Today, TeleNav announces the first GPS navigation application for the G1. TeleNav brings their 3D, turn by turn, traffic, speech recognition and other features that make it the premiere on-phone GPS choice to the G1 starting February 24th. T-Mobile G1 users can sign up for a free 30-day trial.
I’ve been using TeleNav on my Windows Mobile phone for some time and now and I am a big fan. I’ve found their POI (point of interest) database is among the most complete while their directions are on par with stand alone GPS devices. I saw a prototype of this offering at CES this year and my one word summary is “slick.“
Designed specifically for the G1, TeleNav takes advantage of both landscape and portrait modes. The UI has been designed with touch in mind and the result is, well, classy. This application is among the best looking apps I’ve seen for Android.
“TeleNav has become synonymous with mobile phone GPS navigation. It is relied upon by millions of mobile customers,” said Sal Dhanani, co-founder and senior director of marketing. “It was important to us that we build a great application for Android and the G1 so that customers with this phone would have a remarkable experience. The device’s large, beautiful touch screen creates an incredible navigation experience when combined with our software.”
All the features you’d expect from modern stand along GPS devices are on board. Traffic is well though out: traffic is considered when planning your route, then traffic is evaluated every 5 minutes during your trip to ensure you don’t get snarled. Weather, gas prices, WiFi listings are some of the connected conveniences. My favorite addition is the user ratings. Tapping in to the opinions and ratings on the web, your business searches brings up these ratings right on your phone. Very cool integration.
And as a spoiler for all those Android phones that will be announced in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress, TeleNav plans to offer this application to all Android phones later this year. That suggests they put a lot of customization into this roll out for the G1.
The service is free for 30 days, then $9.99 per month thereafter. G1 owners can sign up for email notification when the application is available.
Fujistsu is taking a stab at the e-book market. A rather expensive $900 stab, but an interesting one nonetheless.
The "FLEPia" (We know. That's one ugly name) is bigger than Amazon's Kindle, and also has a color screen. The bezel surrounding that screen is also a lot thinner but Fujustsu has still managed to make a pretty fugly piece of kit.
The reader, which is being tested in the Tokyo restaurant Termina Kinshicho Fujiya, pulls down content via Wi-Fi using a service called "BB Mobile Point" -- a public WLAN network. The restaurant is using the FLEPia as a high-tech replacement for dead tree newspapers, although we don't know whether the devices are being tied to wooden poles to stop them from being stolen.
Other specs include a touch screen (no ugly keyboard like the Kindle), a USB port, an SD card slot, a pair of speakers, and a decent battery life of 50 hours thanks to the e-ink display. The problem is, of course, the price. The oversized screen also makes us wonder about the ideal size for an e-reader. Big is better for newspapers and magazines, but for reading novels you need something a little more portable.
One thing is certain. E-books will soon be mainstream. We can't wait.
In light of the hubbub surrounding rumors of an up-to-20-percent price increase on ASUS netbooks and notebooks beginning March 1, 2009, ASUS CEO Jerry Shen said the following during a conference call this morning.
I asked: “Will you be raising notebook and netbook prices by up to 20% starting on March 1, 2009?” Mr. Shen’s response:
“Actually, the price is based on market competition so until now, for the netbook, the product shift from nine-inch to ten-inch models will help in Q1. So most of the product will be ten-inch based and so the price will be a little bit higher than the nine inch. But that’s based on the [move from nine to ten inches], not on the original price.
And for the notebooks, actually, there’s a lot of inventory from our competitors, so there’s no way to raise the price much.”
So there you have it. Slight price increases on netbooks due to bumping up the screen sizes but that’s about all.
Reuters - Qualcomm , MySpace and 12 more companies joined the Symbian camp on Thursday, giving the mobile operating system larger scale than Google's Android in the handset software battleground. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:26 pm
Later today at the LA Twiistup event, the makers of Twitter-for-business application Yammer will announce a new, hosted version of its software that will enable companies to install it inside their corporate firewall.
This was an inevitable move for the venture-backed startup to make if it wanted to expand its reach to larger companies who have security policies in place that would prevent users from communicating via the internet (something the normal SaaS version requires).
Customers will be able to switch back and forth from the SaaS version to the hosted one, since Yammer promises to transfer network information between both versions upon request. Pricing is $12 per seat per year, although the company says it will change its pricing according to the size and scope of its customers. The Yammer software can be installed on top of existing infrastructure and comes with a licensing agreement and support contract.
Sprint has thrown a Palm Pre page up and it has a long list of the wonderphone's specs. Some are rather banale, some are weasel-speak and some are genuinely neat-o touches that put even the iPhone to shame.
We'll skip the dull stuff -- you know it already (EVDO, QWERTY slider, multi-touch) and quickly get to the juice. The Pre will have proper Bluetooth. Not only can it stream to stereo headphones, it can be used to tether the Pre as a modem, something the iPhone won't even do with a wire. You can also use a USB cable should you prefer.
And the weasel-words?
3 Megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field.
What does this mean? It means an autofocus-free, fixed lens camera. In other words, just as bad as the iPhone, only with 50% more pixels.
(Macworld.com) Macworld.com - mStation|mophie has introduced the Juice Pack Air for the iPhone 3G. It costs $79.95 and itâs coming this Spring. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:05 pm
Remember Sean Tevis, the Kansas geek who financed his run for the state House of Reps by asking 3,000 net-people to send him $8.34 each -- and who won lost (from Rikchik in the comments, "Correction - Tevis didn't win, though he came close. The guy introducing the bill is the incumbent who beat him.") the election after raising a staggering sum of money in a short time? Well, his "colleagues" in the Kansas House of Reps aren't impressed.
Representative Scott Schwab (R-Olathe) has introduced a bill to require politicians to gather and disclose the personal information of small (less than $50) donors, if that politician raises more than $1,000. This is basically the Sean Tevis Campaign Finance Bill, and it will only affect politicians who raise their funds through distributed, grassroots campaigns. As Tevis points out. the main reason for campaign finance disclosure rules is to track money's influence in politics: "You give $1 to a candidate. It’s a pretty safe bet that they won’t feel indebted to you. If you give them $100, they might. You give a candidate $1,000 they will probably drop everything to take your call." Do Kansans have to worry that net-people who paypalled $8.34 to Tevis will lean on him for government pork?
The $1,000 threshold creates an unequal protection of privacy.
If you donate $1 to a candidate, you can expect that your personal information will remain private. If that candidate, however, crosses the arbitrary $1,000 threshold, which is beyond your control, then suddenly your reasonable expectation of privacy that other small donors enjoy is stripped from you.
For example:
• John gives $1 to Candidate A
• Mary gives $1 to Candidate B
• Candidate A *does not* raise more than $1,000 in small donations.
• Candidate B becomes very popular and she raises more than $1,000 in small donations.
The effect of this is that:
John’s personal information is safe.
Mary’s personal information is not safe.
Remember Sean Tevis, the Kansas geek who financed his run for the state House of Reps by asking 3,000 net-people to send him $8.34 each -- and who won lost (from Rikchik in the comments, "Correction -... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:04 pm
PHOENIX, Arizona (Reuters) - Imagine playing around with an NBA videogame and creating a custom jersey for your virtual NBA players to wear on the court. Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:03 pm
LAGOS, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell warned on Thursday that unrest in Nigeria's Niger Delta meant it may be unable to meet some oil export obligations from its Bonny terminal for the rest of this... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:02 pm
Although BoomTown has seen this movie before–a similar mobile deal with a Nokia (NOK) investment in Facebook was being bandied about a year ago–expect more noise than ever when it comes to social networking sites and mobile devices in 2009.
As you can see from the chart below (click on the image to make it larger), Facebook ran MySpace past the number of unique visitors via mobile phone in the early fall of 2008 and kept climbing.
Said the Journal article: “In December, Facebook had seven million U.S. mobile users, compared with MySpace’s 5.7 million, according to Nielsen Co.” (Full disclosure: MySpace is owned by News Corp. (NWS), which also owns Dow Jones, the owner of this site.)
And, indeed, to get this kind of traction, Facebook been very busy ferreting away to get a presence on all the big cell phone makers, so far mostly by building its popular Facebook application for smartphones like the BlackBerry from Research in Motion (RIMM) and iPhone from Apple (AAPL).
Facebook–the Journal piece said–has also been talking to Palm, which will launch its new Pre smartphone in the spring, and Motorola (MOT), about being integrated into their operating systems too.
The race to be present on mobile devices by everyone and their Internet mother has gotten all hopped up with the introduction of so many smartphones of late, since these devices make any Web app experience much better.
And consumer uptake of these kinds of phones, with big screens and multi-touch capabilities, is widely expected to dramatically increase over the next five years,
But here is the dicey money–or non-money, actually–quote from the article:
“As with most of the cellphone-software industry, Facebook has yet to find a way to generate meaningful revenue from its mobile services, which include text-messaging features, a mobile Web site and downloadable software. But the number of users accessing its site from phones has grown.”
Oh dear–that roughly translates in Facebook-speak to friending without benefits, with costs rising without much (or any) revenue coming in to speak of.
Of course, many would argue that both Facebook and MySpace, as well other big players, have to still play hard in the mobile market to gain users–given consumers are on the move more than ever digitally-speaking–even if it takes a while to see financial results.
So while efforts by mobile advertising services, such as AdMob, are trying to make that happen and are definitely promising, it’s still a game of growth and not revenue or, of course, profits.
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Feb. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- TechInsights Europe, the leading dedicated media and marketing services business serving the European electronics market,... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm
Award Continues Nearly 20 Years of Support to PEO STRI FALLS CHURCH, Va., Feb. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CSC (NYSE: CSC) announced today that it was awarded a... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm
We first reported on VC Series A deals in the web-tech sector in October 2008, following the financial meltdown, and we updated our coverage in November, reporting some improvement. Now it is time for... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm
Electronic Light, Sound and Motion Toys That Take Playtime to a Whole New Level of Engagement for Dog and Owner Alike Available Nationwide in April ORLANDO, Feb. 12... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm
Ireland's Premier Electricity Utility to Integrate ClickSoftware's Schedule Optimization Solution With SAP Business Infrastructure Software BURLINGTON, Massachusetts,... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 12 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm
An anonymous reader writes "If you had a GenShock, you may not mind those potholes in the road any longer because this new prototype shock actually harvests energy from bumps in the road to save on fuel. A team of students at MIT have invented a shock absorber that harnesses energy from small bumps in the road, generating electricity while it smooths the ride more effectively than conventional shocks. Senior Shakeel Avadhany and his teammates say they can produce up to a 10 percent improvement in overall vehicle fuel efficiency by using the regenerative shock absorbers. They also already have a lot of interest in their design, specifically the company that builds Humvees for the army are already planning to install them in its next version of the Humvee."
It is one of the most sensitive debates in modern society. Arguments over whether race affects intelligence have gone on for generations, and today, in competing commentaries, scientists in the journal... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 Feb 2009 | 12:52 pm
Speakal's iBoo is being featured today simply because it has been launched so far away from its own time. The Pac Man ghost-themed iPod speaker should really be sent to stores in October to cash in on the hallowe'en market. That it is being released scant days before February 14th and its overload of cynical, "romantic" cash-ins means it is an antidote to all the pink flowery sweetness clogging our inboxes today.
The iBoo is a ghost shaped iPod dock and speraker set. Even the sound should be ghostly thin, with a maximum 15 Watt output including the subwoofer. The design is neat, though -- the eyes are the midrange speakers and the mouth is the hole which will swallow infra-red signals from the remote. The subwoofer is inside and fires downwards.
Of course, the $90 speaker isn't just for iPods. It has a 3.5mm jack input for everything else. Available now in a patriotic (depending on where you live) red, white and blue. Thankfully, not available in pink.
Germany’s top chipmaker Infineon and Seiko Epson today presented a new single-chip GPS receiver that boasts the highest sensitivity and smallest footprint on the market. The so-called XPOSYS chip will mainly be used in cell phones with built-in navigation functions.
The companies said sensitivity now stands at 165dBm, 5 dBm higher than the previous model, allowing for exact positioning even within buildings. With a footprint of 26 sq.-mm, the XPOSYS chip is also the smallest of its kind in the world. In addition, power consumption has been cut in half.
According to the official press release, mass production is scheduled to start by mid-2009.
This is the soft bigotry of low expectations: Viacom saw its earnings drop by 70% in the last quarter, pushed down by a write-off and weak advertising and DVD sales. But compared to its big media peers, that’s really not so bad.
The numbers: Excluding a $454 million write-off, Viacom (VIA) posted earnings of $0.76 on flat revenues of $4.24 billion. Wall Street had been looking for earnings of $0.77, but the company did meet the revenue consensus.
The write-off? Just a few million more than the $450 million Viacom announced last fall, at the same time it fired 850 people. But since the company doesn’t own any local television stations, and hasn’t made any huge bets on the newspaper business in the last year or so, it didn’t have to announce anything really big. (That sound you hear is the echo of News Corp. (NWSA) and Cablevision (CVC) investors slapping their heads, over and over.)
Meanwhile, Viacom’s cable ad business was down, but not off a cliff — just a mere 3%. Though it will be interesting to see how that broke down by geography — more on that, presumably, during the company’s conference call this morning.
And just like its peers, the company’s DVD business was off, too — down 6%. But the company’s overall movie business (which is much smaller than its cable business) was down just 2% — in part because a bunch of you paid to see Madagascar 2, apparently.
For more details — including just how much it cost Viacom to can its employees last quarter — consult this handy presentation the company has prepared:
AP - Queen Elizabeth II is offering Internet-savvy subjects the option of applying for a job at her palace through her newly revamped Web site, royal officials said Thursday. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Feb 2009 | 12:41 pm
InfoWorld - Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems and author of Berkeley Unix, predicted the decline of the print newspaper, lamented the state of software development, and pondered the futures for green energy and the environment during an appearance Wednesday night in Silicon Valley. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Feb 2009 | 12:30 pm
When the first candy-colored iMac came out, the "i" supposedly meant "internet", as in "easy to connect to the". Within a time span so short that it made the Big Bang look as slow as LA traffic, every other electronic device had added the letter i to the beginning of its name.
Now, we have "Air" which means "impossibly thin and light". The Mophie Juice Pack Air is an impossibly thin and light battery pack for the iPhone 3G, a slimline plastic case which manages to wrap a 1200mAh battery around the iPhone's svelte curves.
The pack claims to power the the phone for an additional 270 hours of standby time, and extra 4.5 hours of 3G chatting and a whopping nine hours of regular old fashioned 2G talktime.
The advantage of these packs is that they can stay on the phone at all times, even as you charge and sync. The Juice Pack Air also has a standby mode of its own, letting you run the iPhone normally and then switching in the extra power at the last minute. According to Mophie, this actually uses less juice than leaving the iPhone on a constant charge.
If I could be bothered, I'd buy one of these for Boing Boing Gadget's blond bombshell boss, Joel Johnson. At the CES show in Vegas this year he was constantly talking into his iPhone and regularly swapping out backup battery dongles. This would be neater -- if he needed it. I discovered later that Joel has some insecurity issues and was simply pretending to talk into his phone to appear more popular. Poor boy. He just wants to be loved. Available Spring for $80.
There are probably many good reasons that Google has chosen an old Finish paper mill as the site of a new data center. But it’s reasonable to assume that at least someone in Mountain View was amused by the irony, no? Reuters:
Google said on Thursday it aimed to build a data centre at an old paper mill in southeastern Finland that it bought from Stora Enso for 40 million euros ($51.7 million).
“We are currently considering to build a data centre at this site,” said Google spokesman Kay Oberbeck…
In early 2008 Stora Enso closed down the loss-making Summa mill, which consumed 1,000 gigawatt hours of electricity per year, after nearly 53 years in operation.
You don’t want to read too much into this purchase — buying property isn’t the same as actually building a data center — but it’s certainly a more hopeful sign than a company that’s selling off assets.
, the talented designer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sez, "My partner, Mati McDonough and I have a show of new work opening Friday at the a.Muse Gallery in San Francisco. We called the show... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 Feb 2009 | 11:59 am
, the talented designer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sez, "My partner, Mati McDonough and I have a show of new work opening Friday at the a.Muse Gallery in San Francisco. We called the show 'Little Vagabonds' after a lyric in a Jonathan Richman song, since he has been an influence and inspiration to us both over the years.
Little Vagabonds:
New Work by Hugh D'Andrade & Mati McDonough,
A.Muse Gallery, 614 Alabama St, SF 94110
Opening Friday, February 13,
Showing February 13 - April 1, 2009
Radical Hindus in India are attempting to cleanse the nation of foreign soft-drinks by promoting an "ayurvedic" beverage made from cow urine:
The bovine brew is in the final stages of development by the Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India's biggest and oldest Hindu nationalist group, according to the man who makes it.
Om Prakash, the head of the department, said the drink – called "gau jal", or "cow water" – in Sanskrit was undergoing laboratory tests and would be launched "very soon, maybe by the end of this year".
"Don't worry, it won't smell like urine and will be tasty too," he told The Times from his headquarters in Hardwar, one of four holy cities on the River Ganges. "Its USP will be that it's going to be very healthy. It won't be like carbonated drinks and would be devoid of any toxins."
The drink is the latest attempt by the RSS – which was founded in 1925 and now claims eight million members – to cleanse India of foreign influence and promote its ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu-ness.
Radical Hindus in India are attempting to cleanse the nation of foreign soft-drinks by promoting an "ayurvedic" beverage made from cow urine: The bovine brew is in the final stages of development by... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 Feb 2009 | 11:55 am
InfoWorld - IBM has had a busy week, cloud computing-wise, but it's not the only company making such waves. Savvis is embarking on Thursday on an ambitious plan to offer enterprise customers a complete virtualized datacenter. Amazon.com, meanwhile, joined up with Big Blue and DataSynapse in separate partnerships. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Feb 2009 | 11:55 am
Harrison sez, "This is a black and white 8mm film of my sister's wedding taken by her friend Sarah Halpern. Normally wedding videos tend to only be interesting to the parties involved or the producers of America's Funniest Home Videos, assuming something amusing happens. However, I believe that Sarah has put together something haunting and visceral. I swear that I see our father's ghost when I watch this."
(TrendHunter.com) One of the hottest and coolest things on the market today are mobile devices, mobile phones or smart phones. We dont call them cell phones like we did in the past. How would you like... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 Feb 2009 | 11:40 am
Techradar reports that researchers at the University of Portsmouth in England are working on a project to create a game emulator that will "recognise and play all types of videogames and computer files from the 1970s through to the present day." One of the major goals of the project is to preserve software from early in the computer age. David Anderson of the Humanities Computing Group said, "Early hardware, like games consoles and computers, are already found in museums. But if you can't show visitors what they did, by playing the software on them, it would be much the same as putting musical instruments on display but throwing away all the music. ... Games particularly tend not to be archived because they are seen as disposable, pulp cultural artefacts, but they represent a really important part of our recent cultural history. Games are one of the biggest media formats on the planet and we must preserve them for future generations."
Consider it a sign of the times when internet company Google acquires the buildings and premises of a mill site from a paper, packaging and forest products company that caters to the print industry.
Today, Finland-based paper group Stora Enso has announced that Google is buying the buildings and most of the Summa Mill site, where production of paper was ceased last month in January 2008, for approximately €40 million ($51.7 million).
From the press release:
Stora Enso has signed an agreement to sell the buildings and most of the Summa Mill site in Finland to Google Group of Companies for approximately EUR 40 million.The sale is expected to close by the end of the first quarter 2009. The transaction will improve operating profit by approximately EUR 38 million, of which approximately EUR 15 million is a reversal of earlier impairment, and will be recorded as a non-recurring item in the first quarter 2009 results.
Google is expected to announce its plans or future investment “in due course”, and has agreed that part of the mill site will be further transferred to the City of Hamina for other industrial uses.
Update: obviously the space is most likely going to serve as a data center, which has now also been confirmed by Reuters.
An earlier (brutally honest) press release from Stora Enso reveals that the mill site was closed down because of “persistent losses in recent years and poor long-term profitability prospects” It continues: “Despite tremendous efforts by its employees, the mill cannot compete in today’s and tomorrow’s markets using expensive virgin wood fibre, much of which is imported”.
You can read the whole release about further cost reductions and lay-offs here.
(Thanks to Jens Agerberg for the tip)
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
CNETNate writes "The largest chain of cinemas in Britain, Odeon, has become the first chain to fully roll out 3D projection technology in its theaters. These new projectors will deliver 3D images at a resolution of 2K (2,048x1,080 pixels). Many major cities in the UK will now be able to project the new 3D movies coming out of Hollywood, without it being referred to as a novelty offered in one or two locations."
The company said it will establish a rigid restructuring program as an answer to the $1.44 billion in loss for the past fiscal year. The program includes cutting about 6,000 regular and 4,000 temporary jobs worldwide by the end of March 2010. Pioneer will pull out of the display operations and rather focus on car electronics in the future.
30% of Pioneer’s 30 manufacturing units across the world will be closed. TV output in the US ends as early as this April, one plant in the UK will even be closed within this month. Pioneer also said their executives will have to live with lower salaries (minus 20-50%) from February 2009 through March 2011.
Here are two very funny online videos, making the viral rounds of late.
The first is from a Daily Show earlier this week, in which Samantha Bee perfectly mocks products from iRobot (IRBT)–best known for the automatic vacuum called the Roomba–as killerbots.
In the second, local Chicago anchors from WGN News, Robert Jordan and Jackie Bange, do a very impressive Las Vegas-style routine during the commercial break. It is hard to look away.
PARIS, February 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- StreamWIDE (FR0010528059 -
ALSTW), a specialist in next-generation value-added telephony solutions for
telecoms operators, is collaborating with SFR in the launch of its "My Visual
Voicemail" service.
By relying on StreamWIDE's software solutions, SFR enables its
subscribers, at a single glance, to check their voicemail messages directly
on the screen of their mobile phone and to choose the messages they want to
listen to first, thanks to the contact name display; all without having to go
through the traditional voicemail service.
This facility demonstrates the capacity of StreamWIDE's platforms to
Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.
In 1993, I was honored to be asked by my friend, artist and musician John Bergin, to write the precis for his graphic novel From Inside. It was an exciting time. Kevin Eastman, fat with cash from the meteoric success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, created the Tundra imprint and published such ground-breaking work as Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz's Big Numbers, Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, Stephen R. Bissette's Taboo, and Dave McKean's Cages. Bergin and his friend James O'Barr brought over The Crow, Kerosene, and the Bone Saw collection. And then there was From Inside. In the introduction, I began:
John Bergin's work exists in a world of perpetual darkness and droning ambiance. His artistry lies not so much in his ability to maintain this consistent dark vision (which he does with a vengeance), but in his ability to build a rich and complex world inside such a singular dimension. He has the ability to dance right on the edge of suffocating nihilism, while providing just enough oxygen to sustain life.The beauty of his art uplifts you, while its devastating message crushes you to dust.
From Inside has always been a film, even when it was a comic book. When I first got the galleys and began thumbing through it, I saw storyboards, I saw frames and camera angles, I saw sweeps and transitions. The experience on the page was very cinematic. So it makes sense that John would want to go the other way and make a film that feels like reading a comic book in motion. And no, we're not talking about a comic book being adapted to the big screen as a full-blown animation. John worked with the original art from the book and did the ol' Ken Burns Effect on the panels, adding some animation elements, and 3D models and set pieces. The result feels like a mash-up between a static comic book, a pop-up book, and full-blown 3D animation. Its "bookness" is more intact than other comics made into films.
The main characters of From Inside are Cee, a young pregnant woman, and a seemingly endless steam train. John has always had a "thing" for trains and that adoration comes through in the immense detail of the 3D models and animation, the texture maps, the sounds and smoke effects. It's a giant beast of a machine (literally in some scenes). It's mind-boggling to consider that John did nearly all of this work himself (the credits for the over-one-hour film are ridiculously short) on a Apple G5 Dual 2.7 running Maya, Photoshop, and AfterEffects. Some shots took weeks to render. One took over a month. John ended up spending 2-1/2 years of his life on this effort.
The story of From Inside opens with the pregnant Cee on the train as it traverses a post-apocalyptic wasteland. As we get into the sonorous rhythms of the train, we hear the gentle voice of Cee:
I have tried and tried to remember how this wasteland came to be. I don't remember where I got on this train and I don't know where it's going. What difference does it make? When the end of the world has come, it's too late to wonder why.
From there, the train slows and stops at one whistle stop of horror and devastation after another. Cee's experiences on and around the train bleed into the dreams and nightmares she's having in the little womb-like compartment she's been given by the engineers. Through her narration, we learn of life on this helltrain and are made privy to her most intimate fears, her grieving over the loss of her husband, and her total apprehension over bringing a child into this world.
And it's that last bit that From Inside is really about. It's a nightmare meditation on fears of being pregnant, questioning the sanity of bringing a child into an insane world, and the generalized, frequently irrational, fears young pregnant couples have over the devastating impact a newborn will bring down upon their lives. However it will work out in the end, it will surely be cataclysmic to your pre-child life. And the certainty of that can be terrifying.
If you're looking for happy endings here, look out. (John jokingly calls it "the most depressing film ever made.") Like the novel, John rations use of the oxygen throughout. When the film ended, it was all I could do to keep my head out of my oven. But in the end, I was more satisfied than bummed -- I'd had the unique opportunity to climb inside of a book, a world, that has intrigued me since the day I was introduced to it.
You can watch a preview of From Inside on the movie's website and read the blog John has kept throughout the project. The film is currently traveling the animation and film festival circuit, and not surprisingly, scooping up a number of awards. See the News section of his site for the screenings schedule.
Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.
I love sites like Bookcrossing (where books are left out in public and their journeys, from reader to reader, are tracked vis the web) and Where is George? (when stamped dollar bills are tracked in a similar way), so I was tickled to have someone send me info about NamelessleTTer, a collaborative art bookmarking project, where bookmarks are made and stashed inside of library books, books in stores, etc.
The goal is to provoke curiosity (to encourage people to visit libraries and bookstores in hopes of discovering one of these bookmarks), to bring a new and exciting aspect to book reading in a world that is becoming increasingly digital, and to interact with other people.
The bookmarks usually offer some commentary or comic relief on the title in which they're placed. Here are a few bookmarks from the site and the books in which they're found:
Left in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.
Well that, as they say, is that. It's time for me to clear out my desk, return the keys to the executive washroom, and bounce.
It's been a profound pleasure hanging out here for the last two and half weeks. It was so much fun to write about things other than technology for a change. But that seems to be my calling -- to write about tech that sucks less and people doin' it for themselves -- so back into the datamines I march. Speaking of which, I just finished guest editing the Lost Knowledge (aka Steampunk) theme for MAKE Volume 17. Content includes an amazing Whimshurst Influence Machine project by Jake von Slatt, how to build a tea cup Sterling engine, and how to create your own Wunderkammer (Cabinet of Wonders). I also have a piece on William Blake and his invented method of relief-etching. The issue hits newsstands March 10th.
A million thanks to Mark, David, Xeni, Cory, and Joel for this outstanding opportunity. I owe you all indecent favors.
Here are all of my posting, shamelessly reiterated, for those who may have missed some (and so I have one place to link to):
FROM GAMERTELL - The sale will run from February 7 to 12, 2009, and includes free ground shipping and has been grandfathered to inlcude purchases dating back to July 14, 2008… MORE »
COPENHAGEN - FTTH Council Europe Conference, February 12
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today
highlighted its leading role in bringing to the market innovative
technologies that have a proven, positive impact on green house gas emissions.
Two existing technologies - Alcatel-Lucent's distributed digital
subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) concept, as well as a series of
passively cooled fiber-to-the-building (FTTB) DSLAMs - are now complemented
by a whole new range of eco-sustainable indoor optical network terminals
(ONTs), which are located at the customer's premise and convert optical
signals back into electrical voice, video or data.
The new indoor ONTs consume up to 30 percent less power and are compact -
requiring minimal space at the customer's premise - easy to install, ready to
include residential gateway functionalities.
Alcatel-Lucent's unique distributed DSLAM concept - supported by the
Intelligent Services Access Manager (ISAM) family of products - enables
service providers to manage up to 24 times fewer nodes in FTTB or
fiber-to-the-node architectures, resulting in more cost-effective operations.
Additionally, through the use of simplified backplanes, power consumption is
reduced by up to 20%.
At home, a number of important savings can be made as well. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:18 am
If you’re on the Internet for very long, chances are you extensively use or have at least heard a lot about Mozilla’s Firefox browser. It runs on almost every machine possible and Mozilla is expanding its efforts to yet more machines. In its first public pre-alpha release, Fennec, the Windows Mobile version of Firefox is available, for some people at least.
The new release is targeted towards the HTC Touch Pro, mainly to focus their efforts on making the browser more stable as a whole rather than having to work around the hardware of all the WinMo phones that are out there. Even now, it doesn’t have the support it will have later in development. There’s no extension support, touch screen keyboard is disabled and all updates have to be manually installed. But, for a pre-alpha release it seems reasonable.
After waiting so long for some sort of public release for Fennec aside from the developer builds, it’s refreshing to finally this pre-alpha release. Though it is for a WinMo device, there are plans to bring the browser to Linux-based mobile OSes and Symbian. As long as there’s enough push behind it when it does see an official public launch, I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes off immediately.
Given the option, I’m sure most of us would agree to use Firefox over Internet Explorer, and that will most likely be the same on mobile devices as smartphones increase in popularity. If you have an HTC Touch Pro, while it might be a bit buggy, I think it’d be interesting just to see how Fennec is shaping up and possibly contribute a bit to the effort by reporting any bugs.
Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.
Like McSweeny's, Hotel St. George is a painfully hip lit website and print publisher that satisfyingly delivers on its pretensions. Their website is stunning, one of the more impressively-designed sites I've seen. And their print publishing efforts are truly unique, infused with wonder and playful, brainy ideas for presenting and telling stories.
I'm currently reading writer and filmmaker Alex Rose's The Musical Illusionist and Other Tales ($14.95). It's one of the most imaginative and unconventional collections I've read in years. It's really fired up my imagination. Here's the back cover copy which, while typically breathless, accurately describes the whimsy and weirdness contained within.
Disappearing manuscripts. Profane numbers. Extinct bacteria. Cities without shadows. A language spoken entirely in rhythms. A man deaf solely to the waltzes of Chopin. These are among the many anomalies to be found in the Library of Tangents, a vast underground archive whose beguiling exhibitions are detailed by Alex Rose in his exquisite debut collection, The Musical Illusionist.
A masterful fusion of science-historic precision and magical-realistic caprice, this Pandora's Box of curious tales stands in the tradition of Borges, Calvino and Pavic, blending the playfulness and mythic wonder of folk tales with the complexity and richness of modern thought.
Together, these interlaced parables chart an inebriating realm of possibility, the secret passageways that lie between words and meanings, neurons and thoughts, space and time, fact and fiction, sound and music—and in doing so, activate that rare, dreaming rapture one felt as a child, entranced.
The book is as beautiful as it is eccentric, with real scientific illustrations, religious art, maps, and cryptographic manuscripts helping to sell the bait and switch of the "truth" where each story begins with the farcical world where each story ends up.
The latest offering from Hotel St. George is Correspondences ($50, incl. shipping), by Ben Greenman, a limited-edition series of letterpressed stories on thick accordion-fold paper tucked inside of pockets, inside of a slip case. Three two-sided accordions hold six stories. A seventh story is contained on the packaging and there's also an included post card that you can return with your idea for finishing the seventh story. Worthy submissions are being posted on the HSG website. This is a beautiful piece of book art that will especially appeal to collectors of new letterpress work.
Innovation plays key role in 50/50 joint venture between STMicroelectronics and Ericsson
GENEVA, Feb. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:00 am
- With Valentine's Day looming and people increasingly using online match-making or social networking sites to find their perfect partner, VASCO Data Security International, Inc. (Nasdaq: VDSI) (www.vasco.com), a leading software security company specializing in authentication products, is today Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:00 am
Slatterz writes "The first phase of Australia's controversial Internet filters were put in place today, with the Australian government announcing that six ISPs will take part in a six-week pilot. The plan reportedly includes a filter blocking a list of Government-blacklisted sites, and an optional adult content filter, and the government has said it hasn't ruled out the possibility of filtering BitTorrent traffic. The filters have been widely criticized by privacy groups and Internet users, and people have previously even taken to the streets to protest. While Christian groups support the plan, others say filters could slow down Internet speeds, that they don't work, and that the plan amounts to censorship of the Internet. At this stage the filters are only a pilot, and Australia's largest ISP, Telstra, is not taking part. But if the $125.8 million being spent by the Australian Government on cyber-safety is any indication, it's a sign of things to come."
FROM APPLETELL - The Speck SeeThru Case for iPod touch 2G comes in an array of bright colors and has rubberized grips to prevent you from dropping it, but has no protection for the screen itself. MORE »
PARIS, February 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TeleCable, a Spanish Mobile
Virtual Network Operator, has chosen Oberthur Technologies, a world leader in
the field of secure technologies, to administrate its mobile devices - SIM
cards and phones - with its OTA(1) and device management platforms.
SIM cards provided by Oberthur Technologies can be managed and updated
using an Application Loader & Manager platform in order to meet the most
recent requirements of the market and to offer the best services to
TeleCable's customers.
In parallel, the Device Management platform enables mobile handsets to be
configured automatically by inserting the TeleCable USIM in the handset,
providing access to a large range of services such as Wap, MMS, SMS, GPRS and
Email possible for end users. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 Feb 2009 | 6:00 am
PARIS, February 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Oberthur Technologies, one
of the world's leading providers of Smart Card based solutions announced
today the integration of the Valimo Mobile Authentication Client (VMAC) into
its SIM applications portfolio to provide a digital signature solution using
Wireless Public Key Infrastructure (WPKI).
This new secure transaction capability responds to the biggest challenge
with online transactions since there is no 100 percent safe mechanism to
prevent end users from being misled into giving away critical information.
The VMAC application, associated to the WPKI architecture provided by Valimo
ensures that personal data is safely transmitted and stored during the
transaction. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 Feb 2009 | 6:00 am
FROM APPLETELL - There are ways of adding Emoji icon support to your iPhone through jailbreaking or buying a certain program, but now there’s a free alternative. MORE »
This is almost too good to be true. The Associated Press has uncovered the details of the Facebook/ConnectU settlement using, of all things, copy and paste. After taking drastic preventative measures to keep the settlement confidential, including barring reporters from the courtroom and redacting portions of the documents, Facebook has been foiled by the most laughable lull in security I’ve heard of:
Large portions of that hearing are redacted in a transcript of the June hearing, but The Associated Press was able to read the blacked-out portions by copying from an electronic version of the document and pasting the results into another document.
Read that again. Just, wow.
Now for the juicy details:
The document reveals that Facebook’s internal valuation of the company is $3.7 billion, or $8.88 per share - far less than the $15 billion implied valuation established by the Microsoft investment in 2007 (though this comes as no surprise, as a value around $4 billion has been rumored for months).
Under their settlement, Facebook agreed to pay ConnectU $20 million in cash and 1,253,326 shares of common stock. The stock was worth $45 million, based on the Microsoft valuation, but only $11 million under Facebook’s own appraisal.
Something worth noting from these figures: Facebook paid out $20 million in cash, but only around $11 million in stock based on its own valuation (when the news of the supposed $65 million settlement was revealed yesterday by a lawfirm’s advertisement, many speculated that it was primarily in stock). The high cash value (at least compared to the stock) may indicate that the ConnectU founders really did have some compelling evidence in their case. Then again, $20 million in cash is still fairly insignificant to Facebook - it may have well been worth paying even if there was no damning evidence given that it was supposed to make the case go away forever. So much for that.
Update: If you’d like to see the full text for yourself, you can find the PDF of the relevant document here. It appears that the issue is tied to the PDF, as the ‘copy/paste’ trick works with this document.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
If you’re looking for a greener solution for washing your clothes, or you want to be able to wash them in your home but don’t have a ton of space, there might be a solution out there after all. Enter the Wonder Wash a portable, inexpensive, and fairly green alternative to the coin-fed beasts at the corner laundromat.
It’s kind of neat, actually. A small, tank shaped plastic device that apparently uses hot or cold water, and is capable of washing small loads of laundry. It’s hand powered, so requires no electricity, and has a minimum of moving parts. Just the thing for someone living in a loft maybe — or a Luddite.
A word of caution however: my wife has been asking me for a new washing machine, and was not amused when I suggested this as an alternative. Hopefully I’ll be off the couch before Valentine’s Day.
It’s finally happening. You’ll finally be able to buy that crappy movie game at exactly the same time as you buy the movie. Sony announced recently that they’re pushing for (and developers are pushing for as well) movies and games bundled on the same disc. On the surface, this sounds like a good idea, but I’m not so sure.
Assuming that they continue to offer a standard Blu-ray disc, then fine. But if the only way the film is available is in a bundle, then I don’t want it. Keep in mind that while Blu-ray pricing is finally going down, they will definitely be charging a premium for a bundle. Sony’s director of marketing was curiously quiet on the pricing subject. I assume this can only mean bad news for the consumer.
AP - Verizon Wireless is set to announce Thursday that subscribers on some qualifying plans will be able to pick five or 10 phone numbers that they can call for free, without drawing down their plan's minutes. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Feb 2009 | 5:22 am
It seems that since Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is playing it coy about whether she wants to do a massive search deal with Microsoft or not, the software giant is just going to keep hiring her search tech team out from under her.
Today, Microsoft (MSFT) said it had hired Larry Heck, VP of Search & Advertising Sciences at Yahoo Labs, who will work in its online unit.
It’s like the rapture, except geekier.
Said a Microsoft spokeswoman: “We are happy to confirm that Larry Heck has accepted a job at Microsoft. He will be working for Satya Nadella, SVP, Research and Development, Online Services Division, and he will start in a few weeks time. We look forward to welcoming him to the team.”
Lu is a big draw for search engineers, along with the boatloads of money Microsoft has been spending in the arena to catch leader Google. Microsoft is No. 3 behind both Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO).
Today on Offworld, Jim Rossignol came through with his regular Ragdoll Metaphysics column and, just as I'd hoped, gave the clearest explanation of the recent Goonswarm/Band of Brothers corporate dissolution in Eve Online as any I've read to date. It's a concise wrap-up for "the rest of us": how it happened, what it means in terms of dollars and man hours lost, and how it will shape the future of the game's universe.
Most of Google's web-based tools are all about empowering users, but the latest release from Gmail Labs is actually a step backward in that regard: Turn it on, and you give up your ability to easily lie about where you are.
Unless you're hosting a film fest, you won't run out of space. The price is high, but you get what you pay for (if you're patient enough to install it).
Unless you're hosting a film fest, you won't run out of space. The price is high, but you get what you pay for (if you're patient enough to install it).
1809: Charles Darwin is born. His work on how life forms evolve by natural selection will provide the organizing paradigm for biology and, increasingly, all of modern science.
But you know that. And Wired.com has been there, covered that. So, while others work up a media storm to celebrate the 200th birthday of one of the giants of scientific endeavor, we'll take you on a quiet little tour of our coverage that you may have missed or may want to revisit.
Here's our own selection of the fittest Darwin articles from the last few years on Wired.com. Click and evolve.
Dec. 27, 1831: Beagle Sets Sail With a Very Special Passenger
HMS Beagle, a 10-gun, Cherokee-class brig sloop of the Royal Navy's survey service, sets sail from Plymouth, England on its second voyage as a survey vessel.
On board, at the invitation of the Beagle's captain, Robert FitzRoy, is a young biologist called Charles Darwin. Darwin's account of The Voyage of the Beagle, published in 1839, establishes him as one of the foremost naturalists of his time.
[More]
Pink Iguana That Darwin Missed Holds Evolutionary Surprise
A pink iguana overlooked by Charles Darwin turns up on the Galapagos Islands. The iguana's color isn't the only thing that distinguishes it from other iguana species: New research shows that it separated from the others genetically 5 million years ago, much earlier than most Galapagos species.
[More]
July 1, 1858: Darwin and Wallace Shift the Paradigm
The Linnaean Society of London listens to the reading of a composite paper on how natural selection accounts for the evolution and variety of species. The authors are Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Modern biology is born.
Scientists of the time knew that evolution occurred. The fossil record showed evidence of life forms that no longer existed. The question was, how did it occur?
[More]
The Crusade Against Evolution
On a spring day [in 2002], in a downtown Columbus auditorium, the Ohio State Board of Education took up the question of how to teach the theory of evolution in public schools. A panel of four experts — two who believe in evolution, two who question it — debated whether an anti-evolution theory known as intelligent design should be allowed into the classroom.
This is an issue, of course, that was supposed to have been settled long ago. But 140 years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, 75 years after John Scopes taught natural selection to a biology class in Tennessee, and 15 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a Louisiana law mandating equal time for creationism, the question of how to teach the theory of evolution was being reopened here in Ohio.
[More]
On Darwin's Birthday, Dover Still Isn't Over
On Charles Darwin's 199th birthday, the debate about teaching evolution in science classes was raging in Florida.
[More]
Do You Teach Your Kids About Darwin?
Parents of home-schooled children are often criticized for not giving their children enough exposure to evolutionary theory. But public school students are just as likely never to have heard of the subject. A Swarthmore College professor says evolution should be introduced to kids as early as kindergarten.
[More]
Creationism Takes a Hit: Complexity Not Bad for Evolution
Creationists say that as creatures get more complicated, evolution gets harder. Now, new research by evolutionary biologists appears to refute that assertion.
[More]
12 Elegant Examples of Evolution
Here are a dozen examples of evolution's handiwork, which the journal Nature says might be useful for those late-night conversations with religious zealots. But we think they're just kind of beautiful.
[More]
Getting Evolution Up to Speed
Radical evolutionists' vision of a constantly and quickly changing human genome leaves Darwin's theory of slow change in the dust.
[More]
Genetic 'Junk' Could Answer Riddle of Vertebrate Evolution
The sudden appearance of vertebrates 600 million years ago has been a bit of a mystery to evolutionary biologists. New research suggests the development of backbones may be tied to micro-RNA, which is produced by so-called "junk" DNA.
[More]
Biologists Take Evolution Beyond Darwin — Way Beyond
For some biologists, Darwinian evolution doesn't go nearly far enough: They want to apply evolutionary principles to populations, ecosystems and even the entire universe.
[More]
A Theory of Evolution for Evolution
A new model of evolution's origins traces the possible outlines of a critical and mysterious stage in Earth's infancy, when a few odd chemicals developed into the molecular ancestors of life as we know it.
"This was the basis of all life on Earth," said Harvard University evolutionary dynamicist Martin Nowak, "and it's a good starting point to ask, how does life begin? How does evolution begin?"
[More]
Monkey Do: Darwin, the Musical
2006: An anthropologist-songwriter takes his one-man musical about Darwin to the Big Apple. It's Charles Darwin: Live & in Concert.
[More]
Complete Darwin Papers Debut on Internet
Cambridge University has put the complete works of Charles Darwin online. The originator of one scientific revolution is paid tribute by the fruits of another.
[More]
Gallery: Celebrate Darwin's 200th Birthday With a Natural Selection of Books
In 2009 we celebrate both Charles Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species, which means a bonanza for readers, with new works by scientists, novelists and even the odd party-crashing creationist, all lined up for publication. [More]
Think of it as CSI: Scandinavia. At Linköpings University Hospital in Sweden, radiologist Anders Persson dissects cadavers without lifting a scalpel. Using magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography, he captures thousands of images of a body, from head to toe. A computer then assembles the pieces—layer upon layer of tissue and bone—into a stunning 3-D postmortem portrait in which structures are differentiated by hue and opacity: Bones appear white and opaque; organs, a translucent red. Pathologists can then easily strip away the layers—first skin, then a web of blood vessels, then a blanket of muscle—all the way down to the skeleton. Hunting for minuscule bone fractures once required intensive dissection; now it's just a matter of keystrokes.
Virtual autopsies reveal evidence that ordinary examinations often miss, like gas trapped inside wounds, which can show the path of a bullet or knife blade. Swedish police have used the images in more than 300 murder cases. Bonus: They're easier for jurors to understand (and stomach).
But Persson's technique isn't just for peeking inside dead people; it's great for premortem examinations, too. Doctors can identify the exact location of a lung tumor or study blood flow in 3-D to estimate the volume of a leak in a faulty heart valve. It can also provide an invaluable sneak preview before surgery, Persson says: "You can simulate an operation without touching the patient.
You love using NAVTEQ’s map updates on your GPS, even if it does cost a little bit of money, but wouldn’t it be great if you could get the information from the TV before you head out to work? NAVTEQ announced, today, that a few new TV stations will be using their NeXgen 2D and 3D traffic updates.
The stations are as follows:
— KTVK TV 3 broadcasting in the Phoenix, AZ market. KTVK is owned by
Belo Corporation.
— KOMO TV 4 broadcasting in the Seattle, WA market. KOMO is owned by
Fisher Communications, Inc.
— WTVD TV 11 broadcasting in the Raleigh-Durham, NC market. WTVD is
owned by the ABC Television Network.
With the traffic updates being in 2D and 3D, it is designed to work with each stations’ specific needs and desires. For example, these TV stations can opt in displaying 2D traffic flow graphics, or 3D city overviews. NAVTEQ’s traffic updates have been used by 70 stations to date. Here are some of the core features in the updates: 2D traffic flow maps, 3D city overviews, multiple traffic data options and graphics, easy to comprehend data for immediate broadcasting, and realistic imaging and real landmarks for viewing enhancement.
Holly Gauntt, a news director for KOMO TV, had this to say about their latest deal with NAVTEQ:
“With the launch of our NeXgen traffic graphics system, we are significantly upgrading our traffic reporting capabilities and enhancing our viewers’ experience. Our number one priority is providing the best, most up-to-the-second traffic information to help viewers manage their daily commutes, but it’s also important that we present the information with compelling, state-of-the-art graphics to engage our viewers.“
This is definitely a good idea by NAVTEQ, not only to make a little money, but also to gain recognition as a premier GPS map company.
willclem writes "According to Reuters, it seems that Cuba has launched its own variation of Linux in order to fulfill its government's desire to replace Microsoft operating systems. "Getting greater control over the informatic process is an important issue," said Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes, who heads a commission pushing Cuba's migration to free software."
Facebook strategists clearly see the potential for growth in the mobile sector, seeing as 13% of their users log in from their phones. To some that number would have the appearance of success, but Facebook sees nowhere to go but up.
They've begun talks with pretty much everyone in the business, and are hoping to bring more Facebook to more handsets, including Palm's much-anticipated Pre and hopefully a whole bunch of Nokias.
Facebook strategists clearly see the potential for growth in the mobile sector, seeing as 13% of their users log in from their phones. To some that number would have the appearance of success, but Facebook sees nowhere to go but up.
They've begun talks with pretty much everyone in the business, and are hoping to bring more Facebook to more handsets, including Palm's much-anticipated Pre and hopefully a whole bunch of Nokias.
Facebook strategists clearly see the potential for growth in the mobile sector, seeing as 13% of their users log in from their phones. To some that number would have the appearance of success, but Facebook sees nowhere to go but up. They’ve begun talks with pretty much everyone in the business, and are hoping to bring more Facebook to more handsets, including Palm’s much-anticipated Pre and hopefully a whole bunch of Nokias.
At over 220 million users, Facebook’s growth may be starting to slow down in the traditional browser-based arena, but a couple real mobile clients included on major phones and backed by the likes of Nokia would be a huge shot in the arm.
So far the news is pretty vague, but we should know more in a few days from our man on the scene at the Mobile World Congress in beautiful Barcelona. Chances are there will be a few announcements from service providers like Facebook to go along with all the new handsets and services from folks like Samsung, Microsoft, and the rest of those guys. We’ve also heard that MySpace might be announcing support for Nokia and Palm phones (which wouldn’t be surprising given that its CEO is giving the event’s keynote), but we haven’t been able to confirm it — more on that tomorrow.
FROM APPLETELL - According to an Android team member, Google did not implement multi-touch into their T-Mobile G1 because Apple requested they leave it out. Why did Google agree, you might ask? Well… MORE »
Honda’s ASIMO has conducted an orchestra and even served cocktails. Now Honda has added a 360° look at the technology in ASIMO that lets him do all of that. You can see it here. It’s not just a spinning ASIMO, there’s a lot of interesting information on how it gets around, avoids obstacles, and that sort of thing.
Some of you may ask, “What is ASIMO?” Well, Asimo, which stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility, is a humanoid robot designed by Honda R&D. It began as a small project in 1986, but advanced quite a lot and made its U.S. debut in 2002 at the NYSE bell ringing ceremony.
I really wish I could have one around to do chores for me, but unfortunately they are a little pricey. Almost $1 million each. Yikes.
If you were holding your breath until MWC to see if Samsung would drop its promised Android-based phone, you can exhale. It seems that the Samdroid will have to wait, as they’re still in negotiations with carriers and no hardware has been put forth. Shucks!
It’s bad news for Samsung lovers, but there’s still a chance that HTC will give us a glimpse of the G2 (not this thing, which is totally fake). Hey, I like my G1, but believe me I’d be down like a clown if they put out something sexier.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
If you were holding your breath until MWC to see if Samsung would drop its promised Android-based phone, you can exhale. It seems that the Samdroid will have to wait, as they’re still in negotiations with carriers and no hardware has been put forth. Shucks!
It’s bad news for Samsung lovers, but there’s still a chance that HTC will give us a glimpse of the G2 (not this thing, which is totally fake). Hey, I like my G1, but believe me I’d be down like a clown if they put out something sexier.
Doug Aamoth reporting from Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts. Today in the B terminal I saw some good-looking New England Patriots cheerleaders, a good-looking Maria Menounos, and then everything went all haywire when two guys in bumblebee tutus showed up followed by Richard Branson dressed like a patriotic psychiatrist’s wet dream.
Doug Aamoth reporting from Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts. Today in the B terminal I saw some good-looking New England Patriots cheerleaders, a good-looking Maria Menounos, and then everything went all haywire when two guys in bumblebee tutus showed up followed by Richard Branson dressed like a patriotic psychiatrist’s wet dream.
Check out the video above and the photos below for all the delightful hoopla. Virgin will be flying three daily roundtrips between LA and Boston and two daily roundtrips between San Francisco and Boston with Wi-Fi on every flight and fares starting at $109.
GovTechGuy writes "The federal government is on the verge of reaching an agreement with YouTube that would allow agencies to make official use of the popular video-sharing service. A coalition of federal agencies led by the General Service Administration's Office of Citizen Services has been negotiating with Google, YouTube's parent company, since summer 2008 on new terms that would allow agencies to establish their own channels on the site. Agencies have not been [allowed] to post videos to YouTube (although many already have) because under the current terms of service, people who post content are subject to their state's libel laws. Federal agencies must adhere to federal law. On Tuesday, government officials said the negotiations were "very close" to being completed."
Yesterday I gave some Valentine’s Day gift giving suggestions for you guys to give to your lady. These babies look amazing for anyone! The Vuzix iWear AV310 Widescreen Video Glasses provide a viewing experience equal to watching a widescreen 52-inch TV from 9 feet away. They can connect to either your video iPod, a portable DVD player, video cameras, digital cameras, or even a video game system.
Although Vuzix has had their “iWear” around for a bit now, this is the first set that offers the 16:9 ratio. The AV310 uses two high resolution LCDs and dual stereo headphones. The viewer, which was developed from U.S. military technology, generates 24-bit true color (that means 16 million colors), and a 28’ field of view. The LCDs offer 428 x 240 resolution, and can be focused individually from +2 down to -5 diopters, and tilted up to 15 degrees for a custom fit. The nose piece is hypoallergenic and adjustable, and the headphones (with replaceable earbuds) produce great, crisp sound quality. There is also an optional head strap. Also included is one lithium AA battery which will provide up to 8 hours of continuous operation, iPod cable, A/V cable, and carrying case.
Hey, maybe you could buy a set of these and watch some of those movies you recorded with that video camera you bought her! wink wink.
Of the most famous computer makers, only two, Apple and Sony, primarily aim their products at consumers, instead of the generally conservative IT departments of big companies. So, it’s no surprise that these two tech giants often turn out especially stylish and daring hardware designs.
But Sony (SNE), unlike Apple (AAPL), isn’t especially skilled at software and doesn’t make its own operating system. This situation partly explains why Sony’s latest gorgeous, daring laptop, the shockingly tiny Vaio P, turns heads everywhere, but is pretty frustrating to use.
I love the look and feel and boldness of the design, but can’t recommend this sleek machine for most users because it is very slow and has poor battery life. Oh, and it sells for double or triple the price of other small laptops, commonly called netbooks.
The Vaio P is mainly undone because it comes with Vista Home Premium, the edition of Windows that is sluggish and a memory hog. Most competing small notebooks ship with the more nimble, but older, Windows XP. And the Vista problem is made worse by the processor inside the machine, which is an especially slow version of the Intel (INTC) Atom chip often used in netbooks.
While I was testing the Vaio P, which costs between $900 and $1,500, nearly everyone who saw it asked to try it. That’s because it doesn’t look like any other laptop I’ve seen. It’s long, narrow and very thin — with roughly the same footprint as one of those plastic folders waiters use to bring you the check at a restaurant. It can be tucked into the pocket of an overcoat or a pair of cargo pants, and comes in several handsome colors.
Sony’s Vaio P “lifestyle” computer
These unusual dimensions allow for only a small eight-inch screen, which is much wider than it is tall. But the Vaio P’s screen boasts very high resolution, so that it can display almost as much of a typical Web page or document as the more common 13.3-inch screens on larger laptops.
Sony also has done a great job with the keyboard on the Vaio P. Its keys are surprisingly large and well-spaced for such a tiny computer, with a wide space bar, and large “Enter” and “Backspace” keys. Instead of a touch pad, it uses a midkeyboard pointing stick.
And this little laptop is packed with nice features, including a built-in 3G cellular modem to supplement its Wi-Fi and free GPS for mapping. The P also comes standard with two gigabytes of memory. The $900 base model comes with a small 60-gigabyte hard disk; and the $1,200 midrange model has a 64-gigabyte solid state drive — which is more durable and uses less power. The top model, at $1,500, comes with a more reasonably sized 128-gigabyte solid state drive.
There are two USB ports, but the Ethernet and external video ports are relegated to a little module that snaps on to the power adapter. All models come with a quick-start system that brings up a stripped-down Web browser and media player without waiting for Windows to load. This is a boon, but it’s crudely designed.
Sony positions the Vaio P as a “lifestyle” computer, a companion to your main computer that’s almost as portable as a smart phone, but can do more. Unfortunately, once you actually start using it, that promise is dashed by its awful performance.
In my tests of the Vaio P, programs launched painfully slowly, delays were common and start-up and reboot times were glacial. I timed a reboot at nearly four minutes, and had to give up on an attempt to open 15 Web sites simultaneously in tabs in the usually speedy Firefox Web browser. Video playback was choppy.
There are some other problems that can’t be blamed on Vista. The speakers are worse than those on some cellphones. And the tiny mouse buttons are so close to the bottom edge of the keyboard that they are easy to hit accidentally. Also, I couldn’t get the GPS to work.
Using my tough battery test, in which I turn off all power-saving features, I got less than two hours, even on a solid-state model, suggesting a typical battery life of maybe 2.5 hours. Sony sells a double-sized battery, but it adds a bit of weight and bulk to the sleek box, and costs $129.
I also tested two experimental configurations of the Vaio P, which show that there’s hope for it in the future. One of these models had been tweaked by Sony to turn off many of Vista’s performance-sapping and power-hungry features. This box ran better, though still not great. Sony plans to offer a software download that will make these tweaks automatically.
Much better was a Vaio P with the forthcoming version of Windows, called Windows 7, installed. This version of Windows, likely to ship by this fall, made the Vaio P perform acceptably, despite its wimpy processor. Everything was much snappier, and reboot times were cut in half.
The Vaio P may be a beautiful device that’s just ahead of its time. Even if you can afford it, I’d advise waiting for the version with Windows 7.
Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.
Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.
I have Firefox on my home laptop, but Internet Explorer on my office laptop. Can I transfer my Firefox bookmarks on my home computer to IE on my office computer using the Foxmarks bookmark-synchronization service you recommended? And how would I go about doing it?
Yes. You start by uploading your bookmarks from Firefox at home to your Foxmarks Web account, using the Firefox version of Foxmarks. That will establish the bookmark collection on the Web site as identical to your Firefox collection. Then, you install the IE version of Foxmarks on your office computer, and, when it prompts you to sync, you can either merge the Web-based bookmarks you previously uploaded from Firefox with the ones already on IE, or choose the option to overwrite the IE bookmarks entirely with the ones online.
Does the Foxmarks service work with AOL’s browser bookmarks?
AOL’s browser is not supported. Neither are some other browsers, such as Opera or Google’s Chrome. Foxmarks currently comes in versions only for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari (Mac version only). The Firefox version also works with Flock, which is a browser heavily based on Firefox.
Do you have any idea what the realistic hardware requirements will be to run Windows 7?
Microsoft hasn’t announced these yet. But the requirements for the current beta version are likely to be similar to those for the final release. The beta hardware requirements are: a 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor; 1 GB of system memory; 16 GB of available disk space; support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory available for graphics; and a DVD-R/W Drive.
In the past, Microsoft’s minimum requirements have tended to understate what’s needed to run Windows well, even when doing typical tasks. It’s too early to say if this will be true of Windows 7. But I can say that, in my testing so far, the beta of Windows 7 runs much more quickly and smoothly than Vista on the same hardware.
You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.
Diddit, a new site launching today to the public, is looking to help you check off all the things you’ve done with your life, and discover new things that you’d like to do. The site allows users to browse through thousands of activities in categories ranging from the bars you’ve visited to “Bizarre Retro Candies” you’ve eaten at one time or another. To coincide with the launch, Ludic Labs, the company behind Diddt, has also announced that it has closed a $5 million funding round led by Accel Partners with KPG Ventures also participating.
At first glance, the site seems a little pointless - I don’t particularly care if my friends know that I’ve eaten Pop Rocks during my lifetime or that I’ve visited AT&T park (though I should note that I had similar thoughts when I first discovered Twitter). But after exploring the site a little more thoroughly, I can see why it might become very addictive.
For one, it’s a great place to look if you’re trying to think of things to do during a day trip or a night out on the town. Interested in California’s Gold Rush? Check out the list of historic museums, parks, and landmarks that focus on just that. Want to experience Polynesian culture in the San Francisco Bay Area? They’ve got a list for that too.
But the site isn’t just focused on destinations - it has sections for just about everything you could have experienced, including books, movies, games, and foods. If you’ve discovered a new author you’re interested in, there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to find a collection of their best works, along with reviews from other users.
Every item in a list - be it a book or an amusement park - has its own profile, which offers a listing of user reviews, ratings, and other essential information (the profiles are very similar to those seen on Yelp). And while today is the site’s first official unveiling, it has quietly built up a user-base of 10,000 who have shared 750,000 items, so there’s plenty to read about.
Diddit shares many features in common with a number of other sites (for example, Yelp offers a huge library of user reviews and lists, as does Amazon). But its broad scope and already-thriving community may help it get a foothold, especially if it can acquire dedicated users who genuinely care about building up a list of their accomplishments (diddits) and To-Dos (wannados).
Crunch Network: CrunchBasethe free database of technology companies, people, and investors
First things first: The Boing Boing Video episode above is a paid ad for Cheetos. This is the second in a six-part series of security bulletins from the long-lost Communist enclave of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf.
Background on the series is here. This sponsorship allows us to run all of the other BBV episodes we're producing this month ad-free, without commercial interruption.
Neither Cheetos nor Federated Media (the agency that sells our video sponsorships) has seen what we're doing before we air it, and gave us pretty much zero editorial restrictions. With effectively no creative oversight from responsible adults, we went for the most irreverent and ridiculous option we had. That meant monochrom.
IN THIS EPISODE: A suspicious package has arrived in Soviet Unterzoegersdorf via parachute. Matter of national security. S.U.Z.A.K., the Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Academy of Sciences, investigates. The box contains a substance that resembles packing material, but emits a cheesily pleasing odor. Snack, or biological weapon? ENJOYING THE CAPITALIST VIDEO PLEASE, COMRADES.
(Snapshot, inset: This was an iphone pic I took of the two boxes full of Cheetos I shipped to Soviet Unterzoegersdorf earlier this month. FedEx charged me $140 to overnight $10 worth of cheesy snack foods. They were held up in customs for days, because authorities thought we were smuggling drugs. Seriously. We loosely based the ad content around the actual process of getting Cheetos to the monochrom guys.)
Well, well, well. What do we have here? Looks like Sprint just updated their site with the Palm Pre’s specs. This news alone isn’t anything special as the specs have been available for quite some time, but we now know a few details about the Pre’s internal storage and some service details. Does this mean the Pre is coming soon or did Sprint and Palm just finalize some details?
FROM APPLETELL - Apple has posted a survey for recent Apple TV purchasers with a few questions that would indicate Apple actually wants to make the video streaming/storage device better. MORE »
Steve Jobs would love this iPhone app called WhatTheFont. See some pretty letters and dying to know what the font is? Snap a photo of some of the text with your iPhone, run the sample through WhatTheFont, and it'll bring up some matches.
Pretty neat. We tested it on a Wired magazine article. The only catch is it takes some time to bring up a match: First you have to upload the photo, then the app highlights each letter and asks you to verify whether it guessed each of them correctly. You uncheck the letters incorrectly identified and then submit the sample. Finally, after some waiting, WhatTheFont displays a list of the closest matches it can find.
Well, well, well. What do we have here? Looks like Sprint just updated their site with the Palm Pre’s specs. This news alone isn’t anything special as the specs have been available for quite some time, but we now know a few details about the Pre’s internal storage and some service details. Does this mean the Pre is coming soon or did Sprint and Palm just finalize some details?
7.4GB will actually be available from the 8GB included, possibly implying the size of the OS is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 megs or so (though it’s still unclear what the relationship between the 8GB of storage and RAM will be, and whether or not the Pre will use Program Memory RAM/Storage ROM/Mass Storage like Windows Mobile or have a simpler RAM/Storage setup like other phones).
Also, MMS is CONFIRMED. So is Phone-as-modem via bluetooth or USB tethering. Yes!!
We’re just as excited as the guys over at PreCentral, but it’s still coming to Sprint first and that stinks for us GSM users.
DrEnter writes "According to this story on Yahoo, two communications satellites collided in orbit, resulting in two large clouds of debris. The new threat from these debris clouds hasn't been fully determined yet. From the article, 'The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite, which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and believed to be nonfunctioning. Each satellite weighed well over 1,000 pounds.' This is the fifth spacecraft/satellite collision to occur in space, but the other four were all fairly minor by comparison."
AP - Facebook Inc. quickly concluded it wasn't worth anywhere near the $15 billion market value implied in a 2007 investment made by Microsoft Corp., according to confidential information obtained Wednesday from court documents. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Feb 2009 | 12:52 am
InfoWorld - Moonlight 1.0, an open source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight rich media application platform, was announced Wednesday for Unix and Linux systems, said Miguel de Icaza, the Novell developer who has been in charge of the project. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Feb 2009 | 12:46 am
FROM GAMERTELL - Fans will get to see Caprica much sooner than the original 2010 release date as Universal Studios Home Entertainment announced that the Battlestar Galactica prequel will be released exclusively to DVD on April 21, 2009, for $26.98… MORE »
The bong at the center of the Michael Phelps scandal isn't the only item that can't be auctioned on eBay. The popular online auction site also bars people from selling their souls, virginity, children, mummies — even Barack Obama's Senate seat.
Researchers are studying how wing lift and exhaust plumes shape the shock waves that create sonic booms, an early step in the push to build quieter supersonic aircraft.
AP - Two big communications satellites collided in the first-ever crash of two intact spacecraft in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Feb 2009 | 11:59 pm
A company has come up with a cool-looking new application that uses the HTC G1's GPS and compass features to display relevant nearby entertainment locations throughout the UK. Another called Wikitude uses Wikipedia and the phone's camera to embed information on live camera footage.
They're both part of a growing trend in the phone industry, the combination of smart location software with hardware you can physically use, in real time and on the streets. The G1, other upcoming Android phones, the forthcoming Nuviphone, and the iPhone are some of the leading devices using this idea.
London-based Last Minute Labs' nru ('near you') application is simple. When you launch the app, the G1 phone finds its coordinates in space and then brings up a black-and-magenta screen that centers your location inside a compass map. You immediately see a live, Augmented Reality-style map that suggests a short, hidden radius to the circumference representing the nearest places of interest. The circles move along with you, updating information on the fly.
If you hold the phone flat, you get a bird's eye view of the area, and if you hold it up (as if you were taking a picture), you'll get direct-view info of what's in front of you. It's the same principle seen in Google's StreetView. Once you select the place you're interested in, the app will take you to an info-rich webpage from Qype. Qype is the European version of Yelp, a popular social-networking and local review website.
On the other hand, the location-aware application known as Wikitude uses GPS positioning but not the compass. After setting its location, you're supposed to raise the phone, and once it is using the camera's input, it superimposes related Wikipedia information on the screen. For example, if you're walking up to the Golden Gate Bridge and have it in sight of your phone, the app will put up wiki data for you to check out.
Despite Wikitude's cool factor, this app seems quite far from being used as a substitute for any type of quality travel book or location-based travel planning. The text is small and at this point, scrolling through a small touchscreen while holding up the phone to pick up the data is harder than just having the data bound in a paperback, as usual. Same thing goes for the nru. While the app is interesting and fun, the radius of a location appears to be far too short, and it should be easier to access other locations a bit further away, with specific, on-screen distances and travel times.
We're interested in the development of these types of apps in different portable devices so we'll root and keep an eye on them in the next few months and come back with comprehensive reviews.
I met up with Randy Ching, co-founder of Ginx alongside eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, this afternoon to finally get a glimpse of what their secret startup is all about.
We first wrote about Ginx last month when it was revealed that parent company Peer News had raised $2 million in funding. At the time, we could only infer its purpose from Omidyar’s twitter account, which was hooked into Ginx somehow.
Now we know that it’s basically an interface for Twitter on steroids. Ching explains that the most fundamental purpose behind Ginx is to help people share news and other content over the internet. Citing the figure that 20% of all tweets contain links, Ching says that Ginx was built to make better use of them, to encourage more sharing of links, and to connect people who didn’t know each other already along the way.
Functionally, Ginx is a replacement for the experience of using Twitter at Twitter.com. The small development team behind Ginx has used Twitter’s API to rebuild virtually all of the functionality found at Twitter.com. And then it has gone a few steps further to make sharing links easier and more powerful.
For example, when you look at tweets in Ginx, you don’t see TinyURLs that obfuscate their destinations. Rather, Ginx pulls out the original URL and displays it alongside the webpage’s title and an image from the page, if available. You can also click a tab to view only tweets that contain links, or only tweets that contain links that you have visited previously (for when you want to go back to something you once came across on Twitter).
When you click on a link, it takes you to the page but leaves a bar at the top with the Twitter username and avatar of the person who shared it with you. A box lets you enter a reply to that person, retweet their message, send a direct message to the person about the page, or create a brand new tweet with the link. This is intended to make it easier for people to respond to the content they’ve found on Twitter.
Back in the Ginx interface, the service tries to keep track of what people are saying about a particular link, even when they’re not in your follow list. Just click on the conversation link below a shared link and you’ll see a thread of messages pertaining to it, from anyone who uses Ginx (in this way it’s like FriendFeed but the replies are not restricted to people within your social circle). Ching says that this feature in particular is meant to help you discover new people with similar interests. (Update: I think I was a bit confused about this feature. It appears as though the conversations thread only shows replies to a particular person’s tweet that contains a link, not all messages about a particular link that has been shared on Twitter).
While Ginx is ostensibly focused on spreading journalism through the Twittersphere, it also takes liberties to improve the Twitter interface in a variety of unrelated ways (hell, if you’re going to rebuild the Twitter interface, you might as well go all out). There’s a feature that lets you view people’s timelines as they actually see them so you can get a better sense of what conversations they’re engaged in. When you copy a link into Ginx, it automatic calculates how long it’ll be once shortened so you have more room to type. And when you click on a term preceded with a hash mark (e.g. “#obama”), it’ll take you to a page that shows all tweets with that tag.
Right now Ginx is a sophisticated extension to Twitter, but Ching insists that the company will not limit itself to only one social network. It plans to eventually support lots of other networks in the future, perhaps when the other’s have opened up their APIs as much as Twitter has. As far as monetization goes, there are no firm plans on that front either, but Ching suggests that any revenue model may eventually have something to do with helping publishers spread their content to new audiences.
Even as things stand currently, Ginx is an intriguing service that essentially flips the idea of Digg on its head. Instead of the wisdom of the crowds dictating what you read online, Ginx intends to help you discover and share news with people you trust.
Ginx remains in private beta but we hope to share invites with readers soon.
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Vizio's flat screen TVs are a big hit at Costco but consumers will soon have fewer choices as the company drops the production of plasma TV models in favor of LCD TVs.
Vizio is almost out of its existing inventory for plasma TVs company co-founder Laynie Newsome told The New York Times. Fewer consumers are buying plasma TVs as it does not offer the same impression of picture quality in big box stores leading to lower sales, says Newsome.
The move also allows Vizio to focus on a single kind of technology streamlining its production process.
Plasma TVs have been popular among consumers buying large displays with screen sizes of 50-inches or more. They cost lower than their LCD counterparts but they consume more power (see detailed comparison). Consumers also don't have as many manufacturer choices when it comes to plasma TVs. Vizio rival Sony also does not offer plasma TVs. That now leaves just three major companies--LG, Samsung and Panasonic--as plasma TV makers in the U.S.
(For the record – Batman would kick Superman’s ass.)
I was excited for Warner Bros., DC Comics and CobraMobile’s LEGO Batman: Gotham City Games for the iPhone. Then I finished it within 10 minutes.
The Good
Umm…I like Batman.
The Bad
Everything.
Don’t let the game’s title fool you - it’s not at all like the awesome LEGO games (Batman, Star Wars, Indiana Jones) available for various consoles. This is a pack of mini games. All of the mini games lack any sort of instruction, so you’re sitting there tapping and/or flailing about to figure out how to play the game.
Story Mode is fairly incoherent. The Riddler doesn’t make an appearance in the game and yet he’s included in the bad guy group shot. Oh, and Catwoman is on the screen that’s available in iTunes, but she never shows up in the game either. And Nightwing makes an appearance to stop Mr. Freeze in a cut scene, but nowhere else.
Freeplay makes up for it with some added content that’s unlocked when you accumulate enough points, but it’s a marginal benefit at that. There are other unlockable games, but the whole ‘no instructions’ comes into play and makes the whole experience frustrating. Sure, you eventually figure out what it is you need to do, but I would expect some instruction to begin with. Actually, instructions show up about half way through the story mode, but by that point I grew even more irritated that it wasn’t implemented from the beginning. I hope an update will fix this for potential buyer’s sake.
For $5 I would have expected more from this game. The Lego aspect never comes into play at all and I would advise against purchasing this game. It just wasn’t executed properly and I hope for the sake of those who purchased it that WB releases an update with new content or a new story line. Don’t buy this expecting a bite-sized version of the fun times you’ve come to know in the console version. Actually, just don’t buy it.
crazyeyes writes "With Windows 7 set for release in Dec. 09, Microsoft is getting ready with their free upgrade program, which allows Vista users to switch to Windows 7 when it arrives. The folks at TechARP have consistently scored accurate scoops on Microsoft software releases. They have now revealed Microsoft's upgrade plans, schedules and even screenshots of the upgrade process."
Start-up FrugalMechanic.com, an online product search engine for auto parts, received seed funding for an undisclosed amount from Seattle venture capital firm Founder’s Co-Op. The fund typically invests between $250,000 to $500,00 in start-ups.
FrugalMechanic, like a Froogle for auto parts, has gained a niche following of mechanics and consumers as a nifty price comparison tool in the auto market. Founded in July of 2008, the site doubled traffic from December 2008 to January 2009 and boasts over 5 million auto parts from 50 retailers. In an economy where everyone is looking for a deal, FrugalMechanic’s growth isn’t surprising. And when cash and credit are tight, consumers may be looking to repair cars with new auto parts instead of buying new cars.
FrugalMechanic plans to use the funding add new consumer-friendly features to the site as well and to offer a greater selection of parts by adding new categories. In an efforts to cross-brand the site, FrugalMechanic recently partnered with CarDomain.com to allow automotive enthusiasts an e-commerce solution to searching for parts on their own sites.
Here’s a screen shot:
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Windows Secrets writes "After two straight years of taking dead aim at Macbooks and Windows-powered machines, hackers at this year's CanSecWest conference will have shiny new targets: Web browsers and mobile phones. According to CanSecWest organisers, there will be two separate Pwn2Own competitions this year — one pitting hackers against IE8, Firefox 3 and Safari and another targeting Google Android, Apple iPhone, Nokia Symbian and Windows Mobile."
Man, BlackBerry Storm users are gettin’ the unofficial goods left and right as of late. While the rest of us get to wait for updates to pass through weeks of carrier certification, it seems like someone is leaking these Storm firmware updates every time the code looks stable. This latest leak bumps the (unofficial) version numbers up to OS 4.7.0.106 for the BlackBerry Storm 9500 (GSM) and OS 4.7.0.103 for the BlackBerry Storm 9530 (Verizon’s CDMA model).
We’re not seeing anything that looks like a notable new feature, and the early findings indicate that while the accelerometer, transitions, and camera have all become a bit snappier, things are still a bit shaky - which is understandable, as neither of these are official releases. The 9530 update also seems to fix an a recently introduced issue which kept pages javascript code from loading properly.
If you’re looking to guinea pig your Storm for the sake of science (Note: These are unofficial updates. Things can break. Install at your own risk), you can find the downloads here:
Rumors of an upcoming price hike for Asus products are unsubstantiated and appear unlikely.
Australian publication ARN reported Tuesday that the Taiwanese manufacturer announced 20-percent price increases for all its existing and upcoming notebooks and Eee products beginning March.
However, the publication did not cite a source or an official statement from Asus. Also, Asus Germany has denied such claims and Asus USA said it is unaware of any price increases.
ARN's report also cited the economic downturn as a reason for increased component costs to explain Asus's price hike. However, if that were true, Asus's competitors would be forced to raise prices as well. A spokesman for Multi-Star International, a netbook manufacturer also based in Taiwan, told Wired.com it has no plans for price increases.
Asus USA told Wired.com it will contact Asus Taiwan for clarification. We'll post an update once we hear back.
Palm will drop its long-in-the-tooth mobile operating system, Palm OS, in favor of the company's new Web OS, which will debut with its upcoming Pre phone.
Palm will focus on Web OS and Windows Mobile for all future devices, company CEO Ed Colligan told investors Wednesday.
The Palm operating system has had a checkered past. The operating system was first developed under the Palm Computing umbrella in the mind-1990s. But when Palm Computing became a subsidiary of 3Com after an acquisition, Palm started to license the Palm OS through a subsidiary then called Palm Source. In 2005, Palm Source was acquired by Access and a year later Palm gained perpetual rights to the OS.
Over the years, Palm OS became stale, while Palm repeatedly tried -- and failed -- to release a second-generation OS that would enable multitasking, support richer multimedia applications and yet preserve compatibility with the tens of thousands of Palm applications already out there. Meanwhile, Palm's phone increasingly came to rely on Microsoft's Windows Mobile. Now with Web OS, Palm hopes to revive some of its magic.
"We created a new platform from the ground up," Colligan said during the launch of the Pre at the Consumer Electronics Show last month. "It is going to redefine the center of your
access point to the Internet."
WebOS will include features such as Palm Synergy that brings different
information from calendars, contacts and instant messaging applications
into a single screen. That means if the same contact is listed in
Outlook, Google and Facebook accounts, it links them together into one listing, making it easy for users to chat or email with a single click.
Web OS is also easy to develop applications for, says Palm and will come with global search that searches not just the data on the phone but also the internet from a single point.
The Pre is expected to launched on Sprint's network exclusively in the first half of the year. Sprint's hold on the Pre could last longer than a few months. Palm is counting on the success of the Pre to draw in other carriers and hopes to consider other U.S. carriers for the phone in 2010, said Colligan.
Google is now making it easier for Websites to surface Friend Connect features with what it is calling the Social Bar. This is a toolbar that Websites can add to their homepage or any other page they wish, and then they can add links for drop-down gadgets that lets site visitors do things such as sign in via Friend Connect, see who else has signed in recently, check out comments, or site members, all from Social Bar. Here is an example.
Basically, the social bar is a small strip that webmasters can layer on top of any web page, either at the top or at the bottom. That way, website visitors are provided with a bit of information, and the bar also lets them interact with any social feature the site incorporates through drop-down gadgets. As Software Engineer Christopher Wren explains in the announcement blog post, this is a good way to save on pixel space and keep putting the actual content of the site forward first.
Here are some of the gadgets Websites can include in the Social Bar, from Google’s brand new Social Web blog:
On the far left, visitors can join your site, see their identity, and edit their profiles and settings.
Your visitors can also delve into your site’s activity stream to see what’s happening throughout your site. It includes links to recent posts made anywhere on your site, helping other visitors quickly find where the hottest conversations are taking place.
The wall gadget can host a discussion for the whole site, a section of pages, or each individual page, letting your visitors easily read and leave comments.
Lastly, visitors can see the other members of your site, check out their profiles to see how like-minded they really are, and even become friends.
The toolbar approach is both an attempt at ubiquity and invisibility at the same time. Google wants Friend Connect to be everywhere, but at the same time it doesn’t want to seem too pushy about being everywhere. Hence, the seemingly innocuous toolbar. But that toolbar expands with pop-down gadgets, which takes advantage of Google’s strengths with creating gadgets in iGoogle and elsewhere. Can a Facebook Connect toolbar be far behind?
kokito writes "OSNews managing editor Thom Holwerda reviews Haiku, the open source successor of the Be operating system. According to the review, Haiku faithfully/successfully replicates the BeOS user experience and 'personality,' boasting very short boot times, the same recognizable but modernized GUI using antialiasing for fonts and all vector graphics as well as vector icons, a file system with support for metadata-based queries (OpenBFS) and support for the BeAPI, considered by some the cleanest programming API ever. The project has also recently released a native GCC 4.3.3 tool chain, clearing the way for bringing up-to-date ports of multi-platform apps such as Firefox and VLC, and making it easier to work on Haiku ports in general." (More below.)
Map-data suppliers are crowdsourcing location and traffic information, letting the community contribute info on conditions they find in a bid to keep costs down and maps updated.
Add infrastructure improvement to the list of things social networking is trying to tackle: GPS and mapping companies now use community feedback to improve everything from road information to traffic alerts and speed-trap warnings.
Tele Atlas, which provides maps to its corporate parent TomTom as well as to other navigation companies, on Wednesday rolled out its first geographic database containing information based on map users' feedback.
In July 2007, Tele Atlas parent TomTom started offering users in the
United States a way to make changes to its map through its Map Share technology.
Since then, about 800,000 map improvements have been submitted, says the
company, and those improvements are now included in its latest database.
"Roads change every day and virtually everywhere," says Tom Murray,
vice president of market development for TomTom, which owns Tele Atlas.
"There are millions of TomTom users out there and they can cover the
road network more than anyone else."
User-generated content is increasingly becoming a part of the core
strategy of mapping providers and the companies that have spent
billions to acquire them. In October 2007, Nokia paid $8.1 billion to
acquire Navteq, one of the two big map suppliers in North America. The
same year TomTom spent $4.3 billion to acquire the other major player,
Tele Atlas.
TomTom's strategy collects user comments as a way of keeping its maps more up-to-date. If Seventh Street in your city changed its name to Main Street
or if Third Avenue became a one-way, TomTom users can press a button on
their navigation device to make the change. Once they opt to share that
data with other users, it becomes available to everyone using the service.
The thousands of potential map contributors on the road are a resource a corporation can't easily match on its own, says Thilo Koslowski, an analyst with research firm Gartner.
"In terms of sheer numbers the community is very powerful," he says. "If you can get thousands of users to function as probes, you can collect more information than any fleet of vehicles that a private company can build."
Three months ago, Nokia started its experiment with user-generated data. Along with the University of California at Berkeley, it kicked off a pilot project aimed at collecting traffic
information through GPS-enabled cellphones. Users could download the software for free and use it to check on road conditions. At the same time, the software would report data about its users' positions to a central database, enabling the researchers to assemble traffic data in real time.
Some iPhone apps use community police data to warn users about speed traps and red-light cameras.
The increased use of crowdsourcing might seem strange for geographic information, which is more critical than, say, restaurant reviews. If a restaurant review is wrong, the worst that can happen is a disappointing meal -- but what if your GPS device gives you bad directions?
Mapping companies may have no choice, says ABI Research analyst Dominique Bonte. "Crowdsourcing allows digital maps to become more detailed," he says. "And for mapping companies it has become almost a necessity to keep the maps up to date and costs under control."
For mapping service providers, the move is the best way to get low-cost data and updates. Mapping companies have a fleet of vehicles equipped with cameras, GPS antennas and sensors to capture road information. User-generated data could help supplement it.
"Peple are driving around and walking around all the time and they have GPS-enabled devices on them," says Koslowski. "That's the best way to record this information."
Other means of aggregating navigation information can help users. Free iPhone app Trapster uses the phone's GPS capability and information users contribute to warn of speed traps in an area. Users can submit information about new traps and verify old reported ones.
As for concerns about accuracy, companies say map information is verified by the companies before it is incorporated into official updates. In case of TomTom and Tele Atlas, changes to the map are reflected immediately on the individual user's device. But the data is verified by TomTom and Tele Atlas specialists before it becomes part of the official release reflected across millions of devices. iPhone app Trapster says the credibility of users reporting information is gauged over time, based on how many other users agree with the data shared.
The crowdsourcing phenomenon means that an open source project that consists completely of community-generated map data is likely to be the next step, says Koslowski. Though Tele Atlas incorporates user changes, the maps are proprietary information, as are Navteq maps.
"Ultimately there will be a community-based service that collects this from the ground up," says Koslowski. "If you have open source map data, the possibilities to build on that is endless."
Map-data suppliers are crowdsourcing location and traffic information, letting the community contribute info on conditions they find in a bid to keep costs down and maps updated.
Juniper Research released a report today that claims that the global mobile market for adult content grew by around 36 percent, to an estimated $2.2 billion, in 2008. Juniper also estimated that the market will be worth $4.9 billion by 2013, largely dominated by increased demand for video-chat services. Demand for mobile adult content seems to growing at a fast pace since the research company’s 2007 report estimated revenue to reach $3.5 billion by 2010. With 2008 revenue already past the 2 billion mark, the forecasts could become a definite reality.
But this growth is not happening in the United States. Western Europe remains the largest market for the adult mobile services, especially video-based applications, mainly due to the increased adoption of 3G mobile phones in European markets. Western Europe’s share of the revenue was 42 percent in 2008, whereas North America accounted for only 2 percent of revenue in 2008. The lack of widespread availability of 3G phones is not the only reason the U.S. and Canadian market is not catching on to adult mobile services. The report indicates that the US market is constrained by carrier reluctance to introduce age verification systems. Other markets, such as Indonesia and Switzerland, have even tightened the laws governing the access of mobile adult content.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Pet owners with a desire for nostalgia are resorting to the use of frozen sperm to keep certain attributes of their pets alive. Artificial insemination using frozen sperm began in the 1960s when Carrol C. Platz Jr. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Feb 2009 | 9:15 pm
A new study by researchers at the University of Washington shows that the evolutionary split between humans and apes may have been spurred by a fast-track genetic change that occurred in a common ancestor.Before the primates' family tree split, the code was fairly stable, except in one fascinating Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Feb 2009 | 9:02 pm
Austrian scientists say they've found the drug Zometa is effective in reducing the risk of early breast cancer re-occurrence or death in premenopausal women.
The research by the Austrian Breast & Colorectal Cancer Study Group is said to be the first large, randomized, Phase III clinical trial to show Zometa (zoledronic acid) offers significant protection against the return of early breast cancer in premenopausal women.
The scientists said Zometa, along with post-surgery hormonal therapy, provided a reduction in risk of recurrence or death that was 36 percent beyond that achieved with hormone therapy alone.
The researchers said prior laboratory studies suggested Zometa might have direct anti-cancer effects, including helping to protect against the return and spread of cancer before it reaches an advanced stage-two.
It is encouraging to see a significant reduction in risk of recurrence in these patients from a therapy that was also well-tolerated, said David Epstein, president of Novartis Oncology, the manufacturer of the drug. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Feb 2009 | 9:00 pm
Don’t the words “BlackBerry Enterprise Server update” just send a shiver of excitement down your spin? They do? Really? You’re kind of weird. Whether you’re awkwardly excited about BES 5.0 or not, it’s on its way - and RIM has dropped some details on whats in store for you, the end-user.
Firewall-friendly file access to Windows shares, allowing for remote viewing/editing
Attachment support in meetings and calendars
E-mail folder management, with all changes reflecting back to the desktop
Inbox filter creation, which will also reflect back to the desktop
Flagged email support, allowing you to procrastinate highlight emails for later response
Sure - it might not seem too riveting for the general consumer, but these are the little things that keep the enterprise users coming back for more of that sweet BlackBerry nectar.
Time Inc. boss Ann Moore made her case for the survival of magazines, and in a broader sense, traditional media: If they don’t make it, who’s going to do the work to get hard-to-find information?
If she’d just waited a few weeks, she could have saved herself some trouble and simply handed everyone she met a copy of today’s New York Observer, which has a great story about the story behind the Alex Rodriguez/steroids story that her own Sports Illustrated broke on Saturday.
Per the Observer’s John Koblin, here’s some of what SI reporter Selena Roberts (pictured above) went through to get the story:
Roberts started on the story at least four months ago, when she was assigned a general profile of the Yankees superstar.
By January, Roberts and colleague David Epstein were confirming rumors that Rodriguez’s name had surfaced in a 2003 drug test. They eventually cobbled together four different sources to confirm their story.
Last week, Roberts flew from New York to Miami to confront Rodriguez directly. After an encounter with a security guard and the Miami police, she drove by his house, then tracked him down at a local gym.
After getting a “no comment” from the player, she conferred with her editors, and the SI team then spent another 48 hours dotting i’s and crossing t’s before publishing.
It’s a neat tale, and one the folks at Time Warner (TWX) should be proud of. And it’s a good counterpoint to pundits who assure us that one day soon in the brave new world, old media gatekeepers like SI will be replaced by the collective wisdom of the Web. Because the last time I checked, crowd-sourcing didn’t pay for months of reporting, flights to Miami, a team of lawyers, etc.
Could a dogged individual, working without a net, have gotten this story? Theoretically. And some bloggers working primarily with crowd-sourced tips have done some great work, too–see the great work that Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo did on the Justice Department/Attorney General scandal last year. And, just to knock down that straw man–big media, armed with all sorts of resources, does get all sorts of stuff wrong, as the New York Times has admitted on a couple of occasions now.
But look at how much work Roberts and SI had to invest in tracking down what in the end isn’t a story that’s truly important, in a State-of-the-Union sense of the word. Now think about how much work it takes to suss out answers to much less sexy but more crucial questions, about, say, the way our government works.
I still don’t think that Moore’s argument–that these publications will survive because we need them to–will pan out. And I worry that only a small slice of us will get good info about important stuff. But when that day comes, I hope someone will have created a free Web archive of reporting like Roberts’s story, so that the rest of us can get a sense of what we’re missing.
Palm CEO Ed Colligan just pulled the plug on Palm OS, destroying the hopes and dreams of millions of Palm lovers around the world. As a former Palm programmer, let me tell you that this news saddens yet cheers me: Palm OS is in a better place now.
Colligan also mentions that the Pre will have an app store and Palm will have no control over the content. The Pre will hit other carriers in 2010 and that they’re not too worried about Apple’s patents (famous last words.) Luckily, Palm has 1500 patents up its sleeve and sees little problem in implementing multi-touch in the new OS.
This just in from the N.S. Sherlock Institute for the Bleeding Obvious: Palm’s new bet-the-company operating system, webOS, is intended as a replacement for, not an alternative to, its embarrassingly antiquated Palm OS. Speaking at the Thomas Weisel Technology & Telecom Conference today, Palm CEO Ed Colligan said the company won’t release any more Palm OS-based products after the Centro hits end-of-life. In the future, most Palm (PALM) devices will run webOS, with Windows Mobile being used on a few enterprise-class smartphones.
A few other noteworthy remarks from Colligan:
The Pre will launch in concert with an application store that allows for over-the-air and USB downloads.
The company is hammering out Pre partnerships with carriers in Canada, Latin America and Europe and plans to expand to U.S. carriers outside of Sprint (S) in 2010.
Palm isn’t worried about a battle with Apple (AAPL) over the company’s iPhone intellectual property. Colligan says the company has 15 years worth of patents that could be brought to bear in such a conflict if need be, though he doesn’t expect one to occur. “We’re very respectful about people’s intellectual property, we believe we’re huge innovators and have been for a lot of years and that this product has an enormous number of innovations in it,” he said. “If something does happen there, we do have the portfolio, we think, to defend ourselves and to be successful doing that. But nothing’s happened to date, so we’re really just focused on getting the product out the door.”
Micropayments: Everybody’s talking about them! Will they save journalism? Can they help preserve the important tradition of reportage that results in an informed citizenship? Are they the solution to the problem of how to get readers to pay for valuable content?
No. People are idiots. I saw one of the freesheets yesterday whose cover conflated Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, who used anabolic steroids to give themselves an edge on the baseball field, with Michael Phelps, who smoked pot at a college party to make himself look cool. (And get high.) That’s the level of information people are getting from the free papers, and they seem to be perfectly happy about it. Why would they want to pay for anything more challenging or less imbecilic?
Still, we need a fully funded working press if even a small number of us are to remain informed enough about the world and its currents and conflicts. My proposal is a form of micropayment subsidy that enables the continued existence of information gathering and analysis so vital to our political literacy. A small fee will be added to the bill every individual or corporate entity is charged each month for Internet service. Those fees will be disbursed to news-gathering entities at the end of each month to pay for the kind of reporting which, despite the cost outlay required, rarely proves profitable.
In a fluorescent-lit room in an office complex of the Minato Ward, a Sony engineer is putting the finishing touches on a prototype PSP2. Have the lessons learned from the first PSP changed the shape of the plasticine maquettes on his desk? Has the success of its competitors, the nimble, toyish Nintendo DS or the iPhone—hardly a traditional gaming device at all!—affected the chips he chooses to solder into a virtual breadboard? Will his PSP2 even see the light of day?
It's the wrong time for Sony to launch a PSP2. The economy is the dumps. Sony has posted a $1.12 billion loss, its first in 14 years. But they must also be looking towards the future, making tough decisions about whether they should remain in the gaming space at all.
I don't think there's much doubt they will. Sony, after all, has never lacked for stubbornness and pride.
So what should Sony's next portable gaming device be? A phone? An all-singing, all-dancing convergence device of the future? Or a pared down device that does gaming—and only gaming—as perfectly as possible?
Sony has always had a problem with convergence, in that it does it poorly. That's because the company, despite attempts by its latest CEO to bring the company in line, still operates as the prototypical engineer-led Japanese company, a field of silent ivory silos that rarely communicate as a whole. One division of the company might make a camera with a web browser in it, while another might make a camera for the PSP, while yet another sells cameras that connect to their laptops— none of which can actually communicate with other Sony devices. It must be a herculean challenge for a company that makes products in nearly every consumer electronics category to coordinate and executive as a collective whole, but it should not be impossible, even in notoriously regimented Japanese corporate culture. Difficulty does not excuse a failure to meet the challenge.
The problem with the PSP and the PS3 has not been that Sony made a stab at building quality convergence devices—they've just been trying to build too many. It's hard to believe that you should buy a do-everything devices when the same company sells a dozen different do-everything models. Why would Sony, makers of the world's finest Blu-ray player, bother to sell anything other than the PS3 at all?
The PlayStation 3 is nearly perfect as a set-top box, a powerful gaming machine that doubles as one of the most connected media players available. And it's getting trashed in the market by the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii because many customers, when looking at the three units on the shelf, don't see it as a media wunderkreiger, but instead as the least interesting gaming box of the three.
Wasn't this about the PSP?
The PSP has actually done relatively well for itself when it comes to hardware sales, with an estimated lifetime sales of around 44 million units. Think about that one for a moment: a company that has sold 44 million units of one of its premier products may still be considered by some to be failing. That's in large part due to perception—we tend to think of the markets in broad terms, with simple winners and losers, and rarely do you see someone win as decisively as Nintendo has done with the Wii and the DS—and in part due to software sales, which in every part of the world outside of Japan, where the Monster Hunter series sees multi-million sales on the PSP, have a relatively low "attachment" rate (the number of games sold per console sold).
Nintendo has sold nearly 98 million DS handhelds in nearly the same amount of time. And there's a surprise contender in the handheld gaming space: Apple, who has sold around 17 million iPhones, as well as several million iPod touch units, all of which are extremely capable handheld gaming machines. Attachment rates for iPhone games from the iTunes App Store are presumably high, with numbers like a million downloads a day being touted, although it's anyone's guess on exactly how those split between free and paid applications. Nevertheless, that Apple has created an inadvertent third mobile gaming platform has surely not been missed by Sony brass.
Closer than you'd think
Why isn't the PSP perceived to be a success, then? Let's consider the many ways in which it is a failure as both a convergence and a pure gaming device, and why a relatively low-powered dual-screen oddity and a phone that has effectively no buttons at all get all the attention.
The PSP's hardware is magnificent. I will never forget the first time I booted my launch day PSP in a cab taking me home in the early morning after an entire night spent waiting in line at Sony's New York City launch festivities. I was prepared to be disappointed, but I warmed to the beautiful graphics from the huge, bright screen instantly. That technological frisson that every properly designed gadget attempts to provoke was unmistakable, that taste of the future that early adopters spend so much time and money trying to capture. The following weeks found me showing it off to everyone I could, all of whom were dutifully impressed, but very rarely compelled to buy a PSP themselves.
I suspect that was in part due to Sony's inability to make products that don't appear to be exquisite but fragile. The PSP very much feels like a stereotypical product from Japan, bedizened with buttons and switches, and even ejecting from its aluminum cradle an exotic optical disc. (Ignore that that optical disc, the proprietary, slow, and expensive UMD, was obsolesced by flash memory nearly before the PSP was even on the street.) It's sexy in its way, but it doesn't feel disposable: a quality welcome in previous times, but daunting in something that comes with an implicit possibility of loss.
Worse, luxury electronics, from a school of design for which Sony is in part responsible but was always a ruse in the best of times, are increasingly being seen as gussied up branding exercises borne from the same assembly lines as the "bargain" versions. People aren't afraid to buy something cheap anymore, so long as it works, and so long as it will be easily replaced when it's dropped in the toilet or left in a cab.
It was also too big. The PSP doesn't fit in the pocket. It needs a case or cover to protect the screen (unlike the DS, whose cockamamie fold-in-half clamshell ended up obviating the need for armor). A device that can't live comfortable in the front pocket of jeans is ultimately too large to be carried as part of someone's everyday default load-out. Even the DS is slightly too large.
That vaunted and welcome 3D power that makes portable gaming on the PSP look better than any other mobile gaming system ever? It eats a lot of power. Battery life for the PSP is actually fairly good, all power drains considered, but a single standard battery won't fill your cross-country trip with movies and games. (To be fair, battery life is an issue for nearly every modern gadget.)
And the 3D power that makes the PSP stand out was hobbled by Sony's curious decision to include only one analog input, a rather ingenious nubbin on the left hand side of the face, making the dual-analog control scheme for 3D games—a now-standard interface that Sony themselves pioneered on the PlayStation—impossible.
UMD was slow, expensive, and literally just months from being superfluous. The future of portable media is flash memory, end of discussion, and even replaceable media like SD cards will leave the mainstream in a few years. Terribly, it had to be physically spun up to operate, another battery-taxing chore.
Because the games were so similar to home console experiences, many developers neglected to design the games with the mobile player in mind. Many mobile games are played for just seconds at a time, in snatched moments in queues and on lunch breaks. The PSP could go into a sleep mode, provided you had enough battery to keep it slumbering without slipping fully into unconsciousness, but many of the games themselves did not have save functions that could be accessed at any time. Want to stop playing your game for a bit and listen to some MP3s? Too bad—unless you want to play for another ten minutes to discover a save point.
Not that you'd want to use it as an MP3 player. Not because the PSP's MP3 support is poor—it's actually quite good, and as a podcast slurper it's phenomenal—but that pesky pocket problem literally pokes its head up. And with full acknowledgement of how haughty this sounds, it's sort of embarrassing to listen to MP3s out of something so large, like carrying around a portable DVD player so you can listen to CDs.
Video support? Fantastic—if you could encode your own movies. The movies-on-UMD plan was silly from the start by dint of pricing alone. No one wanted to pay DVD prices for movies they could only watch on a single device—without special features.
While it may seem odd already to imagine a time when devices were sold without Wi-Fi, that the PSP could use wireless networks to communicate and even browse the internet was a definite selling point in 2005. But no touchscreen and no keyboard—despite rumors for years that Sony themselves would release a QWERTY attachment—made the PSP a rather pitiful mobile computer. Baffling. With just a nice QWERTY keyboard addition, I could have done the majority of my mobile computing on the PSP years ago. Now smartphones and netbooks have closed that door behind them.
Piracy was easy, although not really easy, depending at which stage of the PSP's life you consider. While I'm not inclined to discount piracy's effect on sales out of hand—nor am I inclined to think there's really all that much to be done about it—one of the surprise strengths of the powerful PSP platform ended up being its utility as one of the best retro-gaming emulation machines of all time. While anecdotes are not data, among my gamer friends a PSP is more often a portable Super Nintendo with a complete library always at hand, with more hours given to 15-year-old titles than modern ones. That may help hardware sales and doesn't even directly hurt software sales, but it doesn't help, either.
It's hard to read Sony's blustery "Games aren't selling because of pirates" comments for the last couple years, coupled with their bizarre hardware revision choices, and not think they just got so swept up in fighting hackers and pirates that they lost site of the bigger picture.
The lack of development on the PSP is due in part to the cost of making a 3D game, a more expensive endeavor than creating the art and assets for a 2D title. With more than twice as many DS and iPhones out there owned by gamers proven to spend money, it makes more fiscal sense for a developer to bet their sweat and money on a 2D title that can, after all, still be ported to the PSP.
On their own, none of these are critical flaws. The PSP may instead be suffering death by a dozen cuts.
Stronger, better, smaller, faster, something, something, everything
Here's what the next PSP should be: an iPhone with buttons.
Sure, it can be slightly wider, but only by millimeters, not centimeters. Same goes for thickness to accommodate shoulder buttons and the largest battery Sony can cram inside. But it should be an attempt at the ultimate convergence device for Sony, one that take all the same risks that Sony tried to make with the original PSP, but going even further. So much further, in fact, that it would shake the fundamental way Sony has sold products in the past.
The next PSP should be a fantastic point-and-shoot camera and camcorder.
The next PSP should be a top-quality GPS unit for both pedestrians and drivers. (Without buying an additional module.)
The next PSP should have a touchscreen.
The next PSP should have accelerometers and a compass.
The next PSP should come with a great web browser.
The next PSP should be offered in two flavors: one with a phone inside, one without.
The next PSP should be able to download and purchase games over-the-air via 3G or Wi-Fi, saved to copious internal flash memory. (Something the current PSP is finally seeing in part through the PlayStation Network, but perhaps Sony should abandon retail entirely. It's worked for the iPhone, Gamestop and Wal-Mart be damned.)
The next PSP should be Sony's best mobile gaming device. (Although it need not be much more powerful computationally than the current PSP.)
The next PSP should cost $500—or $200 when subsidized by wireless carrier.
Luck never gives; it only lends.
Sony needs to go all in. Convergence is a bear. A bear that, when you've just about wrestled it into submission, grows another couple of arms holding pico-projectors and a WiMAX chip. But it's where gadgets are going, like it or not, and while it may take another decade or two for all of the aspects to come into their own (see: the iPhone's horrible but heavily used camera) the opportunity exists for companies to rise to the challenge of making miraculous do-everything magic pocket lumps.
If anyone has the engineering talent to do it, it's Sony. But they'll have to change the way the company works, forcing product groups to march in step—or at least communicate. Can you imagine the product that Sony could make if even a quarter of their engineers dropped all the dabbling and worked on a single product together? Sure, they might only be able to release eight car stereos this year instead of ten, but somehow I think they'd be able to keep sales up across every category.
This isn't out of reach for Sony. In fact it's already in their blood—the company that makes the Vaio P isn't afraid to try to make products that straddle category boundaries. (Nor are they afraid to charge twice as much as their competitors to do so.) But Sony, like so many other successful organizations, has become victim to their own illusions of their strengths, thinking they could grow only laterally. That may work with televisions and amplifiers, but it's not going to cut it in the fight to become the one thing people keep in their pocket at all times.
So while I know there are PSP2 prototypes on little pedestals all throughout Sony right now, I sincerely hope they exist outside of the gaming division and instead are spread throughout the entire company. Some of the world's best engineers work at Sony—it's time to make them work together.
Some great announcements burbled out of Palm CEO's talks with investors about the upcoming Pre:
• PalmOS is dead, which will certainly drive the lingering but eerily fervent PalmOS community to teeth-gnashing, but which is only practical in the era of smartphones. All future Palm phones will be driven by the Pre's webOS (yes) or Windows Mobile (no).
• Pre App Store at launch. Better: no lock down, a la iPhone. You will be able to install third-party apps without jailbreaking, through USB or over the air.
• Palm has already established partnerships with carriers in Canada, Latin America and Europe. The Pre's going international.
• Although there's no details about Palm's exclusivity deal with Sprint, Palm hopes to have the Pre on other carriers by 2010.
It's great to watch Palm not only get the handset right, but get so many various philosophical aspects right, like open app development not limited to one corporate controlled distribution channel. Short of some appalling day one reviews, this is the phone that's replacing my iPhone.
Taking a chemical approach, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a two-step method to convert the cellulose in raw biomass into a promising biofuel. The process, which is described in the Wednesday, Feb. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Feb 2009 | 7:46 pm
Image Caption: A WUSTL biologist and his Donald Danforth Plant Science Center collaborator have discovered a technology that reduces infection by the virus that causes Rice Tungro Disease. Ultimately this knowledge could lead to increased rice crop yields. (National Science Foundation) Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Feb 2009 | 7:40 pm
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Heuer Monaco watch — the only watch rad enough to be personally endorsed by Steve McQueen — Tag Heuer is releasing a slightly updated version. The picture says it all: this is one of the most gorgeous watches in the world. I have no idea what this costs, but I'm guessing thousands. What's Peruvian going rate for a couple kidneys these days?
Nearly 50 human skeletons have been found in a mass grave discovered in Mexico City, which archeologists believe may offer clues about the 16th century Spanish conquest, Reuters reported.Excavators searched for a palace complex in the Tlatelolco area, once a major religious and political center for the ancient Aztec elite, before uncovering the 49 skeletons, all lying face up with their arms crossed. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Feb 2009 | 7:20 pm
I'm not sure what's more incredible about this... whatever the fuck. The fact that its design resembles a toy F1, a steering wheel and a wall clock shot together through a Cronenberg matter teleportation device, or the bizarre hunchback model they've got squinting and slouching in front of it for an infusion of sex appeal.
Most iPhone battery extenders turn one of Cupertino's sveltest designs into an pocket-dictionary sized lump of dark matter, or tether a battery dongle to the bottom with as much grace as a pair of pick-up truck testicles, but the Mophie Juice Pack may be the first one to get it right: it extends the power of the iPhone 3G by 270 hours of standby time, 4.5 hours of talk time, 4.5 hours of web browsing and 5.4 hours on wifi, while only increasing the thickness by a smidgen. It's expensive for a juice pack at $80, but this is the most elegant third party solution yet to the iPhone's woeful battery life problems.
After many occasions during my childhood in which I sat down on LEGOs that I’d mindlessly jammed into my pockets during one of many amazing architecture sessions, the last thing I want is a LEGO phone. Seriously, if the brick’s little nubs don’t get you, the ridiculously sharp corners will. Alas, Alcatel is apparently crackin’ away at a LEGO-inspired phone, complete with mix-and-match keypads. Fortunately, it looks like they’ve rounded out the corners a bit.
Curiously absent from these leaked renders is the LEGO branding. LEGO is pretty intense about that stuff (hell, we’ll probably get a note about this post for calling them LEGOs instead of “LEGO bricks and toys”), so unless the back of the phone is one giant LEGO logo, we’re not sure what’s going on here.
A few other nitpicks: What age range are they targeting here? Take that age range; how many of those kids actually want a cell phone? Probably a good portion. Now, how many of those want a LEGO branded cell phone, rather than something along the lines of the phone they saw on TV that made them want a cell phone in the first place? What happens if they lose the pieces (which they will, being kids)?
The House may have finally gotten the vote through to delay the digital transition from February 17th to June 12th to give more time for money to be scraped together for more converter box coupons... but television stations were never obliged to fund four more months of analog signals. And wouldn't you know: 40% of them won't, shutting those signals down next Tuesday.
I've been flip in the past about my feelings about exactly why the digital transition delay is a bad idea, but it really does come down to this: 40% of analog signals shutting down on February 17th is a hell of a lot more confusing to people than 100% shutting down. Expect a lot or befuddled grannies shrieking in the aisles of Best Buy over the coming weeks.
There's scarce reason to own a reel-to-reel deck these days, although I have long nursed a deep longing to bolt one to the wall as a 50's era answering machine... shades of the interior design choices of a dame-smacking Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly.
Technologically practical they may not be, but as reel-to-reel objets d'art, Jeff Jacobs sells just stunningly restored vintage Technics, Sonys, Piuoneers and Marantzes. He is not necessarily selling these for this function, but I think any one of his pieces would look great in a geek's apartment. Retro technology as the flourished design encrustations of a modern home... I think that look has legs.
Kevin over at CrackBerry spotted this white Pearl Flip during RIM’s BES presentation today and posits that RIM could be releasing it sometime in the near future. Makes sense considering the bazillion colors they have for the candybar Pearl.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
A universal remote can easily wrangle all of the electronics in your collection. But few do them as cheaply as the R50 offered up by the grand maiden of controllers, Universal Remote.
Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.
The main characters of From Inside are Cee, a young pregnant woman, and a seemingly endless steam train. John has always had a "thing" for trains and that adoration comes through in the immense detail of the 3D models and animation, the texture maps, the sounds and smoke effects. It's a giant beast of a machine (literally in some scenes). It's mind-boggling to consider that John did nearly all of this work himself (the credits for the over-one-hour film are ridiculously short) on a Apple G5 Dual 2.7 running Maya, Photoshop, and AfterEffects. Some shots took weeks to render. One took over a month. John ended up spending 2-1/2 years of his life on this effort.
The story of From Inside opens with the pregnant Cee on the train as it traverses a post-apocalyptic wasteland. As we get into the sonorous rhythms of the train, we hear the gentle voice of Cee:
If you're looking for happy endings here, look out. (John jokingly calls it "the most depressing film ever made.") Like the novel, John rations use of the oxygen throughout. When the film ended, it was all I could do to keep my head out of my oven. But in the end, I was more satisfied than bummed -- I'd had the unique opportunity to climb inside of a book, a world, that has intrigued me since the day I was introduced to it.
You can watch a preview of From Inside on the movie's website and read the blog John has kept throughout the project. The film is currently traveling the animation and film festival circuit, and not surprisingly, scooping up a number of awards. See the News section of his site for the screenings schedule.
Left in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Left in Where Is God When It Hurts?
Left in: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.
Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.
I'm currently reading writer and filmmaker Alex Rose's The Musical Illusionist and Other Tales ($14.95). It's one of the most imaginative and unconventional collections I've read in years. It's really fired up my imagination. Here's the back cover copy which, while typically breathless, accurately describes the whimsy and weirdness contained within.
The latest offering from Hotel St. George is Correspondences ($50, incl. shipping), by Ben Greenman, a limited-edition series of letterpressed stories on thick accordion-fold paper tucked inside of pockets, inside of a slip case. Three two-sided accordions hold six stories. A seventh story is contained on the packaging and there's also an included post card that you can return with your idea for finishing the seventh story. Worthy submissions are being posted on the HSG website. This is a beautiful piece of book art that will especially appeal to collectors of new letterpress work.
Today on Offworld, Jim Rossignol came through with his regular Ragdoll Metaphysics column and, just as I'd hoped, gave the clearest explanation of the recent Goonswarm/Band of Brothers corporate dissolution in Eve Online as any I've read to date. It's a concise wrap-up for "the rest of us": how it happened, what it means in terms of dollars and man hours lost, and how it will shape the future of the game's universe.
Elsewhere we got an extended look at the upcoming iPhone puzzler Heroes and Villains (above), showing what exactly the developers meant when they called it "Lemmings meets The Lost Vikings meets Awesome", and saw what it might have been like if Grand Theft Auto IV was on the Spectrum ZX.
Finally, we saw another behind the scenes look at the making of Xbox Live Arcade beat-em-up Castle Crashers, were pleased to hear that the upcoming Left 4 Dead DLC will be free, coveted Pac-Man ghost lamps that we don't think actually exist, and, as linked before and most wonderfully, revealed that four Giant Robot artists and four indie game all-stars will be creating four new games to be publicly unveiled at a San Francisco exhibition at the end of GDC. 
Today, TeleNav announces the first GPS navigation application for the G1. TeleNav brings their 3D, turn by turn, traffic, speech recognition and other features that make it the premiere on-phone GPS choice to the G1 starting February 24th. T-Mobile G1 users can sign up for a free 30-day trial.
![eee21[1]](http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/eee211.jpg "eee21[1]")
In light of the hubbub surrounding 
Later today at the LA Twiistup event, the makers of Twitter-for-business application 
Consider it a sign of the times when internet company 
If you’re on the Internet for very long, chances are you extensively use or have at least heard a lot about Mozilla’s Firefox browser. It runs on almost every machine possible and Mozilla is expanding its efforts to yet more machines. In its first public pre-alpha release, Fennec, the Windows Mobile version of Firefox is available, for some people at least.
If you’re looking for a greener solution for washing your clothes, or you want to be able to wash them in your home but don’t have a ton of space, there might be a solution out there after all. Enter the
It’s finally happening. You’ll finally be able to buy that crappy movie game at exactly the same time as you buy the movie. Sony announced recently that they’re pushing for (and developers are pushing for as well) movies and games bundled on the same disc. On the surface, this sounds like a good idea, but I’m not so sure.
Facebook strategists clearly see the potential for growth in the mobile sector, seeing as 13% of their users log in from their phones. To some that number would have the appearance of success, but Facebook sees nowhere to go but up.
They've begun talks with 
Facebook strategists clearly see the potential for growth in the mobile sector, seeing as 13% of their users log in from their phones. To some that number would have the appearance of success, but Facebook sees nowhere to go but up.
They've begun talks with 
Doug Aamoth reporting from Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts. Today in the B terminal I saw some good-looking New England Patriots cheerleaders, a good-looking Maria Menounos, and then everything went all haywire when two guys in bumblebee tutus showed up followed by Richard Branson dressed like a patriotic psychiatrist’s wet dream.
Well, well, well. What do we have here? Looks like Sprint just updated their site with the 
This just in from the N.S. Sherlock Institute for the Bleeding Obvious: Palm’s new bet-the-company operating system, webOS, is intended as a replacement for, not an alternative to, its embarrassingly antiquated Palm OS. Speaking at the Thomas Weisel Technology & Telecom Conference today, Palm CEO Ed Colligan said 
