fixed

The cool thing about the Wii is the motion sensing. It works because of the sensor bar that sits on top of the TV. But because it's on top, it may fall off and break. We can show you a lot of easy and cheap ways to replace it in this Insider Secret.

The sensor bar is plugged into the Wii, but that's just for power. It's lighting up infrared LEDs. Those are picked up by the Wiimote, and it triangulates off them to determine its position, and then the Wiimote sends that information back to the … Read more

On Wednesday, Mozilla released Firefox 3.0.4 (download for Windows and Mac) and Firefox 2.0.0.18 to address a dozen security flaws, half of which the browser maker ranks as critical. Among the critical is one that could allow an attacker privilege escalation after a session restore. Another could allow arbitrary code to execute with compromised Flash media files.

The updates are pushed automatically to current users and will take effect the next time the browser is restarted. Updates will soon no longer be available for users of Firefox 2; the update is a security update only. … Read more

Apple has reportedly acknowledged the fact that many third-party iPhone applications have been crashing on launch, according to AppleInsider.

One of AppleInsider's readers says that after he contacted Apple about the problem, he received a response from CEO Steve Jobs himself: "This is a known iPhone bug that is being fixed in the next software update in September."

Apple representatives did not immediately have confirmation.

That was the full extent of Jobs' e-mail, AppleInsider said. While the most talked-about mobile-software problems for Apple right now are still the issues with MobileMe, crashing apps have been causing a … Read more

While most American TV watchers and broadcasters are preparing for (fretting over) the long-planned DTV transition in February 2009, broadcasters along the U.S. southern border are requesting an exemption from shutting down their analog broadcasts--up to five years after the deadline. The House of Representatives, according to an article by HD Guru, has already passed the DTV Border Fix Act bill by unanimous consent.… Read more

Update on July 27 at 10:00 a.m. with additional information

Dell has issued a system update for a well-publicized problem with Nvidia chips.

The company said Friday it has posted BIOS updates for an Nvidia graphics chip glitch affecting laptop computers. Citing Nvidia information, Dell said the "affected GPUs (graphics processing units) are experiencing higher than expected failure rates causing video problems."

"The issue is a weak die/packaging material set, which may fail with GPU temperature fluctuations. If your GPU fails, you may see intermittent symptoms," the Dell blog said.

Dell said the … Read more

FixMyMovie, the company that does just what it says, has finally gotten around to launching its premium service. I first blogged about it coming back in April, and it's gone live for everyone this afternoon.

For $2 you can get the enhanced version of your video sent back to you watermark-free, double the bit rate, and 4x the original resolution with the company's scaling technology. You'll also get download links in various portable device formats that you can pass along to friends to download.

Paying members are not the only ones to get the improvements. Users of … Read more

As I've said before, in coverage of Satisfaction and SupportSpace, if you want to get good support for the products you own, your best bet is usually to skip calling the official support line and find other real users of your product. Somewhere out there, you can be sure, there's a geek who knows the ins and outs of the ice maker on your Frigidaire. Or at the very least, how to troubleshoot your HP Windows Home Server box.

And now, finally, someone's trying to bring those geeks back to the companies that could really use them. … Read more

To celebrate the conclusion of Kanye West's "Glow in the Dark" tour featuring Lupe Fiasco, Rihanna, and N.E.R.D., watch manufacturer Nooka will produce a very limited glow in the dark version of their popular Zub watch. When we say "very limited," we mean it--only 15 pieces were made and most of them will find their home with Kanye himself, so abandon all hope of picking up one of these unique watches. Nice to look at though, right?

An old friend from the open-source world, Ira Heffan, called me today about his company, TopCoder. Ira is a smart guy so I figured anything with which he was involved must be good.

And it is. At its most basic, TopCoder stages programming competitions, both for itself (that is, its direct consulting clients) and for third parties like Google. Companies hire TopCoder to stage competitions to build functionality for them (as well as to scout for new talent). TopCoder also provides consulting services and uses competitions to create the requested applications, and heavily reuses its portfolio of applications and components to drive down development costs.

As an example, TopCoder has its premier competition in Las Vegas next week at the 2008 TopCoder Open (May 12 through 15), hosting 120 finalists from 30 countries. $260,000 in prize money is on the line.

Ira told me that one developer made over $500,000 last year in TopCoder prize money. Not too shabby. This, coupled with recruiting interest from top companies means that developers may be winning themselves a new job, as well as a competition.

However, it's actually a lower-profile component of TopCoder's business that I find the most fascinating: Bug Races.… Read more