hail

After an eight-month absence punctuated by legal battles, Uber taxi's service is returning to the streets of New York City.

Uber launched its taxi-hailing pilot program on Tuesday night, just days after a State Supreme Court judge dismissed a lawsuit that sought to put a stop to the program. Passengers will be able to hail a cab with a smartphone app, but the app won't accept payments, at least initially.

"The way New Yorkers hail yellow cabs fundamentally transforms today, and we're proud that it's Uber who gave the Big Apple this option," Uber … Read more

The on-again, off-again scenario of whether to allow taxi-hailing apps to set up shop for a pilot program in New York City is back on again.

State Supreme Court Judge Carol Huff dismissed a lawsuit Tuesday that sought to halt the pilot program, which was filed by a group of mostly livery-car companies, according to the Associated Press. This means that startups like Uber, GetTaxi, and Hailo can now commence with e-hails.

The way the taxi-hailing apps work is by letting potential passengers put their location information into the app, which is then sent to yellow cabs. The first taxi … Read more

Say goodbye to turbulence and flying through nasty weather, and many of the costly delays that go along with such airborne unpleasantness.

That's the promise of the latest iteration of Honeywell's IntuVue weather radar system, technology that is designed to allow airline pilots to steer clear of rough weather.

Although IntuVue has been around for several years, offering pilots a three-dimensional view of weather up to about 370 miles in front of them, the newest version of the software adds warnings of up to 10 minutes for turbulence, hail, and lightning.

The IntuVue system, first unveiled in 2008, … Read more

On today's show, CNET reporter and 404 BFF Caroline McCarthy directs us in a live read-through of the actual script for the upcoming Facebook movie and also joins us in talking about 4Chan, Comic-Con, and this weekend's insane hailstorm.

We love it when Caroline McCarthy drops into The 404 studio because she always brings the juiciest news from the Internet. Last week she revealed to us the details of "The Social Network," a movie about Facebook's seedy origins...and today we read through a scene from the screenplay live on the air! The scene involves Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, twin co-founders of former Facebook rival ConnectU, arguing with their third partner about how to end Mark Zuckerberg's life for stealing their genius idea. After reading a few pages, we quickly realize that none of us even have the slightest chance of having a career in the movie industry. Awful.

Caroline stays with us for the second half of the show for a knee-slappin' Calls From the Public, including one from our buddy Ryan that equates Wikipedia to...well...I'll just give you this hint. Thanks, Ryan!

More stories of the day include the idiots over at AT&T picking a fight with 4Chan, the most notorious group of pranksters on the Internet. Moot, the founder of the controversial forum site, reported on Sunday that AT&T had blocked broadband access to some of the more controversial message boards (including the most infamous /b/), claiming that a denial-of-service attack had "stemmed from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org." Finally, after a fake overdose story involving AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson surfaced on CNN, AT&T deemed 4Chan "safe" for its customers to visit and cleared the block. Talk about getting close to the fire!

I'll try not to get too sniffly here, but this will be my last blog post for a week, since I'll be heading back to California for a week-long vacation. I'll be back next Wednesday, but Jeff and Wilson will have some truly awesome guests coming in to fill my very small feet! I'll never forget you guys. Goodbye!

I'm seeing a lot of interest in Microsoft's Live Mesh, a file-synchronization service and long-term vision for data-sharing across devices that the company announced at the Web 2.0 conference. It's an interesting vision, although it rehashes some basic ideas that Microsoft's been throwing around for at least seven years. (See this story from 2001: "Microsoft envisions HailStorm as a way for consumers and business customers to access their data--calendars, phone books, address lists--from any location and on any device." Substitute "Live Mesh" for "HailStorm" and it's back to … Read more

Of all the brands on the fashion world's A-list, Bulgari has always seemed to stand apart. You've got to admire a company that insists on using the Latin spelling of its name (BVLGARI) hundreds of years after the language was pronounced dead .

So we think it's noteworthy that the storied Italian purveyor of luxury goods has joined the hypercompetitive fray of designer phone straps. Bulgari's version is detachable, turning into a cube pendant of palladium when the handset is separated from the black calf leather strap, according to Sybarites. (Who says luxury accessories aren't practical?)… Read more