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Nokia cuts profit, market share outlook; shares drop (Reuters)Reuters - The world's top cellphone maker Nokia (NOK1V.HE) cut its forecast for second half profitability and 2009 market share at its key phone unit on Thursday, sending its shares sharply lower.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Jul 2009 | 11:02 am QOTD [Digital Daily]
Source: All Things Digital | 16 Jul 2009 | 11:00 am Chrome For Mac Starting To Look Polished
Now, let me be clear: I am not testing out that rather bogus “Developer Release” of Chrome that Google announced to placate users last month, I’m testing out the daily builds of Chromium, which you can find for the Mac here. How different are they? Well, in look in and feel, a lot. Just look at the difference in the start pages. The Developer Release of Chrome for Mac has a ho-hum old-style history overview page. The new builds of Chromium feature the new, sexy layout. This includes thumbnails of pages that you can move around and pin down. And because the build also includes favicons (which the Developer Release only does in certain places), it also includes the ability to switch to “list view.” But more importantly, it has the new “Recent activities” and “Tips and Suggestions” windows below the thumbnail section on the launch page. This Tips and Suggestions page is particularly interesting because it does offer up sites that I am finding to be generally interesting based on my browsing. The “History” area of Chromium (where you see your browsing history) is also looking great thanks to the favicons. And search is working in that section. When you launch an “Incognito” window, the resulting window looks right as it has a dark blue trim with a spy man logo, indicating that the browsing session is private. Overall, the browser feels very snappy and most sites seem to load and render just fine. Dragging tabs around works perfectly, as done “ripping” one off into its own window. The one major thing still missing is the lack of a Flash plug-in, which prevents sites like YouTube from working. So again, if you want to use Chrome for the Mac, forget about that Developer Release and get one of the new builds of Chromium. It’s not perfect yet, but it looks like it’s getting pretty close.
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Source: TechCrunch | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:52 am Chrome For Mac Starting To Look PolishedNo, it's not ready yet. But it does at least look like the Mac release of Chrome is getting ready for prime time. Now, let me be clear: I am not testing out that rather bogus "Developer Release" of Chrome...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:52 am The 12 Moonwalkers: Where Are They Now? - ABC News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:32 am Ahead of the Bell: IBM to post 2Q results (AP)AP - IBM Corp. will report second-quarter results Thursday amid an unsettled technology market that's been sending mixed signals.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:29 am Twitter hack highlights Google Apps vulnerability - TG Daily
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:24 am UPDATE 2-Autonomy Q2 on target but cool share reaction(Adds chief executive comments, analyst reaction, shares)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:24 am UPDATE 2-Infineon reports higher Q3 sales, wireless profit(Adds analyst comment, details on units, updates shares)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:23 am Nokia cuts profit, market share outlook; shares dive* says sees H2 phone unit EBIT on H1 level of 11.3 pctSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:21 am Video: Nearest Subway App Overlays Virtual Maps on Real WorldForget Google’s Street View, which overlays a view of the street in front of you on… the street in front of you. No, for a look at what augmented reality applications can really do, and just why a compass is so useful in the iPhone 3GS, take a peek at New York Nearest Subway. The application is simple. Extremely simple, which is all it needs to be when it includes the entire real city of New York within it. First, watch the video, and then, when you have finished picking up your slack, drooping jaw, read this: The app shows you where the nearest subway station is. Hold the iPhone flat and you get an arrow pointing to each of the city’s 33 lines. This could be enough, but if you then hold the phone up in front of you it will overlay boxes onto the live scene coming through the iPhone’s camera. These boxes float and jiggle around as you move the phone and show you the direction and distance to the nearest stations, along with which lines run through them. If the application works nearly as well as the video demo suggests, this is certain to be a must-have download. There is a London version also in the, ahem, tubes, and the company behind the application, Acrossair, is looking for bete testers for other cities in the US, Europe and Japan, including Barcelona. The price is still unannounced, and the app is in the Apple submission process. Oh, and I almost forgot the obligatory mention of Minority Report. There. Done. Product page [Acrossair]
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:16 am France Telecom unit makes new bid for Egypt MobinilCAIRO, July 16 (Reuters) - A France Telecom subsidiary has submitted a new offer to buy outstanding shares in Egyptian mobile operator Mobinil , Egypt's stock exchange said on Thursday. Egypt's regulator...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:15 am TwitterGate: Out Damned Spot! [BoomTown]
For all the noisy hubbub over should-we-or-shouldn’t-we-publish confidential documents hacked from password-protected accounts of Twitter employees, as well as a Twitter spouse, it is actually pretty simple. Stolen equals stolen. But, because this is a “hot” issue and it concerns an even hotter Web 2.0 company–Holy traffic-gooser, Batman!–the debate that will surely go on and on, even as the stolen information inevitably leaks its way out. Still, let’s not pretend what it is and is not. It is most definitely not, for example, one of those great dramatic moments in journalism. Thus, comparing the ruminations over whether to publish egregiously obtained information–however true–to the debate over a major event like the New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers is pathetic. It is, though, a tempest in a Silicon Valley teapot.
In point of fact, my colleague Peter Kafka, who works from New York, wrote me tonight: “Was at a fancy schmooze tonight packed with digital media bigwigs: Viacom, NBC, News Corp, plus lots of start-up guys. TwitterGate was on *no one’s* lips. I talked to one guy who has a stake in the company and he pretty much shrugged about it–several people had no idea about it at all. Total non-news.” It is not, however self-righteously (and pompously) put forth, much of a dilemma. As the very clever John Gruber of Daring Fireball put it: “What you may ask, is the dilemma, since it is clear that any decent human being would simply refuse to have anything to do with something so lurid?” Indeed, it is unequivocally wrong to publish documents you know or think were stolen or hacked, because it is aiding and abetting that theft. In this regard, then, there should be no difference between “Web” journalism and the old-fashioned journalism–acting as if the former gets a “process journalism” (what a crock!) pass at standards and ethics that should be eternal and unwavering, no matter the medium. And it is a little like pitting “gay” marriage against marriage, in order to create a false dichotomy, designed only to obfuscate the issues. So, it also isn’t kosher to try to take focus of your own wrongdoing by pointing to other practices, which is almost always a obnoxious reach by the willfully immature. While comparisons to leaked company documents have been made–and BoomTown knows from leaked corporate memos–this is a lazy-man’s argument, since it simply does not track.
The Twitter docs were stolen from personal accounts, an obvious pilfer, which immediately changes the equation completely. While you certainly can have a lively debate about whether Yahoos should pass along some widely distributed memo that CEO Carol Bartz penned to the company, it is not even close to the same thing. And, more to the point, if someone sent me emails they jacked from Bartz’s own email account, I would not need even a second to know I would never use such information. As I tweeted earlier today: A credible source a reporter knows giving accurate info is clearly different than a thief rifling through someone’s sock drawer. That is especially true when you use material from a person you do not know. For the record: When I post a company memo, for example, I know and check out exactly who’s giving it to me and I don’t publish stuff just because it happens to land in my email box. And, a minor beef, blaming the victim for the theft by saying they have weak or inadequate passwords is also pathetic. It’s kind of like blaming a person for being robbed because they had crappy locks. I suppose there is a point in there, but the real finger of blame should always be firmly pointed at the burglar and those who fence his nicked goods.
That bring me to my final point–thinking you can handle dirty material and then act as if your hands are clean. How hands get dirty is a concept even my children understand. And if my kids ever said: “Hey, this stolen stuff is going to get out anyway, so let me be the one to ladle it out as I see fit”–I’d ground them for life. Source: All Things Digital | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:10 am Nokia Siemens wins $1.55 bln Brazil deal with OiHELSINKI, July 16 (Reuters) - Nokia Siemens Networks [NSN.UL] said on Thursday it won a 1.1 billion euro ($1.55 billion) order to operate the networks of Brazilian telecom firm Oi over the next five years...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:10 am China body proposes curbs on Shell's coal-gas techBEIJING, July 16 (Reuters) - A China industry body has proposed limiting any further purchase of Royal Dutch Shell's coal gasification technology after teething problems at half the plants, but Shell...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:06 am Verizon Says App Plan Won't ... - InternetNews.com
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 16 Jul 2009 | 10:06 am Is There Really a Recovery in the Works? Time to Check with Google [MediaMemo]
As per Google’s last report card, Wall Street is expecting the company’s revenue to decline from the previous quarter — unthinkable for Google (GOOG) in prior years, but now no longer a shock. But Wall Street will be looking for both numerical and qualitative hints that things are getting better, or at least have bottomed out. The ever-helpful Mark Mahaney from Citigroup (C) has provided his usual “cheat sheet” to help interpret Google’s results (click to enlarge):
Marketers can buy Google ads instantaneously, without the haggling and lead time that traditional ads require. So conventional wisdom is that the company’s results will work as an early indicator for the general ad market, and the greater economy. But I talked to a search market exec last night who cautioned about reading too much into this afternoon’s results, unless there’s a really big upside surprise. This is traditionally a slow quarter for search ads he argues, so it will be hard to learn much from the results. The real key, he argues, will be the company’s Q3 numbers — if things are coming back, then Google’s September numbers will reflect that. In the meantime, we can always hope that interrogators are able to get Google executves to provide them with meaningful answers on a wide range of topics, from the performance of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bing search engine, to the never-ending will-they-won’t-they talks with Yahoo (YHOO).
Source: Gizmodo | 16 Jul 2009 | 9:50 am iKey Crafts A Rugged Wrist-Mounted Keyboard For SoldiersBy Chris Scott Barr How many times have you been in a war zone and needed to quickly and quietly get a message to someone? Sure, I’m guessing that a lot of you haven’t been in that situation,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 9:17 am Cooliris Business Model Surfaces: More Advertising We Actually LikeWe don't talk about Cooliris nearly often enough. The Palo Alto-based company has done a fantastic job in pushing the limits of interactive photo and video browsing with its 3D Wall, a plug-in for Internet...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 8:57 am Cooliris Business Model Surfaces: More Advertising We Actually Like
Today, the VC-backed startup is introducing what was always in the cards for them if they were ever going to make money off its innovative product: a Publisher Network that integrates non-intrusive interactive advertising units into embeddable 3D walls. You can already see the new advertising solution in action thanks to a partnership Cooliris has sealed with marketing agency OMD and one of its historical big clients, Infiniti. Basically, Cooliris will be integrating custom blocks for the Infiniti G Convertible ad campaign into streaming photo walls throughout its freshly launched publisher network, more specifically on popular websites like Yahoo! News, Golf.com, the New York Magazine and Style.com. See it in full effect at this section of the New York Magazine website or just have a look at the screenshot below to get an idea of where the company is going with this. Personally, I’m a big fan of Cooliris and the way they are going about trying to generate revenue from its product. In the past, we’ve talked about other innovative advertising strategies we actually appreciate, and I think this is what should be drawing the attention of The Online Publishers Association. Maybe that way they will finally realize that just making display ads units bigger isn’t going to solve any of their members’ problems without annoying the heck out of their respective website visitors. Cooliris on Yahoo! News Photos
Embedded 3D Wall (doesn’t work so well in Firefox for some reason) Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: Gizmodo | 16 Jul 2009 | 8:27 am Can Appcelerator Change The Face of Mobile? 3,000 Developers Think SoIn little more than a month, the beta of Appcelerator's Titanium Mobile has garnered the attention of more than 3,000 developers. But the beta hasn't just gotten some respectable use: it's changing what...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 8:15 am Bosch Cordless Hammer Drill: light, snappy and blows through brick like butter I needed to make some holes. Specifically, I needed to drill into the brick support-pillars in my office because I have run out of wall-space to hang pictures. We've got a big 9mm Black and Decker drill at home and some mortise bits that I've used from time to time, but it's slow, heavy and difficult. I remember drilling the outside wall to put in a hammock-hook -- it took an hour and afterwards my arms and shoulders felt like I'd been broken on the rack. I also blew through two bits before the hole was done, and even then, it was sloppy and I needed to go buy a larger-gauge plug. Being a poor workman, I blamed my tools and set off in search of a better one. I'd heard good things about cordless hammer-drills -- the last time I looked into them, most of the power-packs were NiCad and subject to all kinds of finicky recharging crap, but LiOn is everywhere these days -- and so I started reading online reviews. I hit on the Bosch Uneo "3 in 1" Cordless Lithium-Ion SDS Hammer and Drill/Driver, a sweet little 1.1kg tool that seemed almost too good to be true. When it turned up, I charged it for a couple of hours and then went to work on the walls. Ever used a Demel to carve up styrofoam? That's about how smoothly the Bosch went into the brick while in hammer-mode, making quick, neat holes with just the lightest pressure. The clever chuckless head is the easiest one I've used so far, a collar that tugs up to admit a new bit, then snaps back to form a dust-collar. The rubber grips are right where I wanted them, and easily absorbed the shock of the hammer-drill action. Around the same time, we got a big plastic storage shed for the back porch that had about a million screws. I brought the drill home for the evening, thinking I'd give it a shot (even though I usually find that the wrist strain from a manual screwdriver is usually less than the pain of slinging around a heavy corded drill). It was almost magic. The drill's trigger is a variable-speed control, making screwing much safer -- I didn't crack a single piece of plastic by overdrilling, nor did I strip any heads (good thing, too, since I inevitably installed the wrong screws in the wrong holes and had to use the drill to reverse them all out again). Since then, I've drilled plenty of holes around the place -- once they're this easy to make, it's hard to resist the temptation -- and hung up my raygun collection, some framed assemblage sculptures, and many other little jobs besides. I'm sold -- going to get another one for home and give away the old Black and Decker.
Bosch Uneo "3 in 1" Cordless Lithium-Ion SDS Hammer and Drill/Driver (Amazon UK) Bosch Cordless Hammer Drill: light, snappy and blows through brick like butterI needed to make some holes. Specifically, I needed to drill into the brick support-pillars in my office because I have run out of wall-space to hang pictures. We've got a big 9mm Black and Decker drill...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 8:14 am Artisanal Retro-Futurism and Team-Scale Anarcho-SyndicalismHere's a set of intriguing notes by Joey DeVilla from a talk at the FutureRuby conference called "Artisanal Retro-Futurism and Team-Scale Anarcho-Syndicalism," presented by Brian Marick. I hope a video...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 8:12 am Artisanal Retro-Futurism and Team-Scale Anarcho-SyndicalismHere's a set of intriguing notes by Joey DeVilla from a talk at the FutureRuby conference called "Artisanal Retro-Futurism and Team-Scale Anarcho-Syndicalism," presented by Brian Marick. I hope a video goes up soon -- I'd love to hear this in full.FutureRuby Talk: "Artisanal Retro-Futurism and Team-Scale Anarcho-Syndicalism" Source: Boing Boing | 16 Jul 2009 | 8:12 am Twitter feed notifies you of newly free iPhone appsStill think there's no good reason to have a Twitter account? Here's a good one: iPhone app-review site 148Apps has a Twitter feed that notifies you when an app's price drops--to zero. Developers frequently...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:50 am Bollywood tweets, blogs for the fans (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:50 am Laser Technology Creates New Forms of Metal and Enhances Aircraft PerformanceAFOSR-funded researchers at the University of Rochester are using laser light technology that will help the military create new forms of metal that may guide, attract and repel liquids and cool small electronic devices. Dr.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:42 am ABSOLUT VODKA Launches Mobile Drink Application for iPhone and Google AndroidSTOCKHOLM, July 16 /PRNewswire/ -- ABSOLUT VODKA has launched Drinkspiration by ABSOLUT, a sophisticated drink application combining the latest mobile technology with GPS, Twitter and Facebook.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:30 am MySpace CEO: "Our users don't know if we're a social portal, a music site, or an entertainment hub"One thing that's great about MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta - his emails to employees always have at least one good sound bite. In June the zinger was his reference to laid off employees as "bloat." This time,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:26 am MySpace CEO: “Our users don’t know if we’re a social portal, a music site, or an entertainment hub”
Neither do we. MySpace always described itself as a social network until they weren’t the biggest social network any more. At various times since then they’ve called themselves a “premier lifestyle portal,” an “online community that lets you meet your friends’ friends” or just the largest “social portal” in the world that doesn’t begin with “F” and end in “book.” Anyway, I assume Van Natta will have an answer to what exactly MySpace is at some point in the near future. He also says “In the last week, we’ve made some small but meaningful site changes that will lay the groundwork to provide more clarity on our brand and business” (all we’ve seen is a logo change, but there are likely other small changes). Meanwhile, here’s his email to the troops, confirming our stories that Travis Katz is leaving and Mike Macadaan is joining, among other personnel changes.
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Source: TechCrunch | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:26 am Brier Dudley Amazon makes good on cracked Kindles - Seattle Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:09 am TIE Fighter made from Starbucks detritus Wired contributing photographer Dan Winters made this TIE Fighter from Starbucks junk -- cups, stirrers, sleeves and such -- and now Wired's challenging you to make anything you can from the chain's stuff.
Contest: Make Art From Starbuck's Junk
(via IZ Reloaded) Meet Google, Your Phone Company [Voices]By Om Malik, Founder and Senior Writer, GigaOM Can Google be your phone company? The answer is yes. I came to that conclusion after I met with Vincent Paquet, co-founder of GrandCentral (a company acquired by Google) and now a member of the Google Voice team. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:01 am New Suite of Teacher Tools Connects Professional Growth to Student AchievementBLOOMINGTON, Ind., July 16 /PRNewswire/ -- To receive federal funding, schools are now required to build data systems that track student achievement and teacher effectiveness. Dr.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:01 am Be Among the First to Power New Web-Based ExperiencePersonal Theme Songs ignite personal drive and creativity, in turn sparking higher achievement." How the Contest WorksEnter the contest by going to FuegoNation.com, registering and creating a music Passion Card profile that tells the world why a particular song, band or performance gets you fired up. YouTube(R) videos can easily be attached to Passion Cards for added effect. Fuego Nation users vote on the Passion Cards they find most inspiring. The top scoring contestant over the course of the contest period will be awarded a new iPod Touch device."While music is a great way to discover Fuego Nation, whatever inspires you most -- yoga, sports, art, dance -- can all be expressed on our site," added Greg Tatem, co-founder and product development lead. "Our intent is to provide an environment where people can turn their interests into passions." Fuego Nation's Personal Theme Song event begins July 16, 2009 and runs through August 31, 2009. The highest scoring contestants will have their music Passion Cards featured in press announcements in early September. The first 5,000 Personal Theme Song entrants will receive charter status and gain first-look access to new features, events and discounts. Further contest rules and instructions can be found at www.FuegoNation.com. A video overview of the contest entry process can be viewed by clicking here (http://blog.fuegonation.com/?p=219).ABOUT FUEGO NATIONSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:01 am SheKnows Surpasses 10 Million Uniques, Making It a Top 100 Web DestinationLOS ANGELES, July 16 /PRNewswire/ -- SheKnows (www.sheknows.com), one of the fastest growing online content and community destinations for women, has reached 10.2 million U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:01 am On the “Free” Business Model [Voices]By Bill Gurley, Partner, Benchmark Capital I have been intrigued by the back and forth between Chris Anderson, Malcolm Gladwell, and Mark Cuban on the topic of “Free” as a strategy and business model. … Here is where I come down on all of this. First and foremost, Free is a disruptive force. This does not mean that if you deploy a free business model you will be successful. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:00 am What Sank Veoh and Joost? Too Much Cash Too Soon [Voices]By Warren Lee , Contributing Writer, Advertising Age In the past few months, two of the highest-profile and most heavily-funded online-video startups — Veoh and Joost — have given up trying to compete with Hulu and YouTube and have now drastically switched their business models in hopes of surviving. Source: All Things Digital | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:00 am Daily Crunch: Club Bill Edition
The Microsoft Store is real, first locations to open this fall
Source: CrunchGear | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:00 am Not an Upgrade — An Upheaval [Voices]By Clay Shirky, Contributing Writer, Cato Unbound The hard truth about the future of journalism is that nobody knows for sure what will happen; the current system is so brittle, and the alternatives are so speculative, that there’s no hope for a simple and orderly transition from State A to State B. Chaos is our lot; the best we can do is identify the various forces at work shaping various possible futures. Two of the most important are the changing natures of the public, and of subsidy.
Source: Gizmodo | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:00 am Zookz: A License to Infringe? [Voices]By Jon Healey, Editorial Writer, Los Angeles Times Companies that offer downloadable movies and music online without licenses from the copyright holders typically wind up answering lawsuits from the Hollywood studios and the major labels. So it was odd to see a news release announcing the impending launch of Zookz, a site that offers unlimited music or movie downloads for about $10 a month, or both for $18 Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 16 Jul 2009 | 7:00 am Integrating Wikipedia With a Local Intranet WikiAn anonymous reader writes "I work for a large company taking a preliminary look at developing an honest-to-goodness wiki. We have tried to launch a company-wide wiki before, but with little success. The technical domains of each part of the company are different, thus each article needs a good deal of background to be useful. Of course, due the proprietary nature of our work we cannot share our articles outside of the intranet. What we would like to do is leverage existing wikis by augmenting our internal wiki with an external wiki. When a user accesses Wikipedia from inside our intranet, they receive the wikipedia content, plus the local domain specific information. For example, links to company-specific wiki pages would be available in Wikipedia pages. Has anyone else tried to do something like this? I know it sounds like a logistical nightmare; are there any thoughts on how to make this successful?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 16 Jul 2009 | 6:40 am MS Exec: Apple Complained About Laptop Hunters Ads - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 16 Jul 2009 | 6:10 am Leverage season one DVD: crime drama about Delta force who take down corrupt corporations
Here's some good news: the first season of John Rogers's TV show Leverage is out on DVD. Leverage is a taut, smart thriller about a Delta force of ex-grifters and special ops types who join forces to take down evil corporations and other scumbags. Rogers, the show's creator and runner, is a long-time comics writer (you might know him from Blue Beetle) with a long history in TV writing and stand-up comedy, and all these influences come through in the writing and the look of the show, which uses a lot of shots that remind me of really good comics panels.
I only caught the first couple episodes of Leverage because it was on US TV and I live in the UK, so I'm looking forward to catching up with this. Really, really looking forward.
Leverage: The First Season
(via Kung Fu Monkey)
Source: Boing Boing | 16 Jul 2009 | 6:05 am MS Exec: Apple Complained About Laptop Hunters Ads
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 MiamiHerald.com | Top 5 non-obvious feature enhancements to Office 2010 BetaNews The question has been asked, who really needs to use Microsoft Office these days? The answer is, anyone who is in the business of professionally generating content for a paying customer. ... With Office 2010, Microsoft Prepares For Another Round Against Google Don't Wait for Office 2010--Get Free Online Productivity Apps Now Microsoft, With Eye on Google, Announces Office 2010 |
 UberGizmo | Hands-On: The Official Google Voice App for Android Washington Post The first-party app integrates Google Voice services seamlessly with your Android phone and throws in a few bonus features. Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. ... Would Apple and AT&T Cripple a Google Voice iPhone App? Google Voice Success May Depend On Apple iPhone 'Push' Google Voice app comes to BlackBerry, Android |
Well, it’s a big day for Microsoft! Their first official retail stores are dated and partially located, Gates mentions that Project Natal is coming to Windows, and now it appears that Apple has cried uncle with the Laptop Hunters ads. Actually, it probably depends on who you ask. Microsoft will say that its shopping farces were effective, not just on consumers but on the competition as well. Apple might say that their prices have become more competitive after a recent price drop on certain models, so the ads aren’t accurate any more — if they say anything at all.
As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between. But a little whining from Apple isn’t going to stop Microsoft from running the ads. After all, Apple didn’t stop running its “Twice as fast, half the price” ads after they admitted its claims weren’t “statements of fact.” Why should Microsoft stop running a consumer dog-and-pony show that has them coming out on top?
From the transcript of a presentation at the Worldwide Partner Conference today:
And you know why I know they’re working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey — this is a true story — saying, “Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices.” They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I’ve ever taken in business. (Applause.)
I did cartwheels down the hallway. At first I said, “Is this a joke? Who are you?” Not understanding what an opportunity. And so we’re just going to keep running them and running them and running them.
What the real content of that phone call was, we’ll never know — probably something along the lines of “Your ads aren’t really taking into account pricing changes we’ve made.” I doubt Apple would actually ask Microsoft to stop running the things. But the truth is that the ads, however much we may rail against them as artificial and the choices made in them as unwise, seem to have done Microsoft nothing but good among the not-bloggers crowd.
They can’t run them forever, covering every $50 increment and price point, but as long as they’re effective, why not? The retail store will be a whole new adventure for them (dangerous, too) and they can make some wacky, misleading ads for that come the end of Summer. They’re on a roll I tells you!
[via Ars Technica and Engadget]
Well, it's a big day for Microsoft! Their first official retail stores are dated and partially located, Gates mentions that Project Natal is coming to Windows, and now it appears that Apple has cried uncle with the Laptop Hunters ads. Actually, it probably depends on who you ask. Microsoft will say that its shopping farces were effective, not just on consumers but on the competition as well. Apple might say that their prices have become more competitive after a recent price drop on certain models, so the ads aren't accurate any more — if they say anything at all.
As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between. But a little whining from Apple isn't going to stop Microsoft from running the ads. After all, Apple didn't stop running its "Twice as fast, half the price" ads after they admitted its claims weren't "statements of fact." Why should Microsoft stop running a consumer dog-and-pony show that has them coming out on top?
NetVibes, the startup that lets you assemble all your favorite widgets, feeds, social networks, email, videos and blogs onto a customizable homepage, is rolling out helpful “drag and follow” widgets for Facebook, MySpace and Twitter tomorrow.
NetVibes has offered Facebook, MySpace and Twitter widgets for some time now. Once you insert the respective widgets onto your NetVibes homepage, now you will be able to click on any friend, screen name or hashtag in the widget, then drag it outside and drop it on your page to create a new custom widget. The new widget will follow a person or topic. For example, you can take the stream of a news source or friend from Twitter and create a separate widget that tracks only their stream.
It’s certainly useful to navigate many different streams or threads at once. Especially if you are an active MySpace, Facebook or Twitter user, you can aggregate all the feeds onto one page as well as break out the feeds and searches that are most compelling to you, much like you can with many desktop Twitter clients..
Desktop clients like Tweetdeck and Seesmic, for instance, let you create breakout columns to filter feeds by user and search from Twitter. So if you regularly use a Twitter client, NetVibes’ page may be redundant. But the nice thing about the widgets are that they are small, and you can aggregate other info, like the weather, news feeds, RSS feeds and more onto one centralized page. NetVibes says that they will start using the drag and drop technology for search within other widgets in the near future. Competitors to NetVibes include Pageflakes and iGoogle. Last week at the TechCrunch’s Real Time Stream CrunchUp, Netvibes also previewed a new live feed reader and instant update architecture to make RSS real-time, which will be officially launched in the near future.
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I’ve been in London for two weeks pretending to be part of the Traveling Geeks contingent of bloggers. But really I’ve been doing some deep investigative work on this whole Last.fm scandal.
I showed up at their offices and guess what I found? A pile of servers sitting in a corner waiting to be delivered to the RIAA. Sure, they said they were just old servers… likely story.
I also discovered that Last.fm is getting into a new business: Michael Arrington Target Practice Kits ™. I got a demo in the office (see video below). Ev, can I put you down for a case?
michael fires me from sarah lacy on Vimeo.
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While this keyboard would be pretty hard for any hunt-and-peck typist to use, it really is a great way of showing the power of some brands. The speed at which your mind can connect the lips logo with the Rolling Stones and R, or the swoosh with Nike and N is pretty striking. Lacoste took me a second, along with a couple others, but by and large these logos are pretty much adequate replacements for the letters of the alphabet. They’re just symbols, after all.
It’s not real (yet) unfortunately, because I think it’d be a fun gift for a designer, assuming they can touch type. Go leave a comment saying you want one!
[via The Daily What]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
VoIP startup Jajah has just scored major deals with eHarmony and Match.com, two of the web’s most popular dating sites, to provide online daters with semi-anonymous voice chat. The new features are part of Jajah’s ‘Platform for Dating’, which is also currently being tested on a number of other dating sites (though Jajah won’t name them, yet).
The new feature offers a good middle ground between the text interactions you typically go through on dating sites and actually meeting your potential match face to face. The integrated Jajah widget will allow you to talk with a prospective match though an online voice call, without having to divulge any of your real contact information should things turn messy.
Voice chat is a premium feature on both eHarmony and Match.com, going for around $5/month. Jajah declined to share any details regarding the revenue split between the dating sites and the VoIP service, but it sounds like the company is going to be generating quite a bit of money from the deal, especially given the negligible costs associated with actually connecting the calls.
This isn’t the first time dating services have implemented voice chat — Match.com previously offered its own service that was powered by the now-defunct Jangl, but it’s been out of action for the last nine months. This is the first time eHarmony is implementing a similar service.
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The short version: if you have the money to spare, these headphones are the only thing you need for your gaming and media PC.
Logitech’s newest G-series lineup is impressive, but I noted when it was announced that unless you’ve got serious cashflow, you really need to look elsewhere. The most unabashedly luxurious option was the G19 keyboard with its built-in LCD screen, but I found it to be an immature platform and a memory hog to boot. The G35, though not without its quirks, is an absolutely excellent piece of hardware and though it will run you north of a hundred bucks, it’s probably the only headset you’ll want or need for a long time.
Design and fit
Logitech has a unified design aesthetic for its latest G-series, and while it was a little clunky for the G19, which felt more like a dashboard than a keyboard, it’s nice on the G35. They’re heavy, but not that heavy, and the weight is distributed well. I found them comfortable, and I don’t think they look as ridiculous as some other headphones do on me. The feel of the headphones, headband, and cord is high quality, but the exposed metal when you adjust them is pretty raw-looking.
On that subject, the adjustable aspect is good, but you will be adjusting them every time you put them on your head. The bands open up to numbered increments, which are helpful because they refuse to stay at any setting you put them at. Generally they tended to close up when I put them away, and adjusting them wasn’t as easy as I’d like while they’re on your head. The lighter Carcharias and new Megalodon from Razer have a superior adjustment mechanism.
You’ll find all the controls on the left side. They’re away from the middle where they might be confusing all clumped together, but having them around the edge makes them damned easy to hit on accident when you’re putting on, taking off, or adjusting the headset. The buttons themselves have a nice, high-quality feel to them and have the same satin finish as the rest of the earcups. There’s also a volume dial, which was nice (I used it more than the one on the G19 when I was using both), though the notches it rolls through are pretty widely spaced.
The microphone works just fine, and, while not removable, does fold up out of your way pretty well and is adjustable to whatever extent you need. You can customize when the mic LED is lit (when muted, not muted, etc) but I’d just as soon have it off all the time if there weren’t a mic mute button I was always hitting on accident.
Okay, nice rims, but what’s under the hood?
Of course, the reason you get these things is for the sound. And I’m pleased to say it’s great. The G35s use Dolby’s virtual surround sound system, which is very good, although there are some that prefer the actual multiple-speaker route. Tritton’s AX Pro system, for example, actually has multiple speakers, and the freaky Psyko headphones I tried out use an even wackier system with multiple sound orifices. Don’t let the name fool you, “virtual” surround sound is a perfectly admissible version of surround sound, using specially-designed speakers and deflectors to place the sound close to where it would be if were actually, say, behind you.
For regular stuff like music, Skype conversations, and TV shows, the non-surround setting is the best. It places the sound very close to your ear and I found them a very pleasant environment in which to listen to my favorite albums. Sound is very well-balanced, loudness was good, and the USB connection means there’s never any line crackle. The isolation inside the G35s is also excellent, probably better than any pair I’ve used so far. Whenever I thought I was hearing a sound from outside the headset, I was always mistaken.
For gaming, which these are really designed for, you’ll want to switch it over to the surround mode. This makes music sound rather distant and indistinct, but playing a game compatible with Dolby’s 7.1 surround is a fantastic experience. There are a few hiccups, like certain directional sounds being disproportionately quiet in some games, but I place the blame on Dolby and the game’s makers rather than Logitech. Team Fortress 2 was fun as hell with these, and although I think the balance of the game’s sounds needs to be tweaked (dispensers are incredibly loud sometimes), I definitely played better when I was using the G35 than my other regular stereo headsets. Being able to place a gunshot or footstep with an extra few degrees of precision can be the difference between surprising someone coming around a corner and being surprised by them.
USB audio: a blessing and a curse
The USB connection never failed to work, and I learned early on to shut down any media players and give the computer a few seconds to get used to the new setup before launching a game. Whether the game or movie you’re watching supports the surround sound I found was a bit of a crap shoot, however. I probably needed to do more due diligence in checking what systems a game, media player, or media file supports (or has encoded), but is it too much to expect from a headset that says 7.1 that it deliver a 7.1 experience?
The G35 control panel helpfully tells you when real surround sound was last passed to the headset, so you can check after the fact whether the game or movie supports it. I would have preferred, perhaps, the light on the Microphone to signal a successful surround-sound stream or game.
On the whole I’m glad of the USB connection; no one wants to fiddle with a bunch of paired-stereo analog cables any more, and while I’ve always thought headsets having their own drivers inside was excessive, I allow it for all my other devices so why shouldn’t I here? More and more audio solutions are involving USB or digital audio, and while audiophiles may balk, nobody’s listening to really high-end audio through a regular sound card anyway.
And of course, the less said about the voice-morphing capability, the better. It exists, what do you want from me? I’m not 13, and these things wouldn’t even fit on a 13-year-old’s head.
Winner!
The G35 is a great headset, and the more I used it, the more I came to rely on it as the “real” sound of a game. While for a quick session of this and that, or for just music listening late at night, I still used the Carcharias or whatever was lying around, games begged to be used with this thing. $130 (or $115-$120 street price) isn’t too much to pay if you’re someone who enjoys the cinematic experience of gaming and watches surround-sound content on your PC.
Section: Video, Content, Web, Websites, Online Music/Video
Delete! Delete! Delete! We’ve all wished at one time or another for some magic delete button in our lives. You know, like when you’ve said something incredibly embarrassing out loud that you thought you were just thinking to yourself. (Like, “Dang! Would I love to grab those *bleep*). Or, when you run really quick to the little mini-market down the street in your oldest sweats with the rip in the behind, and of course that hot guy/girl you’ve been mooning over for weeks comes in the door right behind you. Wouldn’t a delete or rewind button come in handy?
On the brand new internet series produced by NBC, the office geek “Stuart” (played by Tony Hale of “Arrested Development” and “Chuck”) finds himself in control of just such an item on his computer. Due to a mishap with Nestea (wonder how much Nestea paid for that?), and its “Liquid Awesomeness,” Stuart realizes that to his amazement his computer now has magical powers. It gives him the power to rewind time, read minds, move things, and become invisible. Man, I think I want to spill some Nestea on my computer if it does all of that to it! (Seriously, I wonder how many goobers are going to actually try just that.)
He uses these nifty new abilities in big part to play revenge games with his smarmy, know it all boss (played by Steve Howey). I’m sure he’ll find lots of use for some of the tricks with his female co-worker (Emy Coligado) that he apparently has a big old crush on as well.
Now, of course, whenever good ole Stu tries to “fix” things with his keyboard, he ends up creating even more problems for himself as a result. Where would the fun be otherwise?
The series, which is based on the Sundance short film “Ctrl Z”, is both written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Rob Kirbyson, produced by SXM, and is sponsored by Coca-Cola. It premieres today on NBC.com, Hulu.com, and USANetwork.com. Being online episodes, they are short, but definitely worth a watch. Heck, I’m kind of disappointed they didn’t make a regular primetime show out of this one.
You can also check out the ctrl site for info on the show, tidbits about the cast and characters, and some behind the scenes interviews.
Full Story » | Written by Jodie Andrefski for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Doug Rushkoff on The Colbert Report tonight Wednesday, July 15I’m doing The Colbert Report Wednesday, July 15, 11:30pm on Comedy Central, repeated the next day in earlier time slots. Check your local listings, or watch the segment on the show’s website.
I have to admit this is the one media appearance I’m a little nervous about. Not that Colbert is an unfriendly host. He’s really one of us, pretending to be one of “them.” The trick is to remember that he’s actually drawing out a guest’s best arguments by playing the enemy. (As one of the producers told me, “pretend you’re speaking to an eight-year-old.”)
But he plays the part well – so well, in fact, that he often wins debates even against his own left-leaning version of the Colbert character. Conversations can also quickly devolve into an argument over a single issue as Colbert mines it for comedic potential. This can make for great entertainment, but can also prevent the guest from getting out his main and most important points.
Short Version: When it comes to “pocket projectors” the BenQ Joybee GP1 is a smidge to hefty to put into your back pocket, but it’s a full-fledged DLP projector powered by LEDs and has a built-in USB reader. A native resolution of 858×600 (SVGA), 1000 ANSI Lumens and a 2000:1 contrast ratio make the 1.4lb projector well worth the $500 price tag. I can now play my Xbox 360 from anywhere.
Long Version: The relatively high price tag may deter some folks from considering the Joybee GP1, but take into account the specs and you’ll quickly realize why I have nothing bad to say about the mini projector.
Features:
Setup takes a matter of minutes and the front peg unscrews to adjust height. You can also mount the Joybee onto a tripod if that floats your boat. The touch-like controls that sit on top of the projector can be frustrating as they’re some hybrid of touch and physical button controls. I much preferred to use the included IR remote control.
A multi-input cable is provided with the GP1 for composite or VGA inputs. BenQ offers an iPod/iPhone dock as an accessory if you don’t already have AV cables. You can always opt to throw media onto a USB drive and plug it directly into the projector, but I mainly used the GP1 to play my Xbox 360.
With any projector, a dark room is the most ideal setting for a low powered projector like the GP1, but it works fairly well in semi-lit rooms. Depending on the color of the surface you’re projecting onto, the GP1’s software offers a handful of alternatives to ensure you get the best picture quality. Aside from the adjustable front peg, the GP1 has keystone correction so it doesn’t take long to get a really sharp and accurate image within minutes of setting up.
The closer you are to whatever it is that you’re going to be projecting content onto is best. Anywhere from two to four feet is an ideal distance based on the lighting conditions. I have a relatively small living room so the projector sat atop my coffee table, which is about five feet from the nearest wall. At night with the blinds closed, I’m able to project a 60+-inch image that’s sharp with great color reproduction. During the day with the blinds open, I managed to get a pretty good image that was around 40 inches.
As for sound quality, the 2W speaker does a so-so job but I highly suggest you hook the GP1 to your speaker system for a more enjoyable listening experience.
Conclusion:
Overall, the Joybee GP1 is a low-cost, low-power alternative to a power-hungry TV that’s easily portable and quiet. The controls atop the GP1 are lackluster and frustrating, so I suggest using the remote control. Input options are limited at the moment and it’s my hope that BenQ will offer accessories to change that in the future. But if I’m going to drop $500, I’d like to have options other than VGA and Composite from the get go. But it’s small, portable (except the power brick is huge) and allows me to play my Xbox 360 or downloaded movies within minutes. You just can’t beat that.
Product Page [BenQ]
“Prior to joining Google, I set up a meeting on or about November 11, 2004 with Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer to discuss my planned departure….At some point in the conversation Mr. Ballmer said: “Just tell me it’s not Google.” I told him it was Google. At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office.”
- Former Microsoft Disitnguished Engineer Mark Lucovsky
“I’ve never thrown a chair in my life….By and large I made a commitment nine years ago that I was not going to curse. I know I’ve had one or two transgressions in nine years, but I made that commitment to myself. Is that one of them? I don’t recall.”
– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
The rumors were true. Mark Lucovsky, the engineer whose departure from Microsoft (MSFT) allegedly sent CEO Steve Ballmer into a paroxysm of profanity and chair tossing, has left Google (GOOG) for a new position at VMware (VMW), the company has confirmed.
Lucovsky, once a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and key architect of Windows and the company’s ill-starred Dot-Net strategy, was hired away by Google in 2004. Now, five years later he has unceremoniously left the search sovereign for a senior engineer position at VMware. There, he’ll be reunited with Paul Maritz, president and CEO of VMware, who once served as Vice President of the Platform Strategy and Developer Group at Microsoft.
Google’s updates surrounding location are now coming fast and furious. Just a few days ago it added location to Google Maps for the Chrome and Firefox browsers. Today, it brings location to the mobile web on the iPhone.
If you have the new iPhone 3.0 software and go to Google’s homepage in Safari, you’ll notice a new message below the search box that reads, “New! Try My Location to find restaurants, shops and bars near you!” If you click on the My Location link, the iPhone will pop open a dialogue asking if it’s okay for Safari to use the device’s location services to locate you. If you opt-in, you’ll see a new blue dot below the search box with your location next to it. Do a search, and it will return local results.
The fact that mobile Safari can access location is a huge feature. It’s what’s going to allow Google Latitude, Google’s location-based social network, to work on the device without a native app, as we described a few months ago. Something else that is potentially interesting about this is that Safari, like some of the other native iPhone apps, can apparently run in the background. Now, I’m not sure if it can still access location services while it’s running in the background, but that could be very interesting for something like Latitude.
And accessing functionality like location in the browser seems to tie in well with Google’s ultimate goal of having the web be the platform of choice.
For many people, such a feature will bring up privacy concerns. Here’s what Google has to say about that:
As always, your privacy is one of our top concerns. Google won’t use your location in search unless you explicitly opt in. And you can always disable the feature from Preferences at the bottom of the homepage.
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The GP2X handheld gaming emulator gets a little more mainstream this week as a product now available from ThinkGeek.com.
If you’ve not heard of the GP2X, it’s basically about the size of a Gameboy Micro, features 1GB of storage expandable via SD cards, and is open-source. You load emulation software onto it followed by ROM after ROM of old-timey games.
You can do a bunch of other stuff with the GP2X, too — music, movies, etc. — but the big draw is the amount of emulators available: Arcade, GameBoy Advance, Genesis, NeoGeo, NES, TurboGrafx, PlayStation, Sega Master System/Game Gear, Vectrex, DOS, and more. There’s a pretty active community for the device as well.
Retails for $180 plus shipping.
GP2X Wiz MAME/Amiga/Console Emulator [ThinkGeek.com]
8lb. Gorilla? More like 5lb. Chimpanzee. The 800lb. Gorilla in the gaming development world, Electronic Arts, recently announced on Touch Arcade that it has opened a new “micro-studio” to create iPhone games. It’s name? 8lb. Gorilla. Whereas EA usually focuses on higher price point games such as The Sims 3 or Tiger Woods PGA Tour 3, this new gaming studio will develop cheaper games with less depth to increase their dominance in the iPhone gaming market.
Enter, Zombies & Me (iTunes link), the launch game of EA’s micro-studio. Frankly, this launch fell flat on its face. We as iPhone gamers are spoiled with fantastic $1 games. Whether it is the classic Flight Control (iTunes link), or Stick Wars (iTunes link), there are TONS of brilliant $1 iPhone apps that will provide you with hours and hours of fun. Most importantly, these games have surprising depth: you don’t just pick it up and play for an hour and then forget about it. Well, apparently EA didn’t get the picture.
In Zombies & Me, you play the role of some guy who’s trying to save your mother’s house from getting attacked by zombies. It is raining missiles, as the military is conducting an air strike around your house to kill off the never-ending flood of zombies. Unfortunately, their accuracy is more like your father’s military than today’s laser-guided one. So, you have to run around and guide the zombies to the drop zone of each missile. To move, you drag your finger around the screen. Move close enough to a zombie (without getting mauled) and they start following you. Lead them right into the blast zone (denoted by a yellow circle) and send them back to hell.
The goal is to kill off as many zombies as you can before you die. Morbid as it sounds, that’s all there is to it. You can die in three ways: 1) Collateral damage (you linger in the blast zone too long and BAM! a missile falls on your head). 2) Your house gets assaulted by enough zombies that it loses all of its health (there is a health bar at the bottom of the screen). 3) You are eaten to death by the zombies.
The graphics are fantastic, and so is the music, but the gameplay is just not deep enough. I felt like this game was rushed out the door by EA in an effort to get on the map, and I still have high hopes that 8lb. Gorilla will be a success. But this first installation just wasn’t enough, not even for the low price of a $1.
This game is simple and it kept my attention for the first three times I played. But, after that (15 minutes of play time), I was done. It was boring and there wasn’t anything addictive or challenging about it. There were no levels. There were no variations in the game play. Perhaps if it was free, it might stay on my iPhone for a week or so. But, at this point, I’d rather have my $1 back and go get a soda from the vending machine. The caffeine high might keep my attention longer than Zombies & Me.
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I’ve never knew hell would be so much fun. Well, it is, and you can enjoy a visit to hell yourself with Doom: Resurrection (iTunes Link) for the iPhone. As soon as I picked up my iPhone, I was brought back to the days of my youth. As just a child, I remember the sadistic pleasure of sneaking onto my father’s computer at night, loading up Doom on his computer, and jamming the keyboard as I obliterated aliens and henchmen on the 12-inch CRT before me. Doom was a classic; it blew the first-person shooter genre wide open, and anyone who was around upon its conception cannot possibly forget the sinister thrills of blasting the heads off of the monstrous, pixelated beasts in the game. Today, that 12-inch CRT is but a distant memory, yet the legacy of Doom lives on. Surprisingly, in this iteration, it presents itself on a smaller screen: the iPhone’s 3.5-inch widescreen display. No matter, this Doom will bring back memories of the original, and you won’t regret its $10 price tag.
The iPhone is ideal for many things, but I was hard-pressed to envision how a first-person shooter (FPS) would play out on a button-less device. It’s difficult enough to imagine an FPS without a mouse or a joystick, but with no buttons at all? Impossible! Yet, somehow, Id Software pulled it off with shocking precision: the controls were amazing. To be fair, the experience wasn’t the same as on the Xbox or a PC. You don’t control the character’s movements, just the crosshair. But, that was sufficient and Doom: Resurrection still provided a heart-pounding experience that you don’t want to miss.
Though not the first good FPS for the iPhone, but Doom: Resurrection is definitely the best. The controls are absolutely perfect: you tilt the screen to move the crosshair, and tap the bottom-right corner to shoot. Tap the top-left corner to change weapon, top-right to reload and bottom-left to “Hide” (a great little feature we’ll talk about later). The crosshair calibrates to the center of the screen whenever you start a new scene, so be sure to hold your iPhone in an ideal position (no worries if you don’t: just hit the pause key, position your device, and hit “calibrate” and you’ll be set straight). You have just enough range of motion to blast any enemy in view, and the crosshair smoothly traverses the screen as you tilt. When you’re not shooting, you can pick up items by tapping on the screen. This was probably the only major miss of the controls scheme: I often fired off a few stray bullets while trying to frantically grab all of the items I could. Nonetheless, the controls were fantastic and they didn’t get in the way of the gameplay.
Ahhh, the gameplay. With four difficulties, Doom was made for just about anyone to pick up and play. An FPS virgin (though I can’t imagine many exist) can start at the “Recruit” difficulty setting, whereas pathological murderers can try their hand at “Nightmare.” Me? I played at the “Marine” (second) difficulty. The game has eight levels in all, and your job is to kill every monster (or human) in each level to advance. The character moves for you, so all you do is aim your crosshair and blast away when you see an enemy. Of course, headshots kill the enemies faster, but they are not usually insta-kills (unless you’ve got the right weapon). You have limited ammo in all weapons but your machine gun, and you acquire additional weapons as you go through each level.
Breadth and depth are essential for great games, and this one has both. Each level is fairly long–some take an hour or more to complete. There are numerous types of enemies, and they come with different ways of trying to kill you. Some enemies charge at you; when they do, bust out your shotgun and stick two pellets in them. Others shoot at you; use your machine gun for those. In one level (the level where you descend into the depths of hell), they fly at you and the machine gun will do just fine for those as well. Finally, some toss gobs of alien crap at you, which you must dodge by hitting the aforementioned “hide” on-screen button. None of these enemies individually is necessarily interesting, but in tandem, they craft a formidable path to victory. You must craftily switch between weapons, and appropriately tap the hide key in an effort to destroy the enemies before getting blown to bits yourself. The result is a thrilling symphony of well-timed maneuvers and trigger-tapping mayhem that will leave you wondering why you ever questioned the possibility of an FPS on the iPhone.
Of course, that’s not all: each level has a boss at the end, and a ton of items to help you along the way (shotgun shells, energy, health, etc.). I found only two of the bosses to be truly challenging, though I’m sure at a higher difficulty, I probably would’ve died a hundred times before making it past any boss. The levels themselves are extremely well-designed. Id Software took full advantage of the iPhone’s high-flying graphics and delivered stunning images and environments. Though you won’t have much time to stop and admire them, the graphics are flippin’ sweet. Similarly, the cut scenes are enjoyable - I am the type to skip through the talk when I can, but I didn’t mind it so much with Doom: Resurrection.
Id Software does it again with this fist-pumping, heart attack-inducing, spine-chilling FPS for the iPhone. You’ll be hard-pressed to find smoother controls and better graphics on any first-person shooter for the iDevices. Not to mention the fact that the gameplay is everything-you’d-hoped-for-and-more. With dozens of enemies and weapons, Doom: Resurrection will captivate your attention all the way through and the only thing you’ll regret about it is that it wasn’t longer.
What we like:
What we don’t like:
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When I was in Boulder, CO last week I went for a walk in a city-owned "greenbelt" hiking trail. I saw this sign that read, "All bags and coolers subject to search. City of Boulder Rangers and Police Officers will be patrolling this area."
Are the police allowed to search your bags in a public park without a warrant? (I saw no police officers or rangers while hiking that day; in fact I saw no other hikers either.)
Source: Boing Boing | 15 Jul 2009 | 11:52 pm
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Our Rock Band bassist sucks. Am I a total jerk if I kick him out?
Who cares? You shred, he doesn't. Fire his ass. Bonus: It'll put
the others on notice. Anyone who doesn't keep up can hit the road.
Even if that means firing the whole band. Remember: All great
artists go solo eventually. Just think of Ronnie James Frickin' Dio.
Can I talk on the phone while taking a whiz?
No, you can't talk on the phone! Do you want the guy next to you to hear your entire conversation? That's why you should only text in the bathroom. Just be sure you don't hit the wrong button and end up putting a photo of your junk on Twitter. Trust me, you don't want those followers.
Is it OK to look at pornography at work?
Don't just look at it at work, bring in your old porn mags and scan them there! It's like converting your vinyl to MP3s. Fill up your hard drive, and when you need a break from spreadsheets, just open a favorite pictorial.
Section: Video, Accessories, Content, HDTV, Video Providers, Web, Web 2.0
It was only a matter of time before we saw the Internet infiltrate our television, and it looks like Verizon is ready to launch their new type of Widget/App store for FiOS subscribers. Verizon has been working with Facebook, Twitter, Veoh, Blip.tv, ESPN, and Dailymotion in order to bring the best of the web to the TV. All FiOS users will have access to these great services and Internet video via the new Widget Bazaar.
In terms of the Widget Bazaar, subscribers will have the ability to update Facebook statuses, view friends profiles, as well as pictures. For Twitter users, you have the ability to check out tweets pertaining to the program or movie you are currently watching. It isn’t simply Twitter on the television, Verizon wants to tailor Twitter to what you are currently watching. At this time, it is not possible to tweet from your television, but that should come to fruition in the future.
If you participate in ESPN’s Fantasy Football game, you have the ability to view real time Fantasy Football points and statistics, box scores, rosters, and additional player information. This is free of charge as long as you are a member with ESPN’s Fantasy program.
If you are a Home Media DVR subscriber, then you will be happy to know you have access to Internet video such as Blip.tv, Dailymotion, and Veoh. For those of us who like to amass a large video collection, you have the ability to view videos stored on your PC through your television. Both of these services are free of charge.
For additional app development, Verizon plans to release the SDK in order to allow open development of new widgets for FiOS subscribers. More developers will have the ability to reach a wider audience, not just mobile users, and make a profit. Verizon hopes to add more free and monetary apps to the Widget Bazaar.
Read [Verizon]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The latest iTunes update 8.2.1 breaks Palm Pre’s ability to sync with Apple’s music software in a move that should come as no surprise to followers of the recent skirmishes between Apple and Palm.
Palm’s webOS operating system on the Pre has media sync as one of its key features. It allows users to connect their Pre to a PC or a Mac, making the device integrate almost as effectively as an iPhone or an iPod in a trick that was seen as a rather clever move by Palm.
But, as we have pointed out earlier, the feature is dependent to a large extent on Apple’s willingness to play ball. Apple has warned that it does not support or test iTunes’ compatibility with non-Apple digital media players. While earlier versions of iTunes worked with Pre, it seemed just a matter of time before an update would break it. And that’s what has happened.
So far, Palm has responded by blaming Apple. “Palm’s media sync works with iTunes 8.2,” said Palm in a statement. “If Apple chooses to disable media sync in iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience.”
And users still have options, said Palm. “They can stay with the iTunes version that works to sync their music on their Pre, they can transfer the music via USB, and there are other third-party applications we can consider,” it said.
See Also:
Photo: (Maury McCown/Flickr)
Here's my contribution to Wired's August issue. Titled "Behave Yourself," the cover package features all kinds of netiquette tips and advice for 21st-century living.
Oh, and I should probably mention Brad Pitt is on the cover, wearing a Bluetooth headset.
illustration for Wired by Jason Lee
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Three brothers were convicted in a London court for their parts in a fraud operation that revolved around stealing credit and debit card numbers and making fake cards to use them with. Ahmed Charmaga received 4 and a half years in prison, while his brothers Mahmoud and Mohammed received 5 and 2 and a half years respectively. All three pled guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud.
Authorities say the three brothers used skimmers to steal bank card and credit card numbers from ATMs. Skimmers are small pieces of equipment that attach to the front of an ATM and record the information on a card’s magnetic stripe. Police seized several skimmers from the brothers’ office as well as equipment used to make fake cards, fake ATM fronts, keypads, and 600 ready to use fake cards. Another 3,400 card details were found on computers and documents in the office.
The operation netted the Charmaga’s nearly $1 million in stolen funds. They used the fake cards to make large cash withdrawals, go on shopping sprees, and even pay for gas. Credit card fraud jumped 18% last year and the rising fraud rate has led many banks to place stickers on their ATMs warning customers to check and see if an ATM looks like it’s been tampered with and to report anything suspicious.
Read [PCWorld]
Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
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The Samsung Comeback might not have launched today as it was expected to, but the details continue to trickle in. We’ve got the product shots, we’ve got the specs, and now that last oh-so-important detail has come out: the price.
According to this snap conjured up by BGR, the Samsung Comeback is going to knock you back $130 bucks with a 2 year-contact - and that’s with a $50 mail-in rebate! With the vastly smarter T-Mobile G1 floating just around for a few bucks more, this seems absurd. Come on, T-mobile: it’s a dumbphone with a cramped keyboard. Get it under $100 bucks, at the very most.
Anyway - with pricing information now floating around the stores, expect this thing to hit the shelves soon.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 New Zealand Herald | ITunes 8.2.1 Revokes Palm Pre's Syncing Privileges PC World So, it turns out that when Apple says its iTunes 8.2.1 update "addresses an issue with verifying Apple devices," what it really means is that Apple's drawn up a list of which devices are allowed to sync and which aren't--and the Palm Pre is public ... Palm confirms that iTunes update kills Pre sync Apple iTunes To Palm Pre: Talk To The Hand Apple Blocks Pre From itunes |
Here’s a tale of bad neighbors waiting to unravel: Microsoft is planning to set up shop right next to its worst enemy, Apple.
In a keynote speech at the Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner told partners that the corporation is planning to open the first of its retail stores next to existing Apple stores.
Turner said Microsoft’s retail locations will not mimic the white, holy aesthetic of Apple’s, but rather it will innovate with the new stores, according to attendees tweeting the conference. He provided no details of how exactly the stores would look.
“As we progress on our retail strategy there will be scenarios where we have stores in proximity to Apple,” a Microsoft spokeswoman told ZDNet. “We are on track to open stores in the Fall timeframe. Beyond that we have no additional details to share.”
It’s unclear whether the Microsoft stores will be selling strictly Microsoft hardware (e.g., the Zune or Xbox 360) and software, or whether it will also be selling products from third-party companies. In the past, Microsoft has said the purpose of the stores was to build the company’s brand name by connecting with customers.
We’re not surprised by this strategy. If you recall, in October a consumer spotted a Microsoft “I’m a PC” recording studio parked right outside an Apple Store in Bullring, Birmingham, England.
Microsoft: It’s not just a store, it’s a branding experience [ZDNet]
Photo: dalertafamily/Flickr
FROM GAMERTELL - Think a carbonated beverage based on World of Warcraft might taste like a troll’s old bath water? Click through and find out what we think of these uniquely colored drinks…
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Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
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Wow, you can totally tell when Drudge links to a news story. Take this one, which details a Colorado plan to give free cellphones to low income people. Similar programs, using landline telephones, have existed for some time, paid for by a federal tax on telephones. So it’s not like this is new money we’re talking about, you know, being used to help people. But check out these comments, alluding to the destruction of the American way of life, whatever that is—crippling credit card debt? ashelymadison.com?
The day will come that the Goverment will try to make us pay as much in tax as we make. No wonder people are willing to go on goverment assistance, its the only way to fly.
Why don’t we just give them all free cable TV…and a free Tivo, so that they won’t ever have to worry about missing an episode of Oprah.
This is why we are broke! Since when is a cell phone a necessity of life? Is cable, satellite service? What is next? Time for a tax revolt-the producers are getting sick of pulling the cart for the non-producers of the country. Time for a tax revolt.
And so on. It’s a bit of an overreaction, yes, especially when there’s no new money involved. It’s an existing tax.
But back to the program. Recipients would get 83 free minutes per month&more than enough to receive phone calls from prospective employers. It uses a Motorola phone, presumably a low, low end one. Remember: it’s about helping the less fortunate find a job, just spend all day cruising the iPhone App Store.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
I've never roasted my own coffee, but I'm game to try it. The GEN2 Coffee Roaster drum kit is an aluminum cage and rotisserie you place on a standard bbq. Seems like a simple, potentially useful way to heat your beans.
Then again, it costs $110. Not terrible, but that's several times the price of an old popcorn popper, which can roast just fine and doesn't require manual turning. Aside from handling larger batches, I'd love to know why the bbq roaster is preferable.
[via Cooking Gadgets]
Section: Gadgets / Other, Household, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Peripherals, Web
The Kindle is once again making the news. Only this time, not for a rave review and gushing praise. This time the coverage is because of a $5 million class action suit being thrown at Amazon due to a number of Kindle 2 users finding the build quality of the reader lacking.
When purchasing the Kindle 2, consumers have the option of also purchasing the $30 protective case which fastens onto the plastic body of the Kindle with metal clips. So, some of those Amazon customers, thinking they were being diligent about wanting to take care of their precious new baby did just that, they bought that optional protective case. Their mistake, as it didn’t do much protecting. Instead, so far it seems it caused more damage than it did good in lots of cases.
Mr. Matthew Geise, an executive director of a Seattle property management firm, first filed the suit. He did this after he bought a Kindle for his wife for $359 plus the protective case. About three months later, the Kindle started to crack around and underneath the place where the clips squeeze onto the body of the reader. A couple of months after the cracks first began appearing, they had grown noticeably with the stress transferred to the internals of the device as evidenced by screen freeze, screen corruption, leading to the device to stop functioning on July 6th.
Mr. Geise’s cracked Kindle
Looking through the Kindle review section of Amazon.com does show that a number of other Kindle 2 owners have had this (or similar) problems. Some of the comments and complaints make it clear that Amazon has been less than helpful in resolving the situation. One reviewer wrote on July 13th, “Amazon has been horrible about helping with this issue. I am sorry, but if an accessory is purchased to PROTECT the product, the company should certainly be liable if it is the cause of the damage.”
When Geise contacted Amazon about trying to make a warranty claim on July 7th, he was told by a customer service representative that the company would cover the screen, but not the cracks. They contended that they were caused by opening the cover backwards, so it wasn’t covered by the warranty. Geist was told instead of a replacement, he would have to pay $200 for repairs.
Alisa Brodkowitz, Geise’s wife, maintains that she did not open the cover incorrectly. She was even told by an Amazon supervisor that these cracks are a “common problem,” but still was told they would have to pay $200 to get it fixed or replaced. According to the lawsuit, the supervisor told the couple that the broken one could end up either being repaired or offered as refurbished.
Geise’s attorney, Beth Terrell, says it seems though Amazon changed their policy of automatically replacing the cracked Kindles to charging $200 to do so. Not a very consumer-friendly move when you have a product that keeps breaking. On top of that, even if the cracks are being caused by people “opening” their Kindles from the back side, Terrel states that “there’s no warning that’s going to crack the Kindle.”
In his case, he seeks refunds, as well as triple damages and legal costs. This amount is expected to be over $5 million for the hundreds of people suspected to be dealing with the same problem.
Seems to me that Amazon is going about this one the wrong way. Replacing some broken Kindles is gonna cost a lot less than a class-action suit if they lose. Not to mention it really isn’t going to look good for them or the Kindle.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle today, July 15, 2009, and includes buyers of both the Kindle 2 as well as the Kindle DX models “installed in a Kindle Cover designed by Amazon.”
Read: [fastcompany]
Full Story » | Written by Jodie Andrefski for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
MIT researchers are tracking trash to encourage consumers to recycle by illustrating the amount of energy required to dispose of waste.
For the Trash Track program, the MIT research team is planting special tags on different types of waste to track their journey through disposal systems in New York and Seattle. The tags are wireless monitors, which report the location of each piece of garbage to a central server. This way, the public will be able to view each piece of garbage on a visual map in real time.
“When you have paper in your hand and you throw it away, you lose the connection because that doesn’t belong to you,” explained Musstanser Tinauli, a research assistant at MIT Senseable City lab, in a phone interview with Wired.com. “But our tags make this invisible connection between the people and their trash because it keeps sending the message that it’s still alive. We do see there’s going to be a very strong behavioral impact.”
Over the weekend, the Trash Track team began deploying tagged trash throughout Seattle. When the project concludes, a group of end-of-cycle experts will analyze the environmental impact of each type of waste based on the distance it traveled and the amount of carbon dioxide emitted, according to Tinauli.
Trash Track’s tracking map will be available soon at MIT’s Trash Blog. See a photo of the tracking tag below the jump.
See Also:
Photos courtesy of MIT
And yet another game of cat and mouse begins.
Over the past 24 hours, Apple has released updates for both iTunes and the iPhone beta SDK. While both are seemingly minor on the feature front, each packs a bit of disappointment for those who had been using loopholes to their advantage.
First off the bat was a new beta release of the iPhone 3.1 SDK. Within minutes of the news breaking, developers were tearing it apart in search of new gems. Tucked inside was the ability to debug over WiFi and a new API for modifying video as it comes out of the camera. What’s more important than what’s new, however, is what is gone: Tethering. Up until now, AT&T customers have been able to use a carrier file hack to enable tethering on their handsets. With this latest build of 3.1, this hack has been disabled. If you’re relying on iPhone tethering for connectivity, we wouldn’t recommend jumping on 3.1 until there’s a workaround or AT&T finally gets on the ball with this whole tethering ordeal.
Next up was the iTunes 8.2.1 update, which mentions “addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices” as one of the two listed bug fixes (the other item being just, well, “bug fixes”). In real people speak, this means “blocks the Palm Pre from syncing with iTunes”. The Palm Pre had been falsely identifying itself as an iPod in order to allow iTunes users to sync with it. Just as we had predicted a month ago, Apple has swung back at Palm for trying to sneak their way into their closed garden.
Both of these moves are understandable, though they seem quite mean-spirited. AT&T is still remaining mostly mum on when they’ll have an iPhone tethering option available, only speaking up to debunk rumors of pricing or availability. With the Palm Pre, Apple really only needed to do what they already had: say they don’t support it. They could have just moved on from there, making no effort to ensure that the iTunes was Pre-friendly in the future. Everyone would be happy (except for the customer service reps who had to spout the occasional “Sorry, we don’t support that phone” shutdown), and iTunes would have more users as a result.
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
IKEA's solar-powered Sunnan desk lamp is cute, costs only $20, and doesn't use any electricity. A full charge will give you about four hours of light. Even better, for every Sunnan lamp sold since June, IKEA claims it is shipping one for free to kids in Pakistan via UNICEF, so those who live without electricity can study at night. That's nice!
Product page [IKEA]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
When Woz appeared on Dancing with the Stars, you may have noticed this shirt. Funny, but what's it mean?
Geeks on Board is a feature-length doc that was shot in 2004 on a 7-day Caribbean "Geek Cruise" using only prosumer gear, including a Panasonic DVX100A. I found out about the doc as it was being filmed because my wife was actually on that MacMania III cruise (my father-in-law is a big Machead).
The doc, which was cut together using only 27 hours of footage, didn't receive wide distribution at the time. However, filmmakers Abe Forman-Greenwald (currently producing "In Their Boots") and Nate Smith (drummer for the band Shy Child) eventually self-published their work via CreateSpace.
Best part, imho, is what's around the corner. Says Abe:
We want to make all of our raw footage from the cruise available through a Creative Commons license so that anyone who is interested in repurposing the footage can do so.
Here's an outtake of Woz explaining his relationship with gaming, followed by the trailer:
Section: Computers, Desktops, Laptops, Features
We’ve partnered up with LogicBuy.com to bring you today’s Recession-O-Rama deals. The website focuses news, deals, reviews, and discussion on everything to do with laptops, desktops, and printers. How about major money off a range of HP notebooks and desktop computers with lots of free shipping deals and free Windows 7 upgrades?
It’s the thinnest and lightest HP laptop measuring .093” thin and 3.81 pounds wrapped in a magnesium-aluminum alloy case. Plus, get a free 2GB RAM upgrade, 50% off 4GB RAM upgrade, 50% off 512MB discrete graphics, free upgrade to 320GB Hard Drive, free HP DeskJet Printer after paperless rebate and free shipping. Available in Moonlight White (default) or Espresso Black ($25 upgrade). Eligible for free Windows 7 upgrade.
Get a $250 stackable coupon on top of $150 instant discount for HP Pavilion dv7t 16:9 17.3-inch Laptop configured at over $1,199. Get it in Expresso Black or Moonlight White ($25 upgrade). Plus, get a free upgrade to 3GB RAM from 2GB ($50 value), a free upgrade to 320GB Hard Drive from 250GB, free HP Deskjet D4360 printer with paperless rebate and free shipping. Plus get a free Windows 7 upgrade when available.
Grab a $250 stackable coupon + $150 instant discount on customizable HP Pavilion dv3t 13.3-inch Notebook configured at over $1,199. The HP dv3t is the lightest Intel-based HP Pavilion Laptop.
It features a LED-backlit display, liquid metallic imprint pattern and is available in black or white ($25 upgrade) designs, up to 7 hours battery life, optional backlit keyboard, and Blu-ray. Plus, a free upgrade to 3GB RAM, a free upgrade to a 320GB Hard Drive, and a free HP DeskJet D4360 printer ($70 value) after mail-in rebate & free shipping. You even get a free Windows 7 upgrade when it is released.
Pick up a $50 stackable coupon on top of a $200 instant discount for customizable HP Pavilion Slimline s5150t Desktop PC. Includes a free 640GB hard drive upgrade, 40% off 18.5-inch LCD Monitor, 20% off all HP speakers, and a free HP DeskJet Printer ($70 value) after mail-in rebate and free shipping. Plus free Windows 7 upgrade.
$50 stackable coupon on top of $200 instant discount for HP Pavilion Elite e9110t Desktop PC. Available for online customization with free 640GB Hard Drive upgrade, free 15-month NIS subscription, 40% off 18.5-inch LCD Monitor, free HP DeskJet Printer ($70 value) after mail-in rebate, 20% off all HP speakers and free shipping. Plus, free Windows 7 upgrade.
Want an all-in-one PC? Why not get a $250 instant discount + $30 stackable coupon for 25.5-inch HP TouchSmart IQ800t customizable All-in-one PC? Plus, free shipping, free upgrade to 640GB Hard Drive, free Windows 7 upgrade and a free HP DeskJet Printer after paper-less rebate or save $60 on any wireless printer.
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
If you’re part of the very, very, very small segment of Crunch readers who happens to live in Germany, and you’re an O2 customer, and you bought a TG01 - look out! Your new toy might make your computer feel a bit woozy inside.
They don’t have the how or why’s just yet, but O2 in Germany has verified that at least some of the TG01s they’ve sold were packed with a virus on the microSD card. Sales have been nixed, and anyone who bought the phone should give O2 Germany a ring.
We’ll update you as more details come in, but we’d expect O2 to stay pretty mum on this one. We can only assume that one of their computers at the processing plants got infected, and the virus was coded to throw itself onto any microSD card it detected. Hopefully the as-of-yet undetermined side effects aren’t too nasty.
[Via UnwiredView]
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Okay AT&T, lets talk.
If you’re not ready to launch a phone 3 months after it’s announced, no one will really notice. If, at 6 months, the company still hasn’t prepped the handset for compatibility with your 3G network, you might want to start yelling. But a year? One whole friggin’ year to jam in some extra bands? Around the 9 month point, you probably should have just said “Yeah, uh - lets move on.”
One-whole-friggin’-year (and a month!) after the world found out about and got excited about the C905, AT&T will at long last have the 3G-friendly C905a on the shelves on July 19th.
For $179 bucks, you walk out with a decent dumbphone strapped to an 8.1 megapixel camera, complete with face detection, xenon flash, and red-eye reduction. You’re stuck with Sony Ericsson’s dying Memory Stick Micro format, but outside of that it’s a super solid shooter. Sure, it’s an exciting phone - but it was far more exciting a year ago.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Section: Computers, Software / Applications
This week Microsoft released a technical preview of many of the features included in its latest version of MS Office. While Microsoft was showing off all of Office 2010’s bells and whistles, the company quietly ended support for MS Office 2000 yesterday. The 2000 version was released June of 1999 for a suggested retail price of $799. Microsoft had stopped mainstream support options in 2004.
Features of MS Office 2010 were released through an invitation only technical preview yesterday as well. It was an official introduction to the new Office user interface and the inclusion of XML file formats. The much buzzed about web applications of the office suite however was not previewed and will not until later in the year. The browser based versions of the office products are expects to be included as part of Windows Live next year.
Extended support had continued on Microsoft Office 2000 until this week, but users can still access archived articles regarding issues that may occur with the office suite of products.
Read: [CNET]
Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Telegraph.co.uk | Google OS Means Actual Netbooks, Not Apple Trouble PC World Aw, who am I kidding? Making predictions about things we know nothing about is what the Internet was made for, amiright? So in the spirit of talking through my hat, here are the two Chrome OS-related thoughts that kept my brain busy over the past week. ... With Chrome OS, Google Is Doing What Other Vendors Should Have Ballmer Thinks Google Chrome OS Is 'Interesting' Bill Gates on Google's Chrome OS |
Sony Ericsson will offer a new phone on AT&T that comes with a 8.1-megapixel camera, the highest resolution in a device available on the telecom carrier’s wireless network.
The Sony Ericsson C905a Cyber-shot phone has features such as face detection, autofocus, xenon flash and GPS tagging. The phone comes in a slider form factor and is targeted at users who don’t want to carry multiple devices, such as a phone and a compact digital camera.
Sony Ericsson also introduced the W518a Walkman phone aimed at Facebook addicts and music lovers.
“The C905a is the best camera available in a mobile phone today and the W518a’s unique Facebook user interface and Walkman music features will elevate how our customers express themselves,” said Michael Woodward, vice president at AT&T mobility and consumer markets in a statement.
The C905a Cyber-shot phone has a 2.4-inch scratch-resistant display and Memory Stick Micro storage compatible up to 16 GB. The W518a Walkman phone allows users to view their Facebook friends’ status updates and profile photos by just opening up the phone. The device comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera.
The Walkman phone also lets users shuffle, skip and control volume by just shaking the phone. The phone allows users to purchase and download music over the air from Napster Mobile and eMusic Mobile via AT&T Music.
The two new phones will be available on contract with AT&T starting July 19. The C905a will be available for $230, not including the $50 mail-in rebate in the form of a AT&T promotion card. The W518a Walkman phone will cost $100 before the $50 rebate.
See Also:
Photo: C905a/Sony Ericsson
About a month ago you couldn’t go to Huffington Post without thinking that Iran was going to protest its way into the year 2009. That didn’t exactly happen, despite people thinking that they could tweet a government into collapse, all from the comfort of their armchair in Columbus, Ohio. (There’s actually a term for that: slacktivism.) That being said, it now looks like some of the more rambunctious elements of that whole dust-up have now set their sights on Nokia, a company they view as being too close to the current political regime.
Nokia, which, together with Siemens, runs a mobile network in Iran, is accused of providing authorities with monitoring equipment. Said monitoring equipment was used to keep a close eye on key people in the whole dust-up. Says one shop owner, by way of The Guardian:
I don’t like to lose my customers and now people don’t feel happy seeing Nokia’s products. We even had customers who wanted to refund their new Nokia cellphones or change them with just another cellphone from any other companies.
An Iranian journalist explains:
And the most unbelievable thing for me is that Nokia sold this system to our government. It would be a reasonable excuse for Nokia if they had sold the monitoring technology to a democratic country for controlling child abuse or other uses, but selling it to the Iranian government with a very clear background of human rights violence and suppression of dissent, it’s just inexcusable for me. I’d like to tell Nokia that I’m tortured because they had sold this damn technology to our government.
Nokia has yet to address the allegations.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
![romain-laurent-wad-41-front[6].jpg](http://gadgets.boingboing.net/romain-laurent-wad-41-front%5B6%5D.jpg)
The new cover of WAD Magazine features this amazing human clock choreographed by photographer Romain Laurent.
Homotography [via NotCot]
When I was editing Cool Tools, J. Baldwin recommended a fantastic book on constructing furniture and other things with Grid Beam. I bought the book, but have yet to put it to use, so don't take my word for it.
From his Cool Tools review:
Grid Beam is a great way to make working prototypes of furniture, experimental vehicles and even small buildings. If your idea doesn't work, you can change it until it does... A drawing can lie to your client or worse, to you. Grid Beams never lie.
Section: Computers, Software / Applications, Gaming, Accessories
Back in the start of June, Microsoft made quite an impression on many people when it announced Project Natal for the Xbox 360 on the stage at E3. The technology allows for full body movement, face recognition and voice commands for the Xbox 360, allowing users to interact with the console using their entire body, no controller needed. It only seemed logical that Microsoft would try to use the technology in other devices, like PCs, but we’ve had no reason to suspect that until now.
In a recent interview with CNET, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates mentioned that both the Xbox and Windows divisions in Microsoft have latched onto the idea of Project Natal. The technology will allow for easy file management in Windows, moving files just by moving them around with your hand. It would be put to the most use by managing movies, music, and other media in a Media Center environment, which was show at E3 as part of the E3 presentation. Gates said that, “the idea of how it can be used in the office is getting much more concrete, and is pretty exciting.”
The idea of this project isn’t something exactly new, it’s been lusted over by many people since a similar computer system was shown off in “Minority Report.” Of course, it won’t look exactly like the movie’s computers, but the interaction with the computer will be as mouse free as you would want to make it. Of course, Project Natal won’t be able to do everything with a Windows PC, chances are you’ll probably still want to type up documents without relying too much on the voice recognition, though there’s a chance it could be better than most we’ve seen already. The most obvious answer aside from media selection and playback would have to be movement activated Powerpoint presentation, which could only be a good thing.
Read [CNet]
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Recently on Offworld we saw things living in places we didn't expect, like Taito's fantastic looking formerly Japanese-only vector-sharp retro-futurist mobile phone game Space Invaders Infinity Gene making a surprise visit to the iPhone, demoscene group Braadworsten Brigade bringing a mini-rave to your copy of Microsoft Excel 2003, and Subatomic's iPhone tower defense hit Fieldrunners coming as a PSP downloadable.
We also saw our first inside-the-gallery shots of French guerrilla artist Space Invader's NYC art exhibit, including his Rubik's Cube recreations of Daft Punk and Velvet Underground album covers, found no less than 100 brilliant 5-second art/glitch videos based on 'old video games' (above), and followed the latest in the copyfight between iPhone dev Mobigame, IGDA board member Tim Langdell, and anyone who has ever thought about stringing together the letters E-D-G- and E.
Finally, our 'one shot's for the day: Florian Hufsky's pixel pirates, and, best of all, the world of Shaun of the Dead meeting the world of Left 4 Dead.
From the paper (PDF) "Lifted Domain Coloring" by Konstantin Poelke and Dr. Konrad Polthier:
Domain coloring, as the name suggests, makes use of a color spectrum to compensate the missing dimension. More precisely, we discard the approach of plotting the function somehow on an independent axis (as we would do when we plot the modulus over the domain, for instance), but plot it right onto the domain, i.e. we color the domain in a particular way. Now, the effectiveness and flexibility of domain coloring lies in the choice of an adequate reference color scheme...The new color schemes specifically enhance the display of singularities, symmetries and path integrals...
Those color schemes also make killer desktop backgrounds.
Step aside, Korg Nano: Akai's LPK 25 keyboard and LPD8 pad are nearly as small, but offer pro-grade construction and velocity-sensitive keys.
Powered by the USB bus and 13 inches long, they're designed to fit in laptop bags and backpacks. The LPD8 has eight pads and 8 knobs, while the LPK25 has twenty-five keys, an argeggiator, and controls for sustain, octave switching and tap tempo.
Akai says they'll be presented at the Summer NAMM show in Nashville later this month. Stores will get them in Q3.
Update: Bigger, better pics from Akai. Now with orange glow!
By a show of hands, who forgot about that unannounced Acer handset that Mr. BlurryCam spied a few months ago? It’s cool. That phone *might* turn out to be one of the four smartphones Acer still has on tap for this year.
Three of them are Winmo phones - C1/E1, F1 and L1 - but it’s the Android-rocking A1 we care about. Now, Digitimes isn’t exactly clear when these phones will be release because they probably don’t know the release dates either, but at least we know that Acer has a bunch of smartphones slated for a second half of 2009 release. We like it.
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
Google Voice, previously called Grand Central, is rolling out the first mobile apps for the service this evening. The main function of the apps is to make it easier to use your Google Voice phone number by automatically routing outbound calls through Google and to the recipient. We first mentioned they were coming last month when we broke the news that Google would start letting users port their phone numbers over to the Voice product sometime this year.
Google Voice users get a phone number that should be the only number you give out to people. You route calls to mobile, home and other phones based on who's calling and when. But there's always been a nagging problem with the service - when you call out from your phones, people don't see your Google Voice number on caller ID. They just see whatever phone number you are calling from. That means your friends have to store another phone number for you, or they don't know who's calling.
Every morning my inbox is almost full of pitches for various iPhone cases. Gel skins and anodized pictures of sock monkeys are today’s offerings. They are almost always humdrum, and usually virtual clones of one another, probably all starting life in the same Chinese factory.
But the Exovault is different, and not just because no PR company has (yet) pitched it to me. The chunky metal box is possibly the most impractical iPhone case ever seen, the rear fins looking like the hefty heat-sinks found on a 1980s-era CD player (back when we still said the words “compact disk”). Those fins are in fact slots which will let the precious radio waves reach the phone within, and there are similar industrial-looking cutouts for the home button, dock connector and other essentials.
The case comes in brass, aluminum or titanium and each is made from two chunks bolted together in the designer’s Brooklyn factory. The titanium model is $300, but the others are a more reasonable $95 apiece. We think they’re fantastic. Ridiculous, silly, impossibly squared-off and completely pocket-unfriendly, yes, but fantastic all the same. In fact, if I had designed a cellphone back in my school days (long before such things existed outside of Star Trek), it would have looked exactly like this.
Product page [Exovault via the Giz and BBG]
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile
LG is very proud of their S-Class OS and want everyone to get some playtime with it. So the easiest way to do that is to create a downloadable widget for your computer and let you play with the 3D tumbling and sliding fun of the S-Class OS right from the comfort of your very own machine. This is roughly the opposite of what Apple did with their OS-X migrating from computers to the iPhone OS.
The download is an interesting beast. The widget uses InstallShield to install on your machine. You are asked to agree to what I am sure are ridiculous terms and away the install goes. Clicking on the cube icon launches the UI widget. A cube appears allowing you to spin through the four main sides of the cube: Desktop, Widgets, Games, Multimedia.
From the sides of the cube you can access your computer programs and documents. Swipes with the mouse causes the sides of the cube to rotate and the action is pretty neat. The colors, icons and set up is all very attractively designed. LG has taken some time building this UI and it shows.
The widget must have been created for the UK as London, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Leeds are some of the cities you can get the weather widget to work for. Other than that, the widget seems OK for playing with for 5 minutes but after that, it seems a little cumbersome for this guy to keep using.
In fact, I had more fun with the S-Class Emulator. Shown below, users can get the feel of the UI with a little more perspective than the desktop widget. Seeing the widgets and such on a limited screen size makes more sense than small widgets on a large screen, perspective is a wonderful thing and to LG’s credit everything looks really nice on the emulator.
I am really digging the sliding rows option (hit the blue button in the bottom right) that allow you to group the apps by function and scroll through only those. Compared to sliding through all your apps on the iPhone, this could save some serious time (though, I’ve taken to using the search function to find my a lot of my apps now on the iPhone and that seems to be a decent solution). Overall, this UI is simple, rather fun and looks to work well for the average user. LG is putting this S-Class UI on the Arena, Viewty, and Crystal phones.
You can play with the emulator below. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. Enjoy!
Check out the emulator, widget and 3D games here: [LG]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Fans of Wired magazine’s Found: Artifacts From the Future section (which is everyone with a pulse) will love these short video spots directed by Jake Maymudes, digital artist and movie FX guy, which are the same kind of thing only in movie form.
They’re framed as Public Service Announcements from the future. We won’t spoil the gags for you, but be sure not to watch the second one (below) if you don’t like clips of old ladies being hit punched by giant robots. Just sayin’, is all: No old ladies were harmed in the course of making this film.
Artist page [Jake Maymudes via Suicide Bots]
Is this the best kids’ toy ever? The Rocking Horse is a custom built bike made by Felix Götze. He noticed three year old Otto Komei staring wistfully out the window at the bike gang across the street as they spent their days souping up their choppers. After one of the gang wheelied off down the street, Felix decided to build the baby his own sweet ride.
The Rocking Horse is built from old German motorcycle parts — a two stroke engine, a sprung saddle and a rather wonderful headlamp. Even the color is spot-on: Most of the old scooters I saw in when living in Berlin were painted in hospital-wall shades. It’s probably a little dangerous for a tiny child to play on, but it is 100% awesome, nonetheless.
The Rocking Horse [Blog Paper via Noquedanblogs]
The SwissMiniGun is officially the smallest gun in the world. Look at the picture on the right and it appears to be just a regular revolver, apart from the “oversized” trigger sticking out the bottom. One glance at the picture on the left, though, shows that it could easily be used as a key fob.
But don’t go hooking this up to your keys, at least not while it’s loaded: Somebody is bound to grab it and squeeze the trigger. If that happens, you’ll be picking 2.34mm caliber bullets out of your body for weeks.
The tiny gun is, of course, made in Switzerland and measures just 5.5cm (2.2 inches) long. The bullets, which are rim firing, are so small that they really won’t do too much damage. In fact, the makers want to be very clear about this:
We would like to take this opportunity to inform journalists who are interested in writing articles about our product that the power of most airguns or BB guns, which are in many countries freely on sale, can exceed over 10 times the power of our ammunition.
We do not wish to find on the web the same kind of nonsense article we have found lately.
Still, it would certainly sting, and could probably take your eye out. The gun costs a rather hefty 6,500 Swiss Francs, or just shy of $6,000. There is also a gold edition which can go for up to $50,000, but you’ll have to travel to Switzerland to buy one: While it is exported to some markets, the gun is actually too small for the US, and “does not meet with the minimum size prerequisites”.
Product page [SwissMiniGun via Oh Gizmo!]
Section: Communications, Web, Web Apps, Google
Despite Google Voice still not being open for anyone to sign up without first having been invited, the smartphones apps are beginning to roll out. In an announcement that came via the official Google Voice Twitter account, we now know that we can expect to see an Android and a BlackBerry app become available this morning (Wednesday, July 15,2009).
“Google Voice apps for Android and Blackberry coming out on Wed morning.”
Of course, just about anyone will be able to notice there are a few other smartphones that are missing—namely the iPhone and the Palm Pre. As to when or of we can expect to see them, unfortunately Google has not announced any details or plans as to a release date other then to let everyone know that an iPhone version is in the works, it just was not ready.
We have yet to see either app in action, however according to other reports the one for Android is going to be more full featured as compared to the BlackBerry version. That said, both apps will allow the user to make as well as receive calls from their Google Voice number as opposed to their cell number. Additionally, users on either Android or the BlackBerry will also be able to send and receive text messages, check voicemail and view their call history.
Finally, Android users will be able to download the app from the Android Market. As for BlackBerry users, they will have to download it directly from Google because it will not be listed in the BlackBerry App World.
Read [Twitter @googlevoice]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Question: You have a stack of old, vintage moneybags, and a yen to make something out of them. What do you do? If you’re Etsy seller Rikkianne (aka. chakrapennywhistle), you do nothing. Conceptually, at least.
These wallets have gone from holding big stacks of cash to smaller stacks of cash, and are fashioned from old banking moneybags. Because the worn cotton sacks are all different, the wallets are too, although they have some features in common: double card pockets and a billfold at the back. The wallets are $35 each, so you should still have some cash left to put in them when you’ve bought one. Out of stock right now on Etsy, they should be back on sale next week.
Product page [Chakra Penny Whistle via Uncrate]
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