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Fabian Hemmert's urgency-augmented calling concept detailed on video
Fabian Hemmert's no stranger to unorthodox cellphone designs, but things are really starting to get zany in his newest video. While speaking at TEDxSalzburg, Hemmert was able to elaborate on a project that he's been tinkering with for a year or so. In essence, it's the realization of tactful calling, or urgency-augmented calling. In an effort to solve a very real social problem ("Should I answer this call right now? Is it important?"), this here concept would utilize an inbuilt pressure sensor as well as a tweaked user interface. The caller would be able to press on the sensor in order to indicate the level of importance, and the receiver would be able to screen calls based on the level of severity. In theory, all of this sounds fantastic -- the only issue is that telemarketers (amongst others) all think that each of their calls is of the utmost importance. Like anything in life, this too would only truly work if not abused. Head on past the break and mash play -- we're pretty convinced this is just a few tweaks short of being amazing.
EverQuest II adds new achievements of challenging nature
What's makes beating raids in Ruins of Kunark and The Shadow Odyssey even better? Achievements, of course. That's why SOE is adding brand new achievements to several heroic zones and raids to those two expansions. Players will be challenged by several new goals, such as Flawless Victory, which requires finishing an encounter without losing a single party member. Other achievements involve winning a raid encounter with three or more people less than the maximum and clearing a raid or heroic zone within a set time limit. Obviously, these challenging new achievements wouldn't be worthwhile without a reward. The form of said reward comes as three new titles: the Dragonslayer, the Urgent and the Flawless. We'd point out which titles go with which rewards, but we're pretty sure you've got it figured out. In our opinion, the Dragonslayer title is probably the coolest sounding, what with the dragon murdering and all that. Being "Urgent" sounds kind of cool but in a confusing way, like when your friends tell you they blew up a car, until they reveal it was, in fact, your car. [via WarCry]
Java vulnerability in Mac OS X finally patched
It's been a long wait. Fire up Software Update and you should see Java for Mac OS X 10.5 (or 10.4) update 4. This update closes a vulnerability first discussed in August of last year; it was patched by Sun and most other JVM developers months ago.Apple's sluggishness on fixing this security issue could have allowed attackers to run arbitrary applications or processes on your machine if you visited a webpage hosting a malicious Java applet. The vulnerability was pointed out in graphic fashion by security researcher Landon Fuller. Fuller took the exploit code that was circulating in the wild and built a proof of concept page that would run an innocuous program (the command-line 'say' utility) from a rigged Java applet; after the ensuing publicity, less than a month later, we have a patch.Once you've updated, if you took the precaution of disabling Java in your browser settings, you can feel free to go ahead and turn it back on... although, if you haven't missed it, no need to change anything.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.[via Glenn Fleishman / TidBITS]
