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Can Commercial Space Tech Get Off the Ground?coondoggie writes "While NASA's commercial partners such as SpaceX and Orbital have made steady progress in developing space cargo transportation technology, they have recently fallen behind their development schedules. Combine that with the fact that the most critical steps lie ahead, including successfully launching new vehicles and completing integration with the space station, and you have a hole that will be tough to climb out of. Those were the two main conclusions of a Government Accountability Office report (PDF) on the status of the commercial space world this week. The GAO went on to say that after the planned retirement of the space shuttle in 2010, NASA will face a cargo resupply shortfall for the International Space Station of approximately 40 metric tons between 2010 and 2015." Speaking of SpaceX, reader Matt_dk sends along an update on the company's Falcon 9 flight efforts. "Six of the nine first stage flight engines have completed acceptance testing and all nine flight engines are on schedule to complete acceptance testing by mid-July."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:32 pm Homeless Sims are surprisingly depressingRobin Burkinshaw, a British games design student, created a homeless father-daughter pair in The Sims 3, "moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes." The results are surprising heart-rending:Part 0: Hello! Part 3: Just trying to be alone
(via Wonderland) Sharing's Caring In Opera Unite; Is That What We Want? - ChannelWeb
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:23 pm Users Antsy For New Apple iPhone OS 3.0 - ChannelWeb
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:23 pm Clearwire Plants 4G WiMax Flag In Atlanta - ChannelWeb
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:23 pm Ahmadinijad sucks at PhotoshopThe crowd in this pro-Ahmadinijad rally appears to have been clone-tool enhanced. Mirror (Thanks, Yishay!) Previously:Iran: You Suck At Photoshop (updated) - Boing Boing "Iranian...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:20 pm Ahmadinijad sucks at Photoshop The crowd in this pro-Ahmadinijad rally appears to have been clone-tool enhanced. اضافه شدن طرفداران محمود احمدي نژاد با فوتوشاپ روزنامه كيهان (Thanks, Yishay!)
Previously:
Source: Gizmodo | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:20 pm 10 (More) Ways to Provoke a GeekStill looking for ways to annoy the geek in your life? Here's 10 more suggestions, including: Why don't you say it was a shame Jar-Jar Binks wasn't in the original trilogy?
Source: Wired Top Stories | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:17 pm Twitter: suddenly essential to national security?Section: Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Websites  Has Twitter finally found it revenue source? Bowing to pressure from the US State Department, Twitter put off some downtime in efforts to keep their conduit open for news that is flowing out of Iran. The recent Iranian election results have put the people in the streets demonstrating for what they believe is a fraudulent result. Twitter has become one of the only means they are able to get information out now that the media has had its credentials revoked. Viva la Revolution!If you are on Twitter, then you know what has been coming through. Things like:
I am a rebel? Bring it.According to CBS News, I’ve become a person of interest now to the Iran Military. According to CBS:
Why Twitter?Why not Facebook or email or personal websites to convey the points of view flowing out of locked down Iran? Twitter is free, fast, and very personal. Iran is working hard to block IP addresses as fast as they can identify them and Twitter allows users to be pretty ubiquitous. Like many of the things on Twitter, you can’t trust it all. There is rampant accusations of the government sponsoring mis-information as well as the opposition dabbling in much of the same. How can Twitter turn this into something?Certainly I am not suggesting that Twitter make money off the people fighting in the streets for a fair election. But what I am suggesting is this: if the government calls me up and says, “hey JG, we really like the job you do on Halloween. You pass out the best selection of candy this side of the Mississippi and we’d like you to continue passing out candy, starting tonight, until we says stop.” As my Econ professors loved to jabber on about, there is no free lunch. The State Department didn’t go to Verizon. They didn’t go to Microsoft. They didn’t ask Gadgetell to keep the site going. They went to Twitter, the little dynamo that could. Yesterday I saw a comment that Internet has become as important to modern life as bread and water. Has Twitter just become the same? Read: [Time.com] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:16 pm Shared Worlds summer sf camp asks writers for their favorite citiesJeff Vandermeer writes in with more news about Shared Worlds, the summer science fiction and fantasy writing camp for kids: Shared Worlds asked Elizabeth Hand, Nalo Hopkinson, China Meville, Michael...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:16 pm Shared Worlds summer sf camp asks writers for their favorite citiesJeff Vandermeer writes in with more news about Shared Worlds, the summer science fiction and fantasy writing camp for kids:Shared World's Top Five Real Fantasy/SF Cities (Thanks, Jeff!)
Previously:
Source: Gizmodo | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:05 pm Dose Alert Pill ReminderBy Andrew Liszewski There’s an endless number of pill containers and organizers on the market designed to help you remember when it’s time to take your medication, but I think the simplicity...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:04 pm Visual Search Engine Searchme’s Visitors Plummet, Ad Platform Exits Beta
SearchMe, the search engine startup which presents search results as a stack of full-page previews that you can flip through, is bringing its ad network out of beta. The Searchme ad platform, which was originally named AdView when it launched in February, is the visual search engine’s version of AdWords, except that instead of selling paid text links, it intersperses ads into results of clickable previews of entire webpages, videos, or other visual advertising. Searchme’s advertising is appealing because the website becomes the ad itself, making the ad larger and more visually stimulating. So if you search for “Volvo” on Searchme and if you flip through to the third result, it will be an ad that shows a landing page for Volvo’s latest models. Ad units can also be a YouTube video which can be played without leaving SearchMe. As we wrote in our previous review, Searchme’s approach is similar to what StumbleUpon does, with ads placed in every 20 or so Stumbles.  During the beta period, Searchme let 600 advertisers experiment with the network, with 50 of the participants being big-name brands, including Campbell’s and Volvo. Searchme’s CEO and co-founder Randy Adams says that CPCs are $0.25 for the advertisers. And click through rates are high—at around 8%. While visually appealing landing pages could be a potentially effective form of advertising, there needs to be enough unique visits for the advertising to be valuable in the long term. In February, Searchme had about 3 million monthly visitors in the U.S, according to Quantcast. In April, the site had grown to 4 million monthly visitors. But in May, the number of U.S. visitors plummeted to around 750,00 visitors in the U.S. Searchme says that this drop in numbers is due to the fact that the search engine was spending $500,000 a month in advertising and driving a lot of traffic to the site. The startup is now spending little to no capital on advertising and is in the process of closing distribution deals to place the search bar in browsers and toolbars. Searchme maintains that advertisers responded positively to the network and type of ads, and especially the click through rates. And the startup also says it’s not in competition with search engines like Bing and Google, who have the lions share of search traffic. Instead they are out to compete with other visual search engines like Middlespot, Viewzi and Snap. Sequoia-backed Searchme originally launched the private beta of its search engine in 2008 and to date has raised $43.6 million in funding. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Source: TechCrunch | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:00 pm Visual Search Engine Searchmes Visitors Plummet, Ad Platform Exits BetaSearchMe, the search engine startup which presents search results as a stack of full-page previews that you can flip through, is bringing its ad network out of beta. The Searchme ad platform, which was...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:00 pm Portable AppsI have my home desktop set up with applications for a variety of tasks, but when traveling, at work or at a friend’s house (I’m often de facto IT for friends and family) I never...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2009 | 1:00 pm Basic Peek model now $20 everywhereTarget, Radioshack and Amazon all now sell the unlimited email/messaging handset for $20: a murderously good deal for anyone who wants messaging but doesn't want a contract or an expensive data plan. Peek service starts at $16.65 a month if you buy a quarter's worth up front. [Peek] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 17 Jun 2009 | 12:57 pm Little Brother, the play, on in Chicago until July 18Chicago's Griffin Theatre has mounted a live production of my young adult novel Little Brother, adapted by William Massolia. This is incredibly exciting; Time Out Chicago gave it four stars, saying,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 17 Jun 2009 | 12:54 pm Little Brother, the play, on in Chicago until July 18 
Chicago's Griffin Theatre has mounted a live production of my young adult novel Little Brother, adapted by William Massolia. This is incredibly exciting; Time Out Chicago gave it four stars, saying, "Doctorow raises many worthy points about the relationship between our safeties and our freedoms, and in Milne's bracing production, newcomer Mike Harvey as Marcus makes a confident tour guide." Bill Shunn, writing in Sci-Fi Wire, said, "Little Brother is an exciting and thought-provoking production, imaginatively staged on a bare-bones set with some multimedia elements stirred in."
I've managed to wrangle a trip to Chicago to see the play on July 9 -- I hope to see you there! And if July 9 doesn't work for you, I hope you can catch it on another night. LITTLE BROTHER: Griffin Theatre, Chicago Sci Fi Wire: Review: Cory Doctorow's revolutionary novel Little Brother comes to the stage
Production photos
UPDATE 2-Watson goes global with $1.75 bln Arrow deal* Acquisition creates generic drugmaker with $3 bln in revSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 17 Jun 2009 | 12:51 pm Anonymous Newspaper Commenters Subpoenaed In Tax Caseskuzzlebutt writes "In a federal tax case reported in the Las Vegas Review Journal last week, a local businessman has been paying his employees in gold coins instead of cash or ACH, and has reportedly told them that they can only be taxed on the face value of the coinage — not the much higher market value of the metal. The United States disagreed, and brought him up on 57 counts of income tax evasion, tax fraud and criminal conspiracy. The non-authenticated comments section of the original article brought a lot of supporters out of the woodwork, including a few who thought the jury should be hung (literally, procedurally, or figuratively ... pick one). In response, the prosecution has subpoenaed the names of the anonymous commenters, citing fears of jury safety. Or something. The obvious questions of privacy and protected speech aside, for the folks that support the defendant (the newspaper is fighting the subpoena), this also brings back into the spotlight the troll-empowering nature of pseudo-anonymous, non-authenticated boards. If they want to find you, they will; is anonymous commenting still worth it, or is it just too risky for the board owners?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 17 Jun 2009 | 12:50 pm Vegas paper gets subpoena to ID online commenters
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 New Zealand Herald | PC Makers Want No Part of Green Dam ChannelWeb Trying to follow the Chinese government's stand on using the Green Dam Youth Escort filtering software is like trying to figure out a cryptic Chinese Fortune cookie. PC makers plead with China for release from Youth Escort China's Citizens Oppose Green Dam, So Must US Computer Makers |
 Slippery Brick | Disney unveils kids' laptops amid shopper thrift Reuters By Aarthi Sivaraman NEW YORK (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co is introducing $350 netbooks for children ahead of the holidays, even as other toy companies shy away from expensive items to appease recession-hit shoppers. Disney Adds Kids' Netbook, Camcorders Asustek to Sell Disney-Branded Netbook |
Now what?
The party-all-night social networking site that has been MySpace so far got a massive morning-after shock yesterday. when 30 percent of its workforce–or 420 employees–was laid off.
And today, MySpace, which is still 1,000-strong, and its leaders now have to face the cold, harsh light of day in the aftermath of the restructuring and get busy quickly at figuring out a way to reinvigorate a brand that has suffered after a stunning rocket of a start many years ago.
That’s especially true since a report also just came out by market research outfit comScore (SCOR), showing that Facebook has surpassed MySpace in the key U.S. market as the top social networking site.
So, based on many sources I have spoken to over the last week, here’s a rundown of the next steps MySpace will likely be taking and who’ll be making them.
MORE LAYOFFS?
“Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” said new CEO Owen Van Natta in a statement about the layoffs.
What he did not say was that cost-cutting via layoffs is almost always the first move in a turnaround.
These cuts have actually be long in coming, but it’s promising that they finally happened so quickly after Van Natta–along with COO Michael Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn–were brought in by News Corp. (NWS) digital head Jon Miller to replace Co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe.
(News Corp. owns MySpace, as well as Dow Jones, which owns this site.)
“The layoffs were a total reset,” said one source, who noted that unless MySpace’s advertising business falls off a cliff, which it is unlikely to do in the short term, more cuts will not be needed for now.
MySpace is now about the same size as chief rival Facebook’s staff, which has been growing much more quickly (you can see my video tour of its new Silicon Valley HQ here).
Except for not making the move to new offices in Los Angeles, the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace is also not going to be closing offices elsewhere, as has been reported, most especially its San Francisco one.
In fact, Van Natta is traveling to visit all of them, his memo said, over the next several days.
LEADERSHIP
Despite the large number of layoffs and the departure of DeWolfe, most expect there to be very little change in the top ranks of MySpace leadership for the time being.
While Jeff Berman, MySpace’s president of sales and marketing, has been rumored to be on the bubble, multiple sources said he would be staying in his job.
He’ll continue to be aided by Angela Courtin, SVP of marketing, who is well-regarded.
The same is true of the other major question mark, Co-founder Tom Anderson (pictured here), who has held the president title at the company and was in charge of its products.
He does not have a new title yet and will no longer be in a key operational role, but many sources said his historical knowledge, his tight relationship with the MySpace community make it important that he remain at the company.
“Tom is clearly in touch with what has made MySpace special,” said one source. “And it is important that he remain to keep the culture alive.”
Also staying for now is Tom Andrus, who has been SVP of product management under Anderson and is now reporting to Hirschhorn. While initially upset by being supplanted so quickly by new execs, most sources told me that he is a solid and well-liked exec.
The same is said of Jason Oberfest, SVP of business development, who is also staying. So too, CTO Aber Whitcomb, who many thought would be leaving.
The only major exec departure I could confirm was Fox Interactive Media CFO Ed McKenna, who was in charge of MySpace too. Sources said will be leaving the company as his function gets consolidated into higher corporate units at News Corp.
PRODUCT REHAUL
Lastly, most noted that MySpace cannot cut its way back to health, which is why sources said its execs are now beginning to engage in a major overhaul of the product itself.
While leadership had considered bringing in a separate new skunkworks-type team to do that, it has been decided that the current staff–helped by some outside consultants–will be doing a top-to-bottom redo of MySpace.
MySpace could use it. As you can see from the charts below from a poll that we did for the seventh D: All Things Digital conference recently–and where Walt Mossberg and I interviewed Van Natta and Miller onstage (see the highlights video below)–it has a lot to fix, including reengaging users, improving technology and differentiating itself from Facebook.
And, in fact, carving itself out as a different product than Facebook is one major aim, because the offerings–while both are social networks–are quite different in approach. Facebook has evolved into more of a utility, while MySpace has made better inroads as an entertainment hub.
Whatever changes are made, most sources note that MySpace needs to try to remain true to its original frisky and fun start-up core, while innovating a next-generation product and continuing to goose its advertising business.
That also includes starting up renegotiations with Google (GOOG) about its search advertising partnership, talks that are just getting started now (more on that soon).
Most of all, said one person, pointing to the long and painfully public struggle at Yahoo (YHOO), leadership has to stop the focus on MySpace being broken as soon as possible.
“MySpace needed to be shaken up, but it is still a very powerful brand and has huge traffic,” said the source. “Its management has to project a sense inside and outside that it is not only fixable, but also can lead again.”
As with Yahoo, Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL and many others before it, that’s no easy task for MySpace starting today.
In any case, here’s the Miller/Van Natta interview at D7:
And here are three not-so-upbeat poll charts about MySpace and how users think about it (click on them to make them larger):
Microsoft (MSFT) is willing to burn lots of cash as it stubbornly pursues its Internet strategy — it lost a staggering $575 million on its online business in the last quarter alone — but even Redmond has its limits. The company is finally confessing that Soapbox, the would-be YouTube it launched in 2006, is no YouTube. And it doesn’t sound that enthusiastic about keeping it going.
Microsoft vice president Erik Jorgensen tells CNET that the company is already going to scale back the site’s ambitions: Rather than let users upload whatever video they want, Soapbox is limiting user-gen uploads to specific categories it thinks it might be able to sell ads against — entertainment, finance, etc.
And it’s not even promising to keep that option open. “We haven’t decided whether you just continue to support it or whether it is too expensive and out of our focus to do,” Jorgensen tells Ina Fried.
My guess is the latter. Soapbox still exists, but I only know this because Ina says so. A Google search for Soapbox gets you to the main MSN video page. I had to resort to a Bing search to find the Soapbox section.
It’s an amazing turnabout, really. When Google (GOOG) bought YouTube for $1.6 billion in 2006, conventional wisdom was that user-generated video was the future, and that the age of “professional” video content was just about over. Three years later, nearly everyone who’s still in the Web video business — a pool that is shrinking daily — is doing their best to highlight how much stuff they have from grownup pros.
So treasure videos like this “funny dog” clip while you can.
Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
One of the areas of the Atlas Obscura that I hope will get filled out as people continue to contribute content to the site is our "Purveyors of Curiosities" category. Right now it's got a measly six places in it. We're looking to find all those cool stores around the world that share the "wunderkammer sensibility"--places like Deyrolle in Paris (shown above), Evolution and Obscura Antiques in New York City, and Paxton's Gate in San Francisco, just to name a few of the more famous and fabulous ones.
Whenever I travel, I always seek these sorts of shops out, but they can be awfully hard to find (there's no page in the phone book for "odd stores"). If we could put together a good list of the world's "purveyors of curiosities," I think it would go a long way to making the Atlas Obscura into a really useful resource for curious travelers. So, please tell us: what are the most "wondrous, curious, and esoteric" stores in the world? (And if you have a few minutes to spare, would you consider writing up a brief description and adding them to the Atlas?)
 Inquirer | GPUs and the new "Digital Divide" CNET News by Peter Glaskowsky I've been to most of NVIDIA's analyst events over the last decade or so, since I covered NVIDIA almost from its inception while working as the graphics analyst at Microprocessor Report. How Nvidia plans to get its mojo back Nvidia claims to be equal to Intel |
Dell Unleashes New Virtualization Offerings ChannelWeb By Scott Campbell, ChannelWeb The offerings include new hardware and new services geared toward making virtualization a more affordable—and more useful—solution for small and midsize businesses, according to Jim Skelding, director of small and medium ... Dell Expands Virtualization, Server Product Lines Dell Diversifies With Fixed Server Offerings |
Radio Valerie is an almost impossibly cute little radio, a squat curved cylinder with a speaker squashed into the end which is tuned by an inventive combination of aerial and dial. So simple and elegant is the design that we wonder if it could have come from the same person that designed the truly hideous website where it currently lives.
The site is Pix Studio and the man behind the little wireless is Valentin Vodev. The radio is exactly the kind of thing that should be on the shelves of the otherwise awful “design” shops where lazy friends shop for “novel” birthday gifts. Vodev should bang these out at $40 a pop and he’d make a fortune. Or at least, he’d make enough to pay for a website re-design.
Product page [Pix Studio (good luck via Noquedanblogs]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sharpcast’s SugarSync, an application that synchronizes data across desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones, and even televisions, is rolling out a a few features designed to make the service more interactive and social. The idea behind SugarSync is that it allows you to back-up any kind of digital file, including videos, spreadsheets, photos and documents, in the cloud and access it from virtually anywhere via a variety of devices. You can read our reviews of SugarSync here and here.
Syncing is becoming a popular technology trend as people split up their digital lives across devices and the Web and are looking to the cloud to enable this across devices. Apple offers syncing through its MobileMe service. There is also competition from Windows Live Mesh from Microsoft, which won a Crunchie for best technology innovation earlier this year. Startups Dropbox and Mozy also provide popular syncing services in the cloud.
SugarSync is stepping up to the plate by trying to add more interactive features. The service has improved folder sharing, letting users share files with anyone in their Gmail, Hotmail, AOL or Yahoo Mail contact lists. Users will also be able to directly upload photos stored in SugarSync to Facebook, with functionality for additional social networks to be rolled out in the near future.
SugarSync is also trying to get users to promote the services by increasing the size of their accounts for free if the user refers someone to open a new account. Users can refer others automatically by sharing a SugarSync folder with them or by sending an invitation through Facebook or Twitter. SugarSync offers and free and paid service, with prices ranging from $25 to $250 a year depending on storage size. SugarSync is also enhanced the interface of its free mobile applications for Blackberry, Apple iPhone, and iPod Touch.
SugarSync, which raised funding earlier this year, doesn’t release data on how many users the service has but did tell us that since its launch, more than 1 billion files have been backed up and synced to SugarSync, with 550 terabytes of total data backed up and synced in SugarSync’s cloud. If SugarSync continue to add useful features, like the ability to publish files to social networks and making mobile applications more user-friendly, the site could seriously compete with, and maybe surpass, the big guys, like Apple, and the innovative startups.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
T-Mobile’s followup to the G1 is finally on its way to market. The carrier is expected to announce details of its second Android-based handset next week with an eye towards launching it later this summer. Called the T-Mobile myTouch 3G, the device is similar in design to the HTC Magic, an Android device currently sold by Vodafone UK. Like Apple’s iPhone, it features a touchscreen but no physical keyboard. And it’s said to integrate voice-activated search, video recording and enhanced browsing thanks to Cupcake, otherwise known as Android 1.5. When it goes on sale, the myTouch 3G will be the second Android-based phone to hit the market from a major carrier in the states, but by the end of the year it will be one of many. Google (GOOG) expects some 18 Android devices to arrive at market this year.
 Boston Globe | Make No Mistake: RIM's BlackBerry Is The One To Beat ChannelWeb Research In Motion on Tuesday introduced BlackBerry Tour 9360, a 3G BlackBerry smartphone that represents the latest in RIM's dominant BlackBerry handhelds. New BlackBerry Tour joins smartphone fray BlackBerry Tour offers great features, but adds to branding confusion |
Transactional advertising network provider Adgregate Markets, a finalist at the most recent TechCrunch50 conference, has announced that it has recently acquired Gydget, a venture-backed startup in the widget business.
Gydget, which powers a platform for fan-driven, viral widgets primarily centered around entertainment and consumer brands, will be folded into Adgregate’s ShopAds, a fairly innovative advertising network that enables customers to complete secure transactions within Flash-based ad banners. Adgregate Markets seems to be onto something, recently proven by the fact that the company scored a distribution deal with Google’s DoubleClick, enabling advertisers on that platform to integrate ShopAds widgets with just a few mouse-clicks.
The press release boasts about the Gydget ad network currently reaching more than 30 million impressions per month, and also mentions ShopAds widgets have currently been installed 200,000 times.
While the acquisition makes sense on the surface, when you dig a little deeper you’ll note that Gydget seemed to be running out of fuel anyway (not surprising considering the economy we’re in and the general slow-down of the widget business): backed by over $1 million in venture capital from Felicis Ventures and Sunbridge Partners, its founder and CEO Gerardo Capiel recently bailed the company to become VP Product Management for MySpace (presuming he still has that job today, considering the massive lay-off round announced yesterday).
The terms of Gydget’s acquisition were not disclosed.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
By Geoffrey A. Fowler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Social networking services like Facebook and Twitter have played a remarkable role in breaking the Iranian government’s grip on information, both before and after last Friday’s election. But lately, access to the Internet in Iran has slowed to a crawl, demonstrating considerable technical sophistication on the part of Iranian authorities.
One Tehran resident, who asked to only be identified by his first name Behzad, said in a phone interview that his home broadband connection is now useless. Simply loading Google’s (GOOG) home page, he said, takes up to a minute.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Street-food vendors colonize public spaces like bacteria on a toilet bowl (and sometimes they’re about as clean as that bowl). The High Line, an abandoned elevated railway reborn as an aerial park, opened just last week in New York and already there is a concession stand up there (although it doesn’t sell hot dogs - yet). On the beaches in Rio de Janeiro the offerings change throughout the day, from potato chips to skewers of shrimp grilled on portable barbecues. And in Barcelona you can grab a hot, delicious samosa in the early hours for just €1.
All of these are prepared and served from some form of stand, whether a wheeled, powered cart or a picnic cool-box. And these stands are celebrated in Mike Meiré’s “Global Street Food”, an exhibition showing the home-made gizmos of street-vendors around the world, brought together in the gallery of Dornbracht, a bath and kitchen fittings manufacturer.
The exhibition looks fascinating and includes the stands you see above — a grill riding on an old bike wheel in Uganda and a cheese and sausage stand made from a shopping art, from Buenas Aires. Of course, as these contraptions have been transplanted into a gallery, they have to be accompanied by some tortuous and meaningless art-speak. Dornbracht doesn’t disappoint:
Urban fast food stations navigating the contrast between pragmatic dilettantism and complexity in the smallest of spaces [...] Here the de-contextualisation permits an approach from various aspects: Of which materials is such a kitchen unit composed, what are the origins of the materials and how do they communicate?
Etcetera. If you can’t make it to the exhibition in Cologne, take a look at the PDF available from the site, which features photos of the machines in their natural habitats and a commentary (in German).
Exhibition page [Dornbracht via KK]
RIM is too big. Apple is too big. Motorola has problems. When you look at all the assets that are available, what you have left is Palm.
— Avian Securities analyst Matthew Thornton says Palm is a buyout target whether it likes it or not
Boing Boing Video guest correspondent Miles O'Brien checks in with us for an update on the scheduled launch of the Space Shuttle, and on new information about what may have led to the recent Air France crash, and finally, on the confirmation that geese -- yes, geese -- were responsible for the emergency conditions that led to the "miracle on the Hudson" emergency landing.
Follow Miles' coverage of Endeavor's scheduled launch at spaceflightnow.com, or follow him on Twitter: @milesobrien.
Update, 11:15pm PT: From Miles' live-tweeting at the launch site: the space shuttle Endeavour launch has just been postponed because of another leak in the gaseous hydrogen venting system between the launch pad and external fuel tank.
Section: Gadgets / Other, Miscellaneous
Jeff Bezos recently spoke at a Wired sponsored conference and revealed some interesting information in regards to the Kindle. One one hand the news was a little surprising; however if you consider the already available iPhone app then it makes a little more sense.
According to Bezos, the content for the Kindle and the actual Kindle are separate businesses and to prove that point Amazon is going to continue offering Kindle content on the iPhone. But, in addition that content would also be available on “other mobile devices and other computing devices.” He even went as far as saying that;
“The device team has the job of making the most remarkable purpose-built reading device in the world,” Mr. Bezos said. “We are going to give the device team competition.”
These strong statements were backed up later in the day when the source code for the Kindle was released to the public. Of course, until some people actually begin to use that source code it will be hard to tell just what may have been removed in terms of full support and DRM.
Either way, it appears to be pretty safe to say that we are going to be seeing the Kindle Store become available on many more devices in the coming future. Additionally, it looks like we are going to have the possibility of seeing a few Kindle clones hit the market.
Read [New York Times]
Read [Amazon]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
The password is "cannes". I'll turn it off when I wake up.
Trevor Kaufman of design haus Schematic passed along this shiny, produced video showing off their new "Touchwall" project that's the sequel to a previous multitouch panel they built for Cannes last year. As it happens, we're the first to get a look at it.
Multitouch is in a weird spot. It's in our phones. It's in big projects like the Touchwall. But it's not in our home machines yet (for the most part, excepting Tablet PC users and a few HP and Asus customers). So kinks are still there for the working out, and that's a lot of what Schematic has been working on.
For instance, how do you type in a username and password on a big public wall? For Touchwall, you don't—you swipe an RFID badge on the screen.
What about letting multiple users access the system at once? Schematic solved that problem by letting that be possible.
Because Schematic is a design and special projects group, they aren't shy to crow about their fancy acheivents. (Kaufman said we should think of the Touchwall "not as a standalone device, but as a new technology paradigm", which implies a unique technical challenge: What does the Touchwall do when you get sick all over it?) But these are really interesting problems they're solving, and if these sort of interfaces really are the public access terminals of our future airports and Cinnabons, I look forward to greasing them up.
True Ventures backed Socialcast is launching adopting the freemium model for its FriendFeed-like collaboration and social network SaaS for businesses. A finalist for the 2009 Crunchies Award for “Best Bootstrapped Startup,” Socialcast is a communication tool businesses can use to incorporate social networking with real-time messaging to share knowledge across enterprises.
Socialcast’s software combines social bookmarking features, Twitter-like microblogging and FriendFeed-like streaming into one platform. And the software integrates with other social networks including Facebook, Twitter, and Del.icio.us. Socialcast can also import activity from your iPhone, Gmail account and YouTube. The best part is that all of this activity is private, making Socialcast a competitive program for real-time, internal communication within businesses.
The new version of Socialcast will become even more like FriendFeed, including real-time activity streams complete with real-time track functionality that allows user’s to stay updated on subjects of interest, groups, projects, keywords, etc. Socialcast will also be rolling out an Adobe AIR desktop app, as well as the in-browser software. While the app is useful, we’ve complained in the past about the strange quirks and bugs in Adobe AIR.
The software, which used to be $1 per user per month, will not be completely free for an unlimited amount of users but businesses can choose to add paid features to Socialcast. This includes the ability to see analytics and mine data from a group’s network, providing a tag cloud and stats on which employees communicate most and least often.
Another premium feature is a consultancy service provided by Socialcast on how to help employees adopt and deploy the technology (which doesn’t seem that difficult so this may not be worth paying for). For a extra fee, users can also choose to put Socialcast behind a firewall for extra protection.
Socialcast is similar in some ways to Yammer, a winner at last year’s TechCrunch 50, is a similar Twitter-like microblogging and communication platform for businesses that has gained popularity. But Socialcast seems to have a lot more bells and whistles than Yammer in its interface. Cubetree also offers a social network and microblogging platform for the enterprise. And of course there’s the mysterious and hyped Google Wave.
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Madrid, Spain-based eRepublik, makers of what the startup refers to as a ‘massive online social strategy game’ (MOSS), has just raised €2 million - approx. $2.8 million - in Series A funding from AGF Private Equity. The company had previously raised up to €750,000 in seed funding from the VC firm and a host of angel investors, bringing the total invested to €2.75 million or a little over $3.8 million.
eRepublik, its first MOSS, is set in a browser-based mirrored version of the real world in which players (called citizens) can participate in politics, set economic policy, start businesses, engage in wars with other countries and interact socially with other players while they’re at it. The company pitches the virtual world to have an edge over other strategy games played online because it’s not nearly as time-consuming; 15 minutes per day they say should suffice.
According to the company, traffic numbers are going through the roof: the eRepublik website is said to have received over 3.7 million visits in May, with citizens from some 200 countries having spent over 55 million minutes and generating 95 million page views navigating the virtual world during that month. Pretty impressive for a small European company (eRepublik Labs only has 30 employees).
The fresh funding will be used to extend eRepublik in terms of new features: eRepublik co-founder and CEO Alexis Bonte says they’re only at about 25% of what the game should become in the near future. The company is also expanding the eRepublik platform into other languages - the company just launched a Spanish language version this month - and is busy preparing the launch of multiple new games.
Here’s a video of Bonte interviewing Guillaume Latour, a partner at AGF PE who will be joining the startup’s board:
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The Israelis are working on this rather creepy robot snake, a reconnaissance device which fitfully flips and flaps across almost any terrain and captures some rather clear video along the way thanks to the big camera embedded in its head. So creepy is it that it seems to have startled the BBC reporter into this rather splendid description: “It’s able to cross incredible distances and slither and turn and twist through caves and tunnels and, and fields.”
This is a line worthy of Doctor Seuss himself, and fairly conjures up a nightmare world inhabited by writhing robots as they slide through the underbrush, watching our every move. Shudder. Of course, Hollywood will surely make use of this device, most likely in Terminator Snakes on a Plane or some such thing. For more, and better, movie suggestions, see Wired.com writer John Scott Lewinski’s “Top 5 Hollywood Answers to Israel’s New ‘Robot Snake’”.
Israel’s ‘latest battlefield weapon’ [BBC]
See Also:
From Motorola Dynatac to Apple iPhone, Karl Bean’s amazing matrioshka models detail the history of cellphone design from 1983 to what looks like 2007 (that’s a first-generation iPhone if we’re not mistaken). In between are some of the most influential and popular handsets from the intervening 24 years.
Without looking at the Google, I’m going to see how many I can name. Second in is the Nokia Cityman from 1987, second from right is the Razr, before that is the Nokia 3310 (a slightly squat version). The one in the very center looks like an old Motorola I used to have, and of course we have the Dynatac and iPhone bookending them all. Anyone recognize the others? Answers in the comments.
Product page [Creative Review via Tina Paterson]
My esteemed colleague MG Siegler just posted about an admittedly quite in-your-face campaign from Microsoft down under, criticizing Redmond for a ‘pathetic’ attempt at trying to make people switch from using whatever browser other than IE they’re using at the moment in exchange for a chance to win $10,000. I don’t necessarily disagree - it’s fair to say there are far better ways to market browsers than covert bribery and making the competition look like bad eggs - but it doesn’t really surprise me and it won’t work anyway.
But do the browser wars us geeks follow so closely matter to John Doe at all?
Here’s a video some NY-based Google employees put up on YouTube a while ago, titled ‘What is a browser?’:
Pretty funny, and as Orli Yakuel said on Twitter, it kind of puts these browser wars (IE8! Safari! Firefox! Chrome! Opera!) in a whole different perspective.
Note the difference in culture, though. While Microsoft is trying to lure people away from using browsers like Firefox or Chrome with cold hard cash (or at least a chance to get some of that), Google employees don’t make a big fuzz about letting people use the brand names of competitors in their videos and they humorously handle the fact that none of the people interviewed knew what Google Chrome is to begin with.
And by the way, the guy that said he’s probably not the right one to ask because he’s not into computers that much, is not that far off:
“I don’t know, I guess the Internet is just where you, you know, find anything and I guess you browse the same way.”
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One day I’ll get to stop writing this, because Twitter is slowly starting to sketch out some revenue plans. But for now, it still holds true: Almost all of the money Twitter is generating is being generated by companies other than Twitter. They’re members of the growing ecosystem of companies that base their business on the microblogging service but don’t pay Twitter a dime.
Here’s another one: Pontiflex, a lead generation startup that hoovers up names and other other info from users that visit its network of publishers, then sells the data to marketers. The Brooklyn-based company is rolling out a Twitter product that lets marketers compile a list of interested Twitter users.
Sound simple? It is. All Pontiflex is doing is adding a Twitter “handle” field to its lead generation forms (see example to the right). Armed with that data, a marketer can follow Twitterers who say they’re interested in their product, and …. not much else.
Since the users aren’t actually signing up to “follow” any of the marketers, said marketers can’t send them direct messages. The marketers could try to “at reply” their leads — the equivalent of shouting out the name of someone you think might be at a loud cocktail party, but who you can’t actually see. But that’s about it.
So what’s that information worth? Depends, says Pontiflex CEO Zephrin Lasker. Probably more than an email address, but less than a phone number He says pricing will depend on clients, volume, etc, but he figures he’ll be able to sell each Twitter handle to his consumer packaged goods clients for a couple bucks a pop. Call it anywhere from 50 cents to $5 per name.
Per usual, Twitter won’t see a penny of that.
Like most other Twitter ecosystem ideas, this one only works if Twitter really crosses over from novelty to mainstream, and stays there. And the jury’s still out.
But in the meantime, marketers want in on the new hotness, and Lasker is happy to oblige. “This is one of those things that people don’t know how to participate in, but they want to be there,” he says. “So that’s where we can help.”
Also, just because we’re talking about leads, and I use any excuse I can get, here’s Alec Baldwin’s awesome “Always Be Closing” speech from “Glengarry Glen Ross”. Warning! Contains salty sales language.
Chino district's error delays summer break by 34 school days for some students (via Neatorama)
"We made an error on the minimum days of about five minutes," said Dickson Principal Sue Pederson. "Realistically, that's our accounting mistake as adults. We're unfortunately making the children pay for it by making them give up their summer."Students at each school exceeded the state's requirement of at least 54,000 minutes of annual classroom time, but the problem arose in the district's minimum days. Schools typically have one shortened day per week, allowing teachers to use the remaining time for planning and parent conferences. Under state law, these days must be at least 180 minutes, and the daily average classroom time over 10 consecutive days must be 240 minutes.
An internal audit in early May discovered that 34 minimum days had been 175 minutes at Dickson and 170 at Rolling Ridge, said district spokeswoman Julie Gobin. That adds up to a shortage of 170 and 340 minutes, respectively, which could be made up in one or two school days. But under state law, these too-short days do not count at all, meaning that all 34 must be made up to avoid a state penalty of more than $7 million.
"The penalties for not meeting the instructional time requirements are high, much higher than just making up of the time," said Hilary McLean, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education. "It was the intent of the Legislature to make the penalties so stiff [in order] to discourage districts from shaving off minutes here and there."
Palm’s cheeky but gutsy addition of iTunes syncing to the Pre was always at the mercy of Apple’s engineers, if not its lawyers. In a support document updated yesterday, though, Apple has made its first move in what we expect to be a long cat and mouse game.
Right now, Palm Media Sync will “transfer DRM-free music, photos and videos to your Palm Pre” from iTunes. Apple isn’t happy.
Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players. [emphasis added]
That’s about as clear as anything gets from Apple, and if you’re using a Pre with iTunes, make sure to switch off automatic software updates and wait a few days to see if any new versions break things. It no longer seems to be a question of “if” but of “when?”
iTunes: About unsupported third-party digital media players [Apple via ★]
See Also:
I love the range of Microsoft’s campaigns to get people to use Internet Explorer 8. They spread from offering to feed the homeless if you download it, to offering you the chance at $10,000 dollars. It’s quite impressive, really.
I think we all know my feelings about Microsoft using charity in a misleading way to drive IE8 downloads, but this latest promotion is just kind of pathetic. Microsoft has a campaign in Australia to give away $10,000 that it has buried “somewhere on the Internet.” But the catch is that in order to find this money, you need to be using IE8. Apparently, if you stumble upon the site where Microsoft placed it using that browser, you’ll get some sort of notification and the money is yours.
Sadly, I don’t have IE8, so instead I get this rather rude message on the page: “But you’ll never find it using that browser. So get rid of it, or get lost.” That’s a nice FU to Mac users who don’t even have the option to use IE. Not that it should be surprising.
What else is interesting about this campaign is that it’s also directly tied to Twitter. Microsoft is suggesting that users who wish to play this IE8 treasure hunt also follow @tengrand_IE8 on Twitter to get daily clues.
Finally, at the bottom of the page it reads, “Tell your friends. It’s not as stupid as it sounds.” At least they acknowledge that it sounds stupid.
Actually though, it’s not that stupid, it’s just kind of desperate. If Microsoft really wants to get people to use IE8 it should rely less on tacky gimmicks and more on making a great product. If you do that, the users will follow — and you won’t even have to pay them.
[thanks Andy]
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If you were to distill Facebook down to its core magic, you’d have Twitter’s real time news stream with a really expensive-to-maintain photo site bolted on.
And while Twitter isn’t exactly posing much of a current threat, Facebook isn’t taking any chances. Just as Friendster and MySpace tried to buy Facebook in the early days (and nearly did), Facebook is now trying to take Twitter out. First was the acquisition attempt. Then came a focus on real time content streams. Today we say phase 3 - a search engine for public status updates and other content that a small percentage of users are able to test.
Next week, we hear, phase 4 of Facebook’s systematic attack on Twitter is scheduled for beta testing: the Everyone Button.
Facebook currently has complicated privacy settings to let users control who sees what content they post. There are 27 different settings for most Facebook content, plus another 17 for applications. Most users don’t bother.
If Facebook is going to leapfrog Twitter and become the place for the real time news stream, they need more than a new user interface and a search engine (they must be livid to see things like this - Twitter will forever be associated with the civil unrest in Iran, just the most recent example). They need public content as well. And that means encouraging users to post at least some of their content publicly.
The current privacy settings don’t allow for specific status updates and other messages to be treated differently than other messages. That’s going to change. Users will be presented with a variety of privacy choices every time a message is posted to Facebook - everyone, friends and networks, friends of friends and friends. They’ll also be allowed to customize setting further.
But the top choice, and the one most people will choose, is “Everyone.” That means you can have an entirely private profile but occasionally choose (or, Facebook hopes, always choose) to have status messages, links, photos, events, etc. be public and findable in that shiny new search engine.
It’s not clear that Facebook will be able to quickly convince its users to make content public. Just a couple of years ago there were revolts over the launch of the news steam itself, and it wasn’t all that long ago that college students were super not happy about all the old people being let in. But none of that matters. Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg’s world, and we just live in it. He’ll bend us all to his will.
Watch your back, Twitter. I hear Phase 5 is a doozy.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I really want to like the Kindle, but I'm having a hard time feeling good about the device for so long as Amazon refuses to answer these three basic questions:
1. Is there anything in the Kindle EULA that prohibits moving your purchased DRM-free Kindle files to a competing device?
2. Is there anything in the Kindle file-format (such as a patent or trade-secret) that would make it illegal to produce a Kindle format-reader or converter for a competing device?
3. What flags are in the DRM-free Kindle format, and can a DRM-free Kindle file have its features revoked after you purchase it?
No one at Amazon will answer these questions. I've asked them of my contact there, a manager who wrote me to tell me about the existence of Amazon's DRM-free option for Kindles, and he hasn't replied to my questions over a period of several months and several re-asks. Then, an O'Reilly exec asked Amazon to clarify this, as O'Reilly is releasing all its books as DRM-free editions for the Kindle, and he, too, has been stonewalled. Then I wrote to their press office, on behalf of the Guardian newspaper, and they didn't even deign to reply with a simple "no comment." Just radio silence.
Just as with Audible, Amazon's DRM-locked audiobook division (which has the monopoly on providing audiobooks through iTunes as well), I want to like this stuff. Audible's got a great catalog and reasonable prices. The Kindle, too, seems like a perfectly pleasant little device. But Audible requires mandatory DRM on all its files (my Amazon contact said that this has changed, but refused to answer any followup questions on the subject), and Amazon won't tell you what the rules of the road are for your "DRM-free" Kindle books. Given how crummy the license terms are on the "DRM-free" MP3s Amazon sells, I'm very cautious about this.
Please, Amazon, open up. Tell your customers what they're buying.
Amazon is pleased to make available to you for download an archive file of the machine readable source code ("Source Code") corresponding to modified software packages used in the Kindle device. By downloading the Source Code, you agree to the following:Source Code Notice (via Engadget)AMAZON AND ITS AFFILIATES PROVIDE THE SOURCE CODE TO YOU ON AN "AS IS" BASIS WITHOUT REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. YOU EXPRESSLY AGREE THAT YOUR USE OF THE SOURCE CODE IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK. TO THE FULL EXTENT PERMISSIBLE BY APPLICABLE LAW, AMAZON AND ITS AFFILIATES DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. AMAZON AND ITS AFFILIATES WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING FROM THE USE OF THE SOURCE CODE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, AND CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES.
The semantic web platform, OpenAmplify, is today launching its new community area to encourage more collaboration in developing semantic tools for the web. And alongside the launch, it has a new promotion to hopefully improve Gmail.
The community area is exactly what you'd think it would be: An area for people with like-minded thoughts about the semantic web to gather and hash out ideas. The semantic web, of course, deals with looking beyond simple links that make up the web, to try and understand a deeper meaning and context behind that content. The development of the semantic web has been what OpenAmplify is trying to foster using its Natural Language Processing technology.
So far, OpenAmplify highlights three things that its members have built:
As many already know, John Malone has been a cable legend since he first ran Tele-Communications Inc. back in the early 1970s.
Besides being there at the founding of many channels, the Liberty Media (LCAPA) chairman’s influence put most of them on the map and his forceful business skills willed cable into becoming a key consumer medium for entertainment and news.
Malone talked about that experience onstage at the seventh D: All Thing Digital and how it mirrors what is going on in now as more content is being distributed on the Internet. And, more importantly, he discussed how it might or might not be paid for.
You should listen, because Malone is a genuine media pioneer who could teach Web players a thing or two.
Here’s the full D7 video of the session:
Apple is really, really excited about iPhone OS 3.0’s ability to send and receive MMS messages. So excited, in fact, that they didn’t even notice the glaring red error icons lingering in their promotional screenshots.
See, when you’re sending a text or picture message on iPhone OS 3.0 and something goes awry, a little red icon pops up next to the failed message. Its primary purpose is letting you know something broke, but it doubles as the button to resend the message. In Apple’s US store, the error icons are nowhere to be seen. But on the UK page? There they are, clear as day.
Sure, Apple UK might have just decided that this newfound error alert system was a worthwhile feature to passively show off without any mention whatsoever. Or not.
[Thanks Chris!]
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Up until now, if you wanted to have artwork as a background on your iPhone, it was necessary to buy clipart, which was generally pretty amateur and expensive. It was convenient to get them via the iTunes store, of course, but not very economical. Mobile art site “Start Mobile” is changing all this by licensing art from underground (but still recognizable) artists. They’ve also added a significant amount of functionality to the way the artwork is displayed, almost turning your iPhone into a portable gallery. I took a look at some of the art available, and I have to say it’s pretty cool stuff.
From the press release:
THE DAYS OF PAYING $1.99 FOR A SINGLE CLIP-ART MOBILE WALLPAPER ARE OVER
“Over the last five years, mobile consumers globally have purchased billions of wallpapers to personalize their mobile devices,” according to John Doffing, the founder of START MOBILE. “With the launch of our first artist wallpaper galleries for the iPhone, mobile consumers are able to get decidedly MORE compelling content - for HALF the typical retail price of a single static wallpaper.”
START MOBILE iPhone Galleries each feature a bundled collection of curated artist wallpapers, delivered as 99¢ iPhone applications. “Rather than clip-art wallpapers of sports cars and bikini models, START MOBILE is bringing curated collections of NEW ART at a NEW PRICE to iPhone users around the world,” observed Christina Samala, START MOBILE’s Creative Director. “We are using technology to bring art directly to the people, inspired by what Maxfield Parrish did a century ago using what was then the cutting-edge technology of mass reproduction.”
START MOBILE art galleries for the iPhone feature exclusive images created by the world’s premier emerging and underground artists, delivered as mobile wallpapers directly to the picture library of the iPhone. All the mobile art wallpapers are optimized for display on the iPhone, and all the images included in the gallery can be ‘flipped’ to reveal additional information about the respective artists. “If you are in a real-world art gallery or museum and you see something special, you can learn more about it by reading the placard,” observed Doffing. “We attempted to emulate this experience within the context of our mobile art galleries for the iPhone.”
START MOBILE galleries for the iPhone also include a unique PICTURE FRAME feature. Simply tap the PLAY icon on the toolbar, and the iPhone is transformed into a digital picture frame which cycles through every image in the gallery at five-second intervals. The START MOBILE PICTURE FRAME over-rides the auto-lock setting so you can enjoy an arty slideshow while the iPhone is docked and charging.
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Following up on our earlier story, it looks like Apple is holding back delivery of the iPhone 3G S units that we pre-ordered over the web, until Friday. This, despite the fact that they’re already in the United States, and many had been scheduled to be delivered tomorrow.
Earlier, several reports came in of disappearing delivery dates from online shipping trackers. That missing date has now been replaced on numerous people’s invoices with the following:
“THE RECEIVER REQUESTED A HOLD FOR A FUTURE DELIVERY DATE. UPS WILL ATTEMPT DELIVERY ON DATE REQUESTED “
Yes, you are the receiver, and no, you probably didn’t request the hold. Instead, this is likely Apple’s way of telling the delivery service not to deliver the package early. Not surprisingly, reports indicate that the “date requested” for delivery is Friday, the official iPhone 3G S launch day.
A lot of people who had pre-ordered were excited to learn their new devices may be here early, but Apple, it seems, is one step ahead. Perhaps if you’re able to track down the UPS warehouse where yours is being held, they’ll let you pick it up early. Let us know if you successfully do that.
At least you can still play with the 3.0 software today and tomorrow, despite earlier rumors that it may be held back too.
[photo: flickr/darin moran] [thanks Gee-Hwan]
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By Richard Waters, Tech Blog, FT.com
There is something very uplifting about Opera’s vision of a Web that turns every user back into a node on the network, with all the rights and responsibilities that implies (this is the blog post today that explains the idea, and this is an inspirational video.)
The idea behind Opera Unite, in brief: every PC would act as a server on the Web.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Jesse Walker, Managing Editor, Reason.com
For decades, record companies have been begging radio stations to play their music. Sometimes they do more than beg: Few sorts of scandal reappear as reliably in the music business as a payola scandal, in which agents of the labels are caught bribing broadcasters to air their wares.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By James Turner, Contributing Editor, O’Reilly Radar
Google sometimes finds itself at a difficult crossroad of wanting to make as much information available to as many people as possible, while still trying to obey the laws of the countries they operate in. I recently had a chance to talk to Marissa Mayer, who started at Google as their first female engineer, and has now risen to the ranks of vice president in charge of some of Google’s most critical product areas, such as search, maps, and Chrome.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Russell Bates says: "Check out these late-50s commercials for a Washington DC coffee company, starring early iterations of the Muppets doing violent things to each other"
From 1957 to 1961, Henson made 179 commercials for Wilkins Coffee and other Wilkins products, including Community Coffee and Wilkins Tea. The ads were so successful and well-liked that they sparked a series of remakes for companies in other local markets throughout the 1960s. The ads starred the cheerful Wilkins, who liked Wilkins Coffee, and the grumpy Wontkins, who hated it. Wilkins would often do serious harm to Wontkins in the ads -- blowing him up, stabbing him with a knife, and smashing him with a club, among many other violent acts.Shockingly violent coffee commercials starring Muppets
Dylan Thuras is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Dylan is a travel blogger and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Joshua Foer.
So to contrast with the giant industrial holes and moon poop Josh and I have been posting about, I am going to highlight one of my favorite bioluminescent wonders in the world.
Happening right now, and for the next few days the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee will light up as P. Carolinus fireflies begin to blink in beautiful, astonishing unison. The fireflies, who can sense when their neighbor fireflies are flashing and attempt to flash before them, send waves of light to cascading down the Tennessee hillsides. One of the best spots to see them is in one small area, near the Little River Trailhead in Elkmont, TN.
Long thought to be an exclusively Southeast Asian phenomenon, the dazzling behavior was only discovered in an American firefly species (P. Carolinus) in 1992. The American fireflies were first brought to the attention of scientists by a reader of Science News, who thought it odd that an article on Asian firefly synchronicity mentioned nothing about the bugs near her own home. She wrote a letter to a Steven Strogratz, a Cornell mathematician who studies synchronization:
"I am sure you are aware of this, but just in case, there is a type of group synchrony lightning bug inside the Great Smoky Mountain National Park near Elkmont, Tennessee. These bugs "start up" in mid June at 10 pm nightly. They exhibit 6 seconds of total darkness; then in perfect synchrony, thousands light up 6 rapid times in a 3 second period before all going dark for 6 more seconds. "We have a cabin in Elkmont... and as far as we know, it is only in this small area that this particular type of group synchronized lightning bug exists. It is beautiful."
In 1995, scientists confirmed the existence of the Great Smoky Mountain synchronized fireflies, and have subsequently discovered other populations in the Congaree Swamp in South Carolina and other high altitude locations in the Appalachian mountains. As this curious phenomenon remained undiscovered for years, it is quite possible that there are other varieties of fireflies blinking in unison throughout the United States, perhaps even in your own backyard.
More info on the Smokey Mountain fireflies here and here more info on bioluminescent spots around the world on the Atlas bioluminescent spots page.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
iPhone Dev Team vaunted their unending talents with a live video demonstration of yellowsn0w’s
big, bad, unstoppable brother: ultrasn0w.
They’re keeping mum on the details to make sure it’s all still working come Friday’s iPhone 3G S launch, though there’s no saying for sure whether or not this crack will work on Apple’s latest hardware. For every other release to date, however, it should be a breeze. Be on the lookout for a release by the end of the work week.
(Note: The beginning of the video is dead air - skip to the 2 minute mark unless you’re incredibly interested in watching absolutely nothing happen.)
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Boing Boing Video guest correspondent Miles O'Brien checks in with us for an update on the scheduled launch of the Space Shuttle, and on new information about what may have led to the recent Air France crash, and finally, on the confirmation that geese -- yes, geese -- were responsible for the emergency conditions that led to the "miracle on the Hudson" emergency landing.
Follow Miles' coverage of Endeavor's scheduled launch at spaceflightnow.com, or follow him on Twitter: @milesobrien.
Update, 11:15pm PT: From Miles' live-tweeting at the launch site: the space shuttle Endeavour launch has just been postponed because of another leak in the gaseous hydrogen venting system between the launch pad and external fuel tank.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
We’ve been waiting for this. Finally, a developer creates a quality Real-Time Strategy app for the iPhone. No, it wasn’t one of the big iPhone game developers. Instead, it was made by a team of just 5, led by Javier Davalos, who don’t even have their own website (they use this Facebook page for now). Quantum Collapse brings Starcraft-like real-time strategy gameplay to the iPhone… with a few hiccups. Despite the frustrating flaws of the game, Quantum Collapse is a bargain at $3.99 and a game any real-time strategy fan will be happy to have on their iPhone.
The game is like any other real-time strategy (RTS) game in that you are tasked with the job of building an army to protect your base camp, while simultaneously trying to obliterate the enemy’s camp. In Quantum Collapse, you act as the “Administrator” and have a bird’s eye view of the planet in the year 2318. You have Gatherers who are responsible for mining for Xeron, the currency of 2318 (It starts with an X, so it’s from the future.) These gatherers then use the Silicon to build various factories, turrets and buildings around your “command center.” The buildings allow you to train soldiers, tanks and four-legged aliens to fight on your behalf. Basically, your goal is to amass an army the size of Caesar’s and then descend upon the enemy and ruthlessly destroy everything in sight.
Quantum Collapse walks you through a series of missions, each with a completely different flavor and feel. In some missions, your job is to simply defend your base camp for 5 minutes against a seemingly unending barrage of enemy combatants. In other campaigns, you are not even provided with enough resources to build up your army. You have one alien fighter, and your job is to escort an unarmed scientist through hostile territory, carefully eliminating target after target as you wind your way to the final destination. I absolutely loved the diversity of the missions, and thought that the overall design was fantastic.
The experience from level-to-level was great. Davalos really thought through how the user should explore the various features of his RTS environment and crafted the game in a unique and engaging fashion. The storyline that surrounded the mission, along with still-frame cut scenes, was, well, unique. Though not at all professional (there are curse words and colloquial language), it was comical and enjoyable. I found the “The enemy is going to $%#@ you up” language to be refreshing, and only the type of thing you could find from a less established developer like Davalos.
The gameplay was good, but not outstanding. There were some features that the game sorely lacked, which really prevented it from being an A+ game. For example, you are required to build lots and lots of soldiers and attack vehicles in the game. Sometimes you have anywhere from 100-150 units on your screen, so many that you can barely see the ground beneath them. However, there is no easy way to select the ones you want (say, half of the group). And often times, you find yourself manually clicking on each unit and directing them individually. That said, the AI he has developed is solid, and there is a “select all” button, which selects all of the units on your screen. It somewhat avoids the aforementioned problems and you are able to move your army around in a large mass rather easily. It just gets tricky when you want to split the group into two.
Another problem was trying to select/click on buttons. The buttons in the game were too small and I often found myself having to tap my finger on the button two or three times before the game would select the button I wanted to press. I have rather slender fingers, so I can’t imagine what it would be like for someone with bigger hands. At times, this was so bad I was ready to give up and move onto the next review.
Adding a bit of fantasy to the Sci-Fi mix, Davalos has incorporated magic into the combat system. You can build a Research Center which can learn various types of spells that can be used to incinerate (literally) your enemy in flames or defend your base against hostile spells. These spells add a unique twist on the RTS genre, and satiate the narcissism of those who play RTS’s in order to feel like God. The magic feature is definitely interesting, and substantially enhances the gameplay.
However, the graphics were a definite drawback. I know that it is hard to make tiny soldiers on an iPhone screen look good, but the Quantum Collapse environment could have looked much better. Alas, I spent much of the time playing the game wondering: what if Davalos had a full design team? How much fun would this game be? One can only hope that another, more sophisticated RTS game for the iPhone comes out.
Nonetheless, if you like RTS games, you will be elated that this game exists - and that ecstasy will encourage you to overlook the game’s flaws. It is also cheap, and the game has many more features than a traditional $4 game on the App Store. No matter what, Davalos has made one thing clear: the iPhone is a great platform for RTS games (and, well, just about everything else, too). This game will definitely satiate your desire for a solid RTS game, and I would definitely recommend it.
What we like:
What we didn’t like:
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
The word netbook may soon vanish into irrelevance, but the products that resulted from the category are not going away any time soon. Indeed, they’re on the verge of injecting their DNA into a broad swath of the PC market.
Despite their shipments slowing down in the first quarter of 2009, inexpensive and low-powered netbooks are poised for rapid growth as their feature sets continue to mature. Research company International Data Corporation forecasts that the netbook market will more than double by the end of 2009.
“The mini notebook is doing what the notebook did,” said Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC. “It went from a very targeted niche into something that appeals to a greater audience with specialized configurations…. The industry gradually changed and moved away from ‘performance is king,’ and now they want a more personalized experience. Now, customization is king.”
Netbooks — 8- to 10-inch notebooks that typically cost between $200 and $500 — saw a boom in 2008 when manufacturers shipped 11.6 million units worldwide. Last year, netbooks were considered some of the hottest gadgets in the tech industry, with several major manufacturers including Toshiba, Dell, HP and Samsung rolling out offerings in this device category. Some analysts say the poor condition of the economy was the primary factor driving the success of netbooks.
However, netbook sales have already slowed down in 2009, and shipments are falling below manufacturers’ expectations. Taiwanese manufacturer Asus, for example, expected to ship 1 million netbooks in the first quarter of 2009, according to a report in DigiTimes. But IDC’s tracking indicates Asus shipped only 700,000 units that quarter.
Shim noted, however, that first-quarter numbers are generally low compared to the rest of the year for any tech manufacturer; most sales come from the holiday and back-to-school seasons. Also, companies are beginning to shift focus onto a category called “consumer ultralow-voltage notebooks” — notebooks with 12- or 13-inch screens containing the same low-powered, inexpensive guts as netbooks. These devices compensate for some of the shortcomings of netbooks — cramped keyboards and small screens — while offering impressive battery life and a light weight of about 3 pounds for a modest price range of $500 to $700. (See our review of Samsung’s $550, $12-inch NC20 notebook as an example.)
If CULV notebooks are considered in the same device category as netbooks, then the netbook category is on track for massive growth. Shim clarified IDC’s definition of a mini notebook: 7- to 12-inch notebooks powered by an Intel Atom processor, capable of running a full operating system such as Windows XP. IDC forecasts manufacturers will ship 26.5 million “mini notebooks” by the end of 2009, or more than double the 11.6 million units shipped in 2008. The mini notebook category has claimed roughly 17 percent of the worldwide notebook market, and IDC expects this number to remain consistent over the next few years.
Michael Gartenberg, a technology strategist at Interpret, has high expectations of these new notebooks. He explained that the more netbooks’ capabilities increase, the more people will buy them. And bigger screens and full-size keyboards definitely add to capability, he said. The notebook space will get very interesting once CULV notebooks drop to $300 or $400, Gartenberg added.
One could say the netbook is “failing” if one doesn’t consider a CULV notebook to be a netbook — but it’s purely semantics at that point. The least that everyone can agree on is that CULV notebooks evolved from netbooks.
“We may just be beginning to see the end of the pure ‘netbook’ era, as vendors start bringing devices to market with 12-inch screens, full-size keyboards and larger hard drives,” Gartenberg said. “The concept of the netbook is beginning to vanish as a thing itself. By the end of the year it’s just going to be called a cheap PC.”
At the recent All Things Digital tech conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called netbooks “revolutionary” devices. But perhaps they would be more accurately described as evolutionary.
In addition to CULV notebooks, netbooks are inspiring other product types as well, said Brad Linder, owner of Liliputing, a blog devoted to compact notebooks. For example, some manufacturers are experimenting with the concept of the “smartbook”: netbook-like devices that run smartphone operating systems such as Android. Given the little power required to run a smartphone OS, the smartbook concept could lead to even thinner notebooks than the ones we see today, as well as incredibly long battery life.
“Netbooks will probably stop being called netbooks at some point: The lines [between netbooks and notebooks] are becoming less distinct as the days go by, and there’s going to be a continuum, “Linder said. “What really happened in the last year or so is [manufacturers] delivered good-enough computing at low cost. And It’s what a lot of people have been waiting for.”
See Also:
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Video, DVD/DVR/Blu-ray, HDTV, Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Web, Websites
Any self-respecting Transformers fan knows about the impending release of the “Revenge of the Fallen” movie set to premiere in theaters on June 24. What separates this from a normal movie is the fact that LG is planning several events and a phone debut in an attempt to make the movie and the company itself more popular. For example, LG started a new website and even made a special edition Versa phone for the occasion.
First off, Peter Cullen did the voice over of a 30 second advertisement for LG and the movie. As you probably know, Cullen is the voice of Optimus Prime. In addition, the advertisement features Optimus Prime and a Deception from the summer movie, as well as the LG Versa. The ad aired on television starting on June 1. In addition, LG and Verizon are holding a sweepstakes, in which customers have to send one of three prerecorded messages by Optimus Prime to one of their contacts in Friends and Family. The prize for the sweepstakes is an all expense paid trip to Los Angeles, where they can view the movie. Moreover, they will receive 10 LG phones to give away to friends and family, a 55-inch LG TV to also give away to a family member (I’m just kidding about giving it away), and a LG Blu-ray system. All in all, the sweepstakes is pretty enticing and the winner will be very lucky.
Like I previously mentioned, LG has created a special edition phone of the LG Versa, and then is set to retail shorty only through consumer promotions. There will probably only be a few of these phones available. Of course, no phone is a special edition unless it comes with features that can’t be found in the original. The “Transformed” Versa comes with exclusive voice tones by Cullen, preloaded ring tones, preloaded wallpapers, and the original Transformers movie loaded onto a microSD card. To keep the phone safe, it comes with a specially designed case, which resembles the allspark cube found in the movie.
Now, the website they released is called UncoverLG.com, which is actually a game website based upon the movie. The whole idea is to get movie fanatics excited about the film, LG phones (specifically the Versa), and Verizon. I went on the website and took a look at the game - it seems pretty cool but I haven’t actually played it, so don’t take my word for it. All in all, this seems to be a successful advertising venture for LG and Transformers.
Read [LG Press Release]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
AP - The shutdown of U.S. analog TV service on Friday appears to have gone relatively smoothly, but as expected, a lot of viewers are having problems getting the stations they want.
Marketing research company ComScore recently conducted a survey highlighting socioeconomic differences between iPhone and iPod Touch users.
First spotted by Fortune 500’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt, the survey discovered the following about the general iPhone and iPod Touch population:
But more interesting are the results illuminating what iPhone users and iPod Touch owners don’t have in common:
And other more general observations:
Pretty neat, and the results make plenty of sense. I’m surprised iPod Touch owners shop for gadgets more than iPhone owners, though. I always thought the iPhone was a status symbol for spend-happy tech geeks — more so than the iPod Touch. Your thoughts?
See Also:
Photo: Steve Rhodes/Flickr
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
How awesome does Destroy Build Destroy look? It's a new show from CN Real (apparently some Carton Network spinoff) that lets two teams of kids compete to break things, build new things from the wreckage, and then break them all over again. It's like a pint-sized Junkyard Wars with full-size explosions or a Mythbusters without the veil of junk science. [via Laughing Squid]
Apparently they’re not too worried over there among the Symbianites. Despite growing pressure from ever-more-inexpensive smartphones, they don’t seem to care much about competing. Maybe it’s overconfidence from years on the top, or maybe they have an ace up their sleeve. I think it’s a little of both; they don’t think they need an ace, because they’ve seen what everyone else’s ace seems to do when it goes up against the iPhone: break. Perhaps Nokia is secure in their belief that they don’t need to compete with the iPhone, webOS, and Android — at least, not yet.
The move to open-source Symbian is a forward-looking one, but it’s a slow-paced project and not something most people will see the benefits of until much later. And when one of their biggest competitors was open source from the start, those benefits seem pretty questionable. That said, I’d like to think that the people at Symbian know what they’re doing, since they’ve been doing it for so damn long. I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
At the Vitra Design Museum until the 12th of July, "Global Street Food" is an exhibition of all the carts and boats and strange contraptions used by street vendors around the world. Today and Tomorrow has a image gallery and video preview.
My favorite thing at E3 in Los Angeles has always been the Mexican vendors who linger around the outside of the Staples Center, cooking bacon-wrapped hot dogs that they cook on shopping baskets topped with jerry-rigged griddles made from aluminum sheet pans. I asked the guy once how much it cost him to build one and he told it me it was around $20—cheap enough to just leave if the police came by to chase him off for selling food without a license. [via Kottke]
So this isn't new, it's actually been available since late 2007 as far as I can tell, but enough people are tweeting about it today, that's it's worth mentioning again. Amazon has a page where you can download the Kindle's source code.
What is new today is that the Kindle DX, its new larger reader, has also been added to the mix of downloadable code. And you can also download the code to all the previous firmware version of both the first and second generation Kindles.
Color space is something most people never have to deal with, and for good reason: like the fruit from that infamous tree, knowledge of color gamuts and response curves will eject you forever from the comfortable Eden of ignorance. Media professionals, however, like photographers, printers, and effects artists, absolutely have to know (and use) the differences between the popular color spaces, and one of the components for doing so is a display which supports those color spaces.
Why a pro would want to use a 42″ 1080p HDTV instead of a nice color-checked monitor is beyond me, but I suppose it can’t hurt JVC to offer such a device. Unfortunately, the fact that it doesn’t entirely succeed in its mission may be a death blow, as exacting professionals won’t exactly flock to a first-generation product that doesn’t do what it says.
I can be picky about colors sometimes, but since I distribute my images and media on the internet (as you likely do), that means fidelity is degraded and color space data cannot be relied upon to be used by another’s display or browser. We’re okay with that because we’re just doing it for fun, but if you’re a professional photographer and your shot is going to be on a billboard or displayed in a bunch of stores, your income depends on the quality of that image. Therefore color space is essential for them and their display better be capable of showing it. If there is, say, a lack of saturation in the greens, as there is in this JVC display, that means that it’s unfit for duty. You or I might use it for a year and never notice, but it’s their business to see it and I guarantee they will.
Add to this chromatic inadequacy the asking price of over $2300, and you’re looking at an expensive proposition that doesn’t entirely follow through. It doesn’t mean the entire concept is flawed, but I don’t see many professionals shelling out for something like this when they could be picking up a new lens, a better tripod head, or a tried-and-true monitor. Hopefully we’ll see more of these “color-accurate” TVs coming out, but I’d skip this introductory generation.
Section: Computers, Security, Features, Originals
This week let’s take a look at what’s happening in the news. It seems malware is everywhere!
Our first report comes from England where it’s been discovered that hundreds of government run websites have been hacked. Anyone visiting them is redirected to either a porn site or a shady pharmacy hawking discount Viagra. What’s particularly disturbing about the attacks is that many of the websites hit belong to elementary schools and are used regularly by students. That means children are being redirected to the porn and Viagra sites!
The U.K. government hasn’t made any comment on the attacks but experts say the sites were likely hit because of their high rankings in search results and were easily attacked because of poor programming and/or security. As is the case in most website attacks, SQL injections and cross site scripting (the cause of most of Twitter’s ills as well!) were to blame.
Malware is also in the news here in the U.S. as a new wave of malicious spam has been released. This time it attempts to capitalize on the Air France tragedy which killed over 200 people last month. Subject lines promise exclusive news about the crash and the links within direct people to fake news videos. Any attempt to view them results in a pop up saying a codec needs updating, but what really downloads is a Trojan that steals passwords and other sensitive information.
Additionally, the same cybercriminals are using black hat SEO techniques to poison search results related to the plane crash. This is causing malicious sites to pop up high in search rankings. Anyone who clicks on them is redirected to a site that attempts to push scareware on them in the form of a rogue anti-virus program.
Finally, malware has even found its way onto ATMs! Security researchers at SpiderLabs have confirmed that malware was found on an ATM in Eastern Europe and may be making its way to other ATMs around the globe. The program records the information on the magnetic strip of any card inserted into the machine it is on. To be installed someone would need access to a port inside the machine meaning it could be an inside job or that of a hacker who is also a very good lock picker.
There have been no reports of the malware being found on ATMs here in the U.S. How can you protect yourself? Stick to ATMs from well known banks and avoid the generic ones found in convenience stores and other high traffic areas. Also keep a very close eye on your accounts so you can spot any trouble and nip it in the bud.
That’s all for this week! Keep those shields up!
Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Leah Buechley designed this hoodie at the MIT Media Lab using a LilyPad Arduino, power supply, LEDs, tiny speaker and iron conductive fabric.*
I've looked at a ton of light up garments, El Wire, etc. This is one of the most tastefully- and artfully-done articles of clothing I've seen as of late. Instead of hiding the electronics, the graphic on the back integrates, even highlights the main board.
Really well done, imho.
The how-to up on Instructables is thorough and straightforward. Considering a handmade touch-sensitive hoodie can fetch $6 300 (not kidding!), you really should try going for it on your own.
*Here's a good assessment of various types of conductive thread.
Jeff “Michael Stipe Awake” Bezos told a set of analysts that the Kindle - as a physical object - and the ebook store are two different and separate animals and that the device team is completely separate from the ebook sales business. Why is this important? It means that Bezos sees his future in the selling of bits, not e-ink screens, and the addition of mobile readers for the iPhone and other mobile devices is not a fluke - it’s a business plan.
“The device team has the job of making the most remarkable purpose-built reading device in the world,” Mr. Bezos said. “We are going to give the device team competition. We will make Kindle books, at the same $9.99 price points, available on the iPhone, and other mobile devices and other computing devices.”
This is cold comfort for those who might have already paid $300 or more for a Kindle but it also means that more and more folks can join the paperless revolution.
It makes economic sense for Amazon to pitch and drive ebook adoption. It costs nothing to ship and ebook and customer service costs are nil. The only real issue is becoming the first mover in what could be a large and spacious market, which Amazon has already done. I look forward to being able to read my Kindle books anywhere, including my iPhone, although I don’t welcome the readers becoming obsolete.
It's funny how the right celebrity can make a product suddenly seem more sexy. I'm not 5'9" with hazel eyes, but Heidi Klum is, and we both use the same bluetooth headset: the Plantronics Discovery 925 in glittery gold. It's actually a great piece of equipment &mdash it's lightweight, the battery lasts forever, and it's simple v-shaped design is easy to stick in and out of the ear. It also comes with a really pretty rectangular gold case that doubles as a charging station. $150 might sound like a bit much for an earpiece, but it's nothing compared to what you'd have to pay to replicate the rest of Heidi's outfit, even if she's just hanging out a white sweatsuit.
Product page [Plantronics]
This post is part of a theme day: BBG on Fashion
This is the second piece of government or state-related literature that in the past few days has equated Internet access with access to clean water and electricity. (The first was that French court ruling.) That Digital Britain report that I’ve been mentioning for the past few weeks finally came out today. The big headline: Yes, the Internet is Really Important Now. I suggest you at least read the executive summary [PDF]; that’s what it’s there for.
There’s really not much to add to what’s already been written by Gordon Brown, the prime minister there (for now!), in the Times. There’s a bit of the ol’ “Britain was once great, she shall be great once again, thanks to the Internet,” so be on the lookout for that.
Credit to the Government there, though, for undertaking the effort.
You can find the full report here.
Those tears of joy shed by iPhone loyalists are turning into cries of grief with the announcement by AT&T that it will impose a $200 fee to upgrade to the next-generation iPhone, which lands in stores Friday.
For iPhone 3G users who are not eligible for subsidized pricing, the upgrade “tax” brings the grand total to not $200 or $300 — but a hefty $400 or $500 for the iPhone 3GS, depending on the model (16GB or 32GB, respectively).
But tech geeks and criminal masterminds share one philosophy: They understand there’s a way around everything. You don’t have to pay that extra fee, iPhone 3G customers. Here are a few quick, painless methods to shave off that $200.
Sell your iPhone 3G to Gazelle
Gazelle, an e-junk trader, is offering $200 to $300 for used iPhone 3G handsets, depending on their condition. The site makes it extremely easy to sell your iPhone: Just enter “iPhone 3G” in the search bar, select your model, click “Sell it now,” rate the condition of the phone, mention which of the included accessories you still have and then click “Calculate.” Then, Gazelle will give you an estimate. As you can see in the screenshot above, a 16GB iPhone 3G in perfect condition, including accessories and the instruction manual, will sell for $232. Not bad!
From there on, Gazelle will send you a shipping label to print out. Then you’d pack your iPhone in a box, slap the shipping label onto it, drop the package at a UPS location and wait for payment. Oh, and it gets better — this week you get an extra 10 percent for your iPhone if you use the coupon code “iPhone.” Pretty sweet, huh?
I sold my first-generation MacBook Pro through the site, and I got a pretty good deal. I procrastinated on shipping it out, and Gazelle even sent me a notebook-friendly box to ship it in. After dropping off my MacBook Pro at UPS, I received the promised payment within a week. (If you lie about the product’s condition, of course they’ll dock some dollars off the provided estimate.)
Unlock your iPhone 3G and sell it on Craigslist
This is a pretty obvious option: Stick an ad on Craigslist asking for a reasonable price for your iPhone 3G. Don’t expect much from AT&T customers, though, since Apple is still selling the iPhone 3G for a new low price of $100. Your target market is non-AT&T customers who have intentions to Jailbreak and unlock the iPhone to work with their carrier.
Want to add value to your used iPhone 3G? Jailbreak and unlock the thing yourself, before you put it on Craigslist. To figure out how to do that, visit the Dev-Team Blog, where a group of hackers is providing all the instructions and tools to stick it to the man.
Pay the early termination fee
We’re listing this trick last because it’s the least beneficial. You pay a fee to cancel your AT&T account before the two-year contract is up. Here’s the kicker: The fee is pro-rated; Each month AT&T shaves $5 off your termination fee. That means if you bought the iPhone 3G when it hit stores in July 2008, you’ll be paying $120 rather than the initial $175 termination fee ($175 - $55 = $120). Then, you start a new AT&T contract with a new iPhone 3GS.
With this method, after adding the $120 and the $18 account setup fee, the total for the 16GB iPhone 3GS comes to about $340. That’s $60 less than you’d have to pay normally. The cons: You’re committing to yet another two-year contract with AT&T; sometimes early cancellation is subject to extra fees and a new number, according to Cult of Mac.
Not ideal — and what are you going to do with an extra iPhone lying around anyway? Just sell it with one of the tips listed above.
See Also:
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
"It's smooth. It purs like a kitten. It won't wake up the wife when you're coordinating an outfit for work in the morning... So if you or someone you know is looking to embrace push-button living that would make even the Jetsons envious, this little gem of a gadget is for you."
I remember getting my Dad a motorized neck tie rack back in the 1980s. It ran OK for a while, but the motor died or, at the very least, he never bothered to replace the batteries. Probably because he found the thing useless.
20 years later, there are a handful of these contraptions still being sold. I haven't used any of them personally, but if the quality of the videos, websites and images advertising them are any indication, well, I'm not too certain you should rush out to buy one.
After the jump, check out racks capable of holding more than 70 ties!*
*What fashion forward fella has six dozen ties, belts and/or scarves?!
This post is part of a theme day: BBG on Fashion
Also from Hugogate: 54 ties, 4 belts
Available from Brookstone: "NEW"
Previously available from Brookstone: wood = classy
[via The Domestic Diva]
Available from Pro-Idee: 68 ties, shines "pleasantly"
Previously available from Sharper Image: 72 ties
Previously available from Sharper Image: T-rrific
Available from Walmart: 30 ties
Available from NexusGadgets:30 ties, too
Available from Tecnoregalos: 64 ties, plus 8 belts
Available from Storeshop: Presumably the top opens so you can... wait, huh?
Available from Bagala
The summer time in Tokyo is unbearable due to the heat and humidity me and millions of other people living in this city suffer from between June and September. If you’re a man and have to wear a suit, it’s even worse. Last summer, Japan finally got the deodorant suits which made things a little easier. This year, we get suits with built-in ice packs.
The suits have been announced [JP, PDF] by Japanese fashion company Haruyama as the world’s first of their kind. Marketed as the “New Ice Suit”, buyers get special cooling gel packs for their money. Just put them into the inner pocket near the underarms and you will feel cooler immediately.
As a result, you will sweat and stink less. When you get to the office, just put the cooling gel packs in a fridge and you are ready for the way home later. The graphic above shows just how effective the system is. This is genius.
The only drawback is that the New Ice Suit is Japan-only. Over here, it costs $520 and is offered in 277 stores country-wide.
Syuzi Pakhchyan is an artist-roboticist-fashionista who integrates circuits and motors into everyday fashion. Her book, Fashioning Technology, includes easy-to-follow instructions on things like, how to make a Space Invaders tote bag with eyes that light up when your cell phone rings.
"In the future, our clothes will actually do things, whether we're taking biometric data or downloading visual patterns onto what we're wearing that day," Syuzi tells me over the phone. "It's pretty sci-fi, but it's an interesting space for designers to be working in." It might be a while before haute couture designers put solar panels on evening gowns, but things like snowboarding jackets with speakers and shoes that record run data have existed for a few years already.
Keep reading for an instructional guide on how to make a vibrating cell phone finger puppet.
1. Cut three pieces of the pattern out of felt or fabric in the shape of your cell phone. The first layer will be the top, decorative layer; the second, middle layer will be the circuit layer; and the third layer will be your energy layer.
2. Take a vibrating motor and strip about .5" of insulation off both ends of the wires. Curl the stripped end of the negative (blue) wire into a loop and twist the wire together to secure the loop. Repeat for the positive (red) wire.
3. Position the vibrator in the center of the middle felt layer. Using a sewing needle and conductive thread, loop the thread around the bottom loop of the negative vibrator wire. Continue to sew a straight line towards the center of your fabric. Once you have reached the center, create the first contact point for the soft switch by embroidering a small patch of conductive thread. Knot and cut the thread.
4. Using conductive thread, create the second contact point for the soft switch by embroidering another small patch of conductive thread below the first. These two patches of conductive thread should NOT touch. Continue to sew a path to about 1" from the bottom of your fabric.
5. Grab the sewable battery holder and the third fabric layer. Align the edges of the middle, circuit layer with the back fabric layer and pull your needle from the circuit layer to the back layer. Sew the "--" negative contact of the battery holder securely onto the back fabric. Knot and cut the thread.
6. Using a sewing needle and conductive thread, now loop the thread around the bottom loop of the positive (red) vibrator wire. Continue to sew a straight line towards the bottom of your fabric near the "+" positive contact of the holder, making sure that your sewn traces don't intersect. Again, pull your needle from the circuit layer to the back layer and sew the "+" contact securely onto the fabric. Knot and cut the thread.
7. Using a hole punch, cut out a hole in the center of the top felt layer at the exact same location where your created the conductive contact points for the soft switch. Grab a poof or small pompom. Using conductive thread, create a small contact on one side of the poof. Knot and cut the thread. Using ordinary thread, sew the poof onto the top layer with the conductive patch directly on top of the hole.
8. Align the edges of all three felt layers together. Using embroidery thread, stitch all three layers together.
9. Slip a battery into the holder. When your press down on the poof (closing the circuit), the motor should vibrate.
10. Draw things like keys, screen, and icons on the top layer with permanent markers, and you're done!
This post is part of a theme day: BBG on Fashion
Section: Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Transportation, Reviews
This is the Stanley 100Watt Power Converter for your automobile, currently retailing at Amazon for $24.95.
Pop it out of the package, this one is as simple to work as it can get. For the person on the go, this is a nifty little helper that allows you to keep your gadgets charged on the fly. With all the time we seem to spend on the road nowadays, this can really come in handy to keep your laptop, cellphone, digital cameras, mp3 players and more charged and ready to go. It’s quiet since it does not have a loud fan, which is a bonus.
I simply took it out of the package, plugged it in to my Jeep’s DC outlet (cigarette lighter), and boom! All ready.
I plugged in my laptop. There you go—the connection was set and the laptop was charging. I also tried it with my mp3 player. It worked like a charm. I could definitely see it coming in handy this way, especially if you are on vacation or a road trip, and are taking lots of photos, since many cameras don’t use standard AAs and this way you can recharge as you drive.
You seriously can’t get more simple to use. A funny little story about how I was also able to use it: for whatever quirky reason my radio is on the fritz and we decided to go to the drive-in theater. Yes, you need a radio. Well, there you go. I could plug one in and still actually hear the movie. Nice.
The kids can plug in their game systems on trips so they aren’t wearing down batteries too.
This is a handy little tool for anyone on the road a decent amount of time to keep their gadgets charged up. It works well with all kinds of things that you would plug into a standard household outlet. While I don’t advise plugging your curling iron in and doing your hair as you drive, there are lots of ways you can use it, and it is worth the price.
Product Page: Amazon
Full Story » | Written by Jodie Andrefski for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
If you’re looking to get MMS/Tethering up and working right this second on an iPhone running the developer’s release of OS 3.0, you’re going to need to manually update the carrier file. In past builds of iTunes, performing this update was a matter of holding the shift key and pressing the “Update” button on the iPhone screen. In iTunes 8.2, however, Apple decided to do away with the manual update method - or so it seemed.
Turns out, they just obscured it a little bit. A very little bit. Seriously - it’s one command in the terminal. Kill iTunes, open the terminal (or the Window’s command window), blast in one line, and bam: manual carrier updates in the iTunes 8.2 final release.
Check out iClarified for the full details
[Thanks Justin!]
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Google Maps for Android has been functional since its release, but now it's actually catching up to the real thing, and sports some features that integrate it more completely with Android while also increasing its usefulness. Personally, I'm excited about public transportation being included in directions; you're most likely to need that when you're out and about and have nothing on you but your phone. Voice search within Maps could be handy, but I foresee many difficulties when somebody lives on an uncommon street name like "McGilvra."
I'm happy they're implementing the long touch to invoke Street View (very intuitive) but the streets are little and your finger is big, so you'll likely be looking at a store down the street or on an adjacent one much of the time. I predict it will drive you into fits of rage, but you need to keep it together, man.
Google Maps for Android has been functional since its release, but now it’s actually catching up to the real thing, and sports some features that integrate it more completely with Android while also increasing its usefulness. Personally, I’m excited about public transportation being included in directions; you’re most likely to need that when you’re out and about and have nothing on you but your phone. Voice search within Maps could be handy, but I foresee many difficulties when somebody lives on an uncommon street name like “McGilvra.”
I’m happy they’re implementing the long touch to invoke Street View (very intuitive) but the streets are little and your finger is big, so you’ll likely be looking at a store down the street or on an adjacent one much of the time. I predict it will drive you into fits of rage, but you need to keep it together, man.
Latitude (am I the only one who thinks “Lakitu” every time?) also gets an update, fixing some bugs and adding a new feature, a sort of location-based tweet that probably won’t be useful until more people are really using Latitude. To get all these new features, you’ll need to re-download Maps from the Market — it’s not automatic like the system updates.
With Google regularly posting updates like this, Android looks better and better practically every week. I admit that I’m biased, having and liking a G1, but if you compare what we have to 1.0 and imagine where we’ll be in six or eight months, it’s quite an exciting ride. Relatively speaking, of course — I also like to ride wild horses.
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The Pirate Bay announced a few months ago the creation of IPREDator, a VPN service to be used, I guess, to pirate content a little more stealthily. Well, the service is now in beta. Closed beta, I might add.
And while a VPN is a VPN is a VPN, IPREDator is supposedly safer in that there’s no log file to be found. No one is keeping track of who connected to the server and when, making it slightly more difficult for the policía to track you down.
Seems like IPREDator could be useful in Iran right now, right?
via The Register
Fake diamonds + watch + USB drive make up this blinged out necklace marketed towards ladies who might want to carry their data around their necks. At $22 for 2 gigs, it's most definitely cheaper than buying each separately. But can Multifunction really = High Fashion? With the rare exception, I'm inclined to say no. Of course, this could change as our aesthetic tastes evolve over time.
This post is part of a theme day: BBG on Fashion
Scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University have revealed in the journal Nature Chemistry that they’ve created a “magnetic superatom”, or “a stable cluster of atoms that can mimic different elements of the periodic table”. The poor Periodic Table of the Elements barely gets any respect as it is from the kids today (quick: do you know your Noble Gases, or the atomic weight of Nobilium?), now it has to compete with fancypants super atoms!
This new superatom is made of one vanadium and eight cesium atoms, and it “acts like a tiny magnet that can mimic a single manganese atom in magnetic strength while preferentially allowing electrons of specific spin orientation to flow through the surrounding shell of cesium atoms”. What good is this new superatom? According to Shiv N. Khanna, Ph.D., professor in the VCU Department of Physics:
A combination such as the one we have created here can lead to significant developments in the area of “molecular electronics,” a field where researchers study electric currents through small molecules. These molecular devices are expected to help make non-volatile data storage, denser integrated devices, higher data processing and other benefits.
The researchers are also exploring non-conductive magnetic superatoms by combining gold and manganese.
Via Spintronics Info.
Let’s talk hypothetically for a moment. Let’s say you’re the average American (or wherever you’re from), going to school or working for The Man. Let’s say that you occasionally download an MP3 or FLAC from wherever you get such things. Now, do you have $150,000 to give to the RIAA for every song you’ve downloaded? I sure as heck don’t! (I’d need a government bailout, lol!) More importantly, why is $150,000 an appropriate amount to ask for, as Sony seems to suggest? If I can buy a song off iTunes for $1.30, how is it that “finding” that same song could cost me $150,000?
There’s another one of the RIAA vs. Some Guy court cases going on right now, and the defense attorney asked Sony’s lawyers to put a number on per-infringement damages. Sony wouldn’t, instead saying that, under the law, damages can range from $750-$150,000.
Now, I’m not a doctor, not even in the Dr. Nick sense, but on what planet does Some Guy downloading a song, or an album, or 100 albums, equate to $150,000 in damages? It just seems so ridiculous to me.
Even more to the point, is anyone else a little tired of the RIAA? Like, even reading about it, and its wacky exploits, its insane monetary demands, just doesn’t have the same punch as it did in 2004. The Internet could use a new boogeyman.
I’ve been going through the items I’ve seen and bought this year and thought I’d share a few things that would make me particularly happy this Father’s Day. To that end, I’ve collected a mish-mash of items that might make dad smile a bit more readily than a tie and cologne set from Donald Trump’s fashion collection.
I had to send this camera back but I’m honestly thinking of buying it new. It’s a great, heavy duty shooter with plenty of manual chops and a huge rear LCD. It takes shots at 14-megapixels and costs $485. It’s a bit much - I always recommend getting a DSLR like the Rebel if you’re at all into shooting - but it’s a good mid-point camera with great portability.
Product Page
EnviroCycle Composter
It’s odd that I brought a composter into this round-up but Dad’s love gardening, at least the part that involves worms and dirt. I’ve been composting for years but I used to just dig a hole and drop eggshells into it. Now I have a huge, unsightly and stinky worm world that blends in perfectly with the riot of pumpkin vines that are growing up around the old compost pile. At $138 it’s better than a hole in the ground.
Debaufre Aircraft-8 Chronograph
Love it or hate it, Debaufre is doing some interesting things in low-priced chronographs. The Aircraft-8 is the first watch I’ve seen from them that actually looks new and fresh and at $740 for a calendar chrono movement, Swiss ETA, no less, it’s quite nice. Worth a second look.
Tissot Sea Touch
If Dad needs a more rugged watch, get him the Tissot Sea Touch. An impressive update to the T-Touch line this monster comes in orange and black and has a rotating bezel, compass, chronograph, thermometer, second time zone, and a diving logbook. All of the functions are available just by touching the screen. I’ve seen it for about $1,000.
I know this is a little bit old but it’s still a great product and a great way to introduce pop to the magic of MP3s and video downloading. Stock it up with some tunes and and some good movies and maybe add the iFitness application so he can take it to the gym. It starts at $229.
If Dad likes to read, get him a Kindle. Seriously. It’s a great device, it saves space, and he can download books anywhere and at any time. It’s a great device and the smaller version is delightfully portable. $359.
Pioneer XMp3 Radio
If you haven’t tried satellite radio and drive a lot, you owe it to yourself to add this to your Father’s Day shopping cart - if only for yourself. The XMp3 is a portable XM radion that supports up to 100 hours of recording and can record five stations at a time, meaning you can listen to the game on one channel and still grab your favorite shows - Bob Dylan? Howard Stern? - on other channels. They’re selling the radio with a car kit for $149. Installation is dead simple and the satellite subscription costs $164 a year.
Section: Web, Downloads, Websites
Pirate Bay has started beta testing on an encrypted virtual private network or VPN as a way to protect file sharers from prosecution when using their site. It is a special service for users called IPREDATOR Global Anonymity Service and will carry a price tag of $7 a month. The service was named after the infamous iPRED law in Sweden that allows copyright owners to use ISPs to identify file sharers.
With the VPN, user information will be encrypted over the network and Pirate Bay has stated that they will not keep logs of customer data. Not keeping logs is essential to the security of using the VPN service since legal collection agencies can pressure the site to hand over the data.
Pirate Bay has still been operational despite the founders being found guilty of allowing copyright infringement. The verdict is currently being appealed. Over 180,000 users have signed up for the service since April when Pirate Bay started accepting invitations. It’s on an invitation only basis right now and Pirate Bay expects to offer the service to more users once they work some initial kinks out.
Read: [Wired]
Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
FROM GAMERTELL - Remaking games with high definition graphics is a big money maker nowadays. There have been some beauties out there and we wanted to share our list of game we want to see remade for this generation.
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FROM APPLETELL - We’re days away from the launch of the iPhone 3G S, and AT&T apparently is eager to dump off their stock refurbished iPhone 3Gs. You can now order a refurbished 8GB with two year contract for $79, and a refurbished 16GB with contract for only $129.
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Section: Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Web Browsers
For days Opera has been teasing us with its promise of reinventing the web today at 3 AM EDT. The line “reinvent the web” made it seem like it would turn out to be somewhat of a joke, but it looks to actually be a worthwhile idea. Opera’s new idea is called “Opera Unite.”
The idea behind Opera Unite is simple: turn everybody’s computer into not only an end-user of the web, but also a web server. This might sound a bit strange at first, but Opera has some nifty services to start out the Opera Unite idea. These ideas range from the obvious of hosting your own websites on your own computer, to what Opera is calling “The Fridge” which actually displays what looks like a refrigerator that others can leaves sticky notes on. There’s also MobileMe-esque features like file and photo sharing, but rather than storing them on a separate cloud that could possibly be unreliable, you can store the files and images on your own computer for others to view and/or download.
There are two other features that really stand out as something interesting. First, there’s the lounge that allows users to log into one person’s Opera Unite-enabled computer to chat without the worries of other chat programs not running well. The last is possibly the most useful and allows for music streaming from your computer to any other web browser. You could have access to gigabytes of music from a netbook or cell phone that has minimal storage.
Opera Unite looks as if it could actually reinvent the web given time. It all depends on how well it is adopted among web users, and what other services are put out there. It is doubtful that those who must endure bandwidth caps will really enjoy Opera Unite, which could lead to some issues with adoption. But for now, it looks to be an interesting idea that should hopefully catch on, even with only a dedicated few.
Read [Opera]
Read [Opera Unite]
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
FROM APPLETELL - AT&T just can’t pull MMS together quite yet. No one really knows just when “later this summer” really is, but at least one other question was left unanswered. How much will this all cost?
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While we like the thinking behind the BaubBike, a bicycle both modular in design and also fairly easy to build from standard square-section steel tubes, in practice it looks both dangerous and rather uncomfortable.
There’s a reason bike frames have been triangular for so long: stiffness. A steel frame will flex a lot, and the triangle is an inherently stable shape. Stiffer modern materials mean that today designers can experiment more, but if you’re using off the shelf tubing, a square is going to crumple in a collision.
Of course, looking at the Bauhaus-inspired frame by designer Michael Ubbesen Jakobsen, we’re not thinking about damage to the bike. We’re thinking about damage to ourselves: Check the iteration with a second saddle and cojones-splitting handle. Ouch. In fact, all the sharp corners in general make this one of the scariest-looking rides we’ve seen. Far better is the slot-in carrying-rack, but that still leaves a lot of sharp corners.
Unlike many concepts, there is a “buy” button on Jakobsen’s site, although right now it leads only to an e-mail contact form. If he does put it into production, he might consider adding a “sue me” button alongside it. Either that or just only sell the BauBike to men who are already wearing tight jeans and taking very hot baths in order to deprive their baby-hungry wives of vital proteins.
Product page [BauBike via Design Boom]
Everyone moans about the lack of Flash on the iPhone, right? Let’s face it: if someone makes a solid Flash implementation for the iPhone there would be substantially less interest in making native iPhone apps. You could create a rich user environment in the browser, and the iPhone App Store would be less and less relevant. As things stand now, I prefer native apps over browser apps for iPhone services. I use the dedicated mail client to access my GMail account, rather than load the mobile GMail interface in Safari. I use a dedicated Twitter client, FaceBook client, and LinkedIn client rather than load the mobile version of those sites (assuming a mobile version even exists!).
Often, though, no native client exists, and you’re stuck using a web site. It can be a real pain to find a mobile-friendly version of the sites you need, sometimes. Enter Taptu, the alternative search machine. This free app provides iPhone-friendly search results in a surprisingly intuitive way.
The app starts with a simple text entry box. Tap in it, and type in a search phrase. I recently started homebrewing, so beer has been on my mind a lot. I searched for beer.
Unfortunately for this review, the first result was a sucky spam landing page. But in Taptu’s defense, it was a mobile-optimized sucky spam landing page! The second page was the very informative Wikipedia entry on beer. Mmmm…beer.
At the top of the results screen you see your search terms, which you can edit, the Taptu control widget, which we’ll get to in a moment, and some dots. The dots are a pager, and indicate where in the search results you are. You simply flick through the search results in a coverflow fashion, and get to see previews of the result pages. If you want to see the full page, simply click the “View source” link and an inline browser will open. In this case, it’ll open the Wapedia (WAP-optimized version of Wikipedia) page for beer. Mmmmm…beer. Click the little gear in the bottom right and you’ll get options to share or save the link, or email yourself the contents of the result page. Pretty handy.
If you click the Taptu control widget at the top right of the screen, you can filter your search results in a number of useful ways.
As you can see, you can filter your search results to just iPhone sites, just Wikipedia, just Twitter, etc. This is a good way to narrow a search to find stuff you know you want without having to scroll past pages of unrelated results. In an early beta of the Taptu app that I tried, it included an annoying number of YouTube videos in my search results, and I found myself filtering results to get better accuracy. Thankfully, YouTube seems less prominent in search results returned in the current version of the app, and presumably the algorithms will continue to improve.
Another great feature of the current version of the Taptu app are context sensitive search filters included beneath the default search filters. As you can see, my search for beer produced a number of beer-related links.
Mmmmm…beeer.
Bottom line: Taptu is a pretty slick mobile search solution.
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The Garmin nuviphone G60 will come out one day, friends, most likely during the second quarter of this year. And when it does come out, there will be much rejoicing: it’s the last time the Garmin-Asus operating system will be used on a device. From there on out it’s Android and Windows Mobile all the way.
Why the switch? Apparently the operating system, despite being based on Linux, isn’t the easiest to develop for—hence the long delay (The G60 was first announced some 16 months ago under a different name.) Inertia may also be to blame: why wouldn’t a company merely use the increasingly mature Android operating system, or Windows Mobile if that’s the crowd they want to target? Developers already have enough operating systems to juggle—iPhone OS, webOS, Android, WinMo—without having to worry about another one, and an unproven one at that.
So, in conclusion, following the launch of the G60, look for Garmin devices to run on Android or WinMo. That is all.
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In order to bring you the best, most in-depth look at the Lonely Planet New York City Guide for the iPhone, I took a week-long trip to the Big Apple. Is there nothing I won’t do for you, the loyal Gadget Lab reader?
A little over a week ago we took a quick look at the rather promising iPhone application, a $16 app which drops almost all the content of the paper book into a handy, searchable pocket sized piece of software. On paper (ahem) it seems unbeatable, especially when combined with the iPhone’s location awareness which means no more searching for a decent nearby restaurant.
How did it fare? The short answer is “not too bad”. For the longer answer, and the major problems (including an iPhone-killing crash), read on.
The biggest drawback was actually pointed out by Gadget Lab reader Jason Halberstadt: The source book itself. Like most guides, the Lonely Planet is not updated every year, so some information can be a little old. This is fine for a book, but somehow it seems that a mobile app should be a little fresher. Also, as Jason points out, “you end up going to all the tourist traps and hangouts that other LP readers all go to.”
The actual app promises much. Once it has (finally) started up, you can browse by section, as in the book, click to see what is nearby, access an offline map, save and view favorites (read: bookmarks), look at a photo gallery and search the entire guide.
Book
This makes for good reading before you leave, or for something to dip into when waiting for the next metro. It also offers a good overview of each section of town. It’s the most traditional, book-like section of the app, so you probably know exactly how useful it is already.
Nearby
Along with the map, this was the most handy part of the app, and worth the $16 price alone. It brings up a list of the places nearest you, ordered by distance. As it uses the iPhone location services to tell where you are, it doesn’t work too well with the iPod Touch (unless you make use of the countless open Wi-Fi spots in Manhattan). If you see something you fancy, tap on the map icon and it’ll show you just where to go.
When the iPhone can get a location fix, this feature was great. When it couldn’t, it was just confusing.
Map
Notably not called “maps” plural, this section omits several of the maps in the paper book, and inexplicably doesn’t feature a guide to the NYC subway. It also has a bad habit of resetting every time you leave the application, which means that you start at the most distant zoom level every time. The map has an overlay so you can see nearby hotels, bars, restaurant, shops and attractions, but these clutter things and slow them down. They can all be toggled on and off but, you guessed it, they default back to “on” every single time you launch.
It is also missing names for any but the largest streets, and you can’t search by street name. It works, and the maps are all offline, but it could be so much better.
Favorites
They’re bookmarks. Hit the heart-shaped icon when you see it to save.
Images
Fine, but we can’t help thinking that this is a major part of the hefty ~50MB download, and possibly one of the things causing such long load times. Better to keep these on the website, we’d say.
Search
The search is fantastic, and is way better than using the index in the actual book (the Lady is one of people who translated the book into Spanish, so we have a copy). It picks up anything, not just place names or titles, so you can use it to search for, say, bagel and browse all the mentions in the book (in New York, that’s surprisingly only eight results).
There was one problem. Although fine when it works, the search function caused the app to crash. A lot. Two or three times it caused a complete freeze of my iPod Touch, which required pressing both hardware buttons down for more than 10 seconds to force a reboot. This isn’t such a handy feature.
Conclusion
The idea is sound, and the fact that its a proper, edited guide means good and accurate content. It’s still very rough (ahem) around the edges, but certainly worth the money. We’d like to see some more user generated content, though: reviews, suggestions and other wiki-like features which are more up-to-date then the fusty old sections found here. The good ones could be folded into future paper books, too.
Also, if you’re going to New York and don’t mind a little grime, stay in the Chelsea Hotel. Bonus: About five doors down (towards the East) there’s a great, cheap Deli.
Product page [iTunes]
See Also:
Not to be outdone by Verizon, Sprint went live with their BlackBerry Tour 9630 site and with it came details of pricing for the 3G variant of the 8900 Curve. If you’re not down with the Pre then I suggest getting this badboy for $199.
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