The talented shutterbugs at the FCC recently got their hands on a sexy Nokia N97 ahead of the phones US release. Not only did the government suits photograph a previously unannounced color scheme, but also published all the details about the phone. We kind of already know most about the phone after spying it at Nokia World ‘08 last December. Really, all we wanna know about is Nokia’s upcoming app store, ovi, which isn’t discussed within the government filling.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
The talented shutterbugs at the FCC recently got their hands on a sexy Nokia N97 ahead of the phones US release. Not only did the government suits photograph a previously unannounced color scheme, but also published all the details about the phone. We kind of already know most about the phone after spying it at Nokia World ‘08 last December. Really, all we wanna know about is Nokia’s upcoming app store, ovi, which isn’t discussed within the government filling.
Reuters - Shares of Sun Microsystems Inc tumbled 24 percent on Monday after the company rejected rival computer and software maker International Business Machines Corp's $7 billion offer. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 Apr 2009 | 1:10 pm
Design blog Core77 put out a call for Business Card Hacks in its monthly "1 Hour Design Challenge". Only a few days later and back came this amazing piece of origami geekery, a simple earbud winder, complete with pocket in which to tuck the bud parts themselves. The whole thing is held together by the wound headphone cord.
Finally, another use for business cards! Up until now, the only thing they could be used for was to temporarily fix a wobbly restaurant table — the business card is almost the perfect tool for this. Of course, winding any kind of electrical cord is a bad idea, causing broken internal wires and fraying. That won’t stop the neat-freaks obsessively wrapping cables, though. With this hack, at least they can save the cash on pre-made winders and use it to buy some replacement ‘buds.
Religious technology may seem like an oxymoron, but as more people obtain mobile phones, iPhones and other devices to help them manage their lives, it’s only natural that many of them will be using their gadgets to help them enrich their spiritual life as well. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Apr 2009 | 12:56 pm
OSLO (Reuters) - An ice bridge which had apparently held a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place during recorded history shattered on Saturday and could herald a wider collapse linked to global Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2009 | 12:53 pm
OMG. It seems that the rest of the internet has finally caught wind of the upcoming Nikon DSLR and is currently climaxing over some spy shots of said camera. The supposed spy shots do not reveal much of the D60’s successor (perhaps called the D5000) we haven’t covered over the last few months with the exception of what appears to be a movable, and perhaps live, LCD screen. That is, of course, if these spy shots are real.
Look at the picture. Doesn’t it seem a bit strange. Like, was the original photographer standing out on a balcony or ledge and just so happened to notice the unreleased camera in the wild. But the photographer was too far away for a zoom lens to capture and so the picture had to be cropped to bring the camera into view. The dubious forum post states that the pics are of a commercial shoot someplace in Eastern Europe.
Speaking of Eastern Europe, Nikon has a press event scheduled for April 14 where the company might reveal their Spring ‘09 lineup which might include the camera pictured above.
BobB-nw writes "A new cloud storage vendor is entering the market, promising an enterprise-class file system with snapshots, replication, and other features designed to simplify adoption for existing users and applications. Zetta, founded in 2007 by veterans of Netscape, has $11 million in funding and is coming out of stealth mode Monday with Enterprise Cloud Storage, a Web-based storage platform that will compete against Amazon's Simple Storage Service and a growing number of cloud vendors. Zetta's goal was to build a Web-based storage system that would be accepted by enterprise IT professionals for storing primary data. 'Data growth rates are staggering. In businesses you see growth rates of 40 to 60 percent year over year,' says CEO Jeff Treuhaft, a Zetta cofounder and formerly one of Netscape's first employees. Another Zetta cofounder is Lou Montulli, an early Netscape employee who invented Web cookies."
Holly Yarbrough's Mister Rogers Swings! is a fine collection of swinging, jazzy, uptempo covers of songs from classic episodes of Mr Rogers' Neighborhood, with a big, brassy band backing sweet, passionate... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2009 | 12:46 pm
Holly Yarbrough's Mister Rogers Swings! is a fine collection of swinging, jazzy, uptempo covers of songs from classic episodes of Mr Rogers' Neighborhood, with a big, brassy band backing sweet, passionate vocals. You can catch a preview of the disc with "Won't You Be My Neighbor" at the end of this week's Tank Riot podcast, around 1:10:14.
1. Won't You Be My Neighbor
2. You've Got to Do It
3. I Like to Be Told
4. Sometimes People Are Good
5. It's You I Like
6. When the Day Turns Into Night
7. Everybody's Fancy
8. Please Don't Think it's Funny
9. Look & Listen
10. This is Just The Day
11. Many Ways to Say I Love You
12. You Are Special
13. I'm Taking Care of You
14. Peace & Quiet
15. Then Your Heart Is Full of Love
16. It's Such a Good Feeling
Mister Rogers Swings!
April 6 (Reuters) - Xerox Corp Chief Executive Anne Mulcahy's 2008 total pay fell to $10.9 million from $13.5 million a year ago, due to a lower non-equity incentive plan compensation and a drop in stock... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2009 | 12:42 pm
The next iterations of the iPhone and iPod Touch are likely to have 802.11n wireless radios inside, offering lower power consumption, longer range and faster data rates. More importantly, it will mean that you can hook your handheld up to your n-enabled home network and not slow everything else down.
This news comes from detailed, painstaking and probably tiring study of the 3.0 iPhone firmware, revealing an iPod Touch resource file which shows a change from the current Broadcom BCM4325 wireless chip to the newer BCM4329. This chip also supports Bluetooth and FM radio, although expect this last to be disabled on Apple hardware.
Of course, if the Touch gets 802.11n, the iPhone will almost certainly get it too. This move would put all current Apple hardware on the n specification, a curious fact given the very recent upgrade to the Airport base-stations allowing simultaneous b/g and n networking.
DULUTH, Ga., April 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Wegener Corporation (Nasdaq: WGNR), a leading provider of equipment for television, audio and data distribution networks worldwide, Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2009 | 12:30 pm
CASABLANCA (Reuters) - As rapid advances in biotechnology make it easier to develop and produce deadly organisms, experts are calling for better industry oversight to stop that progress... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2009 | 12:22 pm
Bill Thompson spotted this keyboard fossil "on the pavement in Norwich, at the bottom of St Peter's Street." IMG_0051 (via BillBlog) Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2009 | 12:18 pm
Reuters - Wireless carrier T-Mobile is planning an aggressive push into the home with a variety of communication devices that will use Google's new Android operating software, the New York Times said. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 Apr 2009 | 12:12 pm
The Pogoplug, a device that lets you get to the stuff on your hard drive through the internet, and one of Gadgetell’s favorite things at CES, is now shipping to US customers. So, if you pre-ordered it, your wait is finally over. If you didn’t order one yet, you can pick one up now for $99 at the company’s site.
If you didn’t catch Gadgetell’s coverage of the Pogoplug from CES, the Pogoplug is a small box-shaped device that lets anyone easily gain access through the internet to their pictures, music, and other files stored on a connected hard drive. Set-up has been made really simple. You plug in the Pogoplug to an electrical outlet, connect it to the internet via an ethernet cable, and then plug in your USB hard drive to the Pogoplug. That is it – a home server that anyone can set up, which is exactly what Pogoplug’s designers wanted. In fact, one of the designers told our Editors that he designed the Pogoplug to be simple enough for his mom to use.
Gadgetell Editors had a chance at CES to see the Pogoplug in action and are eager to get their hands on the device. Who can blame them? Instead of uploading photos and videos to online sharing sites, Pogoplug lets you act as your own server. Imagine not having to bother with purchasing a FTP, a domain name, or having to cough up a premium fee for your online photo sharing site because you need more storage allowance. For $99 (not including tax or shipping), Pogoplug lets you simply send a link to anyone you want to see your files and storage space is limited only by the size of the hard drive you connect to the device. If Pogpplug actually works like its designers say it will, which I certainly hope it does, it is going to change the game of file sharing.
(TrendHunter.com) Do you want to feel like youve been to the spa every day? Sanyo introduced the First Zero Gravity Foot Massager, which pampers you in any desirable positions, whether it be sitting... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:59 am
newtley writes "SafeNet paid $20 million for MediaSentry in 2005, but has just sold it to rival MediaDefender for a paltry $136,000, with a promise of more later. MediaSentry's new owner says the combination will allow it to 'dramatically expand its effectiveness.' Is it time for an official government inquiry into MediaSentry and the RIAA? A Chicago student said she was planning on killing herself because the RIAA promised her she'd land in court unless she paid almost $10,000 to 'settle' an alleged copyright infringement. She 'couldn't sleep, couldn't study, couldn't live a normal life because of the worry.' The RIAA 'evidence' came from MediaSentry, accused of operating illegally."
Distributed media network Glam Media has raised $10 million more, this time specifically for its Japanese and German operations, reports PaidContent. The fifth round of funding in as many years of existence comes from Japanese VC Mizuho Venture Capital and several local advertising / media companies, but also includes a separate investment round for its German joint-venture from partner Hubert Burda Media. The total amount of capital invested in the company so far now exceeds a whopping $125 million.
Not that Glam isn’t putting their funding to good use. In 2008, the company made a couple of strategic acquisitions and keeps on displaying a clear focus on international growth, while at the same time launching interesting side projects like Tinker.
AP - Shares of Sun Microsystems Inc. fell in premarket trading Monday on news that IBM Corp. withdrew an acquisition offer. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:43 am
Fon, the internet connection sharing company, is on the verge of releasing its second router. The Fonera 2 will go on sale in Europe on April 21st for €50 ($68) and worldwide in May. The official dollar price is to be confirmed.
Like the original Fon, the principals of the hippy love-in still apply. You buy the router and hook it up as normal. The trick is that the router shares a part of your bandwidth on a public-facing connection. Other Fon owners can login and use this for free. In turn, you — as a Fonera owner — can travel the world and use other Fon-spots. It’s a neat idea and everybody except the money-grabbing telcos wins.
The new version adds even more. You can hook it up to a hard drive and leave it running, pulling down BitTorrent downloads or files from sharing sites like RapidShare and Mega Upload. It does this all without a computer, so once you have it set up you can take your laptop out on the road and look forward to a new episode of Criminal Minds when you get home. It also uses less power than leaving a computer on all day and night — as Fon CEO Martin Varsavky says in the video: “the money you’re saving on the movies, you’re actually spending on electricity.”
More: The USB port means you can hook up hard drives and access them over the network, working as both NAS (Network Attached Storage) but also for backup. We’re not sure if the router works with Apple’s Time Machine software, but as Varsavsky is using a Mac and mentions “Time Machine”, we assume it does.
The Fonera 2 also automatically uploads any videos found in a folder named “YouTube” — just make the folder, pop in the video, plug in the USB drive and walk away.
Enough? No? OK, what about hooking up a USB 3G dongle and sharing the connection over Wi-Fi? That’s exactly what is happening in the video.
This is fantastic, and exactly what a router should be doing. When is the best time for heavy download activity? When you’re out, away from home and not using the connection. What is a router? We see it as a simple translator between us and the outside internet, but it really should be a hub for all our networking needs, including NAS and 3G.
In fact, the only thing the Fonera shouldn’t be used for is as a Wi-Fi hotspot at, say, CES. This January, a certain unnamed Wired.com editor brought his Fon router to set up a network at the Wired nerve-center in the Las Vegas Convention Center. It was only as the show started that we discovered the router would take 24 hours to upgrade its firmware. Luckily, we are nerds and we travel with Ethernet cables.
Japanese researchers have developed a "Child-robot with a Biomimetic Body," or CB2, that can develop social skills by interacting with humans. The bald, child-like robot follows movements with its black eyes, and mimics breathing by letting its shoulders rise and fall in rhythm. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:40 am
(TrendHunter.com) A culinary approach to lighting, the white bone china creations by Dominic Bromley, dubbed the Cibola Pendant and Cibola Table Light, resemble smooth, cross-cut onions. The carved... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:39 am
In effort to reach agreement on a new contract, AT&T and unions for its landline workers worked late past a strike deadline on Sunday, the Associated Press reported. AT&T issued a statement explaining that union-represented employees were continuing to work under core wireline contracts that had reached expiration at 11:59 p.m. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:29 am
(TrendHunter.com) Dogs know when they look good and so do their owners. The California Collar Company sells their unique eco-friendly leather dog collars online through an Etsy shop. The collars are... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2009 | 11:19 am
We first got a good look at the Eee PC T91 tablet back at CES, however since then any release information has remained a mystery. Unfortunately, we still do not have an exact release date to offer up, but the recent FCC appearance does mean it is that much closer to becoming available. Sadly though, this was a pretty boring FCC listing as we have only been able to find one image (shown below) of the bottom of the tablet and the FCC label, not even a user manual to browse through. Of course, we did have some nice hands on time this past January, so we have already gotten a good look.
One interesting item to note is that the T91 features an 8.9-inch display, something Asus has seemingly shifted focus away from recently in favor of the 10-inch models. Aside from the display, the T91 will also feature an Intel Atom Z520 processor and be running Windows XP Home.
Still nothing in terms of pricing, but hopefully we will hear about that (and an official release date) soon.
Mark my words, friends: this is this summer’s meme. We’ll be watching these videos for a few months then in about August, Beyonce will come out with a video featuring her and three dancers flailing around wildly to a Flamenco beat.
So what’s going on here? The video game Goldeneye has a weird glitch that causes the characters to dance around if you jostle the cartridge. The resulting hilarity, shown above, spawned a new meme in Japan which has caused hundreds of people to recreate the glitch in odd costumes. A compilation appears here:
The music is from Kohmi Hirose and presumably all you have to do is film yourself and speed it up, so there’s a good chance we can continue this meme in the decadent West with a little gumption.
I leave the creation of one of these videos as an exercise for the reader.
Dundundundundundundun, Dundundundundundun, dah dah! Dah dah dah! If you were in Keswick, Cumbria, England yesterday, you may have been humming the James Bond theme. If you are Peter Nelson, you most certainly were.
Yesterday, Nelson opened the Bond Museum, a collection of movie memorabilia he has collected over the last 14 years from around the world. It’s not junk, either — Nelson has gotten some iconic props from the films: He has the golden gun from, of course, The Man With The Golden Gun and the Octopus from Octopussy (this last confuses — is the creature still alive?). You’ll also find the underwater Lotus Esprit and the Mustang stunt car which drove on two wheels in Diamonds Are Forever (yes, the one which famously went into an alley on two wheels and came out on the other two).
Speaking to the local newspaper, the News and Star, Nelson was understandably excited:
It is every boy’s dream come true. I believe it will become one of the world’s best small museums. People will travel from all over the world to see it and it is going to be a fantastic attraction for Keswick.
The museum will be in good company. In fact the area has a wealth of excellent educational diversions. My parents lived nearby for some years, and it is with great regret that I tell you about Keswick’s other great museum, a museum which I drived past many times but never visited. Its name? The Pencil Museum.
Hint: If you’re going to post pictures of a new, unannounced Nikon DSLR, don’t pick the worst one:
"I have more and better pictures if people are interested."
So ends the post from indyjb on the Something Awful “humor" forums, which you see above. We remain very skeptical of this snap, mostly due to the source and the fact that he didn’t bother putting up the “better" photographs. If real, we are seeing a Nikon SLR with a flip-out screen, something that doesn’t yet exist. It would certainly fit with Nikon’s innovative strategy to push new features other than plain magapixels counts.
The camera is thought to be a "D500", although it could be a replacement for the entry-level D40/D60 double-team. When would it appear? There is a Nikon event in Austria on Tuesday April 14th, a press breakfast featuring “exclusive new product highlights".
To add to the speculation, it is entirely likely that there will be a D60 replacement and a D300 replacement soon, and that the cheaper camera will shoot video just like the D90. We’ll have to wait and see. One thing we do know is that it will be something worth writing about — for the last year or so, almost every Nikon DSLR announcement has been exciting.
This Saturday marks our second annual PragueCrunch to be held at the magnificent Hergetova Cihelna (try the veal!) on April 11 at 2pm.
The program will be fairly off-the-cuff this weekend and I encourage those who’d like to speak for about 5 minutes during the event to drop me a line ASAP (john@crunchgear.com). We’ll also have a job hunt portion to the event with colored name tags for networkers, job seekers, and employers. Robin Wauters will dance.
If last year is any indication, you’re going to meet the cream of the Prague tech community at this event so if you’re out of work or looking for a crack COBOL programmer, you’ll be in the right place. Finally, special thanks to our amazing sponsors:
We’ll be breaking out a post for them as we get closer to the even. Until then, if you would like to RSVP, drop us a line at john@crunchgear.com with the subject line “RSVP PRAGUE” or just hit up the Facebook Event.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
This Saturday marks our second annual PragueCrunch to be held at the magnificent Hergetova Cihelna (try the veal!) on April 11 at 2pm.
The program will be fairly off-the-cuff this weekend and I encourage those who’d like to speak for about 5 minutes during the event to drop me a line ASAP (john@crunchgear.com). We’ll also have a job hunt portion to the event with colored name tags for networkers, job seekers, and employers. Robin Wauters will dance.
If last year is any indication, you’re going to meet the cream of the Prague tech community at this even so if you’re out of work or looking for a crack COBOL programmer, you’ll be in the right place. Finally, special thanks to our amazing sponsors:
We’ll be breaking out a post for them as we get closer to the even. Until then, if you would like to RSVP, drop us a line at john@crunchgear.com with the subject line “RSVP PRAGUE” or just hit up the Facebook Event.
Take a look behind your desk. If you’re at home, peek behind the TV or the stereo. If you are anything like, well, like most people, you’ll see something similar to the above, a photo taken in Bangkok, Thailand.
The snap is by our friends at the Swedish Royal Pingdom, a company that, when not measuring server uptime is showing off about its neat and tidy office space: "Sweden, a very organized country when it comes to things like infrastructure, electricity, etc".
Pingdom has a whole gallery of these crazy, spaghetti-junctions of street cabling. It appears, though, that it is not always simply a lazy, citizen-hating municipality that causes these messes. A lot of the time it is the people themselves hooking up to the wires for some free power.
I showed the gallery to the Lady, hoping she’d relent on her strict-anti cable policy. Instead, she speculated on the poor people living underneath. "Their brains will be fried," she said.
Oh noes! IBM withdrew its $7 billion bid to buy Sun Microsystems. The company has no other offers outstanding, which may mean that the well-known and well-loved Unix server supplier will have to go it alone in an uncertain economy. One interesting point, from NYT:
The Sun board did not reject the offer outright, but wanted certain guarantees that the I.B.M. side considered “onerous,” according to that person.
IBM dropped its price to $9.40 and the requirements included changing the management team and the movement/removal of some senior employees. Sun’s stock dropped to $8.49 last Friday.
Mr. Benheck has done it again. He dumped a fully-working Commodore 64 inside a laptop case that looks like it came out of a copy of Byte magazine circa 1989. He began by shaving down all the extraneous ports and inputs and even pulled off the power supply, making something that was 15″x10.5″. He then stuff it in with a 15″ LCD screen and then stuffed in a real C64 keyboard.
Then he blew our minds by adding in an SD card reader and firing up Golden Axe. True genius. Watch the video to see how fun this guy really is.
This is likely going to spread like wildfire, and it isn’t even finished yet: Information Architects has released the final beta for the fourth iteration of its awesome Web Trends Map series. This is a great visualization of current Internet trends, and how companies and individuals fit into it.
The picture that’s embedded above doesn’t do it justice in any way, so be sure to check out the full-sized image hosted on Flickr. Update: better yet, head over to Zoomorama.
The Web Trend Map is a yearly publication by iA Inc. It maps the 333 most influential Web domains and the 111 most influential internet people onto the Tokyo Metro map. Domains are carefully selected by the iA research team through dialogue with map enthusiasts. Each domain is evaluated based on traffic, revenue, age and the company that owns it. The iA design team assigns these selected domains to individual stations on the Tokyo Metro map in ways that complement the characters of each.
Oh, and in case you like it and you want to buy a printed version, they’re only making and selling 1,000 of them, so be quick.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
For those of you in high school, be prepared to get your mind blown. The Sidekick 2009 is coming May 13, the Wing II is coming on July 22nd and the HTC Snap is coming July 1. A few other models are rolling out of T-Mo this summer, but those are some of the greats.
TEL AVIV, Israel, April 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Ceragon Networks Ltd.
(NASDAQ and TASE: CRNT), a leading provider of high-capacity LTE ready
wireless backhaul solutions, provides today details of the conference call
for first quarter 2009 financial results. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Apr 2009 | 9:00 am
IRVINE, Calif., April 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Logan Marshall, the CEO of Tollfreenumber.ORG, has announced that his California-based communications company still has ample available 1-800 phone numbers. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Apr 2009 | 9:00 am
For those of you in high school, be prepared to get your mind blown. The Sidekick 2009 is coming May 13, the Wing II is coming on July 22nd and the HTC Snap is coming July 1. A few other models are rolling out of T-Mo this summer, but those are some of the greats.
The folks at have found the full summer line-up including a prepaid Nokia 1661. Boring feature phones aside, I’m actually quite excited about the new Sidekick - I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for SK since it saved my life back in ‘Nam and generally made email and IM amazingly easy. Full list after the jump.
* “Blade” (Sidekick 2009) - May 13
* HTC “Maple”/”Snap” - July 1st (contrary to earlier speculation, this seems to confirm a T-Mobile variant)
* HTC “Rhodium”/Wing II - July 22nd (also known as the Touch Pro 2)
* HTC “Sapphire”/”Magic” - TBD. Sorry folks.. we’ll keep you posted (a.k.a. G2)
* Sony Ericsson “CS8″ - June 24th (8mp camera? Is this the Android device they’ve been talking about?)
* Nokia 1661 (prepaid) - April 29th (We know, a week later than previously mentioned. But you know the wait will be SO worth it. No… really… it will be… )
* Samsung T349 (prepaid) - May 6th
* Samsung T239 (prepaid) - May 13th
* Samsung T559 - July 15th
* Samsung T469 - July 15th (just a simple two-tone gray, apparently)
* Samsung T749 - July 22nd (2 colors for this one: red/orange and two-tone gray)
* Samsung T659 - August 19th
Crunch Network: TechCrunchobsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
An anonymous reader writes with a snippet from the Telegraph: "A European Union directive, which Britain was instrumental in devising, comes into force which will require all internet service providers to retain information on email traffic, visits to web sites and telephone calls made over the internet, for 12 months."
LONDON, April 6 /PRNewswire/ -- The global economic downturn has taken its toll on industries across the globe, and the mobile and wireless communications industry is no exception. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Apr 2009 | 8:30 am
One nugget of information Facebook leaked out to press last week during the Gideon Yu fiasco: the company has been EBITDA profitable for five quarters, but doesn’t expect to generate positive cash flow until 2010. Why the discrepancy? There’s only one answer to that - Facebook is paying out big dollars for something that must be depreciated over time. If they could just write off the expense in full as they paid it they’d be having much bigger losses now that matched cash flow, and they’d hit profitability sooner. But accounting rules let them pay cash now and recognize the expense later on. In early leaked projected financials, there was a $200 million difference in 2008 cash flow and EBITDA profitability (or lack thereof).
What have they been buying? Stuff to serve up all these massive page views, and photos in particular. In our post last October, when Facebook was fishing for dollars in Dubai, we noted some of their expenses, including a massive ongoing outlay for NetApp storage systems that cost $2 million each:
The company is likely spending well over a $1 million per month on electricity alone, say experts we’ve spoken with. Bandwidth is likely another $500,000 or more per month on top of that. The company has earmarked $100 million to buy 50,000 servers this year and next. And sources say they’ve been buying one NetApp 3070 storage system per week just to keep up with all this user generated content. At up to $2 million each, that adds up quickly - we’ve heard estimates that they may have spent as much as $30 million this year alone with the company. And the icing on the cake - earmark another $15 million per year in office and datacenter rent payments.
As we noted in February, Facebook is the largest photo application on the web (forgetting everything else they do). More than 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month, and these things chew up bandwidth and storage like crazy. And it’s even more expensive to serve photos in poorer countries where Facebook is getting all its growth (and little revenue).
Enter Haystack
Haystack is Facebook’s way of substantially lowering the cost of storing and serving photos, and the rollout of the new internal infrastructure was recently completed. See Niall Kennedy for a technical overview of what Haystack is and why it’s so much more efficient than third party solutions they’ve used to date, as well as this 2008 presentation by Jason Sobel.
What isn’t clear is if Haystack will really help Facebook control costs outside of the U.S., particularly in Asia. But it’s a step in the right direction for cost control, and is certainly being factored in Facebook’s estimates of cash flow profitability by next year.
Crunch Network: CrunchBasethe free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Stagueve sez, "Ben Heck just finished his new project, a gorgeous Commodore 64 Laptop:"
This project somehow has the distinction of being both the longest and fastest portable electronics project I have ever done. I originally started making a C64 laptop in the fall of 2006, and kept pecking away at it every so often. Finally, a few weeks ago, I said "screw it" and started over.
Everybody wants to be a DJ. Ever since the first iPod, DJ’s have been waiting for the ability to mix from a handheld. Jobs, in all his wisdom, never saw fit to allow tempo changes so that tracks could be seamlessly mixed. There have been a couple of interestingattempts, including two notablemixers from Numark, but nothing as portable as an iPod. Enter the Pacemaker from Tonium. It’s like 2 turntables, a mixer, and an iPod had a wild night together and the result is this beautiful and brilliant device.
The Pacemaker is a hard drive based music player that allows you to do almost everything that a complete DJ setup would in a device about as tall as a soda can and about as thick as a deck of cards. It has an LCD screen and a touchpad. Separate headphone and line outs so you can preview your mix before the party hears it. You can adjust track speed to seamlessly mix two tracks without changing the pitch. There is a visual display to assist with beat-matching or you can let the Pacemaker match the beats for you. There is an EQ and effects that can be applied separately to each track and a kill switch to toggle them on and off. You can create loops and edit them in real-time. The list goes on.
Using the Pacemaker seems a bit confusing at first, but after a few minutes, it feels completely natural. In the center of the device are two buttons that control which channel you are manipulating. Press the left button to activate channel one. Double tap the touch pad on the bottom of the device to open your song library. Browse the entire library or filter by genre, BPM, custom lists called cases, etc. Pick the track you want and start playing it on channel one. Switch over to channel two. Open the library again and find your next track. With the cross fader fully on channel one, start playing the new track on channel two in your headphones. Skip ahead and find a good point to mix it in. Hit the cue button to save the cue point. When the time is right, start playing the track on channel 2. The Pacemaker will show you a visual representation of the beats of both tracks so you can easily see if they match. If they are off, adjust the pitch until the speeds are the same and then tweak the tracks until they line up or hit a button and the Pacemaker will match them for you. When everything sounds good, mix the tracks with the touch-sensitive cross fader. Fade out the track on channel one and start again. It is extremely simple. This is my new favorite gadget.
I won’t get into the controls with any more detail because it would just be confusing. In fact, because each control serves 2 functions and you have to use an up/down toggle switch to access all of the features you’ll need to do basic mixing, the instructions sound difficult and unintuitive. The reality is the exact opposite. After a few minutes of mixing and a few glances at the manual, I just did what I needed to do. I wasn’t thinking about how to operate the Pacemaker, just about making music.
The Pacemaker handheld is also paired with a desktop app (mac and PC compatible) that does the heavy lifting of analyzing tracks for the BPM, allows you to create custom lists, called cases, and transfers tracks to the Pacemaker. You can also create mixes directly in the app, but you can’t yet export those mixes directly to the Pacemaker. Even if you could, I think that would miss the point of the desktop app. A set should be ‘live’ for a party. The desktop app lets you experiment with what tracks go together well. It lets you preset cue points. It allows you to perfect your set before you’re in front of a screaming crowd. Still, making mixes is fun and you can download the desktop app from Pacemaker.net even if you don’t own the device. When you create a mix that you like, you can upload it so the world can hear your genius.
I’ve been using the Pacemaker almost every day for the last two weeks. I mix my own personal soundtrack every day on the train ride home from work. It is so much more fun than passively listening to music.
The original Pacemaker packs a 120GB drive, power and audio cables and, although it is an amazing device, is a bit pricey at $699. The newly announced model 666 knocks $100 of of the price and comes with fewer accessories and a 60GB drive. It will be available May 1. $599 still seems like a lot considering what we are used to paying for our portable music players, but can you really put a price on cool? Apparently, you can. It’s $599.
When a guy like Steve B. Burke likens TV viewers’ stampede online to a “wildfire,” you know the cable industry is feeling the pressure. Burke is the president and chief operating officer of Comcast, America’s largest cable distributor. He notes that Hulu.com and other popular websites that offer access to TV shows and films attract a fraction of the viewers that cable does. But Burke acknowledges that he and his rivals can’t afford to sit still — not when Americans can get many favorite shows online for free.
So Comcast (CMCSA), Time Warner Cable (TWC), and their ilk are going on the offensive. Long technology laggards, the cable companies have set up skunk works. The aim of doing so is twofold: putting more of their content online and making the regular television viewing experience more Weblike. “We don’t want to be alarmists,” says Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt. “But we really need to look at what consumers want.”
Great success! North Korea has successfully launched a satellite into a near earth orbit and it is now circling the earth at about 1 mile below sea level. That's right: North Korea's Taepodong-2, the much-feared long-range missile that had even the Obama camp worried, broke up over Japan at about 11:37am and then fell into the water at 11:48am on Sunday. The launch is described as a complete success in North Korean reports although American military command believes it to be a failure. Nonetheless, the ability to push a rocket even close to U.S. soil is obviously disconcerting. The NYT writes:
North Korea’s public portrayal of the event as a complete success was similar in its celebratory tone to the happy note it struck in 1998 after having failed to loft a satellite into orbit.
A general rule of engineering is that failures reveal more than successes. If so, North Korea — which has now test-fired three long-range rockets, each time unsuccessfully — is learning a lot about limitations.
Over the weekend, Microsoft (MSFT) unleashed the second TV ad in its “you find it, you keep it” series — this time swapping handsome, “technically savvy” Giampaolo for perky, red-headed Lauren De Long.
Once again the camera follows a typical budget-constrained buyer on a laptop shopping spree using Steve Ballmer’s money. Once again the shopper chooses an HP (HPQ) Pavilion over a Mac. And once again, the Apple (AAPL) press has gone after the buyer’s choice with its teeth bared, digging into the machine’s innards and ripping them apart, spec by spec.
Great success! North Korea has successfully launched a satellite into a near earth orbit and it is now circling the earth at about 1 mile below sea level. That’s right: North Korea’s Taepodong-2, the much-feared long-range missile that had even the Obama camp worried, broke up over Japan at about 11:37am and then fell into the water at 11:48am on Sunday. The launch is described as a complete success in North Korean reports although American military command believes it to be a failure. Nonetheless, the ability to push a rocket even close to U.S. soil is obviously disconcerting. The NYT writes:
North Korea’s public portrayal of the event as a complete success was similar in its celebratory tone to the happy note it struck in 1998 after having failed to loft a satellite into orbit.
A general rule of engineering is that failures reveal more than successes. If so, North Korea — which has now test-fired three long-range rockets, each time unsuccessfully — is learning a lot about limitations.
This experience is fairly consistent over in North Korea - a great deal of posturing followed by an engineering failure. However, experts believe that continued launches will eventually prove fruitful and the next Taepodong-2 may break the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of the moon, provided, as this Onion article suggests, they bring the moon to Pyongyang.
As revenues from sales of traditional media have plunged, the music business has been looking for alternate ways of making money from its products, including a variety of subscription services, ad-supported streams, and blanket licenses. The focus of these efforts has largely been on how to ensure that revenue gets collected by the industry in general instead of disappearing into the black hole of piracy, but there’s a related issue that doesn’t receive as much attention: how that money gets distributed once it’s collected. In an attempt to highlight this issue, the Future of Music Coalition has released a set of principles for the compensation of musicians. Although the document focuses on money from new distribution models, it reads much more like an effort to rewrite the rules of the entire business.
The FMC calls itself a “research and advocacy organization that seeks a bright future for creators and listeners,” two groups which tend to have contentious relationships with the major record labels. Based on the document and an accompanying explanation, the FMC isn’t a big fan of the labels, either. So, for example, one of the principles calls for the ability of artists to audit the flow of cash related to their works through the record label’s coffers. In explaining this, the FMC states, “Music industry history is full of stories—anecdotal and otherwise—of misleading accounting by copyright owners.”
Earlier this month, my wife and I were thinking of what to get our daughter for her upcoming fourth birthday, and upgrading her small plastic swingset that she was outgrowing was high on our list. I had started scouting around the web trying to find companies that did custom playground stuff that wasn’t just huge because we don’t have a ton of room in our yard. Everyone thinks bigger is better, but I was looking for smarter, for small spaces.
A few days later I’m reading RSS feeds in Google Reader, which consists mostly of friends and writers I admire. Lilly from Girlhacker posted a great entry about the Obamas getting a swingset playground (March 10th entry) for their kids to have a somewhat normal childhood, and it was the first playset at the White House since the Kennedy family. The post also paints the awesome mental image of an ex-military man on some swings and testing out slides for the Obamas. Lilly does the classic blogging thing that in addition to pointing to the news story she found out about it, she dug up the manufacturer of the swingsets and a few archival photos.
URL shortening services have been around for a number of years. Their original purpose was to prevent cumbersome URLs from getting fragmented by broken email clients that felt the need to wrap everything to an 80 column screen. But it’s 2009 now, and this problem no longer exists. Instead it’s been replaced by the SMS-oriented 140 character constraints of sites like Twitter. (Let’s leave aside the fact that any phone that can run a web browser and thus follow links can also run a proper client, and doesn’t have to hew to the SMS character limit.) Since TinyURL, there has been a rapid proliferation of shortening services.
Aside from the raw utility of allowing URLs to fit within a Twitter message, newer services add several interesting bits of functionality. The most important of these is that let the linker turn any link into THEIR link, and view metrics on how far it’s spread and how many clicks it’s gotten. Showing a user how popular his actions are is inevitably addictive. Shorteners are relatively easy and lightweight to set up. Adding a simple interstitial before the redirect provides an obvious way to monetize. And maybe someday all the link data will be worth something.
The online magazine’s mockumentary about a nanoblogging service is definitely more amusing than contemplating the fate of the real-life microblogging service.
“I think a lot of people don’t have time to Twitter,” said one of its faux founders in a terrific video, in which he describes Flutter’s 26-character–the length of the alphabet–version “flaps,” versus 140 characters for Twitter.
It’s mascot, of course, is a hummingbird.
Here’s one heck of a rumor: BoomTown is in “late-stage” discussions to buy it.
Here’s the video (I especially like the Flutter eyeglasses):
- BGAN mobile broadband satellite service enables rapid response,
streaming of broadcast-quality video from the field -
- New BGAN X-Stream premium service will also be showcased -
BETHESDA, MD, April 6 /PRNewswire/ - Stratos Global Corporation, the leading global provider of advanced mobile and fixed-site remote communications solutions, today announced it will use the upcoming NAB Show to feature recent deployments of BGAN from Stratos by leading media organizations. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Apr 2009 | 7:00 am
Here's Michael Tamblyn, the CEO of BookNet Canada, presenting six technology initiatives that could radically alter the course of publishing for the better. It's a refreshing presentation, focused on selling more paper books using better technology that improves workflow and marketing, while acknowledging that there's lots of room for improvement in ebook readers as well.
The US House subcommittee on Financial Services is agitating to legalize payday loans with 391% APRs. Key committee members have received large campaign contributions from the "payday" industry, and the committee chairman, Luiz Gutierrez (who also received contributions from the payday people) says the reason he's offering the industry this sweetheart deal after being on record as opposing this sort of thing is that their powerful lobbying has left him powerless to resist them: "...[T]hey're very powerful. Their influence should not be underestimated."
After watching members of the military fall prey to exorbitant payday loans, Congress in 2006 capped the interest rates for military payday loans at 36%. Fifteen states have similar caps or outright bans.
Congressman Gutierrez is competing with Congressman Joe Baca to see who can author the biggest giveaway. Baca's legislation would allow rollovers, higher fees for online banks, and would pre-empt state laws banning payday loans.
Reuters - Sony Corp's (6758.T) PlayStation 3 outsold Nintendo Co Ltd's (7974.OS) Wii in March for the first time in 16 months in Japan thanks to hot new PS3 titles from Sega Sammy (6460.T) and Capcom (9697.T), a game magazine publisher said. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 Apr 2009 | 6:44 am
New Version of RoamAnywhere Introduces Mobile Context with Location-Based Enterprise Presence; Adds New Cost-Savings Capabilities to Leading FMC Platform Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Apr 2009 | 6:30 am
NETANYA, Israel, April 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cellcom Israel Ltd.
(NYSE: CEL) (TASE: CEL) (hereinafter: the "Company") announced today that the
public tenders for its series D and series E debentures, previously announced
on April 5, 2009, has been concluded The final pricing information relating
to the public offering is as follows:
- NIS 185,970,000 principal amount of Series D debentures at
the price of NIS 1,161 per unit (each unit comprised of NIS 1,000
principal amount); the interest rate of this series is fixed at 5.19%
per annum, linked to the Israeli Consumer Purchase Index;
- NIS 788,667,000 principal amount of Series E debentures at
an interest rate of 6.25% per annum, without linkage; this series will
be sold at par value (NIS 1,000 per unit).
The closing of the offering is expected to occur on April 7 or 8, 2009.
The offering described in this press release was made in Israel to
residents of Israel only. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 Apr 2009 | 6:21 am
GreennMann writes "An ice bridge linking a shelf of ice the size of Jamaica to two islands in Antarctica has snapped. Scientists say the collapse could mean the Wilkins Ice Shelf is on the brink of breaking away, and provides further evidence of rapid change in the region. Sited on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Wilkins shelf has been retreating since the 1990s. Researchers regarded the ice bridge as an important barrier, holding the remnant shelf structure in place. Its removal will allow ice to move more freely between Charcot and Latady islands, into the open ocean."
Reuters - IBM's talks to acquire smaller computer and software rival Sun Microsystems Inc broke down on Sunday after Sun rejected IBM's $7 billion offer, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
Congressman "Hollywood" Howard Berman (who once proposed legislation that would allow rightsholders to hack American net-users' PCs if they believed the machines were involved in infringement, but excused them from liability if they targeted the wrong machine) is holding "piracy" hearings in LA later today (Monday), and the speaker's list consists of nothing but representatives of giant studios and theater chains, as well as someone from the "Global Intellectual Property Strategy Center."
If you're a copyfighter and you're around Van Nuys today, why not attend the meeting and see if you can't ask an impertinent question or two?
On Monday, April 6, Congressman Howard L. Berman will chair a field hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to assess the financial impact of global intellectual property piracy. The public is welcome to attend this hearing, which will be held in the City Council Chambers at the Van Nuys Civic Center, 14410 Sylvan Street, from 10 a.m. to noon...
Witnesses will be: Steven Soderbergh, National Vice President of the Directors Guild of America; Richard Cook, Chairman of The Walt Disney Studios; Michael F. Miller, Jr., International Vice President of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE); Zach Horowitz, President and Chief Operating Officer of Universal Music Group; and Timothy P. Trainer, President of Global Intellectual Property Strategy Center, P.C.
Here's a gallery of elaborate shanty-houses, hanging at L.A.Galerie in Frankfurt. They're from Peter Bialobrzeski and Oliver Boberg, and the exhibition's called "Case Studies." It's hanging until May 23. Bialobrzeski's photos come from the Bataan Shipyard Corporation Compound, a squatter camp located at the mouth of the River Pasig near the Port of Manila, in February 2008. 70,000 people live there, and 45% of Greater Manila live in a camp like it.
From the Oxford University Press's blog, "Nine Words You Might Think Came from Science but
Which Are Really from Science Fiction."
4. Deep space. One of the other defining features of outer space is its essential emptiness. In science fiction, this phrase most commonly refers to a region of empty space between stars or that is remote from the home world. E. E. "Doc" Smith seems to have coined this phrase in 1934. The more common use in the sciences refers to the region of space outside of the Earth's atmosphere.
5. Ion drive. An ion drive is a type of spaceship engine that creates propulsion by emitting charged particles in the direction opposite of the one you want to travel. The earliest citation in Brave New Words is again from Jack Williamson ("The Equalizer", 1947). A number of spacecraft have used this technology, beginning in the 1970s.
6. Pressure suit. A suit that maintains a stable pressure around its occupant; useful in both space exploration and high-altitude flights. This is another one from the fertile mind of E. E. Smith. Curiously, his pressure suits were furred, an innovation not, alas, replicated by NASA.
7. Virus. Computer virus, that is. Dave Gerrold (of "The Trouble With Tribbles" fame) was apparently the first to make the verbal analogy between biological viruses and self-replicating computer programs, in his 1972 story "When Harlie Was One."
Says Jalopy: "Kurt Andersen is a sterling gent, a real class act. Our conversation brought us to topics I had not really thought about or connected before."
The video above is just a small excerpt from the show. In the same episode, there's a great story about the origins of Devo and an interview with the jilted boyfriend of artist Cindy Sherman.
You don't have to be a big-time money manager like Bernie Madoff to execute a successful scam. They all start the same way: with one really good line of BS.
KHAQQ to Itasca. We are on the line 157 337. Will repeat message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait. We are running on a north and south line. —Amelia Earhart
May I not seem to have lived in vain. —Tycho Brahe
How were the circus receipts today at Madison Square Garden? —P. T. Barnum
1938: Fiddling around in the lab one day, Roy Plunkett accidentally discovers polytetrafluoroethylene, soon to be known as Teflon, a slippery substance that will have practical applications in everything from non-stick cookware to a presidential nickname.
Plunkett, a chemist at DuPont's Jackson research lab in New Jersey, made his discovery in the time-honored scientific way: as the result of a mistake, and with an assistant's help.
Plunkett and his assistant, Jack Rebok, were testing the chemical reactions of tetrafluoroethylene, a gas used in refrigeration. The gas was contained in some pressurized canisters, one of which failed to discharge properly when its valve was opened.
Rebok picked up the canister, only to find that it was heavier than an empty canister would be. He suggested cutting it open to see what had happened and, despite the risk of blowing the lab to kingdom come, Plunkett agreed.
Of course it was heavy: The gas hadn't accidentally escaped. It had solidified into a smooth, slippery white powder as the result of is molecules bonding, a process known as polymerization.
This new polymer was different from similar solids like graphite: It was more lubricant and extremely heat-resistant, due to the presence of dense fluorine atoms that shielded the compound's string of carbon atoms.
Setting other work aside, Plunkett began testing the possibilities of polytetrafluoroethylene, eventually figuring out how to reproduce the polymerization process that had occurred accidentally the first time.
DuPont patented the polymer in 1941, registering it under the trade name Teflon in 1944. The first products — most having military and industrial applications — came to market after World War II. It wouldn't be until the early 1960s that Teflon became a household word when it was used to produce the most effective, heat-resistant cookware yet seen.
The word gained a certain pop-culture notoriety in the 1980s when the media began referring to Ronald Reagan as the Teflon president, a reference to his infuriating ability to avoid being tarnished by the various scandals plaguing his administration.
Teflon cookware, however, remained as steadfast and reliable as ever.
Today, Teflon is found virtually everywhere, coating metals and fabrics from the aerospace industry to clothing to pharmaceuticals.
For his discovery, Plunkett, who retired from DuPont in 1975, was enshrined in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
After hitting the headlines last year, successful pirate attacks have been on the wane in the early months of 2009, despite a failed attack on a British cruise ship earlier this month. Experts disagree about what has led to the reduction, with some suggesting that bad weather had played its part, but Rear Adm. Terry McKnight of the U.S. Navy attributes the "dramatic" reduction in the number of attacks to the deployment of a British warship, the Royal Navy frigate HMS Northumberland, and the coordinated task force of which she is part.
To wage today's battles against pirates who took control of 42 ships and captured 815 sailors last year, the Royal Navy is combining machines and methods forged during the Cold War with centuries-old naval warfare skills. The Royal Navy is also hitting back at pirates by using some of the pirates' own tricks.
Fighting back
When Northumberland slipped out of Mombasa harbor in southern Kenya at the end of last year, a few reporters and gawkers stood on the banks. On the deck of the 460-foot frigate, a smattering of British sailors gazed back. As far as send-offs go, Northumberland's was low-key, but the understated nature of the departure belied the importance of her mission. On that hot December morning, Northumberland — one of just 17 such ships in the Royal Navy — opened up a new front in the unprecedented international war on Somali pirates.
Most of the other warships deployed to fight pirates in the region are concentrated north of Somalia, close to the Suez Canal, through which 10 percent of the world's sea trade passes. Northumberland was the first warship on the scene from a new European Union task force, charged with patrolling the southern flank of the 2-million-square-mile piracy zone, near Mombasa. It was here that pirates scored their biggest victory last autumn, seizing the supertanker Sirius Star, laden with $100 million in crude oil.
Besides Sirius Star, Somali sea bandits hijacked more than 40 large vessels last year, ransoming about 30 of them for a million U.S. dollars or more, according to the United Nations. Sirius Star was released in January after an estimated $3 million ransom was paid, but the other ships, and about 200 crew, remain in pirates' hands. The rise in piracy, and consequent rise in the cost of shipping insurance, drove up the cost of shipping petroleum, electronics and food.
Motherships
To beat pirates in potentially violent showdowns, the Navy has adopted the pirates' tactics of using "mother ships" carrying fast boats to spring on opponents.
In the early days of Somali piracy, in the 1990s, pirates ranged only a few miles from their hometowns and threatened just a few thousand square miles of ocean. The reason was simple: Most pirates were former fishermen and had only the tools of a typical fishermen. Their personal firearms and their small, motor-propelled wooden fishing boats, called skiffs. The skiffs were too slow and too flimsy to catch anything but the most rickety of vessels.
Then the pirates innovated. They began capturing trawlers and small freighters for use as motherships. Crewman Juma Mvita, from the Kenyan merchant ship Semlow, discovered this the hard way in 2005, when about a dozen armed Somalis intercepted his ship. Mvita said the pirates had no interest in Semlow's cargo. Instead, they commandeered the harmless-looking freighter to launch their next attack. It was more than three months before the pirates released Semlow and her crew.
Today, pirates use motherships for nearly all their attacks. "What we tend to see happen is a mothership will ... drag along a couple skiffs with it and have probably 10 or 15, 20 pirates on board, and then they'll send the skiffs out to go after a merchant vessel," McKnight said. He commands a new three-ship, counter-pirate task force.
Warships assigned to piracy patrols rarely engage pirates on their own. They deploy specialized search-and-seizure teams, which in the Royal Navy consist of marines armed with rifles and machine guns, traveling in raider craft. It was one such team from the frigate HMS Cumberland that killed three pirates in a firefight last November.
Boarding teams
Boarding teams have been a part of British warship crews for centuries, but in recent years they've become the best weapon against enemies such as pirates. The Cumberland's actions are "bound to have an impact on pirates," said Capt. Mike Davis-Marks, a Royal Navy spokesman. "Now suddenly there's the threat of death and this may force them to think again."
Cumberland's encounter was typical, if still rare in a conflict in which most navies are focused on deterrence rather than active fighting. A naval engagement with pirates often begins with a commercial ship reporting an attack, using a radio frequency set aside for emergency calls. Other times, a maritime patrol plane, usually flying from Djibouti, spots a potential mothership or pirate skiff, identifiable not by its appearance, but by its vector. A trawler speeding away from Somalia, toward a slow-moving tanker ship, just might have hostile intentions.
Digital deconfliction
Naval commanders, in touch with each other by phone, e-mail and satellite network, sort through the roster of warships in the region to figure out who might respond fastest. They call this "deconfliction." When the responding ship is close enough, it launches a helicopter to scout ahead and confirm that the suspect seafarers are indeed armed, while preparing to lower the boarding teams' boats into the water.
In Cumberland's case, "the ship's presence alone was often enough to prevent pirate attacks," the Ministry of Defense reported. Beyond that, the helicopter might deter pirates simply by "flying close to demonstrate the aircraft's machine gun and giving the pirates warning of their serious intentions."
If the pirates persist, the boarding teams deploy, flanking the pirates' boats to approach from both sides, moving fast with weapons at the ready. If the pirates lay down their weapons, they are taken into custody without a shot fired. If they shoot, the boarding teams fire back, then climb aboard.
The naval network
Deterring an attack, or winning a firefight, requires first that a warship be nearby when pirates strike. With pirates active on millions of square miles of ocean, blending in with harmless fishing boats, that's no easy task.
Today on the Indian Ocean there are 20 warships from 14 nations, all of them sent by their governments over the past six months to protect vital shipping from pirates. Coordinating these ships is key to providing the widest possible protection against pirates. In the beginning, it was a free-for-all. "It's encouraging that everyone is here," Lt. Nathan Christensen, a U.S. Navy spokesman, said last autumn, "but everyone's got their own rules of engagement ... their own commanders."
In time, the naval forces coalesced into four distinct entities plus some odds and ends. There was the U.S.-dominated Combined Task Forces 150 and 151, the latter commanded by McKnight. There was a NATO force sent on a temporary basis, and the EU flotilla intended eventually to replace the NATO one. On the fringes, there were warships from Russia, India and several other navies, sailing and fighting all on their own.
The four large, multi-ship formations had just one thing in common. Each one had a British warship assigned: Cumberland with NATO, Northumberland with the EU, the frigate HMS Portland in CTF-151 and, in CTF-150, a rotation of British frigates, destroyers and logistics ships.
That was no accident. In the last decade, the Royal Navy has mothballed nearly a third of its frigates and destroyers and canceled some new ships and technologies in a bid to save money, but the Royal Navy never cut back on its training and command capabilities.
"Our ships are not necessarily better than those of other navies," said Capt. Malcolm Cree, a commander for international naval forces in the Persian Gulf. "The one thing that we do have, the jewel in the crown of the Royal Navy, is our operational sea training.... As a result, Royal Navy ships and staffs provide a consistent level of professionalism capability that others know they can rely on."
It was that professionalism that the EU enlisted when it sent Northumberland to test the pirates' southern flank in December. And it was that professionalism that eventually helped tie together the tangle of naval forces threading the Indian Ocean to deter pirates.
By January, some order had been imposed on the chaos. McKnight's CTF-151 and the EU flotilla, under the command of British Rear Adm. Phillip Jones, were acting as the major nodes in a radio, e-mail and satellite communications network connecting most of the warships in the Indian Ocean. "My biggest concerns are coordination and deconfliction," McKnight said. "It appears that it's been working pretty fairly in the last couple of months."
The legal front
As boarding teams engaged pirates in firefights and commanders were sorting out the naval traffic jam in the Indian Ocean, a parallel battle was taking place on dry land. Late last year, there was "a lack in U.K. law of clear arrest and evidence-gathering powers for Royal Navy officers," the House of Commons recalled in a report in January. "If Royal Navy officers were to arrest pirates, there was a real risk that such prosecution would fail on procedural grounds if they were brought back to the U.K. for prosecution."
That legal loophole is one that pirates have exploited for years. After two decades of civil war, Somalia has no coast guard and no functional courts, and the only organizations in a position to intercept pirates — the world's navies — have no clear legal powers.
"The potentials for legal embarrassments are quite numerous," said Martin Murphy, a piracy analyst at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. So when they captured pirates, many navies simply deposited them on the nearest Somali beach. Needless to say, in those cases the pirates probably returned to their lives of crime.
What the world needed was a stable, democratic country in East Africa, with a stake in the piracy fight and the ability to detain, try and jail pirates. What the world needed, in fact, was Kenya. The United Kingdom, with close ties to its former colony, was the first to draw Kenya into the counter-piracy coalition in a legal capacity. Moses Wetang'ula, the Kenyan foreign minister, and Alan West, the British security minister, met at a piracy conference in Nairobi to initiate the agreement, and none too soon: Eight Somali pirates already were being held in a Kenyan jail, on soft legal grounds, after being captured by a British frigate.
The United States was quick to follow Britain's example. In January, the U.S. State Department signed a similar agreement with Kenya. "The lawyers are at work for the particulars," McKnight said, "and as soon as we get those mechanisms in place, then we will shift our operation." Instead of just reacting to pirates, McKnight's task force would go on the attack.
Aggressive action can't come too soon. "Pirates are winning," Murphy said late last year.
Back off the coast of Mombasa in December, Northumberland made final preparations for her mission. In the frigate's scrubbed and polished compartments, sailors calibrated their sensors and fueled up a gray-painted Merlin helicopter. Royal Marines checked the rifles and kit. The vessel veered northward, toward Somalia. "We remain ready," said Commander M.J. Simpson, Northumberland's skipper.
If pirates really are less aggressive this year, the world has the Royal Navy, in particular, to thank. If not, and if this most ancient form of lawlessness continues to sap the global economy, nations will keep looking to the United Kingdom to help fight piracy.
Your next piece of designer furniture could cost less than an Ikea chair—as long as you're willing to make it yourself. Taking a cue from the Linux community and file-sharing services, Berlin-based design guru Ronen Kadushin has started a furniture free-for-all he calls Open Design. It allows crafty consumers to download the instructions, photos, and AutoCAD files needed to knock off his work.
Kadushin's tables, chairs, and shelves sell for upwards of $5,000 each, but he's as interested in sharing ideas as in making a profit. Everything on Kadushin's Web site (ronen-kadushin.com) is free for use under a Creative Commons license. And far from being an artistic tyrant, he hopes you'll customize his pieces. You'll just need access to a large computer-controlled router or laser cutter (depending on what you're building) to realize the digital forms in wood or metal. All Kadushin asks is that you be creative with your mods—oh, and maybe send him a picture of the finished product.
1 // Download the AutoCAD file and the instructions for the Square Dance Table.
2 // Customize the AutoCAD file (perhaps your family crest would look good in the center) and source the necessary materials.
3 // Locate the nearest laser cutter. If you don't have one at work or at school, find a local machine shop—they're in the book. Cut the basic ninja-star form (shown at left) from 2-mm-thick stainless steel (Kadushin prefers a mirror finish).
4 // Put on gloves and kneel in the center of the cut sheet.
5 // Gradually bend the legs up toward you until they can be slotted together—like making a metal basket.
6 // Using padded pliers, bend down the rounded, precut feet and stick on felt glides to protect your floor.
7 // Flip the table over and press down on the top to lock in the arms.
While visiting Bungie Studios as its developers finished work on Halo 3 two years ago, I saw something very interesting. Occasionally, to help debug the videogame, they'd play a level in wire-frame mode — where all the environments and characters were rendered onscreen as glowing outlines.
"Check this out," said one of the programmers as he called up a scene for me.
What he showed me was gorgeous. The enemies — two massive hunters — suddenly turned into glowing lattices of colored pentagons; the background became a bright spider web. I could still clearly see everything, but the visuals looked like a mashup of Halo and Tron.
I immediately wanted to play the game in this mode: I loved the idea of revisiting all the battles and scenes of Halo 3 in this altered state, where everything is familiar but somehow alien.
"Maybe we could include this as an Easter egg," the developer chuckled.
Alas, they didn't. But that experience made me hanker for a similar one — some game that took full, 3-D reality and gave it a surreal twist.
This week, I finally got the chance, when I uncorked MadWorld, a new hack-and-slash Wii game with its own bold aesthetic move: It's almost entirely black-and-white.
The upshot is a game that plays eerily like a comic book come to life. A Frank Miller comic book, to be precise: The designers have talked about Miller's influence on their game, which is obvious from the moment you meet the gruff, chain-smoking and chainsaw-wielding killer, who embodies a lot of Marv from Sin City. When he first wanders into the frame, all you see initially is the dancing plume of his cigarette smoke — a lovely bit of moody, and kitschy, chiaroscuro.
This heavy indebtedness to comic-book aesthetics neatly suits MadWorld's narrative, which is yet another one of those "most dangerous game" conceits: You're a contestant in a televised killfest! Killing, like, tons of people! And you'll be rewarded not only for slaughtering anyone around you, but for doing so in the most grisly fashion possible. Cut someone in half with a chainsaw, you might get 2,000 points. But if you ring them with a tire, impale them with a street sign and then hurl them onto a spiked wall? Hey, 50,000 points!
As you might imagine, the over-the-top gore has critics labeling MadWorld the "most violent computer game ever." But the game's visual style — including "Blam-o!"-type, written-word sound effects, and the fact that the copious spurting red blood is one of the few colors in the game — clearly marks it as part of the tradition of two-bit comic books, which have been tweaking prudes with Pavlovian precision for about 75 years. Many games unsettle me with their callous violence; this stuff unfailingly makes me giggle.
But the effect of playing in black-and-white isn't merely about creating a camp sensibility. It actually changed the way I looked at the world around me.
The sheer sense of contrast — the game is really black or white, since there's no gray — makes every detail in MadWorld pop out vividly. It's like playing beneath a bright moon, where the polarized light makes everything seem simultaneously super-real and oddly dreamlike. I'd find myself noticing little things that would, in a regular game, just blend into the background: The fins on the junked 1950s cars lying in piles; the way the glass scattered when I hurled a goon through a window. The buildings looked like the Platonic ideal of buildings.
What really makes MadWorld a breath of fresh air is how neatly it violates the tropes of modern 3-D realism. As today's graphics come closer to approaching photorealism, our "realistic" games have become steadily more similar in appearance: The same gritty gray-and-brown environments, the same light-infused bloom. Partly this is because most games use the same relicensed handful of graphics engines, but it's also an inherent limit of realism. If your goal is to make a dirty, war-torn road look realistic, well, there are only so many ways for something to look real. We know what the reference point is: reality.
This is why I've been heartened by the way many game designers have been actively trying to get away from pure realism in otherwise realistic 3-D games. I'm thinking of the many games that have employed cel-shaded cartoon styles or anime inflections, like in Goichi Suda's killer7 and No More Heroes. (I suspect Nintendo's inferior processing power is why these experiments are so often found on the Gamecube or Wii. If the processor can't do super-realism, then why not make a virtue of the limitation?)
Going black-and-white is an even more bold stylistic move, and I'm sort of surprised more designers haven't tried it. MadWorld isn't completely pioneering; there have been other full 3-D worlds done in black-and-white, such as the 2007 puzzler Vigil: Blood Bitterness, which is so much more surreal and stylized than even MadWorld that it feels like you're trapped inside a Salvador Dali experimental movie. (I mean that in a good way.)
Mind you, a monochromatic palette has its downsides. In MadWorld, sometimes it was a little hard to spot where I was supposed to go. With such high contrast and low-rez detail, everything in the environment seemed to be equally as important as everything else.
Plus, MadWorld's gameplay is more twitch than precision; this isn't a problem, but I half-wondered if working in black-and-white dices a designer out of creating a very precise, fine-motor-skill, 3-D play mechanic, because without color it's trickier to line things up — a headshot, a puzzle element — to a pixel-points' precision. It may be no surprise that the games that have most avidly embraced alt.aesthetics are also, in terms of gameplay, pretty much just button-mashers (as with the dazzling Chinese-art-style graphics of Okami).
Still, after a couple hours playing MadWorld, I wanted more. Not just more of this game, with its highly stylized violence. I want more black and white everywhere.
- - -
Clive Thompson is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to Wired and New York magazines. Look for more of Clive's observations on his blog, collision detection.
An anonymous reader writes "In a move that would make the old eastern German Stasi green with envy, the Thai government has modernized a system that allows citizens to snitch on fellow citizens. 'Internet users are being urged to show their loyalty to the king by contributing to a new website called protecttheking.net, which has been set up by a parliamentary committee. On the site's front page it is described as a means for Thai people to show their loyalty to the king by protecting him from what it calls misunderstandings about him. It calls on all citizens to inform on anyone suspected of insulting or criticising the monarchy.' An large unknown population of political prisoners are currently being held for 3 to 15 years in Thai prisons for being interpreted as insulting the monarchy."
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger
And now for my promised video interview with Charles Hugh Smith, author of the new e-book, "Survival+."
Part 1: We discuss "Survival+" and the current economic crisis.
Part 2: We discuss why socialism in the USA is inevitable (and why this is a good thing), Karl Marx and more.
Part 3: More on socialism in America and Niall Ferguson calling for America to repudiate its debt in the pages of TIME magazine.
Part 4: Charles and I discuss Cory's BB post about squatters on his block and why it's important for culturally influential people to create feedback loops for humane and dignified solutions to the economic crisis.
Produced by Bradley Novicoff and Tara McGinley
I'd like to give a way huge, massive thank you to my longtime friend Jason Calacanis, the CEO of Mahalo and the hardest working person I have ever met in my entire life. He's a 5000 watt bulb, let me tell you people. It was Jason's kind offer of his brand new studio --it was actually more like a challenge than an offer, he dared me to do it!-- that allowed this to happen. The studio's newest toy, the fantastic Tri-caster, was still being set-up the day we recorded and we just winged it --next time I'll have a teleprompter!-- but I think it turned out pretty well and I'm happy to be able to give my good friend Charles Hugh Smith the kind of wide exposure that Boing Boing offers. I think it's important that people hear what he has to say. I'd also like to thank Jason Krute, Mahalo's studio manager, Tyler Crowley from Mahalo, Ryan Scott from Causecast and Kenny Chen, who edited the piece and who was such a big help in several ways. Thanks also to Charles' wife's cousin for the use of her Skype account and laptop!
An anonymous reader writes "Remember the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile launch by the North Koreans last night? You know, the one that went over Japan and supposedly put a 'communications satellite' into orbit. Well, according to the US Northern Command and NORAD it has been a complete and utter failure, with the second stage and payload 'falling in the Pacific.'"
AP - AT&T and unions for its landline workers were working past a strike deadline Sunday to try to reach agreement on a new contract. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 Apr 2009 | 12:07 am
Demand has risen for couples to donate excess embryos to science since the U.S. government lifted restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, researchers say.
The (Nashville) Tennessean reported Sunday that about 500,000 embryos are stored in U.S. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 Apr 2009 | 12:01 am
A year ago British musician Billy Bragg was whining that Bebo should be paying musicians a portion of their $850 million liquidity event, arguing that “the musicians who posted their work on Bebo.com are no different from investors in a start-up enterprise…Now that the business has reaped huge benefits, surely they deserve a dividend.” We dismantled his emotional rant and suggested that, actually, Bebo should be paid for all the free marketing they gave those musicians. 367 comments later, our readers were still divided between the realists and the “it’s not fair” crowd.
Now he’s back again, this time targeting Google. Thank God the bloggers are here to call bullshit because the journalists, fearing their own looming unemployment, are jumping on board the idiot bandwagon.
Last week Bragg pointed his anger at Google, demanding that the company play music videos on YouTube’s UK site and pay the demanded royalty (Google just took the videos down instead of paying). His argument is ridiculous - that Google should literally be forced to play music videos that it no longer wants to play, and then pay a per play fee.
Really, this begging for handouts is unbecoming:
Sir, We have growing concern over the use of our music on the internet and the unfair way we believe music is treated by Google and YouTube, which it owns. At the heart of the issue is Google’s disagreement over the prices it should pay to PRS for Music, the not-for-profit licensing organisation. Music fans in the UK are confused and angry at Google’s stance. We, as songwriters and composers of music, share those concerns. It is not in anyone’s best interests to block access to music. Fans are denied enjoyment, creators aren’t paid and illegal music sites benefit from the resulting displacement of web traffic.
Google says it cannot operate YouTube if it has to pay a royalty — however small — every time a video containing music is played. In 2007 the UK’s independent Copyright Tribunal established that a minimum royalty per play was an essential requirement in the licensing of online services. Google fails to recognize this and ascribes little value to music — in spite of a huge increase in music usage on YouTube’s UK service. Royalties are a vital income source for all professional creators and must be preserved to ensure a continued vibrant music industry. We trust that Google will reinstate music on YouTube and pay a fair price for it.
David Arnold, Jazzie B, Billy Bragg, Guy Chambers, Robin Gibb, Pete Waterman, Mike Chapman, Wayne Hector, Pam Sheyne, Debbie Wiseman
The audacity of the letter is staggering. But The Guardian’s Henry Porter uses it as a launchpad to attack Google more generally as an “amoral menace”, adding that “Google is in the final analysis a parasite that creates nothing…”
Either he refuses to understand, or just ignores, the fact that Google is the one being bullied here. The company is making a simple profit/loss decision and apparently concluded that it can’t make money on the deal being offered. To suggest that Google must accept the deal is to suggest that Google needs to subsidize the music industry simply because it is a profitable company.
It’s ridiculous and only makes sense when Porter moves on his his argument to talk about newspapers, which provide his livelihood (with no discussion of the direct conflict of interest). He then spends paragraphs trying to tie Google’s success with the failure of newspapers. He never really gets there, but does say that Google is “delinquent and sociopathic” near the end, which at least keeps things interesting.
Let’s all be clear here. What Porter and Bragg want is a subsidy from Google. A sort of welfare tax on a profitable company so that they can continue to draw the paychecks they’ve become accustomed to. That isn’t going to happen, and all this hand wringing isn’t helping to move their respective industries toward a successful business model. They either need to adapt or die. And they’re choosing a very noisy and annoying death.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
suraj.sun writes points to a story in the New York Times indicating that the much-rumored merger (or purchase) that would have united Sun with IBM may have dissolved before it began. Excerpting: "I.B.M., after months of negotiations, withdrew its $7 billion bid for Sun Microsystems on Sunday, one day after Sun's board balked at a slightly reduced offer, according to a person close to the talks. The deal's collapse raises questions about Sun's next step, since the I.B.M. offer was far above the value of the Silicon Valley company's shares when news of the I.B.M. offer first surfaced last month. .. Since last year, Sun executives had been meeting with potential buyers. I.B.M. stepped up, seeing an opportunity to add to its large software business, acquire valuable researchers and consolidate the market for larger, so-called server computers that corporations use in their data centers. ... Now, Sun is free to pursue other suitors, including I.B.M. rivals like Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems. Cisco recently entered the market for server computers."
mu22le writes "Today Debian gets one step closer to really becoming 'the universal operating system' by adding two architectures based on the FreeBSD kernel to the unstable archive. This does not mean that the Debian project is ditching the Linux kernel; Debian users will be able to choose which kernel they want to install (at least on on the i386 and amd64 architectures) and get more or less the same Debian operating system they are used to. This makes Debian the first distribution, and probably the first large OS, to support two completely different kernels at the same time."
CNET briefly describes how a poorly chosen default behavior has led to an online crime map of Los Angeles (on a site designed at a cost of $362,000) that shows that "a location just a block from the department's new headquarters is the most crime-ridden place in the city." I wonder how often this sort of error would completely skew things like real-estate maps that attempt to show whether houses in a certain neighborhood are worth more than those in the one next door.
The hubbub that was created around a rumor that was floated late last week that Twitter was in “late-stage” negotiation to be acquired by Google–which BoomTown reported was premature–definitely resulted in one certainty.
Every business development exec in media and tech rushed to lob in a we’re-interested-too communication to its founders–most specifically CEO Evan Williams and Chief Creative Officer Biz Stone–creating an email tsunami directed at the hot microblogging service.
“My inbox is flooded this morning with requests for a response to the latest Internet speculation about where Twitter is headed,” said Stone, in a post titled “Sometimes We Talk” on the company blog on Friday.
Sources close to the company said it execs were pinged relentlessly by plethora of big companies, all wanting to make sure Twitter called them, in the event the company was up for grabs.
And all–from Microsoft (MSFT) to Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL to Yahoo (YHOO) to News Corp. (NWS) and, yes, Google (GOOG) too–are indeed watching Twitter very carefully to either partner with or acquire outright.
The companies, many sources told me, have been talking about a serious product partnership around real-time search, which is often a prelude to discussions on deeper ties and creates a bond between companies that could result in some larger acquisition deal.
This is entirely typical for Silicon Valley, where the game of push-me-pull-you is common among companies. Stone is only partially right: All the time everyone talks.
I have almost no doubt that Google’s intent in talking to Twitter is motivated by a lot more than sharing search results better.
Simply put: It needs Twitter in its orbit. But what that means right now is still undefined.
Google, for example, has long worked with AOL on delivering search on the online service. Then, in a renewal of the deal paid for some equity, investing $1 billion for a five percent stake in 2006 (interestingly, Google later wrote down some of that investment).
Could such a kind of thing happen? It seems a more interesting idea than a bigger deal to swallow Twitter whole.
That’s also because sources close to the company have said many times to me that Williams especially–who has already sold his Blogger start-up to Google in 2003–is not interested in selling out as yet.
Of course, using simple logic and the fact that everyone has a price, Twitter could still sell itself off at any time–especially, if there were an overwhelming cash offer for the company.
“And I do understand why Twitter–flush with venture funding and an allegedly low burn rate–might want to bide its time to see what happens and not sell out too early.
But while the hot microblogging service declined to sell to Facebook, it might want to reconsider if Google (GOOG) or Microsoft (MSFT) or a big telecom company comes calling with, say, a $1 billion check.
Why? Simply because Twitter–while it says it is poised on the verge of announcing its grand plan to make money–is operating in an arena I have seen many other shooting stars in, traversing a very dangerous crevasse of hype and expectation.
Due to that, it has a very big red target on its back, one that a competitor in the status space–such as the spurned Facebook, whose update business is much bigger–will not ignore.
Right now, Twitter could ask for a lot, as one of the only Web 2.0 companies that everyone is uniformly excited about.”
In fact, many sources I spoke to said the search giant will not shirk from trying to buy the company if it thinks it needs Twitter, especially related to its growing importance in real-time search.
And, Google can certainly move fast, as it did when it paid $1.65 billion in stock for YouTube in 2006. It snatched the video service start-up from the hands of Yahoo in one night, said many sources.
Lastly, added many of those sources, it will also not blink in paying up for the revenue-free and profitless Twitter, if it thinks it needs to own a category, even though Google has now been dinged by Wall Street for paying too much and now losing too much on YouTube.
“If Google wants a company and thinks it is key to its future, it would buy it without worrying about much else, if it could,” said one source. “And it will do it quickly without a lot of muss and fuss.”
Personally–and this is my analysis alone and not based on any source–I think Google has to partner with Twitter strongly, as I reported it is currently trying to do, has got to think long and hard very soon about buying Twitter and should definitely not let anyone else do so.
But sources I spoke to uniformly denied Google was ready to deliver that giant bag of money to Twitter last week.
And Twitter was also not ready to receive one quite yet.
This was a sentiment reinforced this weekend, as I did more reporting on the story (we like to double dot all our i’s and cross our t’s here at All Things Digital).
Williams even told staff as much at a meeting on Friday, due to the unbelievable reaction generated by the ver-changing Google-about-to-buy-Twitter report by TechCrunch.
(By the way and of interest to only those who like blogger disagreements–my issue with the post by TechCrunch was loudly declaring that the deal was almost struck, which it was not, and then changing its report–and headline–to report different developments.)
Interestingly, Twitter’s Williams did not do so, sources said, during the Facebook talks, as news of those actual negotiations never leaked until later and was then reported on in this column in detail.
Such a descent into Twittermania was as inevitable as the air, of course, after even a hint of possibility that the media-overhyped start-up–which is unquestionably also an important conceptual game-changer in the online space–was in play.
But how much it should let itself get caught up in such a roundelay of acquisition blather is something its execs and investors have to think long and hard about now.
Because, as many know, living in such an overheated terrarium of breathless expectation always ends up with withered focus on what’s truly important.
And that is: A commitment on the part Twitter’s management and staff to follow through and build a substantial and profitable business on the back of what is a profoundly promising beginning.
Twitter’s Stone said as much in that post: “Our goal is to build a profitable, independent company and we’re just getting started.”
As a chronicler of the Internet sector’s proclivity to shine too bright a light on the one company of the moment, I think Stone’s declaration is exactly right.
That is, providing its execs focus on what’s important–building Twitter’s business and audience–and trying as hard as they can to ignore all the noisy and pointless tweeting from and about its many suitors.
If they can’t, though–and it would be a crying shame–they should just start responded to all those pretty swains and sell out to the highest and most attractive bidder.
Personally, I am hoping they pick the former, as Twitter is turning out to be yet another of Silicon Valley’s great stories of possibility and promise.
There’s been a proliferation of photo sharing apps tied to Twitter, including TwitPic,Twitxr (review), and Yfrog (review), giving users a vast amount of choice when it comes to image sharing on the popular micro-blogging service. But TwitPic seems to have emerged as the leader of the pack.
The service took the top spot on our list of the most popular Twitter applications according to Compete and was in the top ten of Twitter clients according to TwitStat. Compete pegs TwitPic to have had close to 1.6 million unique visitors in February, and its traffic doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.
TwitStat says TwitPic is now the sixth most popular app used by Twitter clients, rising from being the tenth most popular app when we wrote about TwitStat’s rankings in mid-February. And TwitPic was even used to break news of the plane crash on the Hudson River.
Two more competitors to TwitPic have emerged. TweetPhoto and Pixim are both photo sharing applications attempting to challenge its dominance, so we took a closer look.
Pixim uses OAuth to integrate with Twitter (so you don’t have to give out your username and password) and lets you adjust privacy settings on sharing pictures, tag friends in uploaded pictures, view stats on how many people and who has seen you pictures and see your friend’s pictures on the site. Pixim is similar to TwitPic in many ways but the latter incorporates a geotagging tool and mobile support, which Pixim doesn’t have on its site. While Pixim is planning to release their API soon, TwitPic has the advantage of already being built into most popular Twitter clients, and users who are interested in photo sharing have a familiarity with TwitPic.
TweetPhoto, who plans to launch later this month, also lets you use OAuth to integrate your Twitter account. You are then able to send pics through your mobile phone or upload pics via the site. Like TwitPic, TweetPhoto lets users comment on pictures on-site and tag photos. TweetPhoto will also feature integration with Facebook Connect, which is pretty cool, and something both TwitPic and Pixim lack. Like Pixim, TweetPhoto plans to release its own API, but might confront the same issue with TwitPic’s dominance.
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
An anonymous reader writes "My father is a veterinarian with a small private practice. He runs all his patient/client/financial administration on two simple workstations, linked with a network cable. The administration application is a simple DOS application backed by a database. Now the current systems, a Pentium 66mhz and a 486, both with 8MB of RAM and 500MB of hard drive space, are getting a bit long in the tooth. The 500MB harddrives are filling up, the installed software (Windows 95) is getting a bit flakey at times. My father has asked me to think about replacing the current setup. I do know a lot about computers, but my father would really like the new setup to last 10-15 years, just like the current one has. I just dont know where to begin thinking about that kind of systems lifetime. Do I buy, or build myself? How many spare parts should I keep in reserve? What will fail first, and how many years down the line will that happen?"
Wildlife officials in Florida say they have been unable to drive swamphens, an invasive exotic bird, from the state.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Sunday state officials went after the purple swamphens in 2006. Game wardens were ordered to shoot the slow-flying birds. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Apr 2009 | 7:15 pm
Recently, Archos silently made a new PMP, the Archos 2 available on Amazon, and they leaked some information about another PMP, the Archos 4. The Archos 2 is available for pre-order on Amazon in the United States, while it is supposedly available on the German Amazon.
Archos 2 - 8GB and 16GB
The Archos 2 is available in two different models, one being an 8GB model and the other a 16GB model. The 8GB model is the only one available for pre-order on the American Amazon, while both are available in Germany. Unfortunately, Archos didn’t add any super amazing features to either of these models, but the price is what may get you to purchase one of these. Chances are you don’t know many 8GB PMPs that sell for $60, or any 16GB PMPs that sell for $92. Luckily for you, if you are shopping for some cheap PMPs, these new Archos devices might just be what you are looking for.
In terms of specs, the 8GB and 16GB models come with 1.8-inch screens, 12 hour audio battery life, 4 hour video battery life, and manages a few formats such as MP3, WMA, WAV, and AVI. In case you want more storage than 8GB or 16GB, you can opt to purchase a microSD card for additional storage expansion. As most PMP players these days, it comes with a FM Radio tuner. The two models will be available in black and white.
Archos 4 - 16GB and 32GB
The other PMP Archos that has leaked out is the Archos 4. As you can probably guess, it is named with a 4 to represent its screen size (4 inches). Other than that, the only other piece of information we know is the models it will be available in, 16GB and 32GB. Likewise with the Archos 2, I imagine the colors to be either black and white.
We’ll let you know when and if Archos comes out with a press release regarding these two PMP’s, and when the Archos 4 becomes available.
AP - On the surface, there doesn't seem to be much of a connection between the servers that run corporate data centers and a handheld video camera you use to film family vacations. Yet both have somehow become part of the master plan at Cisco Systems Inc. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Apr 2009 | 4:54 pm
Touch tablet: Palm to beat Apple to it? “Every time Apple has an event, rumors of a tablet netbook pop up. The idea of a larger iPhone with a bigger screen and connectivity has been drawing techies like moths to a flame, yet Apple…” MORE »
The future of television and offensive programming ” Part of the reason young kids these days are, for lack of a better word, stupider and socially awkward than previous generations of kids is due to the increased popularity of television and poor quality shows. Especially in America, where I…” MORE »
Netflix jacks up prices if you like Blu-ray “Sometimes it doesn’t pay to like the latest and greatest. Netflix, the name in the online DVD rental world, has just increased its prices if you prefer Blu-ray discs. Myself, I have the 3 DVD at-a-time plan. Normally it costs $16.99. MORE »
Skype coming to iPhone/iPod touch tomorrow, BlackBerry in May ” Skype has been quite busy in the past few months. The company released a new Windows version of the software in February with a lot of improvements. It partnered with to bring the service to Android, Nokia, and Windows Mobile platforms. …” MORE »
Gadgetell review: Dosh wallet ” A wallet needs to do two things well in my book: hold my stuff and look good. The Dosh wallet 6-card accomplishes both while being the easiest wallet to pull a card from I’ve ever…” MORE »
Sugar Sync now available for the BlackBerry “BlackBerry users have just been given a nice option when it comes to accessing their personal (or business) files while on the go. SharpCast has recently announced the release of a SugarSync application for the BlackBerry. SugarSync…” MORE »
Possible ban on HDTVs coming soon in California? “California is the first state that is attempting to pass legislation that would ban the sale of television sets that don’t meet their new efficiency standards. The proposal of the California Energy Commission is attempting to gain approval over the summer and…” MORE »
Got Conficker? Find out with our How To “While many are in a tizzy over the Conficker worm and it’s rumored April 1st attack, experts say most have nothing to worry about, and that the hype around it is likely to do more harm than the worm itself, which is simply scheduled…” MORE »
Editor’s Note: Social networks are taking off in China. The following guest post by George Godula. David Li, and Richard Yu explores how Chinese social networks are pursuing different business models than their American counterparts, relying more on micropayments and the sale of virtual goods. George Godula is the co-founder of Web2Asia, an East Asian incubator and also a consultancy for Western startups trying to enter markets in China, Japan and Korea. David Li is a developer of social networking applications such as Growing Gifts, and he also was the developer of OnChat, an early in-browser graphical avatar chat system. Richard Yu is a Seattle native living in China, where he consults for Shanghai-based web startups while writing his blog.
Despite China’s massively growing internet market, international giants like Google and Facebook are having trouble making gains with the 300 million Chinese online users. China’s netizens are on average very young – 66.7 % of them are younger than 29 years old and 35.2 % of them are teenagers—with social networking and entertainment applications being the most popular.
While companies like Facebook struggle to conquer market share in China and to create viable business models everywhere, their Chinese clones have built lucrative cash machines literally earning billions of dollars a year. Unfortunately, adopting Chinese methods may not help American social networks due both to cultural differences in Chinese user behavior and industry practices. Below is our analysis of the Chinese social networking scene.
Chinese Social Networking is Dominated by Local Players
Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) have long played the dominating role in Chinese Internet life and still continue to be one of the most popular online platforms for social interaction. Registered user accounts, which are mostly anonymous, surpass 3 billion (users have multiple accounts) and 80% of Chinese sites run their own BBS. However in the last year social networking services, most of which require real name registrations, have shown explosive growth in China with 19.3% of netizens using them regularly.
Despite the popularity of social networking in China, the social networking market is dominated by local Chinese players, and Western networks have trouble adapting to Chinese culture and user expectations. Facebook does not rank among the top 15 asocial networks in China while MySpace has only 6 million users (vs. the goal of 50 million users after 2 years initially proclaimed by Rupert Murdoch).
As ad sales slump in the recession, only approximately 12% of Qzone’s revenue stems from online advertising with the rest coming from virtual item sales such as applications and avatars. Internet ad spending in China is expected to reach $1.7 billion in 2009, which is about 4% of total ad spend. In comparison, the US is estimated to spend $25.7 billion reaching consumers online through advertising. These comparably low online budgets in China are largely spent at four large news portals, which earn the majority of online ad revenue. This forces most “smaller” portals to find more innovative ways to monetize their traffic.
51.com, which targets working class adults from rural parts of China, is the second most popular social network in China with 130 million registered users. Concurrently, Chinese students flock to Xiaonei with approx. 40 million users. It is backed up with $430 million in funding from its parent company Oak Pacific Interactive and investors like Softbank. Kaixin001, which skyrocketed out of nowhere to 30 million registered users from the middle of last year, targets white collar workers in China’s largest cities by employing controversial invitation techniques and copying apps directly from Facebook.
Yet the astronomical growth of China’s social networks can be attributed as much to its massive market size as to its cultural norms and values. Social networking apps can hit hyper-viral levels in China due to a higher tolerance of intrusive app invitations. It is not uncommon for apps to essentially force new users to invite people and perform tasks before being able to join their friends online. Once friends have joined they are required to interact much more with the apps and advertisements than on Western applications. While this model is not replicable for the US market, certain aspects of this strategy/cultural mindset are necessary if companies like Facebook or Myspace want to compete in China.
Open Social Networks are Not So Open in China
In the middle of 2008, Myspace was the only social network to support OpenSocial in China. Despite Google’s effort, the adoption of OpenSocial was slow among the major social networks. Eventually, other platforms caved into the partnership with Google and gave half-hearted support to OpenSocial. Apart from some of the large social networks mentioned previously this included City!N, Yiqi.com as well as the business network Tianji and BBS Tianya. Other social networks such as Douban, Hainei or news portal Sohu had originally announced to join OpenSocial but then never implemented it, choosing an F8 style API instead. Today, only one of the top 50 apps in China’s social networks runs on OpenSocial despite the hard work put in by the Google team in China.
When Xiaonei and 51.com at first opened their own platforms, their terms of services outraged the developer community with clauses that practically blocked all monetization opportunities and a shared user base with their own websites. The developers launched several public protests against the social networks including the website www.anti-opensocial.com to rebel against hypocritical support for these “fake open” platforms. The executives from these social networks did respond quickly to the developers demands and changed the terms of service to more reasonable terms, allowing limited monetization opportunities for the developers.
Unfortunately, most social networks continue to ignore “Open Social” practices, opting for the more familiar “Guanxi paradigm” in business practices with third parties. The term ”Guānxi” describes the basic dynamic of gaining influence and receiving favors within social relationships, and is a central concept in Chinese society. For social networks, this means that rather than developing an open ecosystem, they focus on dealing with third parties individually and face to face. New Open Social Networking platforms (or better put, “selectively opened”) such as Yahoo’s Guanxi, Tencent’s Xiaoyou and Tianya court established third party app developers like Five Minutes while largely ignoring the wider developer community.
Additionally, ad sales are also strictly controlled by the social networks themselves even though 51.com set a threshold of a $35k fee to be paid for app developers to operate their own ad revenue -based applications (which until now no developer was willing to pay).
Keso, China’s most widely read tech blogger, who we asked to contribute to this article through China’s online expert panel BloggerInsight, summed up the situation by saying “Despite an open platform strategy, Chinese SNS are still competing with each other on the application level”.
Imitation of Facebook was only a Launching Point
Chinese sites are notorious for their C2C strategy, or “Copy to China”. This applies to the app market in the same way as it did to the social networks and all other Web 2.0 and eCommerce services. A year after Facebook introduced the F8 open platform, Xiaonei.com followed suit and announced its open platform in July 2008. The developer group xCube on Xiaonei attracted individuals and companies interested in third-party apps. Yet Chinese outsourcing developers such as Apptz and Ismole armed with experience working on Facebook applications made significant inroads by launching several apps and attracting millions of users in just a few short months.
At about the same time, the apps space also felt the power of C2C with copies of popular apps on Facebook such as “Friends for Sale” and “Parking War” popping up on just about every social network in China. Other leading social networks such as 51.com and Comsenz!’s Ucenter Home (similar to Ning.com) launched their own open platform soon after Xiaonei’s effort.
Chinas 51.com first social network in the world to open up payment API
While Chinese social networks started out as mere clones of existing sites, they’ve managed to innovate the business models to create a very lucrative market by cementing the relationship between application developers and the site’s user base. Happy Farm, the most popular app in China reportedly collects well over $75k a month through installations on various platforms, and according to Chinese application tracker, Appleap, the value of the total social network’s apps install base is approx. $4.5 million.
Opening up the payment system was one of the most anticipated announcements from Facebook’s developer conference F8 2008 but the company failed to create an integrated ecosystem for users to buy and sell apps. China’s socail networks took the great leap forward in this area when 51.com became the first social network in the world opening up its payment system to third party developers in 2008. Users pay money to 51.com and receive virtual coins which they can then again spend on third party applications. The revenue is split 50/50 between the social network and the developer.
Facebook on the other hand currently does not offer developers access to its payment system. If a third party application redirects Facebook users to their own website and payment processor, they usually lose the advantage of Facebook’s trusted brand name and the majority of potential revenues.
At the same time, companies like Becomedia are cooperating with 51.com to bring OfferPal-style cost-per-click/cost-per-action (CPS/CPA) for virtual currency models to China. CPS/CPA is one of the fastest growing sectors of Internet ads in China. This means revenues for the developers by trading their virtual currency for hard cash.
Season Xu from Five Minutes, the maker of China’s most popular app, confirmed the three basic revenue models for apps in China: shared ad revenues, income through virtual currencies, and customized development for branded applications. However he and Herock, a leading figure in the Chinese tech blogosphere whom we also spoke to, expect a consolidation in the app development market soon with larger companies taking over and benefiting from effects of scale, rather than individual developers still being able to produce top apps.
What can Facebook and Western social networks learn, if anything?
If monetizing a social network is so easy, then why hasn’t Facebook opened up its payment API to third party developers? While the aggressive and intrusive hyper-viral aspects of the apps in China may not be replicable in a Western Market, the problems for creating a more viable business model run deeper. Western companies cannot innovate in the same way due to institutional problems stemming from their own struggle for an identity and revenue.
Facebook has just recently announced a “credits” system, but it seems to miss the mark. The new system demonstrates little incentive for users to shell over money, and does not speak to the same need as paying for a social application that all your friends are already on and talking about. Facebook may be afraid to become a marketplace for applications, because they are reluctant to be labeled as a social gaming network or a social app store. Instead, they are a self-styled guru of dynamic human interaction. If they opened up their platform to become an apps store, their major revenue streams would put them into a pigeonhole, calling their $15 billion valuation into question. They obviously don’t want to be labeled as a “gaming platform” either, and don’t want to fully depend on selling digital trinkets.
Like during the American gold rush in 1849, where Chinese merchants prospered while most prospectors went bust in search of striking gold, it appears that building viable, scalable businesses for Social Networking sites may still be an ancient Chinese secret for Westerners.
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A downright awful economy probably means some cutbacks in your own home. Plenty of folks have suggested dropping your cable or satellite television service. I totally agree.
Can you cut the cable?
First take stock of how much television you watch. I’m a television junkie, so this first step may be a bit of an eye opener. What programs do you view regularly? You may be pleasantly surprised that you watch a lot of shows on the major broadcast networks. Sure, there may be shows you like on other networks, but there are plenty of ways to enjoy those programs.
Researching your antenna
If you’re alright with cutting the cable and putting up an antenna, you definitely want to do research. AntennaWeb.org is the site to consult to determine your antenna. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to get away with a standard amplified antenna in your home. If you’re like me, you’ll find that you need a larger antenna with an amplifier.
Even old rooftop antennas can pick up digital signals. One of the more confusing things with the digital transition is that the ads talk about getting a signal from over the air as an issue. That is not really the problem. The real issue is having a digital tuner to make sense of the signals—try explaining that to the masses.
Getting your antenna
Get an antenna. I picked up one via Freecycle. The fellow who gave me the antenna asked, “What exactly are you going to do with that antenna?” I laughed and told him, “I’m going to watch TV with it.” He gave me a weird look and I drove off. Don’t underestimate Freecycle or your local Craigslist for free or cheap antennas.
You can pick up any number of antennas online. If you need an amplifier, look for something with the most gain. I found an amp from Radio Shack that claimed a gain of 30dB and it really helped out my signal.
Obtaining a signal
Direct your antenna towards the transmitters—you can find that info from AntennaWeb. To keep your signal strong, you’ll want the shortest cable run without things like splitters in the way. The longer the run, the more signal is lost. Splitters also decrease signal strength. If you have a strong signal, then you ought to be able to afford splitting the signal.
For setting your antenna up, you’ll definitely want a partner. As you move the antenna, you’ll want to find out if you are actually doing well or not. You can use a Slingbox and a laptop to determine the same thing if your television gives data about signal strength.
It’s worth it
Setting up an antenna can be somewhat difficult and time consuming if you are far from the originating signal towers. Don’t let that you dissuade you from setting it up. It’s definitely worth the effort. Come back later and I will have another installment showing you how else you can get video for less than your cable bill.
Google has lost the most recent round of litigation over alleged abuse of sponsored search, the sale of keywords based on corporate trademarks, and misdirection. No, this decision does not change anything in Google’s business practices. It does not prove that Google did anything wrong. And it does not create financial liability for Google. It merely sends one case back to court for another trial. It should not send Google stock plummeting. But it does require that we in the online tech community think carefully and debate carefully about Google’s business model.
A federal appellate court handed Google a defeat today in a trademark lawsuit stemming from AdWords ads. The 2nd Circuit ruled that allowing a trademark to trigger a search ad is a “use in commerce.”
The decision doesn’t mean that Google will ultimately lose the case. It also doesn’t stop Google or other search engines from allowing companies to use trademarks to trigger ads. But it makes doing so riskier: If those ads are found to confuse consumers, search engines could be on the hook for trademark infringement.
Here, Google was sued by computer repair shop Rescuecom for allowing rivals to appear as sponsored listings when consumers typed “rescuecom” into the query box.
The case (Rescuecom V. Google) has been public since the initial decision was reached in 2006 but it does not appear to have entered into our collective consciousness. Google is innocent until proven guilty and this latest decision does not prove it guilty of anything; it merely remands the case back to the lower court for reconsideration. But again, we in the online tech community need to understand how businesses are affected, positively and negatively, by Google and its use of its very considerable market power. The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes that there are freedom of speech issues, and others believe that sponsored search increases consumer choice by counter-balancing the power of the largest corporations. The issues surely are complex enough to demand our attention. The ruling is embedded below:
Microsoft has announced that as of April 14th, it will no longer offer mainstream support for Office 2003. This means users of the application will no longer receive free non-security hotfixes or other support. However, Office 2003 users will still continue to receive security patches and regular refreshes of Outlook’s junk mail Microsoft has announced that as of April 14th, it will no longer offer mainstream support for Office 2003. This means users of the application will no longer receive free non-security hotfixes or other support. However, Office 2003 users will still continue to receive security patches and regular refreshes of Outlook’s junk mail definitions.
“Customers will have access to extended support for paid support, security support updates at no additional cost and paid hotfix support,” a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail
April 14th is also the day Windows XP will begin its foray into retirement. The 7 year old OS is the most popular version of Windows to date and has enjoyed a rebirth thanks to the huge sales of netbooks, most of which come with it preinstalled. It was the netbook craze that kept XP going this long. Microsoft actually extended its 5 year mainstream support to 7 years just for netbook makers and users.
If you own a netbook, fear not. XP’s retirement should have little effect on you. You’ll still get security patches when needed, and chances of any non-security issues popping up are quite slim thanks to its 3 Service Packs. Microsoft says primary support for XP versions running on netbooks is the responsibility of the OEM anyway, not them.
Nearly thirty gray wolves living on an island chain in northwestern Lake Superior have backbone malformations as a result of genetic inbreeding, presenting yet another hurdle for the wolves’ long-term survival, wildlife experts say.Although only confirmed recently, the problem has seemingly been in existence or decades in the tiny, isolated wolf packs in Isle Royale National Park in Michigan.The abnormalities are also found in some domestic dogs, and can cause pain, partial paralysis and can limit the critical range of motion needed by these wild predators.The discovery presents the ethically ambiguous question of whether biologists should seek to dilute the gene pool by introducing wolves from other places, said researchers at Michigan Tech University in Houghton.The University hosts a 51-year-old study of the park’s wolves and moose that is one of the world’s longest continuing observations of the symbiotic relationship between predator and prey species and their environment.Biologists have historically taken a hands-off approach as wolf and moose numbers have risen and fallen over the years, choosing instead to let nature take its course --even if that meant extinction of the species. However, there are strong arguments to support intervening as well, according to project leaders."This is not a decision just for scientists to make any more," Rolf Peterson, who has been involved in the study since 1970, told the AP.Although formally part of Michigan, Isle Royale is actually closer to Minnesota and Ontario. Scientists believe moose likely found their way to the island by swimming the 15 miles from Canada around 1900. And a few arrived during the late 1940s, crossing a rare ice bridge from the mainland.The two species’ populations have fluctuated over the years as a result of disease, weather, food availability and other factors. But the wolves’ most dangerous period was during the 1980s, when their numbers dropped to just 12 due to a parvovirus outbreak.This winter, their population stood at 24, a number roughly equal to the long-term average. The wolves were divided into four packs.Researchers had long looked for signs of potential problems from inbreeding, such as poor survival rates for pups. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Apr 2009 | 12:20 pm
The Pogoplug, a device that lets you get to the stuff on your hard drive through the internet, and one of Gadgetell’s favorite things at CES, is now shipping to US customers. So, if you pre-ordered it, your wait is finally over. If you didn’t order one yet, you can pick one up now for $99 at the company’s site.
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A downright awful economy probably means some cutbacks in your own home. Plenty of folks have suggested dropping your cable or satellite television service. I totally agree.
Microsoft has announced that as of April 14th, it will no longer offer mainstream support for Office 2003. This means users of the application will no longer receive free non-security hotfixes or other support. However, Office 2003 users will still continue to receive security patches and regular refreshes of Outlook’s junk mail Microsoft has announced that as of April 14th, it will no longer offer mainstream support for Office 2003. This means users of the application will no longer receive free non-security hotfixes or other support. However, Office 2003 users will still continue to receive security patches and regular refreshes of Outlook’s junk mail definitions.