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Technology for the homeless; cellphones on the streets of Washington DCSection: Communications, Cellphones, Mobile, Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle
In the article there are several good examples of how they are being used, ranging from blogging about their experience, to using them in an effort to find a good place to stay or even use a restroom. Of course, there are some that are using them in much more efficient ways such as letting their families or loved ones know they are safe, to keep track of their food stamps and even helping with employment issues. According to one gentleman, who went simply by the name of Chris, he was able to get a job and now he is able to give his boss a number to reach him when they need him to come in early or even pick up an extra shift. According to Chris;
He was even able to earn a promotion after just one year. Sure, plenty of us take our cellphones for granted, I often consider mine a luxury, something that is nice to have, but that I could truly do without. I guess this just goes to show how far technology and cell phones have been forced into our life. So I guess, the next time you are in Washington DC and a homeless person asks you for some money, it may not be going to something bad, they may just be looking to pay their cell phone bill. Read [Washington Post] Via [Gizmodo] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 Mar 2009 | 4:21 pm Internet Radio Aimed at Stupid Old PeopleOld people are stupid. At least, that’s what internet radio makers Myine tell us. In fact, so proud is Myine of this “fact” that it touts it on the front page of its site: “Older folks like tech toys, too.” To this end, Myine has made the Ira, an internet radio so simple that even an old, stupid idiot can use it. The Ira even has an old-person name. In fact, so simple is the Ira that it apparently needs no instructions. The site is empty of any kind of technical information. We guess that the kind of moron who would buy it is the kind of moron who probably couldn’t work out how to get to a website and read it anyway.
What we do know is that, unless the buyer has a younger, more techy friend, the Ira will likely sit in a box, unused. Take a look at the graphic below to see how “easy” it is to set up. First, you need internet. Next in line, a modem. Then a Wi-Fi router, followed by, at last, the Ira itself. After that you should hook up the Ira, somehow adding the complicated, difficult password (or perhaps not — the stupid buyer probably has an open access point, right?) Finally, you’ll need to hook up some speakers, a stereo or a “boombox” to actually listen. That’s five elements in the chain, too much, clearly, for anyone over 40 to understand. The Ira also ships in a box full of doodads — adapters, power supplies, cables and remotes. So simple! How much for this box of tricks? A mere $150, or – as we prefer to say – just $150 more than the radio you already have on your computer. Because you, stupid as you are, granddad, have a computer. Otherwise, why on earth would you have the internet at home? Product page [Myine]
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Mar 2009 | 12:27 pm Sun Pirate, Inc. Launches Its Spring Online Training SessionSun Pirate, Inc. launches its spring session featuring its two online solar training courses: Fundamentals of Solar Hot Water and Photovoltaic System Design & Installation;...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Mar 2009 | 12:15 pm FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: Echoes of Time Ships to Retailers TodaySquare Enix Invites Players to Jump Into an Adventure That Transcends Platforms LOS ANGELES, March 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Square Enix, Inc., the publisher of Square...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Mar 2009 | 12:15 pm THE LAST REMNANT for Games for Windows Launches Today in North AmericaLOS ANGELES, March 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Square Enix, Inc., the publisher of Square Enix(R) interactive entertainment products in North America, announced today that the Games for...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Mar 2009 | 12:15 pm Are low prices here to stay?
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 Phones Review | Clash of the Touch Titans; iPhone 3G 3.0 vs. Palm Pre ZDNet The big news of the past week for mobile phone fans was obviously the iPhone 3.0 software update and I posted that this update would have me running to buy the iPhone 3G to use with my AT&T SIM. Apple rumor: AT&T excited about new iphone? Reports: Next-Gen iPhone May Be A Major Upgrade |
Hitachi Japan today announced the Ultrastar C10K300 [JP, PDF], a 10k RPM HDD that will be sold mainly to businesses as 147GB and 300GB versions starting today (worldwide). The 6Gbp/s SAS HDD boasts double the data throughput when compared with the previous model that featured 3Gbp/s.
Hitachi says they managed to squeeze the new drive in a 2.5-inch housing (70.1×100.6×14.8mm, weight: 227g), which is 70% smaller than other devices. The company also claims the Ultrastar C10K300’s power specification of 3.4 watts in idle and 6.1 watts in active operating mode is superior in the industry.
Remember my story on dumb devices? Well here’s the ultimate dumb device. The Peek Pronto is actually quite smart. The cosmetics on this new version are slightly different - a better keyboard and a new color, basically - but under the hood you get push email, texting support, Exchange support, and a new development environment for those so inclined. Peek is also announcing the availability of the Peek in India making it one of the first companies to bring its devices to the land of Vishnu in a long while.
Think of this Peek as the Peek for business folks. Entire organizations are already migrating from BlackBerries to these little buggers and Exchange support makes things even better. A full press release follows along with some hot images. We’ll be getting our Pronto in this week and we’ll give you a full report. The Pronto will retail for $80.
PEEK PRONTO FACT SHEET
Peek Pronto:
Mobile messaging devicePeek Pronto
FeaturesSimple, but powerful
Building on the successful launch of its Peek mobile email device, Peek (www.GetPeek.com) is adding an exciting new product to its lineup - the Peek Pronto. Peek Pronto responds to the growing demand for mobile messaging that is both affordable and powerful.Peek Pronto builds on the original Peek - not by
adding unnecessary bells and whistles - but by further enhancing
the core functionality of mobile messaging. The key features of
Peek Pronto are:* push email;
* unlimited email and texting;
* compatibility with Microsoft Exchange;
* ability to view images/PDF/doc files;
* access to up to five email accounts;
* ability to search for emails on the device;
* 50% improvement in speed of the
software;
* larger font size option.Peek Pronto retails for $79.95. A flat monthly fee of just $19.95
provides the user with unlimited emails and unlimited text
messages - substantially cheaper than a comparable
smartphone plan (for details see www.Peekonomics.com).While Peek Pronto offers powerful new features, it continues
Peek’s philosophy of a stylish device that is easy-to-buy and
easy-to-use. There are no contracts to sign, and no hidden fees
or “gotcha” charges.Peek Pronto takes just 2 minutes to setup and works
automatically with all major email providers including Yahoo!,
Hotmail, GmailTM, AOL and many more.Peek Pronto’s full QWERTY keyboard makes typing easy, and its
large color screen and straightforward navigation makes mobile
messaging simple.3/18/09 Pronto Fact Sheet 2
Peek Pronto is perfect for the busy person who needs to be
connected on the go, but does not want to pay a fortune for the
privilege.Specifications Size:
Height = 102 mm (~ 4.02 inches)
Width = 68 mm (~ 2.7 inches)
Depth = 10.1 mm (~ 0.42 inches)
Weight = 109 gramsColor:
Charcoal GrayDisplay:
2.5” diagonal
QVGA (Quarter VGA) which is 240 pixels high by 320 pixels wide
Languages: EnglishBattery: rechargeable lithium-ion battery
Charge: via power adapter
Battery life: average two to three days with typical usageAvailability Available exclusively at Amazon.com from March 24, 2009 until
March 31, 2009Available online at www.GetPeek.com from April 1, 2009
Available at select Radio Shack stores nationwide from April 8,
2009Pricing
Peek Pronto retail price: $79.95
Peek Pronto monthly service: $19.95Peek and GetPeek are the exclusive trademarks of Peek, Inc.
Online media network Current TV has so far remained deafeningly silent over the arrests of two of its reporters, Chinese-American Laura Ling and Korean-American Euna Lee, who were detained by the North Korean military earlier this month after crossing the border between China and North Korea while they were reporting on refugees fleeing poverty. Reports about the arrests surfaced last week, when the NY Times reported the detention.
This morning CET, news agency Reuters followed up with a report that the two have now been moved to the capital Pyongyang and are being interrogated there, quoting a source from Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo. The article is also available in English on the newspaper’s website.
“A South Korean source said that after the capture, U.S. intelligence officials asked South Korea for cooperation in gathering facts about the detention of Korean-American Euna Lee and Chinese-American Laura Ling, who work for Current TV. The United States tried to no avail to negotiate with the North before the incident leaked to the media. The source said the American government had very little information on the status of the two journalists and on the North’s follow-up actions. Other than contacting the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang for communication, the U.S. took little action. Washington has no formal diplomatic ties with North Korea.”
The article goes on to say the two journalists crossed the Tumen River, bordering China and North Korea, acting on their “journalistic urge for a scoop”, together with an American camera man and a Chinese guide (the latter two were arrested by Chinese authorities). The two women could be facing charges for espionage, a felony that could result in a minimum of 20 years imprisonment in North Korea, but it seems more likely they will be released as a sort of goodwill gesture on the part of North Korea, at least according to the sources linked above.
We’ve contacted Current TV, which was co-founded and backed by former US Vice President Al Gore, in search for more information and / or an official statement.
(Picture credit: Yonhap, via Associated Press)
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 ABC News | Volcano in Alaska blows top again BBC News Mount Redoubt volcano in the US state of Alaska has erupted for the sixth time in 24 hours, spewing ash and steam 15km (9.3 miles) into the air. Video: Alaska's Mount Redoubt Volcano Erupts 5 Times Alaska Volcano Makes Case For Earth Science Funding |
Most drivers are familiar with the never-ending dance that goes on at the gasoline pump, where fuel can fluctuate in price multiple times a day. But despite our constant grumbling, unless two stations are side-by-side, few of us go to the effort to actually find the cheapest gas around.
Now BillShrink, a startup that offers a variety of comparison engines designed to help users save as much money as possible, is looking to help you find the cheapest gas in your area, without forcing you to drive miles out of your way.
To get started, BillShrink initially asks for your home address and your most-visited destination, the make of your car, and how much gas you typically fill up when you visit a station. It plots your most commonly driven route on a map, locating nearby gas stations along the route and pulling data from partner services to get the latest gas prices from each station. It then looks at how far out of the way each station is, analyzing how much gasoline would be used in order to drive to a cheaper station and determining if the cost savings would be worth the trouble. You can also filter gas stations by the amenities offered (for example, if you wanted to make sure that the location you were visiting accepted credit cards or had a convenience store). After the initial setup, the service will monitor price fluctations on a daily basis, and you can elect to receive regular updates notifying when your ideal gas station switches.
It’s a neat idea, and BillShrink’s interface is very slick. I was initially skeptical about how much people would actually save, but BillShrink estimates that commuters could save as much as $200-$300 a year simply by regularly monitoring their ideal gas station, assuming they fill up on a weekly basis. This may be easier said than done (I suspect many people would rather pay an extra dollar or two if it saved them a ten minute drive), but I also know quite a few people who would walk half a mile to their bank branch to avoid an ATM fee, and this service would be right up their alley.
In any case, BillShrink isn’t planning to use the service to directly generate revenue, but instead sees it as a good way to drive traffic to its site. Unlike BillShrink’s other cost-saving services, which cover credit cards and mobile phones, gas is something people worry about on a day-to-day basis. BillShrink is hoping that this will lead them to come to the site more often, and hopefully stumble across its other (revenue-producing) services.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Three Melons, an Argentina/US-based developer of short-session, branded online games, has secured $600,000 from Santander Bank. The 3-year old startup is in the business of creating casual Internet games, which they refer to as “engaging and socially empowered snacks of entertainment”, commissioned by media companies, advertisers / agencies and video game publishers.
The company has built up quite an impressive customer reference list since it started out in late 2005, having created and distributed branded online games for companies like LEGO, Coca-Cola, Audi, Disney, Fox, AT&T, etc. Three Melons builds advergames based on Flash and Unity3D, and has set up proprietary multiplayer server infrastructure (Camarero) as well as a custom Flash game development framework (Daiquiri).
Casual online gaming sites and developers are a dime a dozen, but Three Melons seems to have carved out a nice niche for itself in creating short and great-looking advergames for top advertisers and media companies, and it’s most likely going to use the extra cash to pursue more market share within that same target group.
The company is based out of Buenos Aires, Argentina but also set up an office in Los Angeles for business development in the U.S.
(On a sidenote: I just wasted half an hour with the LEGO Indiana Jones game, in case you were looking for a recommendation on which to try first.)
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
A new pocket video recorder about to be released in Japan features significant, public SAL on SAL action. No, it's not what you think it is, Senator Craig (R). Please settle down.
The SAL minicam, from Amadana, is made to pass video and pictures super fast between twin gadgets through its USB ports, without stopping at a PC. We can only wonder why Amadana didn't just go all the way and add media-sharing wireless 'squirting,' though it probably had something to do with cheapness. Also, it's not like wireless media sharing has been a key feature for any hugely successful media gadget or anything.
The on-the-go sharing feature is an interesting feature for a mini cam, but specs-wise, the Sal doesn't look like a big leap away from the most popular mini cams like the Flip and the Kodak.
SAL doesn't shoot blanks, per se, with MPEG4 and VGA video at 30 frames a second (at a resolution of 640 × 480 pixels). But it doesn't look good in contrast to Toshiba's upcoming Camileo S10, which has a 2.5-inch screen, video resolution at 1080p, and a way sleeker design. The Flip Mino HD has a resolution of 1280 x 720, and that one is not even the top mini on the block anymore.
The SALs QVGA LCD is also quite small at only 2-inches diagonal, and comes with 2GB of internal memory (half of the Flip HD Mino).
But if you're still interested in this mini cam after those comparisons (probably so you can continually mention that you're going to dock SALs), it will be available in late May in Japan for an undisclosed price.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 TopNews United States | onlive Aims to Make Game Consoles Obsolete PC Magazine by Loyd Case If you're a console gamer playing on your HDTV, that means avoiding shelling out $500 to play next generation titles. OnLive Announces Cloud-Based Gaming Service OnLive cloud-based gaming service could kill PS3, Xbox, and Wii |
 Maktoob Business (press release) | Smart Grid Lacks Smart Security InformationWeek Devices could be used to conduct attacks on the power grid and on people's homes if they're developed without sufficient security, security researchers warn. Power to the People: 7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now Report: National Smart Grid Vulnerable To Attacks |
 Reuters | Moving to Broaden Its Accessibility, Netflix Intregrates With ... FOXBusiness LOS GATOS, Calif., March 24, 2009 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ ----As part of its plan to make Netflix features more broadly accessible to members and their friends, Netflix, Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX), the world's largest online movie rental service, ... Netflix integrating movie ratings with Facebook Netflix Promises Silverlight Solution for Slow, Painful 'Stream ... |
 Pocket-lint.com | Michael Dell hints at smartphones, mobile Internet devices Computerworld By Martyn Williams March 24, 2009 (IDG News Service) Michael Dell gave the strongest hint to-date that his company is developing a mobile Internet device or smartphone at a speech in Tokyo today. Dell Smartphone Reportedly Draws Yawns From Carriers “Smaller screen” 3G devices in works says Michael Dell |
In early December, Juliet Weybret, a high school sophomore and aspiring rock star from Lodi, Calif., recorded a video of herself playing the piano and singing “Winter Wonderland,” and she posted it on YouTube.
Weeks later, she received an e-mail message from YouTube: her video was being removed “as a result of a third-party notification by the Warner Music Group (WMG),” which owns the copyright to the Christmas carol.
Hers is not an isolated case. Countless other amateurs have been ensnared in a dispute between Warner Music and YouTube, which is owned by Google (GOOG). The conflict centers on how much Warner should be paid for the use of its copyrighted works–its music videos–but has grown to include other material produced by amateurs that may also run afoul of copyright law.
“Thousands of videos disappeared,” said Fred von Lohmann, staff lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet civil liberties group that asked affected YouTube users to contact it. “Either they turned off the audio, or they pulled the video.”
People claiming to be friends of the actress have told Star magazine that she finished the affair after discovering Mayer, 31, spent hours on the networking website, despite telling her he was too busy to get in touch with her.
The pair started dating in April 2008, but have broken up several times. However, they appeared inseparable at the Oscars last month.
A source claimed Aniston decided Mayer was not committed enough to her and called time on their romance having found hourly updates on his Twitter page.
The source said: “John suddenly stopped calling her or returning her emails and when she would finally catch up with him, he’d say: ‘I’ve been so busy with work. I’m sorry I haven’t had time to call you back.”
The source added: “Jen was fuming. There he was, telling her he didn’t have time for her and yet his page was filled with Twitter updates.
“Every few hours, sometimes minutes, he’d update with some stupid line. And in her mind, she was like ‘He has time for all this Twittering, but he can’t send me a text, an email, make a call?’.”
To the usual trappings that help many homeless people endure life on the streets–woolen blankets, shopping carts or cardboard box shelters–add the humble cellphone.
Today, it’s not unusual for the homeless to whip out Nokia (NOK) 6085 GoPhones (with optional Bluetooth and USB connectivity), stop at a public computer to check e-mail or urge friends to read their blogs.
It’s another sign of a society in transition by way of technology, as businesses shed physical addresses for cyberspace and homeless people can establish an online presence and chase opportunities digitally.
Read the rest of this post
The first of two parts. The second is here.
February 2005 was a tough month for those of us who worked at the Wall Street Journal Online, where I was in my fourth year as managing editor. A slew of media experts were telling the world that we were making a mistake of historic proportions by keeping WSJ.Com a paid site.
The criticism usually followed the same route. First, the author would invoke the obligatory paean to the Journal’s historic greatness. That would be followed by a tsk-tsking that the Journal had walled itself off from the “conversation” and thus was en route to irrelevance, followed by obsolescence.
Then, the elixir: Take down the subscription wall, make the site entirely free, and rake in those huge mounds of advertising revenue (time frame for that TBD, but trust us, it’ll come) that will more than compensate for the sudden absence of circulation revenue.
So, author Michael Wolff told a software trade group that February that the Journal was once “one of the truly astounding information franchises.” But then, he invoked ominously, “something happened” in the mid-1990s. “The Journal kind of disappeared. The Journal went out of the conversation as a point of influence…. It seemed to, if not stop existing, at least stop mattering.”
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Last week, PCMag.com’s Sascha Segan pointed out something unusual about former Vice President Al Gore’s keynote speech at next week’s CTIA Wireless phone trade show in Las Vegas: It wasn’t going to be open to the press, apparently at the request of Gore or his staff. It was a truly jarring bit of news. I’ve been attending tech trade shows for a couple of decades, and can’t remember a single other keynote that the media wasn’t invited to attend.
But it’s not just as a courtesy that we press people are normally let into such speeches–media coverage is one of the primary reasons why they exist. It’s impossible, for instance, to imagine a scenario in which Steve Jobs keynotes at Macworld Expo or Bill Gates ones at CES were anything but publicity extravaganzas designed to attract as much media attention as possible.
Read the rest of this post
At least Apple (AAPL) Co-Founder Steve Wozniak can pun through the pain of his foot fracture and pulled hamstring.
“Hey, well, one thing I learned is that if you mix a little dancing with a little Smirnoff and you might end up in an ambulance,” he joked, riffing on the name of his partner, Karina Smirnoff.
What he can’t do, of course, is dance very well, which was why he got the low, low score of 10 out of 30 last night from the judges on his third week of “Dancing with the Stars.”
“Steve, on your knees and beg forgiveness–this worst samba I’ve ever seen, I think–just bad,” said Bruno Tonioli.
“I just hope the viewers enjoyed it as an entertainment, because for me, it was consistent–it was terrible from start to finish,” said Len Goodman.
And, while she called Woz “adorable,” Carrie Ann Inaba delivered the bomb: “At some point, the novelty wears off…you’re like the uncle at the party that we just root for.”
Well, maybe for her it gets old, but not the rest of us completely riveted to exactly what wacky stunt and what level of atrocious dancing Woz will deliver next on the ABC television show.
Oh, it was a bad samba. A very bad samba. Sam-bad.
But from his decidedly odd “worm” to his accusing the producers of vote-rigging to his pink boa, Woz should still get the ballot box stuffed Silicon Valley-style.
Woz was cheerfully defiant about his performance, joking that he probably deserved a lesser score even: “I enjoy it and I am going to try to bring my form of entertainment to the world.”
World geek dancing domination!
So vote early and often tomorrow, so he can overcome his lack of dancing ability and win first place on this ridiculous show!
Here’s the video:
Also here are Woz’s missives to the fans on his Facebook page from yesterday, after the jump:
Mir:ror mak:es ob_jectz smar:ter
British police accept the true power of the holy Hand Grenade of Antioch
Review and Contest: Ipevo Wi-Fi Phone for Skype S0-20
World’s least expensive car, India’s Tata Nano, now available: Less than $2,000
GDC 09: Team CrunchGear invades San Francisco
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Web, Web 2.0, Websites
So far 1.7 million Facebook users have signed a petition to show their displeasure with the site’s new layout. Facebook says the redesign, which is the second one in 6 months, was done to help them compete with other popular social networking sites like Twitter. The Newsfeed, Live Feed, Photos, and Status Update feeds are gone, replaced with a single page combining them all. Also gone is the status update tool, which was replaced with Publisher, a tool that allows users to post Tweet like entries that immediately show up on their page and their friends’. Despite the huge number of irate users, Facebook has chosen to ignore the strongly negative reaction to the new design.
I’m a heavy Facebook user and I will admit I preferred the old design. For me, there are two very annoying features with the new version. The first is that the feed brings too much information at times. For example if a friend sends a gift or an app invite to 100 of their friends, you get 100 notifications, one for each friend they sent it too. Very annoying.
The second issue, which I think is an inexcusable oversight by Facebook, is that although the new feed was promised as being real-time, just like Twitter, it is far from it. You have to manually refresh the feed to get any new info on it! The Live Feed on the old design truly was live and I miss it. Facebook is a valuable tool and a lot of fun but if they don’t start listening to their users they will eventually live to regret it.
Read [PCWorld]
Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 HispanicBusiness.com | YouTube takes down thousands of fair-use videos ZDNet Thousands of user-created videos- or at least their audio tracks - have disappeared from YouTube, and the question is who’s fault is it? Warner To YouTube: Stop The Music! Warner removes more content from YouTube |
Sprint spent a lot of money on their network. And why not, right? A nice network is its own reward. Of course, the costs are murder. But when you can’t get anybody to sign up for your cell phone services (waiting for the Pre, thanks), you start to look around. And what do you find? A sea of devices waiting to be connected. Netbooks, cameras, cars, watches — all ripe for the signing.
Sprint has always liked to pick up these devices, but now that said devices are blowing up, it makes even more sense. And they’ve already got the expertise and infrastructure — why else would Amazon come to them instead of, well, anybody else? Hey, who said “low bid?” Get out of here!
Seriously, though, the number of devices someone has that need some sort of internet connection is increasing incredibly fast, and although it’s not nearly as big of a business as subscribers yet, it’s getting bigger and it’s important for “mind share” as well as market share. “Powered by Sprint” on the back of a powerful internet-enabled device will change a lot of people’s minds about what carrier they wish to join.
Does this mean I’ll finally be able to IM my coffeemaker from my bed in the morning instead of getting up?
It is always wise to take these kinds of promises with a grain of salt, but if a company says their chip will allow a phone or similar device to run Xbox-level games, they’ve got to be at least partially serious. That’s just what’s promised in the upcoming batch of ARM processors, although I’m going to want a bigger screen if I’m going to take up Halo Mobile.
The OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU will push 16 million triangles per second, 4x anti-aliasing (on such a tiny screen, is that even necessary?), and later, even 1080p processing. 1080p on your phone — That last one? Come on. Unless you’ve got eagle eyes you’ll barely be able to tell, though at least you know it won’t stutter if it’s got that much video processing behind it.
You can read the rest of the promises here, but be cautious in your optimism.
Here's a nice homage to the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab, from the early 1950s.
This was the most elaborate Atomic Energy educational set ever produced, but it was only only available from 1951 to 1952. Its relatively high price for the time ($50.00) and its sophistication were the explanation Gilbert gave for the set's short lifespan. Today, it is so highly prized by collectors that a complete set can go for more than 100 times the original price.The set came with four types of uranium ore, a beta-alpha source (Pb-210), a pure beta source (Ru-106), a gamma source (Zn-65?), a spinthariscope, a cloud chamber with its own short-lived alpha source (Po-210), an electroscope, a geiger counter, a manual, a comic book (Dagwood Splits the Atom) and a government manual "Prospecting for Uranium."
We’re about to head off to GDC in San Francisco and mix it up with a bunch of game developers. Sounds nerdy, yes, but these guys are on par with Hollywood FX artists in the depth and complexity of their craft. It’s no surprise that they need a bunch of beastly machines to make games like Final Fantasy XIII and Gears of War 2. Lenovo’s in the business of making said machines, and their latest look pretty solid, in addition to being well-designed.
The cases for the S20 and D20 ThinkStations actually look nice enough to sell separately, so keep an eye on Lenovo desktops to see if you can score one. It’s got the usual ports, a display on the side, and carrying handles on both the front and back. That helps a lot in situations where boxes get moved around a lot — mainly businesses and LAN parties. The guts are either a Xeon 5500 or W3500, and for a graphics card you’ve got your choice between NVIDIA Quadro or ATI FirePro cards. Or this Tesla thing I haven’t heard of, which is mainly for math computation. For putting together those math games you guys all love so much.
It’s also super economical in power and noise as well as being really eco-friendly. They use a ton of recycled and post-consumer plastic in the case, although of course the components are still mostly toxic — of course, even the cardboard computer had that problem. Even if it’s not completely effective, it’s always good to see companies making that move towards green.
In any case, they sound like nice machines, and honestly if they’re good enough for Epic, they’re probably good enough for me. They’ll be starting at just over $1000 for the S20 and $1500 for the D20.
Section: Business News
A week ago, you may recall an article I wrote about Best Buy employees not honoring price matches. They gave some pretty bogus reasons such as the competitor store was running a limited time sale, and they do not honor limited time sales. It seems that most of these incidences are occurring in New York, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was happening elsewhere.
On March 19, the US District Court granted a Class Action Certification which enabled Plaintiff Thomas Jermyn and other NY residents the ability to sue Best Buy because they were in violation of their own price matching policy. Best Buy loves to advertise their price matching policy, which attracts innocent customers into buying their products after they deny their price adjustment. In addition, employees that deny a lot of price adjustments receive bonuses! I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sick of companies receiving bonuses (cough AIG).
At this point, you might be thinking it’s just a few customers who have been denied price adjustments, but in reality, the deny over a 100 requests a week! Among this, two former Best Buy employees also claimed that Best Buy management would train their employees specifically to deny price matches.
I’m willing to put money on it that other companies are trying to do similar things to cut costs and save money in desperate times. Maybe in the short term, Best Buy will have saved money from denying price matches, but in the long run they will probably be hurt by this scandal.
Read [HD Guru]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Watch the video in HD over here.
Thanks for sending this in, Nick!
John Swansburg, Culture Editor of Slate told me about a new project Slate launched in which they've asked its readers to document the recession in photos. It has over 200 images in its Flickr pool so far.
Great Shots of Tough Times: Slate readers share their photographs of the economic crisis.
Source: Boing Boing | 24 Mar 2009 | 4:06 am
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Problem Electricity is the ultimate just-in-time commodity, sent off to consumers as soon as it's generated. But solar and wind installations produce power only when the sun is shining or a breeze is blowing. If you could bank that energy when it's abundant and release it later as needed, you'd have a more reliable, more environmentally sound power grid.
Solution Obama's stimulus package includes $2 billion in grants for battery development. For power grids, sodium-sulfur technology is the best bet. It's more efficient and power-dense than zinc-bromide or lead-acid, and in Japan, where NaS batteries are made, enough have been installed to power the equivalent of at least 155,000 homes. Later this year or next, American Electric Power, a major utility serving 11 midwestern states, will install 4 megawatts' worth of NaS cells in Presidio, Texas. That's on top of the 6 megawatts of battery power AEP installed in three other states last year. "We wanted a real thing that really works," says Ali Nourai, AEP's manager of distributed energy resources. "We didn't want to send a technician out every other day to fix some experimental system." Regulatory uncertainties still abound, but utilities across the US plan to bring sodium-sulfur systems online. Soon, more and more cities will come with batteries included.
Other Energy Storage Technologies |
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Compressed Air
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Flywheels
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Pumped Hydro
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Illustrations: Lamosca
Problem Building wind turbines and solar farms in the middle of nowhere sounds great. But it's not easy to move all that clean energy to the people. Obama just signed into law $6 billion in loan guarantees for energy projects, including new transmission lines. But constructing those lines will require the approval of landowners and city planners, who want the electricity but not the unsightly high-voltage wires strung across their property.
Solution Go underground—or underwater. The Trans Bay Cable will link San Francisco to 400 megawatts of power—some from the Altamont Pass wind farms near Livermore, California, and the rest from other sources throughout the state. Set to open in 2010, it's a $500 million project that everyone in the area wanted built ... somewhere else. As a result, the planned route looks like the path an escaped convict would take if he wanted to minimize contact with humans, especially of the activist and bureaucratic kind.
Routing the Trans Bay Cable |
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Illustration: Lamosca
1989: The Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound, spilling nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil across 1,300 miles of Alaskan coastline. In terms of environmental damage, it ranks among the worst man-made catastrophes ever, and one whose repercussions are felt to this day.
The Exxon Valdez, a single-hull oil tanker measuring nearly 1,000 feet long, was laden with 53 million gallons of crude. After clearing the Valdez Narrows, Master Joseph Hazelwood briefly resumed control of the ship from the port of Valdez harbor pilot.
Then he quit the wheel house, leaving the third mate and an able seaman to handle the ship. He picked a bad time to leave the bridge.
Exxon Valdez was outside the normal shipping lane in an effort to avoid icebergs. Hazelwood had obtained permission from the Coast Guard to change course, which also gave the Coast Guard shared responsibility for ensuring a safe passage. But the ship was not properly monitored and subsequently struck Bligh Reef while maneuvering toward open water just past midnight.
As captain, Hazelwood was ultimately responsible for what happened. Not only did he err in leaving the bridge at a critical moment, he compounded his mistake by handing control of the ship to two men who had not completed their mandatory six hours off duty before beginning a 12-hour watch. The vessel may have also been on autopilot when it hit the reef.
Worse, Hazelwood had been drinking. It remains unclear whether the alcohol impaired his judgment. He admitted during the inquiry to having had "two or three vodkas" earlier in the evening.
The collision tore a gash in the vessel's hull. Before the leak could be stopped, 10.8 million gallons of crude oil oozed into Prince William Sound and began spreading along the coast.
The first cleanup crews attempted to use a combo of dispersant, surfactant and solvent to attack the oil globules, but the lack of wave action hindered that approach, which was soon abandoned.
Booms and skimmers were brought in, but most arrived after the spill had moved beyond the containment phase. When they were deployed, more than 24 hours after the Exxon Valdez ran aground, the combination of thick oil and large concentrations of kelp fouled much of the machinery.
High-pressure, hot-water hoses were turned on the rocks to disperse the oil. While this was effective in dispersing the oil, it also displaced or destroyed microbial organisms, upsetting the coastal marine food chain and adding to the environmental damage.
Attempts to limit the spill's spread were further hampered by a storm that hit the area three days later.
Exxon, the oil giant that operated the ship, was roundly excoriated for its slow response to the crisis. When it finally did bestir itself to action, the company mounted what was then the costliest oil-spill cleanup effort in history.
The damage, however, was done.
In terms of volume, the Exxon Valdez spill is not even close to being the largest on record — it ranks only 53rd on the list. But in terms of environmental impact, it may have been the worst. The sensitive marine habitat around Prince William Sound nestles inside jagged coastline, with many inlets and coves. This is where much of the oil collected, wreaking havoc on the rich variety of flora and fauna.
The statistics are grim. Upwards of half a million seabirds were killed outright by the spill. Scientists also counted among the dead 1,000 otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles and 22 killer whales. The number of salmon and herring eggs destroyed was put in the billions.
Twenty years on and most of the region has recovered, but not entirely. A 2007 study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated that 26,000 gallons of crude oil still contaminates the coastline near Valdez. Some scientists believe it will be at least another 10 years before that stretch of the Alaskan coast returns to its natural state.
As for Hazelwood, he took the full brunt of America's collective outrage, but somehow emerged relatively unscathed. His master's license was suspended but not revoked, and in the end he paid a relatively paltry fine of $50,000. He was sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service, which was performed in Anchorage.
He has, however, had little luck finding further employment as a seagoing skipper.
Source: NOAA, Wikipedia
Filthy coal-fired power plants spew carbon into the air. A mish-mash of 9,200 generators streams vital electrons along 300,000 miles of aging, inefficient transmission lines and one untrimmed tree in the wrong place could plunge a quarter of the country into darkness. This is our electric grid. A whopping 40 percent of all the energy used in the US—be it oil, gas, wind, or solar—is converted into electrons that travel over these wires. Any attempt at energy reform must begin here.
But this keystone of our 21st-century economy has yet to advance much beyond its 19th-century roots. Considering how wasteful, unresponsive, and just plain dumb the grid is, it isn't surprising that outages—which have been increasing steadily over the past quarter century—cost us $150 billion a year. The real shock is that the damn thing works at all.
Now consider what we will ask the grid to handle in the near future: Demand for electricity is expected to increase by as much as 40 percent in the next two decades—more than twice the population growth rate. To meet that need, we will have to generate an additional 214 gigawatts, a feat that would require the construction of more than 357 large coal plants. We also want to plug in dozens, if not hundreds, of gigawatts of wind and solar power harvested from the most remote corners of the country. And we will want to recharge millions of electric vehicles every night, without fail.
That is why we must fix the grid—reinvent it to be reliable, efficient, responsive, and smart. Washington is already on the case: President Obama has called a new energy agenda "absolutely critical to our economic future," and his stimulus package directs more than $40 billion toward that goal—the largest single infusion of government capital to the energy sector in US history, more than half of which will go to grid-related projects. In the short term, this bonanza aims simply to create jobs. But in the long term, it lays the groundwork for the grid of the future. (About $400 million will go to fund ARPA-E, a sort of Darpa for energy research.) And this is just the beginning: Congress is considering additional legislation in the hope of remaking our energy infrastructure.
Private enterprise is on board as well. Just take a spin through General Electric's Smart Grid Lab in Niskayuna, New York, which will simulate an entire electric system—complete with the kind of state-of-the-art meters, software, and communication tech that will enable a smarter grid. Or check out Google's new PowerMeter, a Web app designed to give consumers instant information about their energy usage.
But technology alone won't solve this mess, because fixing the grid is not a technology problem—it's a system problem on the broadest scale. Political gridlock, broken markets, and shortsighted planning have created a slew of bottlenecks that can't be solved with a bunch of smart meters and fancy routers.
Here, we show how utilities and businesses have begun to tackle those obstacles—from installing new transmission lines to empowering consumers. If we're serious about remaking our energy infrastructure, we'll need to encourage these kinds of fixes and replace our current system of misplaced incentives. Right now, that system encourages everyone involved—customers, utilities, and private industry—to neglect the grid. We have to give those stakeholders new reasons to turn on, engage, and transform.
Go ahead, blame Edison. He's the guy who invented the business model that got us into this mess. Edison Electric Light, founded in 1880, was a vertically integrated monopoly that controlled everything from generation to distribution. (It even owned the bulbs in customers' homes.) As utilities sprouted across the country, they saw no reason to deviate from Edison's successful blueprint.
For its first century, then, the electricity industry was a simple affair. Most states anointed a single utility to provide all the power to its citizens. These utilities owned the plants that generated the electricity, the transmission lines that carried it to substations, and the wires that distributed it to customers. When more power was needed, they simply built another coal-fired plant and spliced it onto the grid. Rates had to be approved by a public-service commission, but otherwise the utilities were autonomous. (They linked their systems to neighboring grids, but mostly for backup.) Electricity was inexpensive and abundant, and the system's reliability was the envy of the world.
What it wasn't? Efficient. Since the utilities had a captive market and seemingly unlimited access to cheap fossil fuels, they had no incentive to upgrade their leaky old plants. No one complained as long as energy was seen as plentiful and harmless. Then came the fuel crisis of the 1970s, along with the rise of environmentalism. In 1978, Congress began chipping away at the utilities' dominance by forcing them to buy electricity from independent generation companies that met efficiency goals. Fourteen years later, the government went much further, ordering the utilities to open their transmission lines to all comers.
The result was utter chaos. Many utilities got out of the generation business and morphed into middlemen, shopping for the cheapest power—often from areas with low labor costs and lax environmental oversight—and transporting it hundreds, even thousands, of miles to their customers. This meant using the links between grids, which hadn't been designed to accommodate such heavy traffic. The grids of distant states thus became closely intertwined, so that an outage in one rural county could affect millions of far-flung customers.
Though power companies were demanding more from the grid, they had no incentive to upgrade it. Every penny a utility spent on grid improvement would potentially benefit plants owned by rivals. And states that exported cheap energy resisted plans for costly new transmission projects, fearing they would lead to higher in-state rates—and angry voters.
As a consequence, the grid has fallen into disrepair, with few major efforts to fix it. Today, utilities allocate just 2 percent of revenue to research. "For God's sake, we contribute less to R&D than the pet food industry does," says Jeffrey Byron of the California Energy Commission. So the grid remains hobbled by unreliable electromechanical switches and analog controllers. During the early minutes of the Northeast blackout of 2003, the Ohio utility whose damaged hardware started the cascade couldn't even monitor its own wires; employees had to phone a regional overseer and beg for updates. By that time, it was too late.
Regulators, meanwhile, have done a terrible job of mandating grid upgrades. Maybe that's because nobody is really in charge. The industry-run North American Electric Reliability Council appoints eight regional agencies to manage grid standards, but they clash with state agencies, which constantly angle for more authority. Adding to the muddle are the quasi-governmental independent system operators and the regional organizations responsible for ensuring open access to transmission lines. Meanwhile, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, created in 1977 to supervise regional and national electricity sales, has proven inept at mediating interstate disputes. This thicket of regulation and competing interests strangles any ambitious initiative. As a result, despite ever-increasing electricity demand, fewer than 700 miles of interstate transmission lines have been built since 2000.
To fix the grid, then, we don't need another layer of oversight. We need to tweak the system so that companies are rewarded—not punished—for investing in the grid. Take the case of Duke Energy. Like most utilities, the North Carolina company is not known for its environmentalism. (It has been accused of flouting the Clean Air Act, for instance.) But in 2006, Duke announced its Utility of the Future initiative. This billion-dollar program is designed to smarten up Duke's portion of the grid by deploying customer meters and network-level gizmos that facilitate speedy, two-way communication. It's exactly the sort of upgrade that will help make the grid stable enough to handle wind turbines and plug-in hybrids.
How did the giant utility come around to embracing the smart grid? Probably not out of the goodness of its corporate heart. The costs of building new generation facilities—and the tumbling prices of plug-and-play gadgets—likely made raising the grid's IQ a more efficient way to improve Duke's long-term prospects. Look at the company's recent push toward IP-based open standards for all its grid hardware. Open standards will help operators communicate with one another regardless of utility—turning the grid into an Internet-like ecosystem rather than a scattered network of proprietary islands. But there may be another reason for Duke to become an evangelist of the approach: Open standards would make it easier for the large utility to gobble up and incorporate smaller rivals, since their systems could be integrated with minimal effort.
Duke isn't the only utility to grasp the financial upside of smart-grid projects. Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy is building SmartGridCity, a $100 million effort in Boulder, Colorado, that will allow customers to monitor their electricity consumption via the Web, as well as pump wind and solar energy into the grid. If SmartGridCity is a success, Xcel hopes to persuade public utilities nationwide to invest in similar systems.
This type of investment benefits the grid tremendously and must be encouraged at every turn. According to Roger Anderson at Columbia University's Center for Computational Learning Systems, tweaking the grid's communications capabilities can increase transmission efficiency by 50 percent—no additional wires necessary.
Self-interest has a long, noble history of spurring some of America's greatest infrastructure projects. But it must often be nudged along by cleverly crafted government incentives. The transcontinental railroads, for instance, got a crucial boost from a federal land grant program. These grants, often located in barren quarters of the western US, weren't worth much at the time; the railroad companies laid track through the land in hopes of increasing property values. Energy regulators already have some experience creating similarly ingenious carrots. In the early 1980s, states began to realize that utilities wouldn't become more efficient until their revenue was no longer tied directly to the sheer amount of energy produced. So regulators in dozens of states began to implement decoupling, a policy that rewards utilities for coming in below generation targets. Suddenly, companies could profit by promoting efficiency.
With similar policies, we can push energy companies to make the grid better for everyone. For example, utilities have not been eager to incorporate renewable power from customers' rooftop solar panels or backyard wind turbines. They would be more likely to do so if they were allowed to hike rates or were given tax breaks for making the necessary accommodations.
The grid took more than a century to grow into the unwieldy beast it is now. Given the urgency of climate change, energy independence, and economic demands, we have only a fraction of that time to fix it. But the solution won't spring forth fully formed. This, the greatest engineering challenge of our era, must be solved the same way it was created—piece by piece, with utilities and consumers acting in their own interests. For too long, those interests have been misaligned. It's time for a reset.
Contributing editor Brendan I. Koerner (brendan_koerner@wired.com) writes Wired's Mr. Know-It-All column and blogs at microKhan.com.
Problem It's high noon in July. At 90-plus degrees outside, the masses are jonesing for AC. But it's seriously expensive to keep the juice flowing when demand crests. Firing up turbines that sit idle 360 days a year can multiply electricity costs by a factor of 10. How to keep cool without stressing the grid?
Solution Pay big users to cut consumption when the need arises. Many utilities already do an ad-hoc version of this, an emergency practice known as demand response that has lately been promoted by Jon Wellinghoff, acting chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Now there's an alternative: Call EnerNOC, a Boston-based company that gangs commercial users who are willing, for a quarterly payment, to trim back operations on 30 minutes' notice. EnerNOC micromanages consumption at 3,400-plus locations from Maine to California. Between dimming lights, adjusting thermostats, and suspending industrial activities, the potential cuts top the output of a large nuclear reactor. And the savings can be huge. EnerNOC's cofounder, Tim Healy, points out that 10 percent of all US generating capacity exists to meet the last 1 percent of demand. Utilities paid EnerNOC $100 million last year simply to stand at the ready—insurance, in effect, against the inevitable days when every AC unit is humming.
Illustration: Lamosca
What Scott praises is, in effect, granola cinema, abstemious films that are made to look good for you but are no less sweetened than mass-market products, that cut off a wide range of aesthetic possibilities and experiences on ostensible grounds of virtue. It’s not new; it’s self-consciously, fashionably old-fashioned. Many of these films have a whiff of the sermon about them. “Gran Torino,” in which Clint Eastwood portrays an old bastard who becomes something of a liberal despite—not in the absence of—his worst prejudices and most bilious emotions—is far more politically sophisticated and daring than any of the films Scott names.About “Neo-Neo Realism”
Pandora just put out this video of their pre-production gaming handheld and so far, so good. The final production models will be black and this test model is white, so that they can stress points. The OS on Pandora handheld is Linux and the video shows Quake being played at full resolution of 800×480 at 60FPS. Looks pretty good.
OK, it’s a pretty lame app, but I’m sure your kids will love it. Grab it off iTunes here if you’re interested. There’s one more video after the jump.
via Ideo ToyLab
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Wouldn’t it be rad if Nintendo announced Virtual Console for the DSi at GDC this week? We’re unsure if this will actually happen this week, but there’s a rumor going around the web that this was mentioned last night at an event for Club Nintendo members. If true, you’ll be able to download classics from the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance era, but they’ll be limited to first-party titles. And I doubt anyone will have issues with that. Games can be saved onto SD cards on the new DSi in capacities larger than 2GB.
Another rumor to support this comes from a chap who was also at the event in Illinois.
I was at the dsi event in Naperville, IL and the rep there told us the same thing, that like the VC you will be able to download gb/gbc games. Now I don’t remember if he mentioned gba but he DID say that supposedly sega was interested in bringing Game Gear games to the dsiware too. Nothing set in stone but they are looking into it.
If this all turns out to be true, will you guys upgrade?
via Kombo and GoNintendo
A few hours ago I was interviewed by Douglas Rushkoff on his new WFMU radio show, The Media Squat. Also on the program was Miriam Raymon from The Financial Times. Topics include the financial crisis (is there anything else to talk about?), local currencies, Karl Marx being trendy again, Crass, punk rock, counter culture, Boing Boing being the most successful underground publication in history, socialism in the US and of course, we end with the financial crisis.
iTunes link, Stream from WFMU.org
Microsoft is getting set to release Power Pack 2 for Windows Home Server tomorrow and it looks to be a pretty decent update. Some of the improvements coming with PP2 include beefed up functionality for Windows Media Center, improved remote access configuration, and streaming support for Windows Media Center Extenders. Look for it tomorrow via Windows Update, but make sure you have Power Pack 1 installed beforehand.
If you’re looking for in-depth details then check out the Windows Homer Server Team Blog.
Section: Video, DVD/DVR/Blu-ray, Gadgets / Other, Green
The other day, I was wondering aloud why exactly some DVDs and Blu-ray discs come in a cardboard sleeve and a bulky plastic case when others come in slimline packaging. It looks like Sony thought about the same thing. Starting with “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” Sony will be going more green with its DVD and Blu-ray packaging.
The packaging for the home video version of “Paul Blart” will use only 80% of the plastic that is currently used. Recycled paper will be used for the box art. Even the shrink wrap used will be lighter. Oh, and there won’t be a cardboard sleeve, either. All of this means a more green package.
A greener package is also a lighter one. Sony will probably be able to cut shipping costs to help out their bottom line. Maybe this will help them get out of the mess they’ve been in for a while now.
Maybe if things get bad enough we’ll see a return to simple cardboard sleeves like the ones that came with vinyl records for DVDs and the rest. They would be really light, would work fine, and would be simple to produce.
Read: [Variety]
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
AP - A startup called Zeebo Inc. is betting that people in emerging markets want to play good video games just as much as people in the U.S., Western Europe and Japan do.
Richard Metzger is Boing Boing's current guest blogger.
It's hard to believe that this jaw-dropping series of videos of Royce Reed and Marilyn Hoggatt isn't a massive YouTube sensation... but it will be. Take one (huge) part "Grey Gardens" and add a hefty dollop of Peter and Raymond from "Shut Up Little Man!" and you kind of get into the Royce and Marilyn territory. But not quite, it's as unique as either and yes, it totally deserves to be spoken of in such esteemed context with these aforementioned FREAKS. Royce and Marilyn are two elderly ladies from "another era" and these videos document their lives in a SRO hotel in Los Angele's downtown "skid row" area (where they share a bed). One of them is happy-go-lucky and content with her life, the other is totally haughty with delusions of grandeur and an ever present glass of bubbly. It's one of the most tweaked things I've seen in some time.
Werner Herzog will plotz when he sees this! These videos are the best thing since medical marijuana.
Richard Metzger is Boing Boing's current guest blogger.
"There is no group more mythical than Faust." --Julian Cope.
Along with Can and Kraftwerk, art rock terrorists Faust are the prime exemplars of German rock music or "Krautrock." Until recently I'd never seen any film footage of them playing live in their early 70s prime, but someone kind uploaded this amazing clip to YouTube.
If you've not heard Faust's music before, I recommend visiting their MySpace page and starting off with "It's A Rainy Day (Sunshine Girl)" and playing it f**ing LOUD.
Faust on Myspace,
Julian Cope on Faust IV,
Official Faust site,
Faust perform "Krautrock" in London during 2008 reunion tour
Source: Boing Boing | 24 Mar 2009 | 2:10 am
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Hello again, Boing Boing readers. It was BIG FUN being guest blogger last year and I am very excited to be back. It's a rare and special thrill be be able to communicate with so many people from the comforts of my office whilst still wearing pajamas and slippers! Many thanks to Mark, Xeni, David and Cory for hosting me again. This time around, I'll be posting a mixture of more whimsical pop cult recommendations, mixed in with some serious fare, stuff about, you know, THE ECONOMY, the big story of our times. Later in the week I'll be taping some interviews with Douglas Rushkoff about his upcoming book, Life Inc., (pre-order now and support Doug!) and I'll also be talking to Charles Hugh Smith about his new (free) E-book, Survival+, which he begins serializing today at his Of Two Minds blog. Still working out the production details, but that should appear here later during my Boing Boing tenure.
--Richard Metzger
Photo of Richard Metzger and Tara McGinley by Kendra Miller
Twitter has started to advertise a number of applications using the small box on profile pages that it first introduced earlier this month. Before today Twitter had reserved the space for links to its own services like Search, but now they are advertising a number of sites and apps, including Tweetie, a popular iPhone client.
Other links popping up include Twittervision and ExecTweets, which was first announced earlier today.
The ads are unobtrusive, and they’re promoting useful applications that are all Twitter-related so they blend nicely with the page. The question now is how much money is actually changing hands - John Battelle writes that Federated Media is sharing some of its revenues from ExecTweets, but also notes that Twitter has a history of promoting apps it finds interesting without getting paid for it.
Update: Tweetie developer Loren Brichter says that he actually isn’t paying Twitter a cent to get featured on the site. Twitter came to him, explaining that it wants to promote projects like Tweetie which promote “variety, relevance, and value” (apparently a number of Twitter employees use the app).
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
What was a bad situation in November 2008 is starting to turn outright ugly - Facebook is now well over twice the size of MySpace, according to recent worldwide Comscore data. And what’s worse, MySpace is losing audience while Facebook absolutely hockey sticks: MySpace lost 2% of users in just one month, while Facebook grew by nearly 40 million members in February alone. MySpace currently has 124 million monthly unique visitors, compared to Facebook’s 276 million.
That’s a 16.6% growth rate at Facebook in one month. This simply doesn’t happen with sites that already have hundreds of millions of users. It was less than a year ago that MySpace and Facebook were the same size.
Comscore says more than 1 in 4 people with Internet access visited Facebook last month. They’re sixth overall in terms of top sites in terms of unique users, and third (after Google, Microsoft and Yahoo) in overall page views.
MySpace continues to see executive departures, and it isn’t clear that founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson will be staying on after their contracts terminate later this year. We expect more defections by the summer, and a possible reorganization of parent entity Fox Interactive Media.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Over the weekend, the CPO of Netflix wrote on the company blog that the delays experienced by users of the streaming service over the last few months is not Netflix's fault and instead blames the traffic irregularities of ISP providers and 'playback devices.'
Problems with video streaming from Netflix (on PCs and set top boxes) started in early November, when users of the Netflix-enabled Roku box started seeing a loss in quality and low bit rates. Among the reasons noted by Roku at the time was a change in the content distribution network (CDN) used by Netflix.
Weeks later, the glitch and slow streaming was mostly fixed but ever since, users seem to have become more vigilant of the problem, and a good number of them are still not pleased. Most notably, audio has been noted to be out of sync is Roku streams.
Netflix's Neil Hunt says that people need to understand the weird discrepancies between streaming rates occur because "different titles, and different encodes for different playback device types, may come from different CDNs or different servers at a particular CDN, so may have different paths and different bottlenecks."
This is not news, since it was the same type of answer that was given back in November. It's true, however, that Limelight and Level 3 ISPs are probably mostly to blame, and that different boxes (like the Xbox 360) encode content at higher bit rates that others, causing wild differences in customer satisfaction.
But perhaps the most useful note on the weekend post is the promise from Netflix that most of these problems will end by the end of the year with the full implementation of the upcoming Silverlight 3 player (still in beta). According to CNET, Silverlight will allow 'stream loads' (sounds filthy, yeah?) to be 'shared by the graphics and main processors, whereas the current version puts all the strain on the CPU.' This will also allow people to see a huge increase in quality streams in lower-powered machines, like netbooks.
Netflix is saying that once the Silverlight player is ready to go, they'll push it out to its device partners, including the Roku, Xbox, and recent Blu-ray players.
In other Netflix news, a recent customer service survey put out by the online rental service is causing some to believe that it will soon offer streaming services for both the Wii and PS3 gaming systems.
The inquiry asks current users whether they would be willing to pay for a $10 streaming disc that would enable the feature. As a reader smartly noted in the Hacking Netflix blog, for the PS3, the extra disc would likely push through a Java app running through the player's Blu-ray Java virtual machine.
Fwix, a social news site that skims through dozens of web services to generate a ‘News Feed’ for your city, has just released its free iPhone application (iTunes Link).
The application revolves around your ‘City Feed’, which offers an automated list of stories pulled from sources including local newspapers, blogs, and Yelp, to help users quickly find the most up-to-date news relevant to their region. Stories range from the hottest restaurant reviews and concerts to recent crime reports in the area, and are generally fairly relevant to your current location (though stories that seem pretty random do occasionally pop up). These feeds are also available on Fwix’s homepage, which launched last summer.
The application also brings a few entirely new features to the Fwix service. The first is the introduction of location-based checkins with friends (called ‘Neighbors’ by the app). The inclusion of the feature seems a bit odd at first - Fwix didn’t launch as a social network, and there a number of other services like Loopt and Brightkite that already have a huge head start in this space.
But founder Darian Shirazi says that Fwix still isn’t meant to act as a social network, explaining that these social connections are primarily meant to help friends share stories they find interesting with each other. He also says that Fwix (which probably would have a hard time competing as a stand-alone location based network), is planning to integrate with Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, which means users will be able to update their location on Fwix using other services.
It’s not quite there yet, but the app’s most potentially useful feature is its heat map, which presents a visual representation of the most active areas in your city. An area’s ‘hotness’ is determined by the number of status messages, news stories, and other activity that has occurred in a region within the last few hours. It’s a great idea and it looks nice, but in its current form it’s not very useful because there’s no way to actually see which stories have made an area ‘hot’ (Shirazi says this feature will be included in the next release).
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
The entire Boing Boing Video crew is in San Francisco this week, along with a number of the bloggers from Offworld, BB Gadgets, and Boing Boing, to cover the 2009 Game Developers Conference. And this time, for the first time ever, we're doing it with live video broadcasts on our new Ustream channel.
Tune in for conversations in our BBV@GDC studio with special guests from the gaming biz, Tuesday through Friday.
Above, a little segment we shot en route to GDC, aboard a Virgin America flight -- because if you're flying to a gamer con, you really do need to be able to play DOOM on the way, on the inflight entertainment system. In this episode, we climb way inside the guts of the plane, beneath the seats, and actually get our hands on the little servers where they store the DOOM cheat codes.
Our live video stream and all of the video episodes we're cranking out this week will all live at offworld.com/gdc09.
Flash video embed above, click "full" icon inside the player to view it large. You can download the MP4 here. Our YouTube channel is here, you can subscribe to our daily video podcast on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are the archives for Boing Boing Video.
(Special thanks to Boing Boing video's hosting partner Episodic, and to Wayneco Heavy Industries, and to the kind folks at Virgin America who let us goof off on their planes.)
Source: Boing Boing | 24 Mar 2009 | 12:15 am
Section: Computers, Mobile Computers, Laptops, Netbooks, Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous
photo credit Laptop Magazine
It’s always nice to start the week with the sighting of a decent product; so kudos to Samsung for helping us do just that. Their new N110 is a redesign with a few extra boosts of their previous NC10. And it seems they kept what worked, and styled up what could use it.
Some lucky soul over at Laptop Magazine apparently already got their mitts on this baby, and gave it a full review. It seems as though the new N110 has the same insides as its big brother the NC10—you’ve got a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor, a 160GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, and it runs on Windows XP Home.
Samsung also followed the adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” when it came time to the keyboard. The keys are still a nice size at 93% of standard size, and are raised. Buttons are all where they should be, and the right shift is full-size.
They moved from the matte cover of the NC10 to a glossy black for the N110. While this looks pretty snazzy at first, it loses some of that once you’ve got fingerprints all over it. I have an Aspire with the same gloss finish and it is constantly looking smudged. Someone needs to figure out a way around that. Samsung also smoothed the look out by putting rounded edges around the palm rests, and added a burgundy trim at the bottom edge of the chassis to add an updated dash of style.
Where they could have done a little better is on the touchpad. It’s only 2.3 x 1.1 inches. This is rather limiting and I don’t even see the point of why they didn’t go a bit larger. (But the scroll feature is a nice add-on.) Also, the mouse button, although slightly more raised than on the NC10, is still a single rocker bar.
It has the same ports and slots as the NC10 as well. There are 3 USB ports, a 3-in-1 memory card reader, a VGA port, an Ethernet jack, and mic and headphone jacks. Measuring in at 10.3 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches and weighing just 2.8 pounds, this one won’t break your arm lugging it either.
Although the price tag of $469 makes it a little more expensive than some other comparably configured netbooks, the Samsung N110 deserves at least a second look.
Via: laptopmag
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"Allowing section 92A to come into force in its current format would not be appropriate given the level of uncertainty around its operation," said Commerce Minister Simon Power in a statement. "These discussions have exposed some aspects of section 92A which require further consideration. While the government remains intent on tackling this problem, the legislation itself needs to be re-examined and reworked to address concerns held by stakeholders and the government...""3 strikes" strikes out in NZ as government yanks lawUsers and ISPs were most concerned that the rules would apparently disconnect even huge businesses after a few employees downloaded illicit files. A high-profile judge raised concerns that the procedure could run afoul of contract law in New Zealand. ISPs weren't keen on disconnecting their own customers for the benefit of one set of industries, and they couldn't believe the law provided no indemnification from lawsuits; the ISP could be sued both by users and rightsholders if they didn't like the way it was handling the three strikes program. And users wanted some form of third-party or judicial arbitration before any Internet disconnection...
As for all those worries about false positives and the quality of evidence? RIANZ has never taken them too seriously, since (like the RIAA) it insists that its detection methodology is basically foolproof. In a recent interview posted on the RIANZ website, CEO Campbell Smith was asked if he would "eat his hat" if music industry copyright notifications turned out to contain numerous errors.
If anyone had doubts about the viability of a business that is purely focused on making video game applications for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and iPod Touch, venture capitalists aren’t among them. Ngmoco, known for iPhone games like puzzle-adventure game Rolando and word game WordFu, said on Monday that it raised $10 million in a new round of financing led by Norwest Venture Partners.
Game applications are among the most popular applications on Apple’s App Store, which lets users choose from thousands of software programs that developers have created for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Apple said last week that users have downloaded 800 million applications since last July, when the App Store opened. Out of the 25,000 apps available in the store, more than 6,700 of them are games, according to Mobclix, which analyzes iPhone application usage.
Mozilla Labs is experimenting with a design for a new tabs page in the Firefox browser that will show a circle of the top sites you visit that is reminiscent of the circle of friends design you see on many mobile phones. (Except, who needs friends, when you’ve got the Internet?) When you open a new tab, instead of a blank page, you would see a watermark of icons representing the eight or so sites you visit most often. By mousing over the circles, the the tab page would fade into the actual links.
This is just a concept design, but using that blank page when a new tab opens up makes sense. Aza Raskin of Mozilla Labs calls the watermark a”cognitive shield” because it is supposed to protect users from the clutter of all the links unless they explicitly mouse over the watermark. Also, it doesn’t appear if you start typing something into the address bar. He says he is considering making the circles themselves clickable, which would be more intuitive and eliminate a step. Giving users the ability to customize which sites show up in the circle would also be helpful.
The add-on only works on the development build of Firefox 3.1 right now, and may or may not find its way into a future general release.
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The entire Boing Boing Video crew is in San Francisco this week, along with a number of the bloggers from Offworld, BB Gadgets, and Boing Boing, to cover the 2009 Game Developers Conference. And this time, for the first time ever, we're doing it with live video broadcasts on our new Ustream channel.
Tune in for conversations in our BBV@GDC studio with special guests from the gaming biz, Tuesday through Friday.
Above, a little segment we shot en route to GDC, aboard a Virgin America flight -- because if you're flying to a gamer con, you really do need to be able to play DOOM on the way, on the inflight entertainment system. In this episode, we climb way inside the guts of the plane, beneath the seats, and actually get our hands on the little servers where they store the DOOM cheat codes.
Our live video stream and all of the video episodes we're cranking out this week will all live at offworld.com/gdc09.
Flash video embed above, click "full" icon inside the player to view it large. You can download the MP4 here. Our YouTube channel is here, you can subscribe to our daily video podcast on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are the archives for Boing Boing Video.
(Special thanks to Boing Boing video's hosting partner Episodic, and to Wayneco Heavy Industries, and to the kind folks at Virgin America who let us goof off on their planes.)
Hardware store chessmen
Headed toward the light-bulb aisle in my local hardware store a few years ago,I stopped to admire the bins of nuts,bolts and the like. This is not unusual for me who likens this kind of scene to a candy store. I love metal,and have cast and welded all types as a sculpture major in graduate school. When I saw the little bin containing two different types of castle nuts,I immediately thought of rooks. At the time my three sons and I hosted a weekly chess club,so chess was on my mind a lot. With my boys in tow,I returned with graph paper and we computed what sorts of bits we might want (we didn't know for sure) for each type of piece and how many in total. An hour later, after poring over numerous bins and waiting for the clerk to saw the threaded rod into measured lengths (for kings, rooks,and bishops), we went home with about fifteen pounds of loot, including spray paint for the black pieces. We created a set not far different from what is pictured here. Since then we've added washers to some and added a flanged hex nut to each of the bases to make the set uniform and even more stable. The hardware chessmen were a huge hit and the other boys built their own sets.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Section: Business News, Communications, VoIP
Skype has announced today its plans to offer a service that connects all corporate telephone networks in a beta version. The new product has been named Skype For SIP for Business and during beta testing calls will be priced at 2 cents per minute for the majority of global calls. Skype has launched this campaign as a way to build their corporate customer base since the Skype service has always been more popular with consumers.
The way Skype has designed this program so that users will be able to Skype both fixed lines and mobile devices from a standard phone system. Additionally, the new software is intended to permit companies to offer an inbound calling option from other Skype clients so that anyone can call free of charge internationally, much like an 800 number. These services can mean substantial monetary savings on international calls for business clients.
In order to use the new service, companies will need to already be using a SIP interface. Official pricing will be announced once Skype releases the full version later this year.
Read: [ZDNet]
Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Though it made no mention of a next-generation handset at its iPhone OS 3.0 preview last week, Apple is clearly hard at work on one. And if history is any guide, the company will bring it to market sometime in mid-June just as it did the iPhone 3G last year. And if history is any guide, this new iPhone will be a great improvement over its predecessor. And if history is any guide, the device will arrive at market in a cloud of hyperbole. So “100 percent confirmed” reports leaking out of AT&T claiming Cupertino is doing exactly that–prepping a new iphone that will “be faster and have a more seamless experience unmatched by any device”–and encouraging us all to prepare “for an exciting time this summer”–aren’t all that interesting. It’s not like Apple (AAPL) was going to surprise us all by not releasing a revision to the handset that’s upending the cellphone industry.
What is interesting here, though, are 100 percent unconfirmed hints that the next-generation iPhone will support faster 3G speeds. If this is indeed the case, it suggests that the device may run Infineon’s new SGOLD3 chipset. And if it does, that means it will be capable of supporting not just download speeds twice that of current 3G networks–theoretically 7.2 Mbps–but a five-megapixel camera and real-time video encoding/decoding with a new on-board video camera. Now that would make for an exciting summer, indeed.
If you want to know what the strategic priorities are for a startup, sometimes you need to look no further than the positions they are trying to fill. Twitter, which is growing like crazy and just raised $35 million, is hiring engineers and business development people. But three new positions recently popped up for what appear to be Twitter’s first product managers. They are for the Twitter service itself, Twitter search, and the Twitter API Platform.
Reading the job-board tea leaves here, Twitter is signaling that those are the three most important areas that it will be focusing on: the main service, search, and the platform. The first one is obvious, a growing company needs a product manager for its main product. But the other two suggest that beyond its basic service, Twitter sees its future as platform for other apps and as a search engine.
Of course, Twitter is already a platform for hundreds of other apps, which helps to drive substantial usage of the underlying messaging service. The more messages that people create the better. And that is where the need for the third product manager comes in. Twitter’s real-time search is how people are going to sort and filter the messages on Twitter, and it will drive usage even higher. Right now, most people read the messages that they happen to catch while they are on Twitter.com or see through an app developed by Twitter. With search, the growing archive of micro-messages can be mined for both fun and profit. That’s the job I would apply for.
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Complicating the Diploma-Gate issue that cropped last week at Concur Technologies (CNQR), it turns out that a second company executive also misstated his educational background in some corporate filings.
Last week, Concur confirmed that company filings from 1998 through January 2007 incorrectly asserted that CEO S. Steven Singh had a degree from the University of Michigan, where he attended college, but never actually graduated. Then over the weekend, the company issued a statement saying its board regretted the incident, but that it had full confidence in the CEO.
Today, a spokeswoman for the company confirmed in response to a query from Tech Trader Daily that some Concur filings, including the S-1 for its IPO, incorrectly asserted that Singh’s brother, Rajeev Singh, the company’s president and chief operating officer, had a degree from Kettering University. More recent disclosures, including the bio on the company’s Web site, say he has a degree from Western Michigan University.
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FROM APPLETELL - A very reliable source claims Apple recognizes the need for video on the iPhone, and will address it in the next version. MORE »
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Just a housekeeping item: the ridiculous patent infringement lawsuit brought against us and mobile social network Loopt (details here and here) by Earthcomber is history. The company walked away from the lawsuit.
We criticized being included in the lawsuit because we are nothing more than a search filter on Loopt. And the Earthcomber founder appeared to include us out of spite for not giving them as much press as they wanted. From my earlier post:
I called Earthcomber President Jim Brady this morning to verify the lawsuit. At first he wouldn’t answer - all he did was try to explain how he’s been wronged by Loopt. When pressed he did confirm that the lawsuit was filed, but quickly added that he didn’t really mean to press it with us. He wants to go to court with Loopt, but is willing to quickly work something out with us to make this go away, he told me, hinting that he’d like to partner with us. He also said he’s been desperately trying to get me on the phone but hasn’t been able to, so he decided to sue us instead.
The problem with using a lawsuit as a negotiating tactic is that you can’t put the cat back in the bag. The door is open, and it has to play out. In other words, suing someone to get them to return your calls is not exactly a sign of brilliance.
I’m not going to go into a lot of detail on the specifics of the patent claims, other than that they are absurd, since our lawyers have asked me not to. But I will say this - adding TechCrunch to a lawsuit based on the fact that we are a search filter (see image to left) in a product seems a little absurd to me. I’ve asked our attorneys to spend whatever it takes to kill this lawsuit, and to find a way to counter sue this guy into the stone age.
Did Earthcomber also sue iMeem, RockTheVote and NRDC, the other filtered search options? No. Because that doesn’t get them all this free press.
I’m just glad the whole thing is over, we have better things to focus on than this.
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Todd Herman, former Microsoft and MSNBC.com employee and streaming media expert, has been named the Director of New Media for the Republican National Committee. Herman founded and ran SpinSpotter, a startup that provides tools to detect spin in news stories.
Here’s a snippet of Herman’s bio from SpinSpotter’s website:
Todd wrote the initial strategy and business plan for MSN Video and brought over 100 traditional TV brands into Internet video. AdAge Magazine named him “the media guy” at Microsoft/MSN. Before that, he served as co-founder/CEO of theDial, an angel and VC-backed Internet radio pioneer acquired by Loudeye. theDial was the first to welcome Microsoft, Sears, and H&R Block to Internet radio.
Unsurprisingly, Herman said his political affiliation leaned conservative and he’s also made political contributions to the Electronic Freedom Foundation, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the American Center for Law and Justice. The RNC has been criticized recently for lacking a viable technology platform and initiative after the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign launched a comprehensive and innovative web 2.0 plan during the election cycle.
In this video, Herman speaks about the importance of non-media organizations to incorporate online video:
Herman wrote about the new position on his blog here.
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After initially banning media coverage of his keynote speech at the upcoming CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas next month, former Vice-President Al Gore is doing a flip-flop.
Gore's staffers issued a statement Monday saying his keynote address will now be open to all and there will be no restrictions around its coverage "due to the high degree of interest."
Gore is scheduled to address attendees on April 3 at 9:30 a.m. PST at the Las Vegas Convention Center. During the hour-long session, he will discuss the relationships between technology, the economy and the environment, say his staffers in a statement. But previously attendees with media badges would not have been allowed to write about it.
It's not the first time that the former Veep has tried to keep his oft-repeated speech about global warming and related environment damage secret. At the RSA conference last year, Gore did not allow media to cover his keynote session. But a few did eventually.
And as many bloggers pointed out, it is likely that this year some attendees would have ended up tweeting or blogging about the keynote, considering that CTIA is where the latest and the best mobile technology makes its debut.
Photo: (dfarber/Flickr)
What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if its name ended in "pod," it might attract the ire of Apple's shark-like legal team.
Apple's obsession with the blockbuster success of its iPod has driven the corporation to chase down many companies attempting to use the media player's three-letter suffix in their product or business names. Names that have come under fire include MyPodder, TightPod, PodShow, and even Podium. On Monday, Sector Labs, a small business whose Video Pod trademark has been blocked by Apple, took legal action to fight back.
"It appears that Apple is not only trying to put an iPod in everybody's hands and white earbuds in everyone's ears but to control the use of our language and most particularly the word 'Pod,'" Sector Labs' lawyers wrote in a 239-page response to Apple's trademark opposition, which has blocked Video Pod's development. "If we are not careful, in Apple's quest for dominance, they will soon attempt to take over the words 'Phone' and 'Tunes' — let us hope they do not attempt a coup over the exclusive rights to the letter 'i'."
Apple's trademark scuffle with Sector Labs is not unique. The corporation began cracking down on businesses attempting to use the word "pod" as far back as 2006. One of the earliest examples involved Podcast Ready, which developed a podcast-downloading application called MyPodder. Apple sent a cease-and-desist to Podcast Ready, claiming that "pod" has become commonly associated with Apple's famous iPod, and using the three-letter word could cause consumer confusion. Apple subsequently took the same action against several other companies, including TightPod, an independent business that sold protective covers for notebooks, which later renamed itself to TightJacket.
A low-profile example involved a start-up called PodShow, a social networking web site for video podcasters. Though the start-up later renamed itself to Mevio to coincide with a site redesign, it's worth noting that Apple in June 2008 filed an opposition to the company's usage of PodShow. Seven months later, Apple withdrew that opposition [pdf].
A Hoovers search query turns up about 600 companies that use the word "pod" in their name, including Peapod and PODS International. But clearly, Apple hasn't given up on the battle for this word. Just last week, Apple sent a cease-and-desist letter to Pivotal, a company marketing an iPhone stand called Podium. In that letter, Apple cited the same reasons — consumer confusion and protecting its intellectual property. Pivotal told Wired.com that it plans to file a formal response to Apple on Wednesday.
"I absolutely understand a company protecting their intellectual property," said Scott Baumann, president of Pivotal, in a phone interview. "But to start taking ownership of the letters P-O-D — a word that's in the dictionary — certainly seems far-reaching to me. It certainly seems like a stretch."
Though Sector Labs' response to Apple was published only Monday, the start-up's trademark scuffle with Apple over Video Pod began March 6, 2007, when Apple filed an opposition to the registration of the Video Pod trademark. In the face of that opposition, Sector Labs halted development and funding of the product. Apple then filed a motion for summary judgment — asking for a ruling to be made without going to trial.
But rather than throw in the towel, Sector Labs owner Daniel Kokin filed a response to Apple's motion for summary judgment, continuing the fight. In its response, Sector Labs claims the Video Pod, a video projector designed to work with a DVD player and other input devices (not the iPod), has been in development since 2000 — a year before Apple launched its first iPod. Sector Labs' legal team added that Apple has the burden to prove that a probability of consumer confusion exists.
"The ordinary reasonable consumer must be confused about the source of the Video Pod itself," Sector Labs' response reads [pdf]. "Apple's opposition falls far short of establishing that it is probable that consumers would actually be confused."
Pinnacle Law Group principal Eric Farber, who is representing Sector Labs, said Apple's intention is clearly to intimidate smaller companies who would more easily fold under the pressure of a corporation as large as Apple.
"Apple is using their power and strength to attempt to knock out very legitimate marks at a stage for start-ups that is very critical, where a great many of them don't have the money to fight a behemoth like Apple," Farber said in a phone interview.
Apple's lawyer did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
Apple's fans typically leap to defend the corporation, but Wired.com readers commenting on last week's story about Podium unanimously disapproved of Apple's actions.
"Apple's got a good point about such flagrant use of the syllable 'pod,'" commented Max Beta. "Why, just last week I was tricked into going into the office of someone who claimed to be some kind of 'doctor.' The guy didn’t know anything about music or iPods®, and he had some kind of weird foot fetish. You shouldn't be able to call yourself a podiatrist unless you are associated with Apple in some way!"
Apple must file a response to Sector Labs by April 1, and then Sector Labs will have the opportunity to respond as well.
Photo: Gaetan Lee/Flickr
Section: Audio, Portable Audio
In case you missed it, SpiralFrog, an ad-supported music site, shut down. It had been up and running since September 2007, offering DRMed music for free to its customers. The music wouldn’t work on Mac OS X, iPods, or Zunes which would explain why it wasn’t all that popular.
The website shutting down proves to be an issue for that who used the service. While the website was in use, the users had to log in once every 60 days to let SpiralFrog know their account was active, and to renew the license on the DRM. Now, with the website gone the users have only a maximum of 60 days to actually listen to their songs before they stop working. Oh, the joys of DRM.
Of course, with a completely ad-supported site, it makes sense why the record labels would have required DRM, but it is quite unfortunate for the consumer. It prevented the playback of the music on certain devices, and now won’t work at all in two months or less, depending on when they last renewed the license. It is doubtful that the average consumer really knows anything about what DRM is or does until they can’t use their files again, which is really unfortunate. Amazon and iTunes have moved to entirely DRM-free, meaning there’s no issue for those who buy all their music from those sites. But, those who rely on ad-supported services like SpiralFrog are out of luck once they close up shop, which can’t be a great feeling.
Read [CNet]
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Online dating site Match.com is releasing a native iPhone application for its 15 million members to date on the go. The app allows users to edit their profile, upload photos, and even has an opt-in to a location based feature that allows them to see singles in their area.
The last feature seems to be the most innovative one-there is definitely a market for location based dating on iPhones and other smart phones. We wrote recently about Scout, a location-based dating iPhone app, and said that location based dating might be more successful and appealing via big dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony. Now that Match has unveiled its new app, we think this could become really popular amongst its exisiting member and perhaps even draw new ones.
Match.com hasn’t been slow to jump on the mobile bandwagon. In 2007, the dating site launched its MatchMobile service, which provided subscribers with text messages to their phones when they received an e-mail from other Match.com users.
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Although Nokia had previously promised to bring its gaming service to the firm’s hot N73 (they’ve sold roughly 20 million of these badboys), as of today, all bets are off.
Citing the phone’s “limited computing power,” Nokia has decided to pull the gaming plug on the N73 before someone gets terribly hurt disappointed.
Now back to your regularly scheduled mobile news programming…
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Immediately after the Motorola Alexander took its first steps into the internet’s oh-so-harsh light, things looked bleak. Purported to be Moto’s “last stand” in the mobile hardware biz, folks were expecting it to be some valiant effort to change the world (or at least the world’s opinion of Motorola’s post-RAZR handset lineup); instead, it ended up being a crappy Windows Mobile 6.1 phone with a cramped looking keyboard. When the QWERTY-less version of the Alexander, the A3100 (otherwise known as “Atila”), debuted at CES, things looked no better. This was essentially half of the Alexander, and it sucked something fierce - so at its best, ol’ Alex would be 50% suck.
Whether its due to the impending launch of (and the lack of compatibility with) Windows Mobile 6.5, their new found love for Android, or a sudden realization that the handset just wasn’t up to par, Motorola has killed Alexander’s great voyage before it even left the dock. Lending credibility to the idea that the handset just plain sucks, they’re also cutting back on the number of markets in which they’ll be peddling the A3100.
Don’t worry - you’re not missing much.
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Section: Video, Content, Gaming, Console
$10 for all you can stream Netflix movies and TV shows is what Netflix is testing the water with via a new survey questions according to Joystiq. The survey suggests Netflix found a way to get their customers or new customers access to their network via the uber-popular Nintendo Wii. So the question Netflix wants to know, would you cough up $10 to watch your Netflix instant queue?
Netflix streaming is coming to every connected box as of late. I’ve been using the service via a TiVo HD box as of late and it is changing the way I use Netflix’s service. My ratio of instant view versus traditional mailers is about 3 to 1. If only their instant view selection was better, my ratio might stop mailing all together. The instant streaming starts almost instantly, perhaps a 10 second lag at most.
The survey suggests the $10 would cover the cost of the disc you’d need to load on the Wii unit in order to get to the Netflix service. Users would access Netflix by the Wii’s connected capabilities. Users would need to insert this disc every time they wished to access Netflix’s service.
Netflix continues its march toward morphing with the times away from physical media format and gearing up for an internet delivered method of distribution. Their on-everything approach is interesting to watch. As a Wii owner, I would pony up $10 easy for this ability.
We’ll be watching this development closely.
Source: [Joystiq] via [Boy Genius Reports]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
[via Microkhan]
FROM GAMERTELL - Play-Asia is holding its annual Lucky Spring Sale, where tons of games, gadgets, toys, music and movies are all reduced until March 31, 2009. The Lucky Draw contest is also being held, so buying a discount item may help you win a game system. MORE »
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When a Nokia 7205 with a silver keyboard and a Nokia 7205 with a pink keyboard love each other veeeeerry much, they … dance. Then they spin around while showing off their features. It’s an odd mating ritual, but it’s about as sensual as phones can get without, you know, goodie bits.
We’re not sure if this video is headed for the airwaves any time soon, as it was sent to us by one of our buddies on the inside with nary a detail. What we do know, however, is that the 7205 apparently has way more swagger than we ever will.
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
The latest gnomic press release from Sony-Ericsson is titled "Sony Ericsson announces management change in North America."
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications (“Sony Ericsson”) today announced that Najmi Jarwala, President of Sony Ericsson USA and Head of Region North America (comprising the US and Canada markets), has chosen to leave the company at the end of March to pursue other career opportunities.
Press Release [Sony Ericsson]
Noted GM apologists at Jalopnik reviewed the new Chevy Camaro, which they seem to like just fine, but can't be bothered to muster too much driving excitement: If you've been following Jalopnik or even had a conversation with me at any point since last August, you're probably bored to death with hearing about how good GM's latest crop of performance cars are. The 2009 Corvette ZR1 is the best car I've ever driven, the 556 HP Cadillac CTS-V is an utterly awesome performance sedan and you've already been reading about the G8 GXP. So it comes as a surprise that Chevy's flag-waving everyman muscle car doesn't live up to those driving standards. Sure it's stinking fast, but it doesn't make exploiting that performance rewarding in the way all the above did so well. It doesn't so much defy convention, as drive like you'd expect a Camaro would, a really good Camaro. ... It's exactly the car GM should be making, a car that will sell; it's just not the unprecedented new experience that we were hoping for, it's not a real driver's car.
Let us all for a moment believe that last week’s rumor of new iPhone hardware is true. With that in mind, let’s all settle in for the latest batch of rumors regarding the new hotness from Apple according to the Boy Genius. BGR’s sources within AT&T have revealed a slew of tasty morsels about the upcoming handset announcement.
First and foremost is the announcement date, which shouldn’t come as a surprise anymore – mid-June. AT&T and Apple have been working on a U-Verse app that will allow you to control your home DVR. The new iPhone will be much faster than previous generations with talk of wicked fast HSDPA. This next bit is a bit out there, but we’ll let you decide.
They said customers shouldn’t need to choose from AT&T’s high-end devices because of features, they should choose based on preferences. The gap in capability should be filled with the new iPhone. Ok, bets on slide out QWERTY, autofocus camera, video sharing, blah blah?
And on a completely unrelated note, AT&T will begin selling a $99 3G netbook this summer, but it won’t be packing Windows.
via BGR
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Apple already offers movies and TV shows in high definition and it should be no surprise that its rival Amazon is prepping to do the same.
A few screen shots unearthed from the Amazon.com website suggest the company is planning to offer HD TV shows for $3 an episode--the same price as it costs on Apple's iTunes.
The move increases the competition for Apple's iTunes as Amazon's online video on demand service ramps up. Amazon might even offer a season's pass to HD TV shows that could cost about $53, a move that might bring more House and Law & Order junkies to its service.
Amazon has been testing its HD video on demand service for TiVo users for the last few weeks, says Dave Zatz. And so far reports suggest the video quality is "outstanding" with surround sound ability. Amazon could also offer the HD shows through Roku's streaming media box.
Meanwhile, Apple has been fighting back. Last week the company started distributing HD movies through iTunes for rent at $5 a movie and for purchase at $20 a film.
There's no official word yet on when Amazon's latest HD service will go live but it won't be long before Amazon unveils its latest threat to iTunes.
[via NewTeeVee]
Photo: (programwitch/Flickr)
Wherein Pong is played on a hillside using LED-wrapped sheep, time-lapse photography, and very energetic dogs. And perhaps some video editing.
This is a Samsung viral -- talk about "purple sheep" marketing!
The only Nokia handsets Verizon ever picks up are the flip phones, and now they’ve got a new one on top of the chain: the Nokia 7205 Intrigue.
It’s your basic flip at its core, but they’ve wrapped it up in an ultra-slick shell and tossed in a new “Habitat Mode” screen. On this new Verizon-exclusive screen, “contacts are presented in chronological order, providing an engaging and intuitive way for customers to track, visualize and connect with their contacts”. Yeah, we have no idea what’s new about that either.
The Intrigue is available in Black/Silver or Black/Pink for $180 bucks on a 2-year contract, and VZW will lop an additional $50 off if you buy it online. Specs after the jump.
The Specs:
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Mat Halprin writes:This is pretty big. In 1959, the Nikon F camera and its associated lens mount dethroned Leicas and other rangefinders as the camera to have for photojournalists and other pros, as well as bringing SLRs into the mainstream. SLRs existed prior to the F, but they lacked an automatically returning shutter and film winding mechanism. The F had all this and more. To this day the F lens mount is still used on all Nikon SLRs (with minor changes) and you can theoretically mount [almost] any lens on [almost] any camera from 1959-2009. Not to mention that there are original generation F cameras still snapping pictures today with little or no maintenance.Bad Nikon! (That's all I've got, Mat. We've failed you, too.)So this huge milstone arrives for Nikon and what do they do? You'd assume they would do a limited edition reissue of the original F, like they did when the SP rangefinder had its 50th a few years back. But no. They introduce a new logo and that's it. I thought this deserved mention on BBG, since I read it and love it and I haven't seen much other coverage on this. Nikon really dropped the ball.
Peter H. writes:Stumbled across this website by Public Works and Government Services Canada, Crown Assets. They auction surplus electronics, vehicles, appliances, cameras, military gear, computers. Heck everybody needs an Ultra-Violet Visible Spectrophotometer. God save the Queen!Thumbing through government seizure auction catalogs is always a fun way to kill a little time before the mounties come to take away your stuff. I think I'll take the darkroom revolving door for my auction fantasy this morning.
The tiny chip inside the new iPod Shuffle's headphone control module turned out to be for "transmission" rather than hardware authentication. Leaving it at that, however, ignores Apple's capacity for clever design. Perhaps it has a trick up its sleeve, one that would add a useful feature to the control-less new iPod Shuffle: voice control.
"Transmission" is a curious turn of phrase, after all, which doesn't quite fit the idea of issuing simple playback commands. As the Shuffle doesn't have on-player controls, that's a necessary function—but such controls could be accomplished without a microchip by using simple analog techniques. The easy assumption, then, is that the chip is a contrivance designed to impose a licensing "tax" on manufacturers who want access to the Apple store.
To some ears, however, the meaning of "transmission" is even more obvious—with no need for conspiracy theories. One anon reader writes in:
Why the mystery on this? ... To implement voice recognition for a few commands, playlists, etc., you don't need superlative fidelity. ... It might be a locked feature for now, like BlueTooth on the iPod Touch...but it's there for a software upgrade, perhaps to be used with other "iProds."
Note the physical similarity between Apple's new chip and MEMS microphones developed and sold by Akustica and others. In size, surface texture and design, they're almost identical:
Microelectromechanical systems are devices with components that approach the nanotechnological scale. Audio sensors integrated into the surface of tiny chips is one of the first applications. According to EEtimes, "most analysts agree that Akustica and other MEMS microphones with digital outputs will be integrated not only into PCs and PDAs, but also into most cell phones," by 2010.
On the 1mm-square die of a MEMS controller's chip is all the circuitry required to produce digital PCM audio output.
Akustica's website, in fact, pitches just the sort of headset-based applications at hand. It imagines Bluetooth headsets. Perhaps Apple imagines something more unusual — at least with devices with enough power to process the commands.
Update: Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge, which originally reported the chip's existence, corrects my arrant speculations:
Hey, just FYI - the post re: the MEMS microphone is a bunch off. ...Yes, the chip + microphone set Apple is selling to developers contains
a MEMS microphone interface and button decoder (that's the special
chip) and a MEMS microphone. However, in the shuffle implementation,
the microphone is intentionally left completely off the headset, even
though Apple makes an almost identical mic-equipped version of the
headset for other iPods.The absence of the mic on the shuffle headset, combined with the fact
that you'd need to trigger the voice command by... wait for it...
hitting a button on the shuffle, then talking, then possibly
confirming -- all of which takes roughly much effort as changing
tracks yourself with button presses -- makes voice command on the
shuffle highly unrealistic. ... The same thing happened with the $50
iPod video cables, where a few readers insisted (in the absence of any
official explanation from Apple) that the change was going to enable
some new awesome iPod or iTunes functionality, which never actually
happened. It was ultimately just about locking down video and
collecting licensing fees for more accessories.
The "GreenWheel" lets you turn a bike into an electric simply by swapping the rear wheel. The batteries and motor sit inside the plate at the axle, while the throttle control operates wirelessly through Bluetooth. At full charge, the GreenWheel has a range of around 25 miles, extended by the pedaling of the rider.
A GreenWheel equipped bike is a smooth ride, as Discovery News found out during a recent afternoon test ride around MIT's campus. Turning the handle mounted throttle, like any motorcycle, just a few small degrees produces a noticeable increase in power and a light electric hum.The inventors estimate a life of nearly 40,000 miles, which is pretty incredible. They're trying out different sizes and power ratios and hope to have a product on the market very soon.
Previously: The Heart and Soul of Laptop Art
The internet is quivering with excitement today at the introduction of a new 17" iMac, aimed exclusively at the education market.
The problem? It seems that a lot of people were out partying over the weekend and haven’t yet recovered. There is no new iMac. Instead, it is the old white plastic iMac which has been knocking around for some time, much like the still-available white MacBook, which Apple has also failed to stop selling.
The “news" was sparked by an Apple newsletter, and understandably so — the misleading copy reads thus:
The new iMac line also includes a 17-inch model starting at $899.
As ever with Apple, things on the site have mysteriously disappeared. The newsletter is still there, but the little drop down on the iMac product page doesn’t even show up on the education store. The screengrab below comes courtesy of TechTree:
Still, it's good to know that Apple’s policy of axing a whole product line when its replacement comes out isn’t ending in landfill. Much better to offer cheap hardware to those that need it.
Apple’s 17-inch iMac for Students [Techtree]
eNews for Education March 2009 [Apple]
The NitroCream isn’t really aimed at the home user, but that hasn’t stopped the company making this odd claim on its site: “The New NitroCream brand N2-G4 is geared not only for the experienced ice cream or gelato connoisseur, but for the novice as well." [emphasis added].
The operation is simple. Mix up your creme anglaise or cream and fruit combo of choice and the 110v machine adds liquid nitrogen. That’s pretty much it. The machine is clearly aimed at commercial concerns, and the site touts the advantages of instant, on demand cones with no freezer storage required, along with the obvious customer-luring qualities of the spectacular show.
If you really do want to makke this at home, you can. Just get ahold of some N2 and stir it into your mixture. Just remember to wear some thick gloves.
Product page [NitroCream via Uncrate
Polaroid is dead. Anyone doubting this should take a look at the horribly inadequate Pogo, a digital version of the instant camera which debuted to derisive laughter (my own) at this year’s CES in Las Vegas.
Digital, so far, doesn’t come close to offering the characterful pics of instant film. Exibit A: Annie Liebowitz iconic shot of a naked John Lennon hugging Yoko hours before his death was snapped on Polaroid film. So to get anything instant and good we shall return to film.
The Diana Instant Back+ is a replacement back for Lomo’s Diana+, a cheap, low quality plastic camera which normally shoots quirky pictures on 120 film. The Instant+ uses Fuji’s Instax Mini film, which gives the same sized pictures as 135 film (just 46 x 62 mm or 1.8 x 2.4 inches), but judging by the sample pics the low-fi quality is spot on.
To use the back, you’ll need to have a Diana+ already, and from there you can of course use all the overpriced plastic accessories (ring flash, fisheye lens etc.). The back alone will cost you $95 and you still have to pay for the batteries. A bundle which includes both back and camera is $130 (the camera alone is normally $50).
Extra packs of film (ten sheets, ISO 800) are $15 a pop.
Product page [Lomo via Core77]
See Also:
Have you ever taken a look at a Super Nintendo console and pondered the toaster-like slot in the top? Or contemplated an actual toaster, wondering what would happen if you slotted in a game cartridge? Well, so did hacker richdaluz but, unlike all you lazy-bones readers, he did something about it. Behold! The Super Nintoaster.
The mod is a fully functioning Super Nintendo (although it has some glitches playing Super Mario World 2). Sadly it is no longer a fully functioning toaster, but tweaking the doneness control will dim and brighten the six glowing orange LEDs inside so you can pretend you are cooking.
The game carts slide into the toaster slots and, well, the whole thing is just amazing. I’m actually tempted to do this in reverse, turning an old SNES or NES into a real, working toaster. That might just be because I missed this morning’s breakfast, though, and my belly is currently rumbling like Bowser’s.
Project page [Stupidfingers via the Giz]
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It may be something we do not expect, or quite possibly it is something we just do not think about, however, it seems that the homeless population in Washington DC is beginning to make good use of cellphones. A recent story in the Washington Post estimates that anywhere from 30-45-percent of the homeless population in Washington DC are carrying phones. Of course, based on the report it seems they are relying on pay-as-you-go models as opposed to a fancy smartphone, but even that is helping them improve their quality of life. 
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