The Internet started in America, but the big growth in the coming years may come from Asia. We recently interviewed a VC in India. Clearly, it was time to get a perspective from China. So we spoke to Richard... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 May 2009 | 12:00 pm
What’s one of the ways you might attract a lot of attention online?
Here’s one possible equation: Celebrity + Mom + Tips Galore.
That’s the formula behind a new site relaunching today, called Modern Mom, which is backed by “Dancing With the Stars” winner Brooke Burke and partner Lisa Rosenblatt, wading into what the pair hopes will be a lucrative market.
In an unusual twist, they have bought an existing site, redesigned it and then turbocharged it using both original content and stuff pulled from Demand Media (which was founded by Rosenblatt’s husband, Richard Rosenblatt).
It’s an interesting effort to watch in online publishing to see if the pair can attract both an audience and also advertisers, without a big brand name in the mother space and leveraging Burke’s online and offline popularity.
Whether that can be turned into a real business is a good question.
“I think I am passionate about this and want it to be organic,” said Burke, who noted that she and Rosenblatt have seven kids between them. “There are a lot of places for moms to go online, but they tend to cut up the experience, while we’re focusing on information and tools from pregnancy to the teen space, since being a mother does not stop at any one point.”
Rosenblatt, who said that the effort has been backed by several million dollars in angel investment, said the key was trying not to overwhelm readers with content that was not relevant.
“We wanted to be a place for people to feel involved easily, so they could feel comfortable,” she said. “We’re the audience for what we are offering, so we think we know what people want.”
That means, no surprise, nothing too heavy–with lots of tips, buying suggestions, health and beauty, food and home, videos, blogs, as well as an area focused on celeb parents called Mommywood.
Some of the many include BabyCenter, iVillage, Momlogic and Mommy Track’d, among others. Still, the packed category has a lot of potential, given it’s often an advertising-friendly environment.
Burke and Rosenblatt said Modern Mom already had such relationships and that would be combined with Burke’s endorsements and also her existing e-commerce business called Baboosh Baby.
Here’s a screenshot of Modern Mom’s new homepage (click on it to make it larger), as well as a welcome video from Burke:
Quincy Smith, who guided CBS through a series of big transactions during the Web 2.0 era, is planning his next deal: A move to start his own boutique investment bank or consultancy.
Smith is still running the CBS Interactive unit, a job he took in November 2006. But he has been telling associates recently that he plans to start up his own company, possibly as soon as this summer.
Other people close to Smith say that his departure isn’t imminent and doesn’t have a fixed date, and that he’s still working closely with CBS CEO Les Moonves. Here’s a statement from CBS spokesman Dana McClintock: “We decline to comment on rumor and speculation.”
If Smith does leave CBS (CBS) to put out his own shingle as a dealmaker, the move would make sense, because that’s what he did prior to joining Moonves and co. His last job was at media banking heavyweight Allen & Co. where he put together a slew of Silicon Valley tie-ups, including Google’s (GOOG) $1.6 billion pickup of YouTube in 2006.
People close to Smith says he often talks of trying to emulate Dan Case, the late brother of AOL founder Steve Case and the former CEO of Hambrecht & Quist, the dominant Silicon Valley investment bank during the first Web boom.
Smith’s departure also make sense for another reason: CBS no longer needs a deal guy to run its digital operations. Like just about every other big media company, it is still trying to digest the deals it made during the last boom–most notably online music service Last.fm, which it bought for $280 million in 2007, and CNET, which it bought for $1.8 billion last year.
In addition to M&A, Smith has also been overseeing the networks’s online video strategy, which is different than its broadcast competitors: While GE’s NBC, News Corp.’s Fox (NWS) and now Disney’s ABC (DIS) have all joined together to offer their programming exclusively through the Hulu joint venture, CBS passed on a Hulu deal, and has cut its own pacts with a variety of Web distributors.
Smith, backed by Moonves, has argued that CBS is better off selling ads for its online inventory instead of ceding it to the likes of Hulu. And with some notable exceptions–like the March Madness college basketball tournament–the network has been more reluctant than its peers to put much of its premier shows online. It’s still too early to tell which strategy will work best for the broadcasters, and it may take years to get a real answer.
In an age when anyone with a video-capable cell phone can have their own TV channel on the Web, it is still the celebrities and rock stars who are getting all the views (just as on Twitter they get the most followers). Kyte CEO Daniel Graf knows this fact all too well. Of the 215,000 video channels on Kyte, nearly all are created by consumers, but only about 1,000 account for more than 90 percent of the mobile videos streamed via the service. And those 1,000 channels are invariably the work of professionals or the cell-phone videos of famous people such as musicians Lady Gaga (iTunes link) and Soulja Boy (iTunes link)
In April, Kyte streamed 50 million videos across the Web, mobile devices, and social networks. Just to put those 50 million video streams into perspective, that is half the number of videos streamed in March, 2009 by AOL, the tenth ranked video site in the U.S. (Hulu, which is No, 3, streamed 380 million videos).
Today, Kyte is launching iPhone apps for partners including MTV, the NBA, Spin Magazine, the rock band No Doubt, and the Los Angeles radio station KCRW, which is using the app to highlight videos of bands playing live in its studios. Some of these apps are tailored to specific events such as the MTV Movie Awards and the NBA Playoffs (iTunes link). Kyte creates iPhone apps as a turnkey service, with the ability to add different modular features to each app. These features include video shows based on mobile Kyte uploads; blog, news, and Twitter feeds; live chat; a presence indicator showing how many other people are currently in the app; music or video downloads via the iTunes store; location-aware event listings for tour dates and other listings, mobile Web access, and custom modules such as basketball scores
Kyte is taking off, but not because of user-generated videos. Rather it is trying to cash in on the premium slice of video content out there, much like Hulu is for Web video. The difference is that Kyte creates consistent branded video experiences across Websites, social networks, and mobile devices. Graf doesn’t see Kyte competing so much against Qik and UStream on the mobile live streaming video front as it does against Brightcove in the enterprise video publishing. Pitches Graf: “We are cheaper than Brightcove and you get mobile as well and Twitter and Facebook.”
Kyte wants to become the one-stop shop for major talent and media brands, wrapping their Websites and iPhone apps around mobile video. My problem with the apps is that they are only as good as the content they showcase. The iPhone apps are very consumption-oriented. For instance, Twitter is treated as nothing more than a straight, one-way feed instead of turning letting fans Tweet back from within the app.
In the video below, which I took last week when Graf visited my office, he talks about the new iPhone apps and how he sees Brightcove as his biggest competition .
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
In an age when anyone with a video-capable cell phone can have their own TV channel on the Web, it is still the celebrities and rock stars who are getting all the views (just as on Twitter they get the... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 May 2009 | 11:43 am
Hyuh Jin Lee’s concept hard-drive emergency kit looks fantastic, although it suffers from a bad case of over-intellectualizitus, something common in student concept designs. The idea is that the IV-drip contains a hard-drive full of anti-virus software which auto-runs when hooked up to the computer.
This would actually be quite useful as a product, but the ridiculous design is quite superfluous. Also, is a Mac the best computer to pick when showing an anti-virus solution?
It’s not all bad, though. I actually dig this design, if only for the drip-feeding aesthetic. It would make a very neat-looking setup on my desk, too. My Mac could suck the bits down from it’s own bag-on-a-stick while I continue to receive IV gin from the tube I jam into my arm every morning after breakfast.
AP - Dish Network Corp., the nation's second-largest satellite TV provider, said Monday that its first-quarter profit rose 21 percent as revenue climbed partly on equipment sales. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 May 2009 | 11:27 am
Dish Network Corp., the nation's second-largest satellite TV provider, said Monday that its first-quarter profit rose 21 percent as revenue climbed partly on equipment sales. But the... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 May 2009 | 11:23 am
A May 18th launch date has been set for Mathematica's compelling, proudly nerdy computational search engine. I still think they should've called it Googol. [Wolfram Alpha via Pocketlint] Source: Gizmodo | 11 May 2009 | 11:15 am
Assuming we can believe these latest rumors are accurate, it looks like you will be able to grab a subsidized netbook from Verizon beginning next week on May 17. The netbook that is expected to be available is the HP Mini 1151NR. As far as the netbook details, this particular model has a 10.1-inch display with a resolution of 1024 x 576, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive and ships with a 3-cell battery.
Similar to the details on the release date, the pricing has not yet been confirmed either. However, it has been suggested that it will be $199. But, don’t forget that $199 will also require you to sign up for a two-year agreement and that service will run somewhere between $40 and $60 a month. In other words you are going to pay quite a bit more than $199 for the netbook.
Personally, I would rather pay full price for a netbook and get a 3G service plan that comes with a USB modem—that way I am not limited to using the service on one device. In general, I would say that these deals are lousy. That said though, I am interested in seeing how well the regular consumer reacts. I just cannot see people wanting to pay for what in lots of cases will be a third internet connection.
Writing in Inc. about what a crummy story Circuit City was before it died, Joel "On Software" Spolsky describes what may just be the perfect electronics store, B&H at Ninth and 34th in NYC.
And what a roof it is: The whole operation is a crazy Willy Wonka factory. If you want to check out a product that's not on display, a salesperson orders it by computer terminal from a vast stockroom in the basement. Moments later, as if by magic, the product arrives at the retail counter, via an elaborate system of conveyor belts and dumbwaiters. You can try out the gear, see if you like it, and, if you do, the salesperson puts it in a green plastic box and places it on another conveyor belt, which runs, above your head, to the pickup counter. There, an employee bags your purchase. Meanwhile, your salesperson gives you a ticket, which you take to a payment counter. After you have paid, you get a different ticket that you take to the pickup counter to get your merchandise.
At first, this all seemed like incredible overkill to me. But then, as I thought about it more, I developed a theory as to why B&H operates this way. With all the expensive electronics and cameras and lenses and laptops floating around the store, the system creates a series of checks and balances -- typically, five employees are involved in every purchase -- in order to reduce shoplifting and employee theft. That it works at all is not the most amazing thing about B&H, however. The most amazing thing is that the prices are so low that I don't even bother to comparison-shop anymore.
No, wait: The most amazing thing is that the salespeople at B&H really know their stuff. When I recently bought a portable digital recorder, the salesperson knew that some gear was not compatible with flash memory cards larger than 2GB and spent a few minutes surfing the Web to make sure that the 8GB card I wanted would work with it.
This 30-minute long-exposure shows the trail blazed by the blinking light of a Roomba as it goes about its autonomous, ceaseless duties. The photograph was snapped by curious blogger Signaltheorist to see just how effective the little vacuum-robot would be:
The result is a picture that shows the path of the roomba through it’s cleaning cycle, it looks like a flight map or something. It really hits every spot!
The picture reminds me of a documentary I once saw about spiders. The web-spinners were fed drugs of various kinds and then left to weave their sticky silk fly-traps. The results were fascinating — cocaine webs were erratic and messy, cannabis webs meticulous and perfect and the LSD webs were just plain weird.
Signaltheorist seems to be an inveterate experimenter, too. While you’re at the site, check out his video of carrots in a blender, shot at an amazing 600FPS on a Casio EX-F1.
SAN JOSE, Calif., May 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CEVA, Inc. (Nasdaq: CEVA; LSE: CVA), a leading licensor of silicon intellectual property (SIP) platform solutions and DSP cores... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 May 2009 | 11:00 am
America's Vote Will Determine Winner of Plug-In Hybrid School Bus from IC Bus WARRENVILLE, Ill., May 11 /PRNewswire/ -- America votes online for the... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 May 2009 | 11:00 am
SAN JOSE, Calif., May 11 /PRNewswire/ -- MRG, Inc., announces a comprehensive report on emerging battery technologies including Next-Generation Li-ion Chemistries, Advanced Zinc and Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 May 2009 | 11:00 am
BOSTON, May 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Stream Global Services, Inc., (AMEX: OOO), is pleased to announce the opening of its newest solution center in Cairo, Egypt. Our newest... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 May 2009 | 11:00 am
NEW YORK, May 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Suspect Detection Systems Inc., (OTC: SDSS), a world leader in the development of terror and crime prevention technology,... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 May 2009 | 11:00 am
Silicon-proven on SMIC's advanced 90nm process technology, CEVA-TeakLite-III based chip dramatically accelerates time-to-market for HD audio, VoIP, Cellular baseband and... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 May 2009 | 11:00 am
Sunglasses = cool. Lego = nerdy. Combining the two would clearly seem to be a recipe for destruction, a physics faux-pas on the same level as crossing the streams or shaking hands with your anti-matter doppelganger. But in reality, the combo actually works, and the universal clock continues to tick.
The thing we like best about the Lego shades is the opportunity for customization. Those bobbled arms could easily be modded to hold laser-pointers, cameras or any other geeky device. The sunnies are a collaboration between Lego itself and the online specs retailer Lynx Optique. The only thing they really need is a Cylon/KITT-style sweeping light across the top. Just sayin’ it would be cool, is all.
Transport for London is announcing a large-scale trial of the Intelligent Speed Adaption system, which uses preloaded road data and GPS to track and slow speeders. Basically, the future is everything... Source: Gizmodo | 11 May 2009 | 10:45 am
By Evan Ackerman Last week on BotJunkie, we started early on Sunday watching highlights from the 2009 Hexapod Dance-Off (aka the best thing ever), decided we’d much rather have robot babies than... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 May 2009 | 10:40 am
(TrendHunter.com) Jewelry has taken a whimsical turn this summer with the use of ballerinas courtesy of Les Nereides. French company Les Nereides has created a line of Deux earrings, featuring ballerinas... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 May 2009 | 10:19 am
“It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.”
So said Nigel Tufnel in This is Spinal Tap, but only because didn’t have a SpyderCube. The SpyderCube is more a cube than a spider, and is used for tweaking the white balance and exposure of your photos. Sure, you could just let your camera set on auto white balance (I do) or tweak it by hand later in your RAW processing software (I do this, too), but the SpyderCube is way more accurate, and has something called a “Black Trap”, which we believe, although not mentioned in the specs, is the only thing in the universe from which a black hole cannot escape.
Accurate color in digital photos means that the camera needs to know what color the light is. The traditional way is to throw a gray or white card into the scene, snap a picture and then later, back at the computer, use this known neutral color to set the white balance for the whole batch. The SpyderCube is the same, but with a few added features.
First, it’s a cube, which means that it reflects light from different directions, allowing you to check the colors of main and fill lights, for example. Second, it combines gray, white and black so you can get help with exposure tweaks, too. Third, it has the scary Black Trap, which is in fact a hole into which light falls and never returns. This gives an absolute black value for the scene, as well as the lighter black from the outside faces.
Lastly, there is a shiny ball on top. This isn’t to tempt magpies on outdoor shoots. Rather, it gives a specular highlight, again useful for exposure tweaking. The price of this fade-free resin cube? $60, which isn’t that much more than a plain 18% gray card. I’m not pedantic enough to need one of these, and I usually tweak the white balance for atmosphere rather than accuracy anyway. But some people buy cameras and then spend their weekends shooting test charts and the like. This may just be your perfect toy.
Video search startup EveryZing just landed its biggest fish yet: NBC Universal. Boston-based EveryZing signed a master service agreement with NBC to provide video search and search-optimization technologies across all of its online properties, which include NBC.com, iVillage, CNBC.com, and the websites for Bravo, Sci-Fi, and Telemundo. (The deal does not cover Hulu, which is a joint venture between NBC and Fox).
NBC is also investing in the company’s, leading its latest $8.25 million C round, through its venture capital arm, the Peacock Equity Fund. Peacock Equity put in $3 million of the total, with existing investors Fairhaven Capital, General Catalyst Partners, Accel Partners and BBN Technologies putting up the rest. The valuation was flat with the last $10 million round the company raised in 2007.
With the partnership, EveryZing will start powering search across NBC’s sites, starting with CNBC.com in a few weeks. As an enterprise search company, EveryZing offers a universal search box for finding not just video, audio, but also text results within a site or network of sites. After ingesting all of the video and audio content, it uses natural language processing and speech-to-text technologies to create a searchable transcript. As NBC digitizes its vast archive of TV shows, many of which are stored on old videotapes that are beginning to deteriorate, EveryZing can process the video to make it searchable. (The technology originated at BBN). It can also do directed indexing of YouTube videos by ingesting all the videos on certain channels, for instance.
As EveryZing creates transcripts for searching purposes, they also become available for contextual ad targeting in and around the videos themselves. NBC.com alone has streamed more than one billion full episodes of TV shows over the past 18 months, it recently announced. EveryZing will also be making available a chromeless, re-skinnable video player that includes the text of all the spoken words in the video, as well as the ability to play both related YouTube and Brightcove videos inside the same player.
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Video search startup EveryZing just landed its biggest fish yet: NBC Universal. Boston-based EveryZing signed a master service agreement with NBC to provide video search and search-optimization technologies... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 May 2009 | 10:00 am
(TrendHunter.com) Ever wonder what it would be like to have a rave in your mouth? These LED ice cubes are the closest you will ever get. These ravetastic ice cubes come in a variety of colors that are... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 May 2009 | 9:59 am
The Garmin Nuvifone G60, a Linux-powered, ASUS-built left-field handset that was pretty exciting when it was announced nearly a year and a half ago, will be delayed yet again, says the company's... Source: Gizmodo | 11 May 2009 | 9:46 am
(TrendHunter.com) Famed photographer Greg Williams gives us a glimpse into the world of the rich and beautiful in this seductive photo shoot. Rising British model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who is a... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 May 2009 | 9:39 am
CNN RSS Reader and TIME RSS Reader: All the CNN/TIME news that's fit to print, or at least fit to appear in your iPhone. Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 May 2009 | 9:21 am
Survey Finds One in Three Americans Know Someone Who Lost Home to Foreclosure
EAGAN, Minn., May 11 /PRNewswire/ -- As the housing crisis and recession impact homeowners throughout the U.S., home foreclosures are now touching more and more Americans as well as their friends and neighbors. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 May 2009 | 9:20 am
(TrendHunter.com) Weve seen the innovative animated Megan Fox cover of the June issue of Esquire Magazine, and here we bring you the sizzling editorial that accompanies the cover. Photographer Greg... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 May 2009 | 9:19 am
By Andrew Liszewski There’s no question that CPR saves lives, however, Sudden Cardiac Arrest still accounts for some 350,000 deaths annually in the US alone. And that’s because the average... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 May 2009 | 9:19 am
The PCs feature a built-in PHS module that makes it possible to receive signals that can make the computer delete the decryption key for data stored on the hard-disk drive. In Japan, at least, Fujitsu uses Willcom’s PHS network. The solution also works when the computer is turned off. Users are also able to fence out the bad guys completely, as the feature also allows to prevent the PC from booting up.
Security comes with a price. Fujitsu charges between $5 and $10 monthly for their new technology, aiming mainly at businesses. The company hopes to sell 100,000 notebooks with the feature pre-installed within 12 months after launch.
The technology is Japan-only for the time being, as Willcom isn’t operating its PHS network in any other country. Fujitsu claims their new security feature is the world’s first of its kind.
FRANKFURT, Germany, May 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AVEVA is proud to
announce the amalgamation of its industry-leading Information Management
Solution into a single brand -- AVEVA NET. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 May 2009 | 9:00 am
LEEDS, England, May 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Whilst the country is gripped in a
credit crunch and shoppers are increasingly unwilling to spend money on
luxury items, spending on VoucherSeeker has further increased!
Online voucher code site VoucherSeeker (http://www.voucherseeker.co.uk)
was launched in December, in the middle of the credit crunch and Christmas
spending worries. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 May 2009 | 8:58 am
mx12 writes "I'm currently an undergrad in computer engineering and have been thinking about getting my masters. I have a year left in school. Most of my professors seem to think that getting a masters is a great idea, but I wanted to hear from people out in the working world. Is a masters in computer engineering better than two years of experience at a company?"
The first handset to fulfill last month's BlackBerry codename prophesy is here, and we're pretty sure it's the Onyx. That means Curve-8900-like proportions, but with Bold genes (read: 3G).
Here's... Source: Gizmodo | 11 May 2009 | 8:55 am
AP - The surveillance cameras at Big Y, a Massachusetts grocery chain, are not just passively recording customers and staff. They're studying checkout lines for signs of "sweethearting."
AP - AT&T Inc. said Friday it will buy the assets of Verizon Wireless in 79 mainly rural areas for $2.35 billion, a deal that will affect more than 1 million subscribers. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 May 2009 | 8:27 am
If you wanted to pick the moment when the American news business went on suicide watch, it was almost exactly three years ago. That’s when Stephen Colbert, appearing at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, delivered a monologue accusing his hosts of being stenographers who had, in essence, let the Bush White House get away with murder (or at least the war in Iraq).
Steve Jobs is probably one of the best and most visionary CEOs in the world, and a national treasure. He’s also been sick lately, and I wish him a full and speedy recovery, followed by a return to Apple as full-time CEO.
Since March, I’ve been using Google Voice, the search company’s fantastic Web app that gives you a single number to connect all your phones and lets you make rules about who can call which phone when. Voice is packed with many other amazing tricks, but there’s one feature that I’ve come to value above all: The software transcribes voice mail messages into text.
In August 2008 we reported on 18 chief executives who use the microblogging application Twitter to clue customers in on new services, help them with questions about their products, and generally get a little bit personal with customers, business associates, and the public.
Not even a year later, we bring you nearly 50 CEOs who find tweeting a personal and professional delight.
When I read the news on TechCrunch that Valleywag’s longtime editor, Owen Thomas, was leaving the gossip site, I wondered whether there was a bit of schadenfreude in this reporting. After all, TechCrunch’s founder, Mike Arrington, was a constant target of the Gawker Media blog and once famously ejected a Valleywag photographer from a party he was co-hosting simply because of the publication the photographer worked for.
Alabama Department of Education to deploy CareerForward curriculum statewide to help students better compete in the 21st century global economy.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., May 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- With financial support and assistance from Microsoft Corp., the Alabama Department of Education announced plans to roll out CareerForward(TM), a powerful online course covering globalization, career planning, financial literacy and entrepreneurship, statewide by the 2009-2010 school year to make sure students are college- and career-ready, and able to compete in the 21st century global economy.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO)
Alabama is the second state in the nation -- after Michigan -- to require students to have an online learning experience before they graduate from high school. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 May 2009 | 7:01 am
ALLEROED, Denmark, May 11 /PRNewswire/ --
- Cultivating Customer Experience Second-to-None
Contex, the world's leading wide format scanner manufacturer, is
launching a Partner Program offering resellers financial benefits, sales and
marketing support and product training. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 May 2009 | 7:00 am
Recently on Offworld Tom Armitage donned Plants Vs. Zombies (above) his official game for the weekend, admitting that its "charming character design and inventive array of zombies ensures that it's never long after a play-session before you're double-clicking on it again," and I take a longer look at my first week with my own most-played tower defense game -- ngmoco and Rough Cookie's spherical iPhone Star Defense -- and how everything I was skeptical of might became the very reasons it'll win me over.
I also gave my first-hand diary account of sneaking across the digital Canadian border to be part of Microsoft's unveiling of its massively-multiplayer Xbox 360 version of the game show 1 Vs. 100, which will be played for real prizes (in the form of Microsoft Points) and looks geared to be the first successful run of a truly interactive TV show (commercial breaks and all).
PARIS, May 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Publicis Groupe is pleased to
announce the following management changes. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 May 2009 | 6:50 am
As they mature, social networks are increasingly becoming viable systems for information management. We’re seeing this with Facebook, and with FriendFeed and even to some extent with Twitter. The combination of social graph plus information is a powerful one. And that’s exactly why CubeTree wants to port that idea over to the enterprise world.
CubeTree’s new enterprise collaboration suite, which is opening to the public tomorrow, has a familiar look: It looks like a cross between Facebook and FriendFeed (more-so before they were both recently redesigned). And that familiarity is part of the idea to getting this to work on the enterprise level. As with other social networks, there are two main components to CubeTree: The Feed and the Profile. But on CubeTree’s feed, instead of seeing updates from everyone in your social graph, you see updates from coworkers. And on your profile page, rather than highlighting pictures or videos of yourself, there is an emphasis on information and documents.
CubeTree co-founders Carlin Wiegner (also CEO) and Ross Fubini (also CTO), both formerly with Symantec, recently gave me a walk-through of their product. It’s impressive both in look and feel and scope. They’ve done a great job taking the best parts of the social networks I’ve mentioned above, and putting them into CubeTree with more of a business spin. And I think a lot of businesses may be receptive to that because a lot of their employees have already been trained to use social networks of this ilk, something which Wiegner also pointed out. And in huge companies (the biggest one CubeTree is currently testing with has about 100,000 employees), a network like this can give an employee a face.
As you can see in the screenshots, CubeTree places a large emphasis on the micro-updates, just like Twitter. The rationale behind this is that there are often things people maybe want others to know, but don’t want to send out an email to everyone in the company, as Fubini notes. With status updates, employees can give passive updates to coworkers which show up in their stream throughout the day. But that’s not all that goes into the feed, like FriendFeed (and now Facebook), CubeTree can import elements from other social services such as Google Reader shared items, TripIt trips, Salesforce data and others. And just like FriendFeed (and again, now Facebook), anyone can now comment on these items in the feed.
But lest you think CubeTree is just a straight knock-off of Facebook/FriendFeed/Twitter for enterprise, there are also several other more unique things it offers. For example, users can upload and share documents, set up goals, set up trip information, create Wiki pages for the company and even create company quizes for others to take. The last one is not what it sounds like, it’s not meant to test others aptitude, but rather fun exercises to get to know your follow coworkers. For example, you may ask a question like “FILL IN THE BLANK loves their iPhone the most.” Other employees then fill in their answers. “People love playing this game,” Wiegner says, noting that it wasn’t originally intended to be used exactly like that.
CubeTree also offers a powerful search option to look for things across the network — particularly handy for documents. And there is a “track” option, just like Twitter used to have to alert you when some key word is said. Almost everyone immediately tracks their names, Wiegner and Fubini joked.
It’s important to note that social relationships within CubeTree are much like they are on Twitter. That is to say rather than having to friend someone and have them friend you back, you can simply follow anyone in the company you wish. That seems a bit odd since this is an internal company product, so it would seem reasonable that everyone should follow everyone else, but CubeTree wants to make sure users have options still within the company as to how they want to interact with the product.
Seeing as CubeTree runs entirely in the cloud, security is an obvious concern, but Wiegner and Fubini, who again both came from Syamantec, placed an emphasis on security from day one and note that CubeTree has passed many leading security tests. That was apparently enough to get at least a few Fortune 500 companies to sign up to test the product out. Right now, the product is being tested with about 100 companies ranging in size from 20 people to 100,000, Wiegner says.
There are quite a few competitors to various parts of CubeTree, but the company is convinced that it has the most comprehensive offering across the board. For example, Yammer does the micro messaging aspect for businesses, but doesn’t have all of the other social elements. Then there’s the enterprise wiki work that Socialtext leads the field in, but it too doesn’t have all the other elements.
As for pricing, CubeTree has three tiers. The first is the free product which is called “Standard” and offers a company unlimited accounts that are limited to 10 megabytes of storage. The step up from that is “Group,” which for $3 per user per month offers 1 GB of storage and improved security. The third tier is “Enterprise,” which at $5 per user per month offers the best security, storage and management options. One nice thing about the bottom two tiers is that they’re compatible. So basically if you don’t want to buy all your employees the Group package, you can mix between Standard and Group. But if you want to upgrade to Enterprise, your whole network must be running it. There are bulk discounts though over 500 users.
CubeTree was founded in 2008 with a seed round by Mitch Kapor and Trinity Ventures. It raised an undisclosed first round in April and will likely look for another round at the end of this year or beginning of next, according to Wiegner.
Gerard Butler, the guy who played King Leonidas in 300, stars in Gamer, a new movie that is due out September 4 in the US and now gets its first trailer. The movie is set in a future world, in which humans can remotely control other humans in mass-scale MMOGs, making them kick each other’s butts.
The game in the movie is called Slayers and the star player is a death row inmate called Kable (Butler) who is forced to battle other players in a prison to regain his freedom.
I don’t think Gamer will win any Oscars, but the plot sounds kind of interesting (like a mix between Running Man and Death Race). And the trailer is full of brainless action.
Ever since I saw the F-35 demon helmet—which gives a 360-degree spherical view of the battlefield—I have wondered how it really looks inside, for the pilot. No more: Jump to minute 3:50... Source: Gizmodo | 11 May 2009 | 5:00 am
Good evening, fellow earthlings. Before you jump into bed and get ready for the new week, I wanted to fill you in on some hot and juicy Palm Pre news. A tipster has informed us that the Palm Pre “Real Reviewer” units are shipping out this week. To be more specific, we’re told that reviewers should be getting them towards the end of the week or as early as Wednesday. In other words, expect to see a lot of Palm Pre ’sightings’ this week. Have a good night, ya’ll.
Macworld.com - Sorenson Media on Monday launched the Sorenson 360 video delivery network, a video-hosting service designed for individuals and companies who want to share high-quality on the Web. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 May 2009 | 4:01 am
Giving something away has never been so exciting as when you post a listing on the world's biggest flake magnet. Lore Sjöberg's Alt Text column returns to Wired.com.
Recession be damned! Just because the economy has come to a screeching halt doesn't mean hardcore PC gamers are slowing down. In fact, well-heeled fraggers are still buying elaborate rigs festooned with premium parts (like liquid immersive cooling systems) that shred through Crysis at 60 frames per second and often cost as much as a used car ($9,000!). Here are a few of our favorite gaming machines that have come hurtling down the pipeline recently
iBuyPower Gamer Paladin F970
This camouflage-colored tower comes loaded with 6GB of DDR3-1866 RAM, 2 GTX295 video cards, an 80GB solid-state hard drive, and a Blu-ray burner. What's more, it has additional storage for 1TB of data, and it packs a speedy Core i7 965. And at under five grand, it's practically a bargain!
$4,230, ibuypower.com
:
In addition to an Intel Core i7, Blu-ray drive, X2O water-cooling technology and 1,080GB of storage, it also flaunts an Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 Triple SLI video card for fragging speed that blazes like a solar flare.
$7,800, maingear.com
:
Phobos is Greek for "fear," or something. Or it should be: We were a little scared to take a look at the price tag of this rig after discovering what's inside (and outside) its chassis. First of all, an 8-inch touch panel sits on the outside of the machine, letting you control performance of various components while keeping a watchful eye on the processor, memory, network and storage data. Inside the black monolithic chassis lurks an Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz processor, two Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 graphics cards, and an MSI Eclipse SLI Intel X58-based motherboard. But don't expect BFG to drop you once you have shelled out $8,000 (yes, eight Gs) on this rig. You'll also get the rig hand delivered and set up by an expert who will make you feel like gaming royalty. Of course, if you're that serious about a gaming machine like this, you're probably already a PC expert of some kind.
$8,000, bfgtech.com
:
There's liquid cooling, then there's liquid immersive cooling. The folks at Hardcore PC said "screw this" to the usual network of pipes and tubes circulating cooling liquid around high-performance PCs. Instead, the company opted to build an enormous tank, fill it with 4.5 gallons of industrial cooling fluid, and then drop the components for their finest PC inside. The results are awesome. The 100-pound leviathan clocks 45 frames per second in Crysis and does so while running whisper quiet.
$9,723, hardcorecomputer.com
:
Alienware was one of the first boutique gaming rig makers out there and it's still one of the best, offering smart, well-assembled machines for a relatively small amount of money. One of its newer models, the ALX X58 follows that tradition. The system, which is ridiculously customizable, can be decked out with an overclocked Intel Core i7 Extreme 3.86GHz with 8MB cache, an 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 video card, and a sound blaster X-Fi hi-def surround sound audio card. Oh yeah -- and a sticker price that starts out a bit south of 4k.
$3,700, alienware.com
:
The fastest an airplane has ever flown is Mach 3 (set by a Blackbird SR-71). Apparently Falcon had something a little quicker in mind when they hatched the Mach V. In production since the early ‘90s, the Mach V is completely customizable. If we were to assemble one it'd probably have an Intel Core i7 965 processor, 12 GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and maybe an ATi Radeon HD 4870 graphics card. We're guessing a setup like that would also post some of craziest times on Crysis we've ever seen. Probably something in the neighborhood of 60 frames per second.
$8,000, falcon-nw.com
:
Although not as famous as its more flashy brethren, CyberPower still makes machines that are very capable of dusting even the most well-appointed Dell. Case in point: the Gamer Xtreme XI. Entombed within the NZXT Khaos Black Full tower case beats the heart of an i7-965 Extreme Edition 3.2 GHz processor, factory overclocked to 4.0GHz. Also stuffed inside is an Asus P6T Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX (with three way SLI support.) And keeping everything chilled and quiet is an Asetek Liquid CPU cooling system.
Paranormal phenomena aren't just for Fox Mulder, Melinda Gordon, and Rod Serling. Even top academics can't resist a good ghost story. And maybe that's for the better: Brilliant ideas often seem crazy at first. Scientific American dubbed the Wright Brothers "the Lying Brothers" despite test flights witnessed by trainloads of startled onlookers. More obscure findings can fare worse: Germs, quarks, black holes, and continental drift were all once considered laughable. Still, impeccably credentialed scientists persist, as Lewis Carroll's White Queen says, in trying to believe a few impossible things before breakfast—or after they've received tenure.
It's dèjé vu in advance: In conventional psychological tests, subjects recall words they've had a chance to study better than words they've seen only briefly. Bem reversed the usual order of events and found that his subjects were significantly more likely to recall words they would study later than words they wouldn't study at all. Extroverts show the most precognition.
Object of Study
Disembodied consciousness
Can people visit faraway places without leaving their living rooms? Kelly aims to find out. In an upcoming experiment, he plans to wire EEG and MRI devices to test subjects who report disembodied experiences to measure brain functions as they "travel" to designated places. Extra points if they can confirm their visits by identifying unique markers at the sites in question.
Object of Study
Origin of the cosmos
Big bang deniers are a growing force, with Lerner at the head of the pack. The majority of astronomers believe the cosmos is expanding in the aftermath of an initial cataclysm. Lerner, whose focus now is fusion energy, claims that his analysis of data from the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that galaxies are not receding at all. This is just one of several holes, he says, in the big bang theory.
Emeritus Professor of Applied Physics,
Stanford University
Object of Study
Atmospheric effects on physiology
Sure, a rainy day can get you down, but do storms in the ionosphere affect human well-being? Building on research that has correlated shifts in Earth's magnetic field with rates of traffic accidents and hospital admissions, McCraty is adding ionospheric measurements to the mix. His next round of experiments will attempt to link moods to atmospheric shifts.
Object of Study
Telekinesis
Aiming a beam of light at a glass slide in 2006 and 2007, Moddel asked test subjects to use their brainpower to increase the amount of reflected light. Expected reflection: 8 percent. Measured reflection: 8.005 percent. This represents a tiny but significant demonstration of mind over matter, Moddel says. Asked to decrease the amount of reflected light, subjects had similar success.
Object of Study
UFOs
Alongside a sterling career in astrophysics, Sturrock has pursued the mystery of UFOs. He surveyed the American Astronomical Society; 6 percent of members reported experience with UFO-type sightings. More to the point, he sifted through such evidence as chemical analysis of purported landing sites and concluded that reports of alien spacecraft deserve serious study.
Recession be damned! Just because the economy has come to a screeching halt doesn't mean hardcore PC gamers are slowing down. In fact, well-heeled fraggers are still buying elaborate rigs festooned with premium parts (like liquid immersive cooling systems) that shred through Crysis at 60 frames per second and often cost as much as a used car ($9,000!). Here are a few of our favorite gaming machines that have come hurtling down the pipeline recently
iBuyPower Gamer Paladin F970
This camouflage-colored tower comes loaded with 6GB of DDR3-1866 RAM, 2 GTX295 video cards, an 80GB solid-state hard drive, and a Blu-ray burner. What's more, it has additional storage for 1TB of data, and it packs a speedy Core i7 965. And at under five grand, it's practically a bargain!
$4,230, ibuypower.com
:
In addition to an Intel Core i7, Blu-ray drive, X2O water-cooling technology and 1,080GB of storage, it also flaunts an Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 Triple SLI video card for fragging speed that blazes like a solar flare.
$7,800, maingear.com
:
Phobos is Greek for "fear," or something. Or it should be: We were a little scared to take a look at the price tag of this rig after discovering what's inside (and outside) its chassis. First of all, an 8-inch touch panel sits on the outside of the machine, letting you control performance of various components while keeping a watchful eye on the processor, memory, network and storage data. Inside the black monolithic chassis lurks an Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz processor, two Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 graphics cards, and an MSI Eclipse SLI Intel X58-based motherboard. But don't expect BFG to drop you once you have shelled out $8,000 (yes, eight Gs) on this rig. You'll also get the rig hand delivered and set up by an expert who will make you feel like gaming royalty. Of course, if you're that serious about a gaming machine like this, you're probably already a PC expert of some kind.
$8,000, bfgtech.com
:
There's liquid cooling, then there's liquid immersive cooling. The folks at Hardcore PC said "screw this" to the usual network of pipes and tubes circulating cooling liquid around high-performance PCs. Instead, the company opted to build an enormous tank, fill it with 4.5 gallons of industrial cooling fluid, and then drop the components for their finest PC inside. The results are awesome. The 100-pound leviathan clocks 45 frames per second in Crysis and does so while running whisper quiet.
$9,723, hardcorecomputer.com
:
Alienware was one of the first boutique gaming rig makers out there and it's still one of the best, offering smart, well-assembled machines for a relatively small amount of money. One of its newer models, the ALX X58 follows that tradition. The system, which is ridiculously customizable, can be decked out with an overclocked Intel Core i7 Extreme 3.86GHz with 8MB cache, an 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 video card, and a sound blaster X-Fi hi-def surround sound audio card. Oh yeah -- and a sticker price that starts out a bit south of 4k.
$3,700, alienware.com
:
The fastest an airplane has ever flown is Mach 3 (set by a Blackbird SR-71). Apparently Falcon had something a little quicker in mind when they hatched the Mach V. In production since the early ‘90s, the Mach V is completely customizable. If we were to assemble one it'd probably have an Intel Core i7 965 processor, 12 GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and maybe an ATi Radeon HD 4870 graphics card. We're guessing a setup like that would also post some of craziest times on Crysis we've ever seen. Probably something in the neighborhood of 60 frames per second.
$8,000, falcon-nw.com
:
Although not as famous as its more flashy brethren, CyberPower still makes machines that are very capable of dusting even the most well-appointed Dell. Case in point: the Gamer Xtreme XI. Entombed within the NZXT Khaos Black Full tower case beats the heart of an i7-965 Extreme Edition 3.2 GHz processor, factory overclocked to 4.0GHz. Also stuffed inside is an Asus P6T Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX (with three way SLI support.) And keeping everything chilled and quiet is an Asetek Liquid CPU cooling system.
The Wolfram Alpha homepage is very much like Google's, but this search engine is really the anti-Google. It's a new way to search the web to have it answer your questions in real time. It's like having a squad of Cambridge mathematicians and CIA analysts inside your browser.
Way more countries have laws against holocaust denial (11 or so) than breast feeding (0), but guess which one is banned on Facebook? That’s right. Pictures of breast feeding babies are indecent, so they’re a no go.
But Holocaust denial is totally cool because it fosters open discussion. Facebook wants to “be a place where people can discuss all kinds of ideas, including controversial ones.” Even, apparently, the discussion of the idea that someone might be a “Nigger faggot, Jew nosed cunt.” That’s just one of many hateful messages I found written on a Holocaust denial site on Facebook.
Brian Cuban is making the removal of these sites a personal mission. He’s arguing the law. He’s arguing terms of service. He’s arguing common sense and decency. These groups are clearly little more than excuses to spew hatred towards Jews, and Facebook is too timid to do anything about it. The first amendment doesn’t apply to private companies. So why is Facebook so willing to take a stand when it comes to hungry babies, but won’t do a damn thing when it comes to the Holocaust.
Because they’re cowards. Here’s more open discussion of ideas on a Facebook Holocaust denial group:
If Facebook doesn’t want to take a moral or ethical stand on the issue, they can easily make a case that the groups violate their terms of service. These groups violate multiple sections of the TOS, particularly Section 3. There’s an easy way out of this for Facebook, and it also happens to be the right thing to do. Why in the world must they draw a line in the sand and then stand on the same side as Holocaust deniers is beyond me.
Update: Up for debate is whether or not this image of Romanian children in Auschwitz, victims of medical experiments, is evidence of the Holocaust, which apparently may or may not have happened. But what isn’t debatable is whether or not this is pornography under Facebook’s TOS. It is.
Yes, Facebook, this is the side of the line you’ve chosen to stand on.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
SilverMind writes in to note a blog entry at Byte Size Biology describing in detail a few hours spent with Wolfram Alpha (which we have discussed before). "After playing around with Wolfram Alpha for a few hours, I can safely say the following: it's different, it's incomplete, it's idiosyncratic, and it's funky cool. And no, it will not dethrone Google, nor does it aim to do so."
Mom, I love you, but this Mom Translator from the fake commercial department at SNL was hilarious. I pretty much relived every high school era dinner conversation in the course of a 1:30 video. [Hulu] Source: Gizmodo | 11 May 2009 | 2:41 am
As readers know, I’m working on a new book about global entrepreneurship that is taking me around the world at the pace of roughly one country per month for the next year and a half. The plan is to focus on several contrasting hot spots for entrepreneurship and revisit them throughout the next year or so to see how the entrepreneurs and economies evolve over that time.
But since it’s early in the process, I’m still hitting many places for the first time, and it’s a challenge. I’m continually throwing myself into a culture and trying to absorb as much as I can from being on the ground, meeting with hundreds of entrepreneurs, and trying to ferret out some TechCrunch-worthy and book-worthy stories. Two-to-three weeks can go past in the blink of an eye, and frequently I leave with more questions than answers. More maddening: That’s usually a sign I’ve done my job. No place should be decipherable in two weeks. Especially not China.
China has just exploded with entrepreneurship, funding and economic opportunity over the last five years or so, and unlike most of the world there doesn’t seem to be a slow down yet. In 2002, U.S. investors pumped $437 million into China. By 2007 that had grown to $2.8 billion. And last year, it swelled again to $4.2 billion. All numbers courtesy of Dow Jones/VentureSource which should be releasing its first quarter China figures this week. Imagine Silicon Valley in 1999 times a huge sprawling country and population, and that’s what I’m wading into for the next two weeks.
On one hand, it’s exhilarating. In the US, we’ve all heard so much about the amazing Chinese economic engine, looking on with a mix of terror, greed and awe. It’s stunning actually to be on the ground here. But sifting through hundreds- even thousands- of Mandarin-speaking entrepreneurs is also a bit like trying to do an estate sale for Howard Hughes. There are priceless old films, keepsakes from starlets and antique aviator equipment, but also stacks of milk bottles, newspapers and nail clippings—where do you start?
This mild panic I’m finding myself in has me thinking a great deal about two characteristics of China that people have been referencing in the last few weeks as I’ve been planning this trip and doing pre-interviews: Patience and speed. They’re seemingly contradictory, and perhaps part of that is the collision of tradition and modernity in China right now.
It’s important to realize that patience isn’t the same thing as being slow. It’s a mindset thing, not a factor of how fast you are moving. The Chinese people have always known they’d be one of the world’s major superpowers, known it with such conviction; they just had to let it unfold. And unfold it has. Even Internet entrepreneurs share this view, as Jack Ma of Alibaba said in this 2000 Forbes interview, “One must run as fast as a rabbit, but be as patient as a turtle.” Interestingly, Ma picks the good attributes of each animal: The speed of the rabbit but not the impatience and cockiness. And the patience of the tortoise but not the slow speed. (One could argue those are traits of large, fat and happy American multi-nationals that both Chinese and Silicon Valley startups seek to out-do.) Ma has also said that employees and customers come first, shareholders second. Why? They’re incapable of holding a long term view and he refuses to run his business quarter-to-quarter. For Ma, ten years is a short time. For U.S. investors—even VCs—ten years is a long-term investment horizon.
What many U.S. investors find baffling is how that patient mindset co-exists in a world that moves so quickly. Last night I had dinner with several ex-patriot entrepreneurs who said it’d be hard to leave Shanghai now because the speed with which the city runs has become addictive. Every few weeks there are new buildings. The restaurants open and close so quickly, one of the ex-pats says he calls a restaurant before he leaves the house, not to make reservations but to make sure its still there. Another laughed at the idea that he used to think Manhattan was fast-paced. He goes back to visit now, and it all seems the same.
I’m not even 24-hours into my adventure in China, but I’m interested to learn more about how these two traits manifest themselves in the startup world here. Already, I’m hearing about a distaste for raising U.S. money because of an insistence on predictable and unnatural growth metrics. My guess is the successful investors will be the ones that yield to the Chinese way of thinking on this, not the reverse. Indeed, a short-term nature of investing is a big part of why our capital markets are broken, and over the last few decades as Wall Street funds and endowments have become the main backers of VCs, that short-term-thinking disease has spread into what used to be a risky but patient asset-class.
Crunch Network: CrunchBasethe free database of technology companies, people, and investors
J.J Abrams' Star Trek took the original characters in a new, wonderful direction, but that doesn't mean people still can't enjoy the boxy look of the original series with this sharp-looking tricorder... Source: Gizmodo | 11 May 2009 | 2:30 am
At NYU's ITP, I heard the shrill and desperate scream of a child. It turned out to be a kid playing Nobu Nakaguchi's multiplayer interactive telephony called Tuuug of War.
The game is pretty... Source: Gizmodo | 11 May 2009 | 2:29 am
As one of our T drivers found out this week in Boston, it costs that much when you send it while driving the Green Line and plow into the back of a stopped train.
The errant text message also sent... Source: Gizmodo | 11 May 2009 | 2:00 am
An anonymous reader writes "Last month, Google officially announced the Android 1.5 update, dubbed 'cupcake.' The new software is apparently ready to roll out to Android-powered devices beginning tomorrow. Make no mistake, Android 1.5 is a major upgrade — they could have called it 2.0. The software brings a host of new capabilities, some of which can't be found on rival mobile platforms, including video recording and sharing."
Xiamen International Bank first to adopt innovative new solution to optimize branch efficiency.
REDMOND, Wash., May 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 May 2009 | 1:00 am
The Lois Whitman how-not-to-do-PR saga continues. She was called out by us and others in December for verbally abusing bloggers and spamming Wall Street Journal and New York Times reporters.
Things quieted down when she issued an apology, saying “Official Apology to Rich Brome And All Offended Bloggers -Just posted this on Twitter. Received over 100 emails, most of them angry. They are right. I was wrong. Thank you for the support emails but this is the right thing to do. Amazed by the power of viral marketing and learned a lot. I should take the heat. I love the blogger community and I did them wrong. I apologize.”
But now the PRSA, always willing to eat their own, is holding a seminar called Social Media for Skeptics: The Care and Feeding of Bloggers in Colorado. The description: “Pitching a blogger is like pitching a reporter — a reporter who can and will publicize and criticize and rationalize your every word. So, can you pitch a blogger to cover a story for your company or client? Yes! But do it wrong, and you might just end up like Lois Whitman (we’ll tell you who Lois Whitman is and what she did at the session!).”
Whitman isn’t pleased and has commented a couple of times in the blog post. Screen shot is below.
I completely understand Whitman’s desire to leave this whole mess in the past and not to have PR seminars dedicated to avoiding her situation. But her new comments also make it clear that she was never really that sorry for her actions. Rather, she was just sorry she got slammed for it - an important distinction.
This is how she now characterizes what happened last December: “The bottom line of my story is that I emailed press releases to a list of high profile bloggers signed up for a trade show. They didnt know their names were being issued to publicists. So I took the heat for an entire industry. Many of them are now closefriends.”Read our post for the real story. We don’t quite see her as the defender of the PR industry. Rather the opposite.
I feel sorry for Doyle Albee, who now has to face Whitman’s potent wrath.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Hugs are silent, but they say a lot. A half-body clap is like a "hello" popsicle, informal but icy. Then there's tucked-head tackle—aka "MmmYousmellsogood." Celina's sensor decodes hugs and... Source: Gizmodo | 11 May 2009 | 12:30 am
thefickler touts an interview in tech.blorge with Lenovo's Worldwide Competitive Analyst, Matt Kohut, who spoke about his vision of the future of netbooks, which involves Windows 7, bigger screens, built-in 3G, touch integration, and lower prices. Linux fans will be disappointed to hear that Kohut thinks Windows 7 will dominate future generations of netbooks because it offers a better, more familiar solution, with the benefits of touch. Quoting Kohut: "The other challenge has been, in order to keep the price points down, a lot of people thought that Linux would be the savior of all of these netbooks. You know, there were a lot of netbooks loaded with Linux, which saves $50 or $100 or whatever it happens to be, based on Microsoft's pricing and, again, from an industry standpoint, there were a lot of returns because people didn't know what to do with it. Linux, even if you've got a great distribution and you can argue which one is better or not, still requires a lot more hands-on than somebody who is using Windows. So, we've seen overwhelmingly people wanting to stay with Windows because it just makes more sense: you just take it out of the box and it's ready to go."
TOKYO, May 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Graphin Co., Ltd., announced that the company began in April the domestic sale of isMedia camera module test equipment, CCM Test Equipment M9 (Manual) for manual operation and CCM Test Equipment S16 (Semi-Auto) for semi-automatic operation, both compatible with the Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI), a widely recognized open interface for mobile devices.
IsMedia Compact Camera Module (CCM) Test Equipment is used exclusively for tests on camera modules for mobile devices, ranging from electrical functional tests (including voltage, current, standby current, and open/short) and lens tests (including SFR-compatibility, focus, distortion, and color reproducibility) to sensor tests (including a variety of noises, SN, and shading). Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 May 2009 | 12:00 am
Today is Mother’s Day; have you called your mother yet? Judging from popular topics on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc, you have. So what else is there to do on this fine Sunday? Perhaps watch the latest Lonely Island spoof music video, “Motherlover.”
The video, which is the sequel to the viral hit “Dick In A Box,” aired last night on NBC in honor of Mother’s Day. It’s already on the web (NBC, Hulu), making the rounds, certain to be a viral hit. We’ve embedded it below for your viewing pleasure.
Warning: This will almost certainly offend some people - so if you’re one of those people, don’t watch. Happy Mother’s Day!
And for our international readers, here’s a YouTube embed (sorry for the spammy overlay, you can turn that off in the lower right corner, I’m looking for a better version):
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
RJ sez, "Very few people have heard of John Heartfield, the German born artist whose photomontages in the late nineteen thirties outraged Adolf Hitler. However, as part of the resistance against the inexorable rise of Nazism, he contributed some of the most biting satirical photographic mashups of the day - and all without the aid of Photoshop. Nice."
Remember the revelation that pharma giant Merck had paid Elsevier to publish a fake peer-reviewed journal that promoted its products? Turns out Elsevier has an entire division devoted to publishing fake journals for money:
Now, several librarians say that they have uncovered an entire imprint of 'advertorial' publications. Excerpta Medica, a 'strategic medical communications agency,' is an Elsevier division. Along with the now infamous Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, it published a number of other 'journals.' Elsevier CEO Michael Hansen now admits that at least six fake journals were published for pharmaceutical companies."
LOS ANGELES, May 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Sun Microsystems and Oracle offer insight into the motives behind accelerating their involvement in open source projects. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 10 May 2009 | 10:15 pm
bsharma writes to let us know about a little goodie that we will be able to buy starting May 17: a battery-powered, rechargeable, cellular, Wi-Fi hot spot that you can put in your pocket. "What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go? Incredibly, there is such a thing. It's the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It's a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot. ... If you just want to do e-mail and the Web, you pay $40 a month for the service (250 megabytes of data transfer, 10 cents a megabyte above that). If you watch videos and shuttle a lot of big files, opt for the $60 plan (5 gigabytes). And if you don't travel incessantly, the best deal may be the one-day pass: $15 for 24 hours, only when you need it. In that case, the MiFi itself costs $270." The device has its Wi-Fi password printed on the bottom, so you can invite someone to join your network simply by showing it to them.
The fifth and final repair expedition on the Hubble Space Telescope will involve five spacewalks and extended time in a debris-filled area, experts say.
The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that NASA is taking special precautions to protect the shuttle crew from the added danger. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 May 2009 | 9:24 pm
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Based upon a quick examination of the records in PACER, I detected 62 new cases brought by the RIAA against individuals in the month of April alone. In December, 2008, the RIAA had represented to Congress that they had 'discontinued initiating new lawsuits in August [2008].'"
Instead of hugging your mother, hug this TS trailer instead. The new one - apparently official - shows that this summer might be the golden age of shoot-em-ups and sci fi.
College students in China have a higher than average rate of hepatitis B infections, a public health expert said Sunday.
Xinhua reported that less than one-third of China's college students have been vaccinated against the virus.
Yang Xizhong, secretary general of the Chinese Foundation for Hepatitis Prevention and Control, said more than 9 percent of Chinese college students were infected with the disease, citing a six-month nationwide survey of 729,000 students from 59 colleges.
The hepatitis B infection is more than 10 percent in provinces such as Jiangxi, Guangdong, Hubei and Fujian. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 May 2009 | 7:39 pm
T-1000, appropriately enough, lets us know about a California initiative to compile open source science and math textbooks for the state, in the hopes of saving money. The effort is spearheaded by Gov. Schwarzenegger. "The effort seems very promising, but the state's complex standards and arduous textbook evaluation process will pose major challenges. ... The governator will surely be able to stop the digital textbooks from gaining sentience and subjugating humanity, but there are trickier challenges that will be even tougher to defeat than the impending Skynet apocalypse. Textbooks are a surprisingly controversial issue in California and there is a lot of political baggage and bureaucratic red tape that will make an open source textbook plan especially troublesome. ... [T]he traditional wiki approach is untenable for California teaching material. Individual changes to textbooks can become a source of fierce debate and there are a multitude of special interest groups battling over what the textbooks should say and how they should say it. It would take the concept of Wikipedia edit wars to a whole new level."
Its almost an unspoken truth that save for a few handsets, most cell phones tend to be rather ugly. It can be rather frustrating when new phones with decent features, specs and OS come out with ugly or just bland design. It’s easy to point to the iPhone as a well designed phone, and maybe a few others, which is why concept phones can sometimes be depressing since they may never make it to market.
The latest interesting concept phone, from designer Jaren Goh is the Sony Black Tribute. There’s nothing indicating that this design was actually made for Sony, or if Goh just decided to give it a Sony look. The design is rather nice, with an all aluminum casing, a 3.2 MP camera and a wide touch screen. The phone design has a lot of hard lines and smooth surfaces, unlike the iPhone’s curved back. It gives the phone a sturdier and more professional look. The GUI looks very Sony-esque with a lot of unused black/blue gradient space and clean graphics.
Concept phones always seem to bring about a strange mixture of awe and depression. The design tends to be rather interesting that would be nice to actually hold. However, there’s always only a small chance the phone would actually ever make it to market. With the Sony Black Tribute it would be nice to see it make the trip to market, though maybe from a different company. I know I wouldn’t mind seeing a phone with that design carrying Android, which Sony doesn’t seem to be all to up on.
As newspapers struggle for viability, and media managers attempt to shift presence to the web, a need has arisen for talent with the technical skills of a programmer and the creative skills of a journalist. Over at TechCrunch, we are fortunate to have talented developers who have poured their blood, sweat and tears into making the site what it is today.
Northwestern University’s journalism school is offering free scholarships to software developers so they can further hone their journalism skills and possibly integrate the two for a media company down the line (disclosure: I attended this journalism school). The idea of creating programmers who understand journalism is compelling and brings attention to an important trend taking place in the industry.
Hyperlocal news site Everyblock and the St. Petersburg Times’ truth finding political database Politifact were both built by developers with journalism backgrounds. Their model falls on the heels of Politifact, started by coder-turned-journalist Matt Waite, which won a Pulitzer Prize this year for national reporting.
Some question whether a journalism degree is critical to success as a reporter. A talented programmer certainly doesn’t need a journalism background to create successful digital platforms. And journalism school may be irrelevant for programmers who are more interested in coding than writing.
Both sides of the journalism school debate can agree on the definite need for programmers in the news space. As more news publications shift their focus from print to the web, management increasingly feels pressure to to invest in talented coders, sometimes even more so than talented journalists. Northwestern would argue that investing in one group does not need to come at the expense of the other. Perhaps the future of print is in the hands of hackers.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Village Idiot sends word of a patent granted to MIT researchers for a cone of silence a la Maxwell Smart. This one doesn't use plastic, but rather active and networked sensors and speakers embedded in a (probably indoor) space such as an open-plan office. "In "Get Smart" secret agents wanting a private conversation would deploy the 'cone of silence,' a clear plastic contraption lowered over the agents' heads. It never worked — they couldn't hear each other, while eavesdroppers could pick up every word. Now a modern cone of silence that we are assured will work is being patented by engineers Joe Paradiso and Yasuhiro Ono of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... Instead of plastic domes, they use a sensor network to work out where potential eavesdroppers are, and speakers to generate a subtle masking sound at just the right level. ... The array of speakers... aims a mix of white noise and randomized office hubbub at the eavesdroppers. The subtle, confusing sound makes the conversation unintelligible." One comment thread on the article wonders about the propriety of tracking people around an office in order to preserve privacy.
AP - Unsolicited calls to home and cell phones warning of a final notice and an expiring vehicle warranty are a nuisance and harassment and should be the subject of a federal investigation, a U.S. senator said Sunday. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 10 May 2009 | 6:18 pm
Martha Mason, who chronicled the decades she spent in an iron lung in a 2003 memoir, died at the age of 71 in Lattimore, N.C., her friend Mary Dalton says.
The New York Times said Sunday the 2003 memoir Breath offered Mason's first-person account of the more than 60 years she spent living in the iron cylinder that helped her cope with her paralysis caused by childhood polio.
Despite being paralyzed from the neck down and living full time in the 7-foot-long, 800-pound machine, Mason remained optimistic.
I'm happy with who I am, where I am, she said in a 2003 interview. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 May 2009 | 6:09 pm
PL/SQL Guy writes "A Wisconsin appeals court ruled Thursday that police can attach GPS trackers to cars to secretly track anybody's movements without obtaining search warrants. As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights — even if the drivers aren't suspects. Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, wrote Madison Judge Paul Lundsten."
The swine flu outbreak shows that the World Health Organization needs a better warning system to reflect the severity of epidemics, a U.S. doctor says.
The WHO needs a mechanism to dial down the anxiety levels while educating us about the extent of the transmission, said Dr. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 May 2009 | 4:47 pm
There are some reviews that are a bit difficult to compose. Sometimes the products are so intricate that it takes a whole lot of work to boil them down to a brief review. Other times the products are just so simple that there isn’t much to say about them beside “it works” and “it is great.” Thankfully, this review is the latter.
I am not sure about you but I am regularly running out of space on my living room DVR (from Time Warner Cable) and am forced to delete movies and/or TV shows that I haven’t have time to watch. I could opt to record in SD instead of HD (which requires significantly less space), but that is just too big of a sacrifice. With the Seagate Extender these problems dissolve away.
What is it?
The Seagate Showcase DVR Storage Expander allows you to expand your hard drive space on your DVR. It is available in 500GB or 1TB versions. Each version comes in USB 2.0 or eSATA variations. Prices range from $119.99 to $164.99 depending on configuration.
The Good
The Showcase is a plug and play DVR expander via USB 2.0 or an eSATA connection. It adds up to 200 additional hours of HD shows or 1000 hours in standard definition. To get it going you turn off your DVR and then plug the large power block into the wall and the Showcase. Finally, do the same for the USB or eSATA cable (now between your DVR and the Showcase). Once this is complete (a.k.a. 30 seconds later) turn your DVR back on, at which time you should see a prompt asking if you want to “reformat your external drive.”
Upon saying yes, you are done—your DVR will do the rest. It will fill up your external drive as the internal drive reaches capacity and play off of either drive, based on where the program is recorded.
The Bad
The only downfall is that if/when you disconnect the Showcase and move it to another DVR (even if from the same provider and same model DVR), the device forces you to reformat your drive and lose those saved shows.
The Crux
If you’re looking for a way to expand your DVR without hacking, the Seagate Showcase DVR Storage Expander is a very good option.
It’s a Sunday that saw Formula 1 new boys (in a sense) Brawn GP take the double again in Spain. It’s also a Sunday that saw the release of new Duke Nukem Forever footage, courtesy of former 3D Realms animator Bryan Brewer.
And I’m going to do the gentlemanly thing: rather than completely rip the file from Primotech’s Web site, then upload it to our account, I’ll merely let the link stand for itself.
So, click on over if you want to see a few minutes of Duke quipping left and right (“makin’ bacon” as he shoots pig-things). Fair warning: there’s those dumb stripper in the video, so if that’s NSFW for you, so be it.
I don’t know about you, but any game that takes 10+ years to develop ought to blow your mind; were your minds blown by the pre-alpha footage?
An anonymous reader writes with a report about programs revealed in the Department of Justice's 2010 budget request, which includes $233.9 million in funding for an "Advanced Electronic Surveillance" project, and $97.6 million to establish the Biometric Technology Center. The surveillance project is designed to help the FBI "deal with changing technology and ways to intercept phone calls such as those used by VOIP phones or technology such as Skype. The program is also conducting research on ways to conduct automated analysis to look for links between subjects of surveillance and other investigative suspects." The Center for Democracy and Technology's Jim Dempsey warns, "It is appropriate for the FBI to develop more and more powerful interception tools, but the privacy laws that are supposed to guide and limit the use of those tools have not kept pace." The biometrics plan lays groundwork for a "vast database of personal data including fingerprints, iris scans and DNA which the FBI calls the Next Generation Identification," a system we have discussed in the past.
Talk about Twitter’s reach growing. Apparently it is now going into outer space. NASA astronaut Mark Polansky will be commanding the upcoming mission to the International Space Station, and he just posted an invite on YouTube. This invite, which was posted on NASA’s official YouTube channel, invited users, as well as Twitter folks, to be a part of his next mission by submitting questions through YouTube and then following updates via Twitter.
He asks that the questions be sent on a video (about 30 seconds long) and posted to YouTube, and then sent to his Twitter account (using the @reply method). He will then respond to the question on the nationally broadcast NASA TV.
As one YouTube commentor put it, “I find it frightening that the first alien contact we might make could be a tweet.” Well, they will probably surely wonder about a society that can only speak in 140 character or less, and uses a hell of a lot of weird acronyms. Maybe we should send them the Guide to Twitter 101.
Actually, Polansky isn’t even going to be the first to be Tweeting from space. Mike Massimo plans to Tweet away from the Space Shuttle Atlantis in under three days when it sets off on mission STS-125.
Trying to reach a larger audience, NASA has been reaching into modern consumer technology…making use of things like the web and social sites. I have to agree with Jason Kincaid’s view in that at least the astronauts might have something educational to Tweet to us, instead of a lot of what many of hollywood flavors of the week are filling space with each day.
I wonder if anyone we don’t expect will intercept and Tweet back? Oh…that’s right…ET used a good old fashioned phone.
Here's another great cartoon we found on archive.org when we were researching corporatism propaganda for Life Inc. In Destination Earth, sponsored by the American Petroleum Industry in 1956, Martian dissidents learn that oil and competition are the two things that make America great.
In spite of its unfaltering market bias (or maybe because of it) the film is still quite an entertainingly assembled piece of work.
Gadgetell Guide: What to expect with Windows 7 RC1 “First things first, while Windows 7 should be stable, it is important to point out that this is still a Release Candidate. In other words, this is not the final release and you may experience an issue or two. That said, I have been running Windows 7…” MORE »
Amazon’s got a giant Kindle secret? It’s free (rumor) ” Today, Amazon delivered invites to an event being held at the New York Times former headquarters in the City. Amazon doesn’t hold a lot of these, so speculation is something new is coming. This new thing…” MORE »
Sprint employees to begin Palm Pre training on May 6 “It looks like we are getting a little closer to seeing the launch of the highly anticipated Palm Pre. According to a recent posting over on the Sprint Gurus user forums training is scheduled to begin very soon. In fact, it is just a few days away…” MORE »
Nine Inch Nails App update rejected, Trent Reznor gets angry “It shouldn’t surprise anyone who didn’t already know that Apple rules over the iPhone/iPod touch App Store with an iron fist. There have been several stories of Apps that got rejected for ridiculous reasons, or even some that were approved then taken down, like the Shaken Baby app. However, not…” MORE »
32GB Cowon S9 PMP now available with Amazon ” Looking for another decent option when it comes to a portable media player? Well Amazon has just listed the latest, or should I say largest Cowon S9 PMP. We have had the MORE »
Gadgetell Guide: Dual booting Linux and Windows XP ” Even though I’d like to think of myself as an open-minded individual, I have never really experimented with Linux. At school, I take a computer class, and one of our recent projects was installing Xubutu (a form of…” MORE »
Gadgetell Review: XLink Bluetooth Cellular Gateway “What Is It: The XLink Bluetooth Cellular Gateway is a $99 device ($119 for an upgraded model) that lets you pair up to three cellphones with your old landline handsets. Gadgetell got to test out the $99 BT model.…” MORE »
Hands on with the Kindle DX (photos and video) “So we got a chance to play with the Kindle DX. It’s exactly what we expected. It’s very light and is very fast. The price tag is a bit high, but it’s probably less costly when compared to textbooks. Check out the video of it in action below. MORE »
Scientists are rescuing dozens of one of the world's most rarest species of amphibians, the mountain chicken frog. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 May 2009 | 12:55 pm
Ministers from 70 countries will congregate in Indonesia Monday to discus how to save the world's oceans and to plan climate change discussions in December.The five-day World Ocean Conference in Manado city is being called a unique congregation on the oceans' part in justifying climate change and the cost of higher temperatures like rising seas, loss of species and famine. Environment, fisheries and resources ministers are anticipated to concur where the direction of the Copenhagen discussions scheduled for December will go. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 May 2009 | 12:47 pm
My latest Locus Magazine column, "Extreme Geek," is online: it's a description of three geeky writing tools I use that are a) useful; b) too geeky for most people; c) ripe for being turned into something useful to less geeky people.
I put the call out to the readership at Boing Boing, the blog I co-edit, and Dan McDonald, one of my readers, came through with a fantastic little Perl script called tagcloud.pl that does exactly this, parsing all my notes into a database that I can search or query visually, by clicking on the cloud.
Now, as I write the novel, this has become an invaluable aid: for one thing, it lends itself to a kind of casual, clicky browsing in which one hashtag leads to another, to a search-query, to another tag, exploring my notes in a way that is both serendipitous and directed.
For another, the format is one that comes naturally to me, because of all the other services I use -- such as Twitter -- that employ this telegraphic, brief style.
Johannes from Monochrom sends us his essay on Hackerspaces, HACKING THE SPACES:
The history of the so-called hackerspaces expands back to when the counter culture movement was about to make a serious statement. In the decade after the hippies attempted to establish new ways of social, political, economical and ecological relationships, a lot of experiments were carried out concerning the construction of new spaces to live and to work in. Thus, the first hackerspaces fit best into a countercultural topography consisting of squat houses, alternative cafes, farming cooperatives, collectively run businesses, communes, non-authoritarian childcare centres, and so on. All of these established a tight network for an alternative lifestyle within the heart of bourgeois darkness.
Hackerspaces provided room where people could go and work in laid-back, cool and non-repressive environments (well, as far as any kind of space or environment embedded into a capitalist society can be called laid-back, cool and non-repressive).
Sociological termed "third spaces" are spaces that break through the dualistic scheme of bourgeois spatial structure with places to live and places to work (plus places for spare time activities). They represent an integrative way that refuses to accept a lifestyle which is formed through such a structure. This means they can come to cooperative and non-repressive ways of working on e.g. technical problems that may result in new and innovative solutions. And that's exactly where Adorno's "Wrong Life" could slip in too...
The Roomba's coverage algorithm looks maddeningly random and inefficient when watched with human eyes, but use a long-exposure camera to track it and you can see how thorough it really is:
Now here's something interesting, I set up a photo camera in my room, turned out all the lights and took a long-exposure shot of my roomba doing it's thing for about 30 minutes. The result is a picture that shows the path of the roomba through it's cleaning cycle, it looks like a flight map or something. It really hits every spot!
Quincy Smith, who guided CBS through a series of big transactions during the Web 2.0 era, is planning his next deal: A move to start his own boutique investment bank or consultancy.
Assuming we can believe these latest rumors are accurate, it looks like you will be able to grab a subsidized netbook from Verizon beginning next week on May 17. The netbook that is expected to be available is the HP Mini 1151NR. As far as the netbook details, this particular model has a 10.1-inch display with a resolution of 1024 x 576, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive and ships with a 3-cell battery. 
As they mature, social networks are increasingly becoming viable systems for information management. We’re seeing this with Facebook, and with FriendFeed and even to some extent with Twitter. The combination of social graph plus information is a powerful one. And that’s exactly why 
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If Facebook doesn’t want to take a moral or ethical stand on the issue, they can easily make a case that the groups violate their terms of service. These groups violate multiple sections of the 
As readers know, I’m working on a new book about global entrepreneurship that is taking me around the world at the pace of roughly one country per month for the next year and a half. The plan is to focus on several contrasting hot spots for entrepreneurship and revisit them throughout the next year or so to see how the entrepreneurs and economies evolve over that time.
The Lois Whitman how-not-to-do-PR saga continues. She was 
Today is Mother’s Day; have you called your mother yet? Judging from popular topics on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc, you have. So what else is there to do on this fine Sunday? Perhaps watch the latest 
Talk about Twitter’s reach growing. Apparently it is now going into outer space. NASA astronaut Mark Polansky will be commanding the upcoming mission to the International Space Station, and he just posted an invite on YouTube. This invite, which was posted on 
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As I made these notes, I had a sense that, somewhere, there)
I put the call out to the readership at Boing Boing, the blog I co-edit, and Dan McDonald, one of my readers, came through with a fantastic little Perl script called tagcloud.pl that does exactly this, parsing all my notes into a database that I can search or query visually, by clicking on the cloud.
