Filed under: Wireless

Not that anyone who lives in the fair city of San Francisco was really all that confident that the muni WiFi project would ever make it off the ground — even despite Major Gavin Newsom’s best intentions — but now it looks like bad’s gone to worse. As you may have read, yesterday EarthLink laid off nearly a thousand employees, and word came today that addition to that news, it’s latest corporate restructuring would have it completely backing out of investments in its San Fran WiFi project contract, as well as the WiFi contracts in other cities. Again, not the most earth quaking news, given the word we received from the city that they were more or less pulling the plug anyway.

Watch the whole thing crumble, in slow-mo reverse chronological order:
Read (April 6th, 2006) – San Francisco selects Google/Earthlink for citywide WiFi
Read (January 6th) – It’s official: San Francisco to get free WiFi blanket courtesy of Google / EarthLink
Read (August 6th) – San Francisco pulls the plug on Google / Earthlink’s citywide WiFi… for now
This post, today.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

If you’ve been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the sleek little Archos 105 PMP to slide your sweet music and video collection into? Well, this won’t technically get you any closer to ownership, but the folks over at ArchosLounge have put together an enticing selection of photos which should have fans of the media player feeling awful excited. On the spec tip, the 105 comes in red, silver, or black, features 2GB of integrated flash memory, can play WAV, WMA, PCM, MP3, and protected WMA files, yet only plays back WMV video (or so we’re hearing). No definite word on when the player is due (though last mention was September), and hushed voices on the street say it will be selling for around $80 or $90.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Storage

New Medium Enterprises has been trying to get its VMD platform for high def optical discs out the door since late 2004, but we haven’t heard much solid. In the grand tradition of vaporous, cut-rate consumer electronics, NME’s publishing some puffy PR with terms like “The New Definition of High Definition” and “True High Definition”. What are they offering? Well, supposedly a budget player’s in the works that will play 1080i/p video for €179 ($250), upscale DVDs, and offers 45Mbps video (codecs go unmentioned) and 7.1 surround, region-free media, and a totally blockbuster lineup of Bollywood and Hollywood titles, including Mel Gibson classic “Apocalypto,” and “Passion of the Christ”. Color us totally impressed. No, really.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Let’s face it, even those who do like using Windows (us included) aren’t too fond of Windows Update — and don’t even get us started on what sysadmins have to go through keeping Windows boxes up to date (yeah, we used to do that too). Which is why we’re so glad there’s always a healthy 3rd party ecosystem in place to help fill in the gaps and get users get what they need and how they need it. Like AutoPatcher, the popular Windows Update substitute that’s been around for the last four years. Well, kiss it goodbye. The AutoPatcher team is reporting that Microsoft has laid down the smack on them and their ops, demanding the immediate shutdown of the service. We understand it’s kind of dubious (if not outright illegal) to redistribute Microsoft’s code (in the form of Windows update patches), but try though we might, we just can’t see what damage these guys are doing to Microsoft — only good — so we’ve got our fingers crossed the AP guys can figure out a way to re-enable service without future infringement. Won’t someone please think of the chil — sysadmins?

Read – AutoPatcher sounds like it’s calling it quits
Read – The takedown notice Microsoft sent to the AutoPatcher team

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Displays, HDTV

Just when we were starting to think Vista had complete ownership of the term “wow” in the tech industry, along comes Philips with its WOWzone 3D wall, a 132-inch multi-panel glasses-free system designed for promotional display of high def 2D and 3D content. It’ll be out in Q1 of next year, so don’t worry, you’ve got a few more months left before your mind is like, totally blown, man.

[Via TFOT]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!