Alligator Belly           Gadgets and Technology

Google has once again broker all barriers and introduced the My Location feature in Google Maps. The My Location feature approximates the current location using cell phone towers instead of a GPS device. So chances are if you have a newer cell phone without a GPS that you could Google Maps and it could tell you your approximate location between 25 meters to 2500 meters. That means no more finding out where you are at, just open Google Maps on your cell phone and let it find itself on the map. Although the technology is proprietary there have been rumors that the cell phone using the My Location feature sends some information about your location to the Google servers. So if privacy is a concern then you could have the My Location feature disabled. We tried it on a Nokia E61 Symbian S60 3rd edition phone and it works great and even though it’s still in Beta it’s more than 90% accurate. You can find more information about the technology here.

Aliens and not just humans were also amazed by the Google Street View car. The aliens liked it so much that they followed it for a good 2 miles all the way from Flamingo & Swenson to Flamingo & McLeod in Las Vegas, NV. But on further analysis it looks like one of the cameras or a part of camera went bad and produced the pinkish overlay. Now it’s for you to decide whether it’s a pink hurricane, aliens or a just a minor malfunction of the camera. Or is it another clue to prove that Area 51 does indeed exist.

GMail allows the use of + in the email address and ignores everything after it. So for example if your email address is someone@gmail.com then you could use someone+mailing@gmail.com and that email would still reach you. Then in GMail you could search for someone+mailing and all the emails sent to someone+mailing@gmail.com will be shown. You could essentially create unlimited sub email addresses. Whats even better is that you can create multiple sub emails and give everyone a separate email address. Then you can keep track of who sells/distributes your email address to others and you can just filter that sub email out. Sweet!

Looks like it’s Boeings answer to Airbus A380 but Boeing denies it. Here is the new high-tech Boeing 747-8. Boeing claims it to be the fastest and quitest jumbo to date.

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Imagine upgrading your computer to house 24,000 processors. The Energy Department has just ordered such a system for itself. The system will be delivered in 2008 by Cray Inc. of Seattle. It is expected to have 24,000 2.6Ghz quadcore AMD processors, with 187 to 400 terabytes of memory. This system is also expected to break the 1 PetaFlop (1 Quadrillion) floating point calculation per second. Just a thought, will Windows Server support this system?

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Remember those go round LED lights that you rotate to display a message or an image. What if you could fit those in your car rims. Well it has been done and it looks pretty cool (video below). The rims come with a computer software to upload pictures for the rims. So you could literally put up any picture on your rims and each rim can have a different picture/message. You could also store upto 6 images in each rim that will change at selected intervals. Visit CustomWheel to order your pair. Go ahead Pimp your Ride!

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Time to fire up Google Earth and fly in to Germany as Google has just updated the maps/images on Google Earth. Some of the changes include updated earth basemap to another source called TrueData, Germany along with many Tropical, Caribbean Islands has been upgraded to high-resolution. But there have been also many reports stating that some images have been degraded to older versions.

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We know about seaports and airports but now what is a spaceport? With the first commercial spaceport announced in Ras Al Khaimah (UAE), visitors will be able to travel in suborbital space. Ras Al Khaimah is about an half hour drive from Dubai, one of the world’s leading luxury tourist destinations. Visitors will now have another reason to attend the Dubai Shopping Festival and so will Alligator!
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How do you overcome the fear of getting into you late at night and finding someone with a gun waiting in the backseat for you? You install a heartbeat sensor and that’s what the folks at Volvo have done. The heartbeat sensor recognizes a human being (or probably even animals) and alerts owners through their keychain known as the Personal Car Communicator. The Personal Car Communicator also warns the drivers if their car is unlocked and the alarm is not active.
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“Intel Inside” – “Tuuum, Tuuum, Tum, Tum” – We might not get to see or hear that for too long since Intel is changing its slogan. The new slogan – “Leap Ahead”.
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