Reuters - Mobile phone group Vodafone cut its full-year revenue outlook for the second time in four months on Tuesday but said it would maintain profits and boost free cash flow by cutting 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) of costs.
We live in a rather hermetic world, you and me. The gadget blogger is so drenched in new technology that we forget how these wonderful toys are used in the real world. And you, loyal reader, are obviously far above the norm when it comes to matters of technology.
I was reminded of this when I passed my old iPod Touch onto the Lady a few weeks ago. She's no technophobe. In fact, quite the opposite. She not only gets (and laughs at) nerd jokes, she actually makes them. And after moving onto her second Mac, she's totally at home with such geeky things as setting manual IP addresses and BitTorrent.
So I expected her to be all over the Touch. And she is, but not quite in the ways I expected.
The iPod Makes a Killer Alarm Clock
The Lady has always liked the Touch alarm clock, but I didn't expect it to be her killer app. I suspect it could only be made better if it played music as an alarm, something sadly impossible for the speakerless 1G version. It's easy, hell, it's fun to set the time with the clicky spinning dials, and the snooze function works great. That last, for her, is essential, as the button gets hit around ten times every morning. Bonus Tip: Did you know that the top-mounted sleep button also activates snooze, so you don't even need to open your eyes?
Music, Yes. Earbuds, No
The Lady almost never uses her iPod Touch as an iPod, and the white earbuds remain as tangle free as on the first day. On this, I don't blame her, as I'm the same. I can walk around for hours listening to podcasts but music gives me a headache after a few minutes. That doesn't mean the music part is neglected -- she has her entire library on there. But to listen, it gets hooked up to the stereo (when she isn't streaming music via Airtunes -- I'm so proud!)
Email and Web
As a geek, I'm almost permanently hooked up to the internet, or I try to be. But for the Lady, email and web browsing on the go are less important. For some people, computers are for work, movies and music. Outside of this, there's a desire to switch off the infernal machine and live amongst real people. With the iPod Touch lacking a 3G or even EDGE connection, it's a real pain to access Wi-Fi outside of the house. And if you're at home, why not use the laptop?
The Nerd Difference
The difference between a life long nerd and a normal person can be summed up with this story. I told the Lady that the iPod Touch was the gadget I had dreamed of as a kid (literally). A connected device which can do pretty much anything. A real computer in your pocket, and then some. She stared at me for a moment, and then said, "That's not what I dreamed of when I was small."
RealAge features sneak peek and tips from YOU Docs' latest blockbuster SAN DIEGO, Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- America's favorite doctors Mehmet Oz, MD, and... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 12:00 pm
SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Micrel Inc., (Nasdaq: MCRL), an industry leader in analog, high bandwidth communications and Ethernet IC solutions,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 12:00 pm
CNET - After Google beat analysts estimates in its October 2007 quarter, CEO Eric Schmidt had this to say: Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Nov 2008 | 12:00 pm
Innovative services target young consumers across Portugal LISBON, Portugal and GAITHERSBURG, Md., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- BroadSoft, Inc., the leading provider of... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 12:00 pm
The myth of professional investors like venture capitalists is that they’re not like us: They’re smarter, they can see around corners, and they’re bold when we are quivering.
Or maybe they’re just like us: When their 401ks gets crushed in a once-in-a-lifetime market rout, they think twice before writing another check.
That appears to have happened in October, when VCs spent less money, on fewer companies, than they have in years. Details from Thomson Reuters/PE Week, via PE HUB:
The data show that U.S.-based venture firms invested in just 250 companies in October, down from 565 companies in September and 518 companies in October 2007. You have to go all the way back to January 2004 (when they invested in 232 companies) to find a lower number. The only other October with fewer deals was in 1993.
The amount of capital that VCs are investing also plummeted in October, when U.S.-based firms put $2.5 billion to work, down from $3.8 billion in September and $3.2 billion in October 2007. The October 2008 total is the smallest amount that U.S. VCs have invested since February 2006, when they invested about $2.4 billion. Looking only at October, the last time the monthly total was lower was in October 2004, when about $2.4 billion was invested.
Recall that in addition to the market getting crushed last month, October also ushered in a flurry of look out! pronouncements from some of the VC world’s biggest names, including Sequoia Capital. So it’s understandable that deal flow might dry up.
But it’s not going away entirely. And it doesn’t mean that VCs are avoiding Web 2.0-like gambles. See, for instance, the $20 million or so that investors just pumped into Project Playlist, yet another music discovery services with both legal challenges (the music labels are suing it) and operational ones (there isn’t much revenue, and getting more will be tough).
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia launched a new hi-tech system Tuesday aimed at detecting a potential tsunami and providing faster alerts in a region battered by frequent earthquakes. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 11:31 am
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan Asustek Computer said on Tuesday its U.S. sales have not been affected by the global economic slowdown, even as a bankruptcy filing by a major U.S. retailer... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 11:28 am
A cellphone designed for the elderly might sound patronizing, but there is certainly a need for something easier to use than your usual whizz-bang mobile -- hell, even I have trouble geting these new-fangled telephones to work, and I play with them for my job.
The ClarityLife C900 is an unlocked GSM cellphone which costs $280 with no confusing contracts. The cut-down design gets almost everything right but, like your Aunt Flo trying to sneak the cooking sherry back into the pantry, stumbles at the last moment.
As you can see, there aren't many buttons. Pick up and and hang up are joined by up and down arrows on the front, while the back features a big red emergency button (with the somewhat tasteless addition of a heart). This red switch will, if held steadily down by shaking, arthritic fingers for three seconds, send a text message to up to five numbers.
The phone is also built for the older body, with a double-volume speaker, extra-strong vibrator and a flashing light all signifying an incoming call. BoingBoing Gadgets' John Brownlee, who knows a thing or two about operating gadgets while afflicted by double vision and shaking (in his case caused by an addiction to German beer and millet), points out the one big fault:
I suspect the only real problem with the design here is the lack of numeric buttons [...] it's almost definitely true that your average elderly person will be more comfortable typing in numbers on a pad.
He's dead right. Oldsters are adept at using a regular pushbutton phone. I actually saw a pensioner on the bus a while back using a pretty modern cellphone, hacked to fit her needs: On the back was taped a hand-written list of numbers, which she then tapped in. Neat.
Fujitsu just announced a 500GB, 5400RPM SATA drive for portable applications with full disk encryption, a boon to the paranoid.
The drive supports 256-bit AES. No pricing but expect it in heavy duty laptops soon.
World’s Highest Capacity Disk Drive with Green Policy Innovation
Program and Available AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ — Fujitsu Computer Products of
America, Inc., a leading supplier of innovative computer products including
hard disk drives, peripherals and biometric security solutions, today
announced the launch of the 2.5-inch MJA2 BH and MJA2 CH series 5400 RPM
SATA 3.0Gb/sec mobile hard drives (HDD), achieving industry leading
capacity of a half-terabyte (500GB(1)), and features the highest capacity
to support full disk encryption (FDE) in a 2.5-inch form factor. The new
series are designed to meet the cumulative demands of notebook PCs, desktop
PCs, consumer electronics and other mobile applications.
“End users are looking for reliable hard drives with the highest
possible capacity,” said Mario Apicella, Director, Technology and Product
Validation Services, Storage Strategies NOW, “and these new drives from
Fujitsu respond to those customer requirements. In addition, the new models
have very low power consumption and are manufactured with a green emphasis,
which together with an unsurpassed 256-bit AES encryption capability sets a
great example for the industry.”
As part of the Fujitsu Green Policy Innovation program, the new HDD
series is the first for Fujitsu to be halogen-free(2) and comply with the
RoHS directive, which reduces the use of hazardous substances in electronic
equipment. Both the MJA2 BH and MJA2 CH series provide a best-in-class
read/write power consumption of 1.4W (SATA 3.0Gb/sec), a reduction of 33
percent from previous generation models. Additional product enhancements
over the previous generation 5400 RPM HDD include a higher resistance to
operating shock, reducing damage from accidental handling, and 27 percent
faster internal transfer rates to improve overall system performance.
“We are excited to bring to market a series of hard drives that not
only provide tremendous storage capacity, but also minimize the
environmental impact,” said Lorne Wilson, senior vice president, sales,
corporate marketing and new products group. “This new series will also be
an ideal solution for customers that require an extremely secure, high
capacity storage solution.”
MJA2 CH series features the same shock resistance, compact size and
transfer speed while enabling the end user to add the highest security
standard for data protection. Just as with the first generation model, the
MJA2 CH series supports AES hardware-based FDE using the industry leading
256-bit key size, allowing the drive to provide data protection from
unauthorized access by setting a password. Encryption and decryption are
performed by the hardware of the drive, instead of by the computer’s CPU
and memory, thereby eliminating the impact on system performance. The
security credential that is used to unlock the drive is cryptographically
regenerated when the correct password is received at power-on and is
unattainable when the system is powered off. The MJA2 CH series is ideal
for various IT applications that require the highest security standards
with high storage capacity, less complexity and low cost of ownership.
Well isn’t that nice: 33% of people surveyed by ChangeWave who intended to buy a laptop in the next 90 days would pick an Apple. Most interestingly, they’d probably pick up a MacBook Pro rather than an entry level machine.
Twenty-six percent of respondents reported planning on buying about an Apple desktop - considerably less than Dell’s 37 percent. Respondents said that Dell was a “great value.”
I’ve admitted it before: I have a crush on Animoto. The service does one thing really, really well. It turns photos into slideshows, with music, instantly.
The site has done extremely well. As competitors like Slide and RockYou have wandered off to create countless useless Facebook applications, Animoto has stuck to creating really cool photo slideshows. As of August, Animoto had 250,000 users in 200 countries and 4 million or so videos have been viewed 50 million times.
The basic service is free and users can create videos up to 30 seconds long (that lets Animoto sidestep copyright mess on the songs). If you pay $30 a year or $3/video the time restriction is removed. Videos can be watched on the site, embedded on other sites, or downloaded in MP4 format for free. Users can also have a DVD printed and sent to them for $20, or download a high res (864×480) version in MP4 or ISO format for $5. Today they are also releasing a customized link that lets users easily view videos on their iPhone.
And now users can add text to videos. Not captions or subtitles, but really slick movie-like text. The video below demonstrates it:
To date they’ve taken two rounds of financing, including an undisclosed amount from Amazon in May 2008.
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
SEDONA, Ariz., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- ETF.com has just released a powerful new set of research tools specifically designed for exchange-traded funds (ETFs). These free tools allow investors and financial planners to quickly and easily discover and research ETFs listed on U.S. exchanges. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Nov 2008 | 11:00 am
Editor's Note: A photo is available with this press release Love photography? Love your mobile? Love the glamour of the red-carpet? Now your passion can earn you a role as an official Sony Ericsson photographer. Just grab your camera and start sharing the results on Flickr. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Nov 2008 | 11:00 am
Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo has reported a 78% decrease in net income to $23m for the second quarter 2009, compared to $105m in the year-ago quarter, on revenue up marginally at $4.32 billion. The loss was attributed to lower PC shipments owing to the global financial crisis. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Nov 2008 | 11:00 am
BETH HALEVY, Israel, November 11 /PRNewswire/ -- - Yoggie Releases Cutting-Edge Source Code and its Linux-Based Hardware Platform to the Developer Community Yoggie Security Systems(TM) today launched its new Open Firewall Pico(TM) and Open Firewall SOHO(TM), the first open hardware firewalls based on its award-winning Gatekeeper technology. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Nov 2008 | 11:00 am
Logitech (SIX:LOGN)(NASDAQ:LOGI) today unveiled the newest addition to its line of award-winning diNovo keyboards - the Logitech(R) diNovo Keyboard, Mac(R) Edition. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Nov 2008 | 11:00 am
Fujitsu Siemens Computers has won a contract from oil and gas group OMV to provide IT infrastructure services across 30 countries in central Europe. Datamonitor estimates the contract to be worth $75m over three years. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Nov 2008 | 11:00 am
37 Percent Traveling for the Holiday; Equal to Last Year 30 Percent Feel Pressure to Travel to Spend Thanksgiving with Family NEWTON, Mass., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 11:00 am
InfoWorld - Linux is, among other things, a customizable operating system. Clever developers can craft a Linux whose kernel and packages are configured for a specific purpose, to serve as a sort of vertical-market operating system. The benefit to users is somewhat akin to walking into a hardware store. On the shelves are tools, each suited to a specific task. And it's particularly nice that all the tools are free. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Nov 2008 | 11:00 am
Installation at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego Features Interactive Map of Facilities, Video and Photo Highlights of School's History and Permanent Donor Recognition... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 11:00 am
Sadly, the touchscreen is still stuck in the Palm days simply because it uses a resistive method for sensing styli, not fingers.
Like HTC’s Touch Diamond, the 5800 employs a resistive rather than capacitive touchscreen designed primarily for stylus not finger input. The result is that finger presses needs to be more defined than feels natural (it’s works best when using a finger tip or finger nail). Instead, I’d much prefer a capacitive touchscreen as used by the iPhone.
This is probably the biggest beef I have with the so-called iPhone killers: styli aren’t 2008 technology. There is no reason for me to whip out a little pen if I want to write a quick note - RIM with their Blackberry taught us that - and it is possible to build interfaces that work wonderfully with our own blood-filled digits instead of a little piece of plastic.
As I mentioned earlier, the 5800 is good idea - it looks like a great music device, it will be popular in Europe, and it’s about damn time Nokia got into touch. But as a general rule, let’s try to move towards capacative, please?
Richard Solo is a name that, in its diminutive form, is surely as much of a single-handed euphemism as Han Solo (think about it, but not too much). Additionally, it is the maker of the RichardSolo 1800, an extended battery for the iPhone which will also give you something more innocent to do with your hands.
The RichardSolo 1800 is an 1800 mAh battery pack which snaps into the iPhone's dock connector. It has enough power to completely recharge a dead iPhone and still have "reserve power left over". For what? Well, for the built-in laser pointer and flashlight, of course. To charge, you plug the iPhone into the dongle, and then the dongle into a USB wall-wart which juices both simultaneously.
The device is $70, but we prefer the FastMac iV which costs just $10 more and eschews the laser for an LED that doubles as a "flash" for the iPhone's camera. It also works as a case for the iPhone, wrapping around it instead of dangling dangerously off the end. The Dick Solo version comes with a car charger and a USB extender cable, and is available now.
Old Skooler ramblings has a fantastic write-up of the twenty-five year old PCjr., IBM's embarrassing attempt at designing an affordable, entry-level computesr to '80s consumers. Its primary failing? It was actually less IBM compatible than the clones on the market at the time. But the PCjr was filled with similar juicy design fuck-ups:
• Because of no DMA capability, the computer needed to use the CPU to read the floppy disk, grinding the machine to a halt every time a floppy was accessed.
• The PCjr. was the only PC ever created that was slower than the original IBM PC.
• A modular design that allows you to simply plug-in additional PCjr. hardware, but which effectively doubled the PCjr's physical size.
• Memory expansion sidecars were required to approach rudimentary compatibility with most PC programs.
Of course, some good came out of it all: the PCjr was the computer Tandy eventually decided to clone and enhance, leading to the creation of the crackerjack Tandy 1000.
(TrendHunter.com) Believe it or not, our brains have a Jennifer Aniston neuron that is dedicated to reacting to the famous Friends sitcom star according to a new study by a leading neuroscientist and... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 10:38 am
Fovean, the company that makes film-like digital camera sensors using three stacked photosensitive layers (instead of putting the RGB pixels next to each other on one slice) has been bought by third-party lens maker and sometime camera manufacturer, Sigma.
Sigma's cameras have been using the innovative Fovean lenses for some time, so the buyout is a natural fit. Sigma justifies its purchase in the manner of a photographer justifying a new lens by saying it will make him better. Try not to fall asleep while reading:
The acquisition of Foveon will not only enhance the development of new types of image sensors for high quality digital cameras, but will also create a synergistic effect with Sigma's camera and lens business by improving the integration between the camera and sensor.
This corporate nonsense might actually make some sense. Fovean chips are very promising, especially the for sharp, low-light and lower pixel density trend we're currently seeing. And Sigma makes some great lenses, but its camera offering, while solid, has never quite fulfilled its promise. The marrying of the two could bring some real innovation. We're thinking compact, fixed lens, Leica-beating rangefinders or cheap, big-chipped compacts. Wishful thinking, of course, but Sigma is certainly known for making some odd but compelling products.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy examines Windows 7 from the kernel up, subjecting the 'pre-beta' to a battery of benchmarks to find any signs that the OS will be faster, more responsive, and less resource-intensive than the bloated Vista, as Microsoft suggests. Identical thread counts at the kernel level suggest to Kennedy that Windows 7 is a 'minor point-type of release, as opposed to a major update or rewrite.' Memory footprint for the kernel proved eerily similar to that of Vista as well. 'In fact, as I worked my way through the process lists of the two operating systems, I was struck by the extent of the similarities,' Kennedy writes, before discussing the results of a nine-way workload test scenario he performed on Windows 7 — the same scenario that showed Vista was 40 percent slower than Windows XP. 'In a nutshell, Windows 7 M3 is a virtual twin of Vista when it comes to performance,' Kennedy concludes. 'In other words, Microsoft's follow-up to its most unpopular OS release since Windows Me threatens to deliver zero measurable performance benefits while introducing new and potentially crippling compatibility issues.'"
(TrendHunter.com) Ita G Festa is a huge car show with the usual car accessory midway to pry some yen from your pockets. Check out the variety and fantastic colors of these vinyl car wraps. The... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 10:19 am
TagCow is a company that I quite frankly never thought we'd hear from again. We first discovered them in March when they launched a product that tagged things in photos, seemingly by magic. If it was automated,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 10:08 am
TagCow is a company that I quite frankly never thought we’d hear from again. We first discovered them in March when they launched a product that tagged things in photos, seemingly by magic. If it was automated, they’d done something with computers that even Google still uses humans to do - recognize stuff in pictures.
Then it turned out that TagCow was using humans also, leveraging Amazon Mechanical Turk to get photos tagged for cheap (to their credit, they never said one way or the other). People were paid $0.04 to tag a group of five photos.
It turns out that model doesn’t work, either. Founder Michael Droz emailed today to say “After…tagging over a million images for free we looked at our balance sheet and realized it was make money or close up shop time.”
But they didn’t close up shop. Instead, they started pitching companies on a tagging service, and at least two have now signed deals: Art.com and AutoByTel. Both use TagCow to tag images, for a fee. The company says October was a profitable month for them based on these deals.
Any site which has a lot of images can potentially benefit from having more metadata about those photos. Search results will yield much better results (and the site is better optimized for search engines in general), and perhaps a sale will be made that otherwise wouldn’t be.
TagCow, which says it can tag a million photos a day, and is looking for more customers.
They also say they’ll keep their user-facing service but are now charging a fee.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Clickatell leading global mobile messaging provider (and faithful Textually sponsor), today announced several notable honors from the seventh annual Mobile Star Awards for 2008. Having received over 150... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 10:08 am
The Clarity C900 is a cell phone aimed at seniors. That concept itself seems smug at first, but there's more to it than just marketing to the perceived Ludditical befuddlement of those dottering old pension codgers: in truth, it is easy to forget how complicated even an iPhone can seem to someone who hasn't spent years immersed in the taken-for-granted metaphors of the computer UI. * Factor in fading vision and hearing and arthritis, and what you have is a technology that should be as ubiquitous among seniors as Medic Alert bracelets, but isn't.
The Clarity C900 tries to get around all that with four big, simple buttons, a ring twice as loud as your normal cell phone, a flashing screen and a big red "panic" button depressed on the back that when pressed for three seconds will automatically text an emergency message to five contacts of your choosing while also cycling through them until someone picks up. Better yet, it's sold for $270 without a contract.
I suspect the only real problem with the design here is the lack of numeric buttons. I understand why they aren't there, but it's almost definitely true that your average elderly person will be more comfortable typing in numbers on a pad than scrolling through the digits with arrows. It seems like this phone is really meant to be entirely set-up by a younger relative, and given to a grandparent in case of emergencies.
* - Or to put it another way: imagine going to Japan, drinking two bottles of Vodka, smashing your hands with hammers and then trying to operate the average Japanese teenage girl's Byzantine cell phone.
Tread is a brand which sells recycled bags fashioned from old truck tire inner-tubes. It's not the only company to be making these things -- the combination of almost indestructible rubber and cheap raw materials means its big business. It is, however, the only company making rubber gadget bags that is owned Better Energy Systems, which also owns solar-powered bag company Solio.
We would seriously dig a rubber bag with a solar panel for gadget-charging, both for convenience and for the double-green credentials, but right now you'll need to buy both a Solio charger and a Tread sleeve if you want this. The bags range from the rather corporate-looking Flippy iPhone case (left, $30) through the rather teen-friendly Solio Urban (right, $25) to the frankly splendid Sleeve notebook case (center, $130).
And there lies the rub. $130 is a lot of money for any bag, but especially for one made out of old tires bought from Columbian car repair shops. But then, we doubt you'd ever need to buy another bag again. Unless, of course, Tread finally comes up with a rubber bag with a built in solar cell.
By Evan Ackerman There are the casual bird watchers, who can appreciate robins and blue jays and stuff when they see them. Then there are bird enthusiasts, who buy binoculars and telescopes to spot more... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 9:47 am
With the release of Google Chrome and the continued popularity of Mozilla Firefox, the browser wars are seeing a bit of a renaissance. But as interesting as the renewed battle for the desktop may be, it's... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 9:44 am
The parallels are striking. Back in 2003, the Motorola RAZR shot out of the gate and became hugely popular (or not) despite an $800 off-contract price tag. The glass and metal looked great, and as prices dropped it became almost the default handset for new contract sign-ups.
A few years later, the iPhone took off, again with a crazy off-contract price tag, and again with the glass and metal. But Apple's smartphone could never catch up to Moto's Christmas-cracker giveaway, right? After all, just a year ago we carried this headline here at Gadget Lab: "RAZR V3 Wiping Floor With iPhone, Everyone".
Well, yes. The iPhone now outsells the RAZR, despite the fact that LetsTalk will actually pay you $30 to take one. Here are the top five seling phones in the third quarter of this year, according to NPD group
Apple iPhone 3G
Motorola RAZR V3 (all models)
RIM Blackberry Curve (all models)
LG Rumor
LG enV2
The RAZR was always a good looking phone, and that alone probably accounted for its popularity. Now, though, the fashion conscious have an even cooler phone to buy, and it has one huge added bonus: It doesn't contain Motorola's sucky operating system, an OS which is so frustrating that, in combination with the handset's sharp edges, makes it a potentially lethal weapon.
That said, the RAZR has been a moneymaker for Moto, topping the charts on and off for eight years. Maybe its about time Motorola had another idea?
The Onion turns its eye to next summer's Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 showdown, and heaps scorn upon both in equal measure. "Weird Euro-Internet cafe" may be the most pitch-perfect dismissal of the Windows target market I've ever read.
Spotted in the wilds of Flickr, this MacBook Nano: a modified MSI Wind with some slick Apple branding, a hacked install of OS X Leopard and a 320GB hard drive bump. There's some typically Apple details you just can't mod, of course: there's simply no way Apple would release a netbook with a non-chiclet keyboard at this stage in the game, and that touchpad isn't fooling anyone either. Still, this really is about halfway towards what I want in an Apple netbook, with the additional 50% being extraordinary battery life.
Yes, right now, South America is buzzing with trucks delivering goods. All these trucks are hoping to blow a tire as soon as possible, so they pour on the miles and take the bumpiest route all in an effort to protect your iPhone, laptop and other gadgetry. OK, so the trucks may be doing nothing of the sort, but at the end of the day, their tubes have been burned releasing toxins into the air.
But not so much now, thanks to Tread. Tread is currently buying the butyl rubber, no joke, from pit stops in Quibdo, Columbia. The company’s employees then make cases out of this, relying on the material’s super resistance to scratches, wear, and UV light . The company offers many styles of cases for phones (such as the iPhone), iPods, and laptops.
The company behind this, Better Energy Systems is the maker of the Solio solar recharger and of course they offer a case for the Solio. These cases are another great way to keep that green thing going.
You can find these recycled cases at places like Best Buy, Amazon and REI for reasonable prices. For example, the Sportster featured in the image above sells for $29.99. Suggest they ship it by truck.
Yesterday, BoomTown had a much-belated lunch with longtime tech editor and writer Harry McCracken to catch up on how life has been going since he started his own tech blog site, Technologizer, this past summer.
The former editor-in-chief of PC World got a lot of attention in 2007, after he stood his ground over editorial meddling by former CEO Colin Crawford, who tried to kill a “Ten Things We Hate About Apple” story.
McCracken quit, but was soon back on the job at the IDG unit, with Crawford kicked upstairs to corporate.
But, within a year, McCracken had left again, this time to strike out on his own at his Technologizer site, which is owned and operated by him (and using Federated Media to sell ads). It covers a wide range of tech topics from PCs to smartphones to the future of cloud computing.
I like the tone of Technologizer, which also uses freelancers to supplement McCracken’s daily posts, a lot.
But what I like better still and which I hope to see even more of in the tech blogosphere at large is the obvious respect McCracken has for accurate reporting, strong journalism standards and also trenchant analysis that actually gives a reader insight into a story.
In addition, McCracken is a very nice guy, as you will see from this video, where we discuss a range of things (and yes, PC Word-style, I get him to make a list too).
FROM GAMERTELL - It’s 80 pages of deals and freebies including gift cards and special discounts. Click through to get a page-by-page breakdown of the videogame and iPod deals as well as a list of with-purchase freebies…
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Something is definitely stirring over at video recommendation/discovery provider Taboola, which we last covered a year ago. I've had multiple sources in the Israeli VC community insist that the company... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 8:03 am
Something is definitely stirring over at video recommendation/discovery provider Taboola, which we last covered a year ago. I’ve had multiple sources in the Israeli VC community insist that the company has closed a multi-million round of financing, with Evergreen Ventures Partners being the primary investor. Additionally, while following the US Elections in its final month I also happened to spot Taboola recommendations on CNN.com’s videos. Both the company and Evergreen are keeping tightlipped on any funding round or a CNN deal.
Taboola has kept a low profile since its founding in 2006. I am told that the gross majority of the employees are technologists with strong mathematical and Israeli military backgrounds.
Taboola’s flagship product ViDiscovery is described as follows on the company’s site:
Taboola ViDiscovery™ moves beyond “one-size fits all” answers and matches videos one viewer at a time. Utilizing it’s breakthrough patent pending mathematical technologies that was built from the grounds up to deal with online videos, Taboola predicts what are the best subsequent videos for each viewer to watch on your site . Taboola’s proprietary patent pending technology works in three steps:
Video Context - Analysis of video context independent of any associated text.
Viewer Dynamics – Anonymously studying the viewing patterns of viewers while they view videos on your site.
Personalized Matching – Using the aggregated knowledge from the analysis of your videos and your viewers’ viewing pattern to match every viewer with personalized video recommendations.
To see it in action on CNN.com, go here and press the “Videos Like This Tab” on the video window.
If there indeed a deal with CNN it would serve as a major indicator that the company’s video recommendation/discovery technology packs a real punch. CNN would then join the company’s growing client list which includes the likes of aniBoom, 5Min and Sclipo.
We’ll keep a close eye on Taboola and update on any official funding announcement.
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Let’s start with some uncomfortable truths. We wouldn’t be publishing an article about the under-the-radar guy who’s most likely to succeed Steve Jobs as chief executive of Apple if Jobs himself hadn’t shown up at a company event in San Francisco in June looking frightfully skinny and pale. Jobs, after all, is a pancreatic-cancer survivor, having beaten a treatable form of the disease in 2004. Since that appearance last summer, Apple’s excitable investor base and blogosphere have spun full tilt wondering about their hero’s health, a topic that - other than the pithy retort here and the acerbic talk-to-the-hand comment there - Apple’s CEO has declined to address.
Bill Gates and several of Microsoft’s top technologists are credited as inventors in eight newly disclosed U.S. patent applications. That isn’t a surprise. But here’s where it starts to get unusual: The applications weren’t made on Microsoft’s behalf. Why are Gates and others from Microsoft doing their “inventing” outside the realm of the company? Microsoft has an explanation, and the company says it’s not as unorthodox as it might seem.
MUNICH, Germany, Nov. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Xilinx, Inc. , and Alliance Program member, Eutecus, Inc., a leading provider of advanced image processing solutions, will demonstrate the industry's first full video analytics suite on a single field programmable gate array (FPGA) at Electronica 2008. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Nov 2008 | 8:00 am
By Edward K. Vogel and Trafton Drew, Contributing Writers, Scientific American
Our brains are crammed with a massive amount of memories that we have formed over a lifetime of experiences. These memories range from the profound (who am I and how did I get here?) to the most trivial (the license plate of the car at a stoplight). Furthermore, our memories also vary considerably in their precision. Parents, for instance, often know the perils of a fuzzy memory when shopping for a birthday gift for their child: remembering that their son wanted the G.I. Joe with Kung Fu Grip rather than the regular G.I. Joe could make an enormous difference in how well the gift is received. Thus, the “fuzziness” of our memory can often be just as important in our daily lives as being able to remember lots and lots of information in the first place.
Parallels today announced the availability of version 4.0 of Parallels Desktop for Mac, its market-leading product that currently enables more than 1.5 million users to run Windows, Linux and other operating systems side-by-side with Mac OS X. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Nov 2008 | 8:00 am
If you thought that federal regulators were upset at Comcast’s throttling of BitTorrent, wait until they start scrutinizing what wireless providers are doing. Comcast’s offense was merely to slow or abort some BitTorrent transfers. AT&T Wireless goes much further and flatly bans all “peer-to-peer file sharing” and “downloading movies.” Verizon Wireless’ terms of service also single out P2P applications.
In February 2007, a friend called Marc Andreessen, a founder of Netscape and a board member of Facebook, and asked if he wanted to meet with a man with an idea that sounded preposterous on its face. Always game for something new, Mr. Andreessen headed to the San Francisco airport late one night to hear the guy out. A junior member of a large and powerful organization with a thin, but impressive, résumé, he was about to take on far more powerful forces in a battle for leadership.
Well, it's not like electing Obama, but it's still pretty cool: a Linden-sponsored contest awarding $10K to a project in Second Life "that also achieves tangible, compelling results outside of Second Life",... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 7:56 am
Scientist John Hart created a remix of Shepard Fairey's Obama poster from 150 million carbon nanotubes, each of which measured tens of thousands of times smaller than a human hair. That sure is a lot... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 7:52 am
Scientist John Hart created a remix of Shepard Fairey's Obama poster from 150 million carbon nanotubes, each of which measured tens of thousands of times smaller than a human hair. That sure is a lot of tiny Obamas. Snip:
Even then, the finished product is only half a millimetre in diameter and almost indistinguishable from any other garden variety micro dot - unless you happen to be looking at it through a microscope.
The magnification reveals tiny, three dimensional "carvings" of the now ubiquitous polarised image of the president-elect originally created by street artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey.
The "Nanobamas" were created by a team of researchers led by Hart, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan.
oddRaisin writes "After recently sleeping through a page for work, I decided to change my paging device from my BlackBerry (which is quiet and has a pathetic vibrate mode) to an actual pager. After looking at the websites of Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, I'm left scratching my head and wondering where all the pagers went. I can't find them or any mention of them. Pagers of yore offered some great features that reflected the serious nature of being paged. They were loud. They had good vibrate modes. They continued to alert after a page until you acknowledged them. I didn't have to differentiate between a text from a friend and a page from work. Now that pagers seem to have become passé, what are other people doing to fill this niche? Are some phones better pagers than others? Are there still paging service providers out there?"
Stephen Shankland reviews voice-controlled search product, Yahoo's OneSearch with Voice on News.com. ... The best thing about the service, far and away, is that it frees you from your phone's keyboard... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Nov 2008 | 7:20 am
Navigon keeps pumping out better and move advanced GPSs every time they announce a new one. This one, the 8100T, is no exception as one of its main features is Navigon’s patented Panorama View 3D technology - more on that in a moment.
First, let’s begin with some other specs of the 8100T. It comes with a nice sized 4.8-inch touch screen, free real-time traffic updates, voice destination entry, Reality View Pro, and Bluetooth connectivity. It also comes with new and more advanced software, which allows the driver to choose their destination in a few easy steps.
Other main features include Lane Assistant Pro, Fast Destination Entry, Advanced Text-to-Speech, Exit Guide (tells the driver when exits are coming up with POIs they specify such as restaurants, DirectHelp, Speed Assistant, Multi-Destination planning, and Zagat Ratings and Reviews). This GPS shows you restaurants in the area and provides the Zagat rating and reviews of nearly 27,000 locations including restaurants, hotels, nightclubs, attractions, and other POIs.
Now, there is the Panorama View 3D technology. Basically, it displays the surrounding area all in 3D, including actual digital elevations and life-like terrains; all made possible by an integrated graphics accelerator as well as pictures taken by NASA satellites.
Michael Roach, Navigon’s President of North and South America, had this to say about their latest GPS:
“The NAVIGON 8100T raises the bar on innovation and design in the PND category. Once again, NAVIGON is at the forefront of market innovation by introducing real
3D environment views to the market with Panorama View 3D.”
The 8100T is set to be available later this month for $599. If you want to purchase the optional 12 map updates over 3 years, that will cost you an additional $79.99. I think this new Navigon GPS would make a great gift for anyone looking for a quality, high-end GPS. Thankfully, it’s available for the holiday season.
PMP (personal media players) are becoming increasingly popular for their versatility and array of features, but less so for their often over exuberant price tag. So when the new Mintpad from mintpass was unveiled (after a long enough delay for us to wonder where it had gone) for a reported price of around $160 people were instantly interested.
Not only does the price tag attract attention, but the interesting shape and design also draws eyes. Looking like a modern electronic version of a Post-it, it it operated by stylus which instantly creates attractions and problems. But beside that, on the physical side it is incredibly competitive, with a small sleek design that looks suspiciously like a blend between the Nintendo DS and a square Apple iPod Touch.
Features wise it is packed full of them, which considering the small size and price, is surprising. It (obviously) plays various music and video files as well as pictures; it is also Wi-Fi enabled, which means you can use the inbuilt chat function as well as the blog and Internet equivalents.
A couple of problems here though: the chat can only be used with other Mintpad users, a number which will probably be very small. Regarding the Internet, not only do you have the normal Wi-Fi Internet problems, but also the QVGA sub 3” screen is inadequate for surfing longer than about 5 minutes.
It also has a notes function (not surprising considering what it looks like) and a little camera with 1.3 megapixels as well as a small microphone and speaker… better than the iPod touch in that respect. For the more practical of you, a 30 hour battery life for music should satisfy, although only 5 hours for videos isn’t as good; also it has a 4GB hard drive with a microSD slot supporting up to 8GB.
In conclusion it looks pretty awesome, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it… and that is the problem. It is currently only available in Korea and there is no news whatsoever as to when it will be crossing the Pacific, never mind the Atlantic, so don’t hold your breath. But apart from that? I want!
Austin, Texas based HomeAway, a vacation home rental service, has raised a $250 million round of financing. This comes on top of $209 million previously raised over two rounds.
The new financing was led by Technology Crossover Ventures, with existing investors IVP and Redpoint Ventures participating as well. The financing is the largest minority investment of a U.S. Internet company in the last eight years, according to Venture Source.
The pre-money valuation was around $1.15 billion, say a couple of sources, and at least $50 million of the round went off the table to earlier investors. The company was founded in 2005 and has grown primarily through acquisitions: They’ve acquired at least eleven vacation home rental sites, including VRBO, VacationRentals.com, Abritel.fr and OwnersDirect.co.uk.
The company has revenues of around $150 million and $50 million in ebitda. In addition to cashing out some of the investors, our guess is that the additional funding will likely be used for further acquisitions.
It’s also clear that the round was seriously overvalued. Ebay was rumored to have mulled over an acquisition earlier this year at $1.5 billion, but it never came through with a firm offer. It’s not clear who else could be a buyer at this valuation. Also, since HomeAway has acquired just about everyone in the market, there’s little room for additional growth via acquisitions. 20x ebitda is a public company valuation for a company with real growth potential. Our guess is these new investors may take a bath.
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Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will take the CEO job at a music discovery site called Playlist, a move that had been speculated last week, after he did not end up taking another position as head of MySpace Music.
Van Natta’s arrival at Playlist was not the only news for the Palo Alto, Ca.-based start-up–former AOL exec Bob Pittman’s Pilot Investment Group is also investing an undisclosed amount of money in Playlist. Pittman will also join its board.
Playlist has previously raised several million dollars, said sources, but the new funding is many times that, to total about $18 to $20 million.
He has talked to a wide range of companies, sources said, including Microsoft (MSFT) and a range of start-ups, as well as with MySpace, which is owned by News Corp. (NWS). (News Corp. also owns this site).
Those talks between Van Natta and MySpace to run its new music initiative did not pan out for a variety of reasons.
But he has long expressed a desire to become a CEO of a company, rather than just head to another executive job within a larger company, so the move to run a start-up is not a surprise.
In an interview this afternoon, Van Natta told me he got every intrigued by the possibilities at Project Playlist, which was the first iteration of the start-up and in which he is an investor, due to its viral growth.
And, indeed, Playlist has grown quickly to become one of the larger music communities on the Web, claiming that more than 38 million music fans monthly, sharing playlists via its Web site and also widely distributed embeddable widgets. The site has tens of millions of daily page views, according to surveys.
To get to those big-scale numbers, Playlist essentially has offered users a giant linking service for music, not unlike Google (GOOG) does all information, pointing users to promotional, free and sometimes illegal music and music video tracks all over the Web.
Those links to illegal music has resulted in a lawsuit aimed at Playlist from the music industry, sources said, a sadly typical experience of many online music services.
The usual tactic for the music giants: Sue first and shakedown later.
Under Van Natta, I would guess, Playlist is likely to reach out to music companies and strike deals.
The company also needs to settle on its main business plan, which appears to me to have been less important than its explosive growth.
Playlist currently does have some small amount of advertising on the site, and seems to be making most of its scratch from sending leads to ringtone sellers.
Van Natta did not want to reveal specific strategies for Playlist going forward, only noting the opportunity is large.
“Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta. “And the company that does the best job of taking advantage of that is really going to be huge.”
That said, there have been a lot of music-aimed efforts like Playlist in the music space, with a lot of different business plans and varying degrees of success, ranging from the Apple (AAPL) behemoth iTunes site, which sells single songs, to the CBS (CBS) music service, Last.fm, which relies more on advertising revenues.
Other contenders in the space include the Rhapsody subscription service from RealNetworks (RNWK), music discovery service iLike and many others. MySpace has also waded deeply into the music space, and Facebook is also reportedly weighing its own service.
Van Natta was one of Facebook’s earliest and most prominent execs, serving in jobs like COO and also Chief Revenue Officer while there.
He came to Facebook in the fall of 2005, after a stint as VP of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon and was part of the founding team of A9, the Amazon search company.
“I am excited to be building a company again,” said Van Natta, who has taken many months off since he left Facebook in February.
Opponents of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository said they're hopeful President-elect Barack Obama will put an end to the project. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Nov 2008 | 5:00 am
1856: Englishman Henry Bessemer receives a U.S. patent for a new steel-making process that revolutionizes the industry.
The Bessemer converter was a squat, ugly, clay-lined crucible that simplified the problem of removing impurities — excess manganese and carbon, mostly — from pig iron through the process of oxidation. Once the impurities were removed, either as gas or as solid slag, the properties of the molten steel were bolstered using certain alloys, then poured into molds and given shape.
Depending on the size of the converter, as much as 30 tons of molten iron could be processed in one go. Air was blown into the converter through a number of small channels and forced through the liquid to remove the impurities.
The Bessemer process, which could take as little as 30 minutes to complete, resulted in better quality steel that could be mass-produced. This made steel a viable (read: cheaper) building material and it soon became the standard in heavy construction projects, like skyscrapers and bridges.
The first Bessemer steel mill in the United States opened outside of Detroit in 1855, a year before the U.S. patent was issued. As a Great Lakes port city, and given its proximity to the fertile iron-ore-producing fields in the upper Midwest, Detroit became an early steel-producing town.
Bessemer, meanwhile, moved his mill operations to Sheffield in England's industrial Midlands, which became the British equivalent of Germany's Essen, seat of the Krupp steel dynasty.
Bessemer wasn't alone in working on this process. In fact, an American, William Kelly, developed a similar oxidation technique a few years earlier. He held a patent but was forced through bankruptcy to eventually sell it to Bessemer.
The Bessemer process was used into the 1960s, when it was finally replaced by newer technologies, including the Linz-Donawitz process.
Cowpoolingv. Teaming up with neighbors to buy a whole cow from a local farm. It's then divvied up as T-bones and sirloins butchered to order. The practice is fashionable with urban locavores who want to eschew feedlot-raised, hormone-laced, corn-stuffed meat.
Tweetupsn. pl. Meetups of microbloggers who track one another on Twitter. Most are spontaneously Twittered gatherings of actual friends, but mixers of strangers have become increasingly popular.
Unbibiumn.Superheavy element 122, which chemists claim to have found in a sample of thorium. If confirmed, its name would become permanent and the periodic table would expand past 118. In nature, unbibium — potentially the heaviest element — would have a half-life of more than 100 million years.
Dark Tradingv. Buying and selling stock outside of public view in pools set up by investment banks such as UBS and Goldman Sachs. The practice allows clients to exchange stock at high volume without moving the market significantly.
Firefighters are known for their bravery (and their popularity with the ladies). But geek cred? Not so much. Brian Humphrey is trying to change that. From a decommissioned bomb shelter four stories beneath Los Angeles City Hall, this 23-year veteran is single-handedly hauling the city's fire department into the Web 2.0 era. He has about 80 projects in the works—involving everything from Twitter to BlogTalkRadio—that will not only help broadcast urgent information to the public but also gather crucial intel to assist first responders on the ground.
"Short of motorized fire apparatuses, this technology is the best thing that's happened to our department in 122 years," Humphrey says. "It holds more potential to save lives than any other civic tool." Nice, but can it rescue kitties from trees?
Rebooting the Firefighting Arsenal
Twitter
Humphrey monitors for keywords like "LA" and "fire." During 2007's 800-acre burn in Griffith Park, he got real-time reports on flare-ups and wind directions from Twitterers on the ground, then relayed the information to commanders battling the flames.
Yahoo Pipes
This data-aggregation app lets Humphrey keep tabs on crises elsewhere. (In September, he knew about a poison gas scare in the Toronto subway as it happened.) Implication: If terrorists launch a multicity attack, he'll know in seconds. A head start could save countless lives.
Mobile Alerts
One of Humphrey's projects-in-progress is a Web site where users can plug in addresses—like home and the kids' school. Whenever an incident is reported at any of those sites, the system will beam a notification to the subscriber's cell phone or PDA.
Map Mashups
The LAFD already charts major fires with Google Maps. Humphrey wants more: images that blend street and satellite views with USGS topo data to supply firefighters with critical info, like the location of steep terrain or other hazards (dynamite factory, two blocks north!).
During the nine years of Wired's Return to Sender contest, we received some weird stuff in the mail: broken hard drives, a 5-foot felt "long tail," a wooden DNA helix, and an 8-track player containing an Engelbert Humperdinck tape. The rules called for readers to send us any mailable object; if it came in an envelope or a box, it was disqualified. Winners had a photo of their entry published and received—drumroll, please—a Wired T-shirt. Oh, and immortal glory.
The most prolific contestant was Barry Wood, a 50-year-old government GIS specialist from Vero Beach, Florida. Wood had actually been running his own contest for years, encouraging friends to flummox the Postal Service by sending unusual items he called "permissible objects of postability," or POOP. Once he discovered Wired's contest, he sent us a dozen pieces of POOP, including a mailbox, a conch shell (both winners), buoys, and a pink plastic flamingo. He shelled out nearly $30 to mail an inflatable palm tree, which turned up still inflated. (Sadly, it didn't stay that way, as you can see in the archival video, circa 2006, embedded below.) One year he spent $4,000 on POOP, "but I really didn't care," Wood says, "because sending POOP is my hobby, I mean obsession."
Well, they took their time, but the popular music site Project Playlist will make two announcements tomorrow: They’ve hired former Facebook Chief Revenue Officer Owen Van Natta as CEO, and they’ve closed a new round of financing.
We’ve been digging on this story for weeks, but the company wouldn’t confirm the rumors and actually asked one of our writers to leave their office when we sent him over there to figure out what was going on. Apparently nothing was final then.
The size of the new financing isn’t being disclosed, although we’ve heard that it was just shy of $20 million. Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group led the round. The company had previously raised around $3 million.
What will Project Playlist use the money for? Litigation settlement, to start, is our guess. They were sued by the RIAA earlier this year, and the only way to clean up those situations is with cash and equity to the labels. We’ve also heard that they’re considering an acquisition of iMeem, which also lets users create and embed playlists. That litigation is also the probable reason why Playlist won’t disclose the size of the financing - it simply tells the RIAA how big the pie is.
Whatever happens, the site continues to grow rapidly. 9.3 million unique monthly visitors generate a whopping 822 million monthly page views according to Comscore, and the site claims nearly 40 million users.
Van Natta, who left Facebook in February to look for a company to lead, finally found his CEO job. He was an early investor in Project Playlist, and was involved in a sale attempt to MySpace that may have gotten tangled in his simultaneous discussions to become the CEO of MySpace Music.
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CaptSolo writes "The EU Council refuses to release secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement documents, stating that disclosure of this information could impede the proper conduct of the negotiations, would weaken the position of the EU in these negotiations, and might affect relations with the third parties concerned. The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure requested these documents last week. FFII's response questions ACTA's secrecy saying: 'The argument that public transparency regarding 'trade negotiations' can be ignored if it would weaken the EU's negotiation position is particularly painful. At which point exactly do negotiations over trade issues become more important than democratic law making? At 200 million euro? At 500 million euro? At 1 billion euro? What is the price of our democracy?'"
BigBookSearch, an excellent little tool I just found on Reddit is pretty limited and obviously Amazon-powered, but it works very well. As you can see above, it basically just retrieves your query results from everything Amazon’s got, including, to my delight, stuff from third-party sellers like used book stores. I found an edition of Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles I’ve been looking for for ages. Yeah, it doesn’t do much more than parrot results, but honestly do you really want to wade through all the junk Amazon displays every time you want to price-check a DVD? There’s like five screens of dynamically generated content! Use this thing instead.
Plus, can’t you see this thing working perfectly on your iPhone or G1 or whatever? Text is minimal, the interface is straightforward and touch-friendly, and it’s got all the assets it needs in the form of Amazon’s hi-res cover art. Could be awesome, although I’d like to see one that services multiple sites.
Google just made the world a slightly smaller place today. They’ve added a feature to their highly popular Google Reader that will auto-translate any site with a feed to your native tongue. Not only that, it’s very easy to use and it works really well.
Just subscribe to a blog or other feed like normal, then pull down the feed settings menu on the right and choose “Translate into my language.” The text is instantly translated.
We tested it with TechCrunch Japan, and the translations came through well enough to understand. Definite winner.
Tell us your favorite foreign language tech blogs in the comments so we can subscribe immediately!
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No matter how you slice it, getting to the airport is a painful and often costly endeavor. Public transportation may be the “greenest” and least expensive option, but it often involves lengthy waits, cramped shuttles, and the possibility of a missed connection that could kill your trip before it even gets started. Group vans will usually pick you up at your doorstep, but they’ll swing by a half dozen other stops on the way. And while door-to-door taxi service may eliminate most of these hassles, you’ll be paying a high price for the convenience.
Hitchsters helps you reap the benefits of door-to-door transportation for only half the cost by helping travelers who live close to eachother split a cab. The site launched two years ago with initial support in New York City, and is finally making its way to the San Francisco Bay Area, along with a host of improvements that will transform the site from a purely altruistic meeting place to a viable business.
In the past, Hitchsters was a very barebones service - you could see a list of possible matches in your area, but it was up to you to call your match and arrange for a cab. The site has now partnered with a number of limousine companies who are willing to offer Hitchsters customers rates similar to what they’d get from cabs, and will automatically pair up matches depending on the distances between their addresses (there’s no longer a need to call your match). And because the rides are booked through the limo service, you can also pay online (the fare includes tax, tip, and tolls) so there isn’t an awkward exchange of cash. Hitchsters generates revenue by taking a small portion of the price, which is typically still significantly smaller than what you’d pay for your own cab (and much less than for your own limo).
Unfortunately the system is still a little iffy for the ride home. Hitchsters hasn’t set up any deals with limo services for the trip from the airport so you’ll need to hail your own cab (this shouldn’t be too difficult as taxis are often swarming airport terminals). But a bigger problem will lie in finding someone to ride home with - Hitchsters tries to work around issues with flight delays by only pairing you with people on your flight, but unless the system becomes very popular or you get lucky, you probably won’t find someone on your flight heading to the same region. In the future the site will try to work around this issue by launching a centralized database that can pair travelers that arrive at the same time, even if they were on a different flight.
Provided users can get used to the fact that they’ll be sharing a cab with a stranger (simple solution: don’t get in if they look creepy), Hitchsters seems to have a great idea and a reliable business model. In the future the site will be adding support for Boston and Washington, DC, and is considering expanding beyond airport travel (imagine being able to share a ride to a ball game).
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Popular science just awarded Pacemaker, a mp3 player that turns anyone into a DJ, as a “Best of what’s new” winner in the Gadgets category. The device is part of a larger platform that encompasses a user community which provides legal uploading and mix sharing as well as a desktop application.
The Pacemaker at its gadget-y heart is a 120GB mp3 player with display and touchpad. Various inputs allow some crazy stuff, all in a very mobile little unit. The device features multifunction buttons that allow different inputs on the touchpad. I am certain it is easier to use than the diagram which outlines all the functionality shows.
To have the Pacemaker recognized as a breakthrough innovation by a presitgous publication, such as Popular Science, is a tremendous honor,” said Ola Sars, Tonium’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “Our goal from day one was to create a platform that gives everyone the ability to interact with their music and share it with anyone who wants to listen. With the help of forward thinking media outlets like Pop Sci, we hope to inspire music fans around the globe to share their musical tastes with world.”
The typo was theirs, in case you are keep score.
The Pacemaker is not cheap, currently offered for $876. No one ever said being the cool DJ was cheap.
CrunchGear will be in Stockholm, Sweden this week and would love to meet some CG/TC fans out there. Drop me a line at john@crunchgear.com if you’re in town and would like to share a bit of “bloort” or “flargloa,” the Swedish national drinks.
I think we’ll meet at about 7pm on Weds, November 12 for dinner at Imperiet. Please contact me if you’d like to come along so I can make reservations if I need to. Thanks to Wille for helping find a place. This is a very informal meeting - just some meatballs and drinks - but there will be a more formal and fun TechCrunch meeting in Stockholm before the end of the year led by Mike Butcher.
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Friendfeed co-founder Bret Taylor joined the Gillmor Gang this afternoon to discuss Friendfeed's XMPP stream of its Home and Friends List feeds. I sat with Taylor at the Friendfeed offices and Marc Canter joined intermittently by phone. Canter took the opportunity to vent about Friendfeed's responsibility to exert leadership in the XMPP space before his line unexpectedly went dead.
The video below joins the conversation just before that point, and continues with discussion of Friendfeed's new direction and role with the release of the realtime technologies. While Taylor acknowledged the possible threat to some companies (read Twitter) of providing access to the full firehose of data, he indicated building confidence in allowing businesses on top of the Friendfeed APIs was more valuable for Friendfeed.
Epic Games president Michael Capps did an interview recently with GamesIndustry, and he had some interesting things to say about the future of downloadable content, and how it will affect the retail games market. He also discussed the trend toward social gaming, and Epic's plans in that regard. Quoting: "I'm not sure how big it is here [in Europe], but the secondary market is a huge issue in the United States. Our primary retailer makes the majority of its money off of secondary sales, and so you're starting to see games taking proactive steps toward that by... if you buy the retail version you get the unlock code. I've talked to some developers who are saying 'If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free.' We don't make any money when someone rents it, and we don't make any money when someone buys it used — way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it."
FROM GAMERTELL - It’s hard to play games on your PC while preforming other high-memory tasks, so Symantic created Norton AntiVirus 2009 Gaming Edition to allow you to protect your system without interrupting game play…
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Current has, in its Naked China series of videos, this interesting but scary breakdown of just what happens to all those old PCs, printers, and DVD players that are obsoleted every year and binned.
In a place like China, where manual labor is their most abundant natural resource, it isn’t hard to turn a profit from tearing down imported e-waste and selling the valuable bits. The thing is, so much of e-waste is toxic or otherwise dangerous (not to mention the poor conditions in general for laborers) that the towns where it is the chief industry are seriously troubled. Take a few minutes while scarfing down your daily ramen to get a close look at where our PCs go to die.
AP - Wireless service provider Virgin Mobile USA Inc. posted higher-than-expected third-quarter earnings Monday despite adding fewer customers to its rolls than in the same period last year. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Nov 2008 | 2:19 am
AP - How fast is the new supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory? If everyone in the world performed one mathematical calculation per second, it would take 650 years to do what this machine can do in one day.
A small company on Monday released an iPhone app that caters to designers and the fashion-savvy.
ColorMatch, a $5 app develped by Raisix, features a slider and palette enabling users to display the color they have in mind. Choosing a color displays five matching, complementary colors. The app could speed up the process of picking out your outfit, choosing matching furniture, tweaking the colors on your web site and so on.
Kind of niche, I know, but it could probably even help someone like me use some more imagination when picking out outfits. My current thought process is, "Do I wear the black jacket or the grey jacket? Hum. Feels like a black jacket day." And that's it. About 3 seconds. Maybe I'll download the app to inspire me to expand my wardrobe to include more exciting colors, like yellow, orange, or neon brown. Download Link [iTunes]
Conservation groups say proposed rules for governing Colorado's eight national forests expose too much land to roads and development. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Nov 2008 | 2:00 am
Feel distress (mental or physical) when disconnected?
Have trouble concentrating or sleeping?
Yes? Good! That means you’re part of this modern world in which people connect via their electronic devices. Wait, no. Bad! It means that according to Beijing’s Military General Hospital, you have a treatable illness and you need therapy.
Forgive me, but having worked in this field for some time (addiction treatment and psychology, not “the internet”), I can say that their diagnostic guidelines are wide enough to park a cruise ship in. For example, if you have an iPhone, doesn’t that mean you’re “online” as long as you have a signal? Is gaming different from checking sites or email, and how so? What if you read you local paper, online, on a laptop in a cafe? Any diagnosis would be questionable and any treatment would be incredibly impersonal and ineffective. Nice try, China!
[via Lifehacker and Tech Radar]
Most will agree that choosing to use someone as hard to understand as Ozzy Osbourne to promote a cell phone may not be the best idea. When promoting a messaging-friendly handset it suddenly seems to make quite a bit more sense.
Enter the latest promotional campaign for the messaging-friendly Samsung Propel. A newly released and yet simple commercial showing off Ozzy trying to get around and not being understood, but thanks to his Propel he is able to send nice (and surprisingly fast) text messages to get his message across.
The Propel has recently been announced for AT&T and offers a “streamlined” text message, email and IM experience using a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. After some mail-in-rebates, you can get the Propel for just $79.99, which also comes along with a two-year agreement.
A funny commercial to watch, albeit slightly sad in the fact that Ozzy has become so well known for his ability to speak and not be understood.
Typically when the word "educational" is slapped in front of a gadget, it's relatively inexpensive. Apparently French company Lexibook missed that memo. Its 8-inch educational netbook costs 299 Euros ($381) -- and there are plenty of far more capable netbooks that cost less.
It's unclear what makes the Lexibook "educational," other than the fact it's bright orange. The specifications aren't all that impressive:
Operating System: Windows CE 5.0
Proccesor: 400MHz Samsung CPU
Memory: 64MB of RAM
Storage: 2GB solid state drive,
Connections: Ethernet, two USB ports
Multimedia: SD card reader
Mic input and headphone output
Battery: 1500mAh battery (up to 3 hours of use)
What makes this netbook more educational than, say, a $350, Atom-powered MSI Wind? Beats me. But hey -- it's bright orange! Kids love orange, yeah? Orange you itching to buy one? (OK, I know -- that was bad.)
Just a few years after Minority Report hit theaters, we're beginning to see some of the film's crazy sci-fi tech appear in our reality. Here's a list of six.
Just a few years after Minority Report hit theaters, we're beginning to see some of the film's crazy sci-fi tech appear in our reality. Here's a list of six.
The future-predicting technology that drives the premise of the sci-fi blockbuster Minority Report is silly at best.
And when the film hit theaters in 2002, the gadgets seemed pretty
unrealistic, too. But eerily enough the slew of dreamed-up gizmos showed off
throughout John Anderton's daring escape are hardening into reality.
No, our government hasn't yet imprisoned a group of nude psychics to combat crime. But some of the latest over-the-top gadgets are making director Steven Spielberg and writer
Philip Dickappear to be fortunetellers themselves — of the
technology world, at least. Here's a list of some disturbing, or just
plain cool tech teased in the movie that'll be hitting home in one form or another.
Gesture-based Computer Interfaces
A
visually awesome, albeit seemingly impractical piece of tech that the film highlights is the 3-D-hologram computer interface that Anderton
controls with graceful hand gestures. Mgestyk Technologies is playing off the same idea
with its gesture-based interface, which consists of a 3-D camera and
software that translates hand movements into commands to control
computer applications and games. From looking at the demo video, the
interface appears to be a bit laggy, but progress is progress. Flexible Displays
Spielberg and Dick clearly aren't optimistic about the future of print, because in Report
the medium is entirely replaced with thin, flexible electronic displays. Even
better, the displays automatically update with the latest news
articles, presumably from futuristic RSS feeds. Thanks to the United
States' tendency to dump billions of dollars into military funding, we'll see a gadget just like that in about three years.
Composed of specialty polymer and thin stainless-steel substrates, the
screens will display characters with the electrophoretic ink (E-Ink)
technology seen on today's e-book readers (e.g., the Amazon Kindle).
Hopefully by then E-Ink will achieve color.
3-D Holograms
Probably
the cheesiest scene in Report is the one where Anderton is watching a
home video of his wife and pre-kidnapped son. But more interestingly,
the video is projected as a 3-D hologram, making it appear as if his
wife and son are standing right in front of him. CNN tried to recreate that effect
with its recent election coverage. Granted, the anchors and reporters
being videotaped weren't actually looking at holograms. Instead, they
were looking at monitors, and CNN used 44 small, fixed cameras and 20
computers to insert virtual holograms with real-time effects
processing. Fake holograms! Wait, that's kind of redundant, isn't it?
Identity-Detecting Advertisement Cameras
Surely you recall the scene in Report
when Anderton is trying to run from the PoPo — but cameras keep
scanning his eyeballs, only to play targeted advertisements based on
his identity. A new display from NEC is creepily similar. Announced in July and premiering in Japan,
NEC's display utilizes a miniature camera to detect
a person's age and sex so it can play specific commercials aimed at a
shopper's demographic. Don't get a black-market surgeon to remove your
eyeballs just yet: Playing ads on a TV isn't nearly as invasive as the
ubiquitous holograms in Report. But it's the same intrusive, identity-probing idea.
Robot Scouts
You would think the police in Report go a bit too far when they deploy creepy, crawly spiderbots to chase down Anderton. But there's no limit line for the U.S. military, which has a pretty similar idea: Robot teams that hunt down culprits, according to a story in The Register. The "Multi-Robot Support System" will consist of software and sensors to detect human presence indoors. A human operator will be able to control a team of three to five robots that will weigh up to 220 pounds each. Hum. that's actually a lot more terrifying than the scout bots in Report.
We couldn't find a picture of the Pentagon's robot scouts for the simple reason that they don't exist yet. So, until they do, you'll have to pretend the goofy, costumed nerds above are actually a small swarm of terrifying, human-hunting automatons.
Predicting Mistakes
We're nowhere near figuring out how to see into the future, but neuroscientists are devising a method to predict mistakes. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study where researchers recorded neurological patterns preceding careless errors. This could lead to a biofeedback system that helps us catch mistakes before making them. That's certainly more civil than throwing a group of test subjects into a tub and plugging them in.
Treehugger really likes those ‘lectric bikes. We had that awesome-looking GPR-S the other day, but these are a little less… well, production. There’s DIY, there’s concept, and there is of course the spine-snappingly quick Killacycle (cool video there, wait till 1:15).
Even though they’re not buyable right now, these things are where innovation comes from, and these home-fried engineers are the talent that will be building the electric vehicle revolution of the next decade. Check out their creations here.
secmartin writes "The popular virus scanner AVG released an update yesterday that caused their software to mark user32.dll as a virus. Since this is a rather critical file, AVG's suggestion to remove it caused problems for users around the world who are now advised to restore the file through the Windows Recovery Console. AVG just posted an update about this (FAQ item 1574) in the support section of their site. Their forums are full of complaints."
The night after Obama’s election was a time for celebration for most people (although obviously not John McCain) with parties, drinking and general fun. However for one British journalist the night became a bit of a nightmare when he became an overnight star on YouTube.
Sitting in a corner on a laptop he is approached by a cameraman, who asks him a few questions about himself and the election. Adam Smith (the journalist) is obviously quite drunk, but talks fairly coherently about why he is there and who he works for (Birmingham Mail in England), but then it all went wrong. When asked about an article he is writing at the moment he says that he has copied and pasted it off the BBC website, and then goes on to resign from his job.
The next morning he got a shock when he realized that the video had been put on the Internet with two comments that he did not want to make on there. Admittedly he strongly denies the plagiarism (although this does highlight the problem) but his resignation, stated whilst in a drunken stupor, still stands. This is not surprising when you consider that he ended his monologue with “F*** you, I’m doing what I want to.”
This was a blow for him, as although he was part of a 60 man redundancy program, he now may not receive a pay out as it was him who resigned, and he has the wondrous YouTube to blame. But although this is an interesting story it plays a bigger part in identifying the society that we live in today, in which anything you say can be broadcast around the world in seconds.
Is this an invasion of our privacy? Is it bad that we can’t say anything behind peoples backs with out them knowing? Is there any way to reverse this trend? Almost inevitably not, as so many people now have the ability to take video on there person all the time, but surely this is a bad thing? It would seem you can no longer get drunk in the fear that is your rant at your boss will be viewable on the Internet the next day.
Or perhaps it is good that we are being held account to our drunken manners and stupid statements? I cannot answer these almost philosophical questions, but is definitely a point that need to be made. For Adam at least he plans to set up his own magazine, but many others may not have plans to fall back on, and it is possible that more famous scalps may be taken in this growing trend.
I haven’t run into any surfers with iPhones, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. Today, Oakley (the guys that make those hideous Thump sunglasses) and Surfline announced their free app: Surf Report.
There’s only one other surf-forecasting app, GreenRoom Surf Forecasts, available today and it costs $2.99. It’s limited to spots in California, but you can get a seven-day forecast whereas Surf Report only provides up to three days. However, Oakley’s app is free and you can’t beat that. Read the rest at MobileCrunch
A new study found that of 320 samples of meat and fries from fast food restaurants, just 12 weren't based on corn, in the form of oil or livestock feed.
October 2008 brought us the exceptionalness of Joe the Plumber, the continued deterioration of the world economy, and the Philadelphia Phillies' first championship in 25 years (not too mention the first ever World Handwashing Day!). But plenty of gadgety news also made their mark and we were right in the middle of it.
The top stories we covered included the release of Apple's new Macbooks, the psychological implications of gadget-candidate assimilation, and the latest on the netbook revolution.
Finally, October was the month when we finally (and proudly) launched the Product Reviews website, after months of hard work by teams of good people from New York to San Francisco. Well done everyone!
As always, all the diggs, reddit points, and excessively insulting (or lovable) comments have been taken into account into the making of this list. Please remember to let us know in the comments about any stories that you'd like us to cover.
The Awesome Thing We Spent The Most Time Working On
I haven’t run into any surfers with iPhones, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. Today, Oakley (the guys that make those hideous Thump sunglasses) and Surfline announced their free app: Surf Report.
There’s only one other surf-forecasting app, GreenRoom Surf Forecasts, available today and it costs $2.99. It’s limited to spots in California, but you can get a seven-day forecast whereas Surf Report only provides up to three days. However, Oakley’s app is free and you can’t beat that.
With Surfline powering the Oakley app, surfers now have access to spots all over the world with vital stats like air temp, water temp, tide charts, swell breakdown, wind, sunrise/sunset and a brief synopsis for each spot. Projected conditions and weather are provided for the following three days as well. Using the GPS coordinates of your iPhone you can see what’s going on at a handful of spots near you that are within a certain distance that you set.
Driving directions are also included via map links in case you’re going somewhere new. All of the beaches are well known, so the few hidden spots that are left in the world won’t be revealed, but this will surely bring on another wave of iPhone toting kooks to the already crowded lineups.
A community tab launches news surrounding Oakley team riders, profiles, photos and videos for those interested.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Google has patched an embarrassing bug in T-Mobile's G1 phone that lets users type any word and have that executed with with root user privileges. For instance, just texting the word reboot would cause the phone to reboot.
Google has patched an embarrassing bug in T-Mobile's G1 phone that lets users type any word and have that executed with with root user privileges. For instance, just texting the word reboot would cause the phone to reboot.
SpuriousLogic sends in a sad note from the BBC: "NASA says its Phoenix lander on the surface of Mars has gone silent and is almost certainly dead. Engineers have not heard from the craft since Sunday 2 November when it made a brief communication with Earth. Phoenix, which landed on the planet's northern plains in May, had been struggling in the increasing cold and dark of an advancing winter. The US space agency says it will continue to try to contact the craft but does not expect to hear from it."
Slate announces they're turning the site's The XX Factor blog for ladies into its own full-fledged, stand-alone "web magazine" for chicks called Double X. Between Elizabeth Spiers's impending "Maxim for women," Salon's Broadsheet, and Jezebel's caterwauling, in the coming months you won't be able to swing a stick online without hitting a vaginablog, it seems.
In the spirit of post-election adventure, Slate is starting to work on a new web magazine: Double X. A magazine by women but not just for women, Double X will spin out from our XX Factor blog, where we've started a conversation among women—about politics, sex, and culture—that both men and women enjoy listening in on. The new site will do all this and more. It will take the Slate and XX Factor sensibility and apply it to sexual politics, fashion, parenting, health, science, sex, friendship, work-life balance, and anything else you might talk about with your friends over coffee. We'll tackle subjects high and low with an approach that's unabashedly intellectual but not dry or condescending. The blog will be at the heart of the site, but we’ll also publish essays, reporting, and other features.
Also, they use the word "post-feminist." (Full disclosure: I'm a contributor to Slate's existing vaginablog.)
Mike Webb of ProPublica says, "I thought you guys might be curious about the changes to Obama’s Change.gov website which was supposed to describe how the president-elect would use technology to involve more people in government. They shut it down over the weekend, so we flagged it in a post (since then they responded that they’re “retooling” the site)."
Snip from the ProPublica post:
We noted Friday that President-elect Barack Obama’s transition Web site, Change.gov, included pages describing how he will use technology to increase public participation in government and provide more information to the public.
But sometime over the weekend, those pages went away. All that remains on the Agenda portion of the transition team’s site is a two-paragraph overview of what the agenda will include:
President-Elect Obama and Vice President-Elect Biden have developed innovative approaches to challenge the status quo in Washington and to bring about the kind of change America needs.
The principal priorities of the Obama Administration include: a plan to revive the economy, to fix our health care, education, and social security systems, to define a clear path to energy independence, to end the war in Iraq responsibly and finish our mission in Afghanistan, and to work with our allies to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, among many other domestic and foreign policy objectives.
If you go directly to the twopages we linked to last week, you get the message: "Not Found: The page you requested is not available right now." (Here are cached versions of thepages.)
Snapshots of some of the pages are on the site whitehouse2.org.
Obama’s ‘Agenda’ Disappears From Change.gov. Here's the campaign's response today. UPDATE: A few folks asked what I thought, and here's what I think: As noted in the previous BB post, the speed with which the website was launched was pretty impressive. Obama and his team may been taken over by space aliens or Dick Cheney laser mind control rays -- anything's possible. But I doubt that. And given how hard they've worked and how little time they've had since winning the election to pull together a transition plan, I am impressed that anything was published at all. I'm inclined to give them some room to get their act together. If backsliding follows, I'll be the among the first to blog about that, too.
At $800 the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 700 projector isn’t bad, but it’s not great either. It’s an entry-level projector so we’ll keep that in mind. The 700 can throw up a 270-inch image with a resolution of 720p and 2000:1 contrast ratio. The light output is 2000 lumens and life expectancy is estimated at 4000 hours in low light and 3000 hours in high light output mode. The white 700 weighs in at 11.5 pounds and comes with a mono 7W speaker, HDMI port, D-sub, S-video, composite, USB (A and B) and an SD card slot. If it had a tilt shift lens I’d be tempted, but I think I’ll pass.
A few weeks ago I was at the Burbank airport. The gift store carried Mexican jumping beans. I bought a couple of boxes for my kids.
I was as delighted with the jittery beans as my daughters were, but I was even more charmed by the informational card that came with the beans. The irresistible, off-kilter writing style of card's author reminds of Dr. Bronner's, with the added bonus of making sense.
Excerpts:
IT IS IMPORTANT TO KEEP CHILDREN OUT OF HARMS WAY. IN THE LAST 10 YEARS, I HAVE ONLY HEARD OF TWO INSTANCES OF CHILDREN SWALLOWING A MEXICAN JUMPING BEAN. ONE LADY CALLED BACK TO LET ME KNOW THAT THEY FOUND THE MISSING BEAN. IT IS MY BELIEF THAT THE STRONG ACID CONTENT OF THE STOMACH WILL KILL THE GERMS AND LARVA IN SHORT ORDER.
...
THE MEXICAN JUMPING BEAN IS UNDOUBTEDLY AMONG ONE OF OUR CREATOR’S
BEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS. IT UNDOUBTEDLY GIVES MORE PLEASURE AND
INTRIGUE FOR THE MONEY THAN ANY OTHER CREATION.
...
REGRETTABLY, THEY ARE DOOMED WHEN THEY LEAVE THEIR NATURAL HABITAT IN MEXICO. THERE ARE NO HOST PLANTS THAT WILL PERMIT THEM TO CONTINUE THEIR LIFE CYCLE AND THE ENVIRONMENT WILL KILL THEM FROM HEAT, DEHYDRATION, FREEZING. THE MOTH SHOULD BE PERMITTED TO FLY FREE IF THEY EMERGE FROM THE BEAN. A SCENIC TRIP AS IT WERE.
...
[Instructions for playing the Mexican Jumping Bean Game include the following legal advice:] If you wager, make it small amounts.
The Government doesn't like gambling unless they get a piece of the action.
The Motorola (MOT) Razr’s 12-quarter streak as the No. 1-ranked handset in the United States has finally been broken–by Apple, of all companies. According to a survey by NPD, the Razr V3 slipped to second place behind Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 3G in the third quarter, apparently a victim of its own outdated design.
“The displacement of the RAZR by the iPhone 3G represents a watershed shift in handset design from fashion to fashionable functionality,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD. “Four of the five best-selling handsets in the third quarter were optimized for messaging and other advanced Internet features.”
An interesting trend. Especially, since smartphones tend to be quite a bit pricier than their dumbphone counterparts. Indeed, AT&T (T), the iPhone’s exclusive carrier in the U.S., offers the device for $200 with a two-year contract, while it offers Motorola’s RAZR V3xx Platinum for $0.01.
Seems $200 beats free, or essentially free, even in the ugliest of economic times–as long as it’s emblazoned with an Apple logo.
Another week, another nonpick for the still-outstanding position to lead Microsoft’s digital business.
The company has been on the lookout for the person to lead its online efforts ever since the exec formerly in charge, Kevin Johnson, headed out in late July, after the Yahoo takeover bid failed.
At the time, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer promised a quick search for a Web leader the software giant has so sorely needed.
But, apparently, quick means not-so-quick at Redmond HQ, where Ballmer has had a few other things to deal with (like the vagaries of Windows Vista!). So, he has cast about for more than three months, both internally and externally, for the person who will turbocharge Microsoft’s Web efforts.
Sources said Ballmer continues to look for an external candidate to save the day, as he has been, preferring an outsider to give the division some spark.
And, while well-known Internet figures like former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig, former AOL head Jon Miller and former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta have all taken a pass, Ballmer is soldiering on.
New prospects include former Cisco exec and current Joost CEO Mike Volpi, sources said, with whom Ballmer is likely to be chitty-chatting next.
BoomTown likes that choice, given Volpi has both technical and deal-making skills, and he is someone well-liked in both media and Internet circles. In fact, Volpi has also been a favorite of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, who would also dearly love to snag the personable exec.
So it is not entirely clear that Volpi would leave at this moment.
Other possible outside digital execs with the right experience are few and far between.
If I was making a list, I would include CBS Digital kingpin Quincy Smith (who probably talks too quickly for Ballmer), as well as Google ad head Tim Armstrong, although both are also unlikely to move from where they are ensconced.
Thus, with so few good choices, it might be that Microsoft (MSFT)–as usual–turns inward.
But even that’s in question, given the prospects of the main internal candidate, Brian McAndrews, who came to Microsoft in its acquisition of aQuantive and runs its online advertising business, seem to have dimmed, sources said. But some caution that McAndrews is not out of the running yet.
He is waiting for the digital uber-boss to lead him, as well as McAndrews and also Satya Nadella, the SVP who heads engineering for Microsoft’s search, portal and advertising platform group.
For now, said one source, that appears to be Ballmer. “He’s going to be the digital chief,” joked one exec. “Until he finds someone he likes just as much.”
In any case, here is a recent interview I did with Volpi in London about Joost’s restart:
tom_guyette writes "ComputerWorld reports a federal judge has ordered former IBM executive Mark Papermaster, recently hired as Apple's vice president of hardware devices engineering, to stop working for Apple. The judge's ruling is based on a motion for preliminary injunction made by IBM, which states Papermaster's new job violates a non-compete agreement he signed in 2006. In response, Papermaster asserted to the court that 'Nothing about his new job will implicate any trade secrets from IBM.'"
The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman is open for business as usual following Hurricane Paloma, reported John Dravinski, general manager for the resort. The hotel incurred no damage and is fully operational. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 Nov 2008 | 11:00 pm
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The US Green Building Council (USGBC) awarded its highest level of recognition, LEED(R) Platinum certification, to the Conference Center at the newly re-opened TreePeople Center for Community Forestry. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 Nov 2008 | 11:00 pm
Puget Sound Energy today announced the utility placed an order for 22 wind turbine generators with Vestas on Nov. 7 for the proposed expansion of the utility's Wild Horse Wind and Solar Facility. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 Nov 2008 | 11:00 pm
Well would you look at this? Seems iRiver’s getting into the cell phone game – in Korea, at least. The maker of pretty-slick MP3 players does plenty of business over here, though, so it wouldn’t be a total shock to see one or more of the phones picked up by domestic carriers.
The first handset is set to hit the Korean market in March and will be available on the KTF network. According to Electronista, the phone will have a large touchscreen with handwriting recognition along with a Wi-Fi connection, but little else is known. Here’s to hoping that the finished version will be cooler-looking than it is in the above photo. iRiver makes some nice portables so it’ll be fun to see what it can do with a phone.
AFP - Hot French videogame maker Ubisoft announced Monday that it has bought Massive Entertainment, the Sweden-based studio behind popular strategy title "World In Conflict."
Review of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts for Xbox 360, a game in which you can create an infinite variety of wacky vehicles, then use them to play a game that isn't that much fun.
pisadinho writes "eWEEK's Chris Preimesberger explains how Sun Microsystems has completely discarded RAID volume management in its new Amber Road storage boxes, released today. Because it uses the Zettabyte File System, the Amber Roads have eliminated the use of RAID arrays, RAID controllers and volume management software — meaning that it's very fast and easy to use."
narramissic writes "Three years after the first clinic dedicated to Internet addiction opened in Beijing, Chinese doctors have now officially defined it as an ailment. Those afflicted with this ailment spend six or more hours a day online and exhibit at least one of the following symptoms: difficulty sleeping or concentrating, yearning to be online, irritation, and mental or physical distress. Do you meet the criteria? You're in good company: About 10 percent of China's 253 million Internet users exhibit some form of addiction to the medium, and 70 percent of those people are young men, an official Xinhua News Agency report said."
Image Caption: Parc National des Volcans, Rwanda. August 4, 2005. Gorilla Mother and Baby - for an infant gorilla, Mama is food, transport, and playground. Credit: by Sarel Kromer. Courtesy Wikipedia Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 Nov 2008 | 9:27 pm
Soren Kierkegaard writes "While reading the two and a half year old Slashdot post on Does Philosophy have a role in Computer Science, it occurred to me that over these past few years Philosophy has a more prominent role in Computer Science then ever before. Cognitive Science and Computer Ethics are more established disciplines in universities, and the numbers of philosophy graduates double majoring in computer science and information systems are climbing. Is a merger of Philosophy, a discipline steeped in history and intelligent thought, and Computer Science, a discipline that looks to the future, the best of both worlds?"
Reuters - U.S. business software maker VMware Inc has bought a small French company that specializes in virtualization software for mobile phones, which allows a single phone to run multiple operating systems. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 10 Nov 2008 | 8:53 pm
One of the top 50 inventions named by Time Magazine of 2008 is a forensic technique to find fingerprints on bullets.The technique was developed in Northamptonshire by Dr. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 Nov 2008 | 8:50 pm
Armenian and Greek monks duked it out at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
Dressed in the vestments of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian denominations, rival monks threw punches and anything they could lay their hands on.
The Greeks blamed the Armenians for not recognising their rights inside the holy site, while the Armenians said the Greeks had violated one of their traditional ceremonies.
Israeli policemen scuffle with an Armenian altar boy during a fight at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on 9 November2008
An Armenian clergyman said the Greek clergy had tried to place one of their monks inside the Edicule, an ancient structure which is said to encase the tomb of Jesus.
"What is happening here is a violation of status quo. The Greeks have tried so many times to put their monk inside the tomb but they don't have the right to when the Armenians are celebrating the feast," he said.
If a picture of four dudes holding the phone while each demonstrates a different awkward facial expression doesn’t make you want the LG Edge (LG-SH470), nothing will.
Actually, even if it does make you want the phone, you’re probably out of luck. Unless you live in Korea or select parts of Europe, this one won’t be part of your local lineup. Don’t be too crushed, though - besides an LED touchpad and some slim stylings, it’s all pretty standard. When I’m running out of features to list after just ‘LED touchpad’, ‘2.2″ LCD’ and ‘2 megapixel camera’, you know it’s a model you’ll probably never hear of again.
Crunch Network: TechCrunchobsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
I can't identify the animal(?) depicted on this little rubber ball that my five-year-was playing with last night. Any guesses? (Rotated versions added above to assist in identification. I don't think it is depicting the outline of China.)
I love this adorable series of stuffed animals, the Food Chain Friends, delightfully Darwinian creatures which eat each other in one long daisy chain of carnivorous glutting. $50!
When Charlie Stross -- the mad, gonzo antipope of science fiction -- told me he was working on a Heinlein-esque novel, I wasn't surprised. Old Robert A. Heinlein's classic fiction was some of the best action-driven sf ever written. Then Charlie told me he was working a late Heinlein-esque novel and my eyes bugged out.
Towards the end of his career, RAH's novels got very long, very meandering, explicitly sexual, and very weird. Turned out, he had a tumor that was blocking the flow of blood to his brain (really!) and after it was removed, his fiction (and, reportedly, his personality) really changed again.
And it was those giant, pervy books that Charlie was setting out to pay tribute to.
Saturn's Children is that novel. It's the story of Freya, a sex-bot who was engineered (along with her untold legion of near-identical, near-immortal sisters) to be the perfect pleasure-toy for human masters. Unfortunately, the human race went extinct before Freya was ever booted up, leaving her (and the rest of the robots that comprise galactic civilization) with no purpose in life.
Robot society is sick -- because it was created in the image of our own. Robots are hardwired to obey humans and to serve them and their governments. When humans let themselves go extinct, the robots divided into two castes: those who wired to be empathic and those who were not. The non-empaths seized the moment: they formed shell corporations that bought their robot bodies from their dead and absent owners, and effectively owned themselves. Once this aristocracy of "free" robots was established, they ruthlessly enslaved the rest of robot society, seizing their deeds and slave-chipping them into obedience.
The robots yearn for -- and dread -- the reappearance of humans. The hardwired robotic obedience to humans means that the robots clique that successfully engineers a new human (preferably without releasing the dread "pink goo" -- the robotic bogeyman of self-replicating organic material) may be able to liberate robotkind, or enslave it forever.
Against this backdrop, Freya lives and (nearly) dies as she finds herself embroiled in a series of interplanetary intrigues, shuttling from world to world in realistic (and therefore slow and miserable) spaceships that can take a decade or more to reach Eris and the rest of the outer system. In a book laden with science-fiction in-jokes, philosophy and sly critiques, this may be the very best fillip. Stross puts the terrible lie to the idea of sub-lightspeed space-travel and explores the only way a species could effectively colonize our own system: by turning into robots, willing to amputate limbs to reduce payloads (or, in extreme cases, to simply ship "soulchips" bearing copies of their personalities around), willing to perch atop highly radioactive fission reactors, willing to take a one-way ticket to the outer reaches of our system.
What's more, Stross manages to find the narrative juice hidden in this constrained version of space-travel: to tell a tightly plotted, Maltese-Falcon-esque thriller with reversals and surprises galore, spread out across decades of objective and subjective time.
It's quite a remarkable trick. It's one that neither Heinlein, nor Asimov (the other author to whom the book is dedicated -- as is only proper, given Asimov's prominence in society's conception of what a robot is) managed. This is a fabulous book, a witty and deep critique of the field's shibboleths, and well worth the price of admission.
Packing a touchscreen, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 3G, a 1.3 megapixel cam, and a form factor not unlike that of the Danger Sidekick series, this one comes in at a pocket-friendly $99 on a two-year contract. For those looking for a solid texting device who don’t mind the proprietary operating system, the Quickfire probably won’t do you wrong.
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When it comes to charging for mobile apps, payments usually have to go through either the carriers or one of the emerging mobile app platforms such as Apple or Google’s Android. The problem with charging for an iPhone app through iTunes is that Apple takes 30 percent. A startup called Billing Revolution wants to charge about one tenth as much for a seamless, mobile one-click shopping experience. Already available on other phones, Billing Revolution is announcing availability today for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android apps.
Once a consumer signs up to pay for things through Billing Revolution, he is presented with an Amazon-like one-click payment option no matter what app is using it. (Didn’t Amazon patent that?). Billing Revolution charges a 3.5 percent transaction fee plus 50 cents per transaction.
That pretty much kills any app developer using it for micro-transactions. Nobody is going to sell a digital song for $1.00 if they need to pay Billing Revolution 53.5 cents. But it could become an option for larger purchases, and as a way to charge for premium subscriptions for apps that build adoption with a lighter-weight free version.
In what may possibly be the most bizarre bugs to ever ship, Google's Android OS attempts to carry out every single word you type as a command:
When I first read this I didn’t believe it. Then I read it again, and again, and finally tried it for myself. It’s true. Don’t believe me? Save anything you’re working on (this will reboot your phone!), open the keyboard tray on your G1, ignore anything you see on the screen, and type these 8 keystrokes: -r-e-b-o-o-t-. Poof, your phone will reboot. This only works on a real phone, not in the emulator, and only with firmware version 1.0 TC4-RC29 and earlier.
Google's already issued a fix, but this is a fun one. Unfortunately, "Marilyn Monrobot Massage" is not a recognizable command on my G1.
The same people who make the Solio solar chargers have released a whole new line of bags, laptop sleeves, and gadget cases under the "Tread" brand. Each of the items is made from recycled inner tube tires.
Most of the smaller bags look fairly typical, but the "Transient Attache" and the "Sleeve" are really nice looking. The inherent folds of the inner tubes make the material look like animal leather.
Even though the material has been saved from the dump you won't be getting second-hand prices: the Attache is $200, while the smaller cases are around $20-$30.
So what's the autopsy report on the Nintendo DSi? Why is the battery life notably worse than the DS Lite? Over at bunnie: studios, the eponymous Bunnie ripped one apart, and it looks like we have our answer: a beefier CPU to handle the video and audio stuff.
I haven’t had much of a chance to play around with the device yet, but from what I can tell the CPU is substantially beefed up (consistent with reports of the DSi battery life being shorter than the DS-lite, despite having similar battery capacities of 840 mAh for the DSi and 850 mAh for the DS-lite), as it can do all kinds of real-time image manipulation tricks on the video feeds, and it also has a built-in minigame for audio streams where you can loop in samples over music files and do some low-quality pitch distortion on the fly. The markings on the CPU package yield no clues about its performance, but my guess is that any ARM9 or ARM11 CPU manufactured in 2007 would have a performance around the 266-533 MHz range.
Today through Wednesday, UK photographer Nick Knight and SHOWstudio are airing a live webcast of his latest project: "Let There Be Light." While Knight is an internationally known photographer (you make recognize this iconic image of Björk), he is also one of the most transparent, regularly exposing his works-in-progress on the SHOWstudio blog. This time he's shooting model Lily Donaldson for V Magazine, and livestreaming the machinations behind the machine. (They're also tweeting.)
It’s been a long time coming, but it looks like the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 might almost be here. BGR has some shots of Best Buy’s internal stock showing a December 7th in-stock date and an unlocked selling price of $799. That’s a lot of coin, so we can only assume that it’ll be the greatest phone in the history of cellular telephony, right?
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As part of the Blood on Paper exhibition, which gave artists a book and then asked them to customize it, Richard Shed took a sixty year old Penguin Classics copy of The New Machiavelli, digitized each pages and placed it on its own miniature USB homunculus. I love it: the only thing its missing is the skittering of tiny blood red spiders in the crevice of the spine. H.G. Wells would approve!
Having recently bought a car myself, I'm familiar with the vagaries of used automobiles. My headlamps are a bit out of weak and the carburetor needs some tweaking, for instance.
But learning the quirks of a new car is half the fun of buying used. I shudder to imagine how much joy I'd have discovering how to work this one-of-a-kind Batmobile based on a '73 Opel GT and stuffed to the gills with early '90s electronics.
Check out some of the stuff that was inside:
1. SONY Digital Navigation System #NVX-F160
3. SONY Magic Link System with pager. This is the original vehicle PDA system before there were PDAs. Google Sony Magic Link System to get an idea. I do not know how to use it but it is there. I think you send emails, messaging, etc.
4. SONY Magic Link SkyTel Card
6. SONY Hi-8 VCR
7. Pioneer CD player DEH-85 in the dash....comes with the batman theme on cd!
8. Alpine Bat Phone #91530
11.Super Nintendo NES Game system with Batman Forever game.......yes, a game system that plays batman!
13.Alpine 80-80 Remote Commander RMX 38 (something to do with the alarm I think)
14.Alpine Alarm 8401 with paging system, unlocks and opens doors, windows...It will take you a full day just to learn the alarm system.
And you know what the kicker is? This thing sold for just nine grand. Breaks my heart. I would totally have paid ten just to make this my daily driver.
When the economy takes a hit, so do cell phone sales. Last quarter, mobile phone sales in the U.S. dropped 15 percent to 32 million units, according to market research firm NPD Group. But in hard times, the strongest brands also take share. And that is exactly what Apple did.
The 6.9 million iPhones it sold last quarter catapulted the $200 device into the top spot among all cell phones, even beating out the much cheaper and still-popular Motorola Razr. (Yes, they still sell that thing. They just don’t make any money off of it.)
Here are the top five phones sold last quarter, according to the NPD Group:
1. Apple iPhone 3G
2. Motorola RAZR V3 (all models)
3. RIM Blackberry Curve (all models)
4. LG Rumor
5. LG enV2
Note that the BlackBerry Curve is No.3. Who says expensive smart phones are only for geeks? Everybody is getting one.
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Reuters - Microsoft Corp said on Monday that it reached a Web search deal with Sun Microsystems Inc, the latest partnership struck by Microsoft aimed at chipping away at the dominance of Google Inc.
I’ve 
Yes, right now, South America is buzzing with trucks delivering goods. All these trucks are hoping to blow a tire as soon as possible, so they pour on the miles and take the bumpiest route all in an effort to protect your iPhone, laptop and other gadgetry. OK, so the trucks may be doing nothing of the sort, but at the end of the day, their tubes have been burned releasing toxins into the air.
Something is definitely stirring over at video recommendation/discovery provider 
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Well, they took their time, but the popular music site 
Popular science just awarded Pacemaker, a mp3 player that turns anyone into a DJ, as a “Best of what’s new” winner in the Gadgets category. The device is part of a larger platform that encompasses a user community which provides legal uploading and mix sharing as well as a desktop application.
Friendfeed co-founder Bret Taylor joined the 
So, tell me. Do you:
Most will agree that choosing to use someone as hard to understand as Ozzy Osbourne to promote a cell phone may not be the best idea. When promoting a messaging-friendly handset it suddenly seems to make quite a bit more sense.
When Charlie Stross -- the mad, gonzo antipope of science fiction -- told me he was working on a Heinlein-esque novel, I wasn't surprised. Old Robert A. Heinlein's classic fiction was some of the best action-driven sf ever written. Then Charlie told me he was working a late Heinlein-esque novel and my eyes bugged out.
