Sun's McNealy Wants Obama to Push Open Source

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix Queuing Added To New York Times Online

If you're a big movie fan and tend to read the reviews of the New York Times, you may have recently seen a different but familiar little 'add' button near the top of the review's summary. The Times has added Netflix's API to their website, which means you can now automatically add the movies you're reading about straight to your rental account's queue.

This is another step in content providers' attempts to better integrate their online services to home hardware and portable web applications.

It's true that this is probably far more valuable tool when you're in transit and reading a review in the city paper than when you're sitting down at your computer after work (there are a couple of good iPhone apps for the Netflix out there as well). But there are other ways the API could improve in-home entertainment, and not just through the specific integration of streaming services we've seen with stand-alone boxes.

The API, which contains the titles of over 100,000 movies, could be better integrated into a TV. It could go way beyond on-screen widgets and actually placed inside a remote control, just like iLuv's music player that lets you physically choose to 'heart up' a favorite song.

All the TV manufacturers (or the cable companies) would have to do is match up the feed of the program on-screen with the API, and you'd be linked to your movie immediately. Kinda like a more impressive, simpler version of Comcast on Demand.

Netflix's open API isn't the only way set-top box providers or movie distributors are putting their imprint on portable devices. Last month, Vudu created an iPhone app that allows customers to remotely order your video box at home to download movies.

Has anyone used the new 'add to queue' button at the Times consistently, or at Rotten Tomatoes? Does it improve your queuing efforts, or no?

Contra remade in LittleBigPlanet is unbelievable

Watch it in HD if you can.

It’s no secret that I love old NES games, and of course Contra is among my favorites. You can imagine my delight, then, on finding that some utterly insane NeoGAF forum members had put together a start-to-finish remake of Contra inside LittleBigPlanet on the PS3. Using the toolset they’ve been able to sort of jury-rig the guns, turrets, bosses, and even the rear-perspective base battles. Hats off, my friends. Hats off.

[via Kotaku]

Who’s on Crack in Tech: 02.27.09

Section: Video, Video Providers, Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile, Computers, Netbooks, Web, Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack

Everything went haywire this week.  From Twitter and GMail going down to some crazy concepts floating around the tubes to more economic woes.  As we careen toward insanity, let me point out the road signs as we go along.  Here are the stops we’ll make today:

• iPhone news seems to make itself
• A far better answer to GMail’s outage
• LG goes both ways
• Netflix love catching on everywhere
• Steve Ballmer, I didn’t give you enough respect

Who is steering iPhone news?

Is anyone else astounded by the iPhone’s grip on our news?  Look at techmeme.com at any given moment and you’ll find a preponderance of stories about the Apple device.  Is that nuts?  Is it crazy that a year and half after introducing the phone, as late as yesterday in Panera people are coming up to me asking me about the iPhone?  Haven’t we had enough?

Apparently not.  With the Pre just a few months away, we’ve got something new to think about: will it be better?  Heck, I’d be happy if something just actually came close.  Appletell’s Jake Gaerke says the iPhone has nothing to worry from the Pre and I disagree.  The Pre’s got the stuff and it is the only “iPhone Killer” I’ve seen.  And I’ve been looking.  Read Jake’s diary entry er, love note, er treatise on Apple need not life a finger then read my piece poking fun of Jake and pointing out that the Pre is something to be reckoned with.  You tell me who is on crack.

GMail goes down ‘cause it is ugly?

Our mighty editor Iyaz nominated me for outing a far more interesting - if not fanciful- explanation for GMail’s outage this week for a a couple of hours.  Sure I said it should be blamed on an ugly color scheme created by one user but in Google’s cowardice they blamed some hapless code monkey.  I like my story far better than the official line.  Good thing there is no drug testing here….

LG sports a strap on

I’ve tried to stay away from this story.  The concept hurts my small brain as I just don’t get it.  Question: where is your bluetooth earpiece right now?  If you are like me, your answer is, “I’ve no frickin’ idea.“  I lose everything.

Now LG and Verizon want me to lose a keyboard for their new Versa phone, as reported by our Shawn Ingram.  The phone looks like your average dumb touchscreen phone but can be detached from the keyboard wallet type case.  The phone has on onscreen keyboard for when you desire a thin offering but for those times when it is ok to be fat (not phat), plug it into the wallet.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.  I can’t imagine someone saying, “this is awesome.“  I dunno, maybe I am not part of their demographic on this, but it just seems like extra fluff.  I liked the idea of dropping a small phone into something like this idea.  I’d still lose all that stuff too though.  Fun fact: that link has the distinction of being the only post that comes up in Gadgetell search if you type pterodactyl.  Sweet.

Netflix: too awesome for its britches?

Iyaz pointed out you can’t get away from Netflix, be it the NY Times or RottenTomatoes or the awesome Now Playing iPhone app.  They are working overtime on embedding themselves in everything.  And it is working.

I am totally hooked on instant watching via my TiVo HD.  This month, I’ve watched more movies instantly than via mail.  That is a good thing for Netflix (less overhead) and now Vince Pane tells us they plan to capitalize on it by offering streaming only plans.  Fantastic idea! 

Originally, I was worried Netflix was giving too much away by offering the instant view for free.  After all, I’d pay something additional for the service on top of my DVDs through the mail.  They’ve carefully built a fire, thoughtfully laid out the kindling, and now they are moving into thowing some logs on with the stream-only plan.  Good for them.

Now just add more movies and on-screen navigation vs. only going through movies I’ve already added to my instant queue and this thing comes off the rails.  Can you root too hard for this company?  I think I am in love.

Señor Ballmer, good call.

This week, Jodie told us about Mr. Ballmer talking about seeing Google as a threat on netbooks.  Smart move.  If Android is a their sneaky way to creep into computing devices, then well played Google.  It makes some sense and being free, has some power behind it.

I’ve been saying for a while, Microsoft should have jumped in front of this netbook crazy with a new brand of OS specifically for the platform rather than just merely agreeing to extend XP’s life.  Mentioning Android by name in public is an interesting move.  Ballmer mentioned Apple as a player too, but Apple’s said, “we are just watching” for some time now and may have missed the peak in this tiny offerings.

Perhaps Microsoft is off the rock.  What’s that, Windows Mobile 6.5 still isn’t here, oh, nevermind.

See you next week, crack heads.

Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Idiot: World of Warcraft Is the “Crack Cocaine of the Computer Game World” [Digital Daily]

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than one to two hours of online gaming per day, so warnings that obsessive gaming might be detrimental to one’s health are not without some merit (it’s sunlight, not display light that’s been shown to increase melatonin and serotonin levels). But the suggestion that World of Warcraft is the cocaine of the gaming world and its players by extension, a legion of slathering crackheads, well, that’s going a bit far, isn’t it?

Not according to Sweden’s Youth Care Foundation, which has just finished a report that pegs WoW as the single most dangerous game on the market and the one with the highest risk of addiction. “There is not a single case of game addiction that we have worked with in which World of Warcraft has not played a part,” hyperbolized the report’s author, Sven Rollenhagen. “It is the crack cocaine of the computer game world. Some will play it till they drop.”

And indeed, some will. Last year, a 15-year-old Swedish boy did just that after a 20-hour marathon. But it seems a bit heavy handed to tar WoW for the incident. It’s not as if the boy suffered a temporary state of full-blown paranoid psychosis or ended up in a red-light district tricking for game time. He passed out. Had his dealersparents stepped in, the incident might never have occurred. WoW does offer a pretty robust set of parental controls.

Y Combinator’s FathomDB Takes The Hassle Out Of Managing Your Database

Our Cloud Computing Roundtable just saw the launch of FathomDB, a new Y Combinator startup that offers database administration as a service. The startup manages many of the tasks that database administrators typically have to deal with, like database backups, monitoring, and launching replacement servers in the event of a crash. The service is primarily operating with MySQL databases hosted on Amazon’s EC2, but will expand to support other cloud-based computing services as they become available. And because it uses industry-standard systems, developers won’t have to modify their code to make it work with FathomDB, and they aren’t locked into the service.

Aside from routine maintenance tasks, FathomDB also offers an array of analytics tools that help developers track the status of their servers and identify where their performance bottlenecks are. CEO Justin Santa Barbara says that the system isn’t necessarily meant to actually replace database administrators, but instead to take care of low-level tasks so that they can focus on more complex and important issues.

Final pricing for the service is still being determined, but the company plans to charge a small (~10-20%) markup over standard EC2 prices.

Disclosure: FathomDB is a sponsor for today’s Roundtable event.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

BlackBerry Niagara specs, model number revealed

Mitter: Friendfeed For Online Videos (And Other Media)

Sometimes it’s hard to remember which video you have seen, left a comment on, rated, or who recommended it to you. And it’s getting harder to cut the noise in the heavily crowded online video space (YouTube users alone are uploading 15 hours of new content every 60 seconds). This is where Mitter, a service provided by Tokyo-based Metacast comes in (the site is available in English).

Mitter wants to do for video what recently introduced Dutch startup Twones does for music. The service tracks viewing patterns over multiple video services and generates a social feed based on that information. And much like Twones, Mitter doesn’t make much sense without installing an add-on for Firefox or the Internet Explorer (there is also a browser-independent bookmarklet available). To date, the Mitter toolbar has been distributed 1.5 million times. It’s now being actively used by more than 150,000 people, mostly in Japan.

Mitter is all about aggregating metadata of online videos and using the information to let users socialize around it. Once the tracker is installed, you will see a Mitter button next to every video accessed on 14 different sites like YouTube, Veoh, Seesmic etc. After pressing the button, you can tag, rate and comment on the video (the service calls this activity “mittering”), which will be then added to your history on the website (this happens even if you don’t mitter the video). In addition, the activity can be posted to Twitter and several Japanese blogging platforms.

Your history can be set to private or shared with friends. Other users with a similar taste can follow you, receive updates on your video viewing log and possibly find new content that’s of interest to them (Mitter->Twitter, get it?). It’s also possible to join discussion groups, view rankings of popular videos and dig up videos that are similar to the listed one (and share the relevant video, too).

Mitter does fill a gap in the rapidly growing web video space but there are some drawbacks. Even though the site wants to let you share “experiences” (and not necessarily the videos themselves), it would make a lot more sense if users didn’t need to navigate away to watch videos. The English version still lacks Non-Japanese members who may find it hard to connect to the Japanese usership (and its taste) and there are hardly any comments or tags in English to be found at this point. This can obviously only be overcome through increased participation of Non-Japanese users.

CEO Kengo Ito says in its current form, Mitter is just covering a snippet of one’s life log. The company’s ultimate goal is to build a “social lifestreaming service” that automatically keeps track of a person’s complete online media consumption behavior. Think FriendFeed for media.

This is a big plan and just yesterday, Mitter broke out of the video geek community by following what you watch on TV (Japanese only for the time being). Music, movies, video games and other media will be added to user feeds in the near future.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

8 Little Things We Still Can’t Stand About the iPhone

The iPhone is like the bacon-wrapped scallop of the mobile world. Both are quite visually pleasing relative to their peers, easy to use, and generally liked by the masses. Spend a little too much time with either, however, and you start to see the flaws. With the scallops, the grease and animal fat that was oh-so delicious on the way down begins to clog your arteries and slow your saunter. With the iPhone, the interface that seemed oh-so-polished when it first met your fingertips begins to show signs of oversight and imperfection.

We’ve been using the iPhone for just a few months shy of two years now, and a few things that once seemed trivial have come to drive us up the wall. You’ll find no mention of the glaring faults (The lack of MMS, Copy and Paste, etc) in this list - we’re talking about the stuff that we just can’t believe made it through Apple’s user experience team.

Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch >>

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

BlackBerry Niagara is really the 9630, still coming to Verizon

BG just dropped a bomb about the 8230 that’s actually the 9630, but has the codename Niagara. It’s still going to be a World Edition, which means it will support CDMA 1x, EV-DO Rev. A, GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS. No Wi-Fi, but that’s what you should expect from Verizon by now. The 9630 may or may not have a camera, but if it does it’ll be a 3.2-megapixel shooter. And the browser will support JavaScript 1.6. There’s no launch date, but BG thinks May or June.

via BG

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Diomede Offers Green File Storage In The Cloud For A Fraction Of The Cost

At today’s TechCrunch Cloud Computing Roundtable event, a new storage company called Diomede launched in private beta with the goal of offering low cost cloud-based storage that is also very energy efficient. The basic premise behind the service is that not all data in the cloud needs to be immediately available, but that most people still pay for the immediate access anyway. While most data centers have their servers and disk drives operating 24/7 with near-immediate access, Diomede allows customers to designate files that they don’t need instant access to, and places them either as ‘nearline’ or ‘offline’. These files have an access time of five minutes or four hours, respectively, but cost only 1/12 as much as standard cloud providers to store and take as little as 1/60th the amount of energy. If you’d like to try it out, go to this page and enter the invite code ‘tcrunch’.

The service offers a full API to developers, and also allows them to view metrics like the power consumption of each individual file. Possible applications include allowing developers to set their redundant file backups (which rarely need to be quickly accessed) to ‘offline’, where they can be stored at only a fraction of the normal cost.

Deomede is the latest venture from Steve Iverson, who was CEO of MediaMax, a file storage company with a tumultuous history that closed its doors last year. While the company had its issues, it’s unclear if they can be attributed to Iverson or were primarily related to engineering blunders and investors.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Acer “Hornet”: Wii-like PC game platform

I’d be skeptical of this Wii knockoff by a reputable hardware company, except that Asus has already gone down this road, so why not Acer? The Hornet, as reported on this Turkish site, appears to be an Atom-powered supercompact nettop meant to be clippped to the back of your monitor or HDTV, and has what appears to be a camera on the top corner. The camera will, I’m assuming, track the motion of your little Acer Wiimote and let you “enjoy in various kinds of PC games!”

Now, the English is broken and there are really only a couple shots of the thing itself, so it’s probably the case that this is just a concept being pitched right now. It wouldn’t be much of a gaming machine, but with all the casual games available for the PC, this isn’t that ridiculous of an idea. No release date obviously, although the price is estimated at “couple hundreds dollars.”

[via The Inquirer]

CBS Makes Television Shows Available on iPhone (NewsFactor)

Egypt: Land of Pyramids, the Sphinx…and Outsourcing? [Voices]

India’s tech boom has inspired other developing nations to promote themselves as outsourcing destinations. The latest to try to cash in: Egypt.

Egypt seems like an unlikely place for Western companies to send tech work and open call centers, but Tarek El-Sadany, a government official in charge of helping to grow the country’s information-technology industry, says that the country is well positioned to do these tasks–literally. Egypt is only two hours off of Greenwich Mean Time, so daytime there corresponds nicely with the European workday. For U.S. companies committed to outsourcing, Egypt can be a hop between the U.S. and India.

Another benefit, according to El-Sadany, is that the weekend in Egypt is observed on Thursday and Friday. People typically work on Saturday and Sunday so companies won’t have to pay extra for those shifts–or get stuck with second-class workers–as they might in other countries.

Read the rest of this post

Viagra orgy leads to man's death

SureWest Communications Completes Sale of Wireless Towers to Global Tower Partners

Eggstra! Eggstra! read all about it!

Some women are getting creative trying to make some quick cash in these troubled times: they’re trying to sell their eggs to fertility clinics. Inquiries to one fertility clinic in Illinois, for example, were up 40% in 2008. It sure beats stripping, but according to one clinic only 5-7% of potential egg donors are actually accepted. Egg donations may seem like an easy way to make big bucks, but actual payouts are often far less than the rumored $10,000, averaging $4,200 nationwide. Plus you need to go through a full background check, as well as medical, psychological and genetic tests.

Guys can still make a quick $60 for a visit to the local sperm bank, but surprisingly reports indicate no significant increase in donations.

Via Reuters.

CO2 linked to prehistoric global cooling

Appeals Court Allows Classified Evidence in Spy Case

Free Music Friday: Iggy Pop, Spindrift, Monument to Masses, More

Deutsche Telekom: Filing of the 2008 Annual Report on Form 20-F

Breitling announces new Navitimer 125e Anniversaire

Breitling announced their latest model today, the Navitimer 125e Anniversaire. Using their Breitling 26 movement, the 125e is a self winding chronograph featuring a steel case, sapphire crystal, and is available in either a black or Panamerican bronze dial. It’s average sized at 43mm, but what really stands out is the unique band. It’s rigid, and features a perforated band which is intended as a tribute to 1960’s design. Sounds a bit uncomfortable to me.

Limited to a run of 2,009 pieces, this watch is released in celebration of Breitling’s 125 year history.

No information on pricing or availablility yet, but if you have to ask…

Ryanair Pay-to-Pee Proposal P.O.'s Patrons

SLIDE SHOW: The Week's Top Stories

Alaska Becomes Latest Airline With Wi-Fi (PC World)

Greenpeace Claims Luxury Toilet Paper Bad For Environment

/C O R R E C T I O N -- Verizon Wireless/

Sidekicks might top a dubious category: theft (AP)

AP - Nisha Taylor was just about to put her beloved T-Mobile Sidekick in her bag. She thought the cell phone would be safer there than in her pocket. In the few seconds it took for the 18-year-old to unwind the string loop that held the Sidekick to her wrist, someone else eyed the device and made off with it.

Gigamon Awarded Three U.S. Patents for Its Data Access Switching Technology

Newsday might end free Web access for some (AP)

EASEUS Data Recovery Software Helps to Restore Precious Memories

More unsold inventory piling up: Toyota stores unsold cars aboard ship

A Toyota press spokesperson downplayed the news, saying it's merely an "emergency."

Toyota stores unsold cars aboard ship (Thanks, George Dyson!)


Source: Boing Boing | 27 Feb 2009 | 9:05 pm

En Pointe Technologies, Inc. Replies to Nasdaq Concerning Compliance With Annual Assessment of Internal Controls

EU: Final Chance To Fight Global Warming

Startup Launch: Buzzable Creates Twitter Groups Around RSS Feeds (500 Invites)

One of the most requested features for Twitter is the ability to create groups. While users wait (and wait and wait) for Twitter to add this feature, a number of startups are going ahead and showing how it should be done. The latest of these is a LaunchBox Digital startup called Buzzable which just launched today. Buzzable lets you create Twitter groups around RSS feeds, and does so in a very compelling way.

Right now anyone can browse public groups, but you need an invite code to create a new group. Anyone with a twitter account, however, can join a public group and post a message. We have 500 invites. Just use the promo code: techcrunch.

You sign in using your Twitter ID, which lets you join and create both public and private groups centered around different topics. Some of the public groups right now include Android, Kindle, the New York Knicks, and the White House. There is even one for TechCrunch.

Groups are built around RSS feeds. So the TechCrunch group is simply our feed. But you can set up topic-specific groups which pull from a number of feeds, including Google News, Eventful, Digg, Yahoo Finance, Twitter itself, blogs, and so on. You can set it up so that the feeds are filtered by keyword (such as “Android,” Kindle,” “Knicks,” etc.). Members of the group can then discuss any headline by commenting in-line. Each comment can be pushed out to Twitter proper as well. Both RSS headlines and comments can be “Buzzed” up by popular vote. The result is a combination of RSS content and Twitter conversation, all in the same stream.

By priming the pump with the RSS streams, Buzzable hopes to stimulate conversation, even among people who don’t normally Twitter twenty times a day without prompting. In addition to micro-messages, images and YouTube videos can be added to each comment. And since Buzzable uses your Twitter ID, every time you create a group, it asks you if you want to invite all of your Twitter followers. Every Buzzable member can also be followed on Twitter simply by clicking a follow button on their Buzzable profile. Buzzable groups can also be republished as their own Twitter account. In these ways, Buzzable tries to take advantage of the viral nature of Twitter itself to create as many entry points as possible for new users. Each group can also be republished as a separate RSS feed or as an embeddable widget (see below)

Buzzable’s co-founders are Satjot Sawhney and Ashish Kundra. The company was part of LaunchBox Digital’s 2008 summer incubator program. LaunchBox founder John McKinley is chairman and the lead investor. Check out the demo video below:

Buzzable Demo: Creating a Group from Satjot Singh Sawhney on Vimeo.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Vshield Software (VSHE) in merger talks with UK medical co-insurer

Elecsys Corporation to List Stock on the NASDAQ Stock Market

Vista Capable Plaintiffs Seek Express Class-Action Upgrade [Digital Daily]

If you thought the Vista Capable lawsuit was all but over with its recent decertification as a class action, think again. The plaintiffs in the suit against Microsoft have narrowed its scope a bit and are asking a federal judge to reinstate its class-action status. The suit originally applied to all buyers of so-called “Windows Vista Capable” machines. Now, it applies only to those who purchased Windows Vista Capable PCs in Microsoft’s Express Upgrade Guarantee program. “Plaintiffs believe that the analysis as to these narrowed classes, and specifically to the proposed proof of proximate cause, is materially different from the analysis that pertained to the larger class and is consistent with the court’s prior rulings on class-certification issues,” the plaintiffs wrote in a motion requesting certification of a smaller class.

With potentially millions of dollars in compensatory damages at stake here, there’s no way Microsoft (MSFT) will allow the motion to go unchallenged.

The trial is currently set to begin April 13, unless the plaintiffs succeed in having it postponed.

Herpes Virus Attacks Asian Elephants In US Zoos

Live Stream: TechCrunch Cloud Computing Roundtable

Here’s the live stream of our Cloud Computing Roundtable, which kicks off at 2:30 PST with product demos from a handful of early-stage cloud-focused start-ups, with commentary from a panel of experts. Shortly thereafter our roundtable discussion will bring together a dozen panelists from some of Silicon Valley’s most acclaimed companies who will discuss the future of cloud-based services. Thank you to Sun Microsystems for sponsoring the roundtable stream (powered by ustream and camera work by FutureWorks.)

Twitter Hash Tag: #tccloud

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Cosmo Publisher Plans an E-Reader of Its Own

Cosmo Publisher Plans an E-Reader of Its Own

Media giant Hearst has a bailout plan for its newspapers and magazines business: Get into the e-ink business.

Hearst, the publisher of Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and the struggling San Francisco Chronicle, plans to launch a wireless e-reader this year. The device will be similar to the Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader, although it will have a larger screen to facilitate reading magazine or newspaper content, according to comments from an interview with Hearst Interactive honcho Kenneth Bronfin. Hearst will also allow other publishers to adapt the device's underlying technology, Bronfin shared in an upcoming issue of Fortune magazine.

Ambitious it may be, but Hearst is battling big odds, says Forrester analyst James McQuivey. "My basic assessment of their chances is not good," he says. "Hearst doesn't have the tech credibility or relationships to make this a successful venture."

Mounting losses and declining advertising and subscription revenue threaten the survival of newspapers, and to a lesser extent magazines, nationwide. Colorado's oldest newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, published its final edition Friday. Meanwhile, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Chronicle, both Hearst-owned newspapers, face threats of closure.

Hearst is betting an e-reader could help turn the tide. The company, however, offered few details on its plans. "Hearst Corporation is keenly interested in e-reading and expects that new devices and media platforms will be a big part of its future," a company representative said in a one-line statement to Wired.com.

The e-reader market has taken off in a big way in the last two years. Amazon launched the first Kindle in 2007 for $400 with a 6-inch screen and wireless internet connectivity. A second iteration, the Kindle 2, made its debut this month; it's a slimmer, sleeker device with better battery life. Amazon rival Sony also makes a e-book reader that is available in a touchscreen version.

Hearst Interactive's Bronfin already sits on the board of directors for E Ink, the company whose screens power both the Kindle and Sony Reader. That means an E Ink screen is a near certainty for the Hearst e-reader. However, if Hearst plans to launch an e-reader this year it is likely the screen will be black and white, rather than color.

The newspaper industry has experimented with a digital reader before. In 2000, some newspapers and magazines (including Wired) gave away a cat-shaped barcode scanner called the CueCat to readers. Readers could scan the barcodes from ads in the newspaper and magazine pages using the CueCat and the device would take them to the webpage for the product without having to type the URL. The CueCat was a commercial disaster.

Hearst is hoping its e-reader will meet a different fate. But McQuivey states that a device that debuts with a black and white screen would be a deal killer for many of the company's subscribers.

"Periodicals are just not effective in black and white," McQuivey says. "People who buy Esquire or Harper's Bazaar buy them because they want to see the magazine in color."

Instead, Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader -- despite their monochrome screens -- are likely to have a better shot at success, says McQuivey. "Amazon has a very successful relationship with readers and publishers and they can probably capitalize on it better," he says. Hearst could probably be better off partnering with them instead of launching its own gadget, he suggests.

For Hearst, here's one way to think about the problem. Can the company convince nail salons, probably the biggest subscribers to its Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire magazines, to buy e-readers instead of print subscriptions?

Also see:
Amazon Kindle 2 Review
Amazon Set to ReKindle its E-Book Reader

Photo: Amazon Kindle 2(Jon Snyder/Wired.com)

Cosmo Publisher Plans an E-Reader of Its Own

Shake-up at Sony [Digital Daily]

Bodies Exhibition Under Scrutiny In Poland

Novatel: JMP Advises Getting Out; Kindle Is Not Enough [Voices]

Novatel (NVTL) shares are down hard this morning after JMP Securities analyst Samuel Wilson downgraded the stock to Market Underperform from Market Perform.

For the year through yesterday, Novatel shares had rallied 34.7 percent; Wilson notes that the wireless networking equipment company has gotten a boost from its role providing components to the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle 2 e-book reader. But Wilson says the Kindle 2 will contribute at most $10 million a quarter to Novatel’s revenue, “not enough to fill the hole left by the drop in demand in the PC and USB adapter business.” Novatel declined to talk about the Kindle on its post-earnings conference call last night, but did say that Foxconn, which manufactures the Kindle, was a 10 percent customer in Q4.

After the close yesterday, Novatel reported Q4 revenue of $65.1 million, slightly above the Street at $64.9 million, but down from $118 million a year ago. The company posted a non-GAAP loss of six cents a share, a penny worse than expected.

Read the rest of this post

Lieberman Asks, Why Are Court Docs Behind Paid Firewall?

Oracle to Release Major Enterprise Manager Upgrade (PC World)

Q&A: Google's Vint Cerf on Innovation During Hard Times

Video: Artist Dave Gibbons on the Secrets of Comic Art

Iceland Stands Firm Over Controversial Whaling Decision

Octopus removes valve, floods floor of Santa Monica Pier Aquarium

The guest of honor in the aquarium's Kids' Corner octopus tank had swum to the top of the enclosure and disassembled the recycling system's valve, flooding the place with some 200 gallons of seawater.

"It had grabbed the tube that pulls out the water and caused it to spray outside the tank," said aquarium education specialist Nick Fash. Judging by the size of the flood, Fash estimated that the water flowed for about 10 hours before the first staff member, Aaron Kind, showed up for work.

Spore opens its API

Greenland Warming Lags, But Bound to Catch Up

Hearst to launch own ebook reader

Hearst, owner of dying medium, is to release an ebook reader in the same vein as the Kindle and Sony Reader. [Forbes]

Uh-oh: A ton of Nokia 5800 XpressMusics are going to break [Updated]

You remember those 1 million 5800 XpressMusic handsets that Nokia proudly announced they’d shipped back in January? Yeah, most of those are probably going to break.

After getting wind that something was spotty in the 5800, Mobile Review plunked down nearly 5 grand for 10 handsets. Out of those 10, every single handset had faulty speakers - they’d work fine at first, but eventually fizzle down to a worthless state within a few weeks. For a handset sold for its music capabilities, that’s not exactly a good thing.

We’ve seen how Nokia tests their handsets, so we’re a bit surprised. I guess you can hit things with a hammer and throw it back and forth between sub-zero and near melting temperatures, and nasty issues can still sneak in.

The issue here originated on the speaker supplier’s end, and has since been resolved - in late January. We’re not sure what this means for the North American 5800 that is just hitting the shelves at the flagship shelves this week - we’ve got a note in to Nokia about it, and we’ll update this story when we hear back.

Nokia has acknowledged the problem - the response of Vitoria Eremena, Nokia’s Head of PR for Eurasia, follows below:

The problematic speakers were replaced with speakers from another supplier, both in production and warehouses. I’d like to emphasize that we have replaced not only the speakers but also their supplier, i.e. at the moment we use speakers from the new supplier at our manufacturing plants, as well as in our service centers. It is very easy to confirm this, because the new speakers are visually different (see the picture above.)

Service centers started receiving the new speakers during the last decade of January, so all users who replaced the speakers since then shouldn’t face this problem.

It should be also noted that Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is one of our focus products, so its sales were watched carefully by our R&D department from the beginning; and, as soon as we heard about this matter, an R&D rep was dispatched to Russia to work on the problem on site.

The secondary replacement issues reported by Mobile-Review were related to the first phones and, at that moment, there was no solution to the problem, so the defective speakers were replaced with speakers from the same (at that time) supplier. When the problem was studied more carefully and it became clear that the new speakers (from the same supplier) do not solve the problem, the supplier was changed, the plants started putting new speakers in, and service centers started getting speakers from the new supplier too. I can not name the supplier of the defective speakers, but it is a very respected company with a world-known name, whose quality of products nobody doubted. But, unfortunately, these things happen, most likely, to everyone.

It should be emphasized that, for these kinds of quantities, and for a global company like Nokia, to solve a problem within a month is a very short time. Sure, a record number of devices were sold during December, and fewer buyers would have been faced with this problem if the sales had been lower. But please believe me, we have been seriously working on the speaker quality problem and we think that, for the moment, the problem is solved.

So, the 5800 XpressMusic can now be bought without any fears. And if you had to replace your speakers, from the end of January – everything should be all right; if you bought the phone earlier and you have problems, now they can truly be solved in service centers by replacing the speakers.

Update: We contacted Nokia for some insight on whether the problem plagues the North American models - and it looks like the answer is.. maybe? Response below:

Some Nokia 5800 XpressMusic customers have reported an audio performance issue. This issue appears to be a hardware issue impacting a limited number of units. Customer satisfaction and product quality are very important to Nokia and we take all quality and customer satisfaction-related issues seriously. Nokia has investigated the issue and is working on a hardware fix.

This issue appears to be a hardware issue impacting a limited number of units. I cannot speculate as to where the affected units may be but can say that existing customers of the 5800 XpressMusic who experience an audio performance issue with the device are advised to contact Nokia Customer Care.

[Via Unwired View]

Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies

Yahoo, Sony Shake It Up; Facebook Makes Nice (PC World)

Will the Future of the Web Be More Like the Present?

When I was a kid one of my favorite parts of Disney World was Tomorrowland’s Carousel of Progress. It was steeped in 1950’s futurism: Why, of course! Every family will have their own electric paint mixer in the future! And I only wish I’d been old enough to see this gem before it was torn down and replaced with a souvenir stand: The Monsanto House of the Future, a house built entirely of plastic.

Disney likes to talk up inventions the house featured that wound up becoming commonplace, like the microwave oven. What it leaves out are all the ones that never did. You know, the type of things we saw on the Jetsons: flying cars, our food in pill form, robot butlers and maids. Sadly, as it turns out the “future” looked a lot like the past, just more streamlined. Had Tomorrowland stayed in tact, it would have looked more like the Tomorrow-that-never-happened-land.

I’ve been thinking about Tomorrowland for about three days. It started when I read Farhad Manjoo’s excellent piece on Slate about the “Jurassic Web.” He painted a picture of what the Web was like in 1996. It was mostly a place you went and then thought, “OK, I’m here. Now what?” He reminded us of the sheer wonder the first time you could search on Amazon by author or browse through Yahoo’s hand built “directory” of Web pages.

The note Manjoo struck at the end of the piece was pure Silicon Valley: If all this happened in just 13 years, what will the next decade of the Internet hold? Will we look back on YouTube, Facebook, Hulu and iTunes as primitive?

This is where Tomorrowland and the Jetsons come in. There seems to be a pattern of diminishing innovation the longer a new technology is on the market. The early years—even decades— of, say, the plane, the car, the telephone, television, computers all saw rapid innovation, such rapid innovation that people would look back with the same kind of wonder that we do thinking of the Jurassic Web. “Can you believe you used to have to crank a car engine?” “What do you mean TV was only in black and white?”

But at some point, the innovation gets more evolutionary than revolutionary. Sure there are advancements in digital filmmaking and editing equipment but has anything in movies yet transformed the medium as much as the change from silent pictures to talkies? At some point, the technology stays the same while the cultural importance of it, or the way it is used is what changes. Put another way, the technology that was used to film a movie like “Deep Throat” wasn’t what changed society and the industry, it was the content of the movie itself.

I know it’s heresy to write this on a site that entrepreneurs and technologists read: But what if the bulk of technology innovation on the Internet is, well, done?

Already, if you think about Web 2.0, the successful companies are building off the technology that was pioneered before—whether it’s the browser, broadband, or the open source stack. Sites like YouTube and Twitter may be technically hard to scale, but are they really technical leaps in innovation, or more of a creative, cultural leap in how existing technology is being used? 

Of course, the Internet is still very young. It certainly took technologies like the mobile phone more than 13 years to go from that embarrassing brick that took up half of a briefcase to the iPhone. Some could argue the mobile phone is still ripe for as much game changing innovation, as new models like the Palm Pre promise to integrate the browser experience throughout the user interface. Is it simply too early in the Internet’s lifecycle to even raise the question of whether Internet innovation has peaked?

As someone who writes about the Web for a living, I certainly hope so. But then again, everything has happened faster on the Web. No other technology has been so rapidly adopted by such a large number of people. Is it possible this is it? 

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

CDMA-flavored BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230 clears the FCC

We still think the Pearl Flip is the ugliest phone to ever rear its head from Waterloo - but it’s a butt-dial-free BlackBerry, and that’s worth something, we suppose. When the CDMA variant made its way to the FCC’s testing dungeons, they were able to look past the Pearl Flip’s unsightly hinge and remember that it’s what’s inside that counts - and what’s inside passed their tests without a hitch.

This is where I’d normally end the post with some riveting cliffhanger debating whether the CDMA Pearl Flip was going to Sprint or Verizon - but previously leaked images of the handset sporting a Verizon badge sort of takes the fun out of that last bit. Oh well.

Will Sprint also get the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230? Will their be multiple color schemes? Tune in next time for this exciting conclusion OF: uh.. the.. cell phone.. show?

[Via EngadgetMobile]

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Dell's Inspiron Netbook Is $200 Today Only

Netbooks are getting so cheap you'll start to feel like you're losing money by not buying one. A good example is Dell's Inspiron Mini 9, which is $200 today only.

The specs:

• Display: 8.9-inches, 1,024-by-600 pixels
• Processor: 1.6 GHz Intel Atom
• RAM: 512MB
• Storage: 4GB solid state drive
• Battery: 4-cell
• Operating System: Ubuntu Linux 8.04.1

Sometimes hard times ain't so bad, huh? According to Technabob, the deal is expiring 11:59 p.m. central time.

Product Page [Dell via Liliputing]

Photo: Saravanan07/Flickr

Mufin Incorporates Powerful Recommendation Engine Into New Native Music Player

Mufin, an automated music recommendation engine that actually works (most of the time), has released a new native media player in public beta. The player includes a powerful recommendation engine based on technology developed at the Fraunhofer Institute, allowing users to quickly generate playlists similar to any song they have in their library. The player is for Windows only at the moment, but Mac users can still try out the recommendation technology at Mufin.com, which launched to the public in November. You can see a full list of the new player’s features here

Mufin’s core technology is based on finding recommendations based on knowing a few songs that you like. Unlike Apple’s Genius feature, which creates recommendations based on aggregate data compiled from user listening habits, Mufin actually analyzes the sound file itself, ‘listening’ to 40 audio characteristics as it tries to recommend similar songs. In my testing the service has usually worked surprisingly well, though there are sometimes a few bizarre results. Oftentimes these apparent errors actually do share characteristics with the original song I used to gather recommendations, but they are very obscure and sometimes in a completely different genre (which is both the blessing and the curse of using such audio-based recommendation engines).

Mufin’s new player incorporates this recommendation technology, alongside a standard set of features that you’d expect from a modern audio player. Beyond creating the recommended song playlists, Mufin’s Player also brings a new twist to music management by allowing users to sort their songs by the way they sound (versus by song title or artist name). But aside from that I’m not sure if there’s a compelling reason to use it over iTunes at this point, especially since you can download a Mufin plugin to integrate the site’s audio recommendations into Apple’s music player (though the plugin is limited to creating playlists, and doesn’t allow users to sort by sound).

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Your horses? Hold them. NAM Nokia 5800s not for sale afterall [UPDATED]

If you packed your picnic basket, loaded the family into the car, and hauled over to the Nokia flagship store yesterday as a result of our post yesterday on the Nokia 5800 going on sale, we officially apologize. Chances are, you were turned away. As of this morning, Nokia 5800s aren’t actually on the shelves; they have them in stock, mind you - they just can’t sell them yet.

Update: Nokia has issued a press release indicating that the 5800 is indeed on the shelves and for sale now. We’re still looking into whether or not the North American 5800 has that nasty speaker issue. Full release after the jump.

Their inventory system apparently isn’t playing too nice with the new addition and, seeing as pens, pads of paper, and calculators are banned from Nokia stores, they’re unable to sell the units until they get things patched up. If you’re on the edge of your seat, keep checking back - we’ll update you as soon as we hear they’re letting them out the door.

[Via BoyGeniusReport]

Update: Here’s the press release, indicating things have been fixed.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Hits Shelves in the United States

Ever-Popular Device Now Available Optimized for North American Market

WHITE PLAINS, New York, February 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Nokia (NYSE: NOK) announced today that the highly anticipated Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is now available in the United States. The latest in Nokia’s XpressMusic range, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic delivers an affordable music device with a touch screen interface to the mass market.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic offers all the music essentials including a graphic equalizer, 8GB memory for up to 6000 tracks and support for all main digital music formats, and a 3.5mm jack. Built-in surround sound stereo speakers offer a powerful sound.

“When it comes to music phones, people all over the world want a device that is a great music experience and still works really well as a mobile phone, without sacrificing features,” said Ian Laing, Vice President, North America Sales, Nokia. “The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic delivers on this and has clearly proven to be a device that consumers are clamoring for - selling more than one million worldwide since its introduction a few months ago.”

Making the most of touch screen technology, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic delivers easy and fast access to all music, video and photos through a one-touch ‘Media Bar’ drop down menu. The Media Bar also offers a direct link to the Web and to online sharing. Because the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic supports Flash content, individuals can surf even more of the web.

The innovative ‘Contacts Bar’ lets people highlight four favorite contacts on their home-screen and, through a single touch, track a digital history of recent text messages, emails, phone logs, photos and blog updates.

Among the highest screen resolution available on a mobile phone, the 3.2″ widescreen display brings photos, video clips and web content to life in vibrant color and true clarity. With a 16 by 9 aspect ratio and 30 frames-per-second playback and recording, the device is ideal for VGA quality video recording and playback. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic also features a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens. With a single touch, images or videos can be shared via a favorite online community, such as Ovi Share, Flickr, or Facebook.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic offers a variety of input methods including a virtual alphanumeric keypad, a virtual computer-style QWERTY keyboard, a pen stylus — and for true music enthusiasts, you can even use a guitar pick.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will be available for approximately 399 USD before taxes and subsidies in the U.S. through Nokia Flagship stores in New York and Chicago, nokiausa.com and independent retailers and e-tailers. For a limited time, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will also come with a 50 USD voucher for Amazon Video on Demand which allows you to download thousands of movies or TV titles as well as one month of free turn-by-turn voice guided navigation through Ovi Maps.

* Capacity based on 3 minutes, 45 seconds per song with 48 Kbps eAAC+ (M4A) encoding on the Nokia Music Manager.

Photos of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic are available at http://www.nokia.com/press

About Nokia

Nokia is the world leader in mobility, driving the transformation and growth of the converging Internet and communications industries. We make a wide range of mobile devices with services and software that enable people to experience music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games, business mobility and more. Developing and growing our offering of consumer Internet services, as well as our enterprise solutions and software, is a key area of focus. We also provide equipment, solutions and services for communications networks through Nokia Siemens Networks.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Gary Vay•ner•chuk Expands His Web Video Empire With Obsessed TV

Gary Vaynerchuk is going after the Oprah set. The wine wholesaler who launched a career as a Web video celebrity talking about wine and marketing just launched Obsessed, a new video talk show hosted by Samantha Ettus. With Obsessed, Vaynerchuk hopes to move beyond niche programming on the Web to appeal to a mainstream audience.

The format of the show is an in-depth 30 to 40 minute interview with guests that appeal to 25 to 55-year-old women. The first interviews on the site right now are with food writer Mark Bittman and floral designer Preston Bailey. Future guests will include Today Show travel editor Peter Greenberg, TreeHugger founder Graham Hill, and BlogHer founder Liz Stone. (They are working on some bigger names as well).

Ettus will host the show and be the main star, while Vaynerchuk will come on at the end for 3 minutes to talk about wine, which is his thing. He is the host of Wine Library TV and also serves up regular videos on gary vay•ner•chuk, mostly about marketing. “There is only so much content I can pump out,” Vaynerchuk say. “I need to own as many media properties as possible.”

Vaynerchuk and Ettus are co-producers of the new show. Each owns half of Obsessed TV, the production company behind the endeavor. Vaynerchuk’s other projects include a T-shirt search engine and Corkd, a wine rating site he promises to pay more attention to this year.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Review: Nokia N85

Somewhere out there there is someone lusting after the N85. For some reason the rest of the world loves these lumpen little phones. Perhaps the Nokia N-series calls up memories of the old phones that we once clung to in the dark ages of cellular communication. The Nokia is the ur-phone, the manufacturer of dreams, the Campbellian original Hero With a Thousand Faces. It can do anything, given enough care and attention.

We at CG love Nokia, we support them, but that love is scarcely returned when they release phones like the N85 onto an unsuspecting populace.

First, I’d like to offer a reasoned commentary on my personal anger towards the Nokia N-Series line to head off those who might find me biased. The N-Series line is a smartphone line for the 20th century. When they hit the scene in about 2005, in the form of very powerful offerings including the N70, the N90, and the N91, I was very excited. “N-Series” meant smartphones with Symbian that could basically run anything you wanted and were compact and amazingly powerful. The series, sadly, faltered in the US due to carrier disconnects - figurative and literal - and an inability to sell phone one in the US. They gave up and began selling the phones in flagship shops and this, for a time, seemed to work.

Why is the N-Series popular? Because it is the standard smartphone in Europe, much as the Blackberry is the standard smartphone in the United States. They’re unlocked world phones with enough processing power to run a few apps and send an email or two. Not much else. Full stop.

I also look forward to seeing the N97 - a keyboard would make most of my concerns evaporate - but I’m still against Symbian on principle as an unusable operating system long past it’s prime. And the N-Series is riding the Symbian train until the end of time. Say what you want, but my biggest issue with this phone is Symbian and I will come from that single point and move from there. Note: I also really loved the E71 because it was a smartphone that made sense. If you are from Europe or you really like T9 typing, do yourself a favor and stop reading.

So: the N85. It comes with an 8 gigabyte memory card, it has music control buttons, and a numeric keypad. It has a 369 MHz ARM processor. It also has WiFi and Bluetooth. It has a 5-megapixel camera. It’s a great phone if you love you some Nokia. And it costs $429. Generally, if I were a calm man, I’d leave it at that.

Sadly, I’m not a calm man. This phone hasn’t changed in five or six iterations since the first N series phones. It is the same thing. It has Wi-Fi now, but big whoop. It has better media playback functions, but the screen is so small it’s not worth watching anything on it. Email is impossible. It’s not a smartphone.

But John, you say, you liked the 7510 for T-Mo. Sure I did. It costs $49, it has lots of “features” but doesn’t bill itself as a business phone. Symbian, at this point, is ready for my Mom. It fits nowhere in the in the modern cellular ecosystem.

Man, I love Nokia. I love their gumption, I love their market share, and I wish them no ill. But please, please, please. Stop it. We’ve all had enough. Processors are fast enough to run legacy apps. Throw this garbage out and reboot.

So there we have it: my anti-Symbian rant. I’m sorry the N85 had to get caught up in all of this. None of this is the N85’s fault. It got caught in the cross-fire. Again - you need an N-series at work? Go get one. It’s like a smaller ThinkPad - rugged, boring, and fully-featured, in theory. Otherwise, let’s wait to see what Nokia has up its sleeve and move on from this long, dark, international nightmare.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Computer Zeroes in on Oldest English Words

All Hail Sir Howard, King of Sony [Digital Daily]

What has become of the Sony known for its technology? I hope it will solve its problems soon to quickly recover its brand image reputed for technological prowess.”

– Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister and former Sony employee Akira Amari, October 2006

Now that Sony’s old guard has taken what was once a strong electronics and gaming brand and run it into the ground, the company’s new guard is circling back to resurrect it. This morning the company announced a management overhaul that will see CEO Howard Stringer succeed Ryoji Chubachi as president and assume responsibility for Sony’s key electronics division. It will also see the creation of two new business groups: The first, Networked Products & Services Group, will consolidate Sony Computer Entertainment, the company’s Vaio division and its mobile and Walkman unit. The second, the New Consumer Products Group, will include Sony’s TV, digital imaging, home audio and video businesses. Spanning the two groups will be a cross-divisional software and technology unit charged with ensuring compatibility among their products.

Sony (SNE) says its new structure is aimed at giving the company the agility it has so sorely lacked for so long and to “speed up the transformation of Sony that was started four years ago,” which has all but stalled, if the company’s recent financial performance is any indication. “Have I broken down all the silo walls? No,” Stringer told the New York Times. “Are they very strong and very thick? Yes. But we’ve broken down a lot of them. Our goal is to continue to do that. We have two distinct challenges facing us. The first is the global slowdown, which forces us to make significant adjustments. The second challenge is the evolution of our competitive environment. New competitors springing out everywhere.”

Do Magazines Need Their Own Kindle? Yes, Says Hearst. [MediaMemo]

If Amazon’s Kindle is the iPod for books, do we need a Kindle for magazines and newspapers? I’d say no. But publishing heavyweight Hearst disagrees and is going to come out with an e-reader of its own, according to a published report.

Fortune says Hearst, which publishes magazines like Cosmopolitan and Esquire, and, for the time being, newspapers like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the San Francisco Chronicle, is working its own Kindle-like device.

“I can’t tell you the details of what we are doing, but I can say we are keenly interested in this, and expect these devices will be a big part of our future,” Hearst digital head Kenneth Bronfin tells the magazine. Some more vague details, which don’t include a launch date:

Insiders familiar with the Hearst device say it has been designed with the needs of publishers in mind. That includes its form, which will approximate the size of a standard sheet of paper, rather than the six-inch diagonal screen found on Kindle, for example. The larger screen better approximates the reading experience of print periodicals, as well as giving advertisers the space and attention they require.

…the Hearst reader is likely to debut in black and white and later transition to high-resolution color with the option for video….Downloading content from participating newspapers and magazines will occur wirelessly….

What Hearst and its partners plan to do is sell the e-readers to publishers and to take a cut of the revenue derived from selling magazines and newspapers on these devices. The company will, however, leave it to the publishers to develop their own branding and payment models. ‘That’s something you will never see Amazon do,’ someone familiar with the Hearst project said. ‘They aren’t going to give up control of the devices.’”

Intriguing? Yes. But I don’t have high hopes for the Hearst reader.

That’s in part because building consumer gadgets is a lot harder than it looks–remember all those awful MP3 players that predated Apple’s (AAPL) iPod? And I’m particularly worried about consumer gadgets designed with publishers in mind instead of consumers/readers.

But I’m also skeptical because I don’t really see how a dedicated magazine/periodical player does much for readers, period.

You can debate the pricing and feature set on Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle, but at least there’s a use case for the device: It’s designed to let you read for long stretches of time, which is pretty hard to do on iPhones and BlackBerries.

But I can easily plow through newspaper stories and magazine articles on my relatively frill-free BlackBerry 8830 (if you do the same, let me recommend Instapaper.com and/or Handmark’s FreeRange Reader). And bear in mind that Amazon’s device is also designed to let you hoover up newspapers, etc., as well; the New York Times says it is already selling a “modest” number of subscriptions to Kindle users.

So if Hearst’s Kindle Kopy is going to take up space in my gadget array, it’s going to have be something pretty special.

[Image credit: Library of Congress via Flickr]

Fungus Threatens Ancient French Cave Art

Books and Music That Make You Dumb [Voices]

Anyone who has ever sought to justify their own musical or literary taste may find some solace in the side project of Virgil Griffith, a 25-year-old Caltech graduate student known for embarrassing numerous corporations with his WikiScanner, a database that tracks the sources of anonymous edits to Wikipedia entries.

With his two Web sites (which have crashed from too much traffic), Booksthatmakeyoudumb.com and Musicthatmakesyoudumb.com, Griffith used aggregated Facebook data about the favorite bands and books among students of various colleges and plotted them against the average SAT scores at those schools, creating a tongue-in-cheek statistical look at taste and intelligence.

Read the rest of this post

NTT DoCoMo pulls BlackBerry Bold

Well, well, well. Yesterday I mentioned that Japanese telecom NTT DoCoMo had begun selling the BlackBerry Bold last week and today there are reports that they’ve pulled the device due to overheating. Approximately 4,000 Bolds have been sold with 30 reports of the keyboard area getting a little too hot while it’s being charged. RIM doesn’t think it’s a battery issue, but the root cause has not been identified and don’t worry, it’s only the Japanese variant that has the issue.

Reuters

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Wheelchair Arm Controlled by Thought Alone

Will Sony's Next PSP Lose the UMD Drive? (PC World)

Recently on Offworld

Elsewhere, Ragdoll Metaphysics columnist Jim Rossignol has a lengthy chat with Quake Wars designer Ed Stern on whether or not games are weird enough, someone creates an amazing 1080p HD digital pinball cabinet, and the creator of the real-world Portal gun strikes back with a jaw-dropping reproduction of BioShock's Little Sister Adam syringe.

We also saw Cooking Mama come to the iPhone, King Hippo and Soda Popinski speak out in a new Mike Tyson biopic, an interesting looking new rhythm/action indie PC game, and MF Doom/Ghostface Killah pop up with a new track for the DS's Grand Theft Auto.

Finally, we rounded up the best of the incoming Wii/DS games for the remainder of spring, watched an illuminating David Lynch-namedropping speech by Rolando creator Simon Oliver, and a new hardware mashup that does Ben Heck proud: a Dreamcast crossed with a G3 iMac.

Synthetic Life Form Grows in Fla. Lab

New Fragments of Ancient Egyptian Papyrus Found

Five Fantastically Stupid Booby Traps

The folks at Home Security, vendor of security systems to the jittery and paranoid, sent us a link to their fantastic list of bad booby traps, entitled The 5 Dumbest & Deranged Home Booby Traps. So good is it that we decided to dig in and find out a little more about the bamboozling array of home-made tricks and traps.

Shotgun Shenanigans

Back in 1990, Colorado warehouse owner Philip Connaghan got sick of break-ins in his area and decided to take a few extra precautions. He rigged a couple of shotguns to a tripwire and loaded them up. The problem came when he was burglarized yet again, by the same gang that had visited twice already. One of the three teenage thieves was hit in the chest and killed. Connaghan turned himself in and plead guilty.

Trial Set in Booby Trap Death [NYT]

House of Pain

Belgium, 2002. A 79 year old man booby trapped his entire house in order to kill his family, who wanted nothing more to do with him (not surprisingly). According to his entry in the Darwin Awards

 

traps included numerous concealed shotguns triggered by threads, and an exploding crate of beer set to detonate once a certain number of bottles were removed.

The Darwin Awards link may have tipped you off to the ending. While rigging a wooden chest with yet another gun, it fired and shot him in the head. Police assumed suicide until the investigating officer almost caught a bullet from the same place.

Booby Traps Trap Boob [Darwin Awards]

Photo: 5rar.ASN

Crutch of Doom

Killing a Verizon technician might be a secret dream of many of our readers, but Eric Stetz of Bay Shore, New York went a little further than most.

His trap? A crutch with a nasty-looking kitchen knife taped to the handle. The entire contraption was hung above and behind the door using elastic and rigged to swing down when the door was opened.

Luckily, his landlord was a paranoid sort, or simply knew that Stetz was an oddball. He accompanied the Verizon technician and spotted the killer kit above the door. If the technician had entered alone, however, things might have got a lot more Dungeons and Dragons.

Doin’ it like MacGyver: Guy sets booby traps in NY home [It’s Truly Random]

Warehouse Woes

Burnley, England, 2006. Another warehouse owner, this time in sunny England, paid a friend to build him an alarm after a gang of kids kept breaking in to his mill. Instead of using the traditional klaxon or bell, though, his buddy decided the best noisemaker would be built from a shotgun.

Delivered and set up, the death-machine was triggered after just one hour. The proud owner, Jack Clarkson, reset the “alarm”, only this time with a live round. You can guess what happened next — a 12 year old broke in and, typical of street urchins of the UK, attempted to make of with the device. It blew up in his hand and although it didn’t kill him, he needed an operation to fix things.

Home-made booby trap ‘was alarm’ [BBC]

Photo: Tyrkinn/Flickr

Stun Gun Fun

Finally, a story we covered here at the Gadget Lab last year. Luke Iseman rigged his ride to shock thieves. The bike is equipped with a stun gun, a cellphone and a battery. Once stolen, the bike can be tracked down via GPS and then, when the perp is away from traffic, the gun is put into action. The gun is hooked up to the phone’s vibrator and it fries the rider with 50,000 volts at every buzz. You can keep the thing running until the battery goes dead.

There’s a happy ending, though. First, the bike has not yet been stolen and, best of all, Iseman is the only one of our hackers who has not been either arrested or killed.

How-To: End Bike Thefts With a DIY Stun Gun and Get Yourself in Trouble [Gadget Lab]

The 5 Dumbest & Deranged Home Booby Traps [Home Security]

Stringer promoted to Sony president

Sony gives CEO Sir Lord Darth Howard Stringer a free hand to restructure the behemoth company, promoting him to company president. His first act: unite the mobile electronics, PC and gaming divisions under Kaz Hirai. [IHT]