Gamers are always looking for ways to upgrade notebooks in order to serve up the best graphics and sound during game play. AMD has announced ATI Mobility RadeonTM HD 4000 series graphics, their planned next generation series of notebook graphics processors. AMD says that this new processor will bring PC quality gaming technology to notebook users.
So, what type of upgrades can users expect? The processor will support Microsoft DirectX 10.1 games, longer battery life, and HD quality multimedia features. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4800 series will improve HD gaming performance with support for ATI CrossFireX technology to deliver up to one teraFLOP of performance power. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4300, 4500 and 4600 also are supposed to be energy efficient.
AMD has promised that the new processors will deliver twice the gaming power as its predecessor, the 3000 series. To do this, the company utilizes powerful 3D engines to better render games. ASUS, MSI and other notebook manufacturers will start releasing the new AMD processor in their notebooks within the first quarter of 2009.
FROM APPLETELL - Newsweek’s “Fake Steve Jobs” and CNBC’s Jim Godlman need to just meet out at the willow tree after school and settle their differences like men. Check out the video. MORE »
The Peek, sort of a Blackberry-lite, has taken the gadget world by storm, as well as the mainstream world due to its simplicity. Allowing you to have your e-mail inbox on the go, without the need to pay for a hefty phone/data plan with your cell provider, has, surprisingly, led the Peek to sell extremely well.
However, what I truly dislike about the Peek is that one has to pay $19.95 per month in order to use the service. Well, no more! At least for today; that is. Peek is offering a one-day sale — for a flat $299.95, you can get buy the Peek device and service for life. This transforms the Peek from a niche device to one that many people would seriously consider purchasing in place of a cell phone data plan.
Though this offer is only good for today, look for this to possibly become a more permanent member of the Peek’s payment options, as it seems to make a whole lot of sense for a device like this.
An anonymous reader writes "In two weeks, older emergency locator beacons will no longer be monitored by satellites. USA Today noticed that 85% of private aircraft in the U.S. have not switched to the 406 MHz beacons. I thought I'd send up a flare about this. And this should not be relevant to the airplane which landed in the Hudson River today, as that was a commercial plane and its location was known by a number of bystanders, one of whom helped crash TwitPic."
CHICAGO, Jan. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Kiddiegram is proud to announce a new partnership for the Kiddiegram.com brand. The company has signed an agreement with Pure Digital... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jan 2009 | 1:10 pm
Sheehy to Connect with AARP's 40 Million Members Through Exclusive Video, Blogs, Online Chats and Editorial Content WASHINGTON, Jan. 16... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm
With NetSuite, Medalcraft Mint Modernizes Traditional Manufacturing and Ordering Processes to Boost Efficiency and Cut Costs SAN MATEO, Calif. and GREEN BAY, Wis., Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm
- Two-lamp PLC-XF71 provides highest luminance in its class at 10,000 lumens - Delivers high-resolution images using three mirror system for improved light... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Jan 16 /PRNewswire/ -- According to research from Compass Intelligence ( href="http://www.compassintelligence.com">http://www.compassintelligence.com ), the... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm
Democrats beware: GOP heavy hitters and new conservative voices join editor David Frum for reform and renewal WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- The inaugural event... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm
WARREN, N.J., Jan. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Virgin Mobile USA (NYSE: VM), a leading national provider of wireless communications services, announced today that the New York... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm
BEIJING and SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 16 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- AsiaInfo Holdings, Inc. ("AsiaInfo" or the "Company") (Nasdaq: ASIA), a ... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jan 2009 | 1:00 pm
Although it's just as unreadable as the TokyoFlash variety, I like this white plastic EIN Cyber Heartbeat watch a lot more, which filters the minutes through an EKG display. It is just so very early 80's Japanese cyberpunk. If you want one, it'll cost approximately $290.
SAO PAULO, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras said late Thursday it canceled tenders for the construction of the P-61 and P-63 production platforms as it considered the prices... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jan 2009 | 12:57 pm
Yes, you can still get someone to invest in a Web startup with zero revenue. It helps if you can insert the word “Twitter” into your pitch, though.
TweetDeck, a one-man company which makes a very helpful piece of free software that organizes your Twitter streams, is raising an angel round led by Betaworks, the investment company with a hankering for all things Twitter. The round, which hasn’t closed yet, will eventually end up somewhere south of $500,000, I’m told.
When it does, the financing will make 34-year-old programmer Iain Dodsworth a paper millionaire. Nice work for a Brit who built TweetDeck just last June, because he was following 30 people on Twitter and wanted a better way to organize their Tweets.
Dodsworth says TweetDeck has been downloaded 250,000 times since then, and that users are sending out 120,000 messages a day using the software. That places it above other free Twitter clients like Twitterific and twhirl, both of which are cranking out 80,000 to 85,000 a day, according to tracking service TweetRush.
All of them are part of the burgeoning ecosystem that revolves around Twitter, which powers all of their companies by letting them plug into its datastream. In exchange, all of these companies make Twitter more successful, by bolting on frills and features to its bare-bones service.
And no money changes hands at any point: Twitter doesn’t charge for use of its data, and its partners do all their development work for free. That could change at some point. As Twitter casts about for a business model to support its service — it is, famously, just about revenue-free at this point — an obvious solution would be to start charging a fee to the likes of TweetDeck.
No problem, says Dodsworth, who says he’d be happy to pay Twitter, particularly if it gave him even more access in exchange. Oh. And what about his business model? It’s coming, Dodsworth says — he’d like to start selling a pro version of his software, targeting power users and corporations.
That strikes me as a fairly small market, but then again TweetDeck is a very small operation. Dodsworth says he doesn’t plan on hiring any additional help for the near future, even as he preps new features like a version for Apple’s iPhone (AAPL).
I’ll let him explain himself, via a short video interview I taped with him yesterday — just as soon as the Internet cooperates and lets me post the clip. In the meantime, you can track Dodsworth on Twitter here or here.
American bicyclists are a wistful lot. With the encroachment of an Obama presidency, rising gas prices and a recognized recession, they imagine that America's city streets will be reforged with dedicated bicycle lanes... and, as a bicyclist myself, I certainly hope that's the case. Still, with bicycle lanes costing $5,000 to $50,000 a mile to install, chances are pretty damn slim at a point where the government is squeezing bailout money out of each orifice.
This Yanko concept tries to fill in the gap between Velocipede Zembla and America's current set-up, where the only thing marking a street's bicycle lane is a pervasive encrusting of spilled bicyclist brains.
It's clever: lasers on each side of a bike project a bicycle lane for drivers to recognize. But it really does miss the point: America's bicycling infrastructure is only a small part of the larger problem, which is a driving culture that doesn't recognize bicyclists. An imaginary bike lane that swerves when you swerve isn't going to do a lick to solve that problem.
I was impressed with the Blackberry-like Kogan Agora when it was first announced. Unlike the G1, it wasn't an ungainly brick of a phone slapped on top of Google's hot new OS. It had lines and curves and QWERTY, with reasonably impressive specs: a 2.5 inch touchscreen, 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS... powered by a 624MHz processor and 128MB of RAM. All good.
Or, rather, all not so good. The Kogan Agora designers appear not to have read the Android spec docs particularly carefully before designing their phone. According to Ruslan Kogan, they discovered that the Agora's 2.5-inch touchscreen was too small and not high resolution enough to ensure future Android compatibility with all apps... days before they started shipping orders out. Jeez, guys.
Back to the drawing board. If you ordered a Kogan, don't fret: your money will be refunded in full. Let's hope the next Agora design actually gets to market... it still looks like a great little phone.
An anonymous reader points out this report at News.com.au which says that "THE first Australian 'Google phone' set to go on sale within weeks has been delayed indefinitely, with the manufacturer Kogan forced to refund early buyers. In a statement released this afternoon, the company said the delay was 'due to future interoperability issues.'The Agora reached a very late stage of development, manufacturing had commenced and we were within days of shipping the product to customers," company founder Ruslan Kogan said in a statement."
For today and only today, you can get the Peek — the tiny little email-only PDA that Beschizza loved for being brazenly perfect at doing exactly what it was trying to do and not a jot more — for a lump sum price of $299.95.
That's ostensibly a crappy deal on a limited device that costs less than $100 bucks and only does e-mail, but where this deal gets good is that it includes unlimited email for life, where as the Peek usually requires a $20 a month email plan.
Even so, it's unlikely any of you guys will want one for yourself: your cell phones already do email. That said, now that the monthly fee has been taken out of the equation, this might suddenly make the Peek a more viable gift for a Ludditical relative who has so far eschewed always-on Internet connectedness.
Web-folk have a fairly justified suspicion of anything they hear from official music industry reps these days. But this stat seems about right to me: 95% of all songs downloaded on the Web last year were stolen, says the industry’s international trade group.
The IFPI estimates that some 40 billion tracks were stolen/shared last year, though it’s not entirely clear how the group came up with the math. Regardless of the methodology, that’s bad, right?
Depends on how you look at it. The IFPI also notes that people spent some $3.7 billion on digital music in 2008, which is up about 25%. Figure about half of that comes from Apple (AAPL), which moves about 2 billion tracks a year from its iTunes store. The remainder would be from mobile, with a very small smattering from services like RealNetworks’ Rhapsody (RNWK), and a few dollars spent on ad-supported services like News Corp.’s MySpace Music (NWS), etc.
AP - Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson on Friday said it swung to a net loss in the fourth quarter, mainly pressured by lower volumes on the back of the financial crisis. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Jan 2009 | 10:39 am
My friend Alex over at Marginal Revolution has (appropriately, to my mind) done an about-face on Minneapolis Fed graphs that he posted there earlier in the week. The graphs compared employment losses in... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Jan 2009 | 10:34 am
Gamasutra reports that Jolt Online Gaming is teaming up with Activision to revive the Zork franchise in the form of a casual, browser-based MMO. The Legends of Zork website provides some basic background information: "The Great Underground Empire has recently fallen and the land is in disarray. The Royal Treasury has been sacked. The stock market has collapsed, leading even mighty FrobozzCo International to fire employees from throughout its subsidiaries. A craze of treasure-hunting has swept through the remnants of the Great Underground Empire. The New Zork Times reports that trolls, kobolds and other dangerous creatures are venturing far from their lairs. Adventurers and monsters are increasingly coming into conflict over areas rich with loot. It's a dangerous time to be a newly-unemployed traveling salesman, but it's also a great time to try a bit of adventuring." Gamasutra also has a brief interview with Jolt's CEO, Dylan Collins. There's no word yet whether or not players are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Zimbabwe's hyperinflation has become so extreme that the treasury there is set to print 100 trillion, 50 trillion, 20 trillion and 10 trillion notes. 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars are worth about US$300... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Jan 2009 | 10:25 am
Zimbabwe's hyperinflation has become so extreme that the treasury there is set to print 100 trillion, 50 trillion, 20 trillion and 10 trillion notes. 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars are worth about US$300. Wait. Now it's US$290. Quick, spend it, while there's still time.
Even vegetable vendors prefer the U.S. dollar, South African rand or Botswanan pula, and most workers now demand their salaries in foreign currency. Doctors and nurses have been on strike since last September, demanding salaries in U.S. dollars. The strike coincided with a cholera epidemic that now has claimed more than 2,000 lives.
Last week, the state media reported that most teachers had left their jobs. As a result, the end-of-year examinations taken in November are yet to be graded after the markers demanded their wages in foreign currency. Schools are yet to re-open this year awaiting the examination results
The retro media centre was Thomas Thomassen's Final Major Project in BA (Hons) Modelmaking for Design and Media at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth -- it's an atompunk* tailfin fantasy that would look absolutely fantastic atop your giant console TV, serving as your home's media hub. Thomassen's documented the whole process from design to build -- great tips if you want to try it on your own.
A major drawback of multi-effect processors is that they are digital. The sound coming out of them usually lacks the analog warmth. The ME-70 is easy to use, has knobs for every parameter so you can edit your sound quickly. The ME-70 also has a COSM Preamp which will provide the proper signal strength I guess.
TU-1000: Professional Stage Tuner
Featuring a huge, striking, high-intensity LED meter for visibility on dark stages or outdoors, the flagship TU-1000 offers ultra-smooth, accurate motion and superior brightness to make tuning fast and easy.
TU-12EX: Chromatic Tuner for Guitar and Bass
A direct descendant of the legendary TU-12, the TU-12EX features the famous BOSS needle-type meter and LED tuning guide in a sleek thin-line body and compact size.
TU-12BW: Chromatic Tuner for Brass and Wind
The TU-12BW features an expanded tuning range to correspond to a wide range of brass and wind instruments and the famous BOSS needle-type meter and LED tuning guide.
TU-88: Micro Monitor and Tuner
In addition to authentic BOSS’ tuner and metronome features, the TU-88 features a built-in headphone amplifier, so players can directly monitor or record sounds from stomp boxes or electric guitars with the built-in speaker simulator.
BoomTown’s favorite space villain, as well as an alum of two of the “Planet of the Apes” sci-fi movies, Ricardo Montalban, died earlier this week in Los Angeles. He was 88 years old.
While he was also a movie star and helmed the always bizarre 1970s television show, “Fantasy Island,” those who love some serious scenery-chewing will never forget Montalban’s turn as the insane Khan Noonien Singh in the second “Star Trek” movie, “The Wrath of Khan.”
The fabulous movie was based on a famous episode of the “Star Trek” television series, “Space Seed,” about a race of super-men lost in space and found by the crew of the Enterprise.
While Montalban’s over-the-top performance is extreme in both cases, it is pure sci-fi genius too.
So, here is a great Internet video mash-up of from “Khan,” with the terrific “From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee…” line, as well as a preview of “Space Seed.”
(And, I could not resist throwing Montalban’s classic commercial for the Chrysler Cordoba and his wonderfully languid way of saying “soft Corinthian leather.”)
Builders and Developers with New Homes--and Not Facing Financial Problems--Are Increasingly Turning to Auctions to Sell Inventory
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Jan. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Jan 2009 | 9:20 am
Sprint is trying everything possible to win over mobile phone users. Using its Boost Mobile brand, $50 a month will get you unlimited everything. Unlimited texting, calling, push-to-talk, everything for $50.
What’s the catch? Don’t expect a great phone or even great service since it’s using Nextel. I’m sure a lot of the Gadgetell editors would love this plan for their beloved Palm Pre. This new plan should be active starting January 22nd. Will this gutsy move pay off?
John Ham, the cofounder and CEO of live video streaming site Ustream, stopped by this afternoon to show me their newest stuff - a yet-to-be-released application that lets users watch live streams from the service on their iPhone. I took a brief video of the product and embedded it below, along with the more official video from Ustream.
The application will let users watch any Ustream channel, live, directly from their iPhone. And not only that, users will also see and be able to participate in the live chat around the video as well.
The timing on the application is near perfect with the Obama inauguration coming up on January 20. If you have the application installed you’ll be able to watch it live from anywhere, even if you aren’t in front of your TV or computer.
The world is changing before our eyes.
If you’d like to try out the application before it officially launches, we have a handful of invitations to give away. Just follow the directions below.
Instructions for preview:
1) Plug the iPhone into your computer
2) Wait for the iPhone info to appear in iTunes
3) click on the words “Serial Number” to cause it to change to “Identifier”
4) double-click the identifier number (the long string of characters) and then press cmd-C (Mac) or ctrl-C (Windows) to copy it
5) email that identifier to iphone@ustream.tv so we can build a custom version for that phone using the iPhone SDK
Crunch Network: CrunchBasethe free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Retrovirus writes with a link to a Register story which says that the UK's "Ministry of Defence confirmed today that it has suffered virus infections which have shut down 'a small number' of MoD systems, most notably including admin networks aboard Royal Navy warships."
She stole his heart so he gave her his kidney. And now he wants it back.
So goes the story of 49-year-old Long Island physician Richard Batista and his estranged wife. In 2001, Batista gave one of his kidneys to Dawnell, 44, who had suffered from renal disease for many years. According to the NY Daily News, he said that Dawnell initiated an affair with her physical therapist two years later. She then filed for divorce in 2005 to end their 15-year marriage. “I saved her life,” Batista told the Daily News. “But the pain is unbearable.” At a news conference in Garden City on January 7, Dr. Batista’s lawyer said his client was demanding return of the kidney or $1.5 million (its estimated worth).
It is not difficult to sympathize with Dr. Batista. He is having an extreme form of donor remorse. While the vast majority of donors report a lasting feeling of self-worth and experience a deep sense of gratification from the act—according to surveys, about 95 percent of donors say they would do it again—some regret having donated.
By Rob Hof, Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, BusinessWeek
When I talked the other day with Bill Coleman, CEO of Cassatt and a former colleague of new Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz at Sun Microsystems (JAVA), he said he was initially surprised she would take on such a demanding job. After all, she stepped back from being CEO of Autodesk (ADSK) to be executive chairman, seeming to head toward relative retirement. “I thought, why does Carol need that at this time of her life?” But he thinks she was ready to get back to full-time work. “I think she misses that energy.”
I’m sure he’s right. But there’s another reason, too: money. According to a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing, she will be paid a base salary of $1 million plus up to a $3 million annual bonus, plus an annual equity grant worth $8 million in 2009, plus a $10 million equity grant this year to make up for forfeiting Autodesk grants and medical coverage. Nice.
By Mark Glaser, Host and Editor, MediaShift, PBS.org
Last summer, the British cell phone carrier Vodafone announced it would be offering a new filtering service for its Czech customers. “Child pornography and promotion of racism [are] such socially dangerous content that we have access to it automatically blocked for all of our customers,” said Philip Premysl, senior manager of corporate social responsibility of Vodafone in the press release.
But six months later, that filter also blocked pages on tech blogs, a chat server and a transportation site all based in the Czech Republic. Tech bloggers Radim Hasalik and David Biksadsky started a Facebook group called Stop Internet Censorship (in the Czech language) to protest the poor filtering by the cell carrier.
Read the rest of this post
As the first president-elect with a Facebook page and a YouTube channel, Barack Obama is poised to use the Internet to communicate directly with Americans in a way unknown to previous presidents.
Judging by Obama’s savvy use of social-networking sites during his campaign and the interactive nature of his transition team’s Web site, Americans can expect a president who bypasses the traditional media’s filters while reaching out to citizens for input, observers say.
“The rebooting of our democracy has begun,” said Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum and the techPresident blog. “[Obama] has the potential to transform the relationship between the American public and their democracy.”
Your starting annual base salary will be at the rate of one million dollars ($1,000,000) per annum, less applicable taxes and withholdings, paid in accordance with the Company’s normal payroll practices and subject to annual review for increase. You will also be eligible to receive an annual target bonus of two hundred percent (200%) of your annual Base Salary to be determined by the Compensation Committee of the Board in its discretion based on your performance and the Company’s performance for the relevant year.
… As a part of the Company team, we strongly believe that ownership of the Company by our employees is an important factor to our success. Therefore, as part of your compensation, the Compensation Committee will grant you at its next scheduled meeting at which equity grants are to be made (currently scheduled for January 30, 2009) an option to purchase five million (5,000,000) shares of the Company’s common stock.”
I’m all for transparency and mark to market. As Roger Ehrenberg has blogged about consistently, investors need to know what the underlying securities are worth inside banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, hedge funds, private equity funds, and yes venture capital funds.
The FASB (which governs accounting standards in this country) recently issued a new rule called FAS157. I’m not going to get technical on you and the accountants in the community can weigh in via the comments if they feel the need for more rigor in this discussion.
In layman’s terms, FAS157 says that you have to value your investments at ‘fair market value’.
Westinghouse wanted to be seen at the 2009 CES. They introduced a huge line of “affordable” LCD HDTVs and computer monitors at the show. Leading the pack was the new TX line of HDTVs. Available in 37”, 42”, and 55” sizes, the TX line has a 120Hz refresh rate with full 1080p. The 55” model will be available in May 2009 with the smaller models rolling out before July. Westinghouse promises they will be affordable, but refused to set a price at CES so the jury is still out.
Besides the featured TX line, there was the SK line of 720p HDTVs and HDTV/DVD combos, new 16:9 PC monitors, and 19” and 22” portable HDTV models. I’m not entirely sure how a 22” TV is classified as portable, but Westinghouse can prove it to me when they release in March. Like the TX line, all of the other lines are promised to be affordable, but no firm commitment on price. Westinghouse is a leading manufacturer of LCDs, and many of their products are lower in cost than other major name brands, so it is entirely possible.
More on US Airways 1549, the plane that water-landed in the Hudson river in New York -- the first photo from the scene was this stunning image from Janis Krums from Sarasota, Florida, who put the photo in his Twitter feed as his ferry steamed toward the rafts to pick up the passengers. What a fantastic, iconic shot.
And Kottke has a fantastic roundup of amateur reporter coverage of the crash, everything from nautical charts and flight-path mashups to learned discussions of the effect of birds on plane-engines.
NEW YORK, January 16 /PRNewswire/ --
- Everyone has An Equal Chance to buy the Best Names
With less than three weeks until the start of the .tel Landrush, Telnic
Limited (http://www.telnic.org), the registry operator for the new .tel top
level domain, announced today that it will not be holding any auctions for
high value or premium domain names nor is it withholding any names from the
Landrush, with the exception of a few names on a "reserved list," as required
by ICANN and as needed for registry operations.
"People need to understand that there are really great domain names
available during Landrush and that everyone will have a fair and equal chance
to register these names as they are all offered at a fixed price on a
first-come, first-served basis, the fairest and most democratic selection
method available," said Khashayar Mahdavi, Telnic's CEO.
"We expect strong uptake in every country for people's names (i.e.
Bob.tel, Mary.tel, Hans.tel), city names (i.e. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Jan 2009 | 7:00 am
NEW YORK, January 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Telnic Limited
(http://www.telnic.org), the registry operator for the new .tel top level
domain, today announced the opening of the Telnic Accredited Technology
Partner programme for organizations looking to integrate their technology
products and services with .tel. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Jan 2009 | 7:00 am
Representatives from Microsoft (Dean Hachamovitch), Opera (Christen Krogh), Mozilla (Mike Shaver) and Google (Sundar Pichal) met at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley tonight for a panel called “Browsers are Hot Again!”, moderated by Businessweek columnist Steve Wildstrom.
The event is timely. There has never been such robust competition in the browser space. Google recently brought Chromeout of beta, and Microsoft’s GM of Internet Explorer Dean Hachamovitch told me earlier today that the Release Candidate of Internet Explorer 8 would be released in the next two weeks.
Notably absent from the panel was Apple, although their Safari browser was brought up repeatedly as an important mobile platform, and Safari’s underlying Webkit javascript engine was also praised as innovative.
Most of the panel discussion focused on the browser ecosystem, including add-ons, standards compliance and security. The panelists noted that web developers have a harder time today than a few years ago because they have to build for more than one browser. But as Firefox and others have gained market share, competition has sped feature advances, accelerating the development and evolution of javascript and other languages and standards. Krogh from Opera noted that the next big battleground is mobile.
An audience question asked each of the panelists to describe the essence of each browser. The responses were varied. Microsoft’s Hachamovitch said his team starts with looking at what the user wants and building from there (and pointed to IE 8’s impressive feature list). Krogh from Opera said they wanted to supply a standards compliant browser for literally any Internet connected device. Google’s Pichal said speed (of javascript) was their primary goal (Hachamovitch then dubbed him “Mr. Speed” in a later comment). Mozilla’s Shaver said Firefox was about “putting the web first,” and creating a standards-compliant browser in as many languages as possible to ensure that no one was left out of the Internet.
Hachmovitch also confirmed that Microsoft has no current plans to build Linux or Mac versions of Internet Explorer. Google’s Pichal confirmed that Chrome for Mac was coming “very soon.”
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
AFP - Nintendo sold 10.17 million Wii consoles in the United States in 2008, setting a new video game record despite dismal economic conditions gripping the country, according to NPD Group statistics.
Casemodder Sheyr produced this stunning Castle Wolfenstein-themed PC, called the FuG-01/ET. It features a field phone, bullet-holes (!), and has a matching keyboard and mouse. Bravo!
Besides the side-mounted telephone one of the most striking features on this case are the dual electric gauges. One measures amperage, the other core voltages. This can be implementing by simply buying some cheap multimeters that use a needle, mounting them into the case and attaching their leads to the system's power inputs.
As with many of the case mods I've covered the modder has once again taken the time to "distress" the paint job and give it a used look. This can be done simply by sanding the existing finish on a case, but for a great look you can apply a couple coats of slightly different colored spray paint (say, dark gray and light gray) and then sand certain areas to reveal the layers. The bullet holes are a great addition, it really lends to the feel of the unit.
I realize the "distressed paint" theme has shown up in several of my Best PC Mod picks... I guess it's because Make asked me to pick out the mods I personally found interesting, not necessarily the most complex or fancy. In my online journeys I've seen plenty of awesome mods, many award-winning, but to be honest if I didn't find them visually appealing I passed them over for this series.
For two years now, I have been begging the U.S. Congress to loan me DVDs they have of congressional hearings so I can load them up to the Internet Archive. So, I was pretty steamed to see all 4 of the senior leaders of Congress cut a shameless ad for YouTube, making YouTube the official video purveyor of both the House and Senate.
Sure, they talk about how this is only one of many avenues that the modern new socially aware Congress will pursue, but you don't see Pelosi and Boehner cutting any ads for the Internet Archive or C-SPAN (let alone Yahoo or MSN).
In the case of the Internet Archive, the Speaker's actions are especially puzzling, considering Brewster Kahle is one of her constituents and I assumed probably even voted for her! I did note that the Google official PAC gave $34,000 to the four actors who appeared in their ad.
In Minnesota, where it's -21F (that's -29.4C for everyone else), Birdchick is amusing herself with a spray-bottle full of hot water: shpritz it into the air and it turns into instant ice-needles that tinkle prettily to the frozen ground below. I love people who really know how to enjoy themselves, no matter what the weather's doing.
LightLane is a concept gadget that paints a bike lane around your bicycle with laser-light as you pedal through the night:
Enter LightLane, a safety concept from the clever designers at Altitude, Inc. The system projects a virtual bike lane (using lasers!) on the ground around the cyclists, providing drivers with a recognizable boundary they can easily avoid. The idea is to allow riders to take safety into their own hands, rather than leaving it to the city.
The British food watchdog is asking fast-food restaurants to add calorie-counts to their menus -- and want to adopt a set of "traffic light" labels that indicate dangerously high levels of salt, fat, sugar (or, presumably, eyeball-gnawing maggots, see post below). Pizza Hut is in.
Men in Britain now get a quarter of their food energy intake outside the home, while women get 21%. A number of chains, including KFC, Starbucks and McDonald's, already offer nutritional information on websites or leaflets, but now the catering industry will be expected to go far further. Officials at the agency hinted that if the calorie counting was a success, the drive for information could see an extension of the traffic light scheme, which applies to food sold in stores for home cooking and consumption. Red labels suggest levels of salt, sugar or fats are too high, amber shows they are at medium level and green at a low level. The calorie counting might also reduce portion sizes.
I don’t know about you, but spending too much time away from a computer can be a bit nerve-wracking. While withdrawal-like symptoms might be a problem for some, they show just how large a part of our lives computers have become. They’re about as ubiquitous as TVs are in the U.S. to some of us. A home without a computer seems strange, foreign. Turns out that’s not too far from the truth.
According to a Research and Markets report of computers in the U.S. in 2008, about 80 percent of homes currently have a desktop or notebook computer. While the report is a whopping 111 pages, and costs € 2,995, the important information for those of us not in the business side of things is already right there. An average of four out of every five homes having a computer is a big deal, especially if that last 20 percent of those homes might have access to computers in some other way.
The report shows he trends of the industry and where it could be going. It cites both Windows 7 and cloud computing as being “on the horizon,“ with both being huge factors this year, and probably beyond it.
Looking through the table of contents for the report, the most interesting section to me would have to be “18-24 year-olds less engaged with the PC.“ I don’t know who the conductors of the study talked to, or if I’m just misreading the title, but computers (the Internet more specifically) are a huge part of the lives of many 18-24 year-olds. Were it not for computers, it would be difficult for them to buy certain things, write papers for college, or communicate with family and friends when at college or on break. Then again, it could just mean that they’re less engaged with the machines themselves, and more so with the Internet.
Casu marzu is an illegal Sardinian cheese that is served riddled with writhing maggots that try to jump into your eyeballs as you eat it.
Casu marzu is considered toxic when the maggots in the cheese have died. Because of this, only cheese in which the maggots are still alive is eaten. When the cheese has fermented enough, it is cut into thin strips and spread on moistened Sardinian flatbread (pane carasau), to be served with a strong red wine.[6][7] Casu marzu is believed to be an aphrodisiac by local Sardinians.[1] Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed,[5][8] diners hold their hands above the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping into their eyes.[3] Those who do not wish to eat live maggots place the cheese in a sealed paper bag. The maggots, starved for oxygen, writhe and jump in the bag, creating a "pitter-patter" sound. When the sounds subside, the maggots are dead and the cheese can be eaten.[9]
The Female Mechanics calendar showcases 12 woman mechanics working hard at challenging, technical jobs, looking competent, happy and awesome. Keith calls it a "21st century Rosie the Riveter calendar," and says, "I bought a copies for my daughters." Fantastic.
Maybe this is why Best Buy is still around while Circuit City is on the verge of collapse. The latest rumor surrounding Palm’s Pre is that Best Buy will be the only place (other than Sprint locations) you can get a Palm Pre for a while.
Best Buy may do some weird things (like the Napster purchase), but when it comes to phones, they know what they are doing. They even landed the iPhone 3G before you could pick it up at a Walmart.
The Pre will probably grab a lot of attention from the average consumer since Best Buy is virtually everywhere. This is a smart move by all the parties involved since it will increase exposure for the phone. The fact there is a deal at all lets you know that Sprint, Palm, and Best Buy think they have a winner on their hands.
I love this watercolor at the homepage of Britishy-retro singer Ladyhawke. What is the game depicted? One must be acquired and respiritualized by turning it into a MAME console, at once.
Emb3rz writes "DarkReading.com brings us news of a new approach to phishing that targets online banking sites. Here's the novel part of it: it doesn't involve any of the typical attack vectors we all know and love. Instead, it uses JavaScript from a remote page to detect if you have a banking site open, and prompts you for info via popup if you do."
Actually, there’s a real reason they’re splitting. Their LCD and semiconductor arms will be combining, being the two most stricken in these dark economic times, which leaves mobile and media to be together in (hopefully) lasting harmony. Sudden loss of credit (that probably never existed really) and loss of consumer confidence have hammered income in their LCD and memory sectors, normally cash cows for fueling investments and (failed) acquisitions. This comes after a shake-up in management as well, so I think that punishment has already been meted out.
I think the idea is that the ship is too big to weather the storm head on, so they’ve cannibalized it and made it into a couple big whaleboats, more maneuverable and easier to harpoon from. Not sure what the harpoon signifies in that little fantasy but you get the idea. The low-performing businesses will be able to focus on profitability and regaining market with decisions and spending that don’t affect the other divisions.
What does this mean for you, the consumer? Likely very little. It’s not like they’re chainsawing the building in half, they’re just compartmentalizing where the water is coming in, kind of like what was supposed to happen on the Titanic. Let’s hope things turn out better for Samsung.
SanDisk and LG have partnered together to create a flash card that cellular providers can lock down to their service only. This new “smart card” will allow companies to provide many features and services on removable cards without worrying about piracy across phones. This opens the door for more iPhone like features on standard and smart cell phones.
Amir Lehr, senior director of business development at SanDisk said, “With this advanced technology, handset manufacturers and MNOs will be able to meet the increasingly sophisticated demands of consumers who want easy access to premium content on their mobile devices.”
The technology uses the phone’s SIM card as an authentication server using the OMA SmartCard Web Server (SCWS) standard. Customers plug the flash cards into their phones and the information stored on the SIM card allows access to applications, multimedia and other data. LG adopted SCWS last year, and their KC910 Renoir handset was used in the demonstration.
No word yet on when the cards and phones will be available, but you can bet that SanDisk and LG are hoping to get a larger piece of the smart phone market as soon as possible.
RAMSEY, N.J., Jan. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Konica Minolta Sensing Americas, Inc. (KMSA), the worldwide leader in the industrial measurement of color, light and shape, announces the addition of a "dark surface mode" to its Range 7 non contact 3D digitizer. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Jan 2009 | 4:01 am
Intel released its quarterly earnings report today, which revealed a 90% drop in profits compared to the same quarter last year. I’m no economy major, but if I try to work through the jargon I believe they’re saying that their profits dropped by 90% over a year period.
Considering how much of a lead they have on rival AMD (also hurting) and the immense popularity of Atom-based netbooks, this comes as a surprise to me, though apparently not to industry analysts. Must be all them books an’ learnin’ they got!
Total revenue is down by a fifth, from $10.7bn during 4th quarter last year to $8.2bn this year. Costs appear to have remained static, as the loss in total revenue is similar to the loss in profit. They are predicting revenue to fall next quarter to $7bn-ish, which means they’ll either have to cut costs to stay profitable, or take the hit.
I’ve been eying FIOS for a few years now - I know Doug has it and likes it - and was just inspired by a commercial on cable to pop by the Verizon site to check on FIOS in Brooklyn. Almost immediately I was shunted into a chat with “Philip” who proceeded to offer me DSL. Phil then encouraged me to “check back” with some regularity, something that would be swell if I cared enough to check back regularly.
What is it with third-generation networking systems? Carriers refuses to plug in anything, whether it’s fiber or WiMAX or real 3G, and then wonder why their revenue is so low. It took carriers a good decades to really bring in 3G - I remember Japan whizzing around on wireless networks in the 1990s and the European telecom I worked for in 1998 already implementing 3G in Poland. It can be argued that we didn’t really get 3G - or any devices that could actually use 3G - until the iPhone.
Sorry, Philip. I won’t be checking back. I’ll keep my eye on wireless technology like the MiFi from Novatel. There will be a day that you drop a little box in your living room and all your wiring problems are solved.
Fine: I’m a crank. But don’t offer me something I can’t have and shunt me over to your lesser and less valuable offerings when I’m asking to pay for your crown jewels
Never the one to allow a business model pass them by, Google recently announced a partnership with CTT to provide advanced online advertising courses for professionals in Latin America, beginning in March 2009.
The courses, offered through the Google Business Education Center (GOOBEC), are designed to expand the offerings that have been available from GOOBEC since April, 2008. With the partnership, the same classes will be offered in both CTT’s online portfolio and education centers with an eye towards developing talent specialized in online advertising.
The first courses will focus on Google AdWords Fundamentals, designed for those already using AdWords, and Corporate Assistance Services, which deals with support and strategy for online businesses. The expanded course package, GAP Test Preparation and Google AdWords Advanced, will give further knowledge for Google’s online advertising services.
GOOBEC offers courses in Spanish and Portuguese in countries in Central and South America. If you are in one of the countries serviced, and an advertising professional, you should check it out.
Folks may have been renting Xbox 360 titles like mad last year, but that didn’t do much for console sales. The NPD group announced sales figures for the Wii and DS earlier today and the numbers are astonishing.
Despite the current economic conditions, Americans purchased 10.17 million Wiis in the year 2008. Not only is this a huge sales figure, but it’s also the first time Americans have purchased 10 million units of a game console in a single year. The handheld DS came very close to the 10 million mark with 9.95 million units sold. Last year Nintendo moved 8.52 million DS portables. Of all game consoles sold in America, the Wii accounted for 55 percent sold while the DS took up a whopping 72 percent.
NPD data released for December and all of 2008 also included the following:
* The industry’s top 4 selling games of 2008 were: Wii Play™ at No. 1, Mario Kart™ Wii at No. 2, Wii Fit™ at No.3, and Super Smash Brothers™ Brawl, at No. 4.
* Industry annual revenues jumped 19% in 2008 over 2007, and Nintendo products were responsible for 99% of those additional retail dollars.
* Nintendo DS set another industry record for system sales in any month, with 3.04 million units sold in December.
* Wii broke its own monthly record, set in December 2007, by selling 2.14 million units last month.
* In December, Nintendo titles filled 20 of the top 30 spots on the best-seller list. Six games made for Nintendo systems placed in the top 10, including Wii Music™ for Wii (No. 9), which has now sold 865,000 units following its launch in October 2008, and Mario Kart DS for the Nintendo DS (No. 7), which has sold a total of 4.3 million units 38 months after launch.
* Activision’s Guitar Hero® III: Legends of Rock and Guitar Hero® World Tour, and MTV Games/EA’s* Rock Band Special Edition Bundle all sold more units on Nintendo platforms than any other platforms in 2008.
* More 3rd party units were sold for Wii than any other home consoles in December for the 2nd consecutive month.
* For the year, more than 132 million games were sold in America for play on Nintendo systems.
The company behind invisibleSHIELDs recently introduced the $79.99 Z.buds for the iPhone, and showed them off at CES. We finally got a chance to listen to them and like what we hear. The new earbuds have a tangle-free cord that comes in red or black, has an inline volume control, and has an inline microphone for talking on the phone as well. The cord is made to be worn around your neck so they don’t get ripped out of your ears like normal earbuds do every once in a while. Apparently the Z.buds are very similar to a product Rivet used to carry, but we’re glad to see Zagg decided to add them to their ZAGGaudio line-up.
Tangle-free cord
You know how regular headphones and earbuds get all twisted and wrapped up every time you put them in your bag or pocket? The Z.buds have a nylon-wrapped cord so this does not happen. The tangle-free cord is not just a gimmick… it actually works as promised. The cord has a goofy split in the middle where they change from one cord to two (see picture), but it’s not a big deal, and does not get in the way.
You know how when you get your starched shirts back from the cleaners? Right when you get the Z.buds, that’s how the cord is. It’s not very flexible, but I guess that’s the trade-off of having a tangle-free cord.
Adjustable beads
Zagg thought this one through. As I mentioned, the buds are made to be worn around your neck. Since there are basically infinite ways to position the cord around your neck, they added movable beads on there so you can situate it as you please. Too tight? Loosen it up!
With that, I must say it took me a few seconds to figure out how to put them on. The confusing design makes sense once you figure it out (see picture below), but is confusing as hell right when you take them out of the box. Once you move the beads into a comfortable spot, it all starts to make sense.
How do they fit?
Let me start out by saying that earbuds do not normally fit me well unless they come with changeable buds. Thankfully, the Z.buds fit like a charm. The set comes with 4 pairs of buds so you can customize them as you must. I can definitely see myself wearing these for working out, sitting at my desk, and talking on my iPhone. The buds are comfortable, and don’t put any unnecessary weight on my ears since the cords are made to sit around your neck.
I’m not an audiophile, so comfort is the most important factor for me. The Z.buds by Zagg’s ZAGGaudio division exceeded my expectations, and I recommend them.
I have only had the Z.buds for a week or so at this point, so I cannot speak for the durability. I did however take a look around the web and find that some are having issues with the plastic earbuds splitting in half after a short amount of time. Have any problems with the Z.buds? Tell us about it below.
Overall
The Z.buds sound great, look stylish, and have a tangle-free cord. They also have an inline volume control and microphone for use with the iPhone. The adjustable beads allow you to position the cord around your neck in the fashion that fits you comfortably. Based on my experience with them, I recommend the Zagg Z.buds.
Buy the Z.buds by Zagg? Tell us about your experience below…
The fine folks at THX have taken note of the current home theater landscape and deemed it sub-par when it comes to surround sound. That may or may not be true, but I’d like to think someone at THX thought that at some point. Developed in conjunction with Radiient, the THX Roomcaster system taps ultra-wideband wireless technology to unshackle your surround system from its wired overlords. The technology can also be embedded into AV receivers, game consoles, headphones and anything that sends and receives content.
While transmitting in the 3-to-10 GHz range, THX Roomcaster beams uncompressed, 24-bit, low latency, eight channel (up to, at least) audio up to 30 feet away. So, if you’re looking for a wireless surround sound solution that delivers high quality audio then you’d be a fool not to ask for a THX Roomcaster system.
BobB-nw writes "The U.S. federal government is accelerating its efforts to secure the Internet's routing system, with plans this year for the Department of Homeland Security to quadruple its investment in research aimed at adding digital signatures to router communications. DHS says its routing security effort will prevent routing hijack attacks as well as accidental misconfigurations of routing data. The effort is nicknamed BGPSEC because it will secure the Internet's core routing protocol known as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). (A separate federal effort is under way to bolster another Internet protocol, DNS, and it is called DNSSEC.) Douglas Maughan, program manager for cybersecurity R&D in the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, says his department's spending on router security will rise from around $600,000 per year during the last three years to approximately $2.5 million per year starting in 2009."
CNET - Each time our little world suffers a disaster, man-made or otherwise, count on the usual suspects to rush to their keyboards and pound out yet more bloviation about the existential importance of Twitter to our 24 x 7 ecosystem. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Jan 2009 | 1:41 am
So it seems like there’s a new sub-culture developing. We are seeing more and more wristwatches coming out of Japan that are almost impossible to read. A prime example of this design trend is the EIN Cyber Heartbeat. Since the instructions are in Japanese, it’s fairly hard for me to understand, however it appears you read the minutes through the EKG display, and the hours below.
While this may not be the product for me, you should feel free to buy it. There doesn’t seem to a US retailer yet, but you can order it here for approximately $290 US.
Today, iLike released a social playlist app that lets you create a music playlsit and embed it on any Website. Then through Friend Connect, anyone can sign in and change or add to the playlist. I’ve embedded one below seeded with five songs that I’ve called TechCrunch House Party. Go ahead and add to it, but only good songs, please. Or create your own.Update: Oops, I created a regular playlist that can’t be edited by others by mistake. Turns out your site needs to be set up with Google Friend Connect for the social playlist to work. I guess you can suggest songs for me to add in comments.
Friend Connect is Google/OpenSocial’s answer to data portability. Just last December, it opened to all Websites. That means that anyone with a Google, Yahoo, AIM, or OpenID username and password can sign in.
iLike, for its part, offers full song streaming through a partnership with Rhapsody (which limits non-subscribers to 25 free tracks per month). The Rhapsody-imposed limit could eventually become a barrier to consumer adoption. The other problem with the app is that it is missing is the ability to vote up or down songs. There is no mechanism to ensure the playlist gets better as more people touch it rather than get worse. If iLike added that, it could start generating some amazing crowd-DJed playlists. As it stands, I fear most of these playlists will not get better the more people interact with them, which is how the value of all social apps should be measured.
AP - All throughout 2008, as the economy went from bad to worse, video games continued to sell at record levels, boosted by the popularity of the Nintendo Wii and blockbuster games like "Grand Theft Auto IV." Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Jan 2009 | 12:52 am
Shocking news, everyone! Age plays a factor in how we figure out Web site navigation! According to a new study in the journal Psychology & Marketing, younger kids do better with maps and visual “learning clues” while older kids are better at scanning lists of content.
Younger children (ages 7 – 9) preferred a map because they tend to process information holistically. Older children (ages 10 – 13) were better able to use a content list, because they are more equipped to select information and ignore irrelevant material.
This might smack of “Well, obviously” since older kids are generally better readers; but not all Web designers have kids, and not all Web sites are designed by intelligent, rational people with a commitment to their users. Studies like this will help those intelligent, committed Web designers explain to the boss why a list of links is not appropriate for a site targeted at young kids.
I think the more interesting question is how does heavy Web use affect the way we perceive things in the real world? For example, I am almost blind to blinking flashing sections of Web pages: I know those are ads, and my brain has pretty well learned to ignore them. Does this make me less observant of blinky flashy things in the real world?
Lethal is a practical iPhone app for a change: a nice little program that uses your phone's built-in location services to gauge where you are, then tell you how likely you are to be maimed, mugged, mauled or otherwise maligned.
Let's say you're walking through my neighborhood back in Berlin. It's Prenzlauer Berg, so it's plenty shady: on one street corner, three filthy, mad-eyed hobos roast a baby on a spit over a burning mattress. The gutters are thick with used needles and coughed-up lung tissue. Madly jactitating mad men wrapped in raincoats stained with genetic filth eye you lasciviously from the shadows, singing to you in German about the orifices they can smell. WIndows explode above you, accompanied by screams and buckshot.
But how dangerous is Prenzlauer Berg really? Well, just load up Lethal and it will tell you: a Wildlife Rating of Zero, Crime and Disease bars maxed, and a Disaster Rating hovering around 80, since God's cursed it and all. Good to know for only $1.99.
Windows 7 and I went for a little spin today and I’m pleased to report the old girl is doing quite well. As hard as it is to beleive, I’m not actually a total anti-Windows douche and I was actually very excited to be able to try out a fresh new version of Windows free and much earlier than expected.
I installed Win 7 under VMWare Fusion on my Mac Pro and I it took about three installs for the OS to “take” on my machine, one of the things that I used to hate about running Windows. While I understand and accept that perhaps the problem was between the keyboard and the chair, I refuse to accept that I as a fairly savvy computer user can’t install a new operating system outright. I know what you’re saying - “Bitch some more, n00b, you suck” - but if I had this trouble, I would definitely not give this disk to my Dad to install even on a stock PC.
This, however, is where my pain ended. I was greeted with the new OS in all its glory. I was never a big fan of Vista but the clean-up job they did on Win7 is quite admirable. The task bar is intuitive and useful, Aero has come into its own, and the ribbon theme that ran through later versions of Office has fallen to the wayside, replaced instead by a more-task oriented approach to application launching.
In terms of stability I see Win7 as another XP - a workhorse. Vista was Microsoft’s Windows Me move - some sort of strange itch that they have to scratch every few years while the pay lip service to “multimedia” and “user experience.”
As Scott wrote earlier today, Win7 feels like Linux or - dare I say it - OS X. In short, we find not much clutter to get in the way of a job well done.
I’m going to take the Pepsi challenge this week and use Win7 as my primary OS. It won’t be easy - because I’m a Mac Douche, obviously - but Win7 deserves a second and third look.
AP - Autodesk Inc., the software company that has lost its leader to Yahoo, is cutting 750 jobs, or about 10 percent of its work force to cut expenses and expects to report a loss rather than a profit for the fourth quarter. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Jan 2009 | 12:04 am
Earlier this month, Microsoft Research released Songsmith, a song-making app that works only on Windows. To promote the app it released what might very well be the worst promo video ever, featuring a girl singing in front of her laptop about how great Songsmith is.
Besides just being painful to watch (see for yourself below), the laptop she is using to show her Dad how to use Songsmith is a Mac! Did I mention that Songsmith only works on PCs? Whoever made the video thought they could fool everyone by covering up the Apple logo and the rest of the laptop with stickers. Or maybe they knew that would be the only way anybody would bother to watch the video.
(Hat tip to reader Doug Hirsch for pointing this out).
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
dooberrymctavish writes "You can now download an installer and bootloader for getting Debian running on your Android (G1 at the moment) device; the whole install process will take you about 10 minutes, and leaves you with access to the full plethora of programs available in Debian and lets you continue using your phone as it was intended to be: as an Android device with all the capabilities thereof. Here's a look at it running.
First things first: Everyone on U.S. Airways flight 1549, which landed in the Hudson River this afternoon a few minutes after it took off from LaGuardia, appears to be safe. Amazing.
Second thing: I learned this via Twitter this afternoon, via fellow Twitterer Dave Martin, who was “re-tweeting” information he’d picked up via the Chicago CBS TV station’s Twitter account, which was passing along information it had received from CBS News.
Similarly, I am learning, via Twitter, that this amazing picture from Twitterer Janis Krums, who posted it to Twitpic, is the “first” photo of the airplane in the water. No idea if that’s true–was someone monitoring all news outlets simultaneously before they reached this conclusion?–but it is an extraordinary photo.
In the old days, this image might have taken hours or even days to make it to cable news–think of those terrible videos that people shot with their home cameras during the first few minutes of 9/11. Today Krums was being interviewed on MSNBC 34 minutes after he posted the photo, says Dan Frommer at Silicon Alley Insider.
So: Did Twitter “break” news today? Did “citizen journalists” really ”beat” the bad-old MSM? It’d be great if we could skip that debate. Because it will be as boring as the one we had last month after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
So let’s get it over with quickly: I learned that there was a plane in the water via Twitter, via a whole lot of people who live and work on the west side of Manhattan. But the people who told me what had happened after that, and the ones who are telling me why the plane ended up in the water in the first place–those are people who have full-time jobs as journalists. Like the six people who contributed to this excellent report for the New York Times (NYT) Web site.
So I plan on relying on those folks for my news for as long as there’s a business to support them. But I’ll be using Twitter and the Web to augment that coverage–to tell me something very quickly, or to pass along news gleaned from news reports in the first place. See? Easy. Now I’m going to listen to WNYC, the local NPR station, which has been going wall-to-wall with this story all afternoon.
SGN has just released the latest update to its smash-hit iPhone game iBowl, which closed out 2008 as the 4th most popular game on the App Store. The version incorporates network support, allowing users to see what their friends online have just bowled, and adds another dimension to an already-great game.
We’re big fans of the Wii-like series of iPhone games to come from SGN. The games, which ask you to swing your iPhone around to mimic actions like swinging a golf club or toss a free-throw, have been extremely popular, with iBowl alone seeing over 4 million downloads.
But while these apps are innovative, when they were first released they failed to tap into the iPhone’s network effect - you could play with a few friends in the same room, but the games didn’t take advantage of the iPhone’s integrated Wi-Fi and cell network capabilities.
The new version allows gamers to play with friends or random opponents online. And unlike the multiplayer player version of iBasketball (which wasn’t that great because you couldn’t see how your friends were doing), the new version of iBowl lets you watch each of your friend’s bowls on-screen in real time. It isn’t perfect - there’s apparently no way to talk smack about your friend’s last gutterball, which is frustrating. But it’s much more fun than playing against the computer.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
There's something awesome in the literal sense of this MSI NetTop. As in, it fills with awe. How did this design leap hurtling out of the 80's? Why does MSI think it looks Nordic?
Such questions are better off unanswered. Let's leave it to Charlie Sorrel of Wired's Gadget Lab to say all that needs to be said: "If Charlie Sheen had had a computer in the movie Wall Street, this would have been it (although it would have been perched atop a stack of graphic equalizers and spectrum analyzers)."
Suffice to say, MSI 's positioning the NetTop D130 as a sort of light HTPC: it's a dual-core Atom 330 with 2GBs of RAM, a DVD superdrive, a couple HDMI ports, a card reader and a 7.1 surround sound card, all for $240. Congrats to MSI for finally managing to design something even more aesthetically apathetic than the first-generation Wind.
Citi, Nationwide Insurance, Target Corporation, and Bank of America Honored at MicroStrategy World 2009 User Conference
LAS VEGAS, Jan. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 15 Jan 2009 | 11:06 pm
MySpace is building a fully functional webmail product, we’ve learned from sources with knowledge of the product. MySpace mail will compete with services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and AOL Mail, and will on launch be the third largest webmail provider in the world.
All MySpace users will be assigned an email address of [username]@myspace.com. The product is still in development, and we don’t know when it will be released.
The first hint of the new service was a reassignment of some MySpace employee email addresses to [name]@myspace-inc.com, which people have noticed. This is a sign that they are preparing to assign MySpace.com email addresses to users, which is exactly how Yahoo handled the transition when they launched Yahoo Mail in 1997 - Yahoo employees moved to yahoo-inc.com email addresses. We’ve subsequently confirmed that MySpace is currently building a webmail product.
The largest webmail provider today is Microsoft, with 284 million worldwide users (Comscore). Yahoo Mail is the second largest with 277 million users. Gmail and AOL Mail are third and fifth, with 118 million and 50 million users respectively. MySpace’s 125 million active users (active being defined as logging in once per month) would immediately make them the third largest provider, assuming those users log in to the messaging/email feature. That’s very likely, given that it is the one of the most popular social networking features.
Messaging on social networks has to date trailed far behind cutting edge webmail services. MySpace currently allows only one-to-one messaging to other MySpace users, although integration with Google Gears in May 2008 dramatically improved performance. Facebook allows messages to be sent to up to 20 people and supports messages to outside email addresses, but the product remains essentially unusable as a productivity tool.
MySpace won’t confirm or deny this report, although they did send us this advertisement as an official comment:
Messaging is one of the most popular communication tools for MySpace’s 125 million users worldwide. We actively listen to the feedback we receive from our users and are constantly evaluating new ways to enhance the messaging experience for our community. Our recent collaboration with Google to introduce the first search and sort mail functionality into MySpace was extremely well received. We do not comment on company rumors or speculation but will share more details on additional product plans when we have news.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
eldavojohn writes "You might have heard or felt that there is little left to patent these days but IBM begs to differ. They came in at over four thousand for the year of 2008. Now, this isn't a good metric to measure success or progress but for those of you who like to keep track: 'IBM said it earned 4,186 U.S. patents in 2008, more than triple the number of patents earned by rival Hewlett-Packard. Microsoft Corp earned 2,030 patents, while Intel Corp had 1,776 and Hewlett-Packard 1,424, according to the report, which compiled data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics had the second-highest number of patents at 3,515.' You can find the original source of this study here as well as 2007's data and even 2006's data."
Vik Singh of Yahoo’s BOSS team has just launched a new search engine called TweetNews that mashes up Yahoo News stories with some of the hottest topics on Twitter. The result is a news engine that is significantly more timely than common news aggregators like Google News and Yahoo’s standard news site.
In his blog post describing the new release, Singh explains that sorting Yahoo News results by the “recent” category ranks them by the time at which they were published, which is a poor measure of relevance. Some news sites try to measure the relevance of breaking news by looking at how many news publications have covered the same story, but this doesn’t work well for breaking news, as more stale stories tend to rise to the top because they have more related articles.
To combat this, Singh’s mashup tries to use recent Twitter tweets to measure which topics are breaking, and then links to relevant stories gathered from Yahoo News. The site is very barebones at the moment (I’d like to see a homepage detailing the hottest news stories and matching tweets), but it’s a great showcase for BOSS and the power of Twitter. It only took Singh 100 lines of code, and it’s open source. From his blog post:
There’s something very interesting here … Twitter as a ranking signal for search freshness may prove to be very useful if constructed properly. Definitely deserves more exploration - hence this service, which took < 100 lines of code to represent all the search logic thanks to Yahoo! BOSS, Twitter’s API, and the BOSS Mashup Framework.
To sum up, the contributions of this service are: (1) Real-time search + freshness (2) Stitching social commentary to authoritative sources of information (3) Another (hopefully cool) BOSS example.
The code is packaged for general open consumption and has been ported to run on App Engine (which powers this service actually). You can download all the source here.
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
narramissic writes "Doing a download speed test of his Time Warner cable connection, James Gaskin discovered something odd, something that he is quick to note isn't a rigorous benchmarked lab test. The discovery: His Ubuntu machine 'returned a rating from the Bandwidth.com test of 22-25mbps over several tests' while the same test done from a Windows XP PC returned a rating of 12-14mbps. The two computers used in the test are 'almost identical: both off-lease Compaq small form factor D515s, part of the very popular corporate desktop D500 family. Both have Pentium 4 processors running at 2GHz. The Ubuntu machine has 768MB of RAM, while the XP box has only 512MB of RAM. Both run Firefox 3 as their browser.' Gaskin's question: Can a little extra RAM make that much difference in Internet download speeds or does Ubuntu handles networking that much faster than Windows XP?"
A U.S. Airways plane leaving New York City crashed in the Hudson River a few hours ago, possibly due to a bird striking the engine. Rescue operations are under way. Apparently all passengers are safely off the plane now. But I’ll tell you one thing: it’s freezing in New York City today. I can only imagine what it must have been like on the water.
Pictures of the plane floating in the river are already on Flickr, Tumblr, and TwitPic (which seems to be overloaded right now). In fact, the picture above was taken by Janis Krums who Twittered it from his iPhone, and posted via TwitPic.
mldkfa writes "Recently I told a friend about OpenOffice and how it was a great alternative to the big name pay office suites. She went home and searched on Google for it and thought she found the website, filled typical registration information, and downloaded OpenOffice.org 3.0. The next time she opened her e-mail she found a request for 98 [Euro] for her 1-year subscription to OpenOffice.org 3.0 from the company that she downloaded it from. Apparently the EULA stated this cost and here in Germany she is required to pay up. So I thought I would ask Slashdot, should she pay? On the OpenOffice.org German website there is a warning of these schemes being legal. Shouldn't Sun change the license of OpenOffice.org to protect their fans or are they doing this to protect someone else? It has really made me think about recommending it to any more friends." Below, read Google's translation of the warning; it wouldn't be the first time that open source software has been lightly repackaged and sold in ways that should raise eyebrows among anyone familiar with the wide, free availability of the same apps.
A pioneering forensic scientist at Northamptonshire Police and the University of Leicester is being called on by US force officers to tackle a decade-old murder case.Dr John Bond, Scientific Support Manager at Northamptonshire Police and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leicester Forensic Research Centre, is collaborating with Bristol Police Department, Connecticut.He is being asked to probe the murder of a well-known and respected businessman who was shot in the bedroom of his own home. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Jan 2009 | 8:36 pm
Many hopes are pinned on spintronics. In the future it could replace electronics, which in the race to produce increasingly rapid computer components, must at sometime reach its limits. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Jan 2009 | 8:32 pm
Bitstream has just launched into private beta with their free WebKit-based mobile browser, BOLT, which they’re claiming is the fastest J2ME browser of the lot. They’re only letting a few hundred people into the beta at a time, and we just got the first lot of 500 invites. Looking to put it through the paces with the likes of Opera Mini? Read on to find out how to get beta access.
We’ve only just cracked open our own download of the browser, so our impressions thus far are fairly limited. Really getting to know a browser takes a few days - rather than making you wait to get your own mitts on it, we figured we’d share the invites as soon as possible and let you play along at home.
The Features:
It’s Java ME (J2ME), so it should work on most featurephones. Don’t expect it to work on your iPhone, though.
WebKit based rendering engine
Relatively lightweight - 150kb storage, 500kb of RAM required
Fast! In BOLT’s words: “Bitstream measured download speeds of 13 popular websites including Amazon.com, CNN.com, ESPN.com and nytimes.com. The second fastest browser averaged download speeds in excess of 18 seconds across all pages. On the same phones, using the same networks, BOLT’s average download speed was under 13 seconds, a full 5.5 seconds faster. “
Like Opera Mini (the main J2ME competition), data is passed through a proxy for rendering and compression before being passed to the handset, speeding things up and saving battery life. It’s generally a good thing, though such practices tend to spook most security-minded folk. Pages are compressed at a rate of 23:1.
RSS reader built in, with automatic feed detection
“Split screen browsing” - 2/3 of the screen shows the full page, serving as a mini-map with a highlighting box, while the other 1/3 shows the magnified area.
URL auto completion
Phone numbers automatically parsed for Click-to-call
User interface is currently English only, but the browser can render pages written in any Western-European language.
AJAX support, and Flash video support (Sort of - it’ll take FLV files and convert them to the more mobile-friendly 3GP format, streaming that to you.) Note that that’s Flash video, not Flash in its entirety.
If you’re interested in being one of the first in the world to tinker with the browser, head on over to the download page and use the following referral code: Crunch. Remember, the BOLT browser is currently J2ME only - it’ll work on a ton of featurephones, but it’s a no go on most (non-RIM) smartphones for the time being. (Note: the signup process isn’t automated, so you may have to wait a few minutes before your download link comes through)
Paintballs can cause severe and 'visually devastating' eye injuries, especially when used in unsupervised settings without proper eye protection, reports a study in the February issue of the American Journal of Ophthalmology (www.AJO.com), published by Elsevier.“Eye injuries secondary to high-velocity paintballs can cause tremendous damage to vital ocular structures often requiring extensive surgical intervention," comments Dr. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Jan 2009 | 8:24 pm
Researchers in Britain reported Thursday that sun-reflecting crops could help produce cooler temperatures and limit global warming. The strategy of having farmers grow these crop varieties, which reflect more sunlight into the atmosphere, could cool much of North America, Europe and parts of North Asia by as much as one degree Celsius during the summer growing season. It would also reduce by 20 percent a predicted 5 degrees Celsius temperature rise for the region by the end of the century, said Andy Ridgwell, who led the study."We found that different varieties of most food crops do differ in how much solar energy is reflected back to space," Ridgwell told Reuters."The more energy you reflect back to space the cooler the air temperatures will be."Scientists and governments the world over are looking for new ways to slow the global warming that experts believe will cause droughts, heat waves, rising sea levels, more powerful storms and the extinction of some species.Prior studies have shown that maize, wheat, barley and sorghum reflect solar energy according to how waxy or hairy a plant's surface is or how its leaves are arranged. And since its likely that these qualities also hold true of all food crops, the current research points to a potential low-cost strategy with high payoffs in terms of fighting rising temperatures, Ridgwell said.The plan differs greatly from biofuels because food production, either in terms of yield or type, would not need to be disrupted, said Ridgwell."The idea is you could continue to grow maize, for example, but you could grow a variety that has a bigger climate benefit," he said. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Jan 2009 | 8:09 pm
Environmentalists say the British government is not doing enough to prevent the extinction of northern rockhopper penguins.
The birds are vanishing from the British territory of St. Helena in the South Atlantic at a rate of 100 birds every day. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Jan 2009 | 7:48 pm
Keepon sucks now. Meet the new king of the cute robot dance-a-thon: MIT Media Labs' TOFU, the ponderously eyebrowed robot fuzz owl with OLED eyes and some seriously rhythmic body jams.
Huge methane gas bursts on Mars appear to be caused by bacteria rather than volcanic activity, U.S. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Jan 2009 | 7:35 pm
The US Food and Drug Administration on Thursday laid out its updated position on the regulation of the industry of genetically engineered animals.The final guidance, “The Regulation of Genetically Engineered Animals Containing Heritable rDNA Constructs," details the agency’s authority and provides recommendations for members of the industry.“The guidance is aimed at industry; however, FDA believes it may also help the public gain a better understanding of this important and developing area,” the FDA’s Web site reads.“Genetic engineering is a cutting edge technology that holds substantial promise for improving the health and well being of people as well as animals. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Jan 2009 | 7:35 pm
InfoWorld - Hewlett-Packard on Thursday added tools for orchestration and recovery to its Adaptive Infrastructure portfolio. And, as with most enterprise-class technology announcements these days, HP said that the new tools promise IT cost-savings and reduced risks. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 15 Jan 2009 | 7:12 pm
The U.S. government said it has awarded a $487 million contract to Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics for cell-based flu vaccines.
Novartis will be the first U.S. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Jan 2009 | 7:08 pm
Harsh weather, remoteness and even elephant seals in Antarctica can become an obstacle for people living on the continent. On Wednesday, a group of seals lying on the beach delayed what should have been a simple repair of a nearby hut. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 15 Jan 2009 | 6:57 pm
Starting January 22, Boost Mobile (Sprint Nextel’s prepaid brand) will offer a $50 all-you-can-talk/text/web-browse plan in an effort to better compete with other smaller, regional niche carriers like MetroPCS and Cricket. Boost is hoping to draw in more budget-conscious consumers with this contract-free unlimited offering.
“Wireless consumers know there’s a lot of wrong out there – activation fees, overage charges and extra costs for services like voicemail and roaming. Unlike some other prepaid services, our new flat-rate plan will not include any of these charges; what you see is what you get,” said Matt Carter, president of Boost Mobile. “The Boost Mobile Monthly Unlimited plan offers consumers straightforward pricing and predictable payments on a true nationwide network with no restrictions of a local calling area.”
The plan, creatively named Monthly Unlimited, includes:
Unlimited daytime, evening and weekend phone calls
Unlimited texts
Unlimited wireless Web
NO home calling areas, so no roaming charges
Unlimited walkie-talkie calls to Baja California, Mexico included
The big “news” here is not the offering of an unlimited plan as Boost has already been providing this type of service, but rather it’s the price. Currently, Boost offers three tiers of UNLTD plans: $50 unlimited talk; $60 unlimited talk and text; and $70 unlimited talk, text and web (pricing for SF, before tax/fees). Starting January 22, it appears that Boost will replace these with Monthly Unlimited, effectively dropping $20 off the monthly total. But, for $49 less than its big brother’s buffet-plan (Sprint’s $99 unlimited talk/text/data), and no contract, Boost appears to at least have a good recipe for success.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
While we here at MobileCrunch have been worked up like little kids at a Ringling Bros circus since we first got wind of the Palm Pre and webOS, there has been one small matter we’re still a bit shaky about: application development. In Palm’s own words, webOS’ Mojo framework is “a new application framework based on the HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript standards”. While they’re promising that Mojo applications will run at native speeds and can use Javascript calls (Javascript Object Notation, to be specific) to access a “wide range of device services, including contacts, calendars, and location”, we’re still a wee bit tainted by Apple’s strictly limited execution of web applications.
According to Pandora CTO Tom Conrad during an interview with PalmInfocenter, our worries might be without reason. While he does say that Mojo might not be the best framework for hardware intensive games, he does say that it should be perfectly suitable for just about everything else. Pandora’s got a whole ton of mobile dev experience (iPhone, countless J2ME phones) up their collective sleeve - so if they’re good with it, we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt for the time being.
PIC: Right, right, obviously still a few months until release… so what’s Pandora’s take on their approach? I mean, they’re going for this whole “synergy” thing where the OS integrates with the Internet quite heavily. Some people have been saying “Oh, you know, it’s just web apps”, that kind of thing, but other people seem to think that this is going to be some kind of new paradigm in mobile design. So what’s your take on it – what’s your thoughts on that?
TC: Well, I think one of the important little nuances here to understand is that you might think from the name “webOS” and from the technologies used – HTML and CSS and Javascript – you might think that this is the whole thing, just kind of a fancy web browser, and that you’re – y’know, any interaction you take is interacting with web content. That’s really not how it works at all. What you really have, is that you have an environment where a developer can write a traditional application – so, an application that gets installed onto the phone with all its code and all of its user interface elements and that is actually local to the phone. There’s also a database and file storage that allows you to take data from the internet connection and store it locally – so when you’re browsing your contacts, for example, you’re interacting with an application that’s local to the phone, with interface elements that are local to the phone and with contacts that are actually sitting on the phone.
What makes it this “webOS” is that the programming models for your developer rather than being C or Java is really just HTML and CSS and Javascript. So you can take a developer who’s been developing web applications and quickly get them productive in the webOS SDK, leveraging their familiarity with these web-based standards. And that decision is one of the reasons we were able to get, very very quickly, a version of Pandora up and running. We were able to take one of our star web developers – someone who has never touched the Palm webOS and not done mobile development before – and have that person be immediately productive because it’s all based on systems that they’re familiar with from web development.
Hah! A Kenyan cellphone company has released a Barack Obama-branded cellphone. It’s decked out in red and blue, with fun phrases like “Yes We Can” all over it.
The company, Mi Phone, has named the phone the Mi-Obama. (Obama’s father was born in Kenya.) It’ll cost around $30 there.
In other Obama-branded news, there’s a guy on 14 Street in New York who sells all sorts Obama stuff. You know, buttons, flags, t-shirts, the works. Hell, there’s probably a little “Yess We Can” sticker that you can place on your iPhone.
Crunch Network: CrunchBasethe free database of technology companies, people, and investors
The HTC Fuze (see our review here) is on sale for a namby-pamby $149.99 with two-year contract. That’s a good deal for a device that had previously cost twice as much.
If the latest Internet rumor is true, Best Buy Mobile is going to be the only place - besides Sprint stores - you will be able to pick up the hot Palm Pre. It seems that the boys in blue will have an exclusive for 60 days. While this is just a rumor, it isn’t unrealalistic and might work in Sprint’s favor.
The two worked together last summer on the Samsung Instinct launch so there is a history here. Plus, when Best Buy has an exclusive, the retailer will advertise as such which will nearly double the amount of ad spots consumers will see. Both Sprint and Palm needs this phone to be hot and a Best Buy exclusive launch would do nothing but help out the fledgling wireless carrier and manufacturer. Lets classify this as a credible rumor.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Although it's just as unreadable as the TokyoFlash variety, I like this white plastic EIN Cyber Heartbeat watch a lot more, which filters the minutes through an EKG display. It is just so very early 80's Japanese cyberpunk. If you want one, it'll cost approximately $290.
For today and only today, you can get the Peek — the tiny little email-only PDA that Beschizza loved for being brazenly perfect at doing exactly what it was trying to do and not a jot more — for a lump sum price of $299.95.
Gamers are always looking for ways to upgrade notebooks in order to serve up the best graphics and sound during game play. AMD has announced ATI Mobility RadeonTM HD 4000 series graphics, their planned next generation series of notebook graphics processors. AMD says that this new processor will bring PC quality gaming technology to notebook users.
A major drawback of multi-effect processors is that they are digital. The sound coming out of them usually lacks the analog warmth. The ME-70 is easy to use, has knobs for every parameter so you can edit your sound quickly. The ME-70 also has a COSM Preamp which will provide the proper signal strength I guess.
John Ham, the cofounder and CEO of live video streaming site 
Representatives from Microsoft (
Enter LightLane, a safety concept from the clever designers at Altitude, Inc. The system projects a virtual bike lane (using lasers!) on the ground around the cyclists, providing drivers with a recognizable boundary they can easily avoid. The idea is to allow riders to take safety into their own hands, rather than leaving it to the city.
Casu marzu is considered toxic when the maggots in the cheese have died. Because of this, only cheese in which the maggots are still alive is eaten. When the cheese has fermented enough, it is cut into thin strips and spread on moistened Sardinian flatbread (pane carasau), to be served with a strong red wine.[6][7] Casu marzu is believed to be an aphrodisiac by local Sardinians.[1] Because the larvae in the cheese can launch themselves for distances up to 15 centimetres (6 in) when disturbed,[5][8] diners hold their hands above the sandwich to prevent the maggots from leaping into their eyes.[3] Those who do not wish to eat live maggots place the cheese in a sealed paper bag. The maggots, starved for oxygen, writhe and jump in the bag, creating a "pitter-patter" sound. When the sounds subside, the maggots are dead and the cheese can be eaten.[9]
Never the one to allow a business model pass them by, Google recently announced a partnership with CTT to provide advanced online advertising courses for professionals in Latin America, beginning in March 2009. 
Shocking news, everyone! Age plays a factor in how we figure out Web site navigation! According to a new study in the journal Psychology & Marketing, younger kids do better with maps and visual “learning clues” while older kids are better at scanning lists of content.
MySpace is building a fully functional webmail product, we’ve learned from sources with knowledge of the product. MySpace mail will compete with services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and AOL Mail, and will on launch be the third largest webmail provider in the world. 
Messaging on social networks has to date trailed far behind cutting edge webmail services. MySpace currently allows only one-to-one messaging to other MySpace users, although 
