The text message from the elephant flashed across Richard Lesowapir’s screen: Kimani was heading for neighboring farms.

The huge bull elephant had a long history of raiding villagers’ crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time. But this time a mobile phone card inserted in his collar sent rangers a text message. Lesowapir, an armed guard and a driver arrived in a jeep bristling with spotlights to frighten Kimani back into the Ol Pejeta conservancy.

Kenya is the first country to try elephant texting as a way to protect both a growing human population and the wild animals that now have less room to roam. Elephants are ranked as “near threatened” in the Red List, an index of vulnerable species published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The race to save Kimani began two years ago. The Kenya Wildlife Service had already reluctantly shot five elephants from the conservancy who refused to stop crop-raiding, and Kimani was the last of the regular raiders. The Save the Elephants group wanted to see if he could break the habit.

So they placed a mobile phone SIM card in Kimani’s collar, then set up a virtual “geofence” using a global positioning system that mirrored the conservatory’s boundaries. Whenever Kimani approaches the virtual fence, his collar texts rangers.

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TiVo Inc. and Nero AG of Germany were set to announce Monday that they will be launching a package that turns a Windows PC into a TV recorder, just like a TiVo set-top box.

The kit will cost $199 when it goes on sale Oct. 15, and includes a remote and a TV tuner that plugs into the PC. The interface on the computer screen looks just like the one on a TV equipped with a TiVo box.

It’s not the first software that allows TV recording on the PC. That’s been possible for years on computers equipped with TV tuners, and some versions of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Vista operating system include the necessary software. But it will be the first time that both the TiVo interface and functions have been replicated on a PC.

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If you are using Windows Live softwares, the team behind Microsoft Live Team has worked hard to bring you this long awaited program updates.

The updates, which is still BETA include updates for most of the Windows Live softwares including Mail, Windows Live Messenger, Photo Gallery , Movie Maker, Writer, Toolbar, Family Safety and Microsoft Office Outlook® Connector beta.

Download the all in one update here.

Here’s what the Windows Live team explained about the BETA updates: Read the rest of this entry »

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Cutting-edge technology is fuelling Olympic fever in South Korea, with employees using hand-held TVs or mobile phones to follow the Games live during work or off-duty hours.

The nation of 49 million people was third in the medals table as of Tuesday night, with five golds. It also has six silvers and one bronze medal.

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs admitted it was a “mistake” to roll out the company’s MobileMe service at the same time it launched the iPhone 3G and other big products, tech news site Ars Technica reported late Monday.

Ars Technica cited an internal memo sent by Jobs to employees that acknowledged MobileMe had flaws and was released too soon. In the memo, Jobs said the launch of the service could have been handled better, the article said. He also acknowledged the service was “not up to Apple’s standards.” And he said the individual MobileMe services could have been launched slowly instead of all at once.

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A courier and records management firm located in Shah Alam is claiming a world first: That it is ahead of all other companies in its field in using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to store, manage, and retrieve documents.

Sure-Reach Records Management Sdn Bhd grew out of the company’s original business — a worldwide courier service that began in 2003. Read the rest of this entry »

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