” that Google had put in place safeguards to avoid risking anyone’s privacy or safety.

In a statement the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said it had requested a further meeting with Google to talk about Street View prior to the service’s launch.

It said the safeguards Google was putting in place, such as blurring faces and registration plates, were sufficient to allay worries about privacy.

The statement said: “Although it is possible that in certain limited circumstances an image may allow the identification of an individual, it is clear that Google are keen to capture images of streets and not individuals.”

The delay between the images being snapped and them appearing on the web meant it could not be used as a tracking tool

UK rights group Privacy International raised worries about Street View which employs special vehicles to take panoramic snaps of busy streets in cities and towns. The digital images are then attached to Google’s online map system so visitors can virtually travel up and down a route.

The Street View tool was first launched in the US in May 2007 and gave views of five cities. Since then it has been expanded to many more as well as overseas cities.

Although the Street View cars have been spotted in many places in the UK Google has yet to reveal when pictures will be added to maps of the country

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation

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Bridge Construction Set demo

Tim Smith, Computeract!ve, Thursday 31 July 2008 at 11:20:00

Have fun building your own bridges

If you have ever wondered exactly how important all the cables on a suspension bridge are, this game will answer all your questions, and hopefully provide some fun as well….

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