In a bid to bolster the image of its music subscription service and lure new subscribers, Napster is returning to the days of yore by offering free music. But as you might expect, there’s a catch. Rather than offering free downloadable music, Napster is taking a page from RealNetwork’s playbook and offering free streaming music to users in an attempt to entice them. With Napster’s offering, users can listen to streaming music from any of Napster’s two million tracks, with one caveat: no single track can be played more than five times (tracked via mandatory user registration).

Source: arstechnica

The next pair of Levi Strauss & Co. jeans bought in a retail store could have a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag attached, the company confirmed Friday.

Levi Strauss & Co. spokesman Jeffrey Beckman confirms that the clothing maker began shipping men’s jeans, excluding the infamous button-up fly 501s, to one retail location in the United States. The trial uses RFID tags clipped to the outside of the garment to focus on inventory management.

Source: InformationWeek

Alan Ralsky might rat out a massive hacker / spammer network

Alan Ralsky is currently being held by the feds and his file is sealed for the next 72hrs by the DOJ. Local hacker “Memehacker” said “We are concerned that he is going to narq out the entire network since they have enough on him to send him to jail. This means hackers, spammers, anyone who has worked in spam legally or illegally for the last 5 years at least”.

Source: valleywag.com

Loc8tor is an innovative product using patent pending technology that helps find important possessions and can even stop them from getting lost in the first place. By blending the best of old and new technology Loc8tor provides an affordable personal homing device of its kind.

The Loc8tor

For young and old, pet lovers to parents and gadget lovers to grandparents, Loc8tor is designed to be exceptionally easy to use and helps avoid that feeling of frustration when you mislay your valuables. From finding keys, handbags or mobile phones to ensuring the safety of your children, pets and personal possessions, Loc8tor’s versatility means it can be used in almost any situation.

Loc8tor’s versatile nature enables use around the home, in the office or out and about. Small, discrete Tags and a compact Handheld unit direct users from up to 183 metres / 600 feet to within 2.5cm / 1�? of the mislaid item.

Loc8tor tag

The Loc8tor’s small, discrete Tags can be easily attached to almost any item from laptops through to organisers, wallets to keys. The tags are secured in place with the reusable key ring loop or strong adhesive acrylic strips. The built-in flashing LED and audio beep help guide users directly to the lost or misplaced item.

Google recently launched an online version of translation system for Arabic-English and English-Arabic.

To build the machine translator, Google feed the computer with billions of words of text, both monolingual text in the target language, and aligned text consisting of examples of human translations between the languages. Then Google apply statistical learning techniques to build a translation model.

A Chinese businessman has bought a MiG-21f plane from a U.S. seller on the online auction Web site eBay for $24,730 and plans to use it to decorate an empty space at his offices, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Source: AP