Wired Top Stories

Army Social Scientist Set Afire in Afghanistan

Noah Schachtman — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:10:00 GMT

For the third time in five months, a social scientist working for the Army's Human Terrain Team has been killed or seriously wounded. This time a woman is doused in gasoline and set ablaze in an apparent Taliban attack.

You Can Pay for Sex, Just Not on Craigslist

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:35:00 GMT

The online swap meet bows to pressure from law enforcement, agreeing to ban all "erotic services" ads from its sites.

The New Hotness: FourTrack Audio Recorder for iPhone, iPod Touch

Eliot Van Buskirk — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Remember those four-track recorders bands used to use to record song demos onto cassettes? FourTrack brings the same power and simplicity to the iPhone with this rock-solid app for songwriting and field recording.

Perhaps Only Three Years Til We're Flying Green

Dave Demerjian — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:30:00 GMT

Darrin Morgan, who oversees strategy development and execution for Boeing's Sustainable Biofuels Program, tells wired.com that his company expects a bio-fuel blend jet fuel to be certified sometime within the next three years, at which point it would be cleared for use in commercial jets.

IPhone 2.2: Podcast Downloads over 3G?

Charlie Sorrel — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:14:00 GMT

New screenshots of the iPhone 2.2 software have been dug up by blogger Florian Schimank and they confirm over-the-air podcast downloads direct to the iPhone. Another blog, M4gic.net, claims that this will work not only with a Wi-Fi connection, but also over 3G, although with a cap of 10MB, just like the App Store.

Wired.com Readers' Favorite Portable Music Players

Wired.com Photo Department — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:00:00 GMT

When Sony released the first Walkman in 1979, it changed the way music lovers saw the world. Suddenly everything around us played to whatever soundtrack we created, emotionally augmenting otherwise mundane experiences.

The iPod in 2001 brought more headphone wanderers into the fold with its monolithic success, but for many, it's not the musical companion of choice. Some of our readers' submissions took the 'portable music player' topic a little loosely, but here are some of our favorites.

Left: Archos Jukebox
Submitted by Brad Hodges

Photographer's comment:

"In preparation for several years in Central Africa, I bought this device long before MP3 players were commonplace. Boasting one of the first internal hard drives (20 GB) and a built-in recorder, it was a source of entertainment for an entire African village during three years in the tropical rainforest. I returned to the U.S., then spent a cold winter in Canada with it. Back in the U.S. again, it's still my favorite MP3 player, despite its small screen and amazing simplicity.”

Sony D-88
Submitted by Jason Sewell

Photographer's comment:

"The Sony D-88 blew my mind when I first saw it. As far as I know, this is the only CD player with a footprint smaller than a compact disc. Two-thirds of the disc stuck out of the player. And if you could find any of the smaller CDs, you could actually reposition the spindle so that the entire disc fit inside the player."

"The first" portable music player, early 30s
Submitted by PAOMAG

Photographer's comment:

"Early Columbia portable with 'automatic' louvres. There is a further subdivision of portable machines, which takes in the many novelty miniature and folding gramophones, particularly popular in the late 1920s, but still being made in the 1950s. Some collectors collect nothing but these novelties, of which there are dozens of variations."

AM/FM Headphone Radio
Submitted by Ian

Photographer's comment:

"Remember these? I guess lightning-risk awareness was not an issue at that time."

DataPlay Mini-DVD Player by iRiver iDP-100
Submitted by Jacquie Dutton

Photographer's comment:

"It coulda been someone … it coulda been a contender ... there were two devices and two dozen albums ready to ship to stores. Then DataPlay went bankrupt. Everyone ran. Flash memory came down in price. And Apple did something unthinkable: It incorporated nearly obsolete small form-factor hard drives — a commodity — into something HOT. But the secret sauce is always the software, and iTunes had the winning recipe.”

mobiBLU b153
Submitted by Jake

Photographer's comment:

"It wasn't pretty, but it got the job done. The mobiBLU b153 had voice recording, a customizable equalizer, an FM radio and more. It was cheap at the time, too: 2 GB for only $120. The kicker, though, was its 153 hours of battery life."

Boom Box
Submitted by Sam

Photographer's comment:

"Eight D-cell batteries guaranteed three hours of use on or off the basketball courts!"

Diamond Rio PMP300
Submitted by Anonymous

Photographer's comment:

"You kids and your flash players with USB ports and SD slots … this is the great granddaddy of all of your new small players, the original 32-MB Diamond Rio. Connected through the parallel port, ran on one AA, and if you had the money for some flash, could be expanded with SmartMedia. Who cares about the 17th anniversary of the iPod? We should be more concerned about the 10th anniversary of the first portable MP3 player to see any success at all.”

Portable music in a big way
Submitted by Not Anon

Photographer's comment:

"Seriously, the thing was the size of a brick. Owned one before my Zune. Loved the thing. Still miss the Rio DJ feature."

XM Helix by Samsung
Submitted by Anonymous

Photographer's comment:

"It's like a self-loading iPod and I'm not paying $1/song. I have a home cradle to listen through my surround system, and set it to record overnight. Next day, I put it in my car cradle, and listen to live tunes w/o ads; buh-bye FM. At work, I listen to saved music on 15 hrs battery. I edit the stuff recorded the night before, lock in the good and skip the bad. Cap: ~850 songs. When I hear something good on live broadcast, I hit REC and it's mine!"

Sansa slotMusic Player
Submitted by Mike Kabala

Photographer's comment:

"Even though most people are calling it a doomed format, I love my Sansa slotMusic player, shown here with an optional cover that lets me carry up to three additional micro SD or slotMusic cards. I enjoy being able to create custom playlists that I can listen to by simply plugging in a card and pressing 'Play,' rather than having to mess with menus or even look at a screen."

Sony MPD-AP20U, the CD/DVD player and CD writer that played MP3 DVDs!!
Submitted by Anonymous

Photographer's comment:

"Supported media: DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, CD-ROM, CD-ROM XA, Photo CD, CD Text, Video CD, CD-DA, CD Extra, CD-R, CD-RW. Additional media: Memory Stick Reader/Writer (Purple Stick). Write methods: Track-at-once, Disk-at-once, Session-at-once, Fixed packet writing. Write speed: CD-R Write: 4X, 8X, 8~24X Z-CLV max.; CD-RW Write: 4X, 8X, 10X max. Memory Stick: 1.5MB/s."

Sony Walkman Sports Edition (radio and cassette player)
Submitted by Michael

Photographer's comment:

"It might be missing a few dials and buttons, but it's been with me for a long time (through art school and my many travels) and still works.... (Sony really missed the bus on the MP3 player, IMO.)"

Soundwagon: Smallest Record Player Ever
Submitted by Martin

Photographer's comment:

"I used to carry this (soundwagon) around with me so I could drop it on a record in weird, dusty old record shops that didn't let you listen to the goods. I'm sure it's the worst ever for a record ... but it works."

Toshiba XR-P9 Portable/Dockable CD Player, circa 1986
Submitted by Anonymous

Photographer's comment:

"When I saw this page, I went to the basement and dug out my original XR-P9 (long non-functional). Seems I have the full kit: original leather-ette carry case with battery pack (6 C cells!), IR receiver and remote.

The power wedge slides off for use with the case.

My first CD player, chosen and loved for its versatility. Found this pic on eBay, but you get the idea...."

Xclef
Submitted by Jon

Photographer's comment:

"The Xclef is a dream for those of us who know how to build our own systems. I put my own 100-GB drive in there (standard laptop-sized drive), and can swap it out if I want. I can offload it and load onto it from Mac and PC, and the built-in equalizer sounds so much better than anything else I've heard. I wish they didn't stop making this because it truly is an amazing player."

The original Zen Touch
Submitted by Anonymous

Photographer's comment:

"The coolest MP3 player at the time, better sound quality then the iPod, etc...."

Show Us Your Flagrant Cellphone-Use Photo

Wired.com Photo Department — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:00:00 GMT

If you've left your house in the past 10 years, chances are good that you've been wronged by someone on a cellphone. And, let's admit it, you've probably also wronged someone else. Whether it's chatting through your coffee purchase or cutting someone off on the freeway, cellphone use can turn the best of us into a-holes faster than you can say "Can you hear me now?"

We want to see photos of ridiculous cellphone use in an Ode to Rudeness. Help us shine a light on this modern jackassery.

Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best flagrant cellphone-use photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. If we like your photo, we'll include it in a gallery on Wired.com.

The photo must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo so that other readers know what they're looking at.

We don't host the photos, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. Using an online photo service that requires that you log in will not work. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).

Please bookmark this page, send it to your friends and check back periodically over the next two weeks to vote on new submissions!

Vote on flagrant cellphone-use photos submitted by other readers.

Show photos that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your flagrant cellphone-use photo.

Submit your flagrant cellphone-use photo.

(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)

Record Straight From TV to Media Player's Gorgeous Screen

Roger Hibbert — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Sharp resolution and nifty TV connection mark the A3 portable media player from Cowan. Add FM tuner, radio and voice recording, and great battery life -- this little device rocks.

Nov. 6, 1928: All the News That's Lit

Tony Long — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:00:00 GMT

1928: The New York Times begins flashing headlines to pedestrians outside its offices at 1 Times Square, using an electronic news strip that wraps around the fourth floor of the building.

The Motograph News Bulletin, or "zipper" as it was known informally, was a technological marvel of its day. It extended 380 feet around the Times Tower and, with a band 5-feet tall, the moving letters were visible from a distance of several city blocks.

A Times column from 2005 described how inventor Frank C. Reilly's remarkable sign worked:

Inside the control room, three cables poured energy into transformers. The hookup to all the bulbs totaled 88,000 soldered connections. Messages from a ticker came to a desk beside a cabinet like the case that contained type used by old-time compositors. The cabinet contained thin slabs called letter elements. An operator composed the message letter-by-letter in a frame.

The frame, when filled with the letters and spaces that spelled out a news item, was inserted in a magazine at one end of a track. A chain conveyor moved the track, and each letter in the frame brushed a number of contacts. Each contact set a light flashing on Broadway.

Reilly, the Times said, calculated that there were 261,925,664 flashes an hour from the zipper's 14,800 bulbs.

It was the first use anywhere of the zipper, which was itself big news on a big news day. A headline in the Nov. 6 edition of the Times declared: Huge Times Sign Will Flash News. It also happened to be election day, and the zipper's first streaming headline announced a new president:

HERBERT HOOVER DEFEATS AL SMITH

Less than a year later, the zipper would be flashing the collapse of the stock market and the events that brought on the Great Depression.

Throughout the 20th century, historic moments became frozen as zipper headlines in the national consciousness:

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT IS DEAD

OFFICIAL: TRUMAN ANNOUNCES JAPANESE SURRENDER

PRESIDENT KENNEDY SHOT DEAD IN DALLAS

MAN ON MOON

NIXON RESIGNS

In between monumental news events, the zipper kept churning out the headlines, which later included weather forecasts and sports scores.

Even before the advent of the zipper, Times Square was a mighty crossroads, home to theaters and restaurants that kept the district humming 24 hours a day. Illuminated signs began springing up with such profusion that even in the early 1900s Broadway and Times Square were referred to as The Great White Way. The first neon sign in Times Square -- advertising the automaker Willys-Overland -- appeared in 1924. But the zipper, with its streaming headlines, was something new and arresting.

When the Times left 1 Times Square in 1963 for its new building on West 43rd Street, New York Newsday took over running the zipper. But as modern Times Square gradually vanished into an orgy of commerce, punctuated by garish neon and LED displays that make midnight feel like high noon, technology had clearly passed the zipper by.

Newsday was ready to pull the plug in 1994, but the zipper was saved when a British company picked up the lease at the midnight hour. As 1 Times Square, like every other building in the area, was gradually buried in an avalanche of modern signage, the old zipper was acquired by Dow Jones and given a complete face lift.

What was once the Motograph News Bulletin is now one of several high-resolution displays on Times Square, distinguishable from the others only by the use of amber LEDs.

Source: Various

Eco-Friendly AirPods Get Airport Test

Jason Sattler — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:16:00 GMT

Guy Nègre's zero-emission vehicles run on compressed air. But are they anything more than vaporware?

Three Plead Guilty in $2 Million Citibank ATM Caper

Kevin Poulsen — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Three Ukrainian immigrants admit plundering Citibank customers using account numbers and PINs stolen from 7-Eleven cash machines. But Cardtronics, the company that owns the ATMs, hasn't been so forthcoming.

Inside the Genetic Differences Between Chimps and Humans

Brandon Keim — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:05:18 GMT

Genome scans have revealed that though chimps are humans' closest genetic relatives, simple mutations don't tell the whole story. Now, geneticists are pinpointing the more subtle variations that make humans human.

How to Edit Wikipedia

How-to Wiki — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Everyone's an expert on something. That's the idea behind wikis, where any web user can contribute by adding their knowledge to a topic. No site is a better exemplar of the power of groupthink than Wikipedia, the largest and most well-known wiki on the web. Wired.com's own How-to Wiki has tips to help you dive in and start editing pages.

Google Search Deal Slips Through Yahoo's Fingers — Is AOL Next?

Meghan Keane — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:33:00 GMT

The disintegration of the Google-Yahoo search partnership should effectively eliminate Yahoo's chances to buy AOL and make it a tantalizing target for Microsoft yet again.

The Chevy Volt Will Save GM (And Get the Girl)

Ben Mack — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:30:00 GMT

The future of General Motors all but rests on the electric car that the company is scrambling to put into showrooms by 2010.

Colbert Bests Obama, Wins Marvel White House

Scott Thill — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:20:00 GMT

"Truthiness" might be the most potent political platform of all.

The Top 10 Reasons iTunes Sucks

Scott Gilbertson — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Most of what Apple makes is pretty cool — OS X, the classy laptops, the iPhone. But its iTunes media player is one of the most bloated, quirky and backwards-looking apps on our desktops.

Another Election Result: Twitter Comes Through

Chris Snyder — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:53:00 GMT

As Barack Obama makes history, Twitter sustains record-breaking activity on its microblogging service as voters across the globe tweet their election night reactions.

FCC Approves The Use of White Spaces for Wireless Broadband Connectivity

Priya Ganapati — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:45:19 GMT

The Federal Communications Commission's decision to open up the white spaces' spectrum to unlicensed devices could usher in a new telecom revolution, similar to what Wi-Fi did a few years ago, say analysts.

Full Steam Ahead for California's High-Speed Rail

Dave Demerjian — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:45:00 GMT

Getting the bond measure passed was the easy part. Now the hard work begins. High-speed rail advocates aren't wasting any time getting started.

Sci-Fi Giant Michael Crichton Dies at 66

John Abell — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:14:00 GMT

The novelist who wrote Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain succumbs to cancer.

MPAA Already Lobbying Obama

David Kravets — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:12:00 GMT

With the U.S. presidential election less than a day old, the Motion Picture Association of America has begun lobbying Sen. Barack Obama, the nation's president-elect. Obama is tasked with picking the nation's first copyright czar and said he wants to reform intellectual property laws "while ensuring that intellectual property owners are fairly treated."

Firefox's Private Browsing, aka 'Porn Mode,' Arrives

Scott Gilbertson — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:00:00 GMT

The latest addition to the Firefox web browser is a "private browsing" mode, which lets the user surf the web without recording a history or saving any information about the session. The new feature is available only in the latest pre-release builds, but we've got a first look.

@MarsPhoenix Twitter Epitaph Contest Winners

Alexis Madrigal — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:21:03 GMT

Out of nearly 1,000 Twitter-style epitaphs for @MarsPhoenix submitted by Wired Science readers, we have three winners and three editorial picks, whose authors will receive NASA mission swag.

Build a Burrito-Finding App With the Yahoo Maps API

Webmonkey — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:50:00 GMT

The next time you're trying to decide where to eat in your neighborhood, you could just rely on some boring local search service. But that wouldn't satisfy a true Webmonkey. Learn to create a map-based mashup that pinpoints the best burritos in your 'hood. Tools like the Yahoo Maps API make it easy to create custom, location-based web search tools in less time than it takes to decide between chile verde and carne asada.

Songbird 1.0 Poised to Rule the Jukebox Roost

Scott Gilbertson — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:45:00 GMT

The official release of the free and open source media player Songbird is imminent. The potential iTunes replacement shows great promise, but there are still a few bugs to sort out before it's ready to take on Apple's popular app.

Obama's Biggest Science Challenges: You Tell Us

Brandon Keim — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:20:00 GMT

When Barack Obama takes office in two and a half months, he will inherit an abundance — some might call it a mess — of science-related challenges. Most visibly is climate change. Linked to that is energy sustainability. Other environmental problems include water shortages and declining ocean health. Disease pandemics loom on the horizon. What do you think Obama should focus on?

Google Backs Out of Yahoo Ad-Search Deal

Chris Snyder — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:47:00 GMT

Google announces that it has decided to end its proposed advertising search partnership with Yahoo, citing ongoing "concerns" from regulators and advertisers that have delayed implementation of the deal for months and amid the prospect that a Justice Department review would drag well into next year.

Hands-On: Digital Praise's Christian-Themed 'Guitar Hero' Clone

Eliot Van Buskirk — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:31:00 GMT

Christian rock joins the guitar videogame craze, introducing a new demographic to the joys of guitar-based videogaming without exposing devout would-be rock stars to the racier elements of the Guitar Hero. Digital Praise's Guitar Praise - Solid Rock adopts the same concept of "playing" rock tunes on an increasingly difficult level. But it inhabits a gentler world where a bad performance gets you mild clapping and gentle suggestions instead of the raucous boos and catcalls that accompany failure in Guitar Hero.

Berlin Metro Bans Free iPhone Timetable Application

Charlie Sorrel — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:12:00 GMT

Fahr-Info Berlin is an iPhone application which helps Berliners to navigate the city metro system. Or rather, it was. BVG, the company which runs the Berlin Metro, has ordered 21 year old student and programmer Jonas Witt to remove the free application from the iTunes Store. The reason, as you will have guessed, is the catchall excuse called copyright, a term fast catching up to terrorism and communism as a way to shut up anyone you don't like.