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Leading copyright scholar says DoJ gets it wrong in downloader lawsuitsPamela Samuelson, one of America's leading copyright scholars, has published a working paper arguing that the DoJ's and RIAA's theory for calculating damages in downloader lawsuits is flawed:A working paper coauthored by noted copyright law scholar Prof. Pamela Samuelson of the University of California Law School discusses, in depth, various issues regarding statutory damages under the Copyright Act.Working paper by Prof. Samuelson on Copyright Act statutory damages argues Gore due process test applicable to statutory damages (via /.)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Apr 2009 | 12:11 pm Is Steve Jobs really in charge? - CNNMoney.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Apr 2009 | 11:56 am Live from the PragueCrunch II Meet-upWelcome to PragueCrunch II, Prague’s foremost party to held in Prague every year around the time TechCrunch writers feel like going to Prague to drink great beer and talk start-ups, tech, and gadgets. We’ll be streaming live through Qik and posting images throughout the day. If you’re still vacillating and you’re in Prague, come on down! We’ll be at Hergetova Cihelna from 2pm until late in the evening. Confounded as to whether to come at like 11pm? Check my Twitter Updates to see if we’re still at the event or if we’ve moved on. Otherwise, expect to see Robin and I there all night. Special thanks to the venue and all the great sponsors. Click through for live video feeds throughout the evening.
Special thanks to these fine folks: Gold Sponsor:Dial Telecom Dial Telecom provides services for both the wholesale and the retail sectors. Our wholesale sector specializes in providing cable ducts, dark fibre and backbone capacity to international and national carriers, ISPs, and ASPs. Dial Telecom also provides IP-based services to regional ISPs over its own fibre network. The company has an exceptionally well-developed Ethernet over fibre network and DWDM connections to most major regional capitals. Dial Telecom is connected to the world’s largest Internet exchanges (most notably to DE-CIX and KleyerEx in Frankfurt am Main, AMS-IX in Amsterdam, LINX in London and ECIX in Düsseldorf). Naturally, it is also connected to Czech NIX.CZ and Slovak SIX.SK. The Dial Telecom company is part of the well-established international Dial Telecom Group (Dial Telecom CZ, Dial Telecom SK, eTel SK and Telecom Austria Czech Republic (Volný, a.s.). The group actively contributes to the consolidation of the fixed telecommunications market. The most significant acquisitions in the last year have been eTel Slovakia and Telekom Austria Czech Republic (Volný brand). Adamantium Sponsors: Ataxo has offices in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. We provide expert Search Engine Optimization and manage several thousand Pay-per-Click Campaigns for our clients from these countries as well as outsource Pay-per-Click Campaigns for clients from other parts of the world. Binary Age Geewa Kerio Learn10 Learn10 is the work of a European team of four, split between Birmingham, UK and South Bohemia, CZ. It is inspired by the efforts of three of the founders to learn Czech, and informed by experience in advertising research analysis & English teaching. With 27,000 members this self-funded project is one year old. After extensive testing based on the prototype - LearnItLists - they have re-branded to Learn10 and are ready to launch. TasteKid WebExpo 2009 Wirenode Zeality Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 11 Apr 2009 | 11:34 am Live from the PragueCrunch II Meet-upWelcome to PragueCrunch II, Prague’s foremost party to held in Prague every year around the time TechCrunch writers feel like going to Prague to drink great beer and talk start-ups, tech, and gadgets. We’ll be streaming live through Qik and posting images throughout the day. If you’re still vacillating and you’re in Prague, come on down! We’ll be at Hergetova Cihelna from 2pm until late in the evening. Confounded as to whether to come at like 11pm? Check my Twitter Updates to see if we’re still at the event or if we’ve moved on. Otherwise, expect to see us there. Special thanks to the venue and all the great sponsors. Click through for live video feeds throughout the evening.
Special thanks to these fine folks: Gold Sponsor:Dial Telecom Dial Telecom provides services for both the wholesale and the retail sectors. Our wholesale sector specializes in providing cable ducts, dark fibre and backbone capacity to international and national carriers, ISPs, and ASPs. Dial Telecom also provides IP-based services to regional ISPs over its own fibre network. The company has an exceptionally well-developed Ethernet over fibre network and DWDM connections to most major regional capitals. The Dial Telecom company is part of the well-established international Dial Telecom Group (Dial Telecom CZ, Dial Telecom SK, eTel SK and Telecom Austria Czech Republic (Volný, a.s.). The group actively contributes to the consolidation of the fixed telecommunications market. The most significant acquisitions in the last year have been eTel Slovakia and Telekom Austria Czech Republic (Volný brand). Adamantium Sponsors: Ataxo has offices in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. We provide expert Search Engine Optimization and manage several thousand Pay-per-Click Campaigns for our clients from these countries as well as outsource Pay-per-Click Campaigns for clients from other parts of the world. Binary Age Geewa Kerio Learn10 Learn10 is the work of a European team of four, split between Birmingham, UK and South Bohemia, CZ. It is inspired by the efforts of three of the founders to learn Czech, and informed by experience in advertising research analysis & English teaching. With 27,000 members this self-funded project is one year old. After extensive testing based on the prototype - LearnItLists - they have re-branded to Learn10 and are ready to launch. TasteKid WebExpo 2009 Wirenode Zeality Source: CrunchGear | 11 Apr 2009 | 11:30 am Found Object Accessories - Designers Look to Nature to Spruce Up S/S 09 Styles (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Anyone following the Spring/Summer 2009 shows would have definitely noticed designers taking a cue from Mother Earth in the garments that walked down their runways. The accessories...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2009 | 9:59 am Pixelated Pillows - 'Mixelated' Cushions Geek Up Your Decor (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) These Mixelated pillows are perfect for fans of geek chic decor. We have seen a number of tech-inspired pillows, from computer-inspired Apple cushions to musical pillows. This line...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2009 | 9:39 am Life-Sized Dollhouses - Abandoned Farmhouse Transformed Into Giant Playhouse (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Bringing to life the childhood memories of little girls worldwide, Canadian artist Heather Benning has transformed an abandoned farmhouse in southwestern Manitoba into a life-sized...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2009 | 9:19 am The Net — Democratic Panacea Or Autocratic Tool?Alex writes "On April 6, 10,000 protesters organized in Moldova against the nation's Communist leadership by utilizing new media like Twitter and Facebook, demonstrating the ever-increasing potential of the Internet as a democratic and liberating tool. But in the current Boston Review, Evgeny Morozov critiques the view that the internet will inevitably democratize autocratic regimes like China, Russia and Iran. He argues that the Net's democratic effects are not inherent, and that autocratic regimes have been successful in controlling electronic media to disseminate their ideology. Will the net ultimately spread American democracy, or just American entertainment?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 11 Apr 2009 | 9:15 am $250000 reward in phone cable vandalism - San Francisco Chronicle
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Apr 2009 | 7:08 am Suspects caught after homeowner watches live video of burglary - MiamiHerald.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Apr 2009 | 7:05 am Daily Crunch: Amiga Raptor Edition
Casual Friday: Shock mouse costs $6, returns priceless fun until you get bored of it Source: CrunchGear | 11 Apr 2009 | 7:00 am UK farm grows 1301 fluorescent light bulbs
Artist Richard Box' idea of a well-cropped farm involves 1301 fluorescent light bulbs powered by electrical fields running through the power lines above them. [via io9] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 Apr 2009 | 6:37 am Lightpot doubles as lamp and room plant
If you don't want to deal with Aerogrow or extra pots on your kitchen windowsill, then you could get a Lightpot. It's an LED light and plant pot in one, and the lampshade stretches upwards as the plant grows taller. Designed by Studio Shulab, and rumored to his stores soon in multiple colors. [via Treehugger] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 Apr 2009 | 6:19 am Microsoft conjures imaginary 'Apple Tax' - Register
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Apr 2009 | 6:16 am Rockstar Games Develops Connection Between Flash Gaming, Nintendo DSAn anonymous reader writes "It's been a long-talked-about but never fully realized aim of developers, publishers and format holders to create a game that runs on multiple platforms, but connects and exchanges assets between them — e.g. you play a game as an FPS on a console/PC but control it as an RTS on mobile devices. Now, Rockstar Games seems to have cracked it, on a small scale, with news that a new Flash game will allow PC gamers to generate in-game cash — true to form for GTA-creator Rockstar, it's through 'money laundering' — that is then transferred to its new Nintendo DS title, Chinatown Wars. GameSpy's online technology seems to be responsible for this latest gimmick, but most interesting is the idea that this could allow an interface between platforms like the iPhone and consoles as well. How long until an indie developer creates an MMO that has different interfaces for PC and mobile?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 11 Apr 2009 | 5:40 am paidContent.org - Skype Founders Might Buy Back Firm From eBay - Washington Post
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Apr 2009 | 4:50 am It is 1994 and you just bought a Gateway desktop PC
These are your desktop wallpaper options. Jason Scott has uploaded them to flickr for posterity. The Gateway System Version 4.2 CD-ROM included a pile of custom desktops for you to use with your Windows 3.1 system. This harkens back to when Gateway was a much more cow-oriented company. (Did you know they used to legally threaten companies that had any cow spots on their ads or webpages?) Gateway 2000 1994 Desktops [Jason "Textfiles" Scott's photostream via Qt3] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 Apr 2009 | 4:30 am How to Sell Your Soul on Twitter and Who's BuyingWhat are you doing? No what are you doing Apple, Skype, Flip, StubHub and Box.net?? These popular companies just couldn't resist paying off Twitter users to put advertisements into their Twitter streams...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2009 | 4:29 am New York Auto Show | Dog Friendly Honda Element Concept - New York Times
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Apr 2009 | 4:18 am New York Auto Show | 2010 Range Rover - New York Times
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Apr 2009 | 4:18 am New York Auto Show Putting On a Brave Front When Fear Is in the Air - New York Times
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Apr 2009 | 4:18 am New York Auto Show | 2010 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG - New York Times
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Apr 2009 | 4:18 am Sharing Lives As Stories On the Webblackbearnh writes "Jeff Holden spent a decade at Amazon, where he was involved as Senior Vice President of Consumer Websites with the recommendation engine, Amazon Prime, and the product review system. He's left now, and has started Pelago, a company that wants to help mobile users turn their lives into stories they can share on the web. Among the interesting effects he discusses in this interview for O'Reilly Radar is that users of their product, Whrrl, have talked about changing their lives to make more interesting stories. Holden also talks about some of the work he did at Amazon, privacy issues that arise when social networking starts to become ubiquitous, and why he thinks the Apple App Store review system is seriously broken. 'One of the things that happens with an iPhone is when you uninstall an app, it asks you to rate it. And it defaults to one-star. ... The problem is ... there's no kind of qualification. Anybody just downloads it and checks it out or doesn't check it out, right? And I think a number of people run it and they see that you have to sign in and they just delete it. And you get a one-star rating out of those experiences.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 11 Apr 2009 | 4:10 am Empathy for Robots - Will NYC Strangers Give Kacie Kinzer's Tweenbots Directions? (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) We already know that New Yorkers (and, to be fair, most metropolitan residents) typically don't talk to or empathize with strangers, but what about robots? That's what Kacie Kinzer...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2009 | 4:00 am Easter Eggs Give Clues to Next-Gen iPhoneJust what will be in the next iPhone's hardware? Little is known, but hidden files and menus in the latest iPhone 3.0 beta software provide some major clues.Source: Wired: Gadgets | 11 Apr 2009 | 4:00 am 7 Crazy Civilian Uses for Nuclear BombsNuclear weapons aren't just for war. Both the United States and Russia have proposed all sorts of civilian uses for nukes, including building a new Panama Canal and creating a new harbor in Alaska.Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Apr 2009 | 4:00 am Easter Eggs Give Clues to Next-Gen iPhoneJust what will be in the next iPhone's hardware? Little is known, but hidden files and menus in the latest iPhone 3.0 beta software provide some major clues.Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Apr 2009 | 4:00 am Gem Eyewear Cases - SabotagePKG Design for PRISM is Polished Perfection (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) This transparent gem-shaped eyewear case by SabotagePKG for PRISM is a perfect example of when packaging embodies both the product and its company. After all, what better way to safeguard...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2009 | 3:40 am Photos Reveal New Zune HD With Touchscreen (PC World)PC World - Leaked artwork of the supposedly upcoming Microsoft Zune portable media player has found its way onto the Internet. The artwork labels the new device as the Zune HD, and shows it to feature a large widescreen display housed in what looks like a bushed aluminum enclosure and glass.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Apr 2009 | 3:35 am British police medic uses nightstick to treat his involuntary patientsJustin McKeating asks: “Now, I’ve never had any medical training so can someone more knowledgeable please tell me what the above procedure is called and what it’s used for in a medical...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2009 | 3:29 am British police medic uses nightstick to treat his involuntary patientsJustin McKeating asks: “Now, I’ve never had any medical training so can someone more knowledgeable please tell me what the above procedure is called and what it’s used for in a medical capacity?” (via, Why That's Delightful!)Source: Gizmodo | 11 Apr 2009 | 3:03 am Chocolate Now Inhaleable, LiterallyBy Evan Ackerman Ready for a new addiction? How about ‘whiffing’ chocolate? Yes, that’s right, now you can satisfy all of your most serious chocolate cravings without even chewing…...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2009 | 3:01 am The Diggbar Is Evil, Here's How to Stop itDiscord is brewing over Digg's new Diggbar. It serves a third-party site's content within a frame, a practice long-despised by web purists. A few sites have gone as far as blocking it from showing up.Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Apr 2009 | 3:00 am Drug Induced Makeovers - Celeb Zombies Made from Methamphetamines (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) The slide show is real, these are zombies made from using too much methamphetamine. Check out the video to see celebs photoshopped to look as if they had indulged in too many doses...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Apr 2009 | 2:59 am I, robot - and gardener: MIT droids tend plants
|
| 392,000,000 | lol |
| 5,210,000 | lool |
| 3,070,000 | loool |
| 1,410,000 | looool |
| 818,000 | loooool |
| 473,000 | looooool |
| 385,000 | loooooool |
| 416,000 | looooooool |
| 372,000 | loooooooool |
| 312,000 | looooooooool |
| 262,000 | loooooooooool |
| 206,000 | looooooooooool |
| 180,000 | loooooooooooool |
| 171,000 | looooooooooooool |
| 121,000 | loooooooooooooool |
| 56,800 | looooooooooooooooooool (20) |
| 20,000 | looooooooooooooooooooooooooooool (30) |
| 10,800 | l...40...l |
| 1,770 | l...50...l |
| 26 | l...99...l |
| 19 | l...100...1 (a loolol) |
| 392,000,000 | lol |
| 2,520,000 | lolol |
| 1,410,000 | lololol |
| 697,000 | lolololol |
| 313,000 | lololololol |
| 185,000 | lolololololol |
| 119,000 | lololololololol |
| 76,500 | lolololololololol |
| 42,400 | lololololololololol |
| 33,700 | lolololololololololol |
| 28,700 | lololololololololololol |
| 19,300 | lolololololololololololol |
| 11,500 | lololololololololololololol |
| 12,000 | lolololololololololololololol |
| 8,290 | lololololololololololololololol |
No matches were found for 100 lolols, effectively disproving the existence of the loololol. The internet contains 2,050,000 lulz. At no point is equilolbrium reached.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
As the New York Times reported, Skype’s founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, are in talks with several private equity firms and are amassing their own financial resources to make a bid for the internet phone business. eBay bought Skype from Zennstrom and Friis for around $3.1 billion in 2005. We reported last year that eBay would be willing to sell Skype if the company couldn’t support eBay’s core ecommerce business.
eBay has been having trouble finding ways of using Skype across its other products. eBay removed Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennstrom in October 2007, reportedly due to frustration at the financial performance of Skype. Ebay also negotiated down the huge earnout due to Skype stockholders and took a $936 million one-time loss around the transaction.
As we wrote last spring, a sale was projected to be likely late last year or in the first half of this year. Of course, with the economy in such poor condition, the sale was probably put off momentarily. There was something brewing between Google and Skype last spring, but nothing came of it. Google recently launched its own voice product, Google Voice (formerly Grand Central).
Skype recently launched a nifty iPhone app, which was downloaded 1 million times in the first two days of its release. Skype recently made a move to be a player in the enterprise space, but it wasn’t clear how much of a money-maker the new service would be.
There’s no doubt that Skype brings a lot to the table but eBay was probably just not the right buyer. Skype’s scalable technology and a proven platform in the VOIP, VOIP2POTS and P2P Video is impressive to say the least. The service currently has more than 405 million registered users.
Following their respective departures from Skype, Zennstrom and Friis formed VC firm Atomico and founded online video/TV site Joost.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 Straits Times | Yahoo and Microsoft Said to Be Weighing Ad Pact New York Times By MIGUEL HELFT Yahoo and Microsoft, which held a marathon series of fruitless merger and partnership negotiations last year, have restarted discussions, this time over a possible advertising agreement, a person briefed on those discussions said Friday ... March search share: Google up, rivals down Through Display Ads, Microsoft, Yahoo Seek Common Ground |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Very little is known about Apple's next iPhone, but screens and files hidden in the handset's latest beta software are providing some major clues.
IPhone 3.0 beta testers are stumbling upon menus, system preferences and text strings that Apple tried to keep secret — presumably because they give away features that will appear in the next upgrade to the iPhone hardware, which will probably be released this summer. Highlights include a video recorder, an auto-focus camera and a digital compass. Beta-testing sleuths have also found tantalizing suggestions about the operating system, including an unannounced tethering capability, voice control and a "find my iPhone" feature.
Apple has not released any information on the new iPhone hardware, and neither confirms nor denies any possibilities.
In the spirit of the season, we're stuffing all the
iPhone 3.0 Easter eggs into one basket. Here's the list.
Video Recorder and Auto-Focus
Naysayers speculated that the MobileMe button was a huge typo, but beta testers hacking around found even stronger proof for a video camera this week. According to MacRumors, modifying a configuration file in the latest iPhone 3.0 beta (version 2) opened a secret door to a video recording interface. Interestingly, hackers had to manipulate the iPhone firmware into believing there was video-capturing hardware in order to access this interface. That suggests this feature might only be for owners of the third-generation iPhone hardware.
The video function was not yet working, but a toggle switch for choosing between video- and still-capturing appears in the screenshot above. Convinced? We are.
In the same place they discovered the video camera
interface, developers also unearthed a configuration file alluding to
an auto-focus camera. Not quite as exciting, but that would likely be a hardware feature in the next iPhone as well.
Magnetometer
The hackers who discovered
the video-recording interface also found a file referencing a
"Magnetometer." Unfortunately, no one has
managed to find an interface for the feature, so nothing else is known.
If the text reference proves to be true, it's a clue that the
magnetometer will likely debut in the next iPhone as a hardware upgrade. A very exciting
addition this would be indeed: A magnetometer operates on three axes to
determine absolute position. So for example, you could point the
iPhone's camera at a Starbucks location and tap a button to find your
location. Using the compass information, accelerometer and GPS
combined, the iPhone would be able to tell you the exact address of
that Starbucks, then point you in the direction you really want to go.
Voice Control
A configuration file
alludes to a feature called "Voice Control." We're not as excited about
this, because there are already iPhone apps that enable voice control
for dialing contacts, Google search and looking up directions. However,
we never underestimate Apple, and we'd expect the company to bring
"voice control" to more advanced levels.
Think voice control in
the Camera app to reduce the shakes. Or voice control to choose a song
or movie in the iPod. For voice control, we'd expect Apple to aim at
areas that haven't been well addressed.
iPhone Locator
We're betting through any web browser, you can trigger your iPhone to locate itself using its GPS and send an e-mail containing its coordinates to your MobileMe account. The magnetometer would make these coordinates even more precise. Then you can drive to the thief's house, knock on his door and introduce him to your fist. Or, like Gadget Lab's Charlie Sorrel, you could offer him €50 to give your phone back. Nifty, huh?
Internet Tethering
Developer Steve Troughton Smith said he discovered the option to enable tethering while "hacking around." (How did he do it? Unfortunately he doesn't remember.) The menu (pictured above) suggests tethering will work via USB or Bluetooth. And he reports success testing USB tethering with his iPhone on the O2 network.
Now the question remaining is, how
much will tethering cost? AT&T typically charges an additional $15 per month for
tethering plans, so expect to pay about the same for iPhone tethering.
See Also:
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
The NCAA basketball tournament is over, but CBS (CBS) Sports is basking in the glow of its March Madness-related traffic surge.
CBSSports.com reports that its March Madness on Demand video player had about 7.5 million unique visitors by the end of the tournament, a 58% increase from 4.8 million users over the same period last year. The first four days of the tournament saw more unique visits–5.6 million–than last year’s total traffic.
It’s all very anonymous and tipsterish, but it appears that some promotional material for new Zune hardware called the ZuneHD has leaked onto the blagosphere. Engadget got the pictures, those rascals. The art style is very Zune, so I can see these being authentic. So what do we think the ZuneHD has in store?
Well, the name is a giveaway. HD implies 720p (to me at least), but that’s kind of… ridiculous. Perhaps it’s just a generic “power up” moniker. I’m skeptical of the benefits of something like 720p in such a small form factor anyway. Still, the 1.85:1 aspect ratio screen indicates a pretty serious dedication to video. And with no visible controls (no Zune pad at least), might we be able to assume this is a touchscreen device?
AT&T and the union representing its workers are still in contract talks, but workers have published a song, with accompanying ringtone, called “Ready to Strike,” just in case.
The song’s pro-labor lyrics include “Get ready to strike, get ready to walk the line” and “Protect my health care, don’t lower my wages/Realize, recognize, mobilize, stay alive” and even a shout-out to technicians who support U-verse, AT&T’s TV service.
It was co-written by Ray and Rachael Rodriguez, AT&T (T) employees who are active in the Communications Workers of America Local 6222, as well as Riley Wallace, a Toronto hip-hop artist whose stage name is Special.
Do you remember that creepy ‘Hug Me’ pillow? Did you see that and think “Oh man, that’s perfect for me, but what about my newborn infant?” Relax, parents of the world, the Zaky pillow is here!
The Zaky is an ergonomic infant pillow designed by a mom to mimic the size, weight, touch, and feel of her hand and forearm to help her baby with comfort, support, protection, and development. The Zaky can help calm your baby and help your baby sleep better through the night.
The Zaky website even has a comprehensive list of Frequently Asked Questions, covering such important topics as
And more!!
Alas, it looks like Amazon is out of the Zaky. Babies everywhere will cry into the night because of this.
Section: Business News
Nvidia has had a bit of rough time lately. Now, the CEO is taking a big pay cut. While his salary is technically only $1, there are other ways CEOs are compensated to make sure they can enjoy some privileges. In 2008, Jen-Hsun Huang, received $3.7 million in compensation. The previous year, he made $7.6 million. What effects will this have on Nvidia? Well, since Huang’s pay is tied to the stock price, Huang has plenty of motivation to get Nvidia on track. [Source]
So here’s the story so far: Paul Liska was the CFO of Motorola until February 2, 2009 when he was fired. Previous to his dismissal, Liska voiced concerns that Motorola’s mobile unit’s numbers were not exactly right.
The Moto mobile unit may be spun off (meaning it will become its own company). Liska feared that the mobile unit could lead to the “possible ruin of the entire company.” Liska claims that these voiced concerns are the reason he was fired. [Source]
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
President Obama incorporated technology into his election campaign in an unprecedented way, became known as the YouTube president within the first week of being elected, and seems to be forward thinking in his views on innovation and technology, which is why we endorsed him last year. But now we are almost four months into his tenure as President and leader of the free world, and the Obama administration has yet to name a Chief Technology Officer. They have, I should note, appointed a Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, the former CTO of Washington D.C., whose office is being investigated by the FBI for bribery and money laundering (which apparently occurred when he was the boss).
Still, it’s confusing as to why the President is taking his sweet time to appoint a CTO, when there are clear issues that a CTO could be working on. For starters, there are tech-centric issues like the FCC’s National Broadband Plan to give all American’s high speed internet access, and the DTV Delay Act, which was signed into law in early February. There’s the Open Government initiative, through Change.gov, which seems to be in a stalemate. And certainly a CTO could lend his or her expertise and leadership in incorporating technology into the President’s health-care, education and energy initiatives. Take a look at the technology issues page of the White House’s website for a more extensive to-do list awaiting our future CTO.
And there’s definitely no dearth of talent for this position. The names that have been bandied about for the position even before President Obama was victorious in November include Bill Gates, Microsoft founder; Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s CTO; Eric Schmidt, Google CEO and longtime Obama supporter (but he apparently said no to the job); Vint Cerf, the so-called “father of the internet” and VP at Google; Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law professor and founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society; Ed Felton, Princeton computer science professor and founder of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy; Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO; and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO.
Perhaps the Obama administration is being extra careful not to make another “Kundra” mistake and is carefully evaluating the backgrounds of each candidate. But this should hardly take 5 months. Regardless of what the holdup is, we need someone with true technology smarts in the White House soon. I mean, how hard can it be to find a technology exec that has paid his or her taxes? Give us your favorite candidates for America’s CTO in comments. Or take our poll.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Current Media, the media company backed by former Vice President Al Gore, has cancelled the $100 million IPO that it originally announced in January 2008.
In a document submitted earlier today, Current TV attributed the IPO’s cancellation to the current economy:
In light of current market conditions, the Registrant has determined not to proceed at this time with the public offering contemplated by the Registration Statement. The Registrant hereby confirms that no securities have been sold pursuant to the Registration Statement and all activity regarding the proposed public offering has been discontinued. The Registrant hereby informs the Staff that it may undertake a subsequent private offering in reliance on the safe harbor set forth in Rule 155(c) promulgated under the Act.
The media company is best known for cable channel Current TV, which is broadcast internationally to 59 million homes with markets in regions including the United States, Italy, and the UK. Current also has a strong web presence, tapping into popular social media services like Digg and Twitter for special events like the 2008 presidential election.
The network’s social media efforts during the election were deemed a success by the company, but it was still hit by layoffs in November, when it said that the IPO was being “put on hold”. Current says that there have have been no further layoffs since then, and that the direction of the company has not changed.
Via PEhub
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Dell's newly released Adamo laptop has been compared to the ultralight Apple MacBook Air and HP's Voodoo Envy notebook. But is the Adamo's as beautiful on the inside as the outside?
iFixit.com and TechRepublic have done a teardown of the Adamo beast. Adamo is nearly not as light as the MacBook Air, they say, but it offers more in terms of technology features.
Dell has also created a clever locking system that snaps the bottom plate of the computer into place. That means no screws at the bottom giving the Adamo a cleaner look than the MacBook Air.
Adamo's basic model comes with a 13.4-inch screen, a 1.2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2-GB memory and 128-GB solid state drive. It also offers two USB ports, one USB/eSATA port and a display port. And it carries a not-recession friendly price tag. The basic version of the Adamo will cost $2,000, while a more expensive model costs $2,700.
Other highlights from the teardown:
Photos: iFixit and TechRepublic
You’ve seen the second commercial from Microsoft’s Laptop Hunters series, right? You know, the one where G-diddy picks up the HP HDX 16 over a MacBook Pro. I won’t get into the PC vs Mac argument, but Giampaolo chose poorly because he didn’t know what he actually wanted.
Specs on our review unit are as follows:
• Intel C2D T9600 2.8GHz
• nVidia GeForce 9600M GT w/ 512MB DDR2 dedicated memory
• 16-inch HD HP Ultra BrightView Infinity Display (1920×1080)
• 320GB 5400RPM HDD
• 4GB of DDR2 SDRAM
• Intel Wi-Fi Link 5100 network connection and Bluetooth
• Blu-ray ROM w/ SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer
• 6 cell lithium-ion battery
• HP Webcam
• Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit
Performance
We use Primate Labs Geekbench for benchmarking and the HDX 16 scored 3179 overall. Just to give you a frame of reference, the last-generation MacBook Pro with the same processor scored a 3671 on Geekbench. The complete breakdown can be found in the gallery.
Because of the fancy graphics card from nVidia I used 3DMark03 to see what sort of score we’d get out of it. The GeForce 9600M GT managed to score a 12,847. I played a few minutes of Sega’s Iron Man and it was pretty smooth.
Start up takes approximately 66 seconds while shutting down is about 40 seconds.
Battery Life
This where the HDX 16 underperforms and it’s something that should weigh heavily on your decision making process. Off the charger, the HDX 16 gets roughly 58 minutes during Blu-ray playback. For our “real world” test, I cruised the web for about three minutes, literally, and watched 26 minutes worth of Chuck on Hulu, which amounted to one hour and 27 minutes off of the remaining battery time under HP’s “balanced” power plan.
You’d expect more out of the 6 cell battery compared to others in the market, and we suspect the HD screen is juicing it for all its worth.
Hardware
• Dimensions - 14.9×10.0×1.70 inches and a whopping 7.06 lbs. It’s not portable and hurts my back.
• Speakers – Altec Lansing handles the audio on the HDX 16 and the entire speaker system is laid out across the top section of the bottom panel. They’re certainly loud, but start to crackle when maxed out. However, you can adjust bass and treble with the touch controls above the keyboard. Located on the bottom of the laptop near the power connector is an HP Triple Bass Reflex Subwoofer that you really wouldn’t know was there unless you flipped the laptop over.
• Controls – located just above the keyboard are touch controls for wireless, bass/treble, volume, media playback and MediaSmart. They’re a bit finicky and you’ll need a bit of finesse and patience.
• Ports – located along the left side are the following ports: VGA, expansion port 3 connector, RJ-45, HDMI, eSATA/USB, USB, 1394 FireWire and an ExpressCard/54 slot. Along on the front are the following: 5-in-1 memory card reader (SD, MS/Pro, MMC, xD), IR and a mic/dual headphone port. Located on the right hand side of the laptop is the power connector, Kensington lock slot, USB, optical drive, TV antenna and the fourth USB port.
• Keyboard – Like other HP entertainment notebooks, the HDX 16 comes with a full-size keyboard with numpad. The keys have a nice finish to them and are very grippy.
• Track pad – The main issue with the track pad is it causes a lot of friction, so you’ll need to boost the speed of the cursor to actually get something done.
Screen
HP’s 16-inch HD screen is brilliant, but it’s far too glossy and I spent more time primping my hair than watching Chuck. It handles Blu-ray playback just fine with brilliant colors and sharp lines.
Conclusion
As a multimedia machine, the HDX 16 performs admirably, but the lackluster battery life and size make us long for something leaner and meaner. It can also get quite loud during graphics intensive processes, like, watching videos or playing games. But as a stationary machine (ie: plugged in) with a Blu-ray drive and HD screen it’s more than capable of keeping a multimedia junkie happy.
AP - Forget, for a moment, computer viruses and sophisticated cybercrimes. A hacksaw and a few other tools were probably all it took for someone to sever eight fiber-optic cables in Silicon Valley this week, knocking out cell phone, landline and Internet service.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Communications, Cellular Providers
If you are an AT&T customer, you may want to log on the Twitter social networking site next time you lose service to your cell phone or Internet connection. Twitter was used by AT&T to let residents of the Silicon Valley stay updated on their service status when widespread outages were reported on Thursday.
Almost 3,000 people have subscribed to the AT&T Twitter feed and receive status messages that are 140 characters or less. Yesterday, AT&T sent about ten tweets to let California customers know how they were rectifying the loss of service situation. The outage was caused by vandals that cut the company’s fiber optic cables. Regarding the vandals, AT&T released the following tweet: “AT&T offering $100,000 reward for info leading to arrest/conviction of those responsible for CA vandalism. Call 408-947-STOP.”
As of right now, service has not been completely restored in California, but many people have regained connectivity as the company worked through the night to repair the vandalized cables.
Site: [Twitter]
Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
From Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools*:
"Gardening catalogs are the very epitome of dreambooks. Some are quite beautiful, all ripe with the promise of fulfillment in a slightly other universe, but here are the three that make late winter in the heartland a little less bitter..."
- Seedsavers Exchange
- Johnny's Selected Seeds
- Gardens Alive
After the jump, check out three more grow-enabling catalogs, including an "organic" supplier that's been doing green long before Wal-Mart.
[image via Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply]
*Disclosure: I'm currently the editor of Cool Tools.
Peaceful Valley = "the premier source for organic farming supplies...Here is your source for plastic deer fencing, the world's best walk-behind Italian tillers, superlative hand tools, the best selection of drip irrigation supplies, and -- my favorite -- reusable foam seedling trays."
Hortideas = "It's sort of like a Cook's Illustrated for your garden -- the advice is based on scientific testing, and the tools born out of genuine need."
Lehman's Non-Electric Catalog = "Old-time farming and gardening tools (for old-time skills still viable)-on and on."
It is becoming clear that activity streams are taking hold as the default communications interface across a wide variety of social networks and media, from Twitter to Facebook to FriendFeed to Bebo and beyond. Yet the more people we try to keep track of in one consolidated feed, the more noise we have to deal with that increasingly threatens to drown out those golden information nuggets we all seek. So it is appropriate that today’s Elevator Pitch comes from Smallaa, a startup that aims to help people sort and categorize their streams by interests.
Smalla is still in private beta, but TechCrunch readers can sign up with the promotion code c3p0. When you sign up, you can bring in your FriendFeed stream. (Integration with Facebook is scheduled for April 23, and then Twitter will come after that). Your regular FreindFeed stream appears in a column on the right.
You also pick what interests you want to follow. For instance, I picked “Internet Startups,” “Technology,” “Google,” and “Unusual Things.” I could have also picked “best Photos,” “Pets,” “Formula 3 Racing,” “home,” or I could have created my own topics. Those selections create an interest stream on the left. This is the main Smaalla stream.
There are two ways you can inject something into the Smallaa stream. You can add it directly as a comment, link, video, or picture and assign it to an interest category when you place it into the stream. (Smallaa asks “What’s going on in your interests?” That could probably be clearer. A simple, “What are you intersted in?” would do.) The second way to inject items into the Smallaa stream is to assign them directly from the FriendFeed stream on the right (which will expand in the future to include Facebook and other streams as well).
For instance, Robert Scoble just wrote a post and did a video trying to explain why Mike is wrong about FriendFeed because of its superior mechansims for picking out signal to noise compared to Twitter. Scoble is particularly enamored with FriendFeed because he can pick out what’s interesting based on how many comments an item gets or how many people liked it. Yet with Smalla, I can simply grab the link to Scoble’s post from my FriendFeed stream and assign it to my “Technology” interest in Smallla. I trust what Scoble has to say about technology, so I pay attention to that, but I can ignore his comments about how awesome it is to live in Half Moon Bay.
Now, everybody in Smalla following with an interest in technology will see that link to Scoble’s post and any comments I have about it (unless they choose to view only items from people they follow in Smalla). The relationship between Smallaa and other services is reciprocal. When I add a post to Smallla, it appears in FriendFeed as well. And whenever you assign an item from a friend in another service, it prompts you to invite them to follow the particular interest you are assigning their item to in Smallla. Finally, as another way to figure out who to pay attention to, for each item in your Smallaa feed, it shows you how many people are following the person who posted it in that category. So again, to pick on Scoble, he might quickly gain the most followers in technology but not so many in fashion. Hopefully, this would create a reinforcing feedback loop which would encourage Scoble to write and share more about technology and less about his favorite pair of pants.
Or as Smalla CEO and founder Tim Lai says in the Elevator Pitch video below, it would be great to follow what Bill Clinton has to say about “politicians or giving public speeches without ever being distracted if he has anything to say about honesty and family values.” Lai built and sold his first software company in Hong Kong, an enterprise document management company called Paradigm, before moving to California. He has invested $3 million of his own money to start Smalllaa.
His pitch would probably have been less confusing if he explained why he is sitting in a racing car at the beginning, but he comes around to that in the end. If you would like your startup to be featured on TechCrunch, submit your Elevator Pitch.
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My Institute for the Future colleague Lyn Jeffery, of the virtual China blog 88 Bar, turned me on to Neocha.com, an incredible hub of indie Chinese art/culture/music. For example, dig the beautiful music of experimental zither player Zeng Xiaogang.
Let’s say you’ve got his and hers iPhones. Wouldn’t you want both those iPhones to be together while they’re charging? If so, this adorable charging station from Griffin allows you to charge two iPod devices at once.
If you’re a swinging bachelor or bachelorette living the high life, you could also charge one iPhone and one iPod. Or two iPods! The list price is $44.99 but it’s currently available for $29.21. If you’ve got an entire family of iPod owners, there’s also a four-device version for $43.24, marked down from $72.75.
Griffin Powerdock Dual-Position Charging Station [Amazon via dealspl.us]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Undoubtedly Tesla isn’t going to be happy about this video getting attention, but I think it’s awesome to see CEO Elon Musk take a stand against the company’s many detractors. Last November New York Times writer Randall Stross trashed Tesla as a rich man’s car that the government should shun. “Only the Rich Can Afford It. Should Taxpayers Back It?” he wrote.
Later, the article was much edited after well deserved criticism. Stross also corrected errors suggesting that Tesla’s loan requests were for the $109,000 Roadster, when in fact they were to be used for the $50,000 Model S, their most recent and much more affordable all-electric car.
That rewriting, though, apparently hasn’t appeased Musk. In an interview last week (video above) with Yahoo TechTicker, Musk calls Stross a “huge douchebag…and an idiot” (skip to the 40 second mark) and says “What is he doing picking on an electric car company? Why would he pick on the little guy who is trying to do good when you’ve got egregious waste of money in the tens of billions occurring in Detroit?”
Musk also points out that Tesla investors only make money if the loan is repaid, and that Tesla has applied for just 1.5% of the $25 billion appropriation.
Nicely done, Mr. Musk. I’m definitely going to buy one of your cars.
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In the second part of Boing Boing Video's conversation with Peter Kirn and Matt Ganucheau about generative and experimental audio in games, the debate ends on a high note.
One that involves dance.
(Anyone know where this pic comes from? I suspect it is not official promotional work.)
BB Video: Music in Games, pt. 2, and Radiohead Katamari Fan-Spazz Danceoff
This is not a parody of a workplace safety video. This is an actual workplace safety video. Will You Be Here Tomorrow? (Thanks, John Walsh!)
Earlier this week the Google Earth team released a new plugin that allows users to view Google Earth tours directly from their web browsers. These tours, which were introduced in the 5.0 release of Google Earth in February, allow users to create virtual flythroughs through any location on Google Earth, which can lead to some pretty impressive results. Google has compiled a handful of the best tours in this gallery, which includes a reenactment of the historic Flight 1549 landing in the Hudson and a whirlwind tour through San Francisco.
The plugin weighs in at a hefty 30 MB (80 megabytes after installing on a Mac), so it can hardly be considered lightweight. But the functionality is impressive, and could definitely be used in a variety of innovative ways now that the tours have been freed from the Google Earth desktop client. I image news organizations could use the tours to help liven up online reports (tours can include audio voiceovers), and travel companies could use them to help showcase where their tour packages will take their customers.
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Able Planet’s headphones aren’t advertised as travelling hi-fi like the 15G, or as gaming headphones like the Carcharias. They’re supposed to be a sort of “safe alternative,” providing counterbalances for the things research has found cause hearing loss — while also being a solid headset for gaming and multimedia. Do the PS5500MMs live up to the claims?
Their Linx Audio technology supposedly allows for greater clarity and lower volume levels by rounding out clipping and emphasizing sound with harmonics. While it sounds promising, I’m afraid that just isn’t the way it sounded to me. Comparing the PS5500MMs to three other headsets and my speakers, I found that they tended to “warm” music up beyond what is tolerable. The low and high ends are lost in an all-encompassing mid-range. I don’t think it made the music or games sound better, but I will concede that it probably made them less fatiguing to the ear, what with the harsh high end so subdued (for comparison, the AX Pros I used pushed the high end and that grated on the ear after a while).
They are described as having “oversized” ear cups, but I wouldn’t say that’s true. In fact, the ear cups are the smallest I’ve ever seen. Much smaller than even the Piranha’s on-ear cups, though certainly the PS5500MMs don’t press so much. But they are the type of headphones which you must keep “in position,” or the sound will be skewed or the stereo off, unlike over-ear headphones. They’re fairly comfortable, but I get the feeling that once you’ve warmed up the padding and leather they’d get better.
One thing I did like was the microphone. The bendy stalk is long and the windguard is appreciated. They say that there is built-in noise cancellation for the mic, and while I can’t say one way or the other, it certainly sounded good to me.
The build quality is okay, but they’re certainly not stylish. The cord splits into two below the chin, which is something I don’t really like to have outside of earbuds.
At $100, I really can’t recommend these headphones. If they were cheaper, I might recommend them for people who have to listen to non-high-fidelity audio all the time (telemarketers?). But as it is, the only people who might want these are those of you who are concerned for your hearing. I think that Able Planet’s claims on that front are legitimate, although I think it affects the sound too much for my taste.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Earthbox's own tagline is a bit much: "The World' Most Revolutionary Gardening System!" The black plastic boxes come with generally positive recommendations, but they're not magic—their main trick is keeping a reservoir of water at the bottom, letting plants wick it up as they need it, while keeping the soil at the surface dry and hardy against bacteria and bugs.
While the brand-name Earthboxes aren't terribly expensive—around $60, and that includes some soil and fertilizer—building a similar box yourself isn't a huge undertaking, either. (Here's another variant.) Cut apart one Rubbermaid tub, put its guts inside another, add some drain holes and a fill tube, and you're on your way to big tomatoes and eggplants and cukes with a minimum of effort.
"Just watch out for needles, please..." And with that sensible yet troubling advice, I started re-planting and weeding a 120x100 ft. lot hugging I-280 in San Francisco. The property is owned by Caltrans, but the garden is definitely Annie's. In December, after five years of staring at a mostly-barren lot across from her home, the web designer (at Sega!) set to work guerrilla-style! -- without any permission, public meeting or hesitation*. Adopting an array of Agave, Dianthus, Crassula ovata, Grevillea, Ornithogalum, Anisodontea, Osteospermum and more (a good portion culled for free from Craigslist!), she started transforming the landscape and simultaneously found a way to escape the "sterile and predictable" mindset of toiling in an office. No power tools. No soil moisture sensors. No radio... Right on. So on a sunny Saturday morning, I joined her at the Pennsylvania Garden . Hear more about the artifacts unearthed (needles?), the bum who used to live there (King Cobra fan), and how I hurt my back, after the jump...
*She eventually called the city, then Caltrans, and got their blessing -- and a spigot repaired -- to ensure the plants won't get ripped out. She's invested well over $1,000, let alone the time.
"People are disappointed to find out I don't wear a ski mask," Annie laughed in her British accent (she was born in Wales). It's true. Up until now, my notion of guerrilla gardeners was that they were mostly 12 Monkeys-like rebels toiling in midnight darkness to bolster the natural beauty of dull, cement-laden urban spaces. "Drivers beep at me all the time!" she added.
Pennsylvania Garden is a sloping lot perched on display for neighbors, passersby, drivers, and dozens of dogs who use the upper, un-planted portion as a toilet (two recycled poop-bag-compost stations were installed w/the help of a neighbor). Canine excrement is nothing, though. When she first began, Annie contended with a drunken homeless man who slept under a tree bordering the freeway underpass. After a shelter took the man in (provided he agree to quit drinking), she went in to clean up: a litany of 40-oz bottles, human feces, trash, and hypodermic needles (the man's friends' apparently).
This answered my first bit of skepticism: why not plant food? A lot this size could feed a handful of families outright, much in the same way squatters in cities like Detroit are living off abandoned land. The lot is plant-able, but Caltrans warned Annie (and she warned me): It is toxic, with oil and runoff from the highway, discarded batteries (I found a rusty D-volt), broken fuse boxes (check), and the occasional needle (ugh). Translation: wash your hands thoroughly and don't touch your garden gloves to your mouth. Check.
We started off weeding the back hillside. Lady bugs galore. Then a sharp prick right through my glove. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. I searched. Didn't see a needle. It was a particularly nasty twig or cactus tip. We continued, and finished with a pile of weeds that doubled her compost heap.
Planting in these conditions is tough, but Annie seems more than pleased to keep everything low-tech. A friend has promised to loan her a "Texas toothpick," a heavy shaft of forged steel used to break ground. For now, she tackles patches of debris-caked clay with a shovel. It is hard, back-breakingly so.
Annie already transplanted almost 100 species thus far, becoming a budding amateur plant expert in the process. She regularly travels north of San Francisco to rescue unwanted cactus from people she finds through a cactus-nut she met on Craigslist or through her blog. She's discovered that Starbucks will give her free coffee grounds (a solid top soil supplement since snails hate it and worms LOVE it). She's learned how to manhandle 150-lb. prickly pear cacti (hint: two sets of gloves, tarp, twine, three sets of hands, and lift with the legs).
She's pleasant, not preachy. The self-righteous pretension you'd expect is absent. She says she simply enjoys the work. I believe her. She's one of us: a city-dwellling web designer who spends the 9-5 weekdays tending digital gardens for a paycheck. Any excuse to disconnect, sweat, sunburn, and get dirty hands in the name of something tangible and organic is worth it. Have a great weekend.
Rough week for the Associated Press, at least if you measure it by headlines: First, the venerable news organization/aggregator confused the likes of me by announcing a vague plan to fight the Internet. Then it went ahead and confirmed everyone’s worst fears with a boneheaded attempt to stop someone from showing a YouTube clip it had already distributed.
Time for some image repair, don’t you think?
The AP is trying to do this at this very moment by distributing an 11-point FAQ that attempts to clarify exactly what it’s thinking. But that document is still a little vague and overly formal. Good thing I got on the phone yesterday with the pleasant Jim Kennedy, who oversees strategic planning for the AP and who speaks in clear, concise English.
Much of what we talked about was a rehash of what we talked about Monday afternoon, when AP Chairman Dean Singleton first riled everyone up with his “mad as hell” speech. But given the rampant confusion of the past few days, I thought it was worth going over again. Some excerpts from our chat:
On the AP’s plans to chase down people who “misappropriate” its content: Kennedy stresses that the news organization isn’t planning on creating a Wall Street Journal-style pay wall around its content. And it’s not concerned about bloggers who link to its stories. His beef is with sites that are reprinting AP’s stories on a regular basis without paying for them. “The activity that we’re trying to limit is the systematic harvesting of news without trying to license it,” he says. “The people who are building a business by taking the content and trying to recreate a news report. That’s what we’re trying to address. We’ve had success doing this.”
On the AP’s plan to promote its work more effectively. This has been construed in some quarters as a plan to create a search engine or news portal. But it’s really just an attempt to upgrade the AP’s search engine optimization strategy–that is, trying to get its stuff to show up higher on Google’s (GOOG) search results. It will do that via “search pages,” or “topic pages,” which are par for the course in the Web world. Check out this New York Times (NYT) page on Somali pirates, or this Huffington Post page on newspapers, and you’ll get an idea of where the AP is going.
If the search page plan works, the pages will be generating plenty of page views when people land on them, and it’s possible that the AP will sell ads on that inventory, Kennedy says. But their real function is to shuttle searchers to the original source material from the AP’s members.
On the AP’s beef with Google: It’s real. But many of the stories published this week conflated the AP’s gripe-essentially, that it’s not getting paid enough by the search engine for the use of its content–with its saber-rattling against aggregators who aren’t paying the AP at all. The AP may indeed end up suing people in the latter group. But it plans on resolving its Google problem with a new contract that will replace the one that expires this year.
Kennedy is vague when it comes to specifics about the Google contract and what he’d like changed: “It’s just a reevaluation of the situation,” he says. But he’s clear that the company intends to keep working with the world’s largest Web site. “When we’re talking about Google, we’re talking about our future business relationship,” he says. “When we’re talking about misappropriation, we’re talking about people who have never contemplated a business relationship with us.”
On the confusing message that the AP presented to the world this week: Guilty as charged, says Kennedy. But he argues that his group has indeed given some thought to what it’s doing, even if it hasn’t communicated that clearly to date. “The future is going to be a lot different than the present and the past on the Internet, and we’re trying to get ready for that process,” he says. “To the untrained eye it looks like we’re stupid. But we’re looking forward to a totally new space where we have to get ready to do things in a totally different way. We’re trying to be smart business people and we’re trying to stay in business.”
Locavore, an iPhone app that helps you figure out what food is in season in your area, is celebrating their newfound popularity on the iTunes App Store by giving us five copies of the app to give away to readers.
Because I don't like to give you away anything for nothing, I've got a request: The first five people to snap an artsy-fartsy image of some local food on their iPhone and add it to the Boing Boing Gadgets pool will get a copy, per my rarified judgement. (Whole foods get preference, but that can include cute animals you've just slaughtered, too!)
Palm's new phone, the Pre, is inching closer to reality. Now a report suggests Sprint, the exclusive telecom carrier for the phone, will start training its employees this month for the new device.
Palm has said it the Pre will be available by mid-year.
Sprint's move though could indicate that the Pre may launch a few weeks earlier than expected.
Palm introduced the Pre at the Consumer Electronics Show in January to much critical acclaim. The phone has won kudos not only for its design but also for its OS, a completely new system designed from the ground up exclusively for it.
Meanwhile, Sprint has also been trying to build up enthusiasm for the device. The company was at the CTIA wireless conference in Las Vegas last week to offer limited demos of the Pre. Sprint also launched a new website for the Pre earlier this month.
Also see:
6 Reasons Why the Palm Pre Is Special
Palm Energizes Developers for the Pre Phone
Video: Hands-On With the Palm Pre
New WebOS Is Palm's Secret Sauce
Up Close and Personal With the Palm Pre
Why did lightinthebox.com remove this photo of a prom dress and replace it with a different shot of the same model in the same dress?
Source: Boing Boing | 10 Apr 2009 | 7:11 pm
Section: Web
Remember the good old days when all we needed to worry about from our ISPs was net neutrality? Those were great days when there were no caps on what we could use our Internet connection for, and we were scared it might turn into cable TV-like subscription. Now not only is net neutrality still a bit of an issue, there’s the issue of bandwidth caps, with ISPs trying to limit just how much data we download or upload.
Time Warner Cable is the latest ISP to institute the idea of caps, and will be expanding its once Texas-based test to Rochester, NY; Greensboro, NC; Austin, TX; and San Antonio, TX. TWC had previously announced its pricing tiers starting at 10GB at $15 up to 60GB per month. The last two tiers in the program have finally been announced. There’s the 100GB for a measly $75 per month, and double that price for unlimited access. Of course, to some people these data caps won’t be much of an issue; actually for most people they won’t be. In some unspecified markets, users will be able to access a DOCSIS 3 network for $99, with much faster speeds and potentially no caps, unless the price is just added on top of the tier price. That would make for $250 per month for 50 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload, which is insane.
The network caps are almost specifically meant to deal with the top 1% of Internet users who use most of the bandwidth on the networks. Who are the top 1%? Probably people who stream videos from Hulu and Netflix regularly, spend time gaming, and possibly use BitTorrent on a regular basis. That doesn’t even get into purchasing digital content from iTunes, PlayStation Store, Xbox Live, Amazon, etc, which can all add up very quickly. These caps are currently just in testing in these markets, though, let’s hope they don’t stick.
Read [Wired]
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Waterman, whose fortune was estimated at £47 million by The Times in 2004, compared this treatment to the “exploitation” of migrant workers in the Middle East. Yes, a man is comparing legitimate plight to his not being properly compensated for all those “Never Gonna Give You Up” (rickroll) views on YouTube. May he be forced to watched Friends for all eternity.
So this guy, 62-year-old Pete Waterman, co-wrote Rick Astley nouveau hit “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and for that the human race is forever in his debt. You’ll recall that “Never Gonna Give You Up,” first made popular by the game Chrono Trigger, has had a second life of late, peddled by idiots who think they’re being funny. L O L U JST BEN RICROLLd. Yes, quite.
Anyhow! Despite the fact that the video was viewed more than 154 million times on YouTube, Waterman has made only £11 (around $16). But he’s already worth £47 million (nearly $69 million), so who cares.
Sure, he wants to be compensated for his work. Fine. But for him to cry poverty like that is disgusting, just like when FIFA’s Sepp Blatter compared Cristiano Ronaldo’s Manchester United-Real Madrid tug of war to “slavery.” It’s just dumb, and we’re all worse for it.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
A new milestone for Apple's wildly successful App Store is fast approaching — one billion downloaded apps.
In anticipation of the momentous occasion, Apple on Friday launched a web site featuring a countdown tool and a promotion giving away prizes. As of this writing, the App Store is 70 million downloads short of one billion.
Just nine months old, Apple's iPhone App Store has shaken up the mobile software industry. The store launched in July with just 500 apps and grew rapidly, recently surpassing 30,000 applications available for download. Hoping to ride off similar success, other mobile companies, such as Research In Motion, have announced plans to start their own app stores as well.
In addition to being a victory for Apple, some developers have reaped from the benefits immensely. One of the biggest success stories to date involves independent developer Ethan Nicholas, who earned $600,000 in a single month from sales of his iPhone game iShoot. Nicholas recently told Wired.com he broke $800,000 in March.
And now iPhone owners have a chance to get lucky in the App Store, too. Any iPhone owner who downloads an app during the countdown promotion is automatically eligible to win prizes — a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod Touch, a Time Capsule or a MacBook Pro. Each download counts as an entry to the contest; customers can enter up to 25 times. Those who don't own an iPhone or are unwilling to download an app can enter by filling out a form.
See Also:
Photo: superciliousness/Flickr
This week's podcast zeroes in on the exciting world of iPhone dongleware: accessory-app combinations that take advantage of iPhone 3.0's accessory-friendliness to meld custom iPhone software with new peripherals attached to the dock connector or via Bluetooth. We asked Wired.com readers to suggest their favorite ideas for app-accessory combos, and we got some great ideas, including a universal remote, an iPhone keyboard, and a point-of-sale device/app.
We also talk about the strange dearth of Googlephones. Half a year after Android's splashy debut, we still only have one Android-based phone -- the T-Mobile G1 -- and only a handful of additional Google phones are expected this year. What's up with that?
Finally, we review a new Porsche Phone. Verdict: It's beautiful, but dumb.
Listen in, and learn more about all about these topics -- plus a deceptively simple, addictive iPhone game that Brian can't stop playing with.
This week's twelve-minute podcast features Dylan Tweney, Danny Dumas, Brian Chen and Priya Ganapati, with audio engineering by Fernando Cardoso.
If the embedded player above doesn't work, you can download the Gadget Lab podcast #70 MP3.
Use iTunes? Subscribe to the Gadget Lab Audio Podcast in iTunes. You know you want to!
Like video? Aim your browser at the Gadget Lab Video Podcast — available on iTunes and right here on the Gadget Lab blog.
AP - Dave Arneson, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy game and a pioneer of role-playing entertainment, died after a two-year battle with cancer, his family said Thursday. He was 61.
I had the opportunity to test Sony Ericsson’s newest mobile phone, the G9, in Tokyo today. The device is the first KDDI au is selling in Japan under the so-called iida brand. It's not officially on sale yet, but I could lay my hands on finished versions for a few minutes in a KDDI showroom. The G9 will be available in Japan next week.
I don’t like baseball and if that makes me un-American then so be it. But I do watch during the month of October and root against the Yankees - assuming they make it to the postseason. So, baseball video games aren’t necessarily my forte, but I know a good thing when I see it or, in this case, play it. However, the die-hard baseball video game fans might not take kindly to this year’s MLB 2K title.
I managed to find a copy of MLB 2K8 to note the differences with 2K9 and I can see why some fans are shaking their heads this year. 2K was looking for a way to bring baseball to the masses by changing two fundamental features: the batting system and pitching mechanics. They’re both much easier to use than last year’s but you can revert back to the old pitching system.
The batting system is dead simple. Move the right toggle back and bang it forward when that meatball comes down the middle. That’s it.
The new two-step pitching sequence goes a little something like this - pick the corner you want to paint with the left toggle and mimic the pitch sequence with the right toggle while timing the windup for maximum velocity. It’s easy and anyone can do it, but you can always revert to the old three-step process in controller settings. Except that doesn’t seem to work as well as it did last year with the exclusion of gestures being shown.
The online side is beefed up with 2K Living Rosters that updates all MLB happenings within 24 hours, like, trades or injuries. Franchise mode is slightly improved with 30-player roster support and updated menus, but not much else. Play-by-play is top notch and if you were some luddite sitting under a rock you’d think you were watching a real live baseball game except for players walking through each other and other random glitches that pop up far too often.
2K made some major changes to this year’s MLB title and they might get some flack for it, but it’s brought in someone like myself who doesn’t really like to play baseball games and I’m pretty sure that was their main goal – attract more chumps. The bottom line for MLB 2K9 is that it’s fun to play and I keep going back for more.
FROM APPLETELL - This week you’ll be able to expand you vocab, pretend your car is a jet, wrap some string around objects and waste some time with other games. Enjoy.
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Alright, fellas - lets get this one out of the way: the Samsung SGH-A657 isn’t going to score you any points from the ladyfolk. These military spec phones never do. That said, if you’ve actually got a reason to be carrying a phone like this, you’re probably too busy rappelling out of helicopters to care what people think about your mobile. Or, you know, you work construction or something - but hardcore army dudes make for better imagery.
As far as features go, it’s the mobile equivalent of a Kia Spectra wrapped up in a tank’s body. It’s got Bluetooth 2.0, Stereo Bluetooth, AT&T Navigator and Mobile music, Push to Talk, EDGE and HSDPA, microSD expansion, and all the basics you’d expect of any phone - but it’s also spec’d to play rough, meeting military specifications for dust, shock, vibration, and extreme temperatures. Plus it has a flashlight, just in case you drop the keys to your war machine.
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As video sites on the Web struggle to find a business model that will pay their mounting bandwidth and storage bills, many of them are trying to reinvent themselves. Veoh, which has raised a total of $70 million, had to cut 35 percent of its staff earlier this month and the site seems to be losing steam. Unique visitors are down 18 percent from their high a year ago to 15.2 million worldwide, and users of its desktop app VeohTV are down 40 percent to 7.2 million worldwide, according to comScore (see chart below).
Founder Dmitry Shapiro is now back as CEO and he is pouring the company’s remaining energy into a new product launched six weeks ago called Video Compass (read our review). Since launch, it has been downloaded 800,000 times, and is currently being downloaded at a rate of 25,000 a day. Video Compass may amount to a Hail Mary pass to try to save the company. It is an attempt to spread video search across the Web by bringing you search results when you don’t even know you are looking for videos.
The way it does this is through a browser add-on for Firefox and Internet Explorer that is triggered whenever you do a search on a growing list of sites, including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Craigslist, Wikipedia, and even YouTube. In the past few days, it just added Twitter Search, MySpace, Hulu, DailyMotion, and Metacafe. Up next will be Flickr, Photobucket, and Facebook.
Whenever you do a regular search on these sites, a ribbon with Veoh video search results pops down triggered by the same keyword you are searching. For instance, if you are searching for “police” on Amazon, a bunch of Police music videos appear along the top ribbon, along with some car chase footage. You can cycle through the videos by clicking an arrow to see more results in the ribbon or you can click on related tags along the top (”Sting,” “crime,” “japanese police”) to refine your search.
If you click on any of the thumbnails, a semi-transparent player opens up and lets you watch it in-situ, without necessarily going to Veoh.com. When you are done, you close the window and you are back at where you left off.
I’ve been testing Video Compass for the past few days, and the video results pretty decent. I find them to be a bit redundant on other video sites such as YouTube, but they can sometimes offer better results on narrower video sites. For instance, try searching for “Moldova” on Hulu and you get one result, whereas the Veoh Video Compass bar turns up plenty of protest videos. And do a search on Twitter and it adds a whole different dimension to your search. Even searches on Google bring up more video results than occur naturally. And you can always turn it off if it starts to annoy you.
The big question is can Veoh create a business around a browser add-on? That all depends on how much of a habit people make of clicking on the Veoh video results and how good they are. Veoh has developed its own behavioral targeting technology which generates both video recommendations and helps target advertising. Shapiro tells me:
Today we are doing a pretty good job monetizing Veoh.com. We serve pre-rolls (at high CPMs), mid-rolls, overlays, and targeted display units. Our behavioral targeting engine lets us get higher CPMs than our competitors, while selling out more inventory. While I can’t share the exact numbers with you, I can tell you that our quarters are in the millions and every quarter has been a record quarter, although we are not cash flow positive yet.
With Video Compass, he can promote content from partners directly in the toolbar when people are conducting associated searches elsewhere on the Web. Movie trailers would be one obvious type of content to promote, but sponsored video ads of all stripes could be placed in both the results or during playback. There is also a lot of empty real estate around the player that can be filled with ads in the future. Finally, Shapiro is working on ways to drive users back to Veoh.com where the monetization model is more clear. So he is not giving up on his destination site entirely.
Relying on people to download his add-on, however, is a risky strategy. Not only does it require people to go out of their way, as more and more browser add-ons adopt similar triggering mechanisms, conflicts could emerge. For instance, Glue has a similar user interface, although it is not triggered by searches. But you can imagine a time when two different add-ons are both triggered and either one cancels out the other or the top of the browser becomes a mess. This is essentially the same problem people have with the new Diggbar and other Website framing mechanisms. They can create a lot of clutter instead of helping you cut through it.
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The handheld computer is the new PC — the most exciting, promising new platform for running software and connecting to cloud-based services. What do I mean by a handheld computer? Well, it could be one of the new generation of super-smartphones, like Apple’s iPhone — which pioneered the new generation — or phones powered by Google’s Android operating system, or the latest BlackBerries from Research in Motion. Or, it could be a small tablet powered by the iPhone’s OS and user interface; by Android; or by other competitors, like Palm’s new webOS.
What I don’t mean to include in this new class of devices are netbooks running Microsoft Windows, which are just fine, but are really merely small, cheap, laptops. Nor do I mean to include the tens of millions of older, less capable, phones labeled “smartphones,” which can be a slippery term.
These devices, like the Palm Treo, older Windows Mobile phones, or older-model BlackBerries, were breakthrough products in their day. But they use wimpier operating systems and less capable hardware than today’s new class of smartphones. They do run third-party apps, but these look primitive compared to, say, an iPhone app.
A battle is shaping up in the next few years to see who will dominate this new handheld platform — who will attract the most users and third-party apps?
So, here’s a quick snapshot of the strengths and weaknesses of the main combatants in the war for the handheld platform.
Strengths: Having defined this new class of handheld computers, Apple has a huge head start, with 30 million modern devices running a powerful and attractive operating system. That includes 17 million iPhones, plus Apple’s secret weapon: 13 million iPod Touches, which do almost all that an iPhone does, except connect to the cell phone networks. Apple (AAPL) also has an easy-to-use app store, which is now estimated to hold over 30,000 apps that have been downloaded over 900 million times in just about 9 months. The iPhone also offers wireless synchronization via MobileMe and Microsoft Exchange, and has had terrific marketing. And rumors persist that Apple is working on a cheaper iPhone, and/or a larger iPod Touch, in a tablet format.
Weaknesses: Apple has three key vulnerabilities. First, there are millions of people who prefer a physical keyboard, which the iPhone and Touch lack. Second, at least in the U.S., the iPhone is tied to a single carrier, AT&T, whose 3G network is still lousy in some major areas. Finally, while the iPhone’s $199 price has been good enough to make it a hit, people in a deep recession might respond better to a lower price, even if it was for a stripped-down lesser model.
DIY Veggiepatch is a fun web site that teaches you how to make your own individual-sized urban garden using fabrics that are lying around the house. Some tips from Jo Szczepanksa, its creator:
1. Print out the templates.
2. Recruit friends. Not everyone knows their way around a sewing machine or a jigsaw/hammer. Plus its a lot cheaper buying the materials in larger quantities.
3. Consider using companion planting, so that you get less pests and bugs munching on your yummy veggies, and you don't have to use pesticides.
4. Find a spot with sunlight, or consider creating a spot with sunlight with some shiny reflectors.
5. Worms! The best thing to gardening ever. Put worms in one of your veggie patch pockets and they will eat up all your veggie leftovers and give you great soil, that will protect your vegetables from diseases and help them grow brilliantly.
I had the opportunity to test Sony Ericsson’s newest mobile phone, the G9, in Tokyo today. The device is the first KDDI au is selling in Japan under the so-called iida brand. It’s not officially on sale yet, but I could lay my hands on finished versions for a few minutes in a KDDI showroom. The G9 will be available in Japan next week.
Design-wise, the phone is nothing special. A typical slider with a keyboard featuring sloped buttons made of aluminum, that were nice to press (but who cares if there is the iPhone). The G9 measures 115 x 50 x 17.4mm, weighs 128g and comes with a quite conventional 3.0-inch LCD panel (resolution 480 x 854). It has a nice stainless frame and a 3MP camera that can take good pictures. But again, this is nothing really special.
I surfed the web with the G9, but compared with Android or the iPhone, the experience was so 2007. May the Japanese phones have digital TV tuners, better cameras or e-payment functions, I still would never want to replace my iPhone.
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Instructions:
1. Stare at the image for 10 seconds.
2. Look at something -- your hand, a book, your friend
3. Enjoy!
Download the MP4 here. Flash video above, click "fullscreen" icon inside player to view large. YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.
Boing Boing Video wishes you a Happy Friday. And surely there can be no better way to celebrate the end of a work week than to put on a Katamari Damacy head, crank up a favorite song ("Bodysnatchers" by Radiohead), and rock out in front of a webcam. This is what happened with our esteemed interview guests Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music and Matt Ganucheau of Expression College, who participated in Boing Boing/offworld's marathon live coverage of the 2009 Game Developers Conference. The interview was over, the chat room was buzzing, the Katamari costumes were just sitting there. I asked our chat room participants what we should force our guests to dance to, and all agreed to Radiohead. You'll hear me shouting out commands from the chat room during this video, and eventually, at the end, obeying a final command myself: to join in.
This moment is also memorialized by paperdummy, whom we thank for the kind loan of the Katamari heads.
Previously:
* Music in Video Games, pt. 2, with Peter Kirn and Matt Ganucheau
* Music in Video Games, a conversation with Peter Kirn and Matt Ganucheau
*
Social Games, and The Quest for Virtual Poo.
* Doctor Popular's Awesome Yo-Yo Stylings
* Hideo Kojima on Metal Gear Solid Touch (games)
* Jane McGonigal on Emotion, Gaming, and Dance.
* Jane McGonigal - Games Can Change the World.
* Jane McGonigal's Game Developers' Conference talk on Making Your Own Reality
* BBV @ GDC live stream archives, at Ustream.tv
* Boing Boing Video and Offworld.com Live at GDC09: offworld.com archive
* Boing Boing Video and Offworld.com Live at GDC09: boingboing.net archive
[ Special thanks to Joel Johnson for editorial help on this episode! BBV Live @GDC09 credits and thanks: Production Team -- Jolon Bankey, Derek Bledsoe, Daniela Calderon, Eddie Codel, Xeni Jardin, Allison Kingsley, Matty Kirsch, Alice Taylor, Wesly Varghese. Special thanks to Wayneco Heavy Industries (accommodation and studio facilities), Virgin America Airlines (air travel), Celsius (thermogenic energy beverage), Ustream.tv (streaming video host). Moral support, production assistance, additional talent, and good vibes provided by: Domini Anne, Scott Beale, T.Bias, Jeremy Bornstein, Brandon Boyer, Chris The Van Guy, Peter S. Conrad, Marque Cornblatt, Wayne, Bre, and the entire de Geere family, Marcy DeLuce, Cory Doctorow, Joel Johnson, Kourosh Karimkhany, Jim Louderback and the Revision 3 team, Karen Marcelo, Rocky Mullin, Alicia Pollak, Jackie Mogol, Taylor Peck, David Pescovitz, Micah Schaffer, and Teal. ]
Don Lindsey has been a busy man the last decade and a half. Going from Apple where he might have had a major role in early iPhone developments, to Microsft where he worked in Live Labs, he’s been around the block a time or two. Now it’s RIMs turn who made the man VP of User Experience, which confirms that the companies commitment to developing stellar OSs. Research in Motion needs to keep up its game now that everyone, including Microsoft, is charging forward with new mobile platforms and Don might be able to help.
Look at his past: He was involved with Apple through OS 8 to 10.3 where the company made huge strides in OS usability. OS X eventually surpassed Windows in terms of usability during his tenure. Windows fans might argue that, but the man left in 2003, which is when MS was working on craptastic Vista. There is even a chance that he was involved with early iPhone development, but his influence would have been very limited given the time frame.
After Apple, he moved to Microsoft where he was a software architect and eventually headed up Live Labs and eventually put out the stupendous Photosynth.com app. There is no question that this man has drive and vision, but lets hope that it carries over to the mobile field. RIM’s next-gen OS is key to the companies longevity. Apple, and even Microsoft, has shown major commitment to the mobile market, and this isn’t saying that RIM hasn’t, but here’s hoping that Don Lindsey can lead the company forward.
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Whether it means the Pre is weeks or months away is anyone’s guess, but Sprint employees have now started gettin’ comfy with the devices. There’s not much more to it than that, really - here’s how its all gone down so far:
Sprint E-mail: “Employees can expect training to start in April as well as multiple communications to get them excited and ready to help our customers.”
PreThinking: Hey! It’s April now! Did training start?
Sprint E-mail: “I would like to inform that Sprint is in the process of providing the training for the new Palm Pre. Once it’s launched, Sprint will be ready to serve their valued customers regarding the Palm Pre.”
Simple as that - Sprint said training would start in April, and training started in April. Congratulations, Sprint Employees. You are joining the ranks of those allowed to touch the Pre without someone else holding the device, which was previously capped at about 10 people. Feel free to take pictures to document the occasion, and send them to our inbox.
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Section: Audio, Communications, Computers, Gadgets / Other, Peripherals, Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack
Welcome to the Good Friday edition, or the “no one else is working, so why should I?” edition, as I like to call it. This week blends freak-deaky gadgets that will only add to my neurosis and potential set us all back some major ching. The normal weirdness is here thanks to MS and Amazon and who knows what the heck Archos is thinking. Here is my list:
Feel like you are getting the shaft? That’s the feeling I get as I consider getting a netbook on the cheap from AT&T along with their service. You get the $99 netbook plus a two-year agreement that runs $60 or $40 per month depending on your habit. Sounds OK, right?
Here is what bugs me: I’d sit there staring at my iPhone and staring at my netbook. I am pretty sure the money-sucking sound would be audible as both burn through paid data plans that I pay. That sound would keep me up at night.
Why do we have to pay for umpteen data connections? How about a bundle plan? Give me a deal for broadband at home, a netbook/laptop, and phone. Or, allow me to share like I can with a Windows Mobile or other tethering plan. I’d really like to pay to get the pipe to follow me; and that’s it. All 3 seem like highway robbery to me. To our Robert Nelson, he just doesn’t want to give money to the man,
“I would think it would be much smarter, and more convenient to have a netbook, mini-notebook or even a full-size notebook and have a separate USB dongle that I can use with any computer.”
Announcing users can download to the unloved Vista or all the way down to XP, Microsoft seems to suggest it doesn’t have much faith in Windows 7. Where is the “this is the best we’ve ever done” or the “you’ll be saying Mac-who in 6 months” or roll out Robert Scoble and have him say, “it was sooo good, I cried.” (love ya Scoble).
With this announcement, the response I get is just a keep your heads down, nothing to see here. Not confidence-inspiring at all boys. Gadgetell’s Heather Wood brings us the deets:
Microsoft has confirmed that users of the new Windows 7 will be able to downgrade to either Vista or XP. Downgrade rights will be open through the company’s PC partners, including HP.
Competing on price these days seems to be a losing proposition to me. Someone somewhere (probably China) will find a way to make it cheaper and then you are left with nada. Archos has done just that with their silent launch of their new PMPs.
Our usually uber-positive Natesh Sood says:
“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.”
Archos seems like a company that has great ideas but just misses in execution. From Archos TV to their chunky iPod touch-like devices, they are good but not great. I keep hoping one day, they’ll knock it out of the park. Today is not that day.
Iyaz wrote a thought-provoking piece on flexible OLEDs that I need to talk about here. Sitting next to Iyaz when Sony showed their gizmo had two different responses: to Iyaz it was “What can’t that be on?” To me it was “What is going to use that?”
I still feel that way. No way is every device going to have some kind of shade that you unroll to view. Anyone who’s fought with window shades that pull down, then zip back up, scaring the bejesus out of you and perhaps making you pee yourself knows what I am talking about. Laptops with a flexible screen just don’t make sense, you’ve already got the form factor tied up in the keyboard. Don’t even talk to me about roll up keyboards mated with rolled up screens. Holograms will be here well before Iyaz gets his thoughts realized.
Speaking of the roll up keyboard, the flexible screen is very similar. Sounds like an awesome idea until you get it in your hands and ask, “OK, WTF now?” They all hang out in the clearance bin at Staples.
And on a watch??? Don’t even get me started. Didn’t I make fun of the 80’s snap bracelets last week?
Our Sue Walsh loves her Kindle. As Gadgetell’s go-to ebook’er, Sue wrote an interesting piece on why she is not upgrading and honestly, I am blown away. Knowing how much she enjoys the simple pleasure of ebooks and tech, you’d figure she’d jump on the train to Kindle2ville faster than anyone. (interesting fact: Kindle2ville does not come up as misspelled in Firefox’s spell checker deal)
So whats so wrong with the Kindle 2? Wouldn’t Amazon want to provide a compelling upgrade path for Kindle (1) users to move to? After all, how many iPhone 3G customers were iPhone first gen owners? It is the upgrade path that feeds so many of today’s tech companies. So what did Amazon do wrong?
Sue says it is price, battery issues and flakey first units.
“stick to your original Kindle if you own one or pick up one for around $200 on Ebay and Amazon’s Marketplace. You won’t be missing anything. “
How fast will Amazon move to a touchscreen Kindle 3 to cover up this blunder?
See something I missed this week that outraged you? Let us know in the comments.
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Shopping on cellphones–long a dream among e-commerce companies–is not yet a mass-market phenomenon. But some new tools could help change that picture.
Amazon.com (AMZN) Thursday unveiled free software for BlackBerry handsets (trackball models only, please), that allow users to browse for products, read reviews, and buy on the go–just like a version for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone that came out in December.
KDDI, Japan’s second biggest mobile phone carrier, currently showcases a number of cell phone design prototypes (and a working one) in their five-floor Design Studio [JP] in central Tokyo (where I went today). The cell phones (and peripheral devices) are part of the so-called iida brand [JP], which is supposed to be focused on the development of unusual handsets only.
KDDI as a whole is well-known in Japan for their penchant for outlandish cell phones. We saw a number of their weird hardware prototypes (developed for the so-called KDDI Design Project) showcased live in the KDDI showroom in Tokyo and during the CEATEC exhibition last year. But the pieces made under the umbrella of iida, which stands for innovation/imagination/design/art, look even weirder.
KDDI au held a press conference on Tuesday [JP], introducing a handful of these handsets. I took pictures of all of them, which you can see below. They were designed by avant-garde artists Yayoi Kusama and Yoshitaka Mukae.
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Apple is really, really close to hitting 1 billion app downloads across the world, according to its new countdown page. If you download an app, you’ll be enrolled in a contest to win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro. TechCrunch is holding its own contest in honor of this occasion. Whoever guesses when it will hit one billion, and is closest in minutes and seconds will get free TechCrunch T-shirt. Leave the guesses in comments; we’ll contact the winner.
Apple also featured the all-time top 20 apps, both paid and free.
Top 20 All-Time Free Apps:
Top 20 All-Time Paid Apps:
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Straight out of the “why didn’t they think about this before” department, comes VidPay whose entire premise can be summed up in a single sentence: A white label platform for sponsored video campaigns. There must be more, right? Wrong. VidPay is as dead simple to use as it is to comprehend. One more thing… It started generating revenue from minute one. What more could you ask for in a startup?
To appreciate my gushing enthusiasm over VidPay you must understand that one of the occupational hazards of writing for TechCrunch requires the deciphering of what startups actually do. Increasingly rare are startups like VidPay that offer straightforward value for its customers and have a CEO that knows how to intelligently communicate what the product actually does without overselling it or using tiring hyperbole. So let’s dive in:
The problem VidPay set out to solve is allowing small/mid-sized advertisers to promote their videos on sites such as Metacafe, Dailymotion and Vimeo. These sites usually don’t have dedicated sales teams to support such advertisers because they focus on larger, more budget-laden campaigns.
MetaCafe is VidPay’s pilot customer and through this partnership alone VidPay is serving ~50M sponsored video impressions per day, or ~1.4 billion per month. Current click-through rates are between 0.1% and 1%, depending on how many video ads are displayed in the sponsored video sections, and whether campaigns are targeted for specific keywords or not.
VidPay’s solution is a self-serve advertising platform for sponsored videos. It is similar in concept to YouTube’s “Promoted Videos” offering, differences being: 1) It allows campaigns to be built for multiple publishers (video sites), and 2) Its interface can be integrated right within the publisher site. The second point is important because it means that any video site can integrate a fully branded self-serve sponsored ad platform with zero investment, and begin reaping revenue it was previously unable to bring in.
For video sites, integrating VidPay functionality is a two step process. First, the video publishing site needs to send VidPay information such as visitor IP addresses, the category being visited, current item tags and the maximum number of sponsored videos to display. Second, the publisher site needs to receive a list of sponsored videos from VidPay and then display them of course. Completing these two steps should take no more than a few hours. Integrating the interface is optional and would require the use of an iFrame.
On each page view, the publisher site sends an HTTP request for sponsored videos to be displayed in pre-defined locations. VidPay returns the best-matching sponsored videos to display by taking into consideration the maximum cost-per-click, click-through rate and targeting parameters such as geo-location and language. The sponsored videos are all located within the publisher’s inventory so all traffic remains under its umbrella. Advertisers can choose the videos they want to promote manually, search for them through VidPay’s interface, or upload them to the publisher site right from the VidPay interface.
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I get the feeling many folks aren’t working today. Which means that those of who you are can probably sneak in an extra couple minutes to entertain yourselves with Web video. So here’s Tina Fey on last night’s episode of “30 Rock,” performing her homage to Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs:
Entertaining. Like the cadence and the walk. But for my money, the best faux Steve is Fred Armisen, Fey’s old castmate on “Saturday Night Live.” Here he is touting the iPhone:
Sadly, I can’t find Armisen’s best Jobs impersonation, where he introduced the iPod “Inviso.” What’s up with that, NBC.com and Hulu?
UPDATE: Fabio M. Zambelli helpfully passes along this link to the missing clip. He also notes as many of our readers outside the U.S. do, that he can’t watch Hulu clips. The Hulu people say they’re working on it, Fabio!
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile
Today, Sprint showed off a full page ad for the Palm Pre, touting the “Now Network.” To date, the phone has not been priced nor has availability been announced other than “in the first half of ‘09.” The ad coupled with their TV spot I covered this week which also showed the Palm Pre at the end of the ad.
Yesterday, on the back page of the first section of the Wall Street Journal I admired a full page iPhone ad touting apps. I noted the ad was all about apps, not so much about the phone or its own software. Apple seems to be saying, “look at all the things you can do with this.” The device is becoming transparent; it is all about the apps.
The Pre, which was announced back at CES, has been the darling of the media. The device offers, perhaps, the first real challenge to the iPhone experience. Need more info on the Pre, check out this primer.
With the Now Network ad, Sprint is slowing bringing out the Pre. The phone was not mentioned by name in the TV spot, but in the WSJ ad, it was named. Could Sprint be signaling we are getting close? Could the Pre be inbound for an imminent launch? Will Sprint pitch this phone as business-focused?
There is only two things I would bet on at this point:
1. Sprint will launch this phone before Apple’s event in June.
2. It will be a big launch. Lots of glitz, lots of pizazz, lots of phones.
The rest is wide open. Place your bet for a public release date of the Palm Pre in the comments below.
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Standard & Poor’s analyst Scott Kessler late Thursday cut his rating on Priceline.com (PCLN) to Hold from Buy on a valuation basis. Kessler notes that the stock has rallied 38 percent off an early February low, and is closing in on his $100 price target.
In early discussions that began in the last several weeks that apparently included a face-to-face meeting last week, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer are finally talking about search and also advertising partnerships the companies could possibly strike, said several sources with knowledge of the situation.
According to a variety of sources, the talks between the pair (pictured here) and other execs at both companies are preliminary and wide-ranging, focused on what kind of commercial relationship Yahoo and Microsoft could have in the future.
But, cautioned sources close to Yahoo, the discussions are not about a renewed acquisition attempt by Microsoft and also might not result in any deal.
In any case, investors will likely cheer any kind of productive re-engagement between Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT), which has been lacking since a tense takeover effort by the software giant went south last year after an ugly battle that soured relations between the two companies.
“It’s long past time,” said one outsider who had been told of the discussions. “With Google’s huge market share, these two need to work together and the problems they had should be put in the past.”
Both Yahoo and Microsoft declined to comment about the talks.
The change in leadership at Yahoo has helped, especially since Bartz–a Silicon Valley veteran with much deal experience–has none of the baggage from the takeover battle that previous management was carrying.
Microsoft seems to have also moved on, working on a massive redesign and relaunch of its search brand, under the internal name Kumo, an effort that has included the hiring a whole lot of talent in the arena, mainly from Yahoo, in fact.
That includes Qi Lu, a former Yahoo tech star, who is leading all of Microsoft’s online efforts.
All of this means that a relatively green-field approach is now possible.
Thus, sources said, the talks include many scenarios, such as one in which the companies swap online advertising assets and deliver services to each other.
In that interesting plan, Yahoo might take over all of Microsoft’s display and premium advertising business to sell along with its own, while Microsoft would run the search advertising business for the pair.
Such a deal, which plays to each company’s strengths, would bind the two closely together, even though they still compete on many other fronts in the Internet space.
It also joins their forces, creating a sale that is much more attractive to advertisers and allows for better competition against search powerhouse Google (GOOG).
And while Ballmer has publicly said repeatedly that Microsoft is interested in buying either Yahoo’s search advertising business or search outright, sources close to Yahoo said the company is still determined to maintain control of the important search business and the massive traffic and critical data it provides.
That is especially true, given that Yahoo is the No. 2 player, with a much larger share than third-place Microsoft. According to recent surveys, for example, Google has a 63 percent share, while Yahoo has 20.6 percent and Microsoft eight percent.
But it is also in Yahoo’s interest to move fast, since its search traffic could be declining soon.
According to a story by Dow Jones yesterday, citing a comScore (SCOR) report, recent toolbar distribution deals with computer makers Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Acer by Microsoft and Google respectively, will have a negative impact on Yahoo.
The story said that Yahoo “could lose up to 15% of its search traffic over the next 12-to-18 months after failing to renew deals with two computer makers, blows likely to hamper the Internet giant’s efforts to remain a viable competitor in search advertising.”
But even as he directs aggressive moves to put even more competitive pressure on Yahoo, Ballmer has been unusually deferential in giving Bartz a lot of time to come to the table.
Nonetheless, he cannot seem to stop talking about it either.
At a recent conference in mid-March, for example, Ballmer said:
“It’s really about getting the pooled volume, because you actually can improve your product faster if you have more users….If you have more advertisers, you can improve the product as well….There are returns to scale. And putting the scale together is valuable.”
But, in that interview, Ballmer also said that he had only talked to Bartz briefly since she was hired in January–congratulating her on the new job and mentioning that he’d love to talk about a deal.
And, at another meeting with Wall Street analysts earlier, he went even further:
“You all know that I would like to figure out how to pool somehow Microsoft and Yahoo. I’m not talking about doing an acquisition, blah, blah, blah, back to search deals, blah, blah, blah, I don’t know if anything is going to happen. I’ll short-circuit the whole conversation, but the fact of the matter is, these two guys [Microsoft and Yahoo] should somehow figure out how to get together and create more competition for this guy [Google]. And I’m hoping perhaps that that’s a reasonable conversation to have with new management at Yahoo as Carol comes onboard.”
In contrast, Bartz has played her hand very close to the vest so far, at least publicly, often discounting any effort to split up Yahoo.
In fact, at a Morgan Stanley (MS) tech conference in early March, she said:
“I am not going to negotiate with my 55,000 favorite friends….We’re going to negotiate as companies negotiate–and that’s privately. If something happens, you’ll know it then. Until then, there is no comment.”
(By the way, both Ballmer and Bartz have agreed to be interviewed onstage–separately, of course–at the D: All Things Digital conference in late May that Walt Mossberg and I run–so we will be sure to try to get one–not that they would give one!)
Section: Imaging, Web, Web 2.0, Websites
When it comes to sharing pictures, the iPhone has lots of apps to handle that. Every other phone already has MMS to send photos to friends. Microsoft, a small start-up out of Redmond with a market cap of only $174B, is prepping its “My Phone” service.
The service, the name of which appears to be a “The Simpsons” reference, is supposed to take pictures from your Windows Mobile phone and send it to a Microsoft server. Then you go to a Microsoft site and see the pictures. You will even have the ability to do some photo editing on the site.
Microsoft is offering 200MB of storage. It is widely believed that Microsoft founder Bill Gates said that “640k ought to be enough for anybody.” 200MB seems like a ton of storage, then. However, compared to most other services, 200MB is a paltry amount of space.
The service is still in beta, so there will probably be some changes before it is officially rolled out.
“Mypods and Boomsticks” clip. Episode aired on November 30, 2008. Microsoft My Phone blog went live February 11, 2009.
Product Page: [MyPhone Site]
Read: [eWeek]
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Speaking of vinyl, what if you have a stack of old records around that you want to listen to on your iPod? If you ask the RIAA, you’ll be pointed towards an online store where you can pay for your music all over again. If you ask the folks at Denon, they might suggest their new DP-200USB, a turntable with a twist.
The $250 record player does all the dirty work for you. You can, of course, just pop on a record and listen, but the guts of the machine contain an MP3 encoder and will not only detect gaps and separate tracks into individual files, it will query Gracenote and actually add names and ID3 tags to the resulting MP3s. To be clear, the tagging is carried out by included software back on your PC.
The neatest touch, though, is the position of the USB port. It’s on the front, so you can just stick a pen-drive in their and rip. Just press record and it’s all automatic once the music starts. You even get to listen as you copy.
I’m pretty sick of tinny-sounding MP3s, but I love the convenience and I don’t want to start buying CDs again. This is tempting me to hit the thrift-stores and pick up some classics for pennies. If only it would encode in a lossless format. Then I’d be sold.
Product page [Denon via Oh Gizmo!]
This video from the BBC does what the Beeb does best. It shows the production of a vinyl record from start to finish in the kind of intricate detail that only a non-commercial station can get away with.
The clip is almost four minutes long and pretty much all of that is dense explanation. Absolutely fascinating, although the presenter doesn’t do much to shake the international myth that England is full of eccentric boffins in tweed jackets.
This raises one question, though: As we moved from vinyl to CD, the prices jumped. The same from VHS to DVD to Bluray. Why? Surely making discs has got cheaper and easier, not more complex and expensive. I smell a conspiracy.
How to make a 7 inch single [BBC via Core77]
We don’t see enough novelty light switches here at the Lab. That’s probably because most of them look like Mickey Mouse or the Teletubbies*. The Cubic Switchplate, though, is different, being both cool enough and nerdy enough to make it into these pages.
The Cubic Switchplate is an optical illusion, a plastic rendering of a switchbox as it would appear in 3D. Or almost as it would appear. The isometric projection would never be seen in real life, but that just makes it better from a geek point-of-view. Better, the plates only cost $9 each, and can be had in black or white, and cover either power outlests or light-switches. Hideous teal wall not included.
Product page [Curiosity Shoppe via New Launches]
*Thankfully, the Teletubbies novelty switch=plate doesn’t yet exist. Searching for it, though, I came across another item, a talking Tinky Winky. As a gadget, it’s not even worth mentioning, but the review below it is quite, quite awesome.
The goal is to encourage a new cycle of biking participation by allowing the biking community to leave a unique mark on the road and to reclaim this crucial shared space.
What-ever. Despite this, we still love the Contrail for its ability to graffiti the streets as you ride. The device sits next to the rear tire and contains a wheel and a reservoir of powdered chalk. As you ride, the wheel transfers the powder to the tire and you leave a mark.
The idea is that if many people use the device, a trail will slowly build up, “similar to what happens when a dirt path appears in a grassy field after lots of people have taken the same shortcut over a period of time.” As a social exercise it seems doomed to failure. We have an alternative: Dick-Topping. Imagine using the Contrail to gradually build up pictures viewable only from Google Earth. It’s the modern-day equivalent of the crop circle, only more fun and way more childish.
Product page [Gelardi via Bike Hugger]
Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Broadband Cards, Mobile, Computers, Mobile Computers, Laptops, Netbooks, Wireless
AT&T has begun, albeit on a limited basis, to offer netbooks—which are priced as low as $99. So far, they seem to only be available in around sixteen stores that are in the Atlanta and Philadelphia areas. They also all require a two-year agreement on either the 5GB DataConnect plan for $60-a-month or the 200MB DataConnect plan for $40-a-month. Both plans also include access to any of the “thousands” of AT&T wireless hotspots.
As for the netbooks (and mini notebooks) that are available, customers will be able to choose from an:
It is important to also point out that the above mentioned prices are all AFTER a $100 mail-in-rebate. So just add a 100 bucks to the above number to find out how much you will be shelling out on the day of purchase. It should be interesting to see just how well these sell, personally I am not sold on the idea of having my DataConnect account tied to just one device. I would think it would be much smarter, and more convenient to have a netbook, mini-notebook or even a full-size notebook and have a separate USB dongle that I can use with any computer.
Product [AT&T] Via [Liliputing]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
The latest version of iTunes causes havoc with syncing the older Shuffle. While iTunes 8.1 doesn’t actually break the iPod, it makes it a pain to use. You can add duplicate files via drag and drop (not a trivial issue for such a small player); the iPod doesn’t shift podcasts to the front of the shuffle-queue; iTunes won’t automatically remove podcasts when deleted from the relevant playlist on the computer (in iTunes 8.0 it did).
Finally, you can’t play songs on the Shuffle through the computer when the Shuffle is connected.
These issues appear to be occurring on both Macs and PCs, although oddly, not all of them. Some people have updated and their 2G Shuffles are still working fine, and some people are having the same trouble with even older iPods:
I’m having the same problems with my 1st gen Shuffle. It asks if you want to skip the duplicate files and then adds them anyway. [Amos Friendly]
There is no fix yet, and we’re not expecting Apple to comment on the issue. In the meantime, we suggest not updating to any version of iTunes above 8.0.2. In fact, that’s generally good advice with any Apple update — wait for a few weeks and let other people beta test them for you. As reader Brady Wahl told us: “I assume it’s to give a big FU to all previous gen shuffle owners and force them to buy a new ipod.”
Tunes 8.1 breaks syncing with 2nd gen iPod shuffle [Apple Discussion]
Photo: bfishadow/Flickr
At first glance, it seems straightforward: The world’s biggest music company and the world’s biggest video site team up to make a new music video hub.
But Vevo, the arrangement announced by Google’s YouTube and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group yesterday, isn’t quite as straightforward as the two companies made it sound.
Some of the funkier details I’ve been able to discern so far:
In other words: With YouTube’s help, Universal is moving all of its videos off of the world’s biggest video site onto its own platform. Think Hulu meets MTV.
Is Universal a likely bet to run a successful Web site? The label’s detractors, and there are plenty, are already pointing to the music industry’s litany of failures on the Web. If you weren’t paying attention to the music business’s online attempts a decade ago, Google “pressplay” and “MusicNet.”
And even if Google’s technical expertise makes it easier for UMG to get a decent site up and running, neither company has a real track record when it comes to getting big brands to pony up for video ads, which is supposedly the whole point of the site.
Lots of people made similarly disparaging remarks about Hulu, of course. There was no way that GE’s (GE) NBC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox were going to be able to launch a decent site, let alone provide a challenge to YouTube. But they did, and they are. So the Vevo folks have that example to inspire them. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)
But even if UMG gets the site off the ground, there is a considerable risk for both the label and for Google. Because if it works, Vevo will be diverting a lot of eyeballs away from YouTube–yesterday’s press release boasted that UMG’s YouTube channel has racked up 3.5 billion views.
The idea is to provide advertisers with a clean, well-lit space that will make them feel comfortable enough to spend money. But part of YouTube’s appeal is that is a riot of the good, the bad and the WTF? You may start out watching a U2 video, and 20 minutes later end up watching a clip of a doped-up 7-year-old after a visit to the dentist. If you end up at Vevo, you’re going to have be very interested in music videos–and, at least for now, just the ones that Universal owns.
Are there enough video watchers out there to justify a business with some 50+ employees, which is the number I’ve heard Vevo/Universal is looking at? And can Universal figure out how to turn those eyeballs into more money than they’d generate on YouTube itself? Got me. Can’t wait to find out.
There are computer hacks, and then there are REAL hacks, like of the saw variety. Silicon Valley got a wake-up call in the latter variety Thursday, when vandals hacked into fiber-optic cables beneath the ground, knocking parts of three California counties offline.
Some 52,000 households in Santa Clara County were expected to be without phone and Internet until at least late Thursday night, according to a county spokesman. Other counties experienced outages as well. Cellphones were also impacted since the cables that were cut handled all voice and data traffic in and out of the area.
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