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Legal Troubles Continue To Mount For Diebolddstates writes "The State of Maryland has filed a $8.5M claim against Premier Election Systems (previously known as Diebold), joining Ohio in seeking damages from the company. The claim alleges that election officials were forced to spend millions of dollars to address multiple security flaws in the machines. Previously, Diebold paid millions to settle a California lawsuit over security issues in their machines. The dispute comes as Maryland and Virginia prepare to scrap the touch screen electronic voting systems they bought after the 2000 presidential election. California, Florida, New Mexico, and Iowa have already switched to optical scanners, and voters in Pennsylvania are suing to prevent the use of paperless electronic voting systems in their state. Meanwhile, Artifex Software is suing Diebold for violations of the GPL covering the Ghostscript software technology used in the proprietary voting machines."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 25 Dec 2008 | 2:00 pm The geek gifts you didn't get for Christmas 2008
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 eFluxMedia | Our Favorite iPhone Apps: Stay entertained NetworkWorld.com - By Macworld Staff , Macworld , 12/25/2008 From finding showtimes to providing badly needed diversions, these final six apps will never fail to keep you entertained. Favorite iPhone apps: Best information tools My ten favorite iPhone apps of 2008 |
 Fresh News | Notebooks Top Desktop Sales ... InternetNews.com - By Andy Patrizio: More stories by this author: Quarterly global notebook PC shipments surpassed desktop computers for the first time ever, according to market research firm iSupply -- a change that industry watchers had figured would happen years from ... Notebooks Outsell Desktops For The First Time A First: Notebooks Outnumber Desktops |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I can only imagine the angst that Jessica Vascellero at the Wall Street Journal inserted into countless minds this evening with her article about the difficulties people are having defining what is and isn’t a “friend” for online social networking purposes.
Most Americans who aren’t teenagers or a little older are just getting used to the idea of social networks in general. But the complicated and evolving rules about what constitutes friendship online is adding even more stress.
One young woman had to face someone she defriended on Facebook in a chance encounter on an elevator, and re-added the person to rid herself of the guilt. A middle aged jeweler frets over the implied meaning a competitor unfriending him. Meanwhile, the web-savvy David Dalka, saying he doesn’t need to know “you’ve changed to a new brand of peanut butter,” has unceremoniously dropped people from his friend list at LinkedIn.
So What Is An Online Friend, Anyway?
The social networks themselves, and those of us who spend a lot of time there, are still trying to work out the details on what it means to be a friend with someone online. With friendship comes benefits - you get a stream of information about the person, but it also has costs (you have to wade through a stream of information about the person, and they get access to your intimate details).
Facebook in particular has struggled with this. For a time they really just wanted users to be online friends with people they already know in the offline world. That messaging has subtly changed more recently, though, to a less rigorous position.
It’s clear that the more friends you have on any given service, the more noise you have to wade through to find the golden signal. In the real world when you don’t want to be friends with someone, you just find ways not to spend time with them. But online, you click that friend button because it seems so easy, and it’s considered insulting if you don’t. And then you pay.
Social networks are taking two approaches to dealing with this. MySpace and Facebook (and those like them) have added different buckets to throw friends into. You can share more or less information with different groups of friends. So if you aren’t really friends with someone but don’t want to insult their friend request, you can throw them into the unwashed masses bucket (or whatever you want to call it).
The other approach is the one taken by sites like Twitter and Friendfeed. Anyone can follow anyone and watch what they’re up to, but you are under no pressure to reciprocate. The problem with this approach is that there is still a lot of social pressure to follow people back. I suggested a “fake follow” back in August so that you can just pretend to follow those people. Friendfeed now has a feature which allows just that.
But bucketing friends just seems like a bolted on way to fix the problem. And managing the changing relationships you have with of hundreds or thousands of people across multiple sites is a real time sink. In the future, the services should be able to do a much better job of just figuring out, through your gestures, who you are really close to and who you aren’t. It may also define a relationship with someone I don’t know at all based on whether or not we have friends in common. So even if there is no interaction at all, Facebook and MySpace (or whoever) can theoretically have an idea of how much personal information to share between us.
Ultimately, though, our culture is adapting just as quickly as the networks are. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has said users are becoming more and more comfortable sharing online. Sometimes (ok, often) Facebook is pushing the envelope when it comes to deciding on my behalf what is shareable and what isn’t. They’re placing aggressivebets on where this is all evolving. And sometimes they lose the bets (but not always).
But where they are correct is that there is no bright line of right and wrong when it comes to defining online friendship. The algorithms and the humans will meet somewhere in the middle.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 CNET News | Alan Zale for The New York Times New York Times - Although Amazon will not disclose sales figures, the Kindle has at least lived up to its name by creating broad interest in electronic books. Searches For "Kindle" Picked Up During The Holidays Electronic books getting their day at last |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 BBC News | Make the Most of Your New PC PC Magazine - Follow this simple 12-step program to guarantee maximum performance, security, and ease of use. Plus, decide how to deal with all your old stuff. Secure Your Vista PC in 10 Easy Steps Why Windows 7 will hit store shelves in 2009 |
 Slippery Brick | It's been a gratifying year for Xbox 360 owners Winston-Salem Journal - AP Photo AP It's been another spectacular year for video games, with more than enough compelling adventures to satisfy even the most demanding player. Microsoft's Newest Advocate is...Your Mom? Microsoft wants you to throw a party for its Xbox |
: Think of it as a testosterone-soaked sandbox: a German amusement park where, instead of standing in line to ride on roller coasters, you get to play with big, loud machines. For 219 euros (about $280), patrons can spend the day operating 29-ton Liebherr backhoes and 32-ton Komatsu front-end loaders, off-roading through the woods in a Mercedes-built Unimog, peeling out in a Suzuki SUV, and slinging some mud on quad bikes.
The brainchild of Alexander Bammer, a former IT honcho, Männerspielplatz (literally "men's playground") began seven years ago as a one-off corporate promotion with a handful of rented earthmovers at a construction site near Kassel in central Germany. The event struck a chord with pasty execs who loved getting in touch with their inner ditchdigger. "Most men these days don't work on a construction site; they work at a desk," Bammer says. "They dream about experiences like this." So in 2004, he decided to open Männerspielplatz, just outside Kassel, as a 17-acre one-stop shop for man fantasy (slogan: "We fulfill men's dreams!"). Most of the customers, it turns out, are actually women buying tickets as gifts for husbands or boyfriends as an alternative to one more tie—or perhaps something else. After all, Bammer says: "I hear 'It's better than sex' a lot."
Left: another satisfied patron of the men's playground in central Germany.
: A lucky adolescent attacks a hunk of concrete with a jackhammer.
: Back to nature on the Männerspielplatz dirt bikes.
: Bros with big bows.
: Dirt racing behind the wheel of a 4x4 Suzuki Samurai.
: One of the main manly attractions: a Komatsu backhoe.
: Conquering sludge mountain on a quad bike.
Editor’s note: The poem and illustrations below were submitted by an engineer in Silicon Valley who works for a big company and wishes to remain anonymous. The views expressed are not (necessarily) those of TechCrunch. The awesome illustrations are by Doug Shannon
Every geek
Down in Geek-ville
Liked searching a lot …
But Bill Gates,
Who lived just north of Geek-ville,
Did NOT!
Bill Gates hated searching and search advertising!
Now, please don’t ask why. It’s not that surprising.
It could be his brain had slowed up with age.
It could be, perhaps, that he loathed Brin and Page.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
Was his wallet was feeling 2 sizes too small.
But,
Whatever the reason,
His wallet or brain,
By Jan of ’08 he was feeling the pain.
Looking down on the web with a Gatesian stare,
At the billions of people just becoming aware,
That web search NOT windows was the new way to think.
That it’s really more fun to surf popular links!
For,
Tomorrow, he knew …
That some Google shareholder
Would make many more billions
Than him or Steve Ballmer.
They’d start BIGGER foundations
To improve world health
And they might even give away
MORE of their wealth!
And THEN
They’d do something
He liked least of all.
Every googling fool, the tall and the small,
Would sit at their laptops like Sergey and Larry
They’d open their browsers and type in a query!
They’d search! And they’d search!
AND they’d SEARCH! SEARCH! SEARCH! SEARCH!
“They’ll be clicking those ads”, he snarled with a sneer.
“I smell a monopoly! It’s practically here.”
The he growled, with his fingers nervously drumming,
“I must somehow stop that monopoly from coming!”
Then he got an idea!
An awful idea!
Bill Gates
Got a wonderful, awful idea!
“I know just what to do!” Gates said with a laugh.
Then he called his pal Ballmer, to plan an attack.
And he chuckled, and clucked, “What a great business trick”.
I’ll buy up Yahoo and I’ll buy them up quick.
All I need is a deal
To get their web stuff
31 dollars per share seems enough!
So Ballmer sent Yahoo his generous offer,
But was told by Yang to return to the coffer.
Did that stop Bill Gates …?
No! He simply said,
“If I can’t buy Yahoo, I’ll sink them instead!”
So while Yahoo’s board was asleep at the wheel,
He asked Steve Ballmer to walk from the deal.
“Now, that is a lesson in playing hardball!”
Said Gates, as he watched Yahoo’s stock in free fall.
Well, it looked like Yahoo was certainly done.
It seemed like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer had won.
But, let’s not forget, that in Silicon Valley,
You’re one hack away from printing more money.
So Yang and his gang started coding from scratch.
They made up a product that no one could match!
“Part open, part social,” Yang said with a grin.
“We’ll rewire Yahoo from outside to in.
And open up search, the home page, and then
We’ll double our profit by 2010.”
And Gates, in ‘08, who’d lost half of his dough.
Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How can it be so?
Is there any way Yahoo can help MS Windows to sell.
Or keep Office sales from going to hell.”
And he puzzled for hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then Bill Gates thought of something he hadn’t before.
“Maybe Yahoo,” he thought, “is more than just search.”
“Maybe Yahoo … perhaps … HAS significant worth!”
And what happened then …?
Well … in Geek-ville they say
That Bill Gate’s small wallet
Magically grew 3 sizes that day!
And the minute his wallet didn’t feel quite so bare,
He made a cash offer of 30 per share.
Then he opened HIS browser and did something new.
And he
… HE HIMSELF …!
Tried a search on Yahoo!
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Section: Computers, Laptops, Gadgets / Other, Green, Peripherals, Displays, Trade Shows, CES
In further attempts to hep the environment, LG has recently announced that they have been hard at work on creating an LCD panel that uses sunlight to light the screen when the laptop is used outside.
The screen they have developed is a 14.1 inch monitor that uses reflective plates in the backlighting panels to reflect sunlight, and then you are able to easily switch back to normal backlighting when using the laptop indoors.
The nice thing about the reflective plates is that it uses only 1/4 of the normal energy, thus saving battery power and electricity. Also, if you are working in a room that is usually flooded with sunlight, it can work indoors too, but you would need a lot of sunlight. In addition, the contrast ratio when used outdoors is 9:1, unlike the normal 2:1 or 3:1 by other notebooks when used outdoors.
No word on official release date as of yet, but it will be on display at CES coming this January.
Via [Twice]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 The Money Times | NASA rocket contract launches SpaceX into the big time Los Angeles Times - The start-up beats out Lockheed Martin and Boeing for a $3.1-billion deal to resupply the International Space Station. By Peter Pae In a major boost to Southern California's aerospace industry, a Hawthorne start-up founded by an Internet entrepreneur ... 2 cargo carriers, 2 methods Wallops docks with space station |
Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we found an old copy of Ladybird books' How Computers Work, but we're not sure it's from this universe.
British advertising regulators banned a Dyson ad they had already cleared and which they agreed was accurate. Psion finally realized that its "Netbook" trademark is slipping through its fingers.
Joel found a flat HDMI cable you can embed in drywall, John spotted a surreal Windows ad from Japan, and Rob beheld Sony's new not-a-netbook -- or maybe the case it comes in.
Apple's PC market share slipped due to the netbook revolution, a Fry's exec got collared on embezzlement charges, and artists designed bizarre cars for the future.
Don't miss Joel and the BBTV folks' awesome CES preview vid: Tell us how you want us to cover it.
Oh, yes. Merry Xmas (Or whatever!)Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 CTV.ca | EPA’s Doctor No New York Times - On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal Clean Air Act plainly empowered the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases from cars and trucks - and, by inference, other sources like power plants. US court reinstates EPA power plant pollution rule Court Keeps EPA Clean Air Rule On Temporary Basis |
I have vague recollections of watching Pinwheel on QUBE, but my parents canceled the subscription before I became a television-watching zombie. After that, we were one of the only families I knew that didn’t have cable. All my friends had cable, so I would orchestrate any opportunity to spend the night at friends’ houses so that I could get my television fix. Then, one year for Christmas when I was still a wee lad, my dad purchased for the family our first video cassette recorder.
It was a glorious thing: so modern and high-tech! I thrilled at the eject button, which opened the top-loading tape slot. I marveled at the faux wood panel. I listened in awe as the motors busily rewound the tape. This was the dawn of a new era: movies on demand, and the ability to watch something on our television without static!
In addition to the VCR itself, dad had also purchased a number of movie rentals. I think it was Curtis Mathis that we used for our tape rentals, but the years have blurred that detail, so I can’t commit to that claim. Nonetheless, dad brought forth a film for us to enjoy on Christmas Day. There we were, warm in our pajamas, faces aglow with the joy of freshly unwrapped toys, and we were about to watch a movie of our own choice in our family room, rather than suffer through whatever was being broadcast that afternoon!
Dad had rented Poltergeist.
I spent the bulk of Christmas Day, and all of Christmas Night, spooked out of my gourd. I was afraid to go upstairs to use the bathroom, insisting that someone come with me, and wait in the hallway until I had finished my business. I refused to go to bed. I was a wreck. Way to spread Christmas Joy, dad!
That VCR, though, lasted many years and provided countless hours of entertainment to the family. Poor first movie choice aside, it was a great gift!
Next month is the annual Lotusphere conference. IBM is giving two free tickets to TC readers--leave a comment saying why you'd like to go to Lotusphere, and we'll pick the winners by Monday morning. (Note: Passes cover conference registration only, not travel/hotel.)
Few pieces of software are as polarizing as Lotus Notes. When my last job forced me to use Notes, I found the interface clunky, the graphics Win 95'esqe, and the workflow architecture non-intuitive. Granted, I was using Version 6.5 (Notes is now on Release 8), but even so I found it frustratingly unproductive. And I'm clearly not alone.
Which leaves me wondering--has IBM's Lotus Notes lost touch with the user-centric web 2.0 world?
To answer these questions, I interviewed Kevin Cavanaugh, IBM's VP in charge of the Notes/Domino group. Also joining us was Ed Brill, IBM's Director of Messaging and Collaboration.
Reuters - Dentsu Inc, Japan's largest ad agency, said it would team up with game maker Nintendo Co Ltd to launch a video distribution service on Nintendo's wildly popular Wii console.
Long before my interests turned to gadgets and gizmos, life was as simple as could be. Wake, bus, school, bus, Power Rangers. If other stuff happened on any given day, I don’t remember; if it didn’t involve Rita Repulsa and the Rangers, I didn’t really care.
I wasn’t alone in this, either. It seemed like every kid in town had latched on to the Rangers and wasn’t interested in letting go. We no longer played Tag or Dodgeball; we played “Sing the Power Rangers theme while punching at nothing”.
Every time we played - Hell, every time someone mentioned the show - there would be a heated debate over which kid was which Ranger. 3 kids would be fighting over the right to be Red Ranger, while another 3 would battle it out for Green. Occasionally, there might be some words over who would fill the suits of the Pink, Yellow, and Black Rangers. Never, however, did anyone care to brawl to be the Blue Ranger. No one wanted to be the Blue Ranger.
Except for me.
It’s not that I had anything against the other Rangers; they just weren’t for me. Red was too macho for his own good. Green was too greasy. Black was too smug. Pink and Yellow were.. well, they were girls. But Blue.. Blue was the man. He was a total geek, but he knew how to throw down. He could hack your computer, but he could also punch through your head.
During each days post-school Power Ranger watching spree, I’d do two things: I’d eat my snack, and I’d try to reenact what was going on in the show using my Power Ranger figurines. Allowance by allowance, I’d managed to amass almost the entire team..
Except for the Blue Ranger.
Every few weeks, my parents would take me to the toy store in search of Billy Blue. Trip after trip, nothing. Mountains of Red, Green.. everything but Blue. What was going on? Were there more Blue fans out there than I realized? Did I just happen to go to the one school where I was his only fan? I didn’t understand. (I’ve since realized that the toy stores most likely just ordered far fewer Blue Rangers, as they had more trouble selling them.)
The nights got colder, and rooftops and rain gutters began to sparkle. Christmas was around the corner. “If anyone can do it,” I thought, “Santa can.”
I wrote my letter to Santa. Then I wrote another, just to make sure that he got the message in case the first one didn’t arrive. I’d dream of running to my toy chest, throwing back the lid, and seeing Blue resting on top, only to wake up empty handed.
Christmas came. Had my letters made it? Had I been good enough? I sat down in the couch no one ever sat in unless it was Christmas, eyes fixed on the presents I knew to be mine. That’s when I spotted it: it was wrapped in some sort of appropriately themed paper, but the signature prism shape of the box couldn’t be denied.
I somehow managed to stay in that seat until it was my turn, forcing myself to focus on the musty/grandma smell of the antique couch I was in, simultaneously pretending to be totally excited for everyone else with each present they opened. My turn.
I don’t remember leaving the chair, the walk to pick up my present, nor the process of unwrapping it. All I remember is the Blue Ranger, staring back at me, ready to take his place in each day’s battle.
Thanks, Mom and Dad. I love you.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Section: Computers, Software / Applications, Originals
Switching operating systems can be tough. When you get accustomed to certain applications sometimes it can be hard to learn how to use other ones. I recently installed Ubuntu Eee (soon to be Easy Peasy) on my Eee PC 901 and it took quite a while to find apps that cam do everything I can do within Mac OS X and Windows. Here’s a quick guide so you can make your Linux machine feel like home.
Think of the things you do most often on the Internet. Chances are they involve any combination of a web browser, IM program, VOIP, and email client. These are the simplest of applications to find, and usually built in to most Linux distributions. Firefox is the easiest choice for a web browser and is probably what you’re using on Windows and (maybe) Mac, anyway.
Pidgin is used for IM, and can handle just about any service you throw at it from AIM and ICQ to Yahoo, Google Talk and MSN. Skype already as a Linux program, so there’s another familiar app.
For email, it’s a bit different. The two largest ones are Evolution Mail and Thunderbird. Personally, if you’re using a netbook with Linux, its probably a better idea to just use the websites to conserve space.
Although we would like to, it is usually impossible to have a computer without an office suite, or at least a word processor. On Linux, the big one I found is OpenOffice, a free open source project from Sun. They can be a bit bloated, and have things you don’t need to use, though. If you only need a straight word processor, AbiWord will do the trick. It’s lightweight, free, and open source. It is the best option I’ve found to replace Word.
There’s also the option to simply install Google Gears and run Google Docs online and off, if you really want to get into cloud computing.
Personally, on the Mac I have 4 word processors that each do separate things. The two specialty ones being WriteRoom and Scrivener. Both have fullscreen editing which I find to be a big help, and Scrivener has the tools to outline any sort of creative writing work (especially good for writing novels and short stories). Sadly, I have yet to find a replacement for Scivener, but I have been able to find a replacement for WriteRoom.
For Windows users, you may have used Q10 or JDarkRoom before, they work the same as WriteRoom. For Linux I found TextRoom. TextRoom is a Google Code project that opens in full screen to write, and tells you word count, pages and other stats alon the bottom of the screen, quite useful for distraction-free writing. Or, you could just used full screen mode in AbiWord.
On Windows and Mac OS X you might be comfortable with Windows Media Player, iTunes, and Quicktime. Unfortunately, none of these work on Linux, but their counterparts are actually better, allowing for more customization and supporting more media codecs.
For video, the best option for Linux (or any operating system, for that matter) that I found is VLC Player. VLC can take just about any media file you throw at it and play it perfectly. It is also lightweight and isn’t too much of a resource hog unless it’s playing HD video. Hands down the best option.
For music the range of options is large. Ubuntu packs Rhythmbox into the distribution and that works fairly well from I’ve seen. It supports music, podcasts, and iPods. However, recently Songbird, a music player based on the Firefox architecture was released, and it seems a bit cooler than Rhythmbox. It supports add-ons like Firefox and even has built in web browser. It can even play iTunes DRM tracks, which is quite impressive.
For most people, when they think of image editing, they think of Photoshop. Photoshop, however, has no real Linux version. I don’t do a whole lot of image editing, but I do use Skitch on the Mac to capture images to send to people and sadly there’s no Linux version of that either. There is one popular program that can replace both of these, though: GIMP.
GIMP is an open source “image manipulation program” that bears an uncanny resemblance to Photoshop. It can do just about everything Photoshop can do for the average user. I can’t speak for the hardcore image editor, but for me it is more than adequate.
Of course, there isn’t a replacement for everything your looking for, especially when you get even more specific. But, with WINE or Crossover, you can get most popular Windows apps to work in Linux. Sadly, there is no way to get native Mac apps to work on Linux, so no Delicious Library, Skitch, Scrivener or 1Password for Linux users.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Everyone knows the Playstation 3 has one key thing over the Wii and the Xbox 360: A Blu-ray player.
But according to a recent report, the PS3 will soon have one more thing above the others: native stereoscopic 3D gaming. It's a development that’s not terribly surprising, but it's interesting enough (and potentially lucrative) that its competitors are sure to be watching.
According to Neil Schneider, the CEO of 3D tech purveyor MTBS, Sony will begin supporting their Blitz Tech 3D engine on the console in 2009. Expected to be a downloadable firmware update, the tech will allow players to upgrade their console to stereoscopic 3D visuals and inexorably, to Blu-ray content on 3D.
Andrew Oliver of Blitz Games Studios says that 3D capability through the BIOS firmware is likely unique to Sony PS3 and will give them a competitive advantage in this area.
A stereoscopic 3D update in the box will presumably enhance the visual depth perception that allows 2D images to pop out of the screen. But the question will be placed precisely on the quality of the perspective deviation of the games, which is what makes good 3D, well, good. Otherwise, the screen might get all fuzzy.
Another question is the variability of the TV displays used when playing the 3D-enhanced games. Some sets already have their own 3D secret sauce -- the new Mitsubishi Laser TV, for example, uses a 3D IR emitter along with a 'checkerboard display' format, where the 'checkerboard' is a type of complicated geometry calibration to display 3D images.
The PS3 3D firmware update will likely be able to fit all of these calibrations, but we don't know for sure whether it will look better or worse in some TVs.
Already, you should be able to play games regardless of the system in several new, 3D-enabled TVs like the Mitsu, and Samsung's PN42A450P Flat Panel HDTV. However, this option has received little buzz as most of the games aren't set-up to take advantage of the tech.
The bigger question as always, is the quality of the content, and the PS3, with or without 3D, is still running behind.
At the system's inception, the Blu-ray presence promised superior graphics and a larger capacity for extra content, like smoother animations and epically long stories. But unfortunately for Sony, it took way more time that the Wii or XBox 360 to come up with appropriate, fun games that lived up to the hardware.
With a cool new firmware app in tow, it's up to Sony's game developers to come up with good games and take advantage of the 3D, which has grown exponentially as an accepted technology in the last few years. If they pull it off, the Playstation might have one more thing up its sleeve before the final score has been tallied in the seventh generation of gaming systems.
Photos: Screenshot of Fallout 3, Mitsubishi 3D test/HDTVExpert
We hope you’re home, warm, and well-fed. From all of us at CrunchGear, we wish you a happy and healthy holiday.
Goodnight.
Section: Audio, Home Audio, Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Reviews
There are two parts to any Player system for an acoustical piano. First there’s the piano itself, and then there the player mechanism. And they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Before installing a player into my mother’s 1922 Sohmer piano, I did a lot of research. And what I learned was that there is a lot of misinformation out there. I was told everything from “it cannot be done,“ to “it will be less expensive to just purchase a new piano with a new player pre-installed,“ to “no problem - we do this all the time.“
Sorting out the facts from the uninformed opinions (or sales talk) was a task in itself. After all, this was a destructive modification. The piano bottom would be cut open and would thus require a skilled installer who knew what they are doing to do it right the first time.
I was told that installing a player in a piano from 1922 would really justify at least a partial, if not a complete, rebuild of the entire piano’s moving parts. While the piano sounded fine, after hearing the analogy of having Billy Joel over my house playing “Piano Man” on my piano every day, I agreed to also contract to have the piano rebuilt. So that had to come first.
Why am I telling you this? Because anyone contemplating retrofitting a player in their piano should really silence those other voices and just get on to doing that—and just that. If the piano needs to be rebuilt, you can rebuild it at anytime. If it needs to be refinished, you can refinish it at any time. If you tally up all those costs and decide it’s not worth it—and this is going to sound obvious— then don’t proceed with any of it, and enjoy Grandma’s piano for what it is, an heirloom.
I went for both the rebuild and the player. There are about 4-5 vendors of player pianos out there. All work on basically the same three principles; a solenoid bar to strike the keys, a decoder unit that will take the coded music and activate the solenoids, and the source format of the music. Deciding which player to install really should depend on your selection of the audio format you choose and the availability of music software.
I decided on Piano Disk as they were the only one who had a product that utilized the latest storage media and/or the Internet. Other vendors had legacy products that still used special Floppy Disk Drives (just try to get a laptop with a floppy drive today!). That alone told me a lot about the engineering of the companies products.
Further - the Piano Disk products even allowed my iPod to be my source for the piano coded music. That meant that there would be no visible player what-so-ever attached to the front of my piano the way the rest of the CD based player systems are installed today.
The Piano Disk product and their people were terrific. They provided me with several authorized installers in my area that I could interview and compare. I selected Ed Dryberg Piano in Northern New Jersey who did the entire project professionally and after just a couple of weeks I am now enjoying mom’s piano with a plethora of music choices.
If you check out Piano Disk’s website, you’ll see that they support all the sources including CD players, iPods that are loaded by iTunes,and even one system called the Opus that downloads music directly to it. They also have a host of options that will satisfy even the most techno of acoustical aficionados.
So, here’s the final result. ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC. If you are looking to get the straight scoop on players, talk with Ed. He’ll describe the entire process and provide you the reassurance of hundreds of satisfied customers. I’m one of them. From a player perspective, this is a no-brainer, but there are a host of other financial if not sentimental decisions that come first.
Read [Piano Disk iQ]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Before this week I’d never really heard much about DailyLit, a site that Emails you books in short, easily-consumable chunks. But after a few days of receiving The Count of Monte Cristo in my Email inbox every morning, I think I may be hooked - these serialized novels couldn’t be more perfect for a 10 minute coffee break or waiting at the bus stop.
To use the site, you choose a novel from DailyLit’s catalog of over 1300 novels, many of which are free. Each book is broken up into dozens (or hundreds, depending on the length) of installments, each of which is supposed to take around 5 minutes to read. You can tell the site exactly what time you’d like to receive each update, which can be sent either via Email or in an RSS feed, and how many chunks you’d like to receive at a time. And if you just can’t wait to see what happens next, you can also immediately download the next section of a book using a link at the bottom of every Email.
DailyLit has also recently launched public reading groups, which broadcast links to the current segment over Twitter. Because the books are being sent over Email, they can be read from nearly any mobile device with a dataplan. My only gripe with the service is that there seem to be few current bestsellers, which means you’ll need to look elsewhere for more recent novels.
Of course, with the growing popularity of Ebook readers like the Kindle and books on the iPhone App Store, DailyLit may seem pointless - why chop a book up when you can download the entire thing at once? But there’s something about receiving stories in these bite sized chunks that make them much more appealing - reading a 400 page novel on my iPhone’s 3.5 inch screen has always seemed like a daunting (and painful) endeavor, but when it’s only for a few minutes at a time, it couldn’t be any more convenient.
Thanks to Christian Bogeberg for the tip.
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Air Force Nu Metal band (Danger Room)“Walk in the shade of the clouds at night,"
"Crawling in the dirt, calling an A-10 strike,"
"Dancing in the shadows, lives are on the line,"
"Bombs are gonna fall, just in time.”
The premise seems like a cruel Carrot Top joke by way of George W. Bush logic: Strap a device to your thigh to monitor your restless leg syndrome, and then make ‘creative beats’ from the vibrations emitted, in order to 'increase your brain power.'
The Yurex is an especially absurd gadget, but its creator, Maywa Denki, insists it works.
As an artist that bases his pieces on scientific principles, Denki developed the strap to visually monitor the patterns of leg movements, while also providing a healthy amount of social rebellion.
In Japan, shaking your leg aimlessly is seen as a sign of poor social grace and low intelligence. According to Pink Elephant, one of the reasons this is the case is because of a cultural belief that shaking a leg evokes the twitchy legs of poor street people. A Japanese myth says that if you shake your legs, you will be stalked by the Binbogami, or the God of Poverty.
The Yurex is made out of a two sensors (the silver disco balls things) that calculate the horizontal and vertical vibrations of the leg. The resulting data is then compiled and analyzed in a computer, where it is made into a "creative beat pattern." Once you have your personalized pattern, you can use it as a sort-of game where you can try to match the beats with your leg. It's kinda like Guitar Hero, but way weirder.
Denki believes that matching the beat while concentrating can be used as a positive mental exercise and increases creativity. Since the leg fits upend cultural convention, which is his main goal, it's not surprising he believes this.
The Yurex and (we assume) the accompanying software will be available in January. There's no price at the moment, but I can already see the infomercial for this thing:
“Is your loved one suffering from restless leg syndrome? Is our children learning? No? Then get the Yurex and he'll be a super brain in no time! It's just as good as playing an instrument! If you buy one, you get a second free, and a T-Shirt with a giant tag of 'Vaporware' on it.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 Techtree.com | Desperate Psystar Claims Apple Never Copyrighted OS X CRN - Psystar, the Mac clone maker that's embroiled in a legal tussle with Apple, appears to be getting into the holiday spirit -- by giving the gift of laughter. New Psystar filing full of sound and fury, signifying nothing Latest Psystar wacky claim: OS X never copyrighted (!???) |
 New York Times | Even Escapist Fare Can’t Escape Some Real-World Questions New York Times - Prince of Persia: The new version of the game, by Ubisoft, is meant to revamp the franchise for players. In it, the prince and his companion, a princess, must restore life to a world desiccated by evil forces. 'Prince of Persia,' 'Tomb Raider' flying high Prince Of Persia An Artistic Success, But Not Everyone Notices |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Social Gaming Network is launching new versions of its Wii-like iPhone sports games that let users play against others who’ve installed the apps.
In August I was disappointed that so few iPhone applications leveraged the network effect to spread virally. I used the chess apps as an example - there were lots of them, but none at the time that let you play against other people.
The chess problem has since been solved. But I am still amazed at how few applications let iPhone users interact with each other (other than the nascent mobile social networks, which continue to gain users quickly).
But SGN, which launched a bunch of sports-themed games that turn the iPhone into a Wii-like controller (and are experimenting with the iPhone as a PC game controller, too), is starting to experiment with multi-user games where players can compete against others who have the application installed.
First up is iBasketball (iTunes link). The app launched in November, but an update this morning lets players compete with others. So far it isn’t that great - you shoot free throws for a period of time while someone else does the same, but you don’t see them. At the end the scores are compared. (In the next update, SGN says you’ll be able to watch your foe take his/her shots real time, too).
But they have something much grander planned for the next version of iBowl, which originally launched in October. The new iBowl Live will let you play against three other players, and watch their swings (or whatever its called when you roll a bowling ball).
Any Xbox user knows how quickly games get stale. Going online and playing against others on Xbox Live is what keeps people playing the same titles for months or years. I think many iPhone apps, especially games, will follow a similar path. SGN seems to be taking the lead in innovating in this space.
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This is pure, unadulterated Communism. Look at all these kids, getting all “excited” because Santa gave them the Wii. Now Mommy and Daddy are drowning in credit card debt—not to mention that mortgage that just won’t go away—so they can play Wii Fun Simulator. Shameful.
Fast-forward 20 years when these kids are married with children, hate their jobs and are slaves to the local bank.
Merry Christmas!
via Newlaunches.com
Do you loves you some Sling Player Mobile? Ready to toss your old WinMo handset for a fresh one, but feelin’ a bit worried that Sling wont play friendly with the new guy? Good news! Sling Media has bumped up their Windows Mobile support, adding compatibility for 4 new resolutions across at least 15 new devices.
Sick of the lack of flash on the iPhone? No, not that flash - the other one. Snapture has come up with a new solution: the SnaptureFlash, a slip-on case with flash built in. While the idea is novel, the execution isn’t without its faults.
Do you loves you some Sling Player Mobile? Ready to toss your old WinMo handset for a fresh one, but feelin’ a bit worried that Sling wont play friendly with the new guy? Good news! Sling Media has bumped up their Windows Mobile support, adding compatibility for 4 new resolutions across at least 15 new devices.
The new supported resolutions are 800×480, 640×480, 400×240, and 320×320, with newfound “official” support for:
* Sprint Treo 800w
* Sony Ericsson X1
* Palm Treo Pro
* Sprint HTC Touch Diamond
* Sprint HTC Touch Pro
* Verizon HTC Touch Pro
* Verizon Samsung Saga
* Verizon Samsung Omnia
* AT&T LG Incite
* AT&T HTC Fuze
* AT&T Samsung Epix
* HP iPAQ 910
* AT&T Pantech Duo
* Sprint Samsung ACE
* Verizon XV6900
Got a new-ish WinMo handset not on that list? Don’t worry - as long it’s running at one of the aforementioned resolutions (the HTC Touch HD, for example, isn’t listed but runs at 800×480) it should work. If in doubt, just give the 30 day trial a run.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A netbook by any other name would be...a miniature, low-powered notebook that isn't worth starting a fuss over.
But some blog sites devoted to covering netbooks claim they received a cease-and-desist letter for using the word "netbook," reports mobile device blog JkOnTheRun.
JkOnTheRun published an image purporting to be the letter, sent by a company called Psion, who claims it trademarked the term netbook several years ago.
"We note that you have recently started using the word netbook without Psion's consent," the letter says. "Psion places significant value on the trade mark registrations and your use of the term 'netbook' could damage those registrations."
Hardware company Psion was indeed the first to use the word netbook in 2000 for a device that was a cross between a personal digital assistant and a notebook. It wasn't until 2008 that Intel started branding subnotebooks as netbooks -- to market them as portable computers streamlined for internet surfing.
Brad Linder, owner of the netbook enthusiast blog Liliputing, told Wired.com he has not received a cease-and-desist letter from Psion.
"I can maybe understand them going after web sites that have the word netbook in the site title," Linder said. "But if they're going after people for using netbook improperly -- I'm not a lawyer, but that seems weird, and I'm not sure how they can enforce that."
Netbook enthusiast web sites getting C&D using term "netbook" [jKOnTheRun]
See Also:
Photo: steve-chippy/Flickr
The year was 1986. The Nintendo Entertainment System had been out for about a year and absolutely every kid in the entire universe had one except for me. I’d resorted to casually inviting myself over to the houses of friends, non-friends, enemies, and strangers, just so I could play Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, and RBI Baseball. I wasn’t proud of it, but it had to be done. I was hooked.
The actual unwrapping of the console was somewhat uncomfortable, due to the fact that it was given to me on Christmas Eve by my grandmother and I was made to open it in front of all my cousins, none of whom had Nintendo but who desperately wanted it as badly as I did. I restrained my glee, anxiously fidgeted in the car as we drove what seemed like 100 miles home, and watched my dad try to hook the thing up for 45 minutes before grabbing the cables myself and proclaiming, “One side, father! I’m only seven, but someday I’ll be a gadget blogger.”
The brief nanosecond between pressing the power button and seeing the initial RC Pro AM screen materialize seemed even longer than the car ride home, but there we finally were, my four-year-old brother and I, driving remote control cars around on a 700-pound wood-paneled Zenith TV. I won, naturally, as I’d been playing every Nintendo game ever released over and over in my head since the console had been released. That, and my brother was four.
Christmas morning brought two additional games in Ghost Busters and RBI Baseball. I remember thinking to myself that nothing would ever eclipse that moment. I see those Lexus ads on TV where the kids get the best presents ever – an Atari, a pony, etc. – and when they grow up, they find that getting a Lexus for Christmas is somehow better (!) and I wonder to myself about the exact moment when their souls were sucked out of their bodies by the pursuit of the almighty dollar, punctuated by an overpriced status symbol.
Drop an entire dealership in my driveway — I’ll take the Nintendo feeling any day.
Arcades are dead. And rightfully so: American arcades never bothered to change with the times (despite a brief dalliance with the public spectacle of games like Dance Dance Revolution).
Not so in Japan, where arcades continue to evolve in surprising ways, in the stereotypical "bigger, crazier" Japanese method, as well as the more pedestrian. Case in point: Yuka Nakajima, queen of "Crane Games", those funny claw machines that are commonly ignored in department store vestibules in the States but big business in Japan. Nakajima is so adept at "UFO Catchers" (the Japanese moniker for all claw machines) that she has an entire room filled with the stuffed bears she has won and is the star of video tutorials included in the games themselves.
I learned about Nakajima in the new book Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan's Game Centers by Brian "The Sweetest Man in Games Journalism" Ashcraft and Jean "Pretty Sweet Himself" Snow. Ash is a pal, so I was a bit worried when I first got my copy; how interesting could a book about arcades be? Turns out I had nothing to fret about. There's a whole new set of human experience happening inside Japan's game centers and it's just as varied and weird and surprising as you could hope it would be.
I too often have an expectation, a caricature, in mind about Japan and its culture that occludes my perception of the people living and playing there. That's natural, of course, and perhaps even welcome: it makes a reading a book that supplants many of my preconceptions so effectively even more exciting.
Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan's Game Centers [Amazon]
Talk about a mash-up.
The legendary James Thurber wrote the parody, "A Visit from Saint Nicholas in the Ernest Hemingway Manner" for the Christmas Eve edition of The New Yorker magazine in 1927. The poem's inventor, Clement C. Moore, will never be the same.
It is my great pleasure to read it aloud:
(Susie Bright is a guest blogger)
Sick of the lack of flash on the iPhone? No, not that flash - the other one. The one for pictures. Snapture has come up with a new solution: the SnaptureFlash, a slip-on case with a Xenon flash built-in. While the idea is novel, the execution isn’t without its faults.
The most debilitating issue: in order to actually make use of the flash, users need to first jailbreak their iPhone. Now, this is already a fairly niche product; while it’s certainly useful, I can’t imagine that the majority of iPhone owners would bulk up their handset so significantly for the sake of flash. Of those who would, the percentage of people open to (and technically capable of) jailbreaking their handsets is likely quite small. This really needs to work sans-jailbreak to be a feasible product. That would require Apple’s seal of approval and a few modifications to the API limitations developers face - chances are, that’s not going to happen.
Snapture hasn’t yet found a manufacturing partner to push these things out, so no word on pricing just yet.
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
Even though it’s pretty much an open secret that Amazon will release the Kindle 2 early next year, plenty of people are still looking to buy the first version of the device this Christmas season.
As Mr. Schonfeld’s little graph shows, searches for Kindle (and for that matter, the Sony Reader) peaked right before the shopping season. In fact, the thing is pretty much sold out.
One thing to note from the New York Times’ story on the subject is that the people buying the Kindle aren’t necessarily “gadget people.” It seems Oprah, who talked up the device in October, has helped increase its popularity among the 55 to 64-year-old demographic.
We told you back in May that Sony could be losing around $260 per PS3 sold. Well, according to iSuppli, the device now uses considerably less parts and costs much less to build than when it was first released in 2006; the unit could be nearing break-even and Sony could even start turning a profit on this console in the near future. When Sony first launched the PS3, the total cost of all the components used to build it was more than $840 for the 80GB model that sold at $599, and $805 for the 40GB model that sold for $499. Today, the loss has dramatically declined, where the PS3 now costs $448.73 to build while selling at $399. Even though Sony is still losing about 50 bucks for every PS3 sold, they’re bringing in the money on games and accessories.
When the PS3 was first released, the PS3 used a total of 4,048 different parts, including those in the handheld controllers. Now the console is built with 2,820 parts, about a 30% decrease. The two main chips inside the PS3 have also experienced a significant cost reduction: the cell chip inside the console which first cost $89 in 2006, now costs $46. The cost of the Nvidia Reality Synthesizer, responsible for the PS3’s amazing graphics, has come down from $129 to $58. According to iSuppli analyst Andrew Rassweiler, the chips have been significantly redesigned with features for functions that used to be handled by separate chips inside the system. These chips are now using less power, which then results in a cheaper power supply and a more efficient, greener machine.
I think Sony has been particularly nice in adjusting the prices according to their increased cost efficiency. We saw a $100 price cut back in July along with the discontinuation of the 40GB version, leaving only the 80GB version for $399. My parents and I just bought one of these for my sister; her and her husband were debating over getting one of these for a year now. This game console + blu-ray player will go perfect with their new Samsung TOC series HDTV. The PS3 is still an amazing deal for a gamer and the HD movie lover, in my opinion.
Yet more evidence that the line dividing the so-called “mainstream media” and the blog world is blurring beyond recognition: Here’s NBC’s “Today” show aping one of blogdom’s tried-and-true conventions–running a popular YouTube clip, then talking about it (apologies for the crummy embed: blame Iframe and user error).
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Can you blame them? That lion is pretty cool. And, it turns out, MSNBC.com viewers like watching that story almost as much as YouTube viewers do: NBC’s site has generated 2.4 million views by talking about the clip, while the original YouTube clip has generated 3.2 million views, says Beet.TV. Happy holidays!
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(Flash video embed above, MP4 download is here.)
This week, the Boing Boing tv crew is taking a week off, and we've been revisiting some of the episodes that mean the most to us over the past year.
For me, for many reasons, the three episodes we produced from a K'iche Maya pueblo in the Guatemalan highlands were the most personally important. I'll embed one above.
It's about taking a traditional sweat bath, which is something they might well be doing today there during the holidays, provided there's enough water -- that only comes every few days.
Here are all three:
(1) BBtv WORLD: Through the eyes of the pueblo.
(2) BBtv WORLD: Migration, and a Mayan Sweat Bath.
(3) BBtv WORLD: El Molinero.
And other episodes of "BBtv WORLD" about Guatemala are here. But I also wanted to take this opportunity to share something else that means a lot to me. Last night, I scanned some of the hand-drawn Christmas cards from participants in an international non-profit I work with there, and uploaded them to Flickr. These were private cards, sent from folks in the pueblo to project participants in the US (in other words, they weren't for sale or anything, they were just heartfelt communication from one person to another).
I'm sharing some of them here with permission. They're beautiful and very meaningful to me.
Some of the cards refer to the old Mayan gods (for instance, references to "Ajaw", or "Tzaq'ol and Bit'ol", primordial entities who were present at the creation of all things), other cards refer to to Christianity. Some were created by children, others by adults, and the one with the Mayan house and the big Christmas tree and the volcano, thumbnail above? That man is considered the best painter and illustrator in the town. Every one of the cards, all in a stack next to me on my desk here right now, every one reflects soul, kindness, and hope.
To really appreciate them, click on "all sizes" and look at the larger size. The one I received personally read, "Feliz Navidad, y Paz a Todas Las Naciones Del Mundo." I know the woman who drew it, and she's survived so much.
On behalf of the Boing Boing tv team, and my colleagues in the nonprofit that works in that village, I extend that greeting to each of you who reads this blog post today. Friends we know, and friends we do not.
Flickr set: Christmas cards from a K'iche Maya Village in Guatemala
[via Books.Google.com/Popular Mechanics]
Spotted at Sony's Japanese Vaio site is this device, which resembles the computer partially revealed by the FCC. It's a pretty but indistinct image that feeds its promise to "change the way you look at laptops" next month: no screen, keyboard or other features are even clear. There's just a hint of a crease, which morphs into an envelope's flaps in the teaser ad.
What do we know of Sony's new machine? According to the FCC filing, its 9 inches long, runs Windows and has high-end connectivity options. It could be a "mobile internet device" such as Intel originally imagined its Atom processors would power; a modern iteration of its much-loved Picturebook series of subnotebooks; or yet another high-end Sony ultra-portable, in the tradition of its T- and U-series.
What's for certain is that it won't be a clamshell netbook with a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 92% size keyboard and Windows XP ULCPC edition: One Sony exec's already asserted it won't make a netbook like the ones that are currently out.
Sony Japan [Electronista]
Get a whiff of this. Some iPhone developers are still raking in large piles of cash with their apps, and recently a fart application made nearly $10,000 in a single day.
Joel Comm, developer of iFart Mobile, published download statistics of his app, and this week it stood at No. 1 overall with over 13,000 downloads.
The app costs a dollar, and Apple takes 30 percent of the pie. So that amounts to about $9,200 in profit for the developer.
That's pretty impressive, considering Apple previously didn't believe fart applications met the standards of the App Store. In September, Apple rejected a similar novelty app called Pull My Finger on the grounds that it had "limited utility." Just recently Apple reversed that decision and approved a number of other fart apps as well.
A fart app is the most downloaded iPhone application this week. Is this a means to celebrate or feel depressed? You decide.
iPhone fart app pulls in nearly $10,000 a day [VentureBeat]
See Also:
Psion is sick of hearing about other companies' netbooks. It'll even cease and decist you if you talk about them, according to reports.
This is because it used to make a miniature laptop called the Netbook, and still owns a trademark on the term. Its machine was cool, in the way that pricey ultra-mobile computers always are, but not a hit with consumers. It was similar to the NEC MobilePro, HP Jornada, and other machines from the "glory days" of instant-on Windows CE Pocket PCs.
A few years on, it's nonetheless antsy about the world using it as a generic term to refer to cheap little laptops. Following is one of the missives from its legal firm, which I'm not 100 percent convinced is real.
Companies often feel forced to send these letters, even if they have no intention of pursuing action: it's necessary to defend a trademark.
Thing is, of course, is that Psion isn't doing anything with the trademark. It now makes ultra-rugged cellphones and vehicle-mount computers under different names. Psion's lack of recent Netbooks — you won't easily find reference to the thing on its own website — would seem a textbook example of how to let a trademark fall into generic usage. Perhaps this is a hint of a new consumer product? It's IKON was a nice piece of kit.
Netbook enthusiast web sites getting C & D using term “netbook” [jkontherun]
“The Man” is making us doing a little thing about some of our favorite Christmas memories involving gadgets. This is mine.
Once upon a time, when I was about 8 years old, my family was preparing to go on vacation to France. My brothers were being pains in the ass, as is their wont, and upset me to the point that I was sent to time out upstairs, alone. Great. The night before a big vacation and I’m upstairs eating old pizza. A couple of hours pass and everyone goes to bed, but then we lose power during the middle of the night. Naturally this breaks all of my family’s alarm clocks, causing us to be late to the airport. In a hurry, my family leaves without me. Now what do I do?
As I remember it, I did crazy kid stuff: using aftershave (and then getting stung!), jumping on my parents’ bed, etc. It was pretty cool for a while, till these two burglars showed up. At first I was scared, but after talking to the neighborhood Boo Radley, I got some nerve and really did a number on these guys.
I fired a BB gun at them, made the stairs all slippery, rigged a light in the basement with an iron, super-heated a doorknob so that the burglar burned himself, put nails on some of the basement steps, burned one of the guys’ head with a torch, put Christmas ornaments on the floor underneath the window and swung paint cans into their faces! Now that’s how you use gadgets!
It was the best Christmas ever.
Photo: Flickr
Desktops have been on the road to oblivion for a few years now in the U.S. but now the rest of the world seems to be catching up.
Global notebook shipments exceeded those of desktops on a quarterly basis for the first time ever in the third quarter, says research firm iSuppli.
"This marks a major event in the PC market because it marks the start of the age of the notebook," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms at iSuppli in a statement.
Laptop sales rose almost 40 percent in the third quarter to reach 38.6 million devices shipped, while sales of desktop PCs declined 1.3 percent to 38.5 million units.
Despite a weak economy, people didn't slow down on their purchases of a computer. Worldwide PC sales rose 15.4 percent in the third quarter to 79 million units.
In terms of the top players, Hewlett-Packard retained its position as the market leader followed by Dell and Acer. Lenovo and Toshiba ranked fourth and fifth on iSuppli's charts.
For Apple fans there was some bad news. Apple lost almost half a point of market share from the previous quarter, placing it seventh overall, says iSuppli.
“The big news was undoubtedly the performance of Taiwan’s Acer ” said Wilkins said.
Acer's netbook strategy paid big dividends for the company. It grew its market share by 45 percent in the third quarter and by 79 percent on a year-over-year basis.
Acer shipped almost 3 million more notebooks in the third quarter than it did in the previous quarter, with a majority of them being netbooks.
So will netbooks become the notebook-killers of the future? Will they do to notebooks, what notebooks did to desktops?
Photo: (coda/Flickr)
By Tiernan Ray, Blogger, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
The makers of LCD panels for laptops and TVs are pressing on with churning out the glass, no matter how badly the industry is doing, reports trade pub DigiTimes. In an article on its Web site, the paper says that despite an expected 10 to 20 percent drop in the first quarter of 2009 in already low utilization of factories at AU Optronics, Chi Mei Optoelectronics, and Chungwa Picture Tubes, the companies are not going to cease production entirely. Instead, they are asking employees to take unpaid holidays, for example, among drastic measures to keep lines running despite the fact that it is must be quite uneconomical to do so at this point.
Mac cloner Psystar claims it's nothing but an independent Florida-based startup, despite Apple's suspicions of a conspiracy.
Apple has been in legal battle with Psystar for several months, and recently the corporation said it believes the Mac cloner is receiving help from other parties -- possibly corporations.
"Psystar denies that said activities are unlawful and improper," Psystar said in its response. "Psystar likewise denies the suggestion that there exists a concerted effort to commit infringement of Apple's intellectual property rights, to breach or induce the breach of Apple's otherwise unenforceable license agreements, and to violate state and common law unfair competition laws."
Psystar in April began selling a PC hacked to run Mac OS X Leopard -- a Mac clone -- and the company has since added several Hackintoshes to its product line. Apple in July filed a lawsuit claiming Psystar was committing copyright, trademark and shrink-wrap infringement.
Apple's lawsuit against Psystar wasn't enough to scare off other companies that later arose to offer similar Mac clones. The army of Mac cloners was largely driven by Apple's switch to Intel chips, which made its operating system easier to hack to run on other non-Mac, Intel machines.
See Also:
Psystar: No conspiracy against Apple [ComputerWorld]
Photo: Psystar
A piece of metal on his costume set off the security alarm, prompting security guards to confiscate his plastic handcuffs and order him to strip down to his shorts and T-shirt.Clown strip-searched before children's charity flight
Staff also demanded he put the liquid for his plastic bubble-blowing saxophone into a clear sealed plastic bag.
"I'd made sure I'd bought plastic handcuffs and a plastic whistle but I hadn't realised that the costume had a metal band – I thought it was plastic," said Mr Vaughan, from Shard End, Birmingham.
Original scans from Davidguy.brinkster.net
Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Dec 2008 | 5:23 pm
What kind of tech and media company tries to go public in this economy? A tech and media company with no other options.
That’s the story behind yesterday’s filing by FriendFinder Networks Inc., a collection of porn sites and adult networks that wants to raise $460 million via the public markets.
Given that the media industry is in the dumps, the tech IPO market was closed even before the economy’s collapse and that the prospects of floating any kind of offering in the public markets is dicey at best, it would be hard to find a worse time to try this route. But FriendFinder doesn’t have much choice: It has very little cash and a lot of debt.
The details: The money-losing company has $43 million in cash, and $420 million in short-term debt. Some of that debt is already in default and the company has breached loan covenants for some loans as well. Presumably the company can’t find anyone to lend it that much, so it’s hoping that the equity markets step up.
If investors bail it out, almost all of the IPO proceeds will go to paying down that debt. If not… well, that “could have a material adverse effect on our ability to continue as a going concern.”
Anyone still thinking about helping out Daniel C. Staton and Marc H. Bell, who run the company and own more than half of its equity? Read the full registration statement here.
FROM GAMERTELL - Check out Gamertell’s gallery of Christmas cards from various game and game-related companies… MORE »
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Chloe Davis, a researcher for Reprieve, told Danger Room the Zero dB campaign was planning to work with prominent musicians to lobby the incoming administration.Rockers To Press Obama on Music Torture
"It is really important that we seize the chance to alert Obama to this practice," she said. "... I think there will be people on the other side trying to catch Obama’s attention, saying we need to be tough. We’re trying to counter that message."
By Nitrozac and Snaggy
By Tiernan Ray, Blogger, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
Our friends at BCA Research were kind enough yesterday to slip the following software musings over the transom at TTD, and I nearly fell off my chair: Buy software stocks! As the folks at BCA see it, “The corporate sector, now more than ever, is trying to squeeze every bit of productivity out of resources.” Well, sure. So? “Productivity-enhancing software firms are the prime beneficiaries. During an economic downturn, overall IT budgets drop (expensive hardware refresh cycles get postponed), however, software-related outlays remain resilient.” Well, I guess that makes sense. Better yet, says BCA, “Investors need not pay up for these attractive defensive characteristics as relative price-to-earnings multiples are close to cyclical lows.”
Paris, France based Fotonauts, which launched at TechCrunch50, had a strong showing at the Le Web conference earlier this month.
The company aims to be a sort of Wikipedia for photographs, letting users create and edit albums of events, things and places. Information from Google maps and Wikipedia is automatically added to the albums.
The attention to detail and design is what makes Fotonauts so awesome. Check out the customization options for the album embedded above, for example, here (try dragging the margins to make the embed larger or smaller). No wonder that the founding team is ex-Apple.
Fotonauts is still in private beta, with 5,000 people or so on the waiting list. But during Le Web anyone could sign up, and were encouraged to upload their photos from the event to the many albums that popped up.
The company also announced the hiring of a CEO - Gilles Samoun - at Le Web, and released a Windows version of its desktop software (previously it was Mac only).
If you’re dying to get in to the Fotonauts beta right now, send an email to techcrunch@fotonauts.com. The first 500 will get set up right away. Otherwise, sign up here and wait in line.
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I'm proposing we have a get-together at the Surly Girl Saloon [Map] in the Short North on Monday at 6pm. It's between holidays, it'll be nice and cozy, and we can talk of many things, including but not limited to, cabbages and kings. Please email john@crunchgear.com with the subject line "COLUMBUS" if you plan on stopping by.
In what may be an early indicator of broader Web advertising trends, the New York Times announced today that it saw total Internet advertising revenues decline 3.8 percent in November. This compares to a total decrease of 21.2 percent for all advertising at media company, most of which is print advertising. The New York Times releases financial data on a monthly basis, and this was the first time it has reported an actual decrease in Internet advertising revenues. (Internet advertising revenues for the year through November are still up 11.6 percent).
The NYT’s digital properties, which include NYTimes.com, Boston.com, and About.com, attracted 47 million unique visitors in November and collectively would have been the 16th largest site on the Web, according to comScore. In the third quarter, online advertising ground to a halt at the largest Web companies.
But most analysts are still arguing about the extent of the slowdown, not whether online advertising revenues will actually go down like other types of advertising. Barclays analyst Doug Anmuth, for instance, recently revised his 2009 Internet advertising revenue growth numbers down from 17 percent to 6 percent. But that might still be too optimistic.
That said, we still need more data points before any conclusions can be made about the fourth quarter or next year. The New York Times is not a perfect indicator of the overall advertising market. Most of its declines came from weakness in online classifieds, especially job and real-estate listings. On the positive side, its news sites actually saw an increase in display advertising in November. So there is some hope for other display advertisers.
Looking at November comScore stats for the NYTimes.com site alone, unique U.S. visitors were flat at 13 million was and pageviews were down 15 percent to 147 million (see charts below). Like many media sites, it is suffering from post-Election blues.
(Photo by matticgn).
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Earlier this month, executives at the New York Times (NYT) warned investors that they had a miserable November. They weren’t kidding.
The grim details are here, but I’ll save you some time:
In the good old days of 2007, the Times could at least say that while print revenue growth was slowing to a halt, Internet ad sales were growing quickly. By last month, the best thing you could say about Internet revenue at the Times was that it was still growing a little bit. Now that’s gone, too.
For the record, the Times says that it was still able to register “moderate” display ad growth at its newspapers, but that its online classifieds and real estate ads had gotten crushed, for obvious reasons. And over at About.com, which until now has been the bright spot on the Times’s financials, display ads shrank, wiping out out “moderate” growth in cost-per click ads.
And expect more of the same in December and in 2009. Martin Nisenholtz, the Times’s digital boss, has already warned investors that the “softness in November” would “accelerate into December” and that “next year is going to be a different year, by a fairly profound margin.”
Per usual, the one bit of good news in the Times’s numbers is that its readers continue to value its publications enough to pay for them: Circulation revenues increased 4.2 percent. But if the Times can’t convince advertisers to pay, too, that’s not going to matter. Happy holidays!
Britain's Advertising Standards Authority has ordered Dyson not to repeat an ad that claims its vacuum cleaners don't rely on filters and don't clog.
The ruling, which follows a complaint from competitor Hoover, comes despite Dyson having cleared its claims before running the ad. It also backed up the claim with independent evidence that its technology worked.
As is often the case with ASA rulings, it came down to the regulator's belief that certain phrases would be misunderstood by consumers.In this case, it ruled that "a Dyson doesn't rely on a filter" would be interpreted by the general public to mean that there is no filter at all in Dyson's machine.
While Dysons do contain filters, they perform auxiliary air intake and hypoallergenic functions, and do not need to be frequently cleaned. Most vacuum cleaners use filters to help remove dust from air, and they require frequent cleaning and replacement--Dysons use the eponymous inventor's cyclonic separation system.
"We understood that neither the pre-motor nor the post-motor filters fitted in a Dyson cleaner were used in the primary separation of dust and dirt from the air," the ASA said in its ruling. "We recognised that Dyson had intended the claim to highlight the difference between the filtration system of Dyson cleaners and that of other cleaners ... We considered, however, that viewers were likely to understand the claim "a Dyson doesn't rely on a filter so there's nothing to clog" to imply Dyson cleaners did not have a filter, which meant they could not become clogged, although we appreciated that this was not the message Dyson had intended to convey."
The ruling all but admits that the Advertising Standards Authority evaluates complaints based not on the technical accuracy of a claim, but on whether a complainant's misinterpretation of it was "likely" -- even if other branches of Britain's advertising regulatory system had specifically blessed the claim at hand.
"The Broadcasting Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) said they sought expert advice from a consultant and discussed the ad in their secretariat meeting before clearing it. They said they agreed with Dyson's argument that, although the ad stated "a Dyson doesn't rely on a filter", it was not misleading, because it did not state that there was no filter at all," it wrote. "We noted the expert commissioned by the BACC had accepted Dyson's evidence that the suction power of certain Dyson cleaners remained constant when the dust collection bin filled up with certain quantities of dust,"
According to the ruling, the ad must not be run again in its current form.
If this Cellgun were a Top Trumps card, that card would read thus:
Probability of being fake: 100%
Possibility of Accidental Suicide: 50%
Awesomeness: 100%
As it is, the 'shop job is merely a humorous gag from StrategyPage's Military Jokes and Military Humor. We love it.
Product page [StrategyPage via RAW Feed]
See those red stains on the floor there? That's the remains of the dead horse that Ten One Design has been flogging for the last year with its Pogo iPhone stylus.
A short history of this pointless pointing device: Back in December 2007 we called it "The Most Useless iPhone Accessory. Ever", a $25 foam-tipped tube with which to replace your perfectly good finger as an input device for your iPhone.
In September of this year, Pogo realized it had sold almost none of its sticks, so in a transparent attempt to shift some units, it marked the price down to $20 and branded it as iPhone 3G compatible.
And what now? See if you can guess. Same stick in a different color? Check. $5 price reduction? Check. Compatible with a new device? Check! The new Pogo Sketch is the same old tat, now being billed as a companion for the latest MacBooks. It also has a pocket clip.
This time, though, it looks like the Pogo people have finally found a decent use for the pointy stick. The Sketch essentially turns the large multi touch pads on the unabomber MacBooks into graphics tablets. Small graphics tablets, but good enough for some sketching and note-writing.
Our suggestion? Wait a while. By our calculations, in another 18 months the price will have dropeed to $0.
Product page [Ten One Design. Thanks, Jenny!]
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