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Take a hike: Garmin eTrex updatedSection: Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Lifestyle, Transportation
A barometric altimeter and an electronic compass have been added to the eTrex Vista H. Both models have 24MB of onboard storage for maps. These two devices are designed to be handheld units for outdoor travels (hence, the “eTrex” name”). Both devices have grayscale screens that measure 2.4-inches. The Vista H costs $199.99, while the Legend H is only $149.99 Company Page: [Garmin] Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 14 Jan 2009 | 6:37 pm Test Midnight Club: LA downloadable content potentially dangerous to save filesFROM GAMERTELL - Recently, downloadable content for Midnight Club: LA accidentally found its way onto the Xbox Live Marketplace. The content was being tested when the leak occurred and could cause problems with your game… MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 14 Jan 2009 | 5:53 pm Dev Team teases iPod Touch 2G owners with redsn0w preview
Yellowsn0w, the illustrious iPhone 3G jailbreaking software, launched at the beginning of this month and the Dev Team is already toiling hard at their next release. Even though the group hasn’t officially announced that redsn0w is the iPod Touch 2G jailbreaking software, it more than likely is. When Apple stuffed a better CPU into the latest Touch, it broke the original jailbreaking software so a new release is likely to drop soon. Hopefully. More as we get it. Large image and coded message after the break.
Source: CrunchGear | 14 Jan 2009 | 2:05 pm Nortel Networks files for bankruptcy protectionTechnology giant Nortel Networks Corp. has filled for bankruptcy protection. North America's biggest maker of telecommunications equipment has been dealing with a sharp drop in orders...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Jan 2009 | 2:01 pm Our Tax Dollars At Work: Nancy Pelosi RickRolls YouTube ViewersThere’s a post title I thought I’d never write. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, posted a video of her cats on her official YouTube page and then promptly RickRolls viewers at the 37 second mark. “In honor of the launch of http://YouTube.com/HouseHub, Speaker Pelosi presents a behind the scenes view of the Speaker’s Office in the US Capitol.” This is the person who becomes President of the United States of America if the right two people go down. I’m moving to Canada. Thanks for the tip Michael. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 14 Jan 2009 | 1:59 pm Did Apple Just Change a Major App Store Policy?
Whoa! Has Apple just changed its mind on one of the lamest policies plaguing its App Store? In the weeks after the App Store submission process went live, a number of developers got a big smack in the face from Cupertino. After spending hundreds of hours developing their wares, they were turned away for offering features too similar to Apple’s own offerings, or “duplicate functionality”. The outcry was instantaneous and deafening; it’s one thing to have pride in your work, but to essentially ban competition is ridiculous. Over the past 24 hours, it appears that a shift in this policy may have occurred. With Apple offering their own Mobile Safari browser on the iPhone, most expected that alternative browsers would never see the light of day. At the time of writing, at least 4 such browsers have suddenly been given the greenlight. Is this an indication of an App-Store-wide policy change? We certainly hope so. Competition is good for everyone. Speaking of competition: Hey Skyfire and Mobile Firefox, the race is on. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 14 Jan 2009 | 1:58 pm Apple dismounts from high horse, approves 3rd Party Browsers
Whoa! Has Apple just changed its mind on one of the lamest policies plaguing its App Store? In the weeks after the App Store submission process went live, a number of developers got a big smack in the face from Cupertino. After spending hundreds of hours developing their wares, they were turned away for offering features too similar to Apple’s own offerings, or “duplicate functionality”. The outcry was instantaneous and deafening; it’s one thing to have pride in your work, but to essentially ban competition is ridiculous. Over the past 24 hours, it appears that a shift in this policy may have occurred. With Apple offering their own Mobile Safari browser on the iPhone, most expected that alternative browsers would never see the light of day. At the time of writing, at least 4 such browsers have suddenly been given the greenlight. Is this an indication of an App-Store-wide policy change? We certainly hope so. Competition is good for everyone. Speaking of competition: Hey Skyfire and Mobile Firefox, the race is on. [Via MacRumors] Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: MobileCrunch | 14 Jan 2009 | 1:56 pm RIAA Backs Down In Austin,TexasNewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In November, 2004, several judges in the federal court in Austin, Texas, got together and ordered the RIAA to cease and desist from its practice of joining multiple 'John Does' in a single case. The RIAA blithely ignored the order, and continued the illegal practice for the next four years, but steering clear of Austin. In 2008, however, circumstances conspired to force the record companies back to that venue. In Arista v. Does 1-22, in Providence, Rhode Island, they were hoping to get the student identities from the College of Rhode Island. After the first round, however, they learned that the College was not the ISP; rather, the ISP was an Austin-based company, Apogee Telecom Inc., meaning the RIAA would have to serve its subpoena in Austin. The RIAA did just that, but Apogee — unlike so many other ISP's — did not turn over its subscribers' identities in response to the subpoena, instead filing objections. This meant the RIAA would have to go to court, to try to get the Court to overrule Apogee's objections. Instead, it opted to withdraw the subpoena and drop its case."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 14 Jan 2009 | 1:48 pm Nortel files for bankruptcy protection in US - Reuters
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 14 Jan 2009 | 1:46 pm Internet threat to minors overblown, study suggests (Reuters)Reuters - Worries that the Internet and social networking services like MySpace pose a threat to child safety may be overblown, a report by industry, academics and technology experts suggests.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Jan 2009 | 1:43 pm IBM wins most U.S. patents in 2008
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 Marketing Shift.com | Review: Pandora 2.0 for iPhone and iPod Touch CNET News - Since its release in July of 2008, the Pandora internet radio iPhone App has been one of our favorites and a consistent top download [iTunes link] from Apple's iTunes App store. Slacker App Now Available for iPhone iPhone apps round-up: Slacker Radio and NoteWorthy |
Contrary to stories of overnight fortunes and money-printing fart machines, making money with an iPhone app can be tough. Thus far, your primary options are to charge for it (risky, unless your app is amazing or you manage to pull in a decent amount of coverage), or to place advertisements in the app (which, depending on your users, ad placement, and app usage could work out to big money or barely enough to be called pocket change).
Offerpal Media thinks they’ve found the answer to monetizing iPhone applications. Built around the same system they have in place for development on Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, and a number of other platforms, end users are able to participate in a variety of offers (from online surveys to product trials) in exchange for virtual currency. Users spend this currency on in-app goods, and the developers get paid.
Offerpal will be looking for partners to help them fine tune the system over the next 6 weeks, at which point the program will launch into beta. Each partner application will face a vetting process which, once they’ve opened the doors a bit more, CEO Anu Shukla says should take “around 24 hours.” Though the integration is a bit complex in its current state, Offerpal says they are moving toward a much simpler drag-and-drop integration method.
Just as traditional ads don’t work for all applications, I imagine that such a system might be a hard sell within certain apps - not all of them have a use for a virtual currency system. With a bit of creativity on the developer’s end, however, this might work out to a good chunk of change from an otherwise profitless application.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 Current World News | First Look: Google Apps Premiere Not For Everyone CRN - By Samara Lynn, ChannelWeb By launching Google Apps, Google decided to take productivity applications into the cloud for business. Google opens heart, Apps to channel Google Woos Allies With Apps Reseller Program |
Panel concludes technology alone can't protect kids, parents needed TG Daily - By AP Digital New York (NY) - A panel concluded earlier this week that no single technology employed to assist parents against unwanted Internet contact with their kids, including adult content and individuals, is viable. Report Finds Online Threats to Children Overblown Percentage of kids solicited online drops, Harvard report says |
A new free service called Twitrans launched today that allows Twitter users to quickly translate any short message to a variety of languages. The translation is farmed out to humans using the OneHourTranslation platform and results are promised in a few minutes.
Here’s how it works. You send a Twitter message to @twitrans followed by the translation requested (English to Chinese would be en2zh). A test message I sent: “@twitrans en2zh Testing out twitrans, a new Twitter translation service.”
The service uses humans, so it’ll presumably yield better results than Google Translate or similar automated translation services.
While I waited for a response the service sent me a message saying “Human translation started. You’ll receive the translation here in a few minutes. Thank you! “ (they sent that to the wrong Twitter account, but I’m guessing they’ll fix that).
Ten minutes later they sent this message back to me: “尝试一下twitrans吧，一种新的翻译服务” I have no idea what that means, but I’m hoping it’s a decent translation. Just to be sure I sent it back to them in Chinese and asked them to translate it to English. If I translate this message back and forth enough times with the service, I’m betting I’ll get some crazy results.
Messages can be translated to/from Arabic-ar, Chinese-zh, Dutch-nl, English-en, French-fr, German-de, Greek-el, Hebrew-he, Hindi-hi, Italian-it, Japanese-jp, Portuguese-pt, Russian-ru, Spanish-es.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
I didn’t see “Saturday Night Live” last week, but NewTeeVee informs me that there was one highlight: Former “Doogie Howser M.D.” star Neil Patrick Harris and a cast of of dozens performing the theme song to “Doogie Howser M.D.”.
So why didn’t I embed a clip of the sketch from NBC.com or Hulu, the joint venture between GE’s NBC (GE) and News Corp.’s Fox (NWS)? Because NBC didn’t have permission from whomever actually owns the rights to the theme song, NBC confirms.
Bummer! Especially since the clip was one of the show’s “Digital Shorts”, which are designed to be viewed on the Web, a la “Lazy Sunday”.
You can still find versions of it on Google’s YouTube (GOOG), though NBC’s lawyers are busy hunting them down — don’t be surprised if the following clip doesn’t work by the time you get to it:
If you can’t see it, don’t despair: These music clearance issues have tripped up Saturday Night Live/NBC before, and the clip in question — Andy Samberg and the dude from Maroon 5 doing “Iran So Far” — eventually made it back on the official Web. (Another reason not to despair, at least in my humble opinion: The Doogie clip isn’t going to make you laugh out loud, anyway.)
The bigger point: Even when TV/Hollywood “get it”, they still can’t always serve up their best stuff to Web viewers, because copyright laws and digital distribution still don’t sync up.
And much more often, the people who make TV shows and movies aren’t interested in serving that stuff up — legally, for free — anyway. Hulu was only able to show one full episode of “Mad Men”, AMC’s much-discussed but little-watched show about advertising. And it’s only going to be able to show “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”, a cult sitcom from FX that it owes some of its success to the video site, for a few more weeks.
So maybe that’s a cautionary tale for companies like Boxee, which envision a future where you get all your TV shows and movies from the Web, with the support of the TV networks and Hollywood. Or more likely, a cautionary tale for TV and Hollywood, who still aren’t ready to let their customers watch their stuff when and where they want to see it.
 Videogamer.com | Nintendo DSi gets April US date? CVG Online - The Nintendo DSi will be released in North America this April for a premium price, US reports have claimed. According to "multiple sources" the updated handheld, which sports a VGA camera, SD card slot and bigger screens, will hit the US at a price of ... Rumor: DSi US Launch Date, Price Revealed Nintendo DSi Coming to North America On April 4 For $179.99?!? |
Pioneer today announced in Tokyo [JP] that they will no longer manufacture LaserDisc players. The DVL-919, CLD-R5, DVK-900 and DVL-K88 are the last models available.
The company has been in the LD business since 1981 and has sold a mere 3.6 million players through 2002. Owners of Pioneer players can still use the company’s service for another 8 years. Pioneer says LD hardware production in the time of DVD and Blu-ray discs isn’t lucrative anymore.
 Telegraph.co.uk | Windows 7 is enough to kill Linux on the desktop Inquirer - By Nick Farrell FOR THE PAST three years I have been a Linux fan-boy using Ubuntu most of the time and Windows XP when I needed to play games or run CS desktop lay out stuff. An Ancient Printer in Vista Home Why Windows 7 Better Deliver |
"Content" by Cory DoctorowI've included a bonus chapter at the end with Barlow's "Economy of Ideas" plus a somewhat impassioned reading of "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" to round out the whole experience.
Sometime in the next month or two, I'll also upload some afterthoughts of my own as a final entry (but first I'm going to listen to the whole thing through from start to finish).
 The Tech Herald | Solitary MS update poses critical Windows risk Register - By John Leyden • Get more from this author The solitary security update in the latest edition of Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday still poses a critical risk. Futility of Microsoft's Exploitability Index Critical Fixes Released for Microsoft, Oracle |
Three Garbages in One Garbage
The left pedal opens the highest can in a traditional way. This can is for general discarding. A bag dispenser is available here. The middle pedal makes the second can rotate around a decentered axe. This can is for packaging, plastic etc. The right pedal makes the last can move towards the user. The last can is for glass discarding.
 dBTechno | Analyst: Palm Will Sell 1.5M Pres In First Year InformationWeek - Let the guessing games begin. An analyst from Citi issued a note recently, stating his belief that Palm should be able to convince 1.5 million people to adopt the Palm Pre as their next smartphone. Palm Pre: Press Loves It, but What About Customers? Why Pre is the right move for Palm |
YouTube has been testing a new way of combating copyright violations on the site - removing the audio, leaving the video. The result is a wasteland of music videos that are creepily silent.
For some time now the company has been fingerprinting audio tracks and notifying users of infringement when they find a copyrighted song (I received one of these in error, fought it and won). Until recently, the copyright holder was able to choose between having the whole file removed or making revenue off of ads placed on the content.
But now YouTube seems to be just stripping out the audio. Examples: here, here, here. This user-created one is just sad now.
Based on Twitters, a lot of people think something is wrong with their computers. Someone (or more likely some committee) at YouTube made the decision that this was the best user experience possible when a song needed to be stripped from the site. That decision was a bad one.
Thankfully the music industry is always there to do something a little more stupid than they did before to entertain us all.
Thanks for the tip Aniq.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Quake Live, the upcoming free in-browser version of Quake, is sending out beta invitations to the service. Users are directed to beta.quakelive.com
This is a grand new experiment in gameplay. Instead of charging users a monthly access fee, id Software is teaming with IGA Worldwide to add advertising and sponsorships to the game to make money. Early reviews of the game are a thumbs up, and it looks to be a one way train to zero productivity at work. We’re trying to track down video of the beta environment.
The trailer for Quake Live is here.
QUAKE LIVE Tester!
Your name has been submitted to id Software to help us test a new multiplayer project underway here at the studio. We are working on QUAKE LIVE and would appreciate your help as we progressively test technology systems, user interface options, and gameplay changes.
What is QUAKE LIVE?
Originally dubbed “QUAKE Zero” when we announced the project at QuakeCon 2007, QUAKE LIVE will be a freely available, updated version of QUAKE III Arena that you access and play through your web browser.
As a beta tester, we are asking you to help us test the game delivery mechanism and core game technology, and to provide feedback on gameplay and game levels. The servers are always available, but you are encouraged to join us for our regular focus tests and special events (you will receive email notifications).
Please note that QUAKE LIVE is a work in progress and your experience as a beta tester does not reflect the final set of functionality that will be available. We encourage you to post comments, issues, suggestions and other feedback to the QUAKE LIVE forums. As a beta tester you are asked to keep your personal key, login information, account information, and all other information related to your participation in this program private and confidential.
What’s Next?
Simply use the personalized key below to setup an id Beta Tester account and gain access to the QUAKE LIVE website where you can begin playing.
You will be asked to agree to a non-disclosure agreement and we ask that you keep your personal key, login information, account information, and all other information related to your participation in this program private and confidential.
Visit http://beta.quakelive.com/ to start playing.
Key:Thank you for your time,
The QUAKE LIVE Team at id Software
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Meez, a 3D avatar community site / virtual world, has announced its merger with Pulse Entertainment, a provider of user-generated mobile multimedia messaging and entertainment services, and has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from LA-based VC firm Anthem Venture Partners to help with the transition.
Details are scarce for the time being, but Meez plans to integrate Pulse’s messaging services into its portal to offer its 8 million registered users web and mobile messaging capabilities. Meez says it will continue to support the customers of Pulse’s existing avatar messaging services, Veepers, and offer expanded new products based on its own social entertainment community platform.
Both companies are based in San Francisco, but Pulse Entertainment has been around for much longer, having been established in 1994, while Meez was launched about 3 years ago. Pulse Entertainment has raised a total of over $60 million in venture capital funding since its existence, while Meez took $5.4 million in a third round funding from Battery Ventures and Transcosmos in 2007, after raising a second round of $4 million in 2006 (we’re still digging for the total amount of financing that Meez raised).
We’ll update this post with more information as soon as it comes in.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Chinese government may be keeping a close eye on which websites, blogs and search engines their people can visit, but that’s not stopping internet usage from growing fast throughout the country. The government-related information center CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) claims the nation’s online population has grown 41.9% in 2008 to an astounding 298 million users, reports the BBC.
That’s about the size of the entire U.S. population, while eMarketer pegs the online population in the States to be about 200 million.
This further cements China’s position as the world’s largest online population, although internet penetration is still fairly low (22,6%) even if it exceeds the world’s average by almost one percent.
According to the study, usage in the countryside is growing much faster than in urban areas (60.8% year-on-year compared to 35.6% in cities), the numbers of bloggers has increased to +162 million, and accessing the internet through mobile phones is still immensely popular. CNNIC reports that 117.6 million people accessed the internet using their mobile phones last year, up 133% from 2007. A further surge is expected after licences for 3G-enabled mobile phones have finally been issued to China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom as from last week. The roll-out of the faster 3G network is expected to commence in 2011.
Imagine what it would be like if the government weren’t so keen in controlling what the Chinese are allowed to view or search on the web.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
EULA - End User License Agreement. Edison invented that, too (Thanks, Mark!)
Patented in Great Britain, Germany, France and other Countries. This record is sold upon the condition that it shall not be re-sold to or by any unauthorized dealer or used for duplication, and that it shall not be sold, or offered for sale, by the original, or any subsequent purchaser (except by authorized jobber or factor to an authorized retail dealer) for less than 35 cents in the United States, nor in other countries for less than the price given in the current Edison catalogues of the country in which it is sold. Upon any breach of this condition, the license to use and vend this record, implied from such sale, immediately terminates.
See also: Record industry DRM from 1907
Section: Tech News, Web, Websites
Jerry Yang is out as CEO of Yahoo! after a less than memorable year. Today, Carol Bartz is the new CEO. Does she have what it takes to right the ship?
Her past experience, while no indicator of future performance, shows that she made Audodesk a huge success. When she first started as CEO of Autodesk revenues were below $300 million. When she left, revenues were over $1.5 billion.
”There is no denying that Yahoo! has faced enormous challenges over the last year, but I believe there is now an extraordinary opportunity to create value for our shareholders and new possibilities for our customers, partners and employees. We will seize that opportunity.” - Carol Bartz
Bartz also had a role in Cisco since 1996 as a director and then the Lead Independent Director. In case you were not aware, being a director on any board of a company is not given to just anyone. Bartz is also on the board of NetApp and Intel.
Personally, I hope Yahoo! gets its act together because competition is good for everyone. We’ll be keeping an eye on Yahoo!
Read: [Yahoo! Press Release]
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Here is a story, in full, by the always terrific G. Pascal Zachary, which appeared in The Wall Street Journal in 1992, about the newly-hired CEO Carol Bartz and the “theocracy of hackers” at then-wacky Autodesk.
Three guesses about who eventually won that battle and the first two don’t count.
Fast forward to 2008, with Bartz now taking up the difficult reins of Yahoo (YHOO), which is a little more behaved than Autodesk (ADSK) was then, but still a handful.
Here’s one quote from the story about Autodesk that could read as if were in former exec Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto” about Yahoo:
“Over time, Autodesk became almost unmanageable. Why? Autodesk was run very democratically. People met. They discussed things. Many flowers bloomed. But nobody harvested.”
(Although, to be fair, Yahoo Co-Founder and outgoing CEO Jerry Yang is no where near as odd as Autodesk Founder John Walker.)
But my favorite quote from the piece from Bartz, and the most pertinent to Yahoo today, as it still sounds like her motto, after listening to her first outing as Yahoo CEO today:
“I am not coming to Autodesk as a dictator. But I am not a consensus manager in the extreme. I do not believe the best decision is a group grope.”
Oh, dear, because that has been Yahoo’s favorite management style–until now.
Here’s the full–and very long–piece:
SAUSALITO, Calif.–When Carol Bartz was named the new chairman and chief executive of Autodesk Inc. last month, the talk focused on her being the first woman outsider ever brought in to run a major high-tech company. But that obscured the larger issue: Whether an unruly clique of programmers at one of America’s most strangely run big companies will make her its latest managerial victim.
Autodesk? If the name barely registers, you’re not alone–even though, remarkably, the London Business School last year calculated that Autodesk was by one measure the most profitable company of the 1980s, based on the school’s survey of 2,000 public companies world-wide.
Though the world’s sixth largest PC software company, Autodesk is hardly a household name for a couple of reasons. One is that it dominates a niche: software that allows relatively inexpensive personal computers to produce powerful models for engineers, architects and other professional designers.
The other reason is Autodesk’s founding genius, John Walker, a reclusive programmer who doesn’t allow the company to distribute his picture or publish it in its annual report. In a rare interview granted for this article, a prickly Mr. Walker insisted that a reporter sit in front of a video camera, declared that Autodesk claimed a copyright on the ensuing discussion and debated the meaning of each question.
Just as Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software supplier, is an extension of the personality of William Gates III, Autodesk is largely a creature of Mr. Walker. Like Mr. Gates, Mr. Walker is superb at identifying computer trends and spreading his vision to the troops. But unlike Mr. Gates, Mr. Walker, 42, never really wanted to run his company. “I’m an engineer, I’m a programmer, I’m a technologist,” he says. “I have no interest in running a large U.S. public company, and I never have. It was a means to an end to accomplish the technological work I wished to achieve.”
He relinquished the top spot in 1986 to Alvar Green, formerly Autodesk’s chief financial officer, to return to programming. But the real power still rested with Mr. Walker, Autodesk’s biggest shareholder, and an elite group of programmers called “Core,” who had either helped Mr. Walker found the company in 1982 or led its most important projects.
Core members are contentious, eccentric free-thinkers who have had a way of devouring professional managers. They have often attacked each other and company executives, usually by sending “flame mail”–biting electronic letters. The outbursts sometimes have led to changes, and sometimes brought work to a halt. “The whole company is a theocracy of hackers,” says Charles M. Foundyller, president of Daratech Inc., a market research firm in Cambridge, Mass.
A year ago, Mr. Walker issued the ultimate in flame mail, a 44-page letter brutally attacking Mr. Green for allegedly trying to bolster short-term profits by neglecting investment in new products and marketing. Mr. Green later decided to resign, but stayed on until the selection of Ms. Bartz, 43, who formerly ran worldwide field operations for Sun Microsystems Inc.
She is regarded as a canny pick, particularly because she has experience managing rapid growth. She’s also a tough manager who got her first big promotion at Sun when she convinced top management that she could do a better job than her boss, who was on vacation. “I am not coming to Autodesk as a dictator,” she says. “But I am not a consensus manager in the extreme. I do not believe the best decision is a group grope.”
That, however, is largely how Autodesk has been managed until now. It was founded by Mr. Walker and a dozen programmer pals just as International Business Machines Corp. revolutionized the computer industry with its original PC. Mr. Walker saw Autodesk as a diversified supplier of PC software with a can’t-miss future. “We should consider ourselves extremely lucky to be in this business at this time in history,” Mr. Walker wrote in 1982, egging on his co-founders. “I cannot imagine any scenario other than the total collapse of society in which the sales of microcomputer application software will not grow by a factor of 10 in the next five years.”
Actually, Autodesk’s own sales did better than that, jumping nearly tenfold to $9.8 million in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 1985, only its second full year of operation. Sales reached $100 million, another factor of 10, four years later; for the year ended Jan. 31, it earned $57.8 million on revenues of $284.9 million.
Mr. Walker didn’t invent the program that drove all this phenomenal success. Instead, Autodesk’s hit product proved to be a computer-aided-design (CAD) program that Mr. Walker purchased from an outside programmer named Michael Riddle. The program, which became AutoCad, did for designers of buildings, interiors and machines what VisiCalc’s spreadsheet did for the accountant: It made the personal computer an essential tool, where once pencil and paper reigned.
Mr. Walker quickly grasped the promise of AutoCad when Mr. Riddle gave him a presentation in 1982. “When I showed him the program, he was quiet for 45 minutes. It was the first time he’s ever been quiet with me,” says Mr. Riddle. Then, “he says, ‘You’ve got a fortune here.’” Before long, Autodesk dropped virtually all of its other work to concentrate on AutoCad. The program, which now sells for about $3,500, was a runaway success, cutting deeply into the sales of computer companies that blended software and hardware into systems that might cost 10 times the price of a PC with AutoCad, and yet afford only somewhat better performance.
While established CAD leaders ignored the threat from the PC, Autodesk began to entrench itself with customers. The company signed up dealers by the hundreds; many were architects and draftsmen themselves who sold it to their colleagues. And Mr. Walker created an AutoCad language so that consultants or customers could take the program and modify it to handle specific tasks. Today, thousands of AutoCad applications exist.
Mr. Walker gave Mr. Riddle an extraordinarily generous royalty agreement that eventually amounted to more than $10 million. The payment may be a record for an outside programmer in the PC business, but Mr. Walker has always operated by a different set of rules. He doesn’t care a whit about office decorum or hierarchy, so Autodesk was always casual and libertarian, even by techie standards.
“I realized this was a different place when at my first staff meeting, I was licked by a dog,” says one manager. But within this unstructured setting, Mr. Walker for the first four years ruled by charisma, relentless memo writing and sheer force of will.
Mr. Walker has unusual interests, which he imposed on Autodesk. When he grew intrigued with outer space, Autodesk invested in a company that salvages used fuel tanks from the Space Shuttle with the idea of sending them back into orbit, carrying the concept of recycling about as far as it can go. When he grew enamored of cellular automata and chaos theory, arcane fields at the intersection of computing, mathematics and biology, the company released a family of products based on those concepts that are essentially video games for brainy adults.
While Mr. Walker is intensely private about his personal life, he has had no qualms about airing Autodesk’s dirty laundry–or effusively describing his technical ideas. He published a book containing scores of confidential Autodesk memos, many written by himself. And he once unsuccessfully tried to interest journalist Hunter Thompson in chronicling the company’s rise. An obsessive writer who often revises a memo dozens of times before releasing it, he also has written a manuscript for a diet book, based on his experience of losing (and keeping off) about 100 pounds.
He is prone to making unexpected pronouncements. In a rare public appearance in March, Mr. Walker interrupted the description of a new product with this observation: “We are living on a small blue sphere in an endless black void.”
Besides programming, Mr. Walker wrote press releases and ad copy and even pitched the product at trade shows in the company’s early years. But wearing so many hats frayed his nerves. He began to show increasing impatience with co-workers. “The only way he knows how to deal with people is to bluster,” says Mr. Riddle, who argued with him about the technical direction of AutoCad.
These fits of impatience dove-tailed with Mr. Walker’s continuing suspicion of professional managers, shared by other members of Core. In early 1986, he forced out John G. Ford Jr., the vice president for marketing and sales, who built the dealer network that many observers say is still Autodesk’s most valuable asset. Neither Mr. Walker nor Mr. Ford will comment.
Despite Mr. Walker’s rough edges, employees were, and still are, drawn to him the way kids admire the baddest boy in class. He “is the cult hero of Autodesk,” says Joe Oakey, who directs the company’s charitable foundation. “He could stand up before a company meeting and say ‘I hate you,’ and everyone would cheer.”
It was also in 1986 that Mr. Walker tired of management and handed daily responsibilities to Mr. Green. Two years later, he resigned as chairman to devote himself fully to writing software from his nearby home. But he still held a huge stake in the company. (He currently owns 869,000 shares–less than 4% of the shares outstanding, but still worth more than $30 million.)
Mr. Green was ill-suited to ride herd on the rambunctious Core. Trained in finance, Mr. Green didn’t even keep a computer on his desk, so he missed the electronic chatter that went on behind his back. When he needed to send an electronic message–the preferred means of discourse at Autodesk–he asked his secretary to do it.
Meanwhile, disputes kept breaking out among programmers and managers, usually about the technical direction of the company. “Over time, Autodesk became almost unmanageable,” says Mr. Foundyller, the analyst. “Why? Autodesk was run very democratically. People met. They discussed things. Many flowers bloomed. But nobody harvested.”
Sometimes, the paralysis was relatively innocuous, as when employees voted to delay the company’s move into a new office complex because they preferred an alternative site opposed by management. Other times, disagreements led to debates over how to lessen the company’s dependence on its AutoCad cash-cow–or even whether the company should try to diversify. The need for consensus led to many organizational quirks. Last year, for instance, the critical AutoCad division was assigned two general managers–one from the business side and one from Core–because neither was believed to have the experience to run it alone. Ms. Bartz has already changed that, appointing a new head of the division to whom the former co-general managers report.
The most bitter disputes arose between programmers and the company’s marketing and sales executives. “A tremendous schism” has existed for years between the two sides, says Mark Macgillivray, who has consulted for Autodesk on marketing issues. Core members and other programmers have simply refused to work on certain new products because they found them boring. Sometimes these are products that customers are clamoring for, such as a more memory-efficient version of AutoCad, which “the techies fought us tooth and nail on,” recalls one marketing executive.
At many software companies, a product manager balances the interests of sales, which wants to satisfy customer demand for certain product features, and the interests of engineers, who push certain features because they are possible. At Autodesk, when products were being conceived “it became very difficult to get features agreed to,” says Tim Cox, who was a product manager for two years until departing last November. “The problem we kept running into–everything needed to be the programming group’s idea.”
Indeed, opposing Core was tantamount to “attempting to butcher the sacred cow,” says Roger Clay, who left Autodesk last year to form a software company.
For a long time, the financial results didn’t reflect the conflict. From 1986 to 1990, net income nearly quintupled and sales jumped more than five-fold. But in the fourth quarter of fiscal 1991 ended Jan. 31, earnings fell about 25 percent below expectations on an unexpected slowdown in growth. The stock fell 22% in a single day. Financial analysts blamed Mr. Green for not keeping them informed, and Mr. Walker blamed him, too–for catering too much to analysts. He asserted that Mr. Green kept profit margins high at the expense of much-needed investments in new products and marketing, which “is how a company dies from making too much money,” he said in his memorable broadside in April 1991, entitled “The Final Days.”
Writing from his new home in Neuchatel, Switzerland, where he had recently moved to find more seclusion, Mr. Walker observed that it pained him “watching Autodesk squander everything I’ve been working 16 hours a day for since 1982.” He accused Mr. Green of “taking his marching orders from the accounting rules rather than the real world” and said he “was so appalled by what I heard at one management meeting that I vowed never to attend another management meeting and I never have.”
The memo was regarded as overwrought by some of Mr. Walker’s own Core associates. “That letter caused me a lot of pain to read,” says Gregory P. Lutz, one of two Core programmers on the board of directors. “He was right about a lot of things and I hadn’t done anything about it. But I thought some of it was unfair and a little exaggerated.”
Moreover, the broadside didn’t mention that Mr. Walker himself had left the company and picked Mr. Green as his successor. “When somebody like Mr. Walker isn’t there, it leaves a vacuum,” observes Microsoft’s chief, Mr. Gates. “People are free to do what they want. It’s just a damn shame that he hasn’t chosen to stay in management or even within the mainstream of software development at the company.”
But Mr. Walker’s pungent analysis (termed “just brilliant” by Mr. Gates) succeeded in getting everyone’s attention at Autodesk. “It was like when you fire a shotgun in an aviary,” recalls Mr. Walker of the letter’s effect. “It caused everybody to say: What is our strategy? What are we doing out there?”
Mr. Green dutifully decided to do most of what Mr. Walker wanted: invest more in marketing and advertising of new products Mr. Walker said were being “abandoned” after introduction; push harder on a new version of AutoCad for Windows, Microsoft’s emerging standard for controlling PC software; and back forays into new areas such as software tools for do-it-yourself designers and scientists. But Mr. Walker’s attack destroyed the credibility of Mr. Green, who in October disclosed plans to resign as chairman and chief executive.
Mr. Green defends his record and downplays Mr. Walker’s memo as a factor in his demise, saying he intended for some time to step down. But he adds that Mr. Walker “perpetually” criticized him. “To a great degree, he was right,” Mr. Green says of Mr. Walker’s memo, adding that “John’s batting average is pretty high” when it comes to picking strategies.
Mr. Green protests that it never was clear to anyone how best to diversify Autodesk’s revenue. He concedes that he approved the company’s issuance of an extraordinary $1.50 a share special dividend because retained profits were mounting so rapidly. “We were asked by people, ‘Don’t you have anything better to do with your cash,’” recalls Mr. Green. “Well, no we didn’t.”
To get a closer look at operations–and to help select a new chief executive–Mr. Walker invited himself back to Autodesk this year for three months as “manager of technology.”
The timing of Ms. Bartz’s ascension to the top job appears auspicious. There are signs that managers and programmers are starting to cooperate better. In March, for instance, Core and other AutoCad development teams for the first time agreed to compile a single to-do list required to complete the next version, which is due out by midyear. The list, which used to be kept in the heads of various developers, consists of 7,000 items. Each is assigned a completion deadline and the name of a person responsible for it.
Moreover, new products are starting to flow. In March, the company removed one monkey from its back by shipping its first Windows version of AutoCad. Autodesk also introduced its first scientific product in March, a program called HyperChem that allows chemists to create molecular models. The scientific market is “the hidden iceberg in software,” says Joel Voelz, the product manager. All together, Autodesk expects to release 25 new products in the fiscal year ending next Jan. 31.
“Very few public companies have been encouraged to report disappointing short-term results to make the investments that are necessary to adapt to a changing market,” Mr. Walker says. “Autodesk had that problem. Autodesk doesn’t have that problem any more.”
Indeed, last week, Autodesk reported that first-quarter profit fell 41%, citing heavy investment in new products. But investors seem willing to give Autodesk some time: The stock, which is trading at about half of its year-ago all-time high, went up on the news.
Another point in Ms. Bartz’s favor: Mr. Walker seems content for the moment. He returned to Switzerland on April 16, but not before pledging his “total and unqualified” support for Ms. Bartz and promising that neither he nor other Core members will “step in and prevent change at the last minute,” as has occurred in the past.
“It seems as if John and I are having a love-in,” says Ms. Bartz. But she also pointedly notes that Mr. Walker is so talented, “he could have many careers,” even one as a writer. “I admire John’s amazing writing skills,” she says.
Section: Gadgets / Other, Green
Do you consider yourself an environmentally conscious person? Do you recycle your paper, aluminum, cardboard? That’s all well and good, but what about your electronic waste? Last week, Electronic Recyclers International (ERI) and KSEE-TV, Central Valley’s News Station and Fresno, California NBC affiliate organized a free electronic waste recycling program for residents of the Fresno area.
Participants of the “RecyclAthon” were invited to drop off their old electronics at the ERI headquarters: computer monitors, televisions, radios, and other electronics. The program beat expectations and the final tally estimated an astounding 198,000 pounds of waste were dropped off for recycling.
It’s an excellent way to reduce the amount of electronics waste that ends up in landfills and it’s a free program (although who’s going to make you pay to throw out your old electronics is beyond me). ERI has six national locations and due to the success of the RecyclAthon, you can expect similar programs launching near you very soon.
Site [Electronics Recyclers International]
Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 guardian.co.uk | New Yahoo CEO lacks Web and deal-making chops Reuters - By Anupreeta Das SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo's (YHOO.O) new CEO is a straight-shooting, tough-talking technology veteran but she is seen lacking two qualifications investors hoped for most: deal-making savvy and Web business know-how. Ahead of the Bell: Yahoo's new CEO What Yahoo Needs from Bartz |
By Andrew LaVallee , Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, Wall Street Journal Digits
Yahoo is to name Autodesk CEO Carol Bartz to the top post, so now comes the time to digest what it means. TechCrunch noted the Internet company’s falling stock price since the announcement, while AllThingsD points out that Ms. Bartz, while a tech veteran, doesn’t have a media background. Time will tell how she does at Yahoo, but some of the things she’s likely to face there are ones she also dealt with at Autodesk, which tapped her for the leadership position nearly 17 years ago.
By Declan McCullagh, Blogger, The Iconoclast
Bill Clinton sent only two e-mail messages as president and has yet to pick up the habit. George W. Bush ceased using e-mail in January 2001 but has said he’s looking forward to e-mailing “my buddies” after leaving Washington, D.C. Barack Obama, though, is a serious e-mail addict. “I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry,” he said in a recent interview with CNBC. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.” One reason to curb presidential BlackBerrying is the possibility of eavesdropping by hackers and other digital snoops. While Research In Motion offers encryption, the U.S. government has stricter requirements for communications security.
Yahoo, “frankly, could use a little management.” Uttering those words Tuesday afternoon during a conference call to discuss her appointment as CEO of Yahoo (YHOO), Carol Bartz ushered in a new era at the company.
Known for occasionally opening Autodesk executive staff meetings with a “Tell me why I shouldn’t fire the whole lot of you,” she’s no milquetoast. She’s a cancer survivor. And she’s the person who rebuilt Autodesk, after putting down a rebellion of programmers bent on undermining her.
“Failure is not in her vocabulary,” Autodesk product manager Tony Peach said of Bartz back in 2004.
If Jerry Yang was a lower-caps CEO–literally, since he pens staff memos using all lowercase letters–Bartz appears to be his ALL CAPS successor, a seasoned tech executive and a no-BS strategist.
That said, there appears to be some disagreement over whether she’s the right person for the job.
To some her limited Internet experience and relationship with Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is worrisome. Eric Jackson, president of Ironfire Capital LLC and an outspoken critic of the company’s leadership, says Yahoo under Bartz will just be “more of the same.”
“(Bartz) will be operating at a different scale, and the industry relevance is also obviously missing,” Jackson told Dow Jones. “I think she is definitely going to look to Yang and the old board for guidance.”
Jeff Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, also questioned Bartz’s appointment. “She was an inoffensive, but largely unexciting candidate–someone who would be a steady hand at the wheel–but investors were hoping for a lot more than that,” he said.
But to others, Bartz’s track record more than makes up for her lack of consumer or Internet or advertising experience. “Bartz was a highly effective CEO at Autodesk over the 1992-2006 period, helping grow ADSK into a $4B market cap, $2B+ revenue run-rate company,” Citi analyst Mark S. Mahaney wrote in a client note Tuesday. “Our brief exposure to her was also positive. She would appear to clearly bring to YHOO organizational chops, a new perspective, and substantial technology industry experience, having also served on the boards of Intel and Cisco.”
Needham analyst Mark May feels likewise: “She has an established track record of running a major public company. She has a strong technical background, having run Autodesk and served on the Boards of Cisco, Intel, NetApp and others…she not only shows great leadership qualities, but is thoughtful and passionate about a number of topics important to Yahoo today.”
And that may make her just the sort of leader Yahoo needs to turn itself around. Said Allen Weiner, research VP for Gartner Media AIS, “I have a feeling that Yahoo has another chance, if not two, to regain its previous stature.”
Review: Thirsty Light
LEGO announces digital camera and more
CrunchTrip: St. George Spirits in Alameda
Skate 2 sneakers for real skaters
So long, CES 2009
By Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Blogger, Apple 2.0
The rise of the iPhone, like the course of true love, never did run smooth. Quarterly sales last year varied widely, from a low of 720,000 in June to a high of 6,890,000 in September following the release of the iPhone 3G. But that’s nothing compared with the weird patterns that emerge from data collected by Net Applications.
By Saul Hansell, Blogger, New York Times Bits
The biggest question facing Windows 7 is whether Microsoft can really think small. When designing Windows Vista, Microsoft put a lot of effort into taking advantage of sophisticated computer hardware, with fancy graphics on the surface and lots of new processing tricks inside. Microsoft says this positioned the operating system for the future, despite the complaining of many users who grumble that Vista has bogged down their computers with unneeded frills and incompatibilities.
By Jon Healey, Editorial Writer, Los Angeles Times
The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem announced six new members at the Consumer Electronics Show, taking one more (small) step toward its goal of creating a standard way for consumers to acquire movies and other types of entertainment online. With the additions of two major consumer-electronics makers (Panasonic and Samsung), the initiative now has the support of five of the largest TV manufacturers, six Hollywood studios, five powerhouse tech companies, and an assortment of players in other segments of the industry’s value chain.
Fun stuff!
The Little Engine That Could Kill (Thanks, Rich!
You waddle through the Bar Car into you room. You waddle past the Violinist who is sitting on your bed red-faced and angry. You open the door and waddle forward with a last desperate step as your lungs burn with every breath and you see the Barman entering the Magician’s quarters. Your sweaty fingers clasp the bottom corner of his white apron, but they are too wet and slippery and you are too drunk on capitalism and whiskey to maintain your hold. The Barman pulls himself into the room and swiftly closes the door. But you are out of control. Your weight is propelling you forward and you can’t stop in time. You crash into the firm metal door and crumble into a pile of flesh and bones – more flesh than bones -- and the voice of Adam Smith, now wheezing and hacking with exhaustion, whispers “A true capitalist would tear down barriers to entry. A true capitalist would. A true capitalist. Capitalist.”You shove your flabby shoulder against the door, but you are shoving against more than just a steel barrier. You are shoving against fair trade, shoving against the public school tax, and shoving against...no, you can’t say it, but you can think it. You think, “I am shoving against the the not-for- profit charity. You shove with the full force of thought conviction, but your weak shoulder bounces off the door and your bulky body makes a soft wet thud against the cool tile floor...Mr. Smith, are you there?...Mr. Smith?...You call to him through the darkness of your mind, but he’s not there anymore and you pass out.
The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition."Detainee Tortured, Says U.S. Official (Thanks, Cyrus!)"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.
Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.
Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health led to her conclusion. "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said.
January 27th is the birthday of Lewis Carrol, author of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. Alice fell down a rabbit hole into a place where everything had changed and none of the rules could be counted on to apply anymore. I say, let's do the same: January 27th, 2005 should be the First Annual LiveJournal Rabbit Hole Day. When you post on that Thursday, instead of the normal daily life and work and news and politics, write about the strange new world you have found yourself in for the day, with its strange new life and work and news and politics. Are your pets talking back at you now? Has your child suddenly grown to full adulthood? Does everyone at work think you're someone else now? Did Bush step down from the White House to become a pro-circuit tap-dancer? Did Zoroastrian missionaries show up on your doorstep with literature in 3-D? Have you been placed under house arrest by bizarre insectoid women wielding clubs made of lunchmeat?Mark your calendars: January 27th is Rabbit Hole Day (via Warren Ellis)Let's have a day where nobody's life makes sense anymore, where any random LJ you click on will bring you some strange new tale. Let's all fall down the Rabbit Hole for 24 hours and see what's there. It will be beautiful.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Zelda ALTTP Map
(via Wonderland)
Well, good news if you're worried about sexual predation on kids. Not so good if you're worried about bullying. But of course, now that we know that kids are more threatened by the (less-sexy, less-mediagenic) scourge of bullying than the (incredibly scary, totally mediagenic) risk of sexual predation, we'll divert funds and resources to the real risk, right?
Right?
The 278-page report, released Tuesday, was the result of a year of meetings between dozens of academics, experts in childhood safety and executives of 30 companies, including Yahoo, AOL, MySpace and Facebook.Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown (via /.)The task force, led by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, looked at scientific data on online sexual predators and found that children and teenagers were unlikely to be propositioned by adults online. In the cases that do exist, the report said, teenagers are typically willing participants and are already at risk because of poor home environments, substance abuse or other problems.
You knew it was coming. As if the “For Dummies” line of books, software, and DVDs wasn’t enough, you can now access the new Dummies.com. This newly launched site is another “how to” resource, similar to eHow and Wikihow. The website will have free how-to videos and instructional articles. Dummies.com is employing a team of knowledgeable bloggers to produce the content on the site. Their goal is to replace the large amount of inaccurate information on the web with facts from a trustworthy brand.
Subjects covered on Dummies.com will include business, technology, education, leisure, health, home, garden, relationships and more. Dummies.com plans to attract new visitors by holding a sweepstakes through March 31, 2009 that awards monetary prizes.
So, how does it measure up? The interface is very user friendly and each step includes photos of the process. As far as the information provided, it is very basic. You definitely won’t be a genius after reading through the site.
Site [Dummies.com]
Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 ABC News | FBI: Violent Crime Drops In Metro Detroit MSNBC - Figures released Monday showed the number of violent crimes, murders and burglaries all dropped during the first half of 2008. The statistics compiled by the FBI showed aggravated assaults in Ann Arbor, for example, were down from 98 to 74, ... Public Safety: FBI statistics show crime is down in cities locally FBI Stats Show SD County Crime Rate Down |
PLAYGROUNDS IN THE SKY (Apr, 1957)
There, a few yards from the tenements where they live, on their very roofs, in fact, is a regulation-size baseball diamond with real springy turf! But the kids aren’t interested just now—they played ball all afternoon. Instead, they enter the locker room and in a few minutes are cavorting noisily in a big, broad and very cool swimming pool. Afterwards, they troop onto the ball field, where chairs have been set up, and watch a movie under the stars.What’s it all about? “This magic land for kids doesn’t exist in my city,” you say. No, it doesn’t—yet!
But it darn well could! It could exist in your town and in hundreds of other communities throughout the nation. Every city could construct huge, all-encompassing playgrounds and recreation centers, using the enormous, readily available space now going completely to waste on the rooftops of their congested areas!
Section: Computers, Networking, Wireless, Trade Shows, CES
Intel dedicated part of its booth at CES to mobile Wi-Fi personal area networking (PAN). The idea is simple, Wi-Fi enabled components speak to each other using an ad hoc network without the need for a router.
The idea seems promising. Intel had a pair of Wi-Fi headphones that supposedly worked with the computer there. There were also a pair of Wi-Fi speakers under the display table that are not out yet. The PAN would work similarly to pairing your Bluetooth headset with your phone using a personal identification number. That would avoid people just randomly joining your PAN and hijacking your speakers or headphones.
Intel’s part in all of this is promoting its Centrino line of processors that has built-in Wi-Fi capabilities. Battery life is extremely valuable and to waste it on sending a sound signal to your headphones seems like a mistake for now.
With the introduction of wireless USB, at least there will be some competition in this space. Bluetooth has proved inadequate when it comes to reproducing great sound. Wireless USB should be able to transmit data at a much higher rate than Wi-Fi, so it may be better suited to putting together a PAN.
Company Site: [Intel]
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
FROM APPLETELL - Got an original iPhone that’s just begging to be upgraded? There are a ton of reasons to upgrade, but it’s hard to justify the cost when you have a phone that works. Rapid Repair might just have a solution for you. MORE »
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Video, Portable Video, Video Providers, Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Robots/AI
Don’t you love watching that play over and over again? The baseball playing barely beating out the throw at first base, or the way the wide receiver manages to catch the throw and score a touchdown? Many TV stations have good equipment to provide instant replay, shots from different angles, etc. but they can only do so much. Enter the Wavecam, a new piece of technology designed to capture all the incredible moments in many different perspectives.
Football teams who have used this so far say how they enjoy the fact that the camera can get in any position, which is great for playing back the game in the locker room to review key plays. The Wavecam is also permanently installed, so you can record practices that takes place in that location and any other events that occur in the same facility, such as concerts. Basically, the Wavecam navigates around the area on a trolley and is suspended using Dura-tech cables. After it is installed, it is very simple for broadcasters to use and control.
Edmund Dougherty, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, had this to say about the Wavecam:
“First of all, the Wavecam is permanently installed, which means it will be available for all events (for example, men’s and women’s basketball games, practices, concerts, graduations) held at a particular venue. Every broadcaster who has seen the Wavecam loves what it can do. In addition, it’s affordable and safe and easy to operate.“
Here are some quick tech specs:
* Stabilized camera motion in 3-D space
* Horizontal travel speed: up to 20 mph
* Vertical travel speed: up to 5 fps (feet per second)
* Camera pan: 360 degrees
* Camera tilt: 110 degrees
* Fiber optic transmission of video and audio signals
* Compatible with major camera brands in SD and HD
* Single or dual operator configurations
* Camera module size: approximately 2-feet x 1-foot x 1-foot
If you want to check out actual footage of the Wavecam, be sure to hit up their company link.
Company Page [Wavecam]
Read [PR Newswire]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
AP - It didn't take long for Carol Bartz, Yahoo Inc.'s new chief executive, to demonstrate that her style will differ dramatically from that of her predecessor Jerry Yang, the genial, soft-spoken co-founder of the struggling Internet company.
Google is opening the doors to resellers for its Google Apps suite of office services. Businesses who want to use Gmail, Google docs and other Google offices services in lieu of Microsoft or other solutions will be able to sign up at Google or through any qualified value added reseller that chooses to carry the products.
Google says that more than 1 million businesses and 10 million users use Google Apps today, and 3,000 new businesses sign up daily. The largest business user, Genentech, has 20,000 employees on Google Apps.
The service is free for businesses that are willing to put up with ads, little customer service and relatively low storage limits. The premium version is $50/user/year. Most of the 10 million users are using the free version of the service, but Google says “hundreds of thousands” of users are paying for the service.
Resellers will be given the service at a 20% price reduction, or $40/user/year. Anything they charge above that is profit.
The reseller pilot program has been running for the last six months or so, Google says, with over fifty active partners. New resellers can sign up now and begin selling in March.
Google Apps competes with Yahoo’s Zimbra and Microsoft Outlook/Exchange Server for corporate office customers. All of the services have had high profile customer wins in the recent past.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Peripherals, Displays/Projectors, Trade Shows, CES
Gadgetell recently got to play with an IPEVO digital picture frame, the Kaleido R7. Now, I am the guy who wrote a post denouncing digital picture frames as a pointless technology. IPEVO changed my mind.
Digital picture frames have gone through a couple of styles. It started off with toyish plastic borders and eventually moved into looking like traditional picture frames with slim borders. IPEVO decided to come up with its own design.
Looking like it belongs in a movie that is set in the future, the IPEVO is slick looking with its two-toned color scheme and flat buttons. The screen is tilted at an angle and can swivel from landscape to portrait depending on your mood.
In person, the viewing angle of the frame is much better in the horizontal orientation than the vertical one. The CEO of IPEVO Royce Hong pretty much said that the vertical viewing just isn’t there yet. However, the frame will automatically determine whether your pictures are oriented correctly and rotate the photos accordingly.
Unfortunately, the screen does not rotate automatically for the pictures (which would have been a pretty interesting feature). Royce told us this frame is “not for your grandma.”
It appears to be built for the tech savvy with its built in wireless, Mac/PC/iPhone syncing capability, and RSS feed support. It comes with 512MB of onboard storage, but you can up that with the built-in SD card slot. The 7-inch model has a resolution of 800x480 which is pretty impressive. It will be available in March at $199.
Company Page: [IPEVO]
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
An unidentified hacker has sent a friendly surprise to Microsoft beneath a recent variant of the Zlob Trojan, which a French analyst found and forwarded to Microsoft’s security team. This is the second message that Microsoft has received from this hacker, and apparently the last. Here’s the strangely friendly message for your enjoyment:
“For Windows Defender’s Team:
I saw your post in the blog (10-Oct-2008) about my previous message.
Just want to say ‘Hello’ from Russia.
You are really good guys. It was a surprise for me that Microsoft can respond on threats so fast.
I can’t sign here now (he-he, sorry), how it was some years ago for more seriously vulnerability for all Windows ;)
Happy New Year, guys, and good luck!
P.S. BTW, we are closing soon. Not because of your work. :-))
So, you will not see some of my great ;) ideas in that family of software.
Try to search in exploits/shellcodes and rootkits.
Also, it is funny (probably for you), but Microsoft offered me a job to help improve some of Vista’s protection. It’s not interesting for me, just a life’s irony. “
Microsoft’s researchers are doing their best to minimize the damage caused by the Zlob Trojan. Just don’t let it interrupt my Windows 7 beta, Microsoft.
Just days after CES 2009 wrapped up in Vegas, Lenovo hits the streets with an entirely new set of three desktop PCs. These PCs are aimed at power and affordability for the general user and hard-core techy. Gamers will appreciate a few of the additions in the K series especially.
Lenovo has unveiled two new desktop models in their IdeaCentre K series. Both the IdeaCentre K220 and K230 are built for the higher end PC user. Both models come complete with options for faster Core 2 Quad chips as well more storage (up to 1TB), Blu-ray and GeForce 9300M GE integrated video capable of full HD decoding. Key differences between the two are the K220 comes offered with a webcam and face recognition but only up to 4 gigs of memory, while the K230 swaps the webcam option for up to 8 gigs of memory.
The new IdeaCentreH200 is an Atom-based system. It uses a low-power CPU combined with a fanless design, so this should be a very quiet machine. Specs are that of higher end Atom systems running at 1.6GHz. Designed seemingly as a workstation type system, its base model comes with only 1GB of RAM and a DVD reader only. Additional options are available.
All three systems that Lenovo has released are set to compete with the likes of Dell in both power, performance, and price.
Source: [Press Release[
Products: [Lenovo]
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CES is over, but I’m still finding things on my camera that I never got to report. For instance, I saw the Silverstone booth and thought they might be showing their Raven mouse. Its most obvious feature is that enormous scrolling thumb-wheel, which few if any mice have something comparable to. I gave it a quick spin while on the lookout for booth babes.
The size of the mouse is good, but there are so many pieces and materials to the thing that it’s difficult to call it solid. It didn’t creak under the pressure of my hand or anything, but it didn’t reassure me either. The luminous thumb wheel also sports a big round button on it, which was easy to press. The wheel itself was not very intuitive, but if you’re used to having on on your MX Revolution or even your cell phone, it won’t come as quite as much of a surprise. The buttons in front of the thumb-wheel were difficult to hit, even though they stick out a quarter of an inch from the body of the mouse. The wheel really dominates that side of the thing and I don’t think I could get much use out of the little buttons. I can just imagine reaching my thumb forward to hit that front button and accidentally rolling the wheel, which as you can imagine may have a million different consequences.
To my hand, it felt like a prototype — an untested design that needs real change as well as minor refinements like button shape. Silverstone and NZXT are in the same boat, then: there’s nothing wrong with their stuff fundamentally, but they lack the constant criticism and advice of the gamers that helped design the G9, the Mamba, and the Ikari. One of these days they’ll catch up, but in the meantime I’d stick with the big guys.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Today on Offworld, we saw cards to tell someone special you, honestly, love them more than Xbox, new games T-shirts teased from Japan's UNIQLO, and, hilariously, the best Left 4 Dead/Randy 'Macho Man' Savage crossover of all time.
Elsewhere, we listened to a new megamix of songs from Xbox Live Arcade flagship game Geometry Wars, learned to knit our own LittleBigPlanet Sackboy, and saw how designer Nicholas Felton's latest Feltron annual report delved into the minutiae of Grand Theft Auto's Liberty City.
Finally, we saw Wall-E's unofficial cameo in Crayon Physics Deluxe, and, most amazingly, saw the first official video for the retro-futurist 'Breakout 2600: The Musical' genius of Gaijin Games's Bit.Trip Beat.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Most of the plants in our house have a death wish. A palm-like thing my wife and I bought a while ago is drying up and this little ficus tree we have thrives outdoors but then dies under our care, only to be resurrected when we take it back outside. Heck, we just killed a cactus. We’re pretty bad.
That’s why I like the Thirsty Light. It’s basically a little stick you put into your plant. When the light flashes, the plant needs water. Sure, it can’t Twitter you but for $9.99 what do you expect?
We currently have the Thirsty Light in a plant in the front room. We stuffed it down about two inches into the earth and gave the plant a drink. Instead of watering on a whim, however, now we only water it when the light is flashing. The plant, it seems, is thriving.
Most interestingly, the Thirsty Light was designed by the same guy who made the PowerSquid, Christopher Hawker. Hawker actually lives in my home town, so it’s great to know that at least someone there is thinking of both our plant and power needs all from the comfort of his perch high above Columbus, Ohio.
Obviously there’s not much to review here: it lights up when the plant is dry. You can move it from plant to plant or leave it in one plant. There is even a little on/off switch on the back. Sure it’s not earth-shatterying, but when you plant costs a few bucks and you have a few of them, one of these moisture sensing dippers might be just the thing to keep us from failing, again, at nurturing another living being.
According to documents obtained online, the owner of the website cablehack.net is facing federal charges for the sale and distribution of hacked cable modems. While he has multiple disclaimers on his website, they are all carefully worded and have a generous dose of *wink wink* applied.
The feds are going after him mainly because he advertises that the hacked Motorola modems will allow you to get high speed internet from your cable company for free. And while that may sound like a good deal for some, keep in mind that the FBI will soon be in possession of his sales records, and everyone who has purchased one of these modems might find themselves regretting it.
This reminds me of the issues that satellite TV providers had in the past, with the smartcards. And when they figured out what was going on, they went after not just the manufacturers of the hardware, but also anyone who purchased it. Just saying.
There’s nothing more frustrating than a fruitless Web search — or one that returns results that distract you from your original goal. Search giant Google knows this all too well and realizes that there’s a chance you might switch to another search engine if you get tired of poor results.
This week I tested two free tools that attempt to make your Web searches more relevant by learning from users’ reactions to search results: Google’s SearchWiki and Surf Canyon Inc.’s namesake tool for Web browsers. These two don’t necessarily compete against each other; in fact, they can be used in tandem. But after initially entering a search query, SearchWiki requires additional work on the part of the user that many people may not want to do. Surf Canyon works automatically as you go, sorting results according to real-time user behavior.
SearchWiki depends on people to rank their own search results by promoting favored URLs to the top of a screen and knocking others to the bottom. It is available to most people who are logged into a Google account, and these user preferences are remembered if the same searches are performed at other times.
This sorting is done using elegant animation; preferred URLs float to the top of the screen when selected and unwanted results disappear in a magic-trick-like poof when removed. Comments about a link can be typed into a word bubble beside the URL and all comments are available to the public, labeled as posted by “Searcher” unless you create another nickname for yourself. People can also add preferred URLs to a search-results page if, for example, they know a better link about something than those that show up.
But who wants to do all this work? Google (GOOG) says your votes don’t influence the way other Google users see search results, nor do they affect your search results if you aren’t logged into Google. You can see the number of votes a URL got from fellow voters, as well as comments made about the URL — but only after you select a link at the bottom of the search-results page. If you promote a URL, you’ll automatically see what other people think about this link.
For your efforts, you’ll create a small collection of results that are saved in your account, sorted by date and time should you ever want to revisit them. This could come in handy in some circumstances, such as if you were researching a topic and you forgot to save Web pages as you went. Google confusingly calls these “SearchWiki notes,” though they really include all of the links you voted on, as well as typed-in notes about links.
SearchWiki is a tough sell because most of us are already trained to surf the Web quickly, skipping ahead and back through links without taking the time to rank those results or comment on them. And it only works with Google searches.
If you like the idea of more personalized Web searches but would like to use other search engines or don’t want to do extra work, you might like Surf Canyon. Once downloaded, this tool displays bull’s-eyes beside certain results to show that Surf Canyon has found additional related hits. Clicking on this bull’s-eye reveals those suggested links, pulled from deeper down in the search results, and these links might have bull’s-eyes of their own. This cascade of data goes on and on as an algorithm studies which of the returned results you do or don’t choose.
You might be deterred from using Surf Canyon because it must be downloaded before it works on Internet Explorer or Firefox. (A version of Surf Canyon for Apple’s (AAPL) Safari browser is due out within a month.) This tool works with Google, Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft Live Search (MSFT) and Craigslist, and just started working with LexisNexis’s LexisWeb.com legal-search engine.
Surf Canyon might not seem to be doing much at first, but it changes and reflects your preferences as you make them. For example, a search for “Obama dog” originally returned results about how the President-elect and his family are narrowing their search for a puppy. But as I opened more links related specifically to Mr. Obama’s daughters, more results appeared on screen about Sasha and Malia. Each time I hit the browser’s Back button to return to the original search page, Surf Canyon offered a new set of relevant URLs.
I tried looking at Craigslist.com for last-minute inauguration tickets, and one hit listed an inauguration-appropriate dress that someone was giving away free. The Surf Canyon bull’s-eye appeared beside this result, and when I selected it, three more dress listings appeared.
Surf Canyon recently released an option for users who want long-term personalization, found at my.surfcanyon.com. It lets people select sources from which they prefer to receive news, shopping, research, or sports and entertainment results. Individual sites not listed on this page can also be added to a list of sources to use; likewise, sites can be added to a blacklist so results never come from them.
Unlike Google, Surf Canyon doesn’t save your history or usage profile. And if you haven’t created personalized preferences using the link above, it responds solely using your as-they-happen signals, like when you choose one link over another.
Google’s SearchWiki is asking users to do extra work, which may not be practical for many users. But if you do use it, this tool’s personalized, saved results could be a real boon. Surf Canyon worked well for me with multiple search engines, retrieving data from result pages I likely wouldn’t have opened. Either way, your days of futile Web searching are numbered.
Edited By Walter S. Mossberg
Man oh man! You show me a business that isn’t taking a hit in this economy, and I’ll show you (probably) a corporation guilt of price fixing and underhanded dealings. If AMD is feeling the hurt, laying off people left and right, at least they can be comforted by the fact that NVIDIA just announced that quarterly revenues will be down “40 to 50 percent” over the same quarter last year.
That means revenues in the half-billion range as opposed to $1.2bn last year in this quarter. That’s hardcore. Wonder if the cheaper and better AMD 4800 series handing NVIDIA’s asses to them for hundreds less had anything to do with it?
Netbooks! Here’s the 8.9-inch Asus Eee from Best Buy for $229. It’s an outlet item, which means they’re trying to blow them out, so get one while the getting’s good. This model’s got 1GB of RAM, a 4GB solid state drive, and Linux.
Asus - Eee PC Netbook [BestBuy.com]
AP - Don't hit that pause button just yet. Despite the tanking economy and an increasing number of video game-industry layoffs, many believe 2009 will be a year of evolution for games. The combination of innovative new titles, long-awaited franchise follow-ups and desire for escapism could spawn a gaming renaissance.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
As we noted in our review of the Slacker G2 music player, the real future of the company lies on other devices. They just launched the BlackBerry version of Slacker — and we've gotten a heads up that they've just put the iPhone version on the iTunes App Store.
It works just like the G2 player, with the free version given access to millions of songs on 100 different stations, each streamed over the air — even EDGE — to the iPhone. You can upgrade to enhanced levels of service that let you skip an increased number of songs, as well as ban the artists you don't like to keep them out of your streaming queue in the future.
Considering how popular the Pandora iPhone application has been, I wouldn't be surprised to see Slacker moving more copies of their free iPhone app than they've ever sold physical players.
One downside to the iPhone app compared to the dedicated Slacker hardware, however: as of yet, there's no buffer for saving streams for when you're away from a signal. No internet? No music. It's possible they could apportion a few hundred megabytes of the iPhone's storage as an offline buffer, but I sort of doubt we'll see that feature any time soon. They do still sell G2 players, after all.
Over my 3G connection it took about 10 seconds to buffer the first song, although skipping to the next song only took about 4 seconds.
Slacker Radio for iPhone, iPod touch download [iTunes]
Reuters looks at Obama's pick for the new head of the FCC, Julius Genachowski.
"We suspect Mr. Genachowski would seek to spur and protect competition from wireless carriers (including Sprint Nextel Corp and Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile) and others as a counterweight to telco/cable wired broadband dominance," Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast said.Hallelujah.
Mobigrip is a $10 gizmo that attaches one's finger to one's phone.
...an adhesive disc with an elastic finger loop that attaches easily to all cell phones, as well as digital cameras and portable gaming devices, to keep portable electronics securely connected to their users, eliminating dropped and broken devices. Mobigrip can also be personalized with a custom-designed disc - everyone can add their own personal pictures, colors and designs.
I can't imagine ever needing this for a phone, but as a hater of the rubber sheaths that come with Wiimotes, I know it'll serve its purpose for some.
Product Page [Mobigrip]
![251852_[mfp] [not shopped] camera phone spinning prop.jpg](http://gadgets.boingboing.net/gimages/251852_[mfp] [not shopped] camera phone spinning prop-thumb-520x693.jpg)
A friend sent me this image that he says isn't photoshopped. The distortion of the airplane props are due to the way a cameraphone's low-end CMOS sensor records an image. Wired explains:
The iPhone has no physical shutter and instead uses photon gating on its CMOS sensor. Some parts of the image are recorded before others, much like with a scanner. The iPhone's CMOS scanner seems to be a lot slower than, say, the CMOS sensor on your Canon point and shoot camera. Therefore, as the camera is recording the image, any changes over that small but significant amount of time are recorded.
Look out, RIM, there’s a new kid in town. The BlueBerry L900i features a “2.4 inch 240*320 pixels screen, bluetooth, and so on,” according to China Grabber. And so on? Brilliant marketing if I’ve ever seen it.
Read the rest of this entry >>
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Overlooked in the chaos of enthusiasm that followed the announcement of the Vaio P is Viliv's S7 MID, which — providing the feature bullet points isn't just a collection of bold lies — looks pretty swank.
According to Viliv, the tiny 7-inch, 1.3 GHz Atom touchscreen device will feature 200 hours of standby time and enough juice to squeezes 7 hours of continuous movie playback ("Blue-Ray") out of a single charge.
Although it claims to be a mobile internet device, and it certainly has the form factor, the specs really are more in line with a netbook: 1GB of RAM, 1024x600 resolution, a choice between a 16GB SSD and a 60GB hard drive, a 1.3MP webcam, built-in card reader, etc. Where it gets mobile internet-y is in the WWAN options, which include WiMax and HSDPA.
No price or availability yet, unfortunately.
S7 [Viliv]
When we had our surprise hands-on with the Slacker for iPhone application a few days ago, the rep mentioned that it could be available “as soon as tomorrow”. Well, just a mere 5 tomorrows later, their prophecy has come true. Apple has greenlit the application, and now nothing stands between you and the customized internet radio goodness.
What it can do:
-Free music library featuring millions of songs
-High-quality stereo playback from any wireless connection
-Over 100 professionally programmed genre stations
-Create custom artist stations
-Fine tune stations to play more of the music you like
-View artist biographies and photos
-View album art and reviews
-”Peek Ahead” artist and album preview
-Pause and skip songs
-Rate songs as favorites
-Ban the songs and artists you don’t like
What it can’t do:
- Fight bears
- Solve criminal mysteries
Even if you’re a hardcore Pandora (or last.fm) devout, Slacker has plenty of features that make it worth checking out. Nab it from your local Stevie J’s Tunes and Vids here.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Dan Lyons of Newsweek — otherwise known as Fake Steve Jobs — offers a devastating take down of Steve Jobs' narcissism, unfavorably comparing Jobs' failure to groom a successor in the face of his various health problems to Gates' job setting up Ballmer to lead Microsoft.
Jobs, in contrast, seems determined to hang on at Apple no matter what. See, in the world of Steve, it's all about Steve. When he does go, he will be remembered as a tremendous genius—but also as a petulant narcissist with a grandiose sense of his importance and a sadly limited view of the world around him.Ironically, it is Gates, his archnemesis, who will likely go down in history as the classy one: the one who knew how to exit gracefully, the one who is devoting the later years of his life, and all of his billions, to helping the world's poorest people—and not clinging to his CEO job while he insults reporters and plays petty cat-and-mouse games with Apple shareholders and fanboys.
Apple: Who Will Succeed Steve Jobs? [Newsweek]
Women really do get the short end of the gadget stick. While surveys have indicated that women have generally as much interest in electronics as most men, most gadgets aimed at Team XX are condescendingly absent any thoughtful additions besides the most superficial touches. (The "shrink it and pink it" approach, quips designer Erica Eden, as quoted and profiled in this Fast Company piece.)
I doubt there's fundamentally any difference between designing a gadget for men or for women; simple, powerful, understated design inside and out is appealing to everyone. Garish "fashion" gadgets — like the HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam Edition netbook the women from Smart Design's "Femme Den" note looks "cheap and plastic-y in person" — may appeal to some women, but no more than ultra-rugged, overwrought, military-inspired gear appeals to a small subset of men.
(Thanks, Robotron!)
(Flash embed above, MP4 download here.)
Television host and gadget-o-phile Drew Carey visited with the Boing Boing crew in Las Vegas to roam the blinking, beeping halls of CES 2009. He was there with his lovely fiancé, and her three year old son, Connor. Today's episode documents Connor's search for talking robots and "tiny cars I can ride in." Along the way, Drew stops at the Intel booth to check out a $47,000 VR racing system that puts you in the driver's seat on famous racetracks around the world -- the system includes topographically accurate maps, down to the pebble, of famous tracks.
Previous "live from CES" videos on Boing Boing Gadgets:
* CES Video: Asus Netbookstravaganza, with Bamboo, Gold Lamé, and Lamborghini (MP4)
* CES Video: Palm Pre Hands-On with Joel and Brownlee, post-review huddle with Ars Technica (MP4)
* Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Video Report, Day Two (MP4)
* Boing Boing Gadgets at CES: Video Report, Day One (MP4)
A fantastic analog synthesizer stuffed in the body of an old Atari 400 console. Technabob explains how it works:
The Atari Synth is a polyphonic 12-oscillator, 3 modulator square wave synthesizer that’s controlled by arcade-style pushbuttons and potentiometers. Just press any of the 12 arcade buttons to activate the corresponding oscillator, the use the knobs to dial in the sound you’re looking for.
fridgebuzz atari 400 synth [technabob]
According to Chinese-language Economic Daily News a chip manufacturer is going to receive microchip orders from Apple sometime in March which must mean that we should see an iPhone Nano sometime around June. Right? It must. Maybe.
Will the iPhone Nano be a lower-cost alternative? Or will it be a premium, small product? If Apple wanted a lower cost iPhone, the company could simply lower the cost on the profit-heavy current iPhone cries the Internet Gurus. Unless, that is, the price is locked into a contract with AT&T or there is a whole new lineup coming.
So, if there is an iPhone Nano coming in June and it’s going to a be low cost model, it only makes sense that Apple will then launch a higher memory and more powerful full-size iPhone at the same time. That way the company would be able to market one as inexpensive and the other as full featured without taking anything away from the current hot-selling iPhone 3G.
Then again, this is just a f’n rumor from a Chinese news source. Probably not a good idea to hold your breath.
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
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Two low-end navigation devices from Garmin, the eTrex Vista H and the eTrex Legend H are being upgraded. What’s new in these machines? The GPS receiver in each is now more sensitive. Garmin says this will help campers and hikers get signal faster even in “dense tree canopies or vertical canyons.“ 
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