Thursday, January 31, 2008

Garmin Adds A Cell Phone To Its GPS Device


First Apple came out with the iPhone, then Google announced its mobile-phone software development platform, and now GPS maker Garmin is entering the mobile phone market with a hybrid device called the nuvifone.

The nuvifone is the first mobile phone by Garmin, featuring GPS, a touch screen, and a Web browser.

The nuvifone, which Garmin unveiled this week, combines a cell phone, a Web browser, and GPS. Its slim form factor, 3.5-inch touch screen, and on-screen keypad resemble another device that took the mobile market by storm last year: the iPhone.

"This is the breakthrough product that cell phone and GPS users around the world have been longing for -- a single device that does it all," said Cliff Pemble, Garmin's president and COO, in a statement.

Unlike the iPhone, the nuvifone is a GPS personal navigator and has built-in third-generation cellular technology for high-speed data access. The home screen features three icons: call, search, and view map for simple access to the phone's functions. Additionally, the phone's GPS works with the built-in camera to take pictures that are automatically tagged with latitude and longitude. Users can e-mail pictures to others, who can then navigate to the location where it was taken, said Garmin.

Once the nuvifone is docked onto a vehicle mount, the GPS turns on automatically, the navigation menu is activated, and a person is then able to make hands-free calls while simultaneously using the navigation function, according to Garmin. The phone comes with maps of North America and Europe, as well as a built-in database with millions of points of interest. It works just like Garmin's standard GPS devices, offering turn-by-turn audible directions.

The nuvifone is also Garmin's first device with the Google local search application, which serves up nearby venues based on a person's current location.

Garmin said the nuvifone will be available in the third quarter of this year, but didn't provide details on specific markets and pricing.

There were over a billion mobile phones shipped last year, according to ABI Research. GPS, digital cameras, media players, and other capabilities are being integrated into phones to create multifunctional devices. Garmin, Google, Apple, and others see the mobile phone market as the next big opportunity, even though the companies are not traditional telephony players.

HP Uses Recycled Plastic In Ink Cartridges

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HP) has developed a process that uses recycled plastic to make cartridges for ink-jet printers.

The company used more than 5 million pounds of old plastic last year in piloting the process that produced more than 200 million cartridges, executives said. HP plans to use twice as much recycled plastic in cartridges this year.

The computer maker's recycling process makes it possible to combine multiple sources and grades of old plastic, whether it's from common water bottles or old ink-jet cartridges. Since first testing the process, HP has recycled enough plastic to fill more than 200 tractor-trailers.

"By developing the technology to use recycled plastics in original HP ink-jet print cartridges, we have the opportunity to reduce the environmental impact HP products have on the planet," Michael Hoffmann, senior VP of HP's supplies, imaging, and printing group, said in a statement released Wednesday.

The amount of recycled content in new ink-jet cartridges ranges from 70% to 100% of the total plastic used, HP said. The company is expected to receive an award for its work from the Society of Plastics Engineers. The trade group is expected to hand out the award at the Global Plastics Environmental Conference in March.

The latest advancement is part of HP's Design for Environment program, which tries to reduce the environmental damage caused by HP cartridges. The company's Planet Partner program for returning and recycling cartridges operates in more than 45 countries, regions, and territories.

Recycling electronics and parts is not an easy process, and a lot more work is needed. Wal-Mart, for example, has set a goal of one day using only renewable energy and creating zero waste. As part of that effort, the retailer is gathering scores on suppliers' environmental efforts to decide which products to stock on shelves.

Among the problem Wal-Mart has faced with electronics is in tracking the separate recycling efforts of each supplier. The company has nearly 61,000 suppliers. In addition, there are no uniform U.S. guidelines that Wal-Mart can use to find methods to recycle the millions of phones, TVs, and computers it sells.

Man Wins, Then Loses, Then Wins Lottery

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - An Australian retiree won a $1.8 million lottery prize, then lost it, and then won it again Wednesday through a court ruling.

Werner Reinhold bought the lottery ticket at a newsstand in Australia's largest city of Sydney on Sept. 19, 1995. His original ticket did not print correctly, so he asked for a new one, which turned out to be the winner.

But when Reinhold, now 73, went back to claim the $1.8 million jackpot, he discovered that the replacement ticket had been canceled, not the misprinted original, and was unable to claim the prize.

He sued NSW Lotteries, which oversees lottery tickets in New South Wales state, and the newsstand which sold him the ticket.

Supreme Court Judge Reginald Barrett awarded Reinhold $1.8 million in damages, citing negligence and breach of contract by the newsstand and the state lottery company. Barrett had not yet ruled on what portion of the award each party should pay.

Human tongue served up in hospital


Authorities in Slovenia are investigating after a piece of human tongue was served up in a hospital canteen.

A doctor at the town hospital in Izola in southern Slovenia complained about the strange looking piece of meat in his meal after he ordered a chicken risotto in the hospital canteen.

The doctor insisted it was not chicken, and after a row with staff the piece of meat was sent for tests - which later showed it was part of a human tongue.

Health inspectors have closed the restaurant and are reviewing hygiene standards.

Managers said the small piece of tongue could have been accidentally dropped into the food by a doctor who had come into the canteen straight after treating a patient.

They also said that it could have been added to the food supplies before they were delivered to the hospital.

The spokesman told the main Slovenian daily paper Delo: "I can say clearly that we have never used patients parts in any of our dishes."

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

26
A man says average 4850 words in 24 hours.
27
The world's populaton is approximately 6.53 billion (2006), India & China represent 36.92% of the world's populations.
28
Look at your zipper. See the initials YKK? It stands for Yoshida Kogyo kabushikigaisha, the world's largest zipper manufacturer.
29
40 percent of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.
30
315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.
31
Chocolate can be killed dogs! True, chocolate affects a dog's heart and nervous system. A few ounces is enough to kill a small sized dog.
32
Ketchup was sold in the 1830's as a medicine.
33
Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.
34
Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
35
There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
36
Leonardo da Vinci invented scissors.
37
Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow a film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.
38
The original name for the butterfly was "flutterby"!
39
By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand.
40
Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.
41
Dentists recommend that a toothbrush be kept at least six feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.
42
The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.
43
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than the entire Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
44
Adolf Hitler's mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor.
45
The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
46
To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, prick your fingers into its eyeballs. It will let you go instantly.
47
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
48
The "pound" (#) key on your keyboard is called an octothorp.
49
The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.
50
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

Strange But True!!!

1
69% Americans use Internet & 5.5% Indians only.
2
El Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) on Sept. 13, 1922 - the hottest ever measured.
3
Plastics take 500 years to break down.
4
America has 30.30% airports of the world & India has only 0.70%.
5
There are roughly 4,000 known minerals, although only about 200 are of major importance.
6
The total surface area of the Earth is 197 million square miles.
7
Crocodile only animal & reptile that sheds tear while eating.
8
The world’s deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1557 in central China, more than 830,000 people were killed.
9
Angel Falls in Venezuela is the worlds highest waterfall, The water of Falls drops 3,212 feet (979 meters).
10
The sunrays reached at the earth in 8 minutes & 3 seconds.
11
8.7 million of United State residents who were born in Asia.
12
The world’s population has been increased 3.1 billion in last 40 years.
13
180 million nos. of Valentine’s Day cards exchanged annually, making Valentine’s Day the second-most popular greeting-card-giving occasion.
14
3,467 Nos. of confectionery nut stores in the United States, they are among the best sources of sweets for Valentine’s Day.
15
4% people drink cold drink daily.
16
Traffic lights are being used before the invention of motor car.
17
More than 50 million Americans said they had a disability; for 32.5 million of them, the disability was severe.
18
About 40% Proportion of all Valentine card purchases which parents account for.
19
First Stock Exchange of America was in Philadelphia & it was established in 1791.
20
Girls however are slightly more likely than boys to use home computers for e-mail, word processing and completing school assignments than playing games.
21
A normal person laughs five times in a day.
22
Approximate 300 million film tickets are sold every year in India.
23
In Britain 70% mothers go for work.
24
More artists live in California than any other state in the United States. There are 10,000 arts organizations in California.
25
Alfred Southwick developed the idea of using electric current & Professionally he was a Dentist (MDS, DDS).

DHAKA, Bangladesh - An unidentified person has donated $130 million to help rebuild hundreds of schools and storm shelters destroyed by a cyclone along Bangladesh's southwest coast, the government said Wednesday.

The anonymous donation was made through the Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Development Bank, said senior finance ministry official Aminul Islam Bhuiyan, describing it as the single largest donation ever made by an individual to Bangladesh.

Bhuiyan said the donor could not be identified because of the bank's confidentiality rules. He said there was no special cyclone relief fund set up at the Islamic Development Bank.

"It's great news for the millions of cyclone-hit people," Bhuiyan said after meeting a team of bank officials visiting Bangladesh to discuss how the money would be spent.

Much of the money would go toward building about 500 schools and storm shelters, he said.

Tropical Cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh's southwest coast on Nov. 15, leaving more than 3,300 people dead and tens of thousands homeless.

Bangladesh has sought $2 billion in foreign aid to rebuild homes, schools and embankments. It has received about $500 million, including the latest donation, officials said.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

“I Love You Soo Much”, “Inside My Heart”


PandaLabs, Panda Security’s laboratory for detecting and analysing malware, has detected two new worms, Nuwar.OL and Valentin.E, which uses the topic of St Valentine’s Day to spread.

“Year after year we see the appearance of several malware strains that use St Valentine’s Day as bait to attract users”, explains Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs. “This indicates that cyber crooks are still reaping the benefits of this technique and many people still fall into the trap.”


The first one of these worms, Nuwar.OL, reaches computers by email with subjects like “I Love You Soo Much”, “Inside My Heart” or “You... In My Dreams.”

The text of the email includes a link to a website that downloads the malicious code. The page is very simple and looks like a romantic greeting card with a large pink heart.

Once it has infected a computer, the worm sends out a large amount of emails to the infected user’s contacts in order to spread. This also creates a heavy load on networks and slows down the computer.

Valentin.E is very similar to this. Like the Nuwar worm, it spreads by email in messages with subjects like “Searching for true Love” or “True Love” and an attached file called “friends4u”. If the targeted user opens the file, a copy of the worm will be downloaded.

The malicious code installs on the computer as a file with the .scr extension. If the user runs it, Valentin.E shows a new desktop background to trick them, while it makes several copies of itself on the computer.

Then, the worm sends out emails with copies of itself from the infected computer to spread and infect more users.

“Both cases are clear examples of social engineering techniques used to spread malware. They use attractive subjects -- Valentine’s Day greeting cards, romantic desktop themes, etc -- to entice users to run attachments or click links that ultimately download malware onto their computers”, says Corrons.

Chinese scientists troubled by pranksters

Chinese scientists are harassed a lot, bombarded with questions from pranksters who want answers from them on issues ranging from using a "nuclear-powered cooker" to what they should do having been approached by terrorists to buy nuclear reactors.

"After years of private research, I have finally succeeded in producing nuclear reactors for household use. Where can I apply for patent," asked one prankster on the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) website.

"By the way, I have been contacted several times by terrorists wanting to buy the reactors. What should I do," the questioner wanted to know further.

And, the ministry's reply was that the question was out of its field of knowledge, and suggested the questioner to refer it to officials at the China Patent Information Centre.

The questions are ridiculous but the scientists respond with a "strait face and serious answers", Xinhua news agency reported quoting the Beijing Youth Daily.

Another asked whether a "nuclear-powered cooker" could be used to make soy sauce pork, a popular dish. The funny side seems unending with queries about stock market predictions and even psychological problems.

The pranksters would not leave it at getting replies. Once answered, they copy the questions and replies and subject it to public ridicule in major on-line forums, the report said.

At least 200 prank questions had been raised, with 30 posted on January 23 but all of them along with answers have since been deleted from the MOST website.

"Although a lot of questions had nothing to do with the work of the science ministry, we have answered them all as best as we could. These joke questions have been most disruptive to our job, and we hope such behaviour will end soon," a ministry statement posted on the website's homepage said.

"People criticise the government when it ignores them, and then laugh at it when it takes everything seriously. It does not make sense," said an internet user who could not fathom why pranksters do all this while he sympathised with scientists.

Mobile Phone Software that Reads to the Blind developed


Day in and day out we keep reporting about innovative technologies. From groundbreaking mobile phones with fold-out displays to gigantic Plasma HDTVs to revolutionary contact lens, 2008 has witnessed a flurry of mind-blowing technologies just within a month’s time. But this time around that aptly define novel technology, and is truly for a good cause.

Technology futurist Ray Kurzweil and the National Federation of the Blind have got together to develop the “the smallest text-to-speech reading device in history.”

K-NFB Reading Technology is a joint initiative between Kurzweil Technologies Inc. of Wellesley Hills, Mass. and the Maryland-based National Federation of the Blind developing reading software for text-to-speech devices. The technology will be installed on the Nokia N82 mobile phone, which will most probably operate in a Symbian OS. This technology will give users the ability to take pictures of text and then convert the text into audible speech. In the past, the National Federation of the Blind has installed the technology on digital assistants, however this time the first time that it would be embedded in a mobile phone.

This new piece of technology will not only enable the visually impaired to hear the content of the documents, but will also facilitate individuals with learning disabilities or dyslexia to enlarge, read, track, and highlight printed materials with the help of the handset’s large display, noted the National Federation of the Blind.

Ray Kurzweil, President and CEO of K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc. said, “Technology that enlarges the printed word or converts it to speech has dramatically improved the lives of millions of Americans with many types of disabilities, enabling them to read and comprehend printed materials to which they never before had access.” Adding, “This innovation has created opportunities disabled people had never considered before due to the large amounts of reading required in certain occupations. The first machine of this type was the size of a washing machine. As optical character recognition technology is integrated into smaller and smaller devices, access to print becomes available almost instantaneously.”

In addition, the knfbREADER Mobile also incorporates all the other key features built into the N82, such as music playback, an integrated GPS receiver, wireless communication, an in-built 5MP autofocus camera, Web and email access. Calendaring and task management features are also packed in.

While the Nokia N82 mobile phone is priced at around $500, the software will cost around $1,595.

In the recent past companies have developed devices and services for the visually impaired that are sure to get them out of the constricted world of Braille on mere paper. While Microsoft and Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) Consortium are in the works of rolling out a standards-based project that would allow visually impaired or print-disabled users to work on computer systems; Yahoo! India made services accessible to the visually disabled. IBM and Google are also not way behind. Apart from the leaders, several other companies have made life simpler for them by introducing things like “Seeing” shoes, special cameras etc.


An out-of-control US spy satellite is expected to crash to Earth in late February or early March, the Pentagon said Monday without specifying where it might land.

Department of Defense spokesman Bryan Whitman said the satellite, which has lost power, would land "over the next several weeks ... late February, early March time-frame."

"We are aware of it, we are monitoring it," he told reporters, declining to give any more details about the satellite or say where it might strike.

The satellite's impending fall from orbit has given rise to worries that it might leak out highly toxic substances.

The New York Times cited satellite monitoring experts who believe it is an experimental imagery satellite launched in 2006.

The United States has a thick web of billion-dollar satellites monitoring the Earth, some including high-powered telescopes or radars, with the capability to zoom in and help launch precision strikes on enemy targets.

"We track all man-made objects that are orbiting the Earth," Whitman said.

"Since we've been in the business of doing that, for 50 years or so, there have been more than 17,000 man-made objects that have re-entered the Earth atmosphere."

Spy satellites are frequently maneuvered in space, in relatively low orbit, to meet military surveillance needs, requiring them to be tanked up with highly toxic hydrazine fuel, according to specialists.

Hydrazine is harmful to the human central nervous system and can be fatal in big doses. However, it breaks down quickly in heat and ultra-violet light, the French security agency Ineris said in a report.

Specialists cited in the New York Times said the hydrazine would burn off if the fuel tank breaks, as is likely, when re-entering the atmosphere.

Monday, January 28, 2008


JERUSALEM - Experts have restored a 1,400-year-old glass mosaic glowing in gold, recovered from a site next to the Mediterranean Sea, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Monday.

The mosaic panel is believed to be the only one in the world, the antiquities authority said, citing the quality of its preservation given its age and its craftsmanship indicating Christian origins.

"It's a unique find, a piece of art," Joseph Patrich, professor of archaeology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "It's in its original state," Patrich said, because the panel fell face down, protecting its green, blue and gold facade from debris and damage.

The mosaic was discovered in 2005 in Caesarea, an ancient city on the Mediterranean coast known for its ancient Roman, Byzantine and Crusader ruins. During excavation of a palace, the original floor was exposed, revealing the panel lying face down in one of the larger paved mosaics.

Detached from the floor in a risky operation, conservationists were then faced with the task of removing centuries of dirt and fire damage from the destruction of the palace in the late Byzantine Era in late 6th or early 7th century A.D., Patrich said.

The mosaic is particularly important because the small colored tiles forming it features two styles of tiling: gold glass and the more traditional multicolored, opaque glass commonly associated with mosaics, he said. The tiles depict two motifs: crosses and eight-petalled rosettes.

The owner and origin of the palace in which the panel was found is unclear — all that is known is that the residents were likely Christian, experts said. The original role of the restored panel also remains unknown.
Organizers unveiled the "Watercube" swimming venue Monday, one of the more stunning structures built for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Known officially as the National Aquatics Center, the Watercube has been dubbed the "cool" building of the Games. The building's design and its translucent, blue-toned outside skin make it look like a cube of bubbles -- like "bubble wrap."

"There are many different buildings in the world and I believe this could be one of the most significant sports venues," said Zheng Fang, an architect and chief of the design team for China Construction Design International.

Forty-two gold medals will be handed out at the Watercube during the Olympics, which start Aug. 8.

After a little more than three years of construction, the facility was officially handed over to the Beijing organizing committee, with President Liu Qi on hand.

Liu and Beijing mayor Guo Jin Long both dipped their hands into the competition pool and seemed satisfied at Monday's brief unveiling ceremony. Guo even put the pool water to his lips.

The venue has 6,000 permanent and 11,000 temporary seats. Like the 91,000-seat National Stadium -- the "Bird's Nest," which will be completed in March -- both are seen as works of art and will anchor the Olympic Green area.

While some argue the gargantuan "Bird's Nest" could become a white elephant, the Watercube has been built to be converted to a shopping area and leisure center with tennis courts, retail outlets, nightclubs and restaurants.

"This building was designed for use after the games," said John Pauline of PTW Architects, one of the lead architects on the Watercube. "We were looking at 30 or 40 years from now."

The outside skin is made of the Teflon-like material known as ETFE, or ethylene-tetrafluoroethylene. Composed of two layers, it's separated by an interior passage that allows the building to breathe like a greenhouse.

The maintenance could be complicated. At the unveiling it was clear the bubbles needed cleaning, soiled by Beijing's dirty air. Officials said this would take about a week and would be done periodically.

The exact cost of the building has been shrouded in secrecy, with estimates ranging from $150 million to more than $200 million. Much of the building was financed by $110 million in private contributions from people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

There will be 37 venues for the Olympics. Beijing is the site of 31 -- 12 new, 11 that have been renovated, and eight built as temporary structures. Most are located in four clusters in the north of the city. Five more venues for soccer and sailing are located outside Beijing, and equestrian events will be held in Hong Kong.

"The building is very innovative in how it appears," said John Pauline, a lead architect with PTW. "The aesthetics are cutting edge. In that respect it's incredibly unique. It's also a very functional, a planned building. The building should work like clockwork for the Olympics games."

Organizers will stage a swim meet in the Watercube on Friday to test the facilities.

The Watercube and Bird's Nest are located several hundred meters yards across from each other, situated on either side of a "sacred" north-south axis and promises to shift development. The venues are five miles due north of Tiananmen Square -- the world's largest public plaza -- and the Forbidden City.

There will be 37 venues for the Olympics. Beijing is the site of 31 -- 12 new, 11 renovated, and eight temporary structures. Most are located in four clusters in the north of the city. Five more venues for soccer and sailing are located outside Beijing, and equestrian events will be held in Hong Kong.

The Watercube will host a test event this week. Though it hasn't drawn a top field, at least one swimmer can't wait to test the water.

"It's an important meet for me," said Swedish sprinter Stefan Nystrand. "I think it's great to be here since it's the same pool as the Olympics. I don't know why more top guys aren't showing up."

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Police are looking for possible links between the deaths of a number of young people around a small Welsh town, but said there was no evidence yet of a suicide pact.

At least seven young people have killed themselves in the Bridgend area in the past year, with several of the young victims reportedly hanging themselves after spending hours chatting with friends on the Internet.

"We'll be reviewing the circumstances surrounding a number of sudden deaths in the Bridgend area," South Wales police said in a statement late on Friday.

Police said they were not re-investigating the deaths but looking for possible links between them.

"We've no evidence to suggest there's any link between the deaths at this time," the statement said. "To date there's no evidence of a suicide pact."

The only death currently under active investigation was that of a 17-year-old girl who died in Blaengarw on January 17. A South Wales police spokesman on Saturday was unable to confirm that the review could involve up to 13 deaths.

Earlier this week the town's Labour MP Madeleine Moon said she was concerned about the effect on teenagers of spending too much time on the Internet and memorial Web sites, where people leave messages about dead friends.

"What we don't know is whether the Internet is playing a key factor in this," Moon told Reuters. "What's concerning is that you're getting Internet bereavement walls. That's not going to help anyone."

The Times newspaper reported on Saturday that the Ministry of Justice is examining new legal curbs to stop Internet sites providing information about ways to commit suicide. The ministry was unavailable for comment.

Photo clues lead to camera's owner

At dusk on New Year's Eve, Erika Gunderson got into a taxi in New York City and entered a digital-age mystery.

Sitting on the back seat was a nice Canon digital camera. Gunderson asked the driver which previous passenger might have left it, but the cabbie didn't seem to care. So Gunderson brought it home and showed it to her fiance, Brian Ascher. They decided that the only right thing to do was to find the owner.

But how? The only clues were the pictures on the camera: typical tourist snapshots, complete with a visit to the Statue of Liberty. How could they find a stranger among the huddled masses?

Gunderson is busy in finance for Bear Stearns Cos., so the detective quest fell to Ascher, a 26-year-old law student at New York University. He was on winter break and eager to put off writing a paper about climate change treaties.

He checked whether anyone had reported a matching missing camera to the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission. No dice. He placed ads in lost-and-found sections of Craigslist but got just one response — from a couple in Brazil who had lost a camera in a cab on Oct. 12, not Dec. 31.

"I guess they thought their camera had been riding around in a taxi for two months," Ascher recalls now, chuckling at the notion that such a thing would be possible in New York.

The 350 pictures and two videos on the camera showed several adults, an older woman and three children. Half put them at New York sites like the Empire State Building. The other half had the group enjoying warm weather and frolicking at kid-friendly theme parks.

Ascher easily pinpointed Florida. The group had stood in front of a sign indicating Clearwater, Fla., and posed at Bob Heilman's Beachcomber Restaurant there.

They also took a pirate-themed boat ride where the kids got mustaches painted on their faces. Ascher zoomed in on the group to see name tags on their shirts. He spotted an Alan, an Eileen, a male Noel and a female Noelle, plus a Ciarnan. Under their names was written "IRE."

When Ascher checked the videos, he saw nothing telling, just the children dancing and swimming. But in the background, he heard Irish accents.

OK, Ascher figured, the camera's owner is from Ireland.

Ascher called Canon's Ireland division to see if anyone had registered the $500 camera's serial number. No such luck. He posted ads on Irish Web sites. Nothing.

He checked the date stamp on the photos from Bob Heilman's and called to inquire whether anyone remembered serving a big Irish group that day. Without the diners' last names, there was no way to check. It's a nice thing you're trying, the manager told Ascher, but you probably just found yourself a new camera.

Enter some fresh eyes. Ascher's mother, Nancy, and sister, Emily Rann, scoured the pictures for clues he might have missed. Nancy was particularly confident, having reunited people with their lost belongings before. She once found a California woman's wallet in a cab in Florence, Italy, and spent all day on her trail before making a handover at an American Express office.

"I thought, with all this data in the camera, there's no way we're not going to get it back to them," Nancy Ascher says now. "I was hoping it wasn't going to take a trip to Ireland, flashing their pictures everywhere."

Ascher's mother and his sister noticed that one of the pictures showed a doorman helping someone into a New York taxi. Zooming tight on the doorman's uniform, they made out the logo of the Radisson Hotel.

After several phone calls and a visit to the hotel to show the pictures around, Nancy Ascher persuaded an employee to search the Radisson's guest records by first name and country of residence. Indeed, a Noel from Ireland had stayed there on the date stamped on the photo. Nancy Ascher charmed the hotel employee into sharing the guest's e-mail address.

Wonderful.

Except that when Noel responded to Brian Ascher, he said he hadn't lost a camera.

By now, school was resuming, and Ascher was prepared to give the camera to his mom so she could take over. She had figured out the name of the Florida pirate-boat cruise and was trying to reach its operator.

But first Ascher took a final look at the photographs.

He pored over some from Dec. 30 that didn't include the children. The photos showed signs for bars in Manhattan's East Village: The Thirsty Scholar, Telephone Bar, Burp Castle. There also were multiple interior shots of a tavern, but they didn't seem to fit with what Ascher knew of those other three bars.

Then he stopped on another picture, showing two people outside an apartment building. Seemingly accidentally included in the picture was something Ascher had missed the first time: an awning in the background that read "Standings." Aha! Standings is a bar next to Burp Castle. Ascher checked its Web site, and the interior matched the pictures on the camera.

Ascher found Standings' owner, who reached the bartender who had worked Dec. 30. Yes, he recalled an Irish group. Especially because one of the women was a big tipper and said she worked at another New York City bar, Playwrights. The Standings bartender called Playwrights to ask which employees had been in his bar.

Ascher soon got an e-mail from a woman named Sarah Casey, whose sister Jeanette works at Playwrights. Suddenly everything Ascher had seen on the camera came to life.

The Caseys recently had hosted relatives and friends from Ireland. The group included their friend Alan Murphy, who had journeyed to Florida with family before heading to New York, where the clan stayed at the Radisson. (Their Noel was not the Noel whom Ascher e-mailed.) Murphy ended the trip kicking himself for leaving his camera in a cab in the twilight on New Year's Eve.

Sarah Casey agreed to send it to him. It didn't go to Ireland but to Sydney, Australia, where Murphy lives now.

Murphy, an insurance underwriter, had been devastated to lose the pictures from a trip he had planned for years. It was Jan. 10 — his 34th birthday — when he heard he would be getting the photos back. "I was over the moon," he says now. "Best present ever."

"I owe you one," he wrote to Ascher. "It's good to know there are some honest people left in the world."