Deluxe Reverse Geocache is reusable, really awesome

You're familiar with geocaching, right? One person hides a "cache" somewhere in the world and hands out the coordinates; the first person to locate it via GPS wins. How about the "reverse geocache"? This one is a little more difficult to get together: you have to design a box of some sort that contains the necessary hardware to enable it to be opened only at a certain GPS coordinate. You hand the dude your box, and they traipse around the woods until they get to the right spot and the box opens. Well, the operator of the imakeprojects.com website has developed a little something called the "Deluxe Reverse Geocache," a locked, electronically enhanced Pelican case that unlike other reverse geocaches, is designed to be reprogrammed and reused after completing its journey. But that's not all! It also gives the user hints regarding the desired location, along with a limited number of attempts to solve the puzzle -- after which the player is downgraded to one attempt per hour. Want to play? Hit the source link for all the details. Happy hunting!

Bacteria's back with portable Nintendo 64, complete how-to guide

The quest to build the perfect portable Nintendo 64 continues, but we imagine we'll stop seeing so many disparate designs soon. That's not because Bacteria's latest bulbous handheld has achieved perfection -- far from it -- but rather because he's provided a 2.5-hour, step-by-step video guide to help you build it from the ground up. And hey, the system isn't too shabby, either. The "iNto64" portable features integrated Controller, Rumble and Expansion Paks for complete N64 functionality, built-in speakers and a headphone jack, rechargeable batteries for up to three hours of play, even a video-out port if you get tired of staring at the ubiquitous 5-inch Sony PSone LCD. The only obvious oversight is controller ports for more inputs -- seems our buddy Bacteria wasn't a big fan of GoldenEye. See it play some of N64's other best games after the break, while we dust off our gamebit screwdriver. Obvious though it may seem, know what you're getting into before you do likewise; ripping up classic cart-based consoles isn't for the faint of heart.

Android and Arduino-packin' Cellbot features voice recognition, autonomy, and charm to spare

The Cellbots gang has been furiously productive as of late. Not even a month after their wooden "boxbot" was first spotted on You Tube the project has moved on from its humble beginnings of lumber and windshield wiper motors to a full-on a neon green acrylic Truckbot that uses a G1 and Arduino board combination for control. Sure, we've seen Android-powered robots before, but these guys have done some pretty cool things, and have no intention of stopping now. They've already implemented an ultrasonic range detector so the 'bot can override the operator and prevent itself from running off a cliff (although we'd like to suggest mounting one on the rear as well -- for obvious reasons), voice recognition, and the Android compass into the control system. If anything, the amount of progress makes this project very well worth keeping an eye on

Nokia N900 overclocked to 1GHz in bid to outrun obsolescence

Given all the Cortex A8 processor clock tweaking going on we admit to being just a little surprised to be reading the first overclocking reports on the eminently hackable N900 only now. Nevertheless, owners are seeing significant speed improvements after updating their stock 600MHz QWERTY sliders with recompiled kernels (no CPU voltage hacks required). Although speeds in excess of 1GHz have been tested (1,050MHz still boots), it looks like 900MHz is the maximum stable clock speed you can expect before the doors rattle off -- but that's only after a weekend of testing. If things continue to go well then you'll see tweaked kernels of various clock speeds released for download soon enough -- something that should keep the device humming right through the commercial launch of MeeGo whether Nokia likes it or not.

T-shirt modded to let you know when you have new emails, won't tell you why your friends are avoiding you

You probably don't have enough reminders that you're always a little behind, right? Well Chris and his wife Madeline decided to make one more for themselves: a t-shirt that lights up when you have new emails, and also tells you the number in your inbox. Using an Arduino Lilypad microcontroller, a few LEDs, conductive thread, and a Bluetooth dongle to communicate with an Android phone nearby (which has access to the inbox), Chris took a custom printed shirt and rigged up this badboy. It's actually pretty good looking as far as these things go, but we still don't know if we need this in our already alert-ridden lives.

Windows Phone 7 Series screwed and chopped onto HTC Touch Diamond

If there's any better argument for rigid spec requirements for Windows Phone 7 Series hardware, it's this video of an HTC Touch Diamond running the OS at an especially syrupy pace. Indeed, the lag is so severe that it could very well be some trickery in the form of a RDP client running on a 7 Series emulator, which is in turn running on a PC -- which, now that we think of it, is a pretty good possibility. Whichever way they achieved this feat, it's certainly not a recipe for a viable handset. But we do know that these sort of "ports" are only going to increase as time goes on. See for yourself after the break.

iPhone SMS database hacked in 20 seconds, news at 11

It's a story tailor-made for the fear-mongering subset of news media. This week, a pair of gentlemen lured an unsuspecting virgin iPhone to a malicious website and -- with no other input from the user -- stole the phone's entire database of sent, received and even deleted text messages in under 20 seconds, boasting that they could easily lift personal contacts, emails and your naughty, naughty photos as well. Thankfully for us level-headed souls, those gentlemen were Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann, security researchers performing for the 2010 Pwn2Own hacking contest, and their $15,000 first prize ensures that the winning formula will go to Apple (and only Apple) for further study. Last year, smartphones emerged from Pwn2Own unscathed even as their desktop counterparts took a beating, but this makes the third year in a row that Safari's gotten its host machines pwned. That said, there's no need for fear -- just a healthy reminder that the Apple logo doesn't give you free license to click links in those oh-so-tempting "beta-test the new iPad!" emails.

Adobe Investigates Cyber-attack

Adobe Systems is investigating an attack against corporate network systems managed by Adobe. Details of the security threat are scarce.

Adobe Systems reported Jan. 12 that it has uncovered a "coordinated attack against corporate network systems managed by Adobe and other companies."

Adobe became aware of the attack Jan. 2, according to a post by Adobe employee Pooja Prasad on a company blog. Other companies were affected by the attack as well, and Adobe is in communication with them as the investigation continues.

2010 Top Security Threats: Facebook,Twitter & iPod

2010 will see increasing security threats to users of social networking and media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, a security vendor predicted.

"In 2009 we saw increased attacks on websites, exploit cocktails thrown at unsuspecting users, infrastructure failure via natural and unnatural causes, and 'friendly fire' become a larger problem than ever."

"With Facebook reaching more than 350 million users, we expect that 2010 will take these trends to new heights," security vendor McAfee said in its "2010 Threat Predictions" report (PDF).

"Malware authors love following the social networking buzz and hot spots of activity; that will continue in 2010."

The report warns that as Google and other providers crack down on "search engine poisoning", Twitter and similar services will increase in appeal for such purposes.

Twitter has been a major driver in the use of abbreviated URL services, such as bit.ly and tinyurl.com..........

Facebook Hit By Clickjacking Attack

Facebook is cleaning up after a clickjacking attack that infiltrated the social networking site this week -- and security experts say this won't be the last such attack.

Clickjacking, in which an attacker slips a malicious link or malware onto a legitimate Web page that appears to contain normal content, is an emerging threat experts have been warning about. The attack on Facebook was in the form of a comment on a user's account with a photo that lured the victim to click on it. The embedded link took the victim to a Web page that presented like a CAPTCHA or Turing test, and asked the user to click on a blue "Share" button on the Facebook page.

Once clicked, the victim is redirected to a YouTube video, and then the same post shows up on the victim's account and thus tries to infect his or her friends. Security experts say the attack appeared to be more of a prank or trial balloon, and it affects only Firefox and Chrome browsers, according to security expert Krzysztof Kotowicz, who blogged about the attack this week.

Twitter once again becomes the prey

A 25-year-old who allegedly hacked the Twitter accounts of numerous well-known figures, including Britney Spears and President Barack Obama, has been detained,
The suspect, who goes by the online pseudonym "Hacker Croll," was caught following a joint operation with the FBI and detained for questioning.
Police say the FBI contacted them after discovering in July that someone had managed to get access to confidential information after hacking into the Twitter system and passing for an administrator. The suspect then posted some information online.

>>Twitter has been the target of several attacks, and hackers have posted information online or sent fake messages.