TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Dutch researchers have come up with plastic chips that will conduct electricity. Cellphones break when dropped because the conducting paths in the chips get all bumped out of shape (unless that drop ends in the toilet. You know who you are). Plastic chips can take a much harsher beating and still bounce back.

Paulette Prins of Delft University of Technology has demonstrated a specially treated plastic that could replace the silicon in pretty much any kind of device, which will be great for the clumsy gadget freak. This is all still in the labs, but we all like to dream of a better future. Count us in for an MP3 football.

Every party sees people who turn up early, hoping to get the first slice of cake and the best booze, and trade shows are no exception: press releases and product announcements already all over the place. If I was CTIA, I’d make them put out the chairs and get the plastic cups from the pantry. Especially Danny, who’s already got his mitts on that $500 Nokia N95 everyone wants.

Sony-Ericsson let the W580 Walkman out of the bag a day early, an orangey quad-band slider phone (but no qwerty) with music in mind. 14mm thick and offering a distinctive design, it’s not much a phone aside from the music functions, with a 2mp camera and not much else. The music features are surprisingly complete, however, with an FM radio, pedometer, stereo bluetooth and assured functionality as a plain-jane mass storage device: none of that oldschool Sony proprietary transcode-’n'-sync software required. It also comes with a “free” 512Mb memory stick. Also coming is their Z750 HSDPA Handset.

One annoying thing about my MacBookPro is the lack of a PC card slot. Smartcards being expensive, next time I get to head out to a show in person, I’ll be grabbing a usb cellular modem.

Bittorrent on Macs means using Azureus. The alternatives are either rubbish or don’t work right (I’m looking at you, Transmission!), at least with my setup. But Az feels fat and slow, hence my interest in the Procare e|share ES-8068, a dedicated BT box to take up the strain of downloading stuff.

Just throw it on your network, hook up a USB hard drive, and log in to the web admin and point it to the torrents.

A while back I wrote a piece on RF sensitivity. I’m not convinced that everyday radio frequency harms people, and a big part of that comes from the selectivity of many claims: some people say, for example, that wireless networks trigger their aches and pains, even though there’s been a storm of noise on the same frequency for years. Cellular networks draw others’ suspicion, and televisions that of still more.

Today’s San Francisco Chronicle notes the growing urban threat of iPod theft — they’re easy to grab, easy to spot and almost as convertible as cash for a motivated meth addict.

San Francisco police tallied 193 iPod grabs last year and are on a similar pace for 2007.

Tips for avoiding such a tragedy included replacing those ubiquitous white earbuds that clearly identify you as the owner of name-brand media player. But we hardly think clunky headphones are sufficient to deter would-be thieves. (Unless you can act a psychotic breakdown as well as Adam Sandler when said headphones are touched without permission.)

Nope, to really ensure the safety of you iPod, we suggest you also encase it in a brown skin and prominently wear a button or T-shirt that says: "Ask me about my Zune!"

Think of the Dirt Dog as a Roomba with an engine swap, lift kit, and knobby tires. In our tests, its stiffer spinning brushes fetched sawdust, dried leaves, and even small screws and nails like a champ. But in our complex shop, this dog didn’t hunt; it got stuck on tool stands and bases, while its cliff sensor couldn’t sniff out a 1-inch drop unless the ‘Dog approached it nearly head-on. Set loose in a normal two-car garage, the Dirt Dog ran unattended for an hour, leaving the whole floor spotless, unlike a real dog, which pretty much does the exact opposite. —Chuck Cage

WIRED Fits underneath roll-away toolboxes to sweep in places you can’t (or won’t).

The Spanish site Noticias.com posted a news story yesterday in which the general manager of Google in Spain and Portagul confirmed that Google engineers are working on a mobile phone (in Spanish). Our translation of the relevant news:

Isabel Aguilera, the general manager of Google in Spain and Portugal, has confirmed to Noticias.com that the company is working, "among other things," on the development of a mobile phone. "Part of our engineers’ time has been dedicated to investigating a mobile phone for accessing information," Aguilera stated to this site.

Isabel Aguilara  explained to Noticias.com that a good 70% of the engineers’ time is dedicated "to developing our core business, which is to say search and advertising," and that 20% [is dedicated to] "products that have potential to be part of our core," and that 10% of their time is centered on developing "products that some time might be part of our business."

Currently, Aguilera’s engineers are working on 36 products and "another 18 in the laboratory," of which the mobile phone is one.

The eventually sensible government of the Netherlands has rejected a proposal to slap USB thumb drives with a tax similar to the one Dutch consumers pay on blank media.

Industry group SONT, which collects the media levies and supposedly doles them out to copyright-abused musicians, was thwarted in an earlier ploy to extend the tax to media players. But flash memory gadgets can hold music files, so why not go for a Euro-nickel on each thumb drive sold?

Justice minister Hirsch Ballin rejected the idea, apparently agreeing with computer industry lobbyists who argued the proposed tax was unfair, since thumb drives are largely used for storing documents and other non-musical files.

BusinessWeek is theorizing that meters on cell phone plans will soon be a thing of the past.

Sprint started an experiment in San Francisco recently, offering a plan for $120 a month with unlimited voice, text-messaging and data service. Add $30 a month for unlimited mobile broadband access.

As smartphones proliferate, such offers will start to seem like a bargain to many consumers racking up data charges, analysts say. Jerry Kaufman, president of wireless consultancy Alexander Resources, predicts 20 percent of U.S. subscribers will be on unlimited plans three years from now . "I wouldn’t be surprised if unlimited becomes the choice among consumers," he says.

All eligible for TV converter discount [Reuters]
Do you still own an analog TV set? Can you get one? The government is setting up $40 payments to subsidize your move to digital.

Tight-lipped Russians prove challenge for cell phone operator [Reuters]
Russian mobile operators struggle to get the taciturn nationals to talk to one another once in a while.