|
|
|
|
Flash drive in the style of an Atari Cart
It's just a USB flash drive cleverly slotted into an old cart, but what better way to tote a ROM collection around? Product Page [Roboticevile] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 6 Jul 2009 | 12:52 pm Nokia to make Android phoneFrom The Guardian: Nokia is understood to be developing a mobile phone that runs on Google's Android software platform in a strategic U-turn for the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer. Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 6 Jul 2009 | 12:51 pm Retro-Electro Digital-Analog Ruler
Shay Shafranek’s electronic ruler is a concept design with a difference. Instead of a boring mockup that only exists inside a computer’s brain, the ruler is a real, working model which lives in meatspace. The wooden stick is unmarked and instead has an LED readout which glows through the top layer of a multi-ply construction, rendering it invisible when off. The actual measuring is done by resistors on the edge which detect the pencil-lead. Because the measuring starts from the beginning of the line instead of the beginning of the ruler, you don’t have to do any careful lining up or hard sums in your head. When you run out of ruler, you can move it and the measurements will be added on, and you can also re-calibrate to any unit of your choice by holding down the power switch and touching two points, which will then become the distance for the new unit. This would be indispensable for Indianan Jones Of course, on the inside it’s way more complicated than a simple wooden strip embossed with a scale, but on the outside it is paradoxically simpler. It could be a little delicate, though, for the other schoolboy essentials: killing flies and making a vibrating boinnnnggg sound against the edge of the desk. Product page [Shay Shafranek via Oh Gizmo!]
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 Jul 2009 | 12:43 pm Amazon Ordered To Pay Back $119 Million In Taxes In Japan. More Tax Trouble May Be Ahead.
Japanese tax authorities started making these allegations as early as 2007 but now seem ready to pull out the hammer. The way Amazon operated so far is that every time Japanese customers buy something from Amazon’s Japanese website, they legally make contracts of purchase with Amazon offices in the US. The problem for the Japanese taxation bureau: These sales were booked and taxed in the US, even though Amazon operates two companies in Japan, Amazon Japan and Amazon Japan Logistics. (Click here for more background on Amazon’s position in Japan.) Reportedly, income of several hundred of millions of dollars wasn’t taxed in Japan under the U.S.-Japan tax treaty, as demanded by local tax authorities now. Amazon is currently in talks with authorities to invalidate the accusations. Amazon has a history of getting in trouble for the way they deal with taxes. In its 2008 annual report [PDF] released in April this year, Amazon.com disclosed that even more trouble may be on the horizon, especially in Japan (page 73):
(emphasis supplied) But even the $119 million tax bill in Japan isn’t peanuts, even for Amazon (provided they really end up having to pay it): Their operating income, for example, stood at $842 million last year for the Amazon group as a whole, with the Japanese subsidiary estimated to having contributed 10% of that number. We’ll stay tuned. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: TechCrunch | 6 Jul 2009 | 12:41 pm DoCoMo invests $45.5M in US mobile video firm
|
 Techtree.com | Sony Ericsson's Android Phone Leaked Techtree.com Everyone is aware of Sony Ericsson's plans to launch its own Android based device later this year. However, what we did not know was the details regarding the first Sony Ericsson Android device. That was until now. It seems we now do have some ... Sony Ericsson “Rachel” Android smartphone leaks Meet Kiki : Sony Ericsson Strange "Glass" Mobile Phone Sony Ericsson Android Smartphone Leaked |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 Pocket-lint.com | Nokia Says No Android Phone in the Works PC World Nokia has denied today reports that the Finnish company is working on a mobile phone running on Google's Android mobile operating system. A report this morning from the Guardian , a British daily newspaper, quoted "industry insiders" saying that Nokia ... Nokia denies plans phone running Google's Android Nokia Denies Android Phone Rumours Nokia, Intel partnership to deliver first gadget in September |
Two years ago, Index Ventures was part of a group that invested $45 million in Joost, the then-hot-and-hyped online video service, while bringing on well-known tech exec Mike Volpi (pictured here) as CEO.
Now, he is headed to Index as a venture partner, in what some might think is an ironic move.
That’s because last week, after much effort to get traction for Joost, Volpi announced that the service was undergoing a major shakeout–drastically cutting staff and shifting its business model and strategy.
Volpi also stepped down as it top exec, although he will stay on as chairman of Joost.
The development for the much-hyped Joost caused a small hubbub across the Internet, with much second guessing over could-have, would-have and should-haves about its strategies and product.
At Index, according to the press release, Volpi will be “based in the London office as part of the venture team where he will lead early stage investments in the Internet, telecom/networking and media sectors and contribute to the firm’s later stage growth fund.”
BoomTown talked with Volpi by phone from London about the move, which will be announced today, and about what happened at Joost.
Taking a job at Index, which is also located in London, was a natural one, said Volpi, who made a $10 million investment in Index’s first fund while an exec at Cisco (CSCO).
Over the years, he has gotten to know its partners well, including Danny Rimer.
Volpi also said he thinks it is a great time to be a VC, a new job for him. “In a market downturn, it is a good time to invest,” said Volpi. “There are a lot of great opportunities out there now.”
Currently, he is very interested in Web companies built around transactional business models rather than ad-supported ones, which he thinks needs a lot more development to become significant.
Volpi should know, given his recent experience at Joost, which relied on the still nascent advertising business for online video.
“At the end of the day, the consumer offering we had was not working, a lot because we did not have enough access to content we needed to build traffic,” said Volpi.
Joost was competing with outfits like Hulu, which is joint venture of two major media companies, News Corp. (NWS) and GE (GE) unit NBC Universal, as well as Google (GOOG) video unit YouTube.
The video service was started by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, whom Volpi met when he served on the board of their last hit, Skype.
Volpi said that to keep competing, it needed more funding. And, since no online video service was making money, he said it was decided a change was needed instead of just keeping on the same path.
Thus, the shift to a white-label video service, becoming a back end for other video players, which is still putting Joost into what is still a very competitive business.
Volpi acknowledged this, although he noted: “It is better to be competing in sector that has profitable rivals than one that does not.”
Discussions with possible acquirers of Joost also did not pan out, due mostly to price issues. But, said Volpi, it yielded some insight about Joost’s future direction.
“Not everyone wanted to pay a lot to own Joost, but a lot of people wanted to rent it,” said Volpi.
Volpi called his time at Joost, “a fantastic experience,” which he also hopes will be the case at Index.
Here’s a video interview I did with Volpi when I was in London last year:
And here is the official press release on the move of Volpi to Index:
MICHELANGELO VOLPI JOINS INDEX VENTURES AS PARTNER
Technology Executive to Invest in the Internet, Telecoms, Networking and Media Industries
LONDON, GENEVA and JERSEY, 6 July 2009–Index Ventures today announced that Mike Volpi, a renowned technology industry veteran, joined the firm as a partner. Volpi is based in the London office as part of the venture team where he will lead early stage investments in the Internet, telecom/networking and media sectors and contribute to the firm’s later stage growth fund.
During his 13 year career at Cisco, Volpi acquired more than 75 companies and served as Chief Strategy Officer responsible for corporate strategy, business development, strategic alliances, and advanced Internet projects. Volpi then led Cisco’s billion dollar routing and service provider business. For the past two years, Volpi was CEO of Joost, an Internet startup focused on online broadcast TV, and recently transitioned into the role of Chairman. Volpi started his career at HP in 1989.
“Mike has been a close advisor to the Index family for more than 10 years. He has worked closely with several of our portfolio companies such as Skype, TrialPay, Joost, FON and Telegent, even serving on some of their boards, so it’s a natural progression to have him officially join our team,” said Giuseppe Zocco, partner and co-founder, Index Ventures. “Mike’s world-class leadership qualities, transaction experience, and network make him a great addition to our partnership and will enhance our ability to serve our portfolio companies.”
“Venture has become a global business and I’ve watched Index take their place as a marquee name by investing in industry-altering businesses such as Betfair, MySQL and Skype,’ said Volpi. “I’m excited to become part of this team and look forward to helping Index partner with the next generation of great entrepreneurs.”
“Index companies have benefited from Mike’s wide ranging experience and his perspective will be invaluable as we continue to identify disruptive companies to invest in,” said Danny Rimer, Index partner.
“Mike has been a great source of strategic advice and has opened many doors for Telegent ever since Index invested in the company,” said Weijie Yun, CEO of Telegent Systems. “We highly value his perspective and we look forward to working with him even more closely now that he is a permanent member of the Index Ventures team.”
Only a couple of days after George Hotz became the first hacker to release a jailbreak app for the iPhone 3GS on Windows, there's a Mac-compatible version out too. This time, Hotz got some help from two fellow coders to be able to please the Mac folks, but he also made some improvements to the Windows version.
Happy jailbreaking, and in case you didn't know yet: happy unlocking too.
Gristelizer StompboxThe pedal version, housed in a high-quality, heavy-duty Hammond 1590DD box, retains all the functionality of the tabletop design with the added convenience of footswitch operation. In essense, The Gristleizer is a synth module that works with any audio signal. The audio path is modulated by an LFO using four selectable waveforms (upslope, downslope, triangle, & square), functioning in one of two paths: VCA (voltage controlled amplifier) or VCF (voltage controlled filter). Ranging from light and sweet tremolo to extreme, raunchy ring mod, The Gristleizer is a 100% analog, hand-assembled unit built to last.
 CNET News | Marc Andreessen Launches VC Firm InformationWeek Netscape founder Marc Andreessen has teamed up with long-time partner Ben Horowitz to launch an investment firm that will focus on technology startups. Andreessen Horowitz will begin with an initial capitalization of $300 million, ... Marc Andreessen puts his money where his mouth is A Father of Netscape Begins a Silicon Valley Venture Firm Marc Andreessen Forms Boutique Venture Capital Firm |
Section: Video, Content, Web, Web 2.0, Websites, Online Music/Video
We knew that Dinsey bought a piece of Hulu recently, but we didn’t know when they would start putting content on the site. Wonder no more because Disney’s ABC content is up on Hulu starting today. First up is “Grey’s Anatomy.”
ABC’s video player was always distinct from a lot of other network sites as it required you to watch an advertisement then click to continue watching your program. Now that ABC content is on Hulu, you can watch the video like any other Hulu video—passively.
The resolution tops out at 480p on Hulu, whereas higher quality HD video is available at ABC’s network site. If you want higher resolution video, hit the network site. If you want decent video without having to click to continue, Hulu’s now an option.
Read: [Hulu Blog]
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Nokia (NOK) will not debut a new Android-based handset at its annual Nokia World conference in early September because the company has no new Android-based handset to debut. That’s the word from Nokia which vehemently denied reports this morning that it is just months away from launching its first mobile phone based on Google’s mobile OS. “There is no truth to this story whatsoever,” the company said in a statement. “It is a well known fact that Symbian is our platform of choice for smartphones.”
Indeed. It was a just a little over a year ago that Nokia invested some $410 million in the platform, establishing the Symbian Foundation and releasing the Symbian OS as a royalty-free open mobile platform. It seems unlikely that the company would jeopardize that effort by rolling out an Android touchscreen phone at its annual conference. Even more unlikely when you consider that
Symbian is by far the world’s leading smart-phone software platform. It might not have as much buzz as Android or iPhone 3.0 or Palm’s new WebOS, but Symbian still claims 47 percent of the mobile OS market.
One thing I really liked about it all is that it's just a PC running a bunch of commodity hardware -- a projector, some sensors -- with cool software on the back-end. This is invention-by-recombination at its finest, and it means that the price and performance of the surfaces are tied to the broader markets for optical sensors, PCs and projectors, which points to a rosy future. The company's business model is building and selling the things, simple enough, so they don't make any pretense about top-s33kr1t stuff within.
 PR Web (press release) | Nude photos in iPhone apps show trouble with policing Web content CNN International (CNN) -- Nude photos and other potentially objectionable or illegal materials have been showing up in the iPhone application store in recent weeks, raising questions about Apple's ability to control iPhone content. ... Hot rumor: Apple to add camera to iPod Touch Prepare Yourself For iPod Video New iPod Touch 2009 with Video Camera Rumor intensifies |
None (of the sniffing students) perceived a difference between the two types of sweat, but the pre-exam sweat had a different effect on brain activity, lighting up areas that process social and emotional signals, as well as several areas thought to be involved in empathy...Fellow students smell your exam fear
A previous experiment found that sweat from skydivers activated anxiety circuits in sniffers' brains.
With his skepticism toward God—or men posing as gods--Baum affirmed the idea of human fallibility, but also the idea of human divinity. The Wizard may be a huckster—a short bald man born in Omaha rather than an all-powerful being—but meek and mild Dorothy, also a mere mortal, has the power within herself to carry out her desires. The story, says Schwartz, is less a “coming-of-age story … and more a transformation of consciousness story.” With The Wizard of Oz, the power of self-reliance was colorfully illustrated.Frank Baum, the Man Behind the Curtain (Smithsonian)
It seems appropriate that a story with such mythical dimensions has inspired its own legends—the most enduring, perhaps, being that The Wizard of Oz was a parable for populism. In the 1960s, searching for a way to engage his students, a high-school teacher named Harry Littlefield, connected The Wizard of Oz to the late-19th-century political movement, with the Yellow Brick Road representing the gold standard—a false path to prosperity—and the book's silver slippers standing in for the introduction of silver—an alternate means to the desired destination. Years later, Littlefield would admit that he devised the theory to teach his students, and that there was no evidence that Baum was a populist, but the theory still sticks.
Problem: You have a messy room in your house, a home office in which, even when the rest of the house is neatly squared-away, the clutter nags at the edge of your mind, taunting you.
The solution? For normal people, a few minutes of tidying would do the trick. For Alpha Nerd Agmak, the answer was to hide the offending room behind a secret passage and then, of course, post the results to Flickr.
This is how we know about the fantastic project. All it took was a pair of Ikea Billy bookcases (picked up from Craigslist), a piece of fiberboard with some cleverly placed casters and some sturdy hinges. It’s not supervillain-lair hidden (if the lights are on inside they spill through the gaps) but it’s certainly messy-room-obscuring hidden. All it needs is a door-catch in one of those books and it would be perfect.
Project page [Flickr via Lifehacker]
(Ed. Note: We recently gave the Boing Boing Video website a makeover that includes a new, guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. I'll be posting periodic roundups here on the motherBoing.)
More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com
Section: Computers
With a name that comes back like a blast, or maybe more like a nightmare from the past, CompuServe is back in the headlines. My nightmare of CompuServe came in the form of horrible dial up moments and hourly charges back in the early to mid nineties, but there was a CompuServe even before that in the form of an email service.
On top of that, the email service was what most would consider a strange form of email today, and served up usernames that if chosen today would seem like it was coming directly from a spammer. The accounts were numeric and had an address that would have went something like this; xxxxx.xxxx@compuserve.com.
Anyway, getting back to the point, AOL, the current owner has killed off CompuServe. Of course, that brings up another point or more accurately a question; CompuServe was still alive? Of course, the CompuServe that I knew and mostly hated was dwindled down to nothing by the end of the late 90s after it was purchased and not welcomed by AOL.
So, if you knew CompuServe was still around and kicking, then RIP to CompuServe. Otherwise, just move along, because we already know there are plenty of spam-like email usernames from the numerous other providers such as AOL, Hotmail and even Gmail.
Read [Basexblog] Via [Wired - Beyond The Beyond]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Paris-based online media group Hi-media has announced its acquisition of AdLINK Media, the display advertising unit of AdLINK Internet Media (also the company behind SEDO and Affilinet, which are not being sold), itself a part of Germany’s ISP United Internet. Still with us?
The acquisition comes about 18 months after the latter assigned Morgan Stanley to assist in the sale of the European display advertising power-broker.
At that time, a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung report citing anonymous sources indicated that AdLink Group expected a three-digit million euro sum from the sale of the unit, adding that AdLink’s valuation was nearly €400 million. That’s a far cry from today, with AdLINK Media getting valued south of €30 million.
The terms of agreement, which are fairly complex, straight from the press release:
AdLINK Media is valued at 29.4 million euros and will be transferred to Hi-media net of any cash and of all debt. According to the terms of the agreement protocol, the consideration paid for this transfer will be:
- 3,940,000 newly created shares in consideration for a portion of the AdLINK Media shares;
- 795,000 existing shares currently held by the Hi-media Group for the remaining shares of AdLINK Media plus;
- A deferred payment in the form of a vendor loan of 12.2 million euros.This vendor loan, which will end the 30th of June 2011, is repayable in fine and will have an interest rate of 3.7% for the first 12 months and then 5% afterwards. The shares to be held post acquisition by AdLINK AG will be subject to a one year lockup period.
AdLINK Internet Media AG will become a major shareholder in Hi-media Group with 10.7% of the capital, along with investors IDI and BV capital, and will henceforth concentrate operationally on its other business units.
According to its website, AdLink Media currently boasts sales offices in 13 countries and powered the display advertising network for about 4,000 websites, claiming a guaranteed reach of more than 80 million unique visitors across Europe (press release says 93 million uniques per month). Its employee count is about 200, and according to its latest earnings report AdLink Media had sales of €14.2 million in the first quarter of this year.
Hi-media currently employs over 390 people and operates in 9 countries: France, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, China, USA and Brazil. The company deploys a range of services linking website publishing (via Hi-media Publishing) and audience monetization (via Hi-media Services). Founded in 1996, Hi-media currently boasts over 50 million unique monthly visitors on its proprietary websites. Its latest financial statement shows that the group reported a consolidated turnover of €135.7 million for 2008, with a net income of about €10 million.
And thus, the consolidation on the display advertising market continues.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Silicon Era uncovers a patent, filed by Sony, for using everyday objects as game controllers.
Sony details a system where a camera can dynamically map an object -- any real world object -- for use in a video game. The illustration has a U shape block, but the patent outlines other example objects "include items such as coffee mugs, drinking glasses, books, bottles, etc." While these are given as examples the object mapping system is not limited to those objects, it can identify any three dimensional object.
Sony Patents A Motion Control System That Uses Ordinary Objects As Controllers [Silicon Era]
Sega Toys Japan is pretty active when it comes to developing toy robots. They are the company behind the E.M.A. (aka the kissing robot) or the A.M.P. (aka the music robot). But Sega Toys is also selling a lot of animal robots, for example a robo-hamster, baby biddies or a puppy. Their newest robotic animal is called Dream Cat Venus [PDF].
Sega Toys has been selling life-like (well, almost) robo-cats in Japan for about 3 years now. And Venus (designed like a Norwegian Forest Cat) is an upgrade for an older model called “Smile”. Sega Toys says it’s the right choice for people with no time to look after a real animal.
I’ve seen the older model in action quite a few times. And these things are really pretty realistic. Venus can move around, lay down and reacts when you touch it. There is a photo sensor in the forehead and several touch sensors are installed in the body.
Sega Toys worked together with scientists from Tohoku University’s Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer in Northern Japan to make sure Venus reacts realistically when you touch or speak to it. Say “There, there” (in Japanese) and it will purr, for example.
The battery-powered robo cat is sized at 490×240×230mm and drops into Japanese stores July 30 (price: $110). And you even get a comb with it.
Ask spezialised stores Japan Trend Shop, Geek Stuff 4 U or Rinkya to get one shipped outside Japan if you can’t wait for Sega Toys’ international distribution plans.
 Ars Technica | Deathmatch: Palm Pre versus iPhone Computerworld InfoWorld - There's been one promised iPhone killer after another -- the Google Android-based G1, the RIM BlackBerry Storm, the yet-to-ship, years-delayed Windows Mobile 7 -- but none has given it worthwhile competition to date. ... iPhone 3GS Tops Consumer Reports' Smartphone Ratings Palm wants quality, not quantity, apps Taking flight: why the iPhone still beats Pre for air travel |
Remember the iPhone Nano? It was a sure thing, based on designs of silicon cases leaked by a third party manufacturer. Oh, wait. No it wasn’t. The fire of speculation licked higher as the gasoline of rumor was sloshed and splattered around the internet, only to fizzle under the halon blanket of Apple’s silence.
Then again, you may remember the design of the iPhone 3G, itself leaked via a case design, although this time it was the actual molds that were the giveaway. These proved to be dead-on, revealing the curved back of the new handset.
So, take this latest story how you will, either choking it back with some hard-to-swallow skepticism or diving into the Kool-Aid flavored rumors as they lap the shores of credibility.
This time the silicone points to cameras in both the iPod Nano and a new iPod Touch (yes, cameras in iPods — yet another recycled rumor). The Touch case looks accurate enough, with a gap for both the lens and the Wi-Fi radio to peek through. Otherwise, the case designs of the iPods themselves do not vary.
We really don’t know where the truth lies. But we have a pretty good idea as to when it may lie — September, the traditional month for iPod updates. Expect analysts to begin “predicting” this soon.
Product page Touch [Uxsight via MacRumors]
Product page Nano [Nanocase]
See Also:
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Want to put your overheating iPhone to some use (other than scalding your cheek as it goes to work in your hip pocket, of course)? Why not try it out as a barbecue grill, “no app required”?
Illustrator Chad Covino tossed off these funs sketches after reading about the hot, hot handsets here on Gadget Lab, and, while rather sardonic, Chad’s idea is a good one. The glass top of the iPhone is wipe clean, like the ceramic cooker hobs beloved of the Lady’s clean-freak mother. And because you’ll have to use the iPhone 3GS if you have any hope of getting your meat past the salmonella stage of doneness, you’ll also benefit from the grease-repelling oleophobic coating.
The only problem we foresee, then, is that the iPhone is tiny in comparison to a real grill, although you’ll probably have space for six chicken nuggets or a very small, reshaped burger patty. And you can even use it as a countdown cooking timer!
No APP required [Chad Covino]
Now that Joost has given up the ghost and bailed out of the Web video portal business, who’s next?
A good bet: Veoh, one of the best-funded would-be YouTubes. Multiple sources tell me the company is aggressively marketing itself in hopes of finding a buyer.
And if a deal does go through, it will result in a loss for the company’s high-profile backers, who include former Disney (DIS) CEO Michael Eisner to Goldman Sachs (GS). I’m told that CEO Dmitry Shapiro has been shopping the company at prices below $70 million, which is the amount that investors have sunk into the portal since 2005.
What happened to Veoh? The same thing that has happened to almost every other Web video portal that isn’t Google’s YouTube or Hulu: Not enough audience, not enough ad revenue, too many costs.
Veoh claims an audience of about 25 million users, which is less than auditors like Comscore (SCOR) report but in any case is an order of magnitude smaller than YouTube. Sources tell me it lost money on revenues of about $6 million last year. Sales are up and executives are optimistic it could break even this year, but the trajectory isn’t high enough to keep it afloat as an independent company.
Complicating matters for Veoh is a costly court battle with Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, which accuses the company of copyright violations. That two-year-old fight has cost the startup millions in legal fees.
The fact that Veoh’s backers include media-savvy players like Time Warner (TWX); former Viacom executives Tom Freston and Jonathan Dolgen; and Spark Capital, one of the primary investors in Twitter, hasn’t been enough to help the company extricate itself from the suit.
In April, Veoh laid off a good chunk of its staff, replaced CEO Steve Mitgang with Shapiro, the company’s founder, and focused its energy on a new “Video Compass” player that users are supposed to download and install in their Web browsers.
At the time, Shapiro said that the company’s Web portal business was a success but acknowledged that “quite frankly, there are a lot of things like that.”
So who would buy Veoh? Theoretically, at the right price, the company could be attractive to a large Web player like a Yahoo (YHOO), which used to be a big player in video back when video was a small market. Or the company could try marketing its technical expertise to a cable/telco company like Time Warner Cable (TWC) that hasn’t done much with online video but says it will soon.
But rival Web portal Joost tried making the same pitch to various buyers over the last few months, and the company couldn’t get a deal done. Last week Joost laid off most of its staff and said it would try to go it alone as a services company.
This kind of flux is now par for the course among the big Web portals that thought they could rival YouTube, or at least secure second place. But Google’s lead over everyone else in video gets bigger every day, and its primary competitor is now Hulu, which has the advantage of premium content from its Hollywood owners — Disney, GE’s NBC Universal (GE) and News Corp.’s Fox (NWS).
In addition to Veoh and Joost, France’s DailyMotion has swapped out CEOs in recent months, and is reportedly looking to raise money. Meanwhile Metacafe, yet another video hub, has hired boutique investment bank Think Equity to look for “strategic investors to provide expansion capital”.
Metacafe CEO Erick Hachenburg says his company doesn’t need the money, and can survive on its own if it doesn’t go ahead with a deal. “You would expect in this marketplace that you’re going to have a shakeout, and the stronger players are going to make it,” he says.
That sounds right. The question is whether we’ll have more than two players left when this is all over.
A Finnish fellow reviews Viliv's X70 for JKKMobile. It's half an hour long, but my takeaway is that it's much better than the Viliv S5. You may also see its innards. [JKKMobile]
People are getting more comfortable, for better or for worse, bringing a computer to bed with them.
There are a couple of places where you can go to get your fill of tech-related information and keep track of breaking news and events outside of your RSS reader or e-mail inbox. Google News isn’t one of those places (yet), but Techmeme and to a lesser degree Alltop, popurls and Digg are some of the most frequented websites when it comes to pleasing those who like to stay on top of hot tech news (us included).
Techmeme is undeniably the leader of the pack; it has solid algorithms and ranking systems in place that can quickly detect breaking news and gives you a clean overview of which other technology news sites and blogs are discussing it practically with minimal lag. It has its flaws, sure, but I dare you to show me a service that does what Techmeme is supposed to do better than they are.
The only web service that I’ve ever seen pop up of which I thought it could potentially become a real Techmeme competitor was Techfuga, a site that mimicked Techmeme in many ways but added some extra bells and whistles (like Twitter search, for example). At launch, the site garnered quite a bit of positive commentary. Louis Gray said Techfuga was the result of mating between Techmeme and Alltop, and Robert Scoble said the site was showing Techmeme how to innovate. But don’t bother going to the site right now to check if they were right. It’s been down for a few days and you won’t see it come back up again for a couple of months.
While we’re still awaiting a formal response from Techfuga founder Joao Azevedo, we gather from his latest tweets and FriendFeed chatter that he plans to rebuild the entire platform and come back with a completely overhauled Techfuga in a couple of months. It’s beyond me why the startup doesn’t just keep this version live and switch to the new one whenever it’s ready for prime time, but Joao says on FriendFeed that this is because of “set up and costs management during this development time”. Judging from its traffic estimates, I doubt a lot of people are actually going to miss it.
That said, I do hope they come back with something awesome, because I happen to think we need more competition in this space.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Your lack of consciousness disturbs me.
Product Page [Star Wars Shop via Technabob]
blueTunes, a streaming music site that lets you stream your music library from the cloud to any computer, is launching a new desktop app tonight that looks to make the service an even more compelling alternative to other online music sites and possibly even iTunes.
For those who aren’t familiar with the service, blueTunes lets you scan your hard drive for music files and upload them to the site’s servers, which you can then stream from wherever you are. This process would take a very long time (and quite a bit of bandwidth) were it not for a shortcut the site is employing: while you still have to prove that you own your music (the site uses a Java app to check through you music folders), the site only makes you upload songs that aren’t already in its database. In other words, unless you’ve got a really eclectic collection, you’ll be able to transfer your library to the cloud without having to move many files.
The benefits of a desktop client for this kind of music service are fairly obvious. When you’re using a site like MySpace Music, you generally have to keep a browser tab open at all times, and when tabs are grouped together in the browser it can be tricky to figure out which one is actually controlling the music coming out of your speakers. And there’s always the possibility that your browser will freeze as you peruse another site, taking down your tunes with it. Using blueTunes through a desktop app, you don’t have to deal with these problems.
It’s a welcome addition to the service, and it’s nice to see that the startup is still chugging along without having to come up against any legal hurdles. As we noted when we last covered the site, blueTunes’ easy-upload model sounds a lot like the one that was used by MP3.com in 2000, which was later sued into oblivion. That said, founder Nick Alexander says that blueTunes hasn’t had any issues with the labels, and that the company is taking as many precautions as possible.
Another music site that also lets you stream your music library from the cloud is Lala, which we’ve been following pretty closely since the service’s relaunch last year. As with blueTunes, Lala only makes you upload songs that aren’t already in its library, and Lala also has the benefit of deals with all the major record labels, so it doesn’t have to worry about any potential legal troubles.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
The search for the perfect remote control continues, this time from Canesta, a San Jose-based company specializing in 3-D “natural interfaces.”
That means controlling your television via a series of gestures–including a wave and more.
Canesta demoed the innovative technology to control TV functions, from changing channels to navigating more complex menu, for Walt Mossberg and me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.
Here’s a video of the D7 demo:
Like most people who've had an iPhone 3GS in their hands, we've been extremely impressed with the video capabilities of this little device. Not only Does it take near-HD video, it has excellent basic editing software and video can be uploaded to YouTube over Wifi or the cell networks. Among other things, it is the most useful video camera in the world today. No wonder the video camera market is shaking in its collective boots.
Thank God those iPhones are so expensive, and Apple will only sell 20 million or so of them in 2009. If Apple added cameras to its line of iPods, there would be another 3+million of them hitting the market per month, and the low end of the digital video camera market could be crushed.
Uh oh.
That's exactly what we're hearing is going to happen. One of our sources in Asia say that Apple has placed an order for a massive number of camera modules of the type that they include in the iPhone. These are inexpensive cameras, in the $10 range. And the size of the order, our source says, means they can only be used for one thing - the iPods.
Like most people who’ve had an iPhone 3GS in their hands, we’ve been extremely impressed with the video capabilities of this little device. Not only Does it take near-HD video, it has excellent basic editing software and video can be uploaded to YouTube over Wifi or the cell networks. Among other things, it is the most useful video camera in the world today. No wonder the video camera market is shaking in its collective boots.
Thank God those iPhones are so expensive, and Apple will only sell 20 million or so of them in 2009. If Apple added cameras to its line of iPods, there would be another 3+million of them hitting the market per month, and the low end of the digital video camera market could be crushed.
Uh oh.
That’s exactly what we’re hearing is going to happen. One of our sources in Asia say that Apple has placed an order for a massive number of camera modules of the type that they include in the iPhone. These are inexpensive cameras, in the $10 range. And the size of the order, our source says, means they can only be used for one thing - the iPods.
Update: Macrumors features two images of cases that are supposed to be designed for the upcoming iPod Touch and iPod Nano, and suggest that the next generation of said devices will indeed include a camera.
Putting a camera in the iPod touch, which uses the same operating system as the iPhone, is a logical next step for Apple. But the order size is supposedly so large that some people in Taiwan are speculating that Apple may be planning to put cameras in the lower end of the iPod line, too. “Everything but the Shuffle may have a camera in it soon,” says our source.
We don’t have even close to enough information to speculate that the Nano and Classic iPods could be video-ready anytime soon. But I could easily see these lower end iPods include the camera just for taking pictures. Apple never turned video on in the iPhone 3G, but lots of people were using it via unlaunched apps from Qik, Ustream and others anyway. They could be planning the same thing for the Nano.
But back to video: The iPod touch starts at $229, and if they add the camera module, turning on video is a no-brainer, particularly since the software, already working on the iPhone, is ready to go.
That’s exactly the same price as the high end Flip Mino HD that we gush about so often. The Flip will take marginally better video, but it doesn’t have on-device editing and uploading to YouTube. Nor does it support Internet browsing, email and the thousands of games and other apps available for the iPod Touch. And we haven’t even mentioned the iPod’s primary purpose - music.
Guess which one wins?
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
When Brad Linder posted audio clips from high-end digital recorders, it looked like a slam-dunk for Sony. Compared to a generic competitor, there was no question: readers found that the other model was muddy, noisier, even worthless.
How interesting, then, that Linder had accidentally posted the same sound clip -- Samson's -- for both devices. [Dan's Data]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
By Farhad Manjoo, Technology Columnist, Slate
“Look at this fucking hipster” was a universally recognized gibe before it became a Web site. Anyone who’s ever taken a stroll with a friend down Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn or accidentally veered into San Francisco’s Mission District on a Saturday afternoon has had occasion to whisper these words. Look at this fucking hipster with the 1985 New England Patriots Super Bowl T-shirt and forearm tattoo of Ralph Nader.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Claire Cain Miller, Staff Writer, The New York Times
Brooke Hammerling (publicist) and Erin McKean (entrepreneur) are in a Sand Hill Road conference room, hashing out plans to unveil Ms. McKean’s new Web site, Wordnik.
Ms. Hammerling, while popping green apple Jolly Ranchers into her mouth, suggests a press tour that includes briefing bloggers at influential geek sites like TechCrunch, All Things Digital and GigaOM.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Dustin sez, "Musician Guillaume Estace plays a rendition of the famous "Cantina Theme" from Star Wars IV on a Chapman Stick, a guitar-like instrument designed solely for finger-tapping. It's really cool the way it lets him play the bass and melody simultaneously - I want one!" This is my wife's ringtone (the original, not the Chapman Stick version) and so I hear it a lot; this guy does a GREAT job with it!
Star Wars "Cantina Band" on Chapman Stick
(Thanks, Dustin!)
Source: Boing Boing | 6 Jul 2009 | 7:04 am
By Jon Healey, Writer, Los Angeles Times
The sale of The Pirate Bay probably ranks as the week’s biggest news for those of us who obsess about copyright issues, followed by the ruling that Usenet.com’s newsgroup-access service infringed on the major record companies’ copyrights and the Supreme Court’s decision not to take Hollywood’s appeal of the Cablevision (CVC) network DVR ruling. But two other developments in U.S. courts seem more important to the average music fan because of the potential they have for disrupting digital services.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Jacqui Cheng, Associate Editor, Ars Technica
In an age where your boss, coworkers, parents, and even (*gasp*) grandparents are finally joining social networks, we are all more aware than ever that we had better keep things relatively clean.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Om Malik, Founder, Senior Writer, GigaOmniMedia
For much of this decade, Mozilla and its Firefox browser were the upstarts, out to beat the big, bad Microsoft (MSFT) and its Internet Explorer browser. Firefox, the descendant of Netscape, the browser that helped jump-start the web revolution, was nimble and it was secure–something Microsoft’s IE wasn’t.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Credit: Jason Battersby, Project Nomad.
Gadget translates baby’s cries into various moods
WTF: GameStop selling Nintendo Wii bundles with rubber ducks, water guns
eBay: Piece of chicken shaped like Ocarina of Time
Video: Classic video games done up LEGO-style
CrunchPad prototype coming this month, be available ASAP
 BBC News | Hybrids boost Toyota and Honda car sales Reuters TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp's Prius hybrid was Japan's best-selling car in June while Honda Motor Co's rival Insight ranked fourth, helping the two hybrid leaders dominate the list of top-selling models. Sales of the Prius, which was remodeled ... Toyota's Hybrid Patents May Hamper Competitors Japan rethinks silent hybrid cars Toyota Prius Becomes First Hybrid Best Selling Car In Japan |
Last April, Hulu made the major announcement that The Walt Disney Company had acquired an equity stake in the online video site. Up until that point, Hulu’s original investors News Corp and NBC were the site’s primary content providers, making for an impressive but still somewhat limited selection. The Disney deal opens doors to an entirely new library of content for Hulu to distribute, ranging from movies from the Disney library to prime-time ABC shows, but for the last two months we’ve had to wait for the catalog to make its way online. Tonight, we’re beginning to see the fruits of the deal.
Beginning this evening Hulu now features Grey’s Anatomy, a very popular prime-time medical drama that’s sure to be a crowd-pleaser. The episode selection for the show is pretty sparse right now — you have five episodes from the most recent fifth season to choose from (with large gaps in between each) but we may well see the selection rotate through the summer. Hulu plans to release more ABC shows over the next two weeks, which will include Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, Scrubs, and I Survived a Japanese Game Show.
The news may be just the shot in the arm Hulu needs to carry its strong traffic numbers through the summer. The site had seen very impressive growth all year, in no small part due to its Super Bowl and subsequent star-studded ad campaign. But last month came word that the site’s growth was dropping off, and the number of unique visitors to the site actually decreased between March and April. Hulu hasn’t been around long enough to figure out exactly what to attribute this to — it could well be television’s seasonal surges in popularity or possibly a saturated market. In any case, the site is still extremely popular, but I’m sure they’d like to keep that arrow going up and to the right.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
The Difference Engine...a steampunk adventure (Thanks, Ed!)
Travelling from past to future through a landscape of machines and ideas Walk the Plank and Thingumajig Theatre have created an interactive journey through the courtyard of Manchester's Town Hall. The audience will help inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage find the clues to repair his Difference Engine; solve the spider's riddles, hidden in the worldwide web; persuade the counting madman to open the gates to the Hall of Shadows...and discover the secret workings of the steampunk arcade.Alongside the show, a programme of engagement with six local schools is being led by The Centre for Urban Education. As part of the Creative Partnerships 'Enquiry' programme, children, young people and their teachers are working with creative practitioners to explore their ideas. They will develop a new creative learning resource based on the themes of the performance and linked to the science, technology, history, engineering and maths curricula.
This was how I got rid of my LinkedIn account in the end, and why I never signed back up again.
(Thanks, Clay!)
Source: Boing Boing | 6 Jul 2009 | 5:37 am
Tell someone that her car has a chip-based controller that can be hacked to improve gas mileage, and you give her the keywords to feed into Google to find out how to do this, where to find the equipment to do it -- even the firms that specialize in doing it for you.Cheap Facts and the Plausible PremiseIn the age of cheap facts, we now inhabit a world where knowing something is possible is practically the same as knowing how to do it.
This means that invention is now a lot more like collage than like discovery.
Kudos to Tim for a great editorial and especially for the use of "strategy tax" -- what a great phrase!
So we sold GNN to America Online in June 1995. Big mistake. Despite telling us that they wanted to embrace the Web, they kept GNN as an "off brand," continuing to focus on their proprietary AOL platform and allowing Yahoo! ( YHOO - news - people ) to dominate the new online information platform.Why Kindle Should Be An Open Book (via /.)So it was with a feeling of deja vu that I listened in mid-2007 to the promises of Amazon about the potential of its new proprietary e-book platform. While no payment is required to participate, there are clearly onerous restrictions that could limit the growth of the market: a proprietary file format, and the requirement that the e-books only be sold by Amazon.com.
The file format was a problem for us from the get-go: Amazon's Kindle file format doesn't provide support for tables or for so-called monospaced fonts, two formatting features that we use heavily in our line of technical books. And there is a viable alternative: Epub, the open format from the International Digital Publishing Forum, is based on the Web's native format, HTML, and provides full table and font support. This is the first "strategy tax" paid by those who embrace proprietary platforms: They can't support the needs of every niche and must prioritize their support for mainstream needs.
 PC Magazine | Browser market share update: Firefox 3.5 eclipses Chrome TG Daily Chicago (IL) - Mozilla can celebrate a decent launch of its latest browser, Firefox 3.5. The software has cleared the 2% barrier over the weekend, topping Google's Chrome browser for the very first time. However, even if Mozilla's ... Browser Users Can Celebrate an Independent's Day Week in review: A speedier new Firefox KELLNER: Speed, space and browsers |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Under the hood of most netbooks lies a tiny Intel Atom chip. Intel’s low-power processor has fast become the silicon of choice for tiny computers — but not cellphone makers. Until last week’s Nokia-Intel partnership, most handset makers showed almost no interest in the world’s biggest maker of PC processors.
Meanwhile, Intel rival ARM, whose chips are packaged and sold through companies such as Qualcomm, Samsung and Texas Instruments, has gained nearly 90 percent of the cellphone processor market.
“Traditionally cellphones have been designed on the ARM processor and it is not easy to change it,” says Jack Gold, principal analyst with consulting firm J. Gold Associates. “And cellphone makers don’t want to. ARM-based chips have a significant advantage over the current generation Atom processors for quite a few reasons.”
Intel is being held back in the mobile sphere by its inability to offer power consumption on par with ARM’s chips, say analysts. Add to that the notion that Atom is untested for mobile phones and the fact that many proprietary mobile-phone operating systems are not compatible with Intel’s x86 architecture, and it makes breaking into the cellphone market an uphill climb.
It’s not for want of trying. Over the past few years, Intel has tried to crack open the mobile market with the XScale technology, before selling it to Marvell in 2006. Last month, Intel said it will buy Wind River Systems, a company that creates software for embedded applications in small consumer electronics and cars.
Now Intel is betting that the next version of the Atom family, which it plans to release in early 2010, will further its plans to get into phones. Also, Intel’s partnership with Nokia could result in a new chipset architecture targeted at mobile devices, the two companies say, although they have not provided any details.
Intel says it is isn’t concerned about its lack of a mobile foothold in the market today. It’s looking to the future. The current generation of Atom processor was never meant to go on cellphones, says Pankaj Kedia, a director in Intel’s ultra mobility group. Instead the company is counting on ‘Moorestown,’ the next generation of Atom processor to please cellphone manufacturers.
“Atom today is not suitable for cellphones,” acknowledges Kedia. “But Moorestown will deliver the same level of performance as today’s Atom but with a 50x reduction in idle power and a 3x reduction in power when you are playing 720p video.”
Intel needs to grab a slice of the cellphone market as its traditional turf — PCs — shrinks. Research firm Gartner expects PC sales for 2009 to reach 257 million units worldwide, while 269.1 million cellphones were sold in the first quarter of 2009 alone. Though smartphones, which require powerful processors, are still a small percentage of the overall phones market, it is a fast growing segment.
“There is no doubt that Intel wants to be in the cellphone business,” says Gold. “We are talking about a category where it can sell hundreds of millions of chips a year.”
Unlike PCs, where power management is important but not a deal-breaker, cellphones are all about the battery life. Though the latest smartphones offer advanced audio, video and picture capabilities, customers still expect long battery life from their phones. And unlike in the PC business where Intel has to contend with just one big rival in the form of AMD, a number of companies have sprung up offering repackaged ARM processors.
The current ARM Cortex-A8 is shipping in the new PalmPre (using Texas Instruments OMAP 3430), the new iPhone 3GS (using Samsung’s version). Qualcomm’s SnapDragon chip also based on the Cortex-A8 instruction set has been announced in Toshiba’s new smartphone.
Independent benchmarks on ARM vs. Atom power consumption are hard to come by. Both Intel and ARM use their own marketing spin to prove one is superior to the other, depending on whose brochure you are reading at the moment.
But analysts are clear that ARM right now ranks much well ahead of Intel Atom.
Consider these numbers for a moment (from ARM). For a 1000 mAH battery, the Intel Atom Z500 Atom processor running at 800 MHz offers 19 hours of sleep time and overall battery life of 7 hours. An ARM Cortex-A8 at 800 MHz offers weeks of sleep time and 6.9 days of average battery life — an order of magnitude greater..
“Of course Intel will argue that this is based on the current N270 Atom, not Moorestown,” says Will Strauss, principal analyst at market research firm Forward Concepts. “And ARM will respond with ‘by the time Moorestown rolls out, we’ll have clients shipping Cortex-A9 based processors, and they will be even more lower-power’,” says Strauss.
Details about the upcoming platform’s power consumption and management capabilities are scarce. Intel has said the Moorestown platform consumes up to 10 percent lower less idle power compared to current Atom based processors. But there’s not enough detail to satisfy analysts.
“We don’t have a sample of Moorestown,” says Strauss. “All we have are Intel’s statements that keep changing and are rather hazy around the details.”
Even if Intel can deliver a successful cellphone chip in Moorestown, finding a foothold in the cellphone market won’t be easy, says Strauss. “A lot of the cellphone OS and software is not ported on to x86,” he says. “Doing that will take time and commitment from handset manufacturers.”
Strauss estimates it would take up to two years to get handset makers get their OS operating systems compatible with Atom. Intel says handset manufacturers may never have to, since it is working on Moblin, a new operating system targeted at pocket-sized devices.
“We don’t think today’s phone operating systems are the right ones,” says Kedia. “They were written for voice phones not for next generation smartphones and that’s our pitch with Moblin.”
It’s an extremely ambitious goal and for now the odds are not in Intel’s favor. “If they ship a chip for cellphones next year, it won’t be substantial,” says Strauss.
See Also:
Photo: Atom processor/Intel
In 1969, the Neiman Marcus catalog offered the first home PC, a stylish stand-up model called the Honeywell Kitchen Computer, priced at $10,600. The picture shows an aproned housewife caressing the machine, with this tag line: "If she can only cook as well as Honeywell can compute." That image should be on every cubicle in Silicon Valley; it's a testament both to what technologists get right and what they get badly wrong.
Free: The Future of a Radical Price
Download the audiobook »
This player requires Flash.
To their credit, they understood that Moore's law would bring computing within the reach of regular people. But they had no idea why anyone would want it. Despite countless brainstorming sessions and meetings on the subject, the only application the Honeywell team could think of for a home computer (aside from the perennial checkbook balancing) was recipe card management. So the Kitchen Computer was aimed at housewives and featured integrated counter space. Those housewives would, however, require a programming course (included in the price), since the only way to enter data was with binary toggle switches, and the machine's only display was binary lights. Needless to say, not a single Kitchen Computer is recorded as having sold.
Today, of course, we have computers in every home—and in every pocket and car and practically everywhere else. But one of the few things the average person doesn't use them for is managing recipe cards.
Don't blame Honeywell—blame the computing world of the 1960s. In those days, computers were expensive mainframes. Because processing power was so scarce and valuable, it was reserved for use by IT professionals, mostly working for big companies and the government. Engineers both built the computers and decided how to use them—no wonder they couldn't think of nonengineering applications.
But as the Kitchen Computer hinted, computers would soon get smaller and cheaper. This would take them out of the glass boxes of the mainframe world—and away from the IT establishment—and put them in the hands of consumers. And the real transformation would come when those regular folks found new ways to use computers, revealing their true potential.
All this was possible because Alan Kay, an engineer at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s, understood what Moore's law was doing to the cost of computing. He decided to do what writer George Gilder calls "wasting transistors." Rather than reserve computing power for core information processing, Kay used outrageous amounts of it for frivolous stuff like drawing cartoons on the screen. Those cartoons—icons, windows, pointers, and animations—became the graphical user interface and eventually the Mac. By 1970s IT standards, Kay had "wasted" computing power. But in doing so he made computers simple enough for all of us to use. And then we changed the world by finding applications for them that the technologists had never dreamed of.
This is the power of waste. When scarce resources become abundant, smart people treat them differently, exploiting them rather than conserving them. It feels wrong, but done right it can change the world.
The problem is that abundant resources, like computing power, are too often treated as scarce. Consider another example: Wired's IT department used to send out occasional emails telling employees it was time to "delete unneeded files from the shared folders"—their way of saying they had run out of storage room on the servers. Because we're good corporate citizens, we all dutifully scanned through our files, deleting those we could live without. Perhaps you've done the same.
One day, after years of this ritual, I began to wonder just how much storage capacity we actually had. Turns out, not so much: 500 gigabytes. At the time, a terabyte of memory (1,000 gigabytes) cost about $130. I had recently purchased a standard Dell desktop PC for my family, which the kids used for playing videogames; it came with a terabyte internal hard drive. My children had twice as much storage as my entire staff.
Scarcity vs. Abundance Management
Scarcity |
Abundance |
|
| Rules | Everything is forbidden unless it is permitted. | Everything is permitted unless it is forbidden. |
| Social model | Paternalism ("We know what's best") | Egalitarianism ("You know what's best") |
| Profit plan | Business model | We'll figure it out |
| Decision process | Top-down | Bottom-up |
| Organizational structure | Command and control | Out of control |
How did this happen? The answer is simple: We had gotten stuck thinking that storage was expensive, when in fact it had become dirt cheap. We treated the abundant thing—hard drive capacity—as if it were scarce, and the scarce thing—people's time—as if it were abundant. The corporate bureaucracy had gotten the equation backward. (Let me hasten to add that my office quickly added a heap of storage, and those emails don't go out anymore!)
This happens all over the place. When your phone company tells you that your voicemail inbox is full, that's artificial scarcity—it costs less than a nickel to store 100 voice messages, and the average iPod could store more than 100,000 of them (voice messages are recorded at lower quality than music, so they take up less space). By forcing subscribers to spend time deleting voicemails, the phone companies were saving a little on storage costs by spending a lot of consumer time. They managed the scarcity they could measure (storage) but neglected to manage a much more critical scarcity (customer goodwill). No wonder phone companies are second only to cable TV companies in "most hated" rankings.
But the funny thing about waste is that it's all relative to your sense of scarcity. Our grandparents grew up in an age when a long-distance telephone call was an expensive luxury, to be scheduled and kept short. Even today, many find it hard to keep people of that generation on a long-distance call for very long—they still hear a meter ticking in their head and rush to finish. But our kids are growing up in an age when long distance is free on their cell phones. They'll happily chat for hours. From the perspective of 1950s telecom costs, that's incredibly wasteful. But today, when those costs have fallen to near zero, we don't give it a second thought. It doesn't feel like waste at all.
Nature Wastes Life
Our brains seem wired to resist waste, but we are relatively unique in nature for this. Mammals have the fewest offspring in the animal kingdom, and as a result we invest enormous time and care in protecting each one so that it can reach adulthood. The death of a single human is a tragedy, one that survivors sometimes never recover from, and we prize the individual life above all.
Percentage of your CPU's transistors used for ...
As a result, we have a very developed sense of the morality of waste. We feel bad about the unloved toy or the uneaten food. Sometimes this is for good reason, because we understand the greater social cost of profligacy, but often it's just because our mammalian brains are programmed that way.
However, the rest of nature doesn't work like that. A bluefin tuna can release 10 million fertilized eggs in a spawning season. Perhaps 10 of them will hatch and make it to adulthood. A million die for every one that survives.
But there's good reason for it. Nature wastes life in search of better life. It mutates DNA, creating failure after failure, in the hope that some new sequence will eventually outcompete those that came before and the species will evolve. In other words, nature tests its creations by killing most of them quickly—the battle "red in tooth and claw" that determines reproductive advantage.
Nature is so wasteful because scattershot strategies are the best way to do what mathematicians refer to as fully exploring "the potential space." Imagine a desert with two pools of water separated by some distance. If you're a plant growing next to one of those pools, you can follow one of two different reproductive strategies. You can drop seeds near your roots, where there's a pretty good chance they'll find water. This is safe but soon leads to crowding. Or you can toss the seeds to the wind and let them float far away. This means that almost all will die, but it's the only way to find that second pool of water, where life can expand into a new niche, perhaps a richer one. The way to get from what the mathematicians call a local maximum to the global maximum is to explore a lot of fruitless minima along the way. It's wasteful, in a sense, but it can pay off in the end.
The science fiction writer Cory Doctorow calls this "thinking like a dandelion." He writes: "The disposition of each—or even most—of the seeds isn't the important thing, from a dandelion's point of view. The important thing is that every spring, every crack in every pavement is filled with dandelions. The dandelion doesn't want to nurse a single precious copy of itself in the hopes that it will leave the nest and carefully navigate its way to the optimum growing environment, there to perpetuate the line. The dandelion just wants to be sure that every single opportunity for reproduction is exploited!"
This is how to embrace waste. Seeds are too cheap to meter. It feels wrong, even alien, to throw so much away, but it's the right way to take advantage of abundance.
Life Is Cheap (If You're a Fish)
Nature wastes life, but it's not all in vain. The animal kingdom merely takes a scattershot approach to improving its species. Only mammals attempt to preserve every life.
Making the World Safe for Cat Videos
Perhaps the best example of a glorious embrace of waste is YouTube. I often hear people complain that YouTube is no threat to television because it's "full of crap"—which is, I suppose, true. The problem is that no one agrees on what the crap is. You may be looking for funny cat videos and think my favorite soldering tutorials are of no interest. I want to see funny videogame stunts and couldn't care less about your cooking tutorials. And clips of our own charming family members are of course delightful to us and totally boring to everyone else. Crap is in the eye of the beholder.
Even the most popular YouTube clips may totally fail in the standard Hollywood definition of production quality, in that the video is low-resolution and badly lit, the sound quality awful, and the plots nonexistent. But none of that matters, because the most important thing is relevance. We'll always choose a "low-quality" video of something we actually want over a "high-quality" video of something we don't.
A few months ago it was time for my kids to choose how to spend the two hours of "screen time" they're allowed on weekends. I suggested Star Wars and gave them a choice: They could watch any of the six movies in hi-def on a huge projection screen with surround sound audio and popcorn. Or they could go on YouTube and watch stop-motion Lego animations of Star Wars scenes created by 9-year-olds. It was no contest—they raced for the computer.
It turns out that my kids, and many like them, aren't really that interested in Star Wars as created by George Lucas. They're more interested in Star Wars as created by their peers, never mind the shaky cameras and fingers in the frame. When I was growing up, there were many clever products designed to extend the Star Wars franchise to kids, from toys to lunch boxes, but as far as I know nobody thought of stop-motion Lego animation created by children.
The demand must always have been there, but it was invisible because no marketer thought to offer it. Once we had YouTube, and didn't need a marketer's permission to do things, that demand suddenly emerged. Collectively, we found a category that the marketers had missed.
All those random videos on YouTube are just dandelion seeds in search of fertile ground on which to land. In a sense, we're "wasting video" in search of better video, exploring the potential space of what the moving picture can be. YouTube is a vast collective experiment to invent the future of television, one thoughtless, wasteful upload at a time. Sooner or later, through YouTube and other sharing sites, every video that can be made will be made, and every person who can be a filmmaker will become one. Every possible niche will be explored. If you lower the costs of exploring a space, you can be more indiscriminate in how you do it.
Nobody is deciding whether a video is good enough to justify the scarce channel space it uses, because there is no scarce channel space. The cost of distribution is now low enough to round down to free. Today, it costs a content provider like Netflix about a nickel to stream a two-hour movie to one person. Next year it will be four cents. A year later it will likely be three. Which is why YouTube's founders decided to give it away. The result is messy and runs counter to every instinct of a television professional, but this is what abundance both requires and demands. If YouTube hadn't done it, someone else would have.
What this boils down to is the difference between abundance- and scarcity-based business models. If you're controlling a scarce resource, like the prime-time broadcast schedule, you have to be discriminating. There are real costs associated with those half-hour chunks of network time, and the penalty for failing to reach tens of millions of viewers with them is calculated in red ink and lost careers. No wonder TV executives fall back on sitcom formulas and celebrities—they're safe bets in an expensive game.
But if you're tapping into an abundant resource, you can afford to take chances, since the cost of failure is so low. Nobody gets fired when your YouTube video is viewed only by your mom.
For all YouTube's successes, however, it has so far failed to make any real money for Google. The company has not figured out how to match video ads with video content the way it matches text ads with text content.
The TV networks saw an opportunity in this failing and created a competing video service, Hulu. It offers mostly commercial video, most of it taken from TV, but it is as convenient and accessible as YouTube. Because the content is a known quantity, often the same thing advertisers are already buying on TV, they're happy to insert their commercials as pre-rolls, post-rolls, and even interruptions in the programming. It's free, of course, but unlike on YouTube, you're paying something in time and annoyance—just like on regular TV. However, if it's 30 Rock you want, and you want it now, in your browser, this is the simplest way you're going to get it.
The YouTube model is totally free—free to watch, free to upload your own video, free of interruptions. But it doesn't make money. Hulu is only free to watch, and you have to pay the good old-fashioned way, by watching ads you may or may not care about. Yet it generates healthy revenue. These two video outlets illustrate the tension between different variations on the free business model. Although consumers may prefer 100 percent free, a little artificial scarcity is the best way to make money.
Sound schizophrenic? That's the nature of the hybrid world we're entering, where scarcity and abundance exist side by side. We're good at scarcity thinking — it's the 20th-century organizational model. Now we have to get good at abundance thinking, too.
Excerpted from Free: The Future of a Radical Price, copyright ©2009 Chris Anderson, to be published by Hyperion in July. Chris Anderson (canderson@wired.com) is Wired's editor in chief.
Walking around Wall Street these days is like being trapped inside the videogame Resident Evil. There are the dead (Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns), the undead (AIG, which survives only as long as the government needs it to), and the living scared (every suit who still has a job). Even with the occasional announcement of a good fiscal quarter from one of the banks, it's hard to see anything but neutron-bomb-like decimation. The glory days of Wall Street's dominance are done.
No one likes to see an industry die, but there is an upside: Often, smart cubicle refugees will seize the opportunity to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams, unleashing waves of innovation upon society. The death of Big Steel in the 1980s gave birth to nimbler, more competitive mini-mills. The decline of the Hollywood studio system in the '60s gave us independent films. And the current demise of print media is giving us new sources of information, as journalists band together to reinvent news coverage. Wall Street's turn is next, and we should all be praying for one thing: that many of those liberated innovators seek playing fields outside of finance.
A new flowering of creativity on Wall Street would be a very bad thing. We tend to think of innovation as always and everywhere desirable—it has brought us printing presses, artificial hearts, and shoes that mimic barefoot running. But Wall Street's creations too often devolve from enriching us all to enriching a select few (while sending the rest of us ducking for cover). Bundling mortgages into securities made home ownership possible for many. Then bankers figured out how to go from "many" to "nearly everyone"; foreclosures exploded and the economy imploded. Credit default swaps initially made it easier for companies to finance growth—until they were leveraged, tweaked, and sold to excess, cratering the financial system. Not all Wall Street innovation is bad. But the worst of its labs are Three Mile Island-style dangerous.
Such inventions do produce fabulous paper wealth, however, attracting many of our sharpest math and science minds. At MIT and other top schools, investment banks recruited hard and early, skimming the cream from each graduating class. Until the mid-1990s, college grads with bachelor's degrees could earn more in engineering than finance; that flipped in 2000, and it hasn't come close to parity since. A survey of Harvard alumni found that 5 percent of men graduating in 1970 went to Wall Street; by 1990, the proportion was 15 percent. The same trend was also apparent among women.
But the big paychecks came with what economists call opportunity costs. Instead of spending their days searching for exotic trades, some of these Wall Street wizards could've been creating drugs, imagining software, or solving energy problems. Capital markets need geniuses, too, but it's hard to cheer such a massive money-chase.
"If I invent some superb method for quantitative trading, it puts money in my clients' pockets and my own pockets. Is society any better off?" asks Michael Coen, a former Wall Street quant who now teaches and researches artificial intelligence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "You could argue that having healthy capital markets helps society, but it's not particularly satisfying. My work in machine learning gets incorporated into medical applications. Does that make a difference? I can say that, in some humble way, it does." Plus, he adds, his research will no doubt be picked apart by folks looking for ways to apply it to finance. But Coen will never see the results of that analysis. "It doesn't go in the other direction."
He's right: On Wall Street, work in the lab never leaves the building; after all, a trading strategy's value disappears when it goes mainstream. An innovation might strengthen capital markets, but the possibility of that research benefiting another industry—the kind of cross-pollination that turned Velcro from a NASA oddity into a modern staple—is eliminated.
Now's the chance for other sectors to get their hooks into the young and brilliant, while Wall Street is distracted and busy rebuilding. This past spring, MIT held a job fair and saw a surge from companies that had never set foot on campus before—newborn startups, nonprofits, hospitals, and government agencies. A few years ago, these promising players didn't stand a chance against Lehman and Goldman Sachs. Today, their recruiting could mean that out of the financial industry's decay will bloom a thousand innovations far away from Wall Street.
Senior writer Daniel Roth (daniel_roth@wired.com) wrote about why Wall Street needs transparency in issue 17.03.
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz are launching their much-anticipated $300 million venture fund this evening, aptly called Andreessen Horowitz.
The fund will make investments of $50,000 to $50 million (yes, $50 million), but will generally focus on early stage opportunities. And here’s a fun fact: they don’t currently have a website, and apparently they aren’t sure they will have one in the future. For now they’ve reserved a16z.com for use if they do ever launch a site. Basically, if you don’t already know Andreessen or Horowitz, or know someone who knows them, getting in contact with them is going to be…difficult.
Andreessen has long been one of my favorite people to interview, because he is tapped into nearly every hot company and isn’t afraid to answer questions directly. That is, when you can actually get him to sit down with you and a camera, notepad or tape recorder. But last week, he had to chat it up with the press since he and long-time partner Ben Horowitz were announcing their the new venture fund. This is not going to be your typical venture capital firm.
For one thing, there’s that $300 million fund size. That’s pretty big for a first-time fund and gargantuan when you consider there are only two general partners, Andreessen and Horowitz. It’s big enough that some people didn’t think they’d be able to pull it off.
How did they? Well, did we mention Andreessen was one of the partners? Heard of the browser? And the lesser-known Horowitz is no slouch. He was the CEO of their second venture, Opsware, which sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. As instant as Netscape’s success may have been, Opsware was the opposite, a hard post-bubble slog.
It’s too early to tell how well Andreessen’s third company, Ning, will do, but Andreessen and Horowitz’s angel stakes in companies like LinkedIn, Delicious and Twitter show their savvy at picking good teams and how much other entrepreneurs in the Valley value their advice. For instance, Andreessen is the only independent member on Facebook’s tiny board of directors. And investors were impressed by the 45 or so companies that Andreessen has independently invested in over the years. Just one, TipMobile, has gone under so far.
So, that’s how they raised $300 million in the worst fundraising environment in 40 years, here’s why: Andreessen says there are only fifteen companies started each year that matter. By “matter,” he means they’ve got the potential to generate $100 million year or more in revenues, and those companies wind up making up 97% of the aggregate industry returns. The firm wants the flexibility to invest as much as they want in those fifteen names, whether it’s $500,000 or $50 million per deal. Considering the two have run big teams and small teams over their time at Netscape, Opsware and Ning, there’s no logical reason they should tether themselves to just one stage of investing.
Like Founders Fund and unlike most everyone else, Andreessen and Horowitz are more comfortable investing when an entrepreneur wants to stay the CEO. Hiring a “grown up” CEO always sounds like a great idea, but almost always hastens a company’s failure, Andreessen argues. There’s strong evidence that the biggest hits come when the founders stay engaged at a C-level position. See: Google, Oracle, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon, Apple and Facebook.
Another distinction: They’re not meddlers. Because there are just two of them, Horowitz and Andreessen won’t always take board seats. If they pick the right entrepreneurs, Andreessen argues they shouldn’t have to.
The whole interview lasted about an hour, and you can see many of the highlights on my Yahoo show, TechTicker, today. Meanwhile, here are five other interesting things he said:
1. Twitter and Facebook’s investors aren’t worried about monetization, but “it’s sweet” of you to. Twitter has spent about $15 million acquiring 30 million users. It’d be a no-brainer to recoup that if need be. Meanwhile, Facebook will generate more than $500 million in revenues this year—it’s spent far less than that to build the company to date. In other words, these are pretty fiscally conservatively run businesses with huge growth potential and no trouble raising additional cash.
2. Digg isn’t done. Andreessen is still bullish on Digg, citing the fact that Kevin Rose is no longer distracted with Pownce and Jay Adelson is moving to San Francisco to manage the company full-time. He thinks having both guys focused on the company will make a huge difference in the next twelve months.
3. The venture capital market should stop whining about Sarbox and other factors that are hurting their ability to take companies public. Says Andreessen, “Build Companies More Valuable and You Won’t Have this Problem.” That said, he sees a conceivable scenario where public markets are no longer how investors get returns at all. Instead, the same institutional names that used to buy the bulk of the shares at an issue, will just buy out VCs at premiums in private deals. That’ll essentially mean everyday Joes can no longer invest in high growth companies. That’s a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how many scars you have from the dot com bust.
4. At least 300 venture firms will go out of business in the next five-to-ten years.
5. Innovation and opportunities to build businesses on the Web aren’t done. They won’t be done for a long time because the Web is one of the only inventions that’s pure software, compared to computers, the television or even the railroads. That means it can completely change without having to fit into set molds. Anyone—Andreessen included—is deluding themselves if they think they know where it’s going. (In other words, don’t listen to anyone making Web 3.0 predictions.)
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Mobile video is taking off in Japan, where mobile operator NTT DoCoMo just invested $45.5 million in PacketVideo, which s a long-time supplier of mobile video software. The all-cash investment gives NTT Docomo a 35 percent stake in PacketVideo, which is s subsidiary of NextWave Wireless (a holding company that owns rights to wireless spectrum in the U.S. which it plans to use for a Wimax network). NextWave acquired PacketVideo in 2005 and the company is now its main source of cash.
The investment indicates how important PacketVideo's technology is to NTT Docomo, and raises the possibility of an outright purchase down the line. Other customers of PacketVideo include Verizon Wireless, Orange (in France), and T-Mobile. They might not feel so warm and fuzzy about PacketVideo now being so closely aligned with another carrier, even if it is in Japan.
Mobile video is taking off in Japan, where mobile operator NTT DoCoMo just invested $45.5 million in PacketVideo, which s a long-time supplier of mobile video software. The all-cash investment gives NTT Docomo a 35 percent stake in PacketVideo, which is s subsidiary of NextWave Wireless (a holding company that owns rights to wireless spectrum in the U.S. which it plans to use for a Wimax network). NextWave acquired PacketVideo in 2005 and the company is now its main source of cash.
The investment indicates how important PacketVideo’s technology is to NTT Docomo, and raises the possibility of an outright purchase down the line. Other customers of PacketVideo include Verizon Wireless, Orange (in France), and T-Mobile. They might not feel so warm and fuzzy about PacketVideo now being so closely aligned with another carrier, even if it is in Japan.
In the past, NTT DoCoMo tried to expand abroad through an aggressive investment program. Maybe it sees cheap assets it wants to grab once again. The $45.5 million investment values PacketVideo at $130 million.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Well, it appears that Nokia will finally pull its head out of its ass come September, says an industry insider according to the Guardian. At Nokia World, the mobile phone giant is expected to debut an Android-powered touch-screen device. Will it be powered by Intel? Eh. Who knows, but I hope it’s true and that they’ve finally realized that Symbian needs to be put out to pasture. Has anyone hacked their N810 to run Android?
via Guardian
 New York Times Blogs | Crunchpad Is Now a Company, Too PC Magazine Michael Arrington's startup now has a name, Crunchpad Inc., in addition to prototypes of its first product. Arrington told the San Francisco Business Times that he had incorporated Crunchpad Inc. in Singapore with 14 employees, ... CrunchPad coming late July/early August says NYT CrunchPad Will Be a 'Dead Simple Web Tablet' Apple, Acer and…Arrington? |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Maybe Sony is beginning to change their mind about the PS3’s punishing pricing strategy? This leaked Best Buy bundle, said to be available next Sunday, nets you a PS3, Killzone 2, and Metal Gear Solid 4 for the current price of the console alone. That’s a slap in the face for anyone that bought an 80GB PS3 in the last month, but let’s be honest: how many of them can there really be?
If you decide to take Sony up on this bargain, keep in mind there’s a good reason they’re offloading all these units: a new slim PS3 is incoming, possibly even this month, and the prices are all moving downward. So if you’re the patient type, just hang on a little longer and you may be able to get even more for your money. This is a pretty good deal as it stands, though.
Twitter has been hailed as an incredibly useful marketing tool for businesses and brands, both big and small, to disseminate information and engage with consumers on a massive scale. But what about non-profits? The ability to use social media to fundraise for charitable purposes has been questionable. A few months ago, the Washington Post reported that Causes, one of Facebook’s popular applications used by non-profits to raise money, was not netting much money for charities, despite its large amount of users (according to the application’s page, it has 26 million monthly users).
Twitter, the current darling of the social media world, is increasingly being used by charities. In addition to building awareness, Twitter has potential to raise charitable contributions. One of the more successful initiatives launched in the Twittosphere was February’s global Twestival, which raised over $250,000 for charity:water, a non-profit organization devoted to bringing clean drinking water to developing nations. The volunteer-run organization held events to bring Twitter communities in nearly 200 cities together. 250K sounds like an awful lot of dough to raise over the microblogging network, but this amount fell way below Twestival’s goal of $1 million.
Still, Twitter’s viral, real-time nature allows for a fast (and relatively low-cost) way to raise funds. Tweetsgiving, another Twitter-based charitable initiative raised over $10,000 in just 48 hours in November of 2008 to fund a new classroom for a school in Tanzania. Beth Kantor reports that she was able to raise over $3000 via Twitter in just 90 minutes.
Other charities have used guerrilla follower tactics, developing ‘follower-challenges’ to raise money for causes. For example, Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation recently found a donor who was willing to give $25,000 if the Foundation’s CEO, Doug Ulman, could reach 25,000 followers in three days (he started with roughly 10,000 followers at the beginning of the challenge). Ulman was able to surpass 25,000 and reach the goal.
Ashton Kutcher added a philanthropic element to the race with CNN to reach a million followers by promising donations to Malaria No More if he won. And Kutcher even initiated a follow-up fundraising effort for the charity shortly after. Hugh Jackman recently issued a challenge on Twitter to give $100,000 to the any charity that is best described within the 140 character limit.
Even on a smaller scale, there are some capabilities that Twitter provides on its platform that other social media outlets don’t have. For example, hashtags are one part of a fundraising effort on Twitter that can make it easy to search and identify a particular trend. Blame Drew’s Cancer (hashtag: #blamedrewscancer) is a great example of this. Drew Olanoff recently contracted Hodgkins Lymphoma, and launched Blame Drew’s Cancer as a way to get Twitter users who are complaining about something to use the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer. The tweets are pulled into www.blamedrewscancer.com with the hope the Tweets would be tallied to elicit a large donation from a non-profit organization. The site recently announced that Livestrong will be a partner.
The examples I mention above are just a sampling of ways non-profits and philanthropists are using Twitter to fundraise. Twollars and Tweet4Good also offer interesting ways for non-profits to raise money over Twitter. But it’s pretty clear that there are many compelling ways to use Twitter’s viral nature as a valuable fundraising tool for charities.
Some may argue that the thousands raised through social media sites doesn’t match the millions raised through traditional tactics, including direct mail and events. But most charities are relatively late-adopters to new technologies, and the success we have seen this early is probably a strong indication of the potential that is yet to be unharnessed. This isn’t to suggest that Twitter will replace conventional ways of fundraising, but it provides a low-cost, yet engaging way to diversify a charity’s fundraising efforts. And in this economy, diversification is too important to ignore.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Only a couple of days after George Hotz became the first hacker to release a jailbreak app for the iPhone 3GS on Windows, there’s a Mac-compatible version out too. This time, Hotz got some help from two fellow coders to be able to please the Mac folks, but he also made some improvements to the Windows version.
Click the image above and then click the logo you know all too well to download.
Happy jailbreaking, and in case you didn’t know yet: happy unlocking too.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section:
No need to scour the interwebs for hot gaming news, Gamertell‘s already done that for you! Here’s a look at this week’s top stories…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Computers, Mobile Computers, Netbooks
Several days ago, it was known that Archos would be selling the Windows 7 powered Archos 9 PCtablet in the United States as well as Europe. Such news is pretty significant as Archos wants the tablet to take center stage before many other netbooks running Windows 7 can be released to the public. In addition, it was known that Archos would be unveiling some sort of Android mini tablet come September 15. Only a few specs and features were announced such as a 500GB hard drive, 3G connectivity, WiFi, Bluetooth, and a 7 hour battery life. Today, there are reports indicating the Android device will be a 5 inch touch screen Internet Media Tablet.
If you are familiar with Archos products, then you have probably heard of the Internet Media Tablets before - as they were announced a little under a year ago. Those devices are pretty much your average PMPs, except with strong Internet connectivity features, and other Archos features. In addition, if we look back to February, Archos did make an announcement regarding Android OS in an Internet Media Tablet-like smartphone. While I don’t think the new Archos device will be an exact smartphone, it is said to bear similarities to normal phones, without all those calling features.
It will be interesting to see what is unveiled on September 15, and how that device will do compared to the Windows 7 running Archos 9 PCtablet.
Via [The Inquirer]
Alert the media! LucasArts’ official Twitter feed has been tweeting non-stop about… something! It looks like the company is poised to announce a new game based on an old game/franchise tomorrow, July 6.
Can we guess? Is it Sam and Max, or maybe Monkey Island? LucasArts surely can’t go to the Star Wars well again, can it? Enough about the Star Wars!
It’s sort of exciting, yes. Not as exciting as waiting for part two of Marca’s interview with Cristiano Ronaldo to show up on Usenet, but exciting nonetheless.
via Kotaku
Section: Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Web, Web 2.0, Features
Forget in car cams. Forget spying on coded cell phone conversations between rider and coach. Twitter is the hottest place to get the inside scoop on what is happening inside the Tour that you won’t find anywhere else. For example, you won’t find Phil Liggett commenting on Levi Leipheimer’s slippers.
Twitter is the perfect venue for riders on the Tour. Tweeting is short, quick, and easy from just about anywhere. Getting instant feedback from riders takes you inside the Tour like nothing else. Cycling great Lance Armstrong has been on Twitter for sometime.
For weeks, I’ve been following Lance Armstrong as he trains and gets mentally prepared for the Tour where he’s got a shot to win a record-breaking 8th time. His comments have ranged from funny “Kreuziger just moved into 2nd. I raced with his dad! Haha..” to informative, “About to head to the team mtg. St 2 isn’t easy. Rolling terrain and high temps. And surely the bunch will be antsy and aggressive.” to inspiring, “No worries, it’s been this way for 10 years. I have nothing to hide. http://bit.ly/8lxT2.”
But Lance isn’t the only one on Twitter. Here is an incomplete list of riders and celebs on the Tour:
Some Tour news to follow:
The Tour de France started yesterday and will run for the next three weeks.
Event’s homepage: [letour]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Cyber criminals AKA teenagers who are just more organized than the IT staffs of their victims stole $415,000 from a sheriff’s department in Bullitt County, Kentucky. That’s right: Bullitt County. Kentucky.
The hacker found out that their phishing expedition had installed a keystroke logging Trojan with remote control capabilities onto the police computers and then lucked out when they were able to grab bank information from the treasurer. They began making multi-thousand dollar wire transfers to mules in the United States. They picked “mules” by hiring them to edit English documents for “grammar and flow” and then asked if they’d like to be official representatives for the front company in the US. They would receive the wires, keep a percentage, and send the rest along to the Ukrainians.
One mule was dumbfounded at her luck. A job in this economy!
The first person I spoke with, a 34 year-old woman from Miami, had been editing texts e-mailed to her by Fairlove representatives for a couple of weeks. Shortly after she inquired about when she would be paid for her work, she received an e-mail asking if she’d be interested in a position as a “local agent,” for the company. The Fairlove representative who contacted her via e-mail said something about how the company often had trouble getting money to its clients overseas as quickly as they needed it, and desperately needed help speeding up that process (at least they were honest on that claim). A description of the local agent job position, as sent to this woman, is available here.
The hackers were essentially able to take over the police departments bank accounts simply by tunneling through their treasury PC to the bank’s website.
Listen, folks: this is a series of lucky breaks for these guys assisted by a treasury official who quite clearly trusted his or her bank more than they should have. The sheer fact that they were able to take complete control of the department’s computer as well as take over their bank account online is an indictment of the fools at the bank, not the prowess of the hackers.
If you’ve been holding out for a Flip Mino-style camcorder but haven’t been able to justify the $150+ price tag, here’s something that may be of interest to you instead.
Amazon is selling the RCA Small Wonder EZ200 camcorder for just $59.99 with free shipping. The camera uses microSD cards for recording footage and features a swiveling LCD screen for standard and flip-around self-recording — the Flip series of camcorders just have a standard, non-flip screen.
There’s also a built-in USB connection like the Flip has, AV output port, simple one-button recording with direct-to-Youtube uploading, and two quality modes (high resolution 640×480 and web quality 320×240).
Audiovox RCA Small Wonder EZ200 Digital Camcorder [Amazon]
Also available at Buy.com [via dealnews]
The chances of me being genuinely amazed at something I see a Belgian tech company achieve are rather slim. But occasionally, it happens. Last week I went to local entrepreneur meetup BetaGroup and saw five startups pitch their stuff to the 200-person audience.
The last one to get its five minutes of fame was Cherry, a new mobile operator that promised to "revolutionize the telecom world". Needless to say, I was as curious as I was skeptical.
Then the company's CEO got up on stage, introduced himself, took out his Nokia smartphone, called some random guy in the audience and had him call him back on his phone afterwards. Projecting his mobile phone screen on a bigger screen for everyone to see, he demonstrated how he didn't need to launch an application and just browsed his contact list to call the other person. Standard functionality, sure, but the cool part of it was the fact that the phone was lacking the presence of a SIM card, which is supposed to identify you as a subscriber of a telephony service.
Section: Audio
We, here at Gadgetell, spend quite a bit of time focusing on the latest and greatest technologies. However every once in a while we see a little technology throwback that is just to good to pass up. In this instance the story involves rock band Cheap Trick going retro with the release of their latest album. They are offering it on 8-track. And with that I am sure I have either summoned up a nice memory of the past for some readers as well as left some readers wondering what exactly an 8-track is. So, before I go any further, according to Wikipedia, the 8-track is defined as:
“Stereo 8, commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or eight-track, is a magnetic tape sound recording technology, popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s.”
Of course, in a little simpler description, the 8-track offered a way to listen to music. Essentially it is similar to an LP, cassette tape and later the CD—of course, the 8-track (for most people) has been dead for a long time and even when it was regularly available it was big and clunky. Anyway, we are sliding off track here.
Getting back to Cheap Trick, their latest album, which is titled just that, “The Latest,” will be offering a limited availability on 8-track. The album is being released on Cheap Trick’s own label, which may explain why they are getting away with this, and according to the original article, the 8-track is “expensive to make” which means they are expected to sell to the public for somewhere in the ballpark of $30.
I am sure they will sell a few to those who just want an excuse to use that 8-track player that has been sitting in the garage, attic, or basement for way longer than it should have.
Personally, I prefer digital tracks, however I can also understand the allure of vinyl, as it does offer a nice sound. That said, I cannot understand going retro for the 8-track. Thankfully, the Cheap Trick album will also be available on CD as well as vinyl. Finally, I think it is safe to say that if they choose to release a music video for this album, they should do so on BetaMax, just to really complete the retro throwback.
Read [The Globe and Mail] Via [boing boing]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 AFP | Backup plan to get NASA to moon cheaper San Francisco Chronicle (07-05) 04:00 PDT Washington -- Like a car salesman pushing a luxury vehicle that the customer no longer can afford, NASA has pulled out of its back pocket a deal for a cheaper ride to the moon. It won't be as powerful, ... NASA's Ares I Starting To Take Shape at Marshall Shuttle crew on schools mission Endeavour's Crew Arrives Tuesday |
AP - Credit the recession for "staycations" and bringing us more game-night parties at home. But also give it a shout for spurring more first dates.
| World : News Archives | Business | Entertainment | Sports | Technology | Science | Marketplace Audio |
| India : News | Business | Entertainment | Sports | Telugu | |
| Blogs : Humor pages | Norkay's Blog | Kids Stories | Indian Recipes | Database Tech Blog |
| Sundries : World Video Clips | Songs Clips | Indian Video Clips | |
