Google Oz coders crossbreed email with IM

Google has unveiled a new-age communication and collaboration tool developed by the brother tandem behind the original Google Maps. Available today to a limited number of developers, the tool is called Google Wave, and naturally it's an online application that leans heavily on the still-gestating HTML 5 standard. "This is an unbelievable demonstration of what is possible in the browser," Google VP of engineering Vic Gundotra said in announcing the tool this morning at the company's I/O developer conference in downtown San Francisco. "You will forget you are looking at a browser. "The tool crossbreeds email with IM and document-sharing in a way that allows for threaded conversations between multiple users. You can respond to email-like messages with IM-like chatter - and vice versa. You can also include photos, videos, maps, and the like, dropping them into conversation threads in real time. And if you like, you can embedded threads - or "waves," as Google insists on calling them - into blogs, wikis, and other webpages. Lars and Jens Rasmussen joined Google in 2004, after the company gobbled their tiny online mapping startup, Where 2 Tech. But after releasing Google Maps, they left the project to start a new app code-named Walkabout. After more than two years of work in Google's Sydney Chocolate Factory, they've released a preview version of their browser-based thingamajig to the four thousand or so developers attending Google I/O.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/28/google_wave/

Saudi 'Killer Chip' Implant Would Track, Eliminate Undesirables

German media outlets reported last week that a Saudi inventor's application to patent a "killer chip," as the Swiss tabloids put it, had been denied. The basic model would consist of a tiny GPS transceiver placed in a capsule and inserted under a person's skin, so that authorities could track him easily. Model B would have an extra function — a dose of cyanide to remotely kill the wearer without muss or fuss if authorities deemed he'd become a public threat. The inventor said the chip could be used to track terrorists, criminals, fugitives, illegal immigrants, political dissidents, domestic servants and foreigners overstaying their visas. "The invention will probably be found to violate paragraph two of the German Patent Law — which does not allow inventions that transgress public order or good morals," German Patent and Trademark Office spokeswoman Stephanie Krüger told the English-language German-news Web site The Local.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,520331,00.html