How does a multinational tech company prove that its servers will stand up to adverse conditions and keep running without a glitch?

Fire a bullet at one, of course.

Those mad boffins in white coats at HP decided to run a little experiment and film it. Of course, it's shameless marketing, but fun to watch.

Take a HP XP12000 disk array, aim a mounted custom-made rifle barrel that delivers bullets with pinpoint accuracy, place a fish tank behind the server, then fire the gun...

The fish tank is no more, but are the videos streaming from the XP12000 still playing?

Watch the video to find out.

What's amusing, in a sad way, is the bunch of disclaimers at the end of the film. Basically, if you fire a gun at your HP server, and it stops working, don't blame them. They're professionals. You're not.

Read (Via Duncan Campbell's blog)

Scientists have been working on something which is, apparently, a big problem - perfectly boiling an egg.

Yes folks, forget the humble egg timer, or intuition: if you really want to know when your egg is cooked to perfection, you need 'thermochromic' invisible ink, which turns dark when it reaches a certain temperature.

According to Lion Quality Eggs, who launched the project, thousands of people have been asking how to boil an egg properly, and so B&H Colour Change came up with this techie solution.

Feeling environmentally friendly and looking at all that lovely sunshine we've had recently? Then pop down to your local Currys store (providing you live in Croydon, Fulham or West Thurrock) and pick up a Sharp solar panel or nine.

Actually, you don't need a whole lot of sunshine these days. New technological advances, plus Sharp's knowledge of the British climate that dictates we don't get more than 3 weeks of sunshine in any year, means that they'll generate electricity from daylight (even our grey daylight).

Customers wanting to invest in solar panelling for their home can have a detailed in-store consultation, followed by a free home survey to ensure suitability.

Installation usually only takes a couple of days, with a small amount of equipment placed in the roof space. Apparently homeowners could cut their bills by around 50% if they install enough panels.

The panels aren't cheap - around £1000 each I've read - but consumers might be able to get a grant from the Low Carbon Buildings Programme.

The Propaganda

Virgin Mobile have committed to expanding their own branded line of mobile phones in the second half of this year, under the name 'Lobster'. These are designed to appeal to youngsters who eat seafood, or are on a budget, or something. Anyway, the 544 is another one of those "for music lovers" phones that everyone is so keen on at the moment.

The Good

The design of the phone is great. It's got a fairly average rounded clamshell shape, but the finish, which is a kind of high shine dark silver colour, makes it look much more expensive than it is. It's also got an external screen under which is one MP3 control - play/pause.

An interesting post over at The Inquirer suggesting that for Dell, as the number one, or possibly two, laptop manufacturer on the planet, there's a certain inevitability about a few of their notebook computers catching fire.

What doesn't help is their interesting interpretation of 'service and support' which can lead to frustrated customers.

Unnerving as it may seem, even modern lithium batteries are effectively little high-energy packages that have the potential to explode due to any manufacturing defect or mishandling.

Is Dell perhaps just one of the companies we love to hate? Pick on the big guy? Other notebooks are as susceptible to the problem (unless they don't use batteries...).

Apple's been recalling and replacing MacBook batteries, and other PC manufacturers have had their problems.

Whatever make or model of notebook you have, it's at best an annoyance, and at worst, dangerous, if your machine spontaneously combusts - but seemingly just 'one of those things' - a small but potential risk of carrying round a large chunk of metal and chemicals on your lap.

Read

Sony, the company that brought us the Walkman and changed the way we consumed music in the '80s, has turned 60 - quite an achievement.

A recent article suggests that Sony is losing touch with what consumers actually want, citing a range of luxury products in the Qualia line that were axed within three years. Sure, it's all very well designing a CD player that self-centers the disc - very swishy - but the price tag doesn't justify it as a mass consumer item.

Part of the current problem is Sony's previous success that now spans a number of different divisions: gaming, consumer electronics, music, film - and sometimes I wonder how much these divisions actually talk to one another.

New boy CEO Howard Stringer seems to have taken a new, and distinctly Western, approach to Sony - downsizing and focusing on growth areas rather than maintaining the cultural status quo of, for example, promoting retired executives to advisory positions.

Skype pretty much rules the roost when it comes to Internet telephony and its free PC-to-PC service has millions of fans but there's a new kid on the block called the Gizmo Project. The basic software is free, just like Skype, and it has all of the usual VOIP facilities, including free PC to PC calling, conference calls and so on but here's the killer features. First it's an open source program so it should be compatible with other VOIP systems but the big news is that outgoing calls to overseas landline and mobile phones are free. So what's the catch? There isn't one, except that the person you are calling must also be an 'active' Gizmo user (active means making a few calls per week). If you want to take incoming and make outgoing calls to non-Gizmo users there are a couple of paid-for call plans but even so the rates are still very low. 

If you've ever copied and pasted chunks of text into a Word document from a web page or another document, you may have noticed that both the new text and old text can sometimes start to behave oddly, changing size or font, for example, for no apparent reason. The unexpected changes are caused by hidden formatting commands interacting with the existing document's formatting.

Here's a couple of tips from Propellerhead that are worth remembering if you do a lot of copying and pasting, and the first one is to remove as much formatting as possible by using Word's Paste Special feature. Simply highlight and copy (Ctrl + V) the text you want to paste in to your document, but instead of pressing Ctrl + V (Paste) go to Paste Special on the Edit menu, or click the Paste Special icon on the toolbar (it looks like an open book, next to the Format Painter 'paintbrush' icon, and on the drop-down menu that appears select Unformatted Text.

Internet security firm Sophos has revealed July's top 10 email viruses and hoaxes, so if you like weird looking names and odd email subject lines, read on.

The top 10 viruses released into the wild:

1: W32/Netsky-P (19.3%)
2: W32/Mytob-AS (13.9%)
3: W32/Bagle-Zip (9.7%)
4: W32/Nyxem-D (6.3%)
5: W32/MyDoom-O (6.0%)
6: W32/Zafi-B (4.2%)
7: W32/Netsky-D (4.0%)
8: W32/Mytob-C (3.6%)
9: W32/Mytob-FO (1.7%)
-: W32/MyDoom-AJ (1.7%)

I've never been so disturbed impressed in my entire life. Cats that talk. No... really. Some of these cats can only mutter one word or phrase... but save yourself for the last one... the cat who goes off on bizarre gonzo streams of insanity.

Mof Gimmers

AOL, the global Internet giant, is set to announce today its intention to trial an Internet video service, imaginatively titled AOL Video.

It's yet another company diving into this kind of high-bandwidth, hard-to-monetise service.

AOL Video 'aims to be the one-stop shop for online videos and will let users search for videos across the Web, upload their own, or buy or watch for free thousands of TV shows from any one of 45 video-on-demand channels on nearly any device.'

Being a part of Time Warner will help with some of that content, but it's still quite a claim. How much of the service will be relevant and usable outside the US remains to be seen.

Speculation about AOL is already rife, as they are expected to announce on Wednesday that their email and web services will become free, wholly supported by online advertising.

It will be interesting to see where AOL goes with this, and how successful they will be.

Read

Microsoft has predicted that it will take up to five years of investment before their Zune digital music device begins to pay off.

It's planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to challenge Apple's iPod/iTunes combo, and is prepared for long-term investment.

Robbie Bach, head of the compay's Entertainment and Devices Division, said that the Zune brand is essential to Microsoft's overall entertainment goals, probably having tie-ins with other products and services such as Xbox, Media Centre, and Live Anywhere.

It looks like it will be early 2007 before Zune hits Europe.

Some analysts believe that Microsoft will go for a subscription-based model for its music service, in direct contrast to the iTunes model of single track purchases.

Zune itself remains a bit of a mystery: wi-fi and a hard drive is all we really know so far.

The Propaganda

Logitech only have three headphones in their current range, and these noise cancellation headphones are the serious ones. Their schtick is that they are designed to cancel out low-frequency noise, making them ideal for planes, trains and automobiles.

The Good

The headphones come in their own carry case, which also has space for a spare AAA battery (needed for the noise cancellation element) as well as an adapter for irritating airplanes that use the two pronged jacks.

The headphones themselves have cushioned ear pieces, making them comfortable for long periods of time. There is also a small switch to on the right earpiece, which turns on the noise neutralizing element. In the event of the battery running out, they can still be used as ordinary headphones. And if you don't fancy listening to music, they can still be used to create a quieter environment.

For many fans of Lost, the guessing games don't stop when the TV show's credits roll. Forget your bog-standard 'Cast Bio' websites: Lost has an innovative online game called The Lost Experience where players have to follow clues, crack codes and swap information in an attempt to discover just what the jeepers the show is all about.

It's not the first time a broadcaster has used viral online marketing and fake websites to promote a TV show, but it's probably the most ambitious. We talked to Steven Forde, who's in charge of The Lost Experience at Channel 4, to find out where the idea came from, how it all works, and why 'the wisdom of crowds' has been a key element in its success.

Remember Segway? No? Tsk, how quickly people forget. Segway was a Human Transporter (i.e. posh scooter) that used gyroscopic technology that meant when you leaned forward, it sped up, and when you leaned back, it braked. It's fair to say it didn't take the world by storm quite as its creators intended. Even in California.

Anyway, that didn't stop Segway from coming up with a new concept device, the Centaur, which appeared to be a swizzy ATV quad-bike type thing featuring dynamic stablization technology with advanced propulsion and suspension systems. What does this mean? You can pop awesome wheelies, dude. And even Ozzy Osbourne would have trouble falling off it. Probably.

"I believe the public should be free," said Home Secretary John Reid, "to carry... mobile phones and MP3 players... without fear of becoming a target for robbers." Vodafone, O2, T Mobile, Orange, and 3 have ganged together to make that more possible by blocking stolen mobiles from their networks within 48 hours of when the victim reports the theft. While it's currently apparently not too hard to get a blocked phone reactivated illegally, this supposedly indicates that the mobile networks really mean it this time. Perhaps this watch the video about the mobile blocking will indicate more about how exciting this truly is. [GT]

Stolen mobiles 'will be blocked'

Related stories: Dead Ringers? at Hippyshopper | Pensioners embrace text messaging | Watch out kids, here comes Phonesitter

Today's Website of the Day is Retro Thing, the independent guide to vintage technology.

Its latest posts include Retro Camera Art; Online Issues of ST-Log Magazine; The Luxo L1 lamp - star of desk and blockbuster movies; ZVG vector arcade interface; and Upright Turntable - Mitsubishi LT-640.

Well worth a read to cast your mind back to the early days of tech.

Nominate your own Website of the Day here.

Casual games are marvellous. Why are they called casual? Because if you play them too much at work, you'll soon be casually sauntering down to your local job centre of course. Which is why I'm posting this at 6.15pm on a Friday night. It's to save you from yourself. Anyway, casual game of this week is King Of Buttons 3, a button basher in every sense of the word (complete with images of old-school arcade buttons).

It's a collection of 15 mini-games that all involve hammering your space bar like a madman (albeit a slightly more controlled and rhythmic madman in some of them). Pick of the bunch is the Rhythm mini-game, which asks you to hit the key in rhythm to the beats of a fairly fierce drum'n'bass tune. Genius! Now get me a plaster...

[via Addicting Games]

YouTube is brilliant. You can find scallies being flung from roundabouts, as well as loads of old music videos. Not only that, but you get to see amazing things like the featured video of the day - which is an amazing octopus that can disappear! Just wait for the slo-mo reverse... incredible stuff!

Mof Gimmers

Sony have unveiled their latest hard-disc based DVD recorders with built-in Freeview TV tuners.

Features are much as we've come to expect from these all-in-one recorders, with some nice touches. The RDR-HXD560 has an 80Gb hard disc, the RDR-HXD860 has 160Gb.

There's a built in Freeview tuner with 8-day EPG, and an impressive set of recording and playback options. You can record from the in-built tuner or external set-top box, playback a programme from the start that's still being recorded, or watch another. You can pause live TV and then enter 'catch-up' mode in which the video and audio is played back at 1.3x the normal speed until you hit the live broadcast again. There's also a 'record series' feature that will automatically record an ongoing series of programmes without user intervention.

These models have a High Bit Rate recording mode which record at 15Mbps onto the hard disc, a higher recording quality than DVDs offer.

Additionally, the RDR-HXD860 has a built in HDMI port and can perform 720p/1080i upscaling to a high-definition TV.

The RDR-HXD560 should be available now, priced £350, and the higher-spec RDR-HXD860 will be available in September, priced £400.