Screenshot of blackle.com

Blackle.com is an alternative to the Google search page -- basically devoid of color with a black background for the purpose of saving energy. There has been lively debate and much testing on the theory that energy can be saved due to reduced power requirements for a monitor to display a darkened screen opposed to a stark white screen. Energy reduction from dark-screen usage is cumulative, based on a small bit of power savings from each of the millions of Web searches daily. Theoretically it does seem to add up, with the blackle.com homepage counter showing that 172,935,519 Watt-hours have been saved.

As innovative and thoughtful as that theory is, test results are mixed and conclusions can be drawn to support both sides.

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Apple and AT&T may have a legal case against hackers who unlock the iPhone from AT&T's network, then share the how-to online with the world. In addition to the 17-year-old whiz kid, two additional groups claim to have a software package to unlock the iPhone.

While there is plenty of disagreement among intellectual property lawyers on the interpretation of the U. S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), legal ramifications can be oversimplified like this. If you unlock your iPhone yourself it is unlikely to be a violation. If you post the instructions for all to access online, even for free, that may draw a nasty letter form an IP attorney, but is probably protected by free speech laws. Lastly, if you try and sell services or software to unlock an iPhone, you are inviting trouble according to a ComputerWorld report.

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Just before sunrise tomorrow morning Michigan residents will have an opportunity view a portion of the total lunar eclipse as Earth casts its shadow across the moon's surface. The partial eclipse will begin at 4:51 a.m. and the total eclipse will begin an hour later at 5:52 a.m. EDT. The moon will be visible during the total eclipse phase as a darkened orange-red or blood moon for a few minutes while the brightening twilight fades the view until it will no longer be visible sometime before sunrise at 6:53 a.m. If you want to see the last half of the eclipse or if it is cloudy you can browse to the NASA Eclipse page where there is a live eclipse Webcast link.

The next lunar eclipse will be February 20, 2008, and will give virtually everyone in the Americas a good view.

For more on the lunar eclipse check out these links:
Lunar eclipse story on detnews.com
SpaceRef Space News as it happens
Lunar Eclipse Wikipedia page

George Hotz, a 17-year-old from Glen Rock, N.J., unlocked the Apple iPhone. To do it he gave up his last summer before college and has become the tech equivalent of a Rock Star for-a-day. He even has his own overnight Wikipedia page.

Saturday morning, according to his blog, Hotz traded a second unlocked iPhone for a “sweet Nissan 350Z and three 8GB iPhones” to Terry Daidone, the founder of Certicell. He uses the original "unlocked" iPhone as his personal cell phone. I guess this means the $99,999,999.00 bid for “...a piece of mobile telephone history” posted earlier on eBay was a joke! Too bad! But the Nissan 350Z is no joke and not a shabby payday for a summer job.

Last Thursday the ten step modification process that Hotz and several online collaborators put together was posted on his blog -- http://iphonejtag.blogspot.com/. The complicated process should scare most away because it requires disassembly of the iPhone and soldering skills to modify the internals of the device. For your troubles you’ll either have an iPhone usable on mobile networks other than AT&T or an unusable device no longer covered by warranty. You’ve really got to hate AT&T to do this.

For the whole story click here.

Your most expensive computing device is probably your automobile. In fact, onboard computing can account for about 20 percent of vehicle production costs and that figure keeps rising, estimated to be as much as 50 percent for hybrid vehicles. The number of onboard devices has grown from about five in 1980 to over 30 in current vehicles. Some luxury models may have as many as 100 onboard computing devices.

Seventy percent of automakers use the German OSEK/VDX, a “Microsoft-like” system, developed in the early 1990s. Other car makers have developed their own individual systems since a global standard is lacking to incorporate new features in safety, driver enhancements as well as hybrid fuel and drive-train control.

According to The Yomiuri Shimbun, a newspaper in Japan, a consortium of 10 Japanese companies, including Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Denso and Toshiba will work jointly to create what they hope to become a global standard for the common automotive electronics operating system platform by 2009.

On a more aggressive schedule; BMW, Daimler and other European automakers are jointly developing a next-generation OS and expect to complete a prototype in 2008.

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