Much of this country's geography is remote, and beyond the reach of cellphone coverage, making American satellites an ideal, if illegal, communications option. The problem goes back more than a decade, to the mid-1990s, when Brazilian radio technicians discovered they could jump on the UHF frequencies dedicated to satellites in the Navy's Fleet Satellite Communication system, or FLTSATCOM. They've been at it ever since.

In fact, everyone from truck drivers to drug dealers to soccer fans have hijacked the system to increase the range of their communications or coordinate operations. Because the practice is so widespread, eradicating it on the ground is probably not going to have a major impact. However, it does illustrate the woeful obsolescence of military satellite technology. [Wired]

Actually, it's Google Maps "mapplet", like Ground Zero, the nuke your fav city app. It shows air traffic in the US based on the data from FlightView, a page that tracks air traffic in real time. You can see it using three different criteria. The first is altitude—which is the one you are seeing here. The darker blues indicate higher altitude, while the lightest blue indicates take off and landing.

This is the model view, showing 543 different airplane models, each with a different color.

And here are the airplanes sorted by manufacturer.

It's not as awesome as the amazing air/ground/sea traffic visualizations done by the BBC, but it's cool to be able to zoom in and access this data in real time. I just wish it was animated. Check the mapplet here. [Wired]

Available for $30, Country Codes of the World is a 24" by 36" representation of the globe in which each country is displayed as its corresponding country code in a font size relative to its population. So countries with big populations appear as bigger letters on the map, and small populations look tiny.

It's a neat idea that really shows you the US's place in the online world, especially as China and India (.cn and .in) both look huge here, despite having been scaled down 30% to fit within their geography. [bytelevel]

It was taken by Pete Souza, the official White House photographer, with a Canon 5D Mark II. According to the EXIF data, it was shot last night at 5:38pm. The settings: 1/125 exposure, F/10.0, 105mm focal length, ISO 100, no flash. You can download the full-sized photo here.

Making gadget history, he really is shaping up to be the first truly geekworthy president. [Change.gov via Daring Fireball]

The FCC also shows the manual, which doesn't have many details we weren't already aware of, as well as a bunch of new internal and external pictures. The big draw here is the certainty of 3G support here in the States, as opposed to the 3G-less release it saw in China. But as Engadget points out, the touchscreen phone doesn't have any branding for a US carrier, which suggests it'll be released here unlocked only. That's nice for gadget freedom, but not so nice for pricing. Expect the 5800 to command a pretty high price point when it gets to our shores. [FCC via Engadget]

Meanwhile Motorola's market share slid from 32.7 percent last year to 21.1 percent. Is that huge drop representative of Moto's woes? Probably, and with oddball cellphones like the Aura and no Android until late next year, the company's going to have to squeeze out a number of winning handsets if it wants to steal first place back from Samsung. [Reuters]

It's because demand is so high here that Wiis only sit on shelves for about an hour before they're bought when people in Europe have been saying they can walk in to stores and buy a Wii at any time of day? It's not because you're allocating more inventory on your products to Europe and Japan because the weak US dollar is causing smaller revenues on units sold here? So when you say, "What I can commit myself to is that Nintendo is going to do its best to supply as many Wii hardware units as possible in order to meet demand there," we don't have reason to think that you're a liar and kind of a scumbag? Gotcha. [Forbes via Kotaku]

Jesus's take:

Now, before you go stringing up Nintendo, or do something really rash, like buy a PS3, consider the words of video game journalist go-to guy Michael Pachter.

"The shortage demonstrates one consequence of the weak dollar. We're seeing companies ignore their largest market simply because they can make a greater profit elsewhere," Pachter said.

Besides, it's not as if those American waistlines are going anywhere anytime soon. "They know that Americans will be just as fat a few months from now when Nintendo will have more units available," Pachter said. [LA Times]

In case you're curious, the study consisted of 35 men and 36 women and ran for 18 months. During that time, the people were exposed to the RF radiation at random times. Another control group was observed, but did not receive the RF blasts. The end result was a finding that the cellphone radiation caused not just insomnia, but headaches and difficulty concentrating.

"The ones who were exposed reported headaches, it took longer for them to fall asleep and they did not sleep as well through the night," said Bengt Arnetz, a professor of social medicine and stress research at Uppsala University in Sweden, which conducted the study alongside Sweden's Karolinska Institute and Wayne State University in Michigan. [AFP/SMH]

Negroponte hopes that this will increase the sphere of influence of the OLPC, whilst simultaneously giving the project a wider global presence and creating a larger development community. Though Negroponte did not initially plan to include the US in the OLPC project, he admitted that not including the home country in the plans indefinitely would have been "kind of ridiculous." There are no dates given for nationwide release, but expect further details to drop soon. [PC World]

According to the act, providers of both cable and DSL will be required to report the exact number of subscribers, the technology used to deliver service and the "advertised" speeds. Here's what Ars says will happen next:

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration will use the data to create broadband deployment maps, which it will make available to the public on the Internet. These maps will show what kind of broadband is available in which areas, and will drill down to the ZIP+4 level.

Two years ago, the Internet Governance Forum was formed due to a compromise between world leaders, consequently the forum decided to meet yearly to discuss matters concerning the information medium. The first meeting concluded that the US should maintain control of the internet, but the position was agreed to be open to discussion on an annual basis. At present, the US government is responsible for the nomenclature of internet addresses. This point is resting increasingly less easy with other world leaders, as the naming system really defines how users make use of the internet. With the internet's increasing power as an information source (propaganda tool), governments globally, understandably, all want a piece of the action.

As the US government funded much of the internet's development, it holds veto rights against Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, (the California based nonprofit organization it selected to manage domain names). The event is unlikely to make any fundamental changes to the infrastructure as it stands, yet the voices of dissent signal an unsettling future for the governing parties that wield control over the internet's current direction. Is it time for a change to the original system? What do you guys make of the underlying discourse? [Yahoo News]

Known as the High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD) Phase I contract, the aim is to prove that a mobile, solid-state laser weapon system can vaporize incoming enemy fire. And, I hope, do a discreet bit of depilation on any soldiers who dare to be too hairy.

The aeronautics company is already at the vanguard of using laser technology for warfare, thanks to systems such as its Airborne Laser, Advanced Tactical Laser and the Tactical Relay Mirror System. But the VP and general manager of Boeing's Missile Defense Systems thinks that HEL TD could be the future of fighting. "We believe this is the next step for developing a weapon system that can change the face of the battlefield," he claims.

[Boeing Press Release via The Register]

There've been 70 successful firings on the ground, and the laser should be enough to destroy "many" missiles depending on how fast the 747 can reach firing distance. The eventual goal is to have the laser planes—each worth a cool $1.5 billion—make up the US' laser plane fleet.

Political battles over the Airborne Laser [Crave via Sci Fi]

Review [Gizmodo]

Taiwan [Unwired View]

US [Unwired View]

We already showed you the Actiontec Chatterbox, a hands-free USB speakerphone for Skype, so it should be no surprise there's competition out there. Take this US Robotics USB Internet Speakerphone, the newest in the company's Skype family of products. Just $50, it includes echo cancellation technology, volume and mute buttons, full-duplex operation, and it's light and easy to tote around. 2006 looks like the big year for Skype, and aren't we happy! I can't say the same for the likes of Verizon, but they've been scamming us for so long with long distance calls, they deserve all they get.

U.S. Robotics USB Skype Speakerphone [Bios Magazine]