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Telecom firms back standard phone charger in Europe (Reuters)Reuters - Top mobile telephone suppliers have agreed to back an EU-wide harmonisation of phone chargers, the European Commission said on Monday, hailing the pact as good news for consumers and the environment.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:29 am Video: MacBook Transforms into Miniature Spaceship, Flies Away
What is clear is that after a few clicks on the La Poste site, the featured MacBook is compelled to transform into a small spaceship and fly out the window, presumably to deliver an “electronic mail”. It’s a fantastic bit of free promotion with one obvious problem: It’s a well known fact that anti-gravity thrusters are absolutely terrible for battery life. Also, what kind of MacBook is that anyway? It appears to have the screen of the MacBook Air and the body of an old MacBook Pro. We declare this to be a fake. MacBooks, robots in disguise [El Reg]
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:22 am Rumored Sprint, Verizon launch dates for the BlackBerry Tour 9630Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile  The last we heard about the upcoming release of the BlackBerry Tour 9630 we were still missing quite a few details, basically all we had was that the Tour was headed to Sprint and Verizon and that it was going to be priced at $199 with Sprint. Thankfully, over the weekend a few more details leaked out. It now looks like the BlackBerry Tour is going to be available on July 12 and July 20 with Verizon Wireless and Sprint respectively. As far as that $199 price tag, it looks like that will be the same for both carriers. Of course, both carriers will also expect a two-year agreement in order to get that pricing. That said, none of these details are coming courtesy of the respective carriers, in other words the release dates and pricing are still subject to change. Read [Inside Sprint Now] Read [BGR] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:19 am Pirate Bay Fires Its Copyright-busting Cannon At YouTube Supposedly, the The Pirate Bay guys were found guilty in their recent trial in Sweden, and, supposedly, they got sentenced to a year in prison and had to pay $4.5 million in damages.
But back in the parallel universe which happens to be the real world, they've appealed the verdict and could probably keep doing so for the next few years. So in the meantime they need to keep busy, and what better way to do this than start a new user driven video portal to take on YouTube, called, predictably, Video Bay, allowing users to post and share video clips without having to worry about copyright violations. Seems reasonable. It's not like they need to attract any more legal interest or anything.
Source: TechCrunch | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:14 am Kid Swaps iPod For Sony Walkman, Gets A Culture Shock
Campbell, apart from being amazed at the blandly colored portable music player, correctly points out that the Walkman is much bigger, heavier and generally more clunky than the digital media players he’s accustomed to seeing within his social circle. On the upside, he writes, the ‘monstrous box’ comes with a ‘handy belt clip screwed on to the back’. The funniest part of the story:
Campbell goes on to speak wise words (”portable music is better than no music”) and lists the pros and cons of the portable cassette player compared to its latter-day successor. Go read it here. Anyone else felt a bit nostalgic about the good old cassette tape after reading? (Picture from BBC) Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Source: TechCrunch | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:10 am Smartphone guide keeps it simple
Wired's guide to buying a smartphone is nice and straightforward. Send it to the people you know need it. [Gadget Lab]
Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:08 am Touch Book Tablet Netbook Will Ship Next Month
The Touch Book, which first showed its pretty little face at the DEMO 09 conference back in March of this year, is just about to ship. But who cares, right? It’s just another netbook, after all. Well, no. The company behind the little computer, Always Innovating, actually lives up to its name. The standout feature is the detachable touch display, an 8.9-inch presure sensitive tablet which can live separately from the keyboard section. When joined to the keyboard (95% full-size) it acts much like a regular netbook. The CPU is an ARM chip from Texas Instruments, the OMAP3530, running with 256MB RAM and 256MB of NAND memory. There is no hard drive — instead you get an 8GB SD card. You’ll also find Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 3D accelerometer and three USB ports. The display is held in place by magnets (and spikes, as you see in the picture). The price remains the same as it did when announced: $300 for the tablet section or $400 if you want the keyboard, too. If that ARM chip is up to the task of running simple applications, and the batteries can last long enough, this could actually be a very neat little portable. The problem, though, will be if people buy it expecting it to be a real laptop replacement. In which case, mass disappointment will ensue. Always Innovating’s Touch Book Netbook in Production [Laptop Mag] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:06 am Jaspersoft Replaces Crystal Reports to Drive Business Intelligence for Leading Nonprofit Constituent Management PlatformOrange Leap chooses Jaspersoft to help strengthen relationships between nonprofits and constituents SAN FRANCISCO, June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Jaspersoft, provider of...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:01 am USA.NET Unveils Enhanced Commercial Messaging Service 2.0Industry's Most Cost-Effective Hosted Email Solution Built on Proven and Feature Rich Technology MILFORD, Conn., June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- USA.NET, a...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:00 am Suspect Detection Systems Inc. Completes Sale of Cogito Interrogation Technology to Private Diamond Enterprise in AfricaScreening of Industry Employees can Lead to a Reduction of Internal Diamond Theft; Company's Second Sale of Crime Prevention Technology to Private Enterprise NEW YORK,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:00 am Middlesex County Residents Benefit From Verizon Wireless 3G Network ExpansionNew Cell Site Added to Keep Residents Connected to Text, Email, Music and Mobile Web WARREN, N.J., June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Wireless calling, text messaging and...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:00 am NIKSUN Unveils Long-Awaited Puma Portable UnitFully functional network performance, security and compliance monitoring solution in a small and lightweight chassis that can be deployed anywhere SAN FRANCISCO,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:00 am Gerard van der Werf Appointed Regional Manager for Telmar Netherlands and GermanyAMSTERDAM, June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Gerard van der Werf appointed Regional Manager for Telmar Peaktime B.V., headquartered in Amsterdam. Gerard will report directlySource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:00 am ProLogis Leases 215,000 Square Feet to Acer in Poland- ProLogis' Newly Developed Distribution Facility Will Be Operated By Acer as an International Distribution Center - WARSAW, Poland, June 29...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:00 am Perimeter Launches Correlative Security Engine to Manage Cost, Complexity, Compliance Pressures in Real TimeViewpoint 2.0 also has Breakthrough Compliance Profiler that Automatically Calculates and Prioritizes Security Risks MILFORD, Conn., June 29 /PRNewswire/ --...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:00 am U.S. Army Selects Northrop Grumman, Cobham Team to Provide VIS-X Vehicular Intercom SystemsBALTIMORE, June 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Northrop Grumman Cobham Intercoms LLC (NGCI LLC), a company formed by Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) and Cobham (LSE: COB),Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:00 am Secure64 DNS Products Now Available Through SEWP ContractAlvarez & Associates to Resell Award-Winning Secure64 DNS Products to Federal Government DENVER, June 29 /PRNewswire/ --Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jun 2009 | 11:00 am News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller and MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta: The Full D7 Session [BoomTown]
Over the last weeks, News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller and MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta have had their hands full directing massive layoffs at the flagship social networking site, as well as throughout the Fox Interactive Media division. The pair discussed the many challenges faced by the giant media company in its digital enterprises in an onstage interview with Walt Mossberg and me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference last month. That included everything from how News Corp. (NWS) online content is paid for to the need for MySpace to innovate, as Facebook has surpassed it. Here’s the video of the full D7 session:
(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.) Source: All Things Digital | 29 Jun 2009 | 10:53 am Compact Flash to SD Adapters Provide Unneeded Solution
This could be useful, we guess, if you happen to have a lot of SD cards lying around. But we wonder if you’d want to. Neither of the two basic adapters (one for SD and one for microSD) lists read/write speeds, and in DSLRs, which can dump a lot of data very fast, speed is arguably the most important spec on the sheet. Also, instead of buying adapters and incorrect cards, why not just buy the right shape card to begin with? More interesting is the four-card RAID adapter, a CF body with slots for four microSD cards. If all the cards are of the same size, they will be turned into a RAID array, allowing very fast speeds – up to 80MB/s read and 40MB/s write. This sounds great until you realize that this appears to be RAID 0 aka “Scary RAID”, which means that if one card fails you lose everything, and that a regular Sandisk Extreme IV will write at the same speed. Not that we’re big CF fans. The rows of pins inside my DSLR make me nervous every time I push the card back in. But this doesn’t seem to be much more than a gimmick. The SD adapter is $26, the microSD $31, and the scary microSD RAID array will be available in July. Product page [Photofast via Oh Gizmo!]
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 29 Jun 2009 | 10:45 am All the news that's fit to print (or edit)
The New York Times used its influence to kill a story: that one of its reporters was kidnapped and held for ransom. It gained the agreement of more than 35 other outlets to suppress the news. Wikipedia agreed to squelch attempts to break the story there, too. The rationale was that doing so would keep his ransom low and help ensure his safety. David Rohde ultimately escaped his Taliban captors. This one's a toughie. On one hand, it's an uplifting story about how dissimilar organizations came together to limit the risk to an endangered reporter. Common sense suggests the right thing was done. On the other hand, the NYT has no qualms reporting other kidnappings--only when its own financial self-interest is at stake does it take refuge in security-before-truth pieties. What other undisputed truths do the media collectively agree not to report? What other favors might Jimmy Wales be enticed to perform? Actually, don't answer that last one. Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 29 Jun 2009 | 10:41 am Are sealed-in laptop batteries a good idea?
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 Earthtimes (press release) | Euro Kindle talks break down with German carriers SlashGear Amazon's plans to roll out the Kindle ebook reader range in Europe has hit a snag, after talks with German carriers broke down over pricing disagreement. According to German WirtschaftsWoche, Amazon were unable to reach what they believed to be a fair ... Kindle DX sold out second time due to high demand Big software plans for Amazon's Kindle? Kindle DX offers more, whether you need it or not |
"Look, Master!" said Darth Zeddo. "I have acquired a splendid steampunk lightsaber from eBay."
Sith Lord Rowcha drew back his hood and inspected it.
"Steampunk? Just because it's brass and wood doesn't mean it's steampunk," he paused and exhaled. "Look, there is not a single cog. Not so much as a leather belt loop. How much did you pay for it? You didn't empty our PayPa..."
Rowcha's voice trailed off as he realized he'd upset his apprentice. Darth Zeddo tightened his jaw and stared into the middle distance. Rowcha reached out tentatively to console him. He drew back at the last moment, leaving his bony, force-shriveled fingers floating uncomfortably near Zeddo's forearm.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.
Owners of the latest iPhone can look forward to using it with other carriers and installing their own software--but not yet. Dev-Team has a new crack completed, but intends to hold onto it until the right moment.
"We can jailbreak the 3GS right now," writes an anonymous developer at the iPhone-dev.org blog. "But making our jailbreak public at this point in time would benefit relatively few people. It would in fact be detrimental to many more people than it would help. So we feel it's best to keep our version of the jailbreak out of Apple's sights for the time being."
As Apple will be able to identify the bug they exploited once they go public, the team plans to release only after an imminent firmware update (and more international launches of the iPhone 3GS itself) before exposing their methodology.
The comment thread contains some superb internet complaining, running the gamut from allcaps rant to exquisitely-crafted insinuation. Would you like some whine with that sense of entitlement, sir?
AFP - Sony Corp. remained tight-lipped over reports that it may combine its PlayStation Portable game console with a mobile telephone into a new gadget to challenge rival Apple's iPhone.
Whilst I have often grouped Cloud Computing with the consumerization of IT (and the iPhone as it’s most visible example) together in concert in my disruptive innovation presentations, I never really thought of them as metaphors for one another. When you think of it, it’s really a perfect visual.
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The Obama administration’s most radical idea may also be its geekiest: Make nearly every hidden government spreadsheet and buried statistic available online, all in one place. For anyone to see.
In a world of double-digit unemployment and old-line industries in mid-collapse, here’s a sales pitch tailor-made for the times: “Get Paid by Google.”
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Forget altruism. Misanthropy and egotism are the fuel of online social production. That’s the conclusion suggested by a new study of the character traits of the contributors to Wikipedia.
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About three months ago, Gianfranco Lanci flew into San Francisco International Airport, got off the plane and made his way to the passport control stations. As he pulled out his documents, the passport agent immediately recognized him as the chief executive of Acer.
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Heart beat posting device lets your Twitter followers know you’re alive
Finally, affordable chainmail for the discerning desk knight
Kodak wishes to reunite Megan Fox and the boy with the yellow rose
Hanappa: Sega Toys to offer yet another plant listening to your sorrows
CrunchGear Remix Contest - Results
We honeymooned on Roatan, one of Honduras' Bay Islands, and it was not without its political problems. Indeed, martial law was briefly declared on Roatan during our two week stay, after a series of blockades and sabotage in protest of massive rate-hikes from the newly privatized power company. Zelaya's personal handling of that problem was less than perfect. But as developing nations' governments go, Honduras had a pretty stable, relatively non-corrupt government and administration. Certainly, a military coup is less democratic than a leader seeking a mandate to try for a constitutional reform.
U.S. President Barack Obama and the European Union expressed deep concern after troops came for Zelaya, an ally of socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, around dawn and took him away from his residence. He was whisked away to Costa Rica.Army overthrows Honduras presidentZelaya, who took office in 2006 and is limited by the constitution to a four-year term that ends in early 2010, had angered the army, courts and Congress by pushing for an unofficial public vote on Sunday to gauge support for his plan to hold a November referendum on allowing presidential re-election.
 MiamiHerald.com | Lessons for the future of human space flight The Space Review As we contemplate the future of the nation's human space flight program at this critical juncture, I would like share my own thoughts based on almost 40 years of experience working in the space program—from JPL scientist in 1968 to NASA ... Buzz Aldrin weighs into NASA Space Center lets visitors relive our longest journey Space in 3-D |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The process is simple. Their software monitors BitTorrent swarms and other filesharing networks and records the IP-addresses of those people who share the work of their clients. It then automatically sends an email to the ISP linked to the IP-address with a request to forward it to the associated customer...Automated Legal Threats Turn Piracy Into Profit (via Digg)In their email they write that "it may be beneficial to settle this matter without the need of costly and time-consuming litigation."
If you don't settle they are "prepared to pursue every available remedy including damages, recovery of attorney's fees, costs and any and all other claims that may be available to it in a lawsuit filed against you." To make it even more scary, they point out that ISPs might cut your Internet connection if you don't comply.
In the FAQ on the VPA website it is noted that consulting a lawyers is an option, but it would be a rather silly thing to do since it will cost more than the settlement itself. "It is likely that the cost incurred to retain a lawyer will exceed the settlement amount offered." [Ed: it's cheaper to pay us than it is to ask a professional whether to pay us].
The Rubber Room is the name for the places where New York City teachers who are under disciplinary investigation are sent to await their. For months -- sometimes years, and sometimes decades, these teachers go to "work" every day in a mostly bare room, and wait, and wait, and wait. Even if exonerated, many of these teachers are so stigmatized that they have to switch careers. Sounds like something out of Sartre or Kafka, but it's just New York.
Here's a documentary on the Rubber Room, made by an ex-teacher who was sentenced to it.
RubberRoomMovie.com
(via DNTO)
Source: Boing Boing | 29 Jun 2009 | 5:26 am
The Czech party has collected 2,500 electronic signatures to date and hopes to compete in October elections. It was just certified as an official political party by the Czech Interior Ministry under the name "Českou pirátskou stranu" (ČPS).Pirate parties parade through Prague, Paris"We do not want any political posts," spokesperson Ondrej Profant told Czech news agency CTK. "If we managed to implement our program exclusively on the level of thinking, which means that large parties would embrace it as their own we would be satisfied."
Like many of the other European pirate parties, the Czechs lack a broad political program; they care only about intellectual property issues and hope to partner with other parties in a coalition.
The French pirates have little more than a Facebook group and a Wordpress blog at the moment, but they too hope to shape policy in the aftermath of the Swedish Pirate Party's win. France might seen like fertile soil for such a party to flourish, since the government has been pushing a tough "three strikes" law. To date, the group has 1,600 members of a Facebook group.
*Two seats, if the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified
Science Fiction Novel: Anathem, Neal Stephenson (Atlantic UK, Morrow)2009 Locus Award Winners
Fantasy Novel: Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin (Harcourt)
First Novel: Singularity's Ring, Paul Melko (Tor)
Young-Adult Book: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins, Bloomsbury)
Novella: "Pretty Monsters", Kelly Link (Pretty Monsters)
Novelette: "Pump Six", Paolo Bacigalupi (Pump Six and Other Stories)
Short Story: "Exhalation", Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
Anthology: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed. (St. Martin's)
Collection: Pump Six and Other Stories, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books)
Non-Fiction/Art Book: P. Craig Russell, Coraline: The Graphic Novel, Neil Gaiman, adapted and illustrated by P. Craig Russell (HarperCollins)
Editor: Ellen Datlow
Artist: Michael Whelan
Magazine: F&SF
Publisher: Tor
The part that starts right about 5 minutes in is utterly terrifying and sad. Watch the whole thing from the top, though. "God Hates the World," brought to you by Westboro Baptist Church who previously became internet-famous for "God Hates Fags" and "God Hates America." Incidentally, the song and lyrics of which this is a remake were co-created by none other than the recently departed Michael Jackson. (Uh, thanks Richard Metzger).
After a year's research, Lenovo boffins have installed larger Delete and Escape keys on their updated ThinkPad laptop T400s range...Lenovo increases size of panic buttons (via /.)The change is based on testing users on which keys they use the most. On average, they used the Escape and Delete keys 700 times per week, yet those were the only non-letter keys, that hadn't been made bigger.
Lenovo decided to make these two keys about twice as long in the vertical direction to fit the way people reach up for them.
Apparently the next keyboard evolution could be the death of the caps lock. It comes from the days when you wrote headings in capitals but these days exists only to be accidently pressed, stuff up passwords, or make you shout online.
The developers behind the Pirate Bay team have been developing a video streaming site for the past two years, and an "extreme beta" version of the project is available (meaning, in their words, "Don't expect anything to work at all"). Users can share video clips here without having to fear concerns they may be removed over copyright claims, as with the current dominant video-sharing service, YouTube. Snip from an item on Torrentfreak:
However, as with most of their projects it can take a while before the public can catch a glimpse of what they are working on. The Video Bay - as the project is named - opened up to the public with a very early test version a few weeks ago. Initially, users were able to browse though the videos but this has been disabled now. What is left is an announcement that the site will be launched somewhere in the future.(...)The Video Bay.Pirate Bay Spokesman Peter Sunde agreed that it might take a while before the site goes live and told us that "it will be done when it's done, in the future, in like a year or five."
Persepolis 2.0 (Thanks, Yishay!)
 New York Times | NYTimes and Wikipedia save reporter's life by NOT reporting on his ... TechCrunch Earlier this week, New York Times reporter David Rodhe escaped from a Taliban prison. He had been a Taliban hostage for the last seven months, but the general public had absolutely no clue. In a joint effort by The New ... Wikipedia censors reporter kidnapping The Troubles of Crowdsourcing: How Do You Keep a Secret? When newspapers choose to withhold information: The NYT vs the ... |
This post was written by Gagan Biyani.
Earlier this week, New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped from a Taliban prison. He had been a Taliban hostage for the last seven months, but the general public had absolutely no clue. In a joint effort by The New York Times and Wikipedia, the story was kept quiet until his daring escape.
In November 2008, Rohde was captured and held hostage by the Taliban, along with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal. But until he managed to escape, most of the general public had absolutely no clue. To prevent Rohde’s value in the eyes of his captors from rising, the New York Times kept more than 35 major news organizations from reporting on the story. They believed that the publicity from reporting his capture would inflate the value of Rohde’s life, increasing the difficulty of negotiating for Rohde’s release. Keeping 35 news organizations quiet was actually not the hard part - but staving off Wikipedia users from publishing the news? That was a bit trickier.
Through an elaborate and ongoing battle between Wikipedia editors and an anonymous contributor from Florida, the New York Times and the Wikipedia Foundation managed to keep the story quiet. For seven months, Wikipedia editors were in a constant back-and-forth with this user to delete news of Rohde’s capture off of the site. They were unable to contact the user directly, as s/he was anonymously posting on Wikipedia, and thus could not explain to the user why they were trying to keep the news quiet. Infuriated, the user threw insults at the editors who were deleting his addition, and blindly continued their futile fight.
All of this ended when Rohde and Ludin managed to climb over a wall and escape the Taliban’s clenches. In an interesting twist, the driver chose to join the Taliban and thus stayed behind, according to Rohde. This is a truly inspiring story, and the efforts of the Wikipedia editors and the New York Times are beyond laudable. In a recent tweet, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said that preventing the news from breaking may have saved his life. Regardless of the merits of this comment, it made Rohde’s escape more likely, and was a downright impressive feat of coordination by all parties involved.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 Digitaltrends.com | June 29, 2007: iPhone, You Phone, We All Wanna iPhone Wired News Everybody knew it was coming. But nobody, not even Apple, predicted how the iPhone would change the way we look at phones forever. First announced Jan. 9, 2007, by Steve Jobs, the iPhone is considered one of Apple's worst-kept secrets, ... Apple Has Axed The Hottest Girls Apple removes topless women app Apple TV, iPhone Remote app gain gestures support |
Boom!... Boom!... My chest reverberates with the thumping of a huge wooden drum as two robed holy men shuffle across tatami mats. They kneel in a vermilion-colored alcove, and a young assistant announces that the ceremony has commenced. The priests begin bowing and chanting rhythmically. I've been given a white "robe of cleansing" to wear. Actually, it's more like a smock. I'm not sure what I should be doing. I bow a couple of times.
I've come to the 1,270-year-old Kanda Shrine in Tokyo to purify and bless something very near and dear to me: my cell phone. I've had hellish luck with mobiles over the past year. I left one on a ride at Universal Studios Japan. Its successor suddenly—and mysteriously—died. The next one accompanied my pants into the washing machine, and its replacement went AWOL in less than a week. Divine intervention was needed, and pronto.
Japan's Shinto religion holds that nearly every object in the world, animate or inanimate, has a spiritual essence. Therefore, anything can be blessed, from a newborn child to an automobile. Priests at the Kanda Shrine, which overlooks Akihabara—Tokyo's mecca for consumer electronics—offer prayers for the well-being of gadgets.
Kanda found its calling in metaphysical IT work seven years ago, when Microsoft XP went on sale in Japan. The shrine created talismans to prevent system crashes, and they were snapped up by the throngs of nerds who prowl Akihabara for the latest gizmos and porn comics. Soon, requests were pouring in for priests to perform purification rites on laptops, cell phones, even Web portals. Today Kanda offers microchip-shaped good-luck charms for ¥800 (about $8) and private ceremonies for ¥5,000.
Back in the great hall, an older priest waves a giant wand—essentially a mop of white parchment streamers—over his counterpart. Thus cleansed, the younger priest rises and carries my phone on a lacquer tray to the main altar. He begins a low-pitched chant, invoking the shrine's deities to "watch over and protect Brian Ashcraft's cellular phone."
As the sound of plucked koto strings echoes through the hall, the assistant jingles gold bells over my head. I'm told to approach the altar and am given a tree branch, an offering to the shrine's deities. A priest painstakingly instructs me to turn the branch 180 degrees—no, no, clockwise—and place it on the altar. Then bow deeply twice—that's good—and clap twice.
Most Japanese people would probably stumble through this intricate ceremony as clumsily as I do, but the tenets of Shinto are deeply ingrained in their consciousness. It occurs to me that this must affect how they view their little electronic helpmates. Perhaps gadgets really do have souls. Maybe my problem isn't bad luck—maybe I simply haven't been giving my phones the respect they deserve. I bow again, and the ceremony concludes.
Near the great hall's exit, I am presented with a wooden plaque certifying that my cell has been purified. Over a cup of sake, senior priest Katsuji Takahashi chuckles as he tells me, "I've lost my phone twice, but both times it turned up."
Seven months later, my blessed phone is still with me.
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My cell phone sits in a lacquer tray waiting to be blessed by a Shinto priest. Late last year, I visited the ancient Kanda shrine, located in the heart of Tokyo's consumer electronics district. The shrine does boffo business offering charms and ceremonial purifications that protect cell phones and laptops and even blogs and ISP service from bad mojo. You can read about it here and see more images of the temple and its priests by clicking on the thumbnails above.
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A geek nirvana has grown up around the 1,200-year-old Shinto shrine. Tokyo's Akihabara district is the place to go if you're looking for gizmos, manga, videogames, anime, or figurines. On the right is the otaku hypermart AsoBitCity, and on the left is a doujin (fanzine) bookstore packed with images of doe-eyed schoolgirl characters.
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Up a narrow side street and under a red and green gate, a wide stone path leads up to the Kanda shrine. It's morning, and a salaryman on his way to work stands tossing change into the wooden offering box and clasps his hands in prayer. Just over the top of the green roof tiles, modern buildings dot the skyline. The view is discombobulating at first, the modern and ritzy clashing with the traditional and sacred, yet that image sums up Japan.
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Near the shrine's entryway is what looks like an old-school arcade attraction. Inside is a shishigashira, or lion head puppet. Drop some yen in this coin-op device to see the mechanical lion do its festive Shinto dance that wards off evil. When the shimmying is over, an omikuji, or fortune, drops down the chute. The fortune, printed on a rolled-up piece of paper, could just as easily be terrible as great. I'm afraid to use the thing — one more bit of bad luck and my cell phone might spontaneously combust in my pocket.
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I enter the shrine with my cell and don a white robe for the purification ceremony. I've been called before the altar. I'm feeling nervous and awkward. Why wouldn't I be? I don't know precisely what it is that I'm supposed to be doing. Clap two times...? Alrighty, here goes.
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Whoosh! Parchment rustles noisily, and gusts of cleansed air hit me in the face. The priest is holding a haraigushi, a prayer stick covered with folded bits of paper. Waving the haraigushi over my phone is part of the blessing ceremony. After this is over, I'm called upon to offer a tree branch to the deities of the shrine.
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These paper charms are made to look like microchips. Each has the words "IT Info Safety Blessing" and the shrine's name inscribed on it. The backing is a sticker with peel-off paper — perfect for slapping it onto your laptop. Take that, computer viruses!
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All done! I'm given a piece of wood to commemorate the ritual. My name is handwritten on it, along with the words "Cell Phone Safety Blessing." It's been eight months since this ceremony, and my phone is still safe and sound. Maybe the ritual itself worked…or maybe the ritual forced me to look at my phone with a little more reverence and respect.
Larry Page should have been in a good mood. It was the fall of 2007, and Google's cofounder was in the middle of a five-day tour of his company's European operations in Zurich, London, Oxford, and Dublin. The trip had been fun, a chance to get a ground-floor look at Google's ever-expanding empire. But this week had been particularly exciting, for reasons that had nothing to do with Europe; Google was planning a major investment in Facebook, the hottest new company in Silicon Valley.
Originally Google had considered acquiring Facebook—a prospect that held no interest for Facebook's executives—but an investment was another enticing option, aligning the Internet's two most important companies. Facebook was more than a fast-growing social network. It was, potentially, an enormous source of personal data. Internet users behaved differently on Facebook than anywhere else online: They used their real names, connected with their real friends, linked to their real email addresses, and shared their real thoughts, tastes, and news. Google, on the other hand, knew relatively little about most of its users other than their search histories and some browsing activity.
But now, as Page took his seat on the Google jet for the two-hour flight from Zurich to London, something appeared to be wrong. He looked annoyed, one of his fellow passengers recalls. It turned out that he had just received word that the deal was off. Microsoft, Google's sworn enemy, would be making the investment instead—$240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in the company, meaning that Redmond valued Facebook at an astonishing $15 billion.
As the 767 took off, Page tersely but calmly shared the news with the others on the plane and answered their questions for about 15 minutes. "Larry was clearly, clearly unhappy about it," the passenger says.
Page soon got over it, but Facebook's rejection was still a blow to Google; it had never lost a deal this big and this publicly. But according to Facebookers involved in the transaction, Mountain View never had much of a chance—all things being equal, Microsoft was always the favored partner. Google's bid was used primarily as a stalking horse, a tool to amp up the bidding. Facebook executives weren't leaping at the chance to join with Google; they preferred to conquer it. "We never liked those guys," says one former Facebook engineer. "We all had that audacity, 'Anything Google does, we can do better.' No one talked about MySpace or the other social networks. We just talked about Google."
Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn't just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internet—its structure, design, and utility. For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this "social graph" to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now.
All this brave talk might seem easy to dismiss as the swagger of an arrogant upstart. After all, being Google is a little like being heavyweight champion of the world—everyone wants a shot at your title. But over the past year, Facebook has gone from glass-jawed flyweight to legitimate contender. It has become one of the most popular online destinations. More than 200 million people—about one-fifth of all Internet users—have Facebook accounts. They spend an average of 20 minutes on the site every day. Facebook has stolen several well-known Google employees, from COO Sheryl Sandburg to chef Josef Desimone; at least 9 percent of its staff used to work for the search giant. And since last December, Facebook has launched a series of ambitious initiatives, designed to make the social graph an even more integral part of a user's online experience. Even some Googlers concede that Facebook represents a growing threat. "Eventually, we are going to collide," one executive says.
It is remarkable that the most powerful company on the Web would feel threatened by one that has yet to turn a profit. (Last year, one insider estimates, Facebook burned through $75 million plus the $275 million in revenue it brought in; Google made $4.2 billion on an astounding $15.8 billion in net revenue.) And even Facebook executives concede that Google has secured an insurmountable lead in search advertising—those little text ads that pop up next to search results—which accounts for about 90 percent of Google's net revenue. But they say they are going after an even bigger market: the expensive branding campaigns that so far have barely ventured online. Once, Google hoped an alliance with Facebook would help attract those huge ad budgets. Now, instead of working together to reach the promised land of online brand advertising, Facebook and Google are racing to see who can get there first.
Like typical trash-talking youngsters, Facebook sources argue that their competition is old and out of touch. "Google is not representative of the future of technology in any way," one Facebook veteran says. "Facebook is an advanced communications network enabling myriad communication forms. It almost doesn't make sense to compare them."
Mark Zuckerberg has never thought of his company as a mere social network. He and his team are in the middle of a multiyear campaign to change how the Web is organized—with Facebook at the center. Here's how they hope to pull it off.
1. Build critical mass.
In the eight months ending in April, Facebook has doubled in size to 200 million members, who contribute 4 billion pieces of info, 850 million photos, and 8 million videos every month. The result: a second Internet, one that includes users' most personal data and resides entirely on Facebook's servers.
2. Redefine search.
Facebook thinks its members will turn to their friends—rather than Google's algorithms—to navigate the Web. It already drives an eyebrow-raising amount of traffic to outside sites, and that will only increase once Facebook Search allows users to easily explore one another's feeds.
3. Colonize the Web.
Thanks to a pair of new initiatives—dubbed Facebook Connect and Open Stream—users don't have to log in to Facebook to communicate with their friends. Now they can access their network from any of 10,000 partner sites or apps, contributing even more valuable data to Facebook's servers every time they do it.
4. Sell targeted ads, everywhere.
Facebook hopes to one day sell advertising across all of its partner sites and apps, not just on its own site. The company will be able to draw on the immense volume of personal data it owns to create extremely targeted messages. The challenge: not freaking out its users in the process.
To understand Facebook's challenge to Google, consider my friend and neighbor Wayne, a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley and a veteran of many big-time programming jobs. I know a lot about him because we are friends. I know even more because we are Facebook friends. On his online profile, I not only find the standard personal-blog-type information—his birthday, address, résumé, and pictures of his wife, son, and step-kids. I also discover that he likes to make beer, that he had dinner at one of my favorite restaurants last week, and that he likes to watch cartoons. Indeed, he has posted something about his life almost every day for the past two months—wondering whether his son's Little League game will get rained out, asking his friends what the impeller in his central heating unit does.
But if I type Wayne's name into Google, I learn very little. I am directed to an old personal Web site, with links that have almost all expired, and a collection of computer-science papers he has written over the years. That's about it.
Hardly any of Wayne's Facebook information turns up on a Google search, because all of it, along with similar details about the other 200 million Facebook users, exists on the social network's roughly 40,000 servers. Together, this data comprises a mammoth amount of activity, almost a second Internet. By Facebook's estimates, every month users share 4 billion pieces of information—news stories, status updates, birthday wishes, and so on. They also upload 850 million photos and 8 million videos. But anyone wanting to access that stuff must go through Facebook; the social network treats it all as proprietary data, largely shielding it from Google's crawlers. Except for the mostly cursory information that users choose to make public, what happens on Facebook's servers stays on Facebook's servers. That represents a massive and fast-growing blind spot for Google, whose long-stated goal is to "organize the world's information."
Facebook isn't just kneecapping Google's search engine; it is also competing with it. Facebook encourages its 200 million members to use Microsoft's search engine, which it installed on its homepage late last year as part of the deal struck between the two companies. At press time, it was also planning to launch Facebook Search, allowing users to scour one another's feeds. Want to see what some anonymous schmuck thought about the Battlestar Galactica finale? Check out Google. Want to see what your friends had to say? Try Facebook Search. And it will not only be for searching within Facebook. Because Facebook friends post links to outside sites, you will be able to use it as a gateway to the Web—making it a direct threat to Google. Why settle for articles about the Chrysler bankruptcy that the Google News algorithm recommends when you can read what your friends suggest? Already, Facebook is starting to horn in on Google's role as the predominant driver of Web traffic. According to Hitwise, Facebook in recent months has sent more traffic than Google to Evite, video site Tagged.com, and gossip mills Perez Hilton.com and Dlisted. That trend should only grow with the advent of Facebook Search.
These are just the latest moves in an ambitious campaign to make the social graph an integral, ubiquitous element of life online. In December, Facebook launched Connect, a network of more than 10,000 independent sites that lets users access their Facebook relationships without logging in to Facebook .com. Go to Digg, for instance, and see which stories friends recommended. Head to Citysearch and see which restaurants they have reviewed. Visit TechCrunch, Gawker, or the Huffington Post and read comments they have left. On Inauguration Day, millions of users logged in to CNN.com with their Facebook ID and discussed the proceedings with their friends in real time.
In April, Facebook announced its Open Stream API, allowing developers to create mashups using Facebook's constantly updated stream of user activity. Previously, users who wanted to read their friends' News Feeds had to go to the Facebook site. Now developers can export that information to any site—or to freestanding applications, much as Twitter desktop clients do for Tweets.
Connect and Open Stream don't just allow users to access their Facebook networks from anywhere online. They also help realize Facebook's longtime vision of giving users a unique, Web-wide online profile. By linking Web activity to Facebook accounts, they begin to replace the largely anonymous "no one knows you're a dog" version of online identity with one in which every action is tied to who users really are.
To hear Facebook executives tell it, this will make online interactions more meaningful and more personal. Imagine, for example, if online comments were written by people using their real names rather than by anonymous trolls. "Up until now all the advancements in technology have said information and data are the most important thing," says Dave Morin, Facebook's senior platform manager. "The most important thing to us is that there is a person sitting behind that keyboard. We think the Internet is about people."
But you don't build a competitor to Google with people alone. You need data. And Connect and Open Stream are intended to make Facebook a much more powerful force for collecting user information. Any time someone logs in to a site that uses Connect or Open Stream, they give Facebook the right to keep track of any activity that happens there—potentially contributing tons more personal data to Facebook's servers. Facebook Connect and Open Stream are also designed to make each user's friend network, which belongs to Facebook, even more valuable and crucial to the Web experience. Together, they aim to put Facebook users' social networks at the center of all they do online.
Mark Zuckerberg is notoriously cocky, even by the standards of Silicon Valley. Two years ago, he walked away from a reported nearly $1 billion offer from Yahoo for his company. He could have sold to Google or Microsoft for a lot more. His business cards once famously read: i'm ceo ... bitch . And he has described Facebook as a once-in-a-century communications revolution, implying that he is right up there with Gutenberg and Marconi.
Still, you'd think he might play it a little cool when discussing Google, not wanting to antagonize the most powerful company on the Internet. But Zuckerberg doesn't pull any punches, describing Google as "a top-down way" of organizing the Web that results in an impersonal experience that stifles online activity. "You have a bunch of machines and algorithms going out and crawling the Web and bringing information back," he says. "That only gets stuff that is publicly available to everyone. And it doesn't give people the control that they need to be really comfortable." Instead, he says, Internet users will share more data when they are allowed to decide which information they make public and which they keep private. "No one wants to live in a surveillance society," Zuckerberg adds, "which, if you take that to its extreme, could be where Google is going."
It's ironic to hear Zuckerberg paint Google as Big Brother. After all, many observers worry that Facebook itself has grown too controlling. Unlike Google, Facebook makes it difficult for users to export their contacts, mail, photos, and videos—a practice Web 2.0 evangelists say is a sign that the company values its proprietary data more than its users' experience. In November 2007, Facebook launched Beacon, a ham-fisted attempt to inject advertising into News Feeds. Users felt violated; after a month of protest, Zuckerberg publicly apologized and effectively shut Beacon down. Then, in February 2009, Facebook quietly changed its terms of service, appearing to give itself perpetual ownership of anything posted on the site, even after members closed their accounts. Users complained so vociferously—millions joined Facebook groups and signed online petitions protesting the change—that the company was forced to backtrack. The event left many people fearful of the amount of personal information they were ceding to a private, profit-hungry enterprise. "Do You Own Facebook?" a New York magazine cover story asked warily in April. "Or Does Facebook Own You?" (Facebook executives say that the company was merely updating the terms of service to match those of other sites and that there was no nefarious intent. They reinstated a version of the amendment after subjecting it to a vote of Facebook members.)
The drumbeat of controversy surrounding Facebook illustrates the catch-22 the social network faces: It has a massive storehouse of user data, but every time it tries to capitalize on that information, its members freak out. This isn't an academic problem; the company's future depends on its ability to master the art of behavioral targeting—selling customized advertising based on user profiles. In theory, this should be an irresistible opportunity for marketers; Facebook's performance advertising program allows them to design and distribute an ad to as narrow an audience as they would like. (It has also developed a program to create ads that are designed to be spread virally.) But as the Beacon debacle showed, there is a fine line between "targeted and useful" and "creepy and stalkerish"—and so far, not enough advertisers have been willing to walk that line.
In a way, Facebook's dilemma extends from its success. Users see the site as sanctified space, a place to engage in intimate conversations with friends—not to be laser-beamed by weirdly personal advertising. But with initiatives like Connect and Open Stream, Facebook can sell ads beyond its own site. Just as Google's AdSense program sells ads on any participating Web site, Connect and Open Stream will eventually push Facebook-brokered advertising to any member site or app. But unlike with AdSense, Facebook's ads could be exquisitely tailored to their targets. "No one out there has the data that we have," says COO Sandberg.
That's where the big-budget brand advertisers come in. Google has courted them for four years, to no avail. That's because, while search ads are great at delivering advertising to users who are seeking specific products, they are less effective at creating demand for stuff users don't yet know they want. Google has tried everything to lure brand advertisers—from buying and selling radio ads to purchasing YouTube. And it is easy to see why it keeps trying. Today, global online brand advertising accounts for just $50 billion a year. Offline brand advertising, meanwhile, accounts for an estimated $500 billion.
Google has even shown a willingness to join Facebook in gingerly tapping the third rail of Internet marketing—behavioral targeting. The search giant has long assured its users that it would never use their personal information to deliver targeted advertising, relying instead on aggregate data or search activity that preserves anonymity. ("There is a line with users that you don't want to cross," Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in the wake of the Beacon controversy.) But in March, Google started its own behavioral targeting campaign—tracking users' browsing to deliver more-customized ads. Users have the option to either edit their profiles or opt out entirely.
In September 2007, Gideon Yu was hired as Facebook's CFO. Before that, the 38-year-old had been CFO at YouTube, where he negotiated its acquisition by Google. He'd also put in four years as Yahoo's treasurer and was one of its top dealmakers. Facebook announced the hire with much fanfare. "I consider it kind of a coup that we were able to recruit him here," Zuckerberg told the Wall Street Journal. "He's just excellent."
Nineteen months later, Yu was gone. It was a short tenure—not unprecedented for a private-company CFO. But Zuckerberg turned Yu's departure into a kerfuffle by publicly trashing him, saying that the job had simply outgrown him and that Facebook now needed a CFO with "substantial public company experience." To many, the performance was a stark reminder that the Facebook CEO, while undeniably ambitious and brilliant, was still just 24 years old. (He's 25 now.)
Zuckerberg's youth has given Googlers some confidence. After all, even under the most sage and steady leadership, Facebook would be confronted with a difficult challenge: turning a massive user base into a sustainable business. (Just ask Friendster, MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter.) Through Google's own experience with YouTube, they have seen how expensive it can be to keep up with exploding user growth. They inked a disastrous $900 million partnership with MySpace in 2006, a failure that taught them how hard it is to make money from social networking. And privately, they don't think Facebook's staff has the brainpower to succeed where they have failed. "If they found a way to monetize all of a sudden, sure, that would be a problem," says one highly placed Google executive. "But they're not going to."
Facebook's naysayers have a point. But before they get too complacent, they might remember another upstart that figured out a new way to organize the Internet. For five years, it worked on building its user base and perfecting its product, resisting pleas from venture capitalists to figure out how to make money. It was only after it had made itself an essential part of everyone's online life that its business path became clear—and it quickly grew to become one of the world's most powerful and wealthy companies. The name of that company, of course, was Google.
Contributing editor Fred Vogelstein (fred_vogelstein@wired.com) wrote about Google in issue 17.02.
Digitalsmiths, the video distribution and analysis platform that powers TheWB.com, TMZ, and a number of other popular sites, is rolling out a new product suite today dubbed VideoSense 2.0. The new suite includes a number of features that will make it more appealing to content owners looking to distribute video across the web, but the most interesting new feature for consumers will be the platform’s revamped video search, which can best be described as a “Google for video”.
Granted, there already is a Google video search, but this goes well beyond that, allowing users to search for any actor, scene, or piece of dialog they’d like across shows in the Digitalsmiths library. Digitalsmiths has spent years building the technology to perform speech recognition and visually match actors’ faces and environmental elements (it can tell if a scene is taking at a beach or on a mountainside), and it’s quite impressive.
Before now the search has been available on a limited scale, but users would have to first fine tune their queries using a number of drop-down menus, specifying which show they’d like to search through and choosing from a number of other options (these helped speed searches up by limiting the content the engine would have to look through). Now Digitalsmiths has refined the technology to the point that it can offer a Google-like search bar, with the engine able to automatically detect if a search term refers to a character or actor name, a location, or perhaps the name of a show. If, for example, I typed in “Seth Cohen Bagel The OC”, the engine would serve up video clips of the character Seth Cohen talking about bagels in the show, The OC.
Unfortunately, while its search functionality is much improved, it’s being held up to some extent by the content owners. In theory Digitalsmiths could put together an engine that searched through all of its content at once, which really would make it akin to an extremely powerful Google for video. But the content owners have not agreed to enable that functionality, so for now all searches will be be constrained to partner sites and widgets (e.g. you’ll have to head to TheWB.com if you want to search through its shows). Hopefully the content owners will have a change of heart, as this kind of universal search could prove immensely useful.
The new product suite includes a handful of products that will appeal to content owners, including a new Asset Manager, which handles things like video ingestion, storage, and processing, and Publisher, which allows content owners to schedule when their content will be posted.
Other players in this space include Auditude and Viewdle.
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Microsoft acquired digital ad agency Razorfish two years ago, as part of a $6 billion for parent company aQuantive. The industry has been waiting for Redmond part ways with the ad shop since then.
Now it’s formally on the block: The FT reports that Microsoft (MSFT) has hired Morgan Stanley to hawk Razorfish, and suggests that French ad conglomerate Publicis Groupe could be a buyer. Then again, so could every other big ad holding company, including Omnicom (OMC) and WPP.
The FT throws out a value of $600-$700 million for Razorfish, down from the $800 million pricetag that AdAge put on the shop last summer, which was the last time sales chatter heated up. At the time, the supposed buyer was supposed to be WPP. Microsoft paid $6 billion for all of aQuantive in 2007.
Why has everyone been so convinced that Microsoft would sell something it bought in 2007? Because everyone thought that Microsoft never wanted Razorfish — it wanted the rest of aQuantive’s ad network business. And presumably what it really wanted was Doubleclick’s ad network business, but Google (GOOG) beat it out on that deal, and Yahoo (YHOO) had bought RightMedia, and WPP had bought 24/7 Real Media. (Boy did a alot of money got spent on ad networks back then! And not coincidentally, a flood of ad network startups flooded the market shortly after those transactions went through.)
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s own people have never tried particularly hard to argue that the company was committed to owning an ad agency. Though they did try to argued that owning one wasn’t a conflict with it online publishing business it keeps burning money on. Now that won’t be a problem.
[Image credit: g-hat]
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"Flowbee may be used on pets with a Pet attachment. Please note when cutting your pets coat down to 1/2" inch it is essential to use the pet attachment. This will keep the pet's skin in place."
I’m not convinced that this isn’t a joke. Apparently there is a feature film called “Reverie,” shot entirely on the Nikon D90, a bit of coincidence considering there was another DSLR-shot film by that name that came out not long ago (and was not good). The cinematographer of the film says of the D90:
The D90 far surpasses the full frame Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1, and even Red’s Scarlet.
A controversial, nay, inflammatory statement. I’m not sure I’m willing to take it seriously, considering the man is also the producer and sound editor for the film (his second).
An actual cinematographer would appreciate the D90, but would find it utterly unfit for actual shooting, considering its limitations. At the very least, even if they found it impressive, they would refrain from such statements as this above. Whether it’s better for some things than the 5D Mk II is a judgment call and the DMC-GH1 is a given, but the Scarlet? Is this guy on crack?
For reasons we have discussed, current DSLRs are pretty much unsuitable for serious filmmaking. If this movie isn’t a joke to begin with (and I think that it is), then it’s a joke of a movie.
[via Nikon Rumors]
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Have you ever gotten excited about a new title that just came out from a game shop that you admire and love, only to play through the game and think: that’s it?! I got all worked up for THIS?! Well, that just happened to me. It took me all of 3 hours to beat Mass Effect Galaxy. No, I didn’t cheat. No, I didn’t take shortcuts (I actually spent longer than I should have on some parts). And, no, I didn’t skip any cut scenes (tempting as it was). If that isn’t enough reason to refrain from buying EA and Bioware’s most recent release, keep reading. Otherwise, save yourself the $2.99 and spend it on a Frosty or something.
In Mass Effect Galaxy, you are Jacob Taylor and your mission is to stop a gang of alien terrorists from, well, terrorizing. You spend most of the game walking through a mildly interesting storyline and conversing with various intergalactic friends and foes. In each conversation, you decide what Jacob says: you can be a dick and tell the other person to get out of your way or you’ll blow their head off. Or, you can politely engage with them and dodge a fight altogether. I recommend the former, because you may not get to shoot anyone if you diplomatically avoid confrontation. And the game is short enough as it is; there’s no need to rob yourself of the few times you can actually play it.
That said, the gameplay wasn’t a complete disaster. For the three hours that I spent on it, at least 30 minutes of it was worth my time. The gameplay was unique and interesting, but it got dull after the first three battle scenes. As a change from the traditional Mass Effect game, you view the screen from a top-down perspective. You are able to see all of the enemies ahead of time and plan your attack strategy from there. Not that you need an attack strategy: I was able to beat almost every battle scene by just running and gunning my way around the room. You control Jacob Taylor via a tilt-motion, which is a clever use of the iPhone’s accelerometer for first-person shooting games. But it got stale and I felt myself a bit disappointed with the way it handled. You just can’t engage yourself in a top-down first-person shooter.
The real problem with the controls was that it AUTO-FIRES. Someone once told me that movies use voice-overs because the writer couldn’t come up with an interesting way to tell his story without it. Auto-firing is like the game developer’s voice-over. Unless there is a DAMN good reason for it, games should never have auto-firing (or auto-accelerate/brake for that matter).
To top it off, the game takes like 30 seconds to load between each cut scene and battle scene. Given the fragmented nature of Mass Effect Galaxy, it is absurdly annoying to see the loading screen so frequently. Definitely one of many things that should be fixed if EA ever decides to build a complete Mass Effect game for the iPhone.
Although never intended as a full-fledged iPhone game, Mass Effect Galaxy was still a major disappointment. To EA and Bioware: if you’re going to use it as a marketing vehicle for Mass Effect 2, then make it free (and cut out some of the features), or charge $0.99 for it. Regardless, as our Devin Coldeway predicted, this game simply dilutes the Mass Effect franchise.
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The web is still inundated with Michael Jackson news, but just in case you haven’t had your fill, I highly recommend the site Billie Tweets. The concept is simple: Take Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and pull in tweets that sync words to the music.
The site was made by 9Astronauts, the development house that also made the Blame Drew’s Cancer site a few weeks back. Another solid creation by them.
Considering that Jackson’s music is utterly dominating all of the online sales charts right now, this site is also a smart play to pull in some affiliate fees for sales from Amazon. You’ll notice the links at the bottom of the site.
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Making music is fun. Winning stuff by making music is even more fun. In one month we received more than 50 entries for the CrunchGear Remix Contest. 50 remixes - some better than others - is more than we ever expected. Let’s see which artists were the best and what prize they will receive!
First of all let me thank you all for participating in the CrunchGear Remix Contest. I know it took a long time until we sorted out the results but trust me, it was a hard decision. We tried to give a prize to all the runner-ups but of course there is a limit. The selection method involved a lot of different aspects: structure, precision, melodies, style and of course personal taste. You can listen to the best mixes on Pandagod.com.
The first prize, a Maschine from Native Instruments goes to Tits & Clits !
The second prize, a Desktop Konnekt 6 from T.C Electronic goes to Lemonboi !
The third prize, a copy of Ableton Live 8 goes to Pigment Chemcal !
Runner-ups in order:
Norway Pumpkin - My Passport Studio from Western Digital, 1 year Aviary Pro subscription
Copycat - Signature Mini Portable from SimpleTech, 1 year Aviary Pro subscription
Yuto Nagayama - Sequel 2 from Steinberg, 1 year Aviary Pro subscription
RD - Union from Livid, 1 year Aviary Pro subscription
Phandaguy - Union from Livid, 1 year Aviary Pro subscription
1 year Aviary Pro subscription goes to the following artists receiving the most votes:
VertS1N
Forceb
cmcpress
Mighty Matty K
Vener Jozsef
The winners will be contacted by email. Thank you for participating.
Unfortunately for us in the United States of America, the Hero (unlocked) is up for pre-order in the UK on Amazon with a July 15th ship date. The list price? A whopping £429.99, which equates to $725.26. I’m honestly excited for this device having seen it at the beginning of June in LA during E3. Not that the Android UI is ugly or anything, but HTC has once again managed to gussy up a UI to make it look even more slick with Sense. So, anyone up for dropping this kind of cash on an unlocked Hero?
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While it’s not being talked about too much, the $99 iPhone 3G is a very interesting play by Apple. It takes what was previously a just out-of-reach device for many, and puts it at a magical price-point. Sure, it still won’t sell everyone, like the people who only care about getting the phone that their carrier is offering for free, or those looking for the cheapest possible monthly plans. But just look at the iPhone compared to the other $99 phones out there.
That’s what we did. And originally we set out to compare the various specs. But looking them over, it’s really a joke. And you can basically see all you need to see simply by looking at the devices being offering by the major carriers in the U.S. at this price point.
Of course, there are legitimate iPhone competitors out there, namely the Palm Pre and the soon-to-be-released T-Mobile myTouch 3G. But the Pre sells for $199 (or $299 before rebate) and the myTouch will also cost you $199. That’s iPhone 3GS territory now. This $99 range is a whole different ball game.
When I looked at the $99 phones, I started to think of a high school reunion. Some show up as successful business people, some as boring cookie-cutter suburbanites, some as fat, overweight slobs. And that’s fine. But then there’s that one person who shows up and makes everyone else look worse. Everyone there has something in common (in this case, the high school), but you wouldn’t know it just by looking at this one James Bond-type in the full tuxedo while everyone else is wearing rags. In my opinion, that’s kind of like the $99 iPhone 3G compared to the other $99 phones out there.
Let’s take a look.
James Bond.
The successful business guy. Kind of pudgy, pretty boring.
The less successful but skinnier business guy. A pencilneck.
The guy who thinks he’s James Bond, but bought his tux at the thrift store — and it’s blue.
The guy wearing his clothes from when you were still in high school.
That odd foreign exchange student that no one still wants to talk to even though he’s popular in Europe.
Some crazy-looking dude.
A total square.
That guy who just got out of rehab.
The girl was popular in high school but now is just kind of ugly, and oddly shaped.
Another business guy. Bland. Has his family on his “Fave 5″ though.
The short, fat guy with the shiny large head.
Spunky, ditzy, short girl. No one took her seriously then, no one takes her seriously now.
The dude who’s really into guns.
The guy who’s trying too hard.
Again, nice suit — in 1999.
Wanna-be hipster.
The short sidekick of the wanna-be hipster.
Oh God. Don’t talk to this one.
The ugly duckling.
The homeless guy. Hasn’t bathed in months.
Had a bunch of kids at 19. Now divorced and wears bold colors to stand out — which doesn’t work.
Business guy with a big chin and a square head.
The girl with the Coke-bottle thick glasses.
The former high school star quarterback. Still loves sports, but is between crappy jobs.
[Thanks Cameron]
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Quite a polemic we’re dealing with, friends. It seems that, suddenly, the PS3 is no longer able to play Hulu content. I just tried to play the Power Rangers movie on my brother’s PS3, and up pops the message: “Unfortunately, this video is not available on your platform. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
I don’t know why this is happening all of a sudden, but I’m not a Hulu user so, frankly!
Neither Sony nor Hulu have said what’s up. My favorite reason that I’ve seen so far: Microsoft paid Hulu a bunch of money to prevent it from working on the PS3. Perhaps Bilderberg
Holy smokes! I interrupt your Sunday afternoon to bring you this shocking news: Billy Mays is dead! Yes, the guy from the OxiClean commercial and that show on the Discovery Channel was found dead in his Florida home today. I am completely shocked and terribly bummed out. That guy was tremendous.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Free fun, thy name is Lemonade Tycoon. I downloaded EA Mobile’s free Lemonade Tycoon to my iPod touch yesterday and spent the better part of the afternoon creating my own beverage empire, one fresh squeezed glass at a time.
Free fun, thy name is Lemonade Tycoon. I downloaded EA Mobile’s free Lemonade Tycoon to my iPod touch yesterday and spent the better part of the afternoon creating my own beverage empire, one fresh squeezed glass at a time.
If you remember playing Lemonade Stand on your old Apple II back in elementary school, you’ll be right at home with this one. You start with a basic cart, a few dollars, and a dream. You’ll need to take daily weather conditions into account — you can sell more lemonade at higher prices on hot days — and to add a bit of depth to the game, you can set up your stand at various locales such as the suburbs, the park, the beach, the mall, the train station, the baseball stadium, and more. Each location costs a certain amount to rent for the day and you can spend some money on marketing in order to get people to come to your stand.
Each morning you’ll get a weather forecast and a daily news update like “Surfing Competition at the beach today!” or “Local park overrun by gangs of trouble-making teenagers,” which will help you decide where (or where not) to set up shop for the day. I found the baseball stadium to be by far the biggest cash cow, but it’s not cheap at $150 per day and you’ll need to have plenty of supplies on hand to cater to the massive crowd.
As you make more and more money, you can upgrade your stand, buy better equipment, hire staff, and so on. It took me about four hours of playing to max everything out, at which point the game becomes more of an exercise in tweaking your recipe and pricing structure in order to maximize profits. Still fun, yes, but it gets lonely at the top.
Free though it may be, Lemonade Tycoon is ad-supported so your game will be interrupted from time to time by interstitial ads for various iPhone apps, credit card offers, and the like. It’s annoying, yes, but the ads can quickly be skipped and, hey, free is free (or never truly free, for that matter).
Graphics are nice and playful with a three-quarters isometric view of the action. Sound and music are minimal, yet well-done and you can turn the in-game music off and listen to your own tunes while you play. There are two gameplay modes as well: 30-day Challenge, which entails building up your empire as quickly as possible and Career Mode, which is more of an open-ended structure that allows you to work your business as you see fit.
However you choose to play, Lemonade Tycoon is an excellent way to pass the time and is a must-download for anyone who’s got an iPhone or iPod touch and longs for the good old days of simple economic simulation games. It’s great fun, and the price is right.
Lemonade Tycoon [EA Mobile]
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
People have always been inclined to join mobs - most people have at least one story to tell about a time that they got swept up in or had to face a crowd demanding justice for one thing or another (both of my experiences were in college). The Internet has proven to be a frighteningly efficient tool to create virtual mobs. But we note two trends that suggest a bleak future: the increase in non-anonymous mob participation and the evolution of online services towards ever more efficient and real time communication platforms that facilitate mob creation and growth like never before. Things are changing online way too fast for society and culture to adapt. Something will eventually break.
I’m going to pick on FriendFeed in this post because I believe it is the nearest thing to Shangri-La for mob justice enthusiasts. I explain why below. But first I want to compare FriendFeed to Syphilis, which may have been the “perfect” disease when it first hit Europe in the 15th century. Today Syphilis takes years to kill its victims and is easily treated with antibiotics. But back in the early 1500’s it led to certain death within months.
Consider the surprising evolution of syphilis. Today, our two immediate associations to syphilis are genital sores and a very slowly developing disease, leading to the death of many untreated victims only after many years. However, when syphilis was first definitely recorded in Europe in 1495, its pustules often covered the body from the head to the knees, cause flesh to fall off people’s faces, and led to the death within a few months. By 1546, syphilis had evolved into a the disease with the symptoms so well known to us today. Apparently just as myxomatosis. those syphilis spirochetes that evolved so as to keep their victims alive for longer were thereby able to transmit their spirochete offspring into more victims. (Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond)
What changed? Syphilis killed people too quickly. And dead people can’t spread a sexually transmitted disease nearly as well as non-dead people. So the disease evolved to keep its victims alive.
FriendFeed today is like Syphilis in 1495. It will be forced to evolve to something less dangerous or it’ll destroy itself.
This really shouldn’t be happening because FriendFeed isn’t an anonymous service. Just a couple of years ago experts were saying that the rise of online mobs could be traced to sites that promote mass anonymous content creation. From a 2006 Time Magazine article:
Along with all the sites that encourage individual expression, we are seeing a flood of schemes that celebrate collective action by huge numbers of bland, anonymous people. A lot of folks love this stuff. My worry is that we’re playing with fire…There’s the Wikipedia, which has absorbed a lot of the energy that used to go into individual, expressive websites, into one bland, master description of reality. Another example is the automatic mass-content collecting schemes like DIGG. Yet another, which deserves special attention, is the unfortunate design feature in most blog software that practically encourages spontaneous pseudonym creation. That has led to the global flood of anonymous mob-like commentary.
But FriendFeed users tend to be easily identifiable as real people. The site’s original purpose was to let users link their blogs, photos, social networking, Twitter and other content streams in one place. The whole idea is that you know exactly who it is that’s posting content there. And suddenly these people are getting comfortable talking hate under their real name. TechCrunch writer MG Siegler wrote about this trend earlier this month on his personal blog. For whatever reason, people are becoming comfortable writing seriously threatening stuff under their real name. That boldness means people are becoming even more comfortable with mob mentality, and more willing to take direct action.
Real Time Content Can Easily Become Real Time Mobs
In the past for an online mob to get any real traction outside of anonymous chat rooms, lots of people had to write about their outrage on their blogs or other websites. That meant an issue had to be broadly interesting to a lot of people. There are lots of examples of these situations, particularly in Asia. One example: “In another well-known Chinese case, an angry husband who suspected his wife was having an affair with a college student she’d met in an online game asked for help tracking him down. The Associated Press reported that the student, who denied the accusation, was bombarded with harassing and threatening e-mails. This vigilante action might be prompted by understandable moral outrage, but some are concerned that the headline-grabbing witch-hunts have been vastly out of proportion with the original transgressions.”
In these examples outrage built over a number of days. Some actual facts were able to spread as well, which usually calmed the mob before real world threats could be carried out by vigilantes. But sites like FriendFeed allow the centralization of a conversation to occur, with real time updates appearing on screen without even the need for a refresh. Things can get out of control instantly.
I was on the receiving end of mob justice a few weeks ago when Leo Laporte exploded at me for asking rudely about a conflict of interest. People massed at FriendFeed and called for my head (a lot of the worst comments have now been deleted).
What the mob didn’t know is that it was largely a misunderstanding (I thought he was joking and egged him on, he was most definitely not joking). Leo and I quickly resolved the issue (and now it’s all just a joke). We both apologized and had a subsequent podcast and really talked things through. But most of the mob members had no idea that was happening. And in the meantime a number of death threats were posted in the comments on TechCrunch. Emails came in as well, including one from a non-anonymous account saying “Go TO FUCKING HELL YOU FUCKING TROLL, HOPE YOU FUCKING DIE”
These weren’t direct “I’m going to kill you” threats that I’ve gotten before. But they were serious enough that, like last year, I had to cancel a number of speaking engagements and generally worry about personal safety issues again.
This is the problem. The mobs get going, and even then most of them wouldn’t even consider physical violence as a real solution to the situation. But enough people are crazy enough that when they get fired up, they want to do something about it. And then, suddenly, I’m in a position of worrying about my personal safety because I asked someone to disclose a conflict of interest about a mobile phone. Seems crazy, right?
Some people say it’s not appropriate to pick on FriendFeed. Other services like Twitter, which are much bigger, have similar problems. But the conversations on Twitter aren’t centralized. It’s hard to see it when a mob forms unless it’s something massive like the almost-revolution in Iran. But on FriendFeed all the comments are aggregated on one page, and everyone participating sees it all. It’s much more likely to break out into a mob. And even niche topics, like mobile phones, can lead to death threats.
So what can we do to change this? In my opinion, nothing more than doctors could do to fight Syphilis before it changed itself. Things are going to get much worse before they get better. At some point an online mob, maybe one that begins at FriendFeed, is going to break out and seriously hurt someone. Perhaps it will be someone who’s being unfairly accused, like the student in China. And at that point society will demand change. Tools will emerge to temper mobs as they begin to form on mainstream sites. A lot of us, me included, will look back at today as a time of freedom on the Internet. But the system is breaking under it’s own weight. It is not sustainable.
Update: A very relevant post that I missed before from blogger and former FriendFeed user Aaron Brazell.
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Twitter works great in Brazil. So great that it gets you fired! Former Real Madrid manager Vanderlei Luxemburgo was sacked by Palmeiras, in São Paulo, Brazil, over what he wrote on Twitter [Portuguese] two days ago. Is this the first time a professional sports coach/manager has been sacked because of what he has written on Twitter? I couldn’t find any other examples, but I could well be wrong here.
Anyway, the story is pretty interesting, especially to those of us who follow football. Luxemburgo, who won the São Paulo State Championship with Palmeiras this past season (and who won with Santos the year before), posted to Twitter that he was dissatisfied with the way one of his players, Keirrison, had handled his apparent negotiation with FC Barcelona, which he is all but certain to join in the next few days. Tweeted Mr. Luxemburgo: “Keirrison didn’t show up to training. He also didn’t give me any explanation. If he isn’t sold [to FC Barcelona] he won’t play for me again.” (Yes, I translated that myself. Thanks, college!)
Luxemburgo was sacked by Palmeiras shortly thereafter, which he also tweeted: “I’m no longer the manager of Palmeiras. I was sacked because of disagreeing with Keirrison’s attitudes. Read about it on my blog: [l]uxemburgo.blog.uol.com.br.”
Perhaps Twitter should have what Gmail has, an “are you sure you want to tweet this?” feature?
In any event: don’t use Twitter to air dirty laundry.
UPDATE As Fernando corrected me, “Cotinthians won the São Paulo State Championship in 2009, Palmeiras won in 2008.” Yes, I feel like a dope, but I’m pretty sure only Fernando would have known that fact. I can’t imagine we’re too big in Brazil.
Section: Video, Gadgets / Other, Household, Peripherals
The iPod and iPhone are great devices for watching video on the go, that’s never really been much of a secret. But, what about when you want to watch that episode of “30 Rock” on a large screen rather than the max 3.5 inch screen on the touch and iPhone? Sure, you could just watch it on your computer, or stream it to tv, but that would be boring, and make for a decent picture. Wouldn’t you much rather project that video with a size of 50 inches?
The iJector, due out in Japan on July 17th will do just that. It will project a 50 inch video with a resolution of 557x234, which most likely will not look very good at all. It will also play back the sound in amplified stereo, so there’s no need for extra speakers. It will work with just about every iPod that supports video from the fifth generation iPod up to the iPod touch and iPhone, so there should be few compatibility problems. It will even come with composite cables to show video from other sources in low resolution.
The iJector just doesn’t seem like a great idea. There might be an audience that wants to project video from their iPod for others to see, but it would just make a lot more sense to get an tv and to stream all that media to a projector or HDTV. Especially considering that the iJector will ship at the US equivalent of $670, it seems like even more of a bad idea.
Read [ipodnn]
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
More proof (see: the Perfect Pushup and the Snuggie.) that having a quirky, on-all-the-time commercial is a step in the right direction toward Big Success. MagicJack (commercial here) is selling something at the rate of 9,000 to 10,000 units per day, making its parent company, YMax Communications, some $100 million this year alone. But, in this age of Skype, who’s buying this thing?
Two points for you if you guessed “older people.” The company’s average customer age is 50, and and live in retirement-friendly places like California or Florida.
MagicJack, if you have no idea what I’m on about, is a device that plugs into your computer’s USB port that in turn lets you make and receive phone calls through your Internet connection. The reason why it’s so popular, I guess, is that you get the first year of service for free, and after that it’s only $20 per year. That low price is especially appealing to people on fixed income, or for people whose regular phone bills are too high.
One side note: you do need to keep your computer on all the time for something like the MagicJack to work, so all that savings you’re getting by freeing yourself from the phone company may go straight toward powering your computer.
It surely didn't escape anyone's attention Twitter is on track to becoming a mass phenomenon globally. The service is also growing nicely in Japan where it has been embraced by the geek community in particular (Japanese is the only alternative language Twitter is available in until today).
And today a small group of those Japanese geeks, members of the so-called Koress Project, have announced the development of the Akiduki Pulse box, a device that automatically posts your heart rate to Twitter [JP].
Video and more info after the break.
It surely didn’t escape anyone’s attention Twitter is on track to becoming a mass phenomenon globally. The service is also growing nicely in Japan where it has been embraced by the geek community in particular (Japanese is the only alternative language Twitter is available in until today).
And today a small group of those Japanese geeks, members of the so-called Koress Project, have announced the development of the Akiduki Pulse box, a device that automatically posts your heart rate to Twitter [JP].
After pressing a button on the box for a few seconds, all your Twitter followers get to see your heart rate along with a quick evaluation (bradycardia/normal/tachycardia). Koress says there is a fourth category but wouldn’t reveal details (I’m guessing this should be “death”).
The whole system is completely open source (firmware, hardware info etc.), with Koress planning to eventually commercialize their box and organize seminars to teach hardware makers how to manufacture the device by themselves. Unfortunately, all data and documentation is available in Japanese only.
In the (intentionally funny) promo video below [JP], future customers are bombarded with lines like “Now I can die and post this info to Twitter. That’s what I call a revolution!” and “Use the Akiduki Pulse box when you do sports, are in love or don’t even know yourself if you’re still alive!”.
Nice, geeky idea and you don’t even need a PC to use the Akiduki box, but the deal breaker is the heart monitor without which the whole system won’t work.
Via Asiajin [ENG] via Mycom Journal [JP]
Section: Video, Content, Web, Downloads, Web 2.0, Web Browsers, Websites, Online Music/Video
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Ye makers of The Pirate Bay are apparently not planning to go sailing into waters unknown even amidst all the current legal fiascos they are facing. They are launching a new site called The Video Bay to be in competition with YouTube. No one ever said pirates were the meek sort.
Now, this little venture was apparently first started quite some time ago. As in, two years ago, but it seems they have decided to finally forge on. A few days ago, according to Slashdot, Peter Sunde appeared via Skype at the Open Video Conference in NY and said they were gearing up to launch something new. Of course at that point speculation ran rampant. What could it be?
Then, some changes appeared on TVB site. And the the site suddenly stated for a while,
“To stay in the spirit on which TPB was founded and using the Latest Technology, TVB aims to use the new HTML5 features, more specifically the video and audio tags with the ogg/theora video and audio formats. This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk (en)coding, so please don’t bug us too much if the site ain’t working properly.”
I went and tried to check out TVB, which is currently in the roughest of beta modes, but couldn’t get anywhere other than seeing that the home page did indeed exist. Apparently, this is a change from fairly recently, when the curious were able to tack random numbers on the end of the page URL to see movies that are on the page for beta-testers. Of course, even that process was pure hit or miss. You would, for example, be typing in a “21” after thevideobay.org/, without having any idea what movie might be showing up for you to view. This little trick is no longer working at time of writing. Now, when you do that, or click on any link, including the one to register, it asks you for your username and password.
So, when is it going to go live for the public? That’s anyone’s guess. Including The Video Bay. They told TorrentFreak that “there is still a lot of work to do behind the scenes. The encoder is not finished yet and the design is also a work in progress.” And, “it will be done when it’s done, in the future.”
One thing that should also be noted, they say they will not be implementing P2P technology to be streaming the videos. The site definitely has potential become a key player in the video streaming area. It’s going to be a site where users can share whatever - no censoring. I can see heads in the movie industry steaming already.
Read: [slashdot]
Full Story » | Written by Jodie Andrefski for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Mockup designs for Sony's rumored PSP Phone are nearly are unappetizing as the pre-iPhone iPhone mockups were.Take this one, for instance, published in foreign-language "Phone Mag." It went for the "boring enough to be convincing" cachet.
The mushrooms kicked in long before T3 found its way to this next idea's awful D-pad -- it's based on a patent Sony itself filed.
It isn't clear where the next one came from. My hunch is that the artist isn't going to be around any time soon to request attribution...
The best of a bad bunch has another D-pad that would get a real industrial designer taken out back and whipped with damp towels:
Connext's design is pure Yanko:
Another hard-to-source one that crops up over and over is this, which resembles one of those little portable import consoles that just plays old Nintendo ROMs.
Sealover still loves that awful Spiderman font:
Clipset designs a controller only Derek Zoolander could love:
Matt Brady crosses the streams:
"There is a strong sense of authenticity," wrote one blogger beneath this image:
They couldn't possibly do it without including a UMD drive:
Unwired View uncovered a child's drawing of the most obvious and banal possible implementation of a PSP Phone, that being the one filed by Sony Ericsson with the patent office:
The appropriately-named I'm Bored has the right idea:
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Gaming, Console
In order to stay competitive with Apple, Sony is considering adding cell phone functionality to its portable gaming console, the PSP. The phone and game hybrid may not be marketed under the PSP name, but the device will likely have many of the similar features of the Sony PSP, including using discs to play movies and games.
According to sources, a development team is expected to start working in July to combine the features of PSP and Sony Ericsson phones. Many top name game manufacturers have started to offer gaming options to Apple, including Capcom. If Sony wants to remain relevant, they have to consider ways to alter their current product line to appeal to more consumers.
Sony has not officially commented on the reports and similar rumors floated around about two years ago when Sony filed a patent for a PSP/phone hybrid. At the time, British Telecom had stated it was working with the company to bring phone functionality to the PSP.
Read: [Reuters]
Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
AP - Scott Painter makes his living betting on startup companies, having played a role in launching 29 of them over the years. But with the bad economy choking initial public offerings and acquisitions, Painter is now backing an idea that makes it easier for insiders like him to sell shares in their companies even before they go public.
Last month, Lance Walley left his position as co-founder and CEO of Ruby on Rails hosting company Engine Yard, after the VC-funded startup was forced to trim its workforce by 15% last January.
With nothing else on his hands immediately, Walley started building a Twitter application on his own dime (about $10,000) that would basically link your Twitter account to a brokerage account and enable you to trade stocks via the micro-sharing service.
PollyTrade is the result of his work, and it’s currently available in public beta. What it does is link your Twitter account to your E*Trade account (more brokers will be added in the future based on user feedback), and subsequently enable you to do transactions using tweets that start with @pollytrade and include the respective ticker.
For instance, if you’d want to buy 200 shares of Apple, you would tweet ‘@pollytrade buy 200 shares AAPL’ and likewise for selling e.g. 100 shares of General Electric (’@pollytrade sell 200 shares GE). After communicating with E*Trade, which should only take a few seconds, PollyTrade tweets back your order status along with your brokerage order number. In case something went wrong - because of incorrect formatting or a refusal from your broker - you’ll receive an error message instead so you know the order didn’t go through.
It’s that simple, and the ease of use is what Walley touts as the main selling point: “I always have access to Twitter, even if through SMS, so trading is always just a short text message away.”
That’s true, but there are issues: the service’s flaky reliability is one, security is another. Anyone remember the Mikeyy worm attacks earlier this year? To get around that, you’ll still need to log into your E*Trade account to confirm any transactions passed through PollyTrade, so the app is more like an easy way to start transactions than to actually go from A to Z with buying and selling stock.
On a sidenote: if you have a public Twitter account, other users can see which stocks you’re buying and selling when they follow both you and @PollyTrade, or when they simply go to your profile. Obviously, don’t use PollyTrade if that’s information you want to keep to yourself until they start supporting trading via direct messages (which is in the works).
If you’re all ok with the above and you want to sign up, you can do this here, but note that while in beta the PollyTrade team will decide to let you in only after contacting you.
Curious to see if this takes off, when they’ll team up with the StockTwits folks, and what you think of PollyTrade.
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The pictures of the Sony Walkman in 
These CF/SD card adapters are either brilliant or bafflingly bad. The trouble is, we’re not sure which. The widgets let you take SD cards and use them in cameras which usually only accept the larger Compact Flash cards.
