|
|
|
|
888 close to deal as trading improves
| |||||||||||||||||||||
 Mashable | Google Woos Business Users With Billboard Ad Campaign InformationWeek The company that made Internet advertising what it is today has decided to promote Google Apps using really big display ads by the highway. By Thomas Claburn Starting on Monday, Google will begin pitching its enterprise productivity suite, Google Apps, ... Google launches rare ad campaign to sell more apps Google Apps Campaign: How Not to Influence IT Experts Google aims at commuters with Google Apps ads |
Tony from the StarShipSofa podcast sez, "The Sofanauts is a weekly SF news related show.
Joining me each week are a variety of guests from science fiction literature, SF blogs and publishing to bring you the latest news and gossip from the world of SF. Guests have ranged from science fiction writers, including Jeff VanderMeer, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jeremiah Tolbert and Gord Sellar (nominated for this year''s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer) to editors and publishers, like the anthologist John Joseph Adams and Pablo Defendini (mover and shaker over at Tor.com). And one day I hope to snag young Mr Doctorow!
"We are now in the 14th week of the show's conception and it seems to be going from strength to strength. You can always tell how popular a show becomes as guests now ask to be on the show. This week will see the Sofanauts blast full throttle into Worldcon 2009, bringing you all the daily gossip and titbits of what is going on at this year's convention."
StarShipSofa, The Audio Science Fiction magazine has just given birth to...
(Thanks, Tony!)
AFP - Japanese high-tech giant Panasonic Corp. announced Monday a big first-quarter loss, blaming weak sales of televisions, digital cameras and other electronic goods during the recession.
By Farhad Manjoo, Technology Columnist, Slate
Back in March, I asked people to quit whining about Facebook’s redesign. It wasn’t that I liked the radical changes the site had made—they were unquestionably terrible. In the past, Facebook would roll all of your friends’ recently added photos, notes, and status updates into a few new posts a day; now the site shows you an ever-changing “stream” of activity, with new stuff from everyone in your network popping up as it happens.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Taylor Buley, Technology Reporter, Forbes
For the second year in a row, Twitter has a major presence on Defcon’s Wall of Sheep. The wall, a perennial presence at the hacking conference, was designed to showcase the consequences of sending passwords over unsecure networks.
But J.A. Simmons says Twitter is more secure than you think.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Rick Maese, Washington Post Staff Writer
Thousands of fans gathered in Ashburn last week for the opening of Redskins training camp, separated from their oversize heroes by a long barricade. But when the players left the field and returned to the locker room, fans suddenly had unprecedented access to the players’ thoughts and whims through their laptops and mobile devices.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Joe Wilcox, Writer, Betanews
Is three times the price three times the value? That’s the question I’m asking about Microsoft’s (MSFT) limited-time Windows 7 Family Pack — three Home Premium upgrade licenses — for $150. Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” Family Pack, with five licenses, will sell for $49.
It’s a rhetorical question really.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By King Kaufman, Senior Editor, Salon
In April, Time magazine used a stock photo of coins in a jar on its cover to illustrate a story about “the new frugality.”
Last week, the photographer who took the picture, Robert Lam, proudly pointed out his achievement in the Photography Talk forum on the Web site Model Mayhem.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
LEDSAUR: Dinosaur-shaped desk lamps
Ninja Star Coat Hook strikes a death blow to clutter
Penguin-powered bootable USB drive looks like actual penguin
80s trifecta wallpaper: Nerf, Zapper, Super Soaker
Video: Panasonic’s battery-powered Evolta robot to tackle the Le Mans circuit
Twitter is getting a ton of spam tonight for the hashtag #sept2nd along with vague sounding warnings about something bad happening on that date. There’s also a YouTube video and a Digg story that is just starting to get clicks.
What is it? Some 4Chan users are trying to stir up some good old fashioned fear. A message urges readers to “Write “9/02/09″ on flyers, stickers, currency, walls, etc. and put them EVERYWHERE….Tweet with the hashtag #sept2nd. Get it into the trending topics….Help get the youtube video into the popular section (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT6N_PZuY-Q)…Spam Google with “9.02.09″”
This is much more likely to create a big annoyance for everyone rather than the intended effect of “its gonna be hilarious seeing everyone freak out.” Traditionally 4Chan has been much better at just raining on parades than than creating any serious mayhem.
But there’s an upside, too. All those people twittering out that hashtag make up an excellent and tidy block list.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
The Associated Press -- which thinks you owe it a license fee if you quote more than four words from one of its articles -- doesn't even care if the words actually came from its article. They'll charge you anyway, even if you're quoting from the public domain.The AP Will Sell You a "License" to Words It Doesn't Own (Thanks, James!)I picked a random AP article and went to their "reuse options" site. Then, when they asked what I wanted to quote, I punched in Thomas Jefferson's famous argument against copyright. Their license fee: $12 for an educational 26-word quote. FROM THE PUBLIC FREAKING DOMAIN, and obviously, obviously not from the AP article. But the AP is too busy trying to squeeze the last few cents out of a dying business model to care about little things like free speech or the law.
They tell me I have to use the sentence "exactly as written" and heaven help me if I don't include the complete footer with their copyright boilerplate. Along the way, their terms of use insisted that I'm not allowed to use Jefferson's words in connection with "political Content." Also, I can't use use his words in any manner or context that will be in any way derogatory" to the AP. As if. Jefferson's thoughts on copyright are inherently political, and inherently derogatory towards the the AP's insane position on copyright. I require no license to quote Jefferson. The AP has no right to stop me, no right to demand money from me. All their application does is count words to calculate a fee. It doesn't even check that the words come from the story being "quoted."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
News broke last week that the latest developer builds of Chrome include support for themes. And a few sites even found a couple of them that you can easily install right now using special links. But links are a less than ideal way of installing these themes since you can’t see what they look like before you turn them on. Luckily, Google appears ready to launch a theme directory for the skins.
The site, which will reside here, is not live yet. But on the default new tab/new window page, the one with the thumbnails of your most visited sites, if you click on the “X” to remove some of them, a themes page shows up as a thumbnail (see included screenshot).
When you click on the thumbnail, it takes you to the not-live-yet page. But the thumbnail clearly shows this page will have a bunch of themes for Chrome. My superior counting skills tell me there are 24 themes shown in that thumbnail alone.
This little trick to get the themes directory thumbnail to show up works in the latest developer builds of Chrome for both Windows and Mac (I haven’t tried it on Linux).
Speaking of Chrome for Mac, it continues to come along nicely, with limited support for Flash just being added recently. We’re told it’s working in the Linux build as well. Alongside themes, improved support for extensions is included in this new Chrome build.
Themes have been available on Chrome for a while, but they used to require you to download files and know which folder to drop them in. It was also hard to revert to the original one. This latest build allows for push-button skinning and an easy way to revert. You can find two of the Chrome themes on this page (theme.crx is “Camo,” theme2.crx is “Snowflake”). Click on them and then click “download” on the next page from within the new build of Chrome to install them.
[thanks Brinke]
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Reuters - Yahoo Inc, which last week announced a Web search deal with Microsoft Corp, will invest money from reduced marketing and infrastructure costs into its display ad, content and mobile services technology, its chief executive Carol Bartz told the New York Times in an interview.
This botched Turkish building demolition features an entire building rolling, Katamari style, through the streets of Cankiri.
Cankiri Turkey Demolition Gone Wrong
German radicals turn to arson (via Beyond the Beyond)
THEY occur at a rate of nearly one a night, without warning or fanfare. By the time the police arrive, all that remains are smoking wrecks. Even the identifying badges -- Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, VW -- are often obliterated by fire...During the past six months, more than 170 cars have been destroyed by fire in Berlin and police confirm conservatively that 93 were politically motivated attacks.
A mysterious, single page website, brennende-autos.de (Burning Cars of Berlin), shows the number of cars set alight and where the crimes occurred, revealing clusters in ''richer'' areas, or in suburbs where gentrification and redevelopment are changing the demographic of local neighbourhoods...
Police cars, too, are being targeted. The favoured method is to use the slow-burn barbecue fire starters, which take time to smoulder and provide plenty of get-away time for the perpetrators.
''It is very difficult to get evidence. The fire can be started underneath a car but the person that did it can be many streets away when it is alight,'' Mr Millert said.
Bluzmanis demonstrated an attack by taking an Interactive CLIQ electro-mechanical lock made by Mul-T-Lock and inserting a mechanical-only key cut to the same keyway. After inserting the key, he does something to vibrate the key for a few seconds until the mechanical motor in the cylinder turns and lifts the locking element to release the lock. He asked Threat Level not to disclose the precise method, other than to say it involves no special tool or skill.Electronic High-Security Locks Easily Defeated at DefCon"There's no audit trail that the lock has been opened," Tobias says, "because there are no electronics [involved]." If the attacker entered the room to steal documents or sabotage the facility, the last person who entered before him and who showed up in the audit log, would presumably get the blame if the thief wasn't caught on surveillance camera or the video surveillance was also sabotaged.
Where Are My Pants? 7
Source: Boing Boing | 2 Aug 2009 | 11:06 pm
 CNET News | Smartbooks: The New Netbooks PC Magazine Yes, there is a difference—one that could have major ramifications in the mobile computing market. by Tim Bajarin Earlier this year, I pointed out, in one of my columns, that we were seeing what I called a bifurcation of the netbook market. ... Windows 7 will bring new major Netbook and Laptop Designs Microsoft and Intel uses Windows 7 to squeeze laptop screen sizes Windows 7, new laptop designs to converge |
Heading south on the New Jersey Turnpike, Ford Motor Company engineer Jerry Engelman swings his 2010 Taurus into the left lane to pass a semi. The Taurus hesitates, slowing down, and then Engelman adjusts his heading. The car takes off. "Larry," he calls to his colleague in the back seat, "write that down!"
Engelman is driving, but just barely. The Taurus has a radar-based adaptive cruise-control system that lets him set a top speed and then simply steer while the car adjusts its velocity according to traffic. He's been weaving and changing lanes, doing between 45 and 70 mph—and hasn't touched a pedal in an hour. Over the past few years, Ford engineers have driven 60,000 miles to test, tweak, and optimize this system, which also provides collision warning alerts. They've been focused on the future in a financially dismal present—analysts actually praised Ford for losing only $1.4 billion in the first quarter. "It's a tough market," says Derrick Kuzak, VP of global product development, noting that the Taurus is important for "reestablishing us in the large-sedan market." That's executive-speak for "This car really needs to sell."
This particular tech isn't new. Jaguar and Mercedes have sold luxury cars with similar features for years, but now they're affordable. By adding them to the $26,000 Taurus, Ford is channeling Henry I, who democratized the automobile Gottlieb Daimler invented. Of course, if the technology is going to revitalize the storied automaker, it has to be fairly kick-ass. Hence the road trip.
As Engelman travels the turnpike, a radar emitter pings for potential hazards ahead and sends the data to a computer that weighs the information against velocity and other factors to determine whether you're about to crash your democratized technology. If a collision is imminent, the car warns you, primes the brakes, and tightens the seat belts. In cruise control, the radar makes sure you're a safe distance from the traffic you're following.
Engelman says the system is now pretty close to flawless. His test car and others have been recording the particulars of their trips and feeding the information into a simulator back in Michigan. He logged that hesitation on the turnpike so he could examine it later. When he did, he found a glitch: The radar saw the two sides of the semi as distinct vehicles. "If the truck were hugging the left side of the right lane, the system would think that edge was a car in the left lane," he explains. He used the data accumulated on his trip to test a few patches and fixed the problem.
The radar-equipped Taurus goes on sale this summer, but the company plans to incorporate the system into all of its vehicles. Ford has survived the market slump largely because of its financial reserves, but it will have to sell some cars to thrive again. And innovation isn't cheap. "Ford is burning through cash," says UBS automotive analyst Colin Langan. "If they don't improve—and I think they will—they'll be facing the fate of GM and Chrysler."
An aroma like bread dough permeates Raul Cano's lab. He has just removed the cover from a petri dish, and the odor wafts up from several gooey yellow clumps of microorganisms that have been feeding and reproducing in a dark cabinet for the past few days. Cano, a 63-year-old microbiologist at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, inspects the smelly little mounds lovingly. "These are my babies," he says, beaming. "My yeasty beasties."
The dish contains a variant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, known in culinary circles as baker's or brewer's yeast. But Cano didn't get this from Whole Foods. Back in 1995, he extracted it from a 45 million-year-old fossil. The microorganisms had lain dormant since the Eocene epoch, a time when Australia split off from Antarctica and modern mammals first appeared. Then Cano brought the yeast back to life.
This reanimation of an ancient life form was a breakthrough, a discovery so shocking that the scientific community initially refused to believe it. It changed our understanding of what microorganisms are capable of. It also gave the Cal Poly researcher a brief taste of fame. For a while, he thought it might make him rich. It didn't. Now, just when it seemed his babies would be forgotten, Cano has found a way to share them with the world.
Born and raised in pre-Castro Havana, Cano still has a noticeable Cuban accent. After the revolution, his parents were unable to escape the country, but they managed to secure him a visa and a plane ticket to Miami in early 1962. His parents would eventually follow him to the US, but for a few years Cano was on his own in a strange new country. "I was 16 at the time," he says. "I went from foster home to foster home."
His scientific aptitude was not immediately apparent. "I wasn't a remarkably good student," Cano says. "I went to community college." He eventually transferred to Eastern Washington University, and there he discovered his calling in a microbiology class. "It was taught by a fungal geneticist," he says. "He was terrific. He became my mentor." Cano got his master's and went on to earn a PhD in microbiology at the University of Montana.
In 1974, Cano went to work at Cal Poly, starting out as a fungus specialist. But by the early '90s, he was making a name for himself by examining the contents of fossilized prehistoric tree resin—more commonly known as amber.
Scientists have been cracking open the translucent caramel-colored rock for nearly two centuries in an attempt to unlock the history of the earth. All manner of flora and fauna got trapped in the dribbling sap, and once it solidified and fossilized, the contents were preserved for aeons. "It's a time capsule," Cano says. "Like a Kodak moment from when the amber was formed." The first study of the contents of amber, made public in 1856, yielded 163 species of ancient plant life.
More than a century later, amber became sexy again with the advent of gene sequencing and cloning. A 1982 paper by entomologist George Poinar explored the potential for extracting DNA from preserved creatures. The paper caused a stir in the scientific community and inspired Michael Crichton to write his best-selling dinosaur-cloning novel, Jurassic Park, which came out in 1990.
In 1993, Cano worked with Poinar and others to remove DNA from a 125 million-year-old Lebanese weevil entombed in amber. They were able to sequence segments of the bug's genome. But even if they had the full genome, science couldn't—and still can't—clone it back into existence. (Just as well—it's hard to imagine Steven Spielberg creating a blockbuster f/x extravaganza about reanimated weevils. Unless he made them 30 feet tall. With a taste for human blood.)
Two years later, however, Cano actually did manage to pull off an astonishing first—he brought back to life something that had been trapped in amber for more than 25 million years. It started with a chunk of fossilized resin from the Dominican Republic. Trapped inside was an extinct breed of stingless bee. It was dead, of course, but Cano theorized that microorganisms in the resin might simply be dormant. After all, he reasoned, some single-celled creatures are known to enter a hibernation-like state and survive for years with no air or food. Still, few believed that anything could survive after lying dormant for so long.
Cano wanted to find out. He took the contents of the ancient bee's stomach, suspended it in saline, and spread it on a growth medium. Amazingly, something woke up and began propagating in the petri dish. Cano identified it as a bacterial spore related to the modern Bacillus sphaericus, which is used to kill mosquito larvae.
Cano's discovery changed science's understanding of just how extraordinarily resilient microorganisms are. "They're the quintessential survivors," he says. "They started when the planet was born, they're going to stay around until the planet is dead, and then they'll just go somewhere else." After publishing the results of his experiment in Science, Cano found himself the center of national attention from scientists and eventually the media. This was the closest humanity had come to the discovery imagined in Jurassic Park.
Over the course of the next year, Cano would crack open several more pieces of amber and bring hundreds of strains of ancient bacteria back to life in his lab. In the process, he began to think there might be a practical use for these creatures. He launched a company, Ambergene, to explore potential biomedical applications. The premise for the venture was that ancient organisms might have antibiotic potential—they'd been out of the ecosystem for so long that nothing today would have a resistance to them. At the time, the approach—dubbed natural product discovery—was very much in vogue. Major players like Merck and Eli Lilly were making serious investments.
Creating a life-saving drug was appealing. Fabulous riches would be a nice side effect. "Altruism's great, but it's not that great," Cano says. He possessed the only known samples of these strains, and he patented his revivification process to further cement his control over them. As the cofounder, part-owner, and chief scientific officer of Ambergene, Cano stood to earn a hefty chunk of any windfall that might result.
To reassure potential investors, Ambergene's board of directors decided to confirm Cano's claims of reanimation. He wasn't the first to attempt to bring tiny beings back to life in this manner. But every previous reported success turned out to be a case of modern bacteria contaminating the amber during the extraction process.
How to Reanimate Prehistoric Microorganisms
Raul Cano proved that single-celled creatures like yeast and bacteria can be revived after lying dormant in amber—fossilized tree resin—for tens of millions of years. Here's how it's done.
 |
|
|
STEP 1 |
STEP 2 |
 |
|
|
STEP 3 |
STEP 4 |
Illustration: Noma Bar
"I was very skeptical," says Chip Lambert, a microbiologist tapped by Ambergene to try to duplicate Cano's results. The company provided him with amber and all of Cano's sterilization and extraction protocols. Lambert doubled all of the cleaning processes and added some of his own. He was still able to duplicate Cano's discovery.
Cano didn't mind the company checking his work if it helped Ambergene win financing. He ended up being impressed with Lambert's efforts. "We became friends," Cano says. "I enjoy his company. Besides working with him on some of his projects, we'd socialize, get dinner, maybe grab a beer." (Another team of researchers working with Cano has also been able to duplicate the results.)
In April 1995, during his amber-cracking spree, Cano made another important discovery. A piece of fossilized resin from Burma yielded something that looked very similar to Saccharomyces, brewer's or baker's yeast. This single-celled fungus feeds on sugars and reproduces frequently—if it has enough to eat, a culture can double in population in 90 minutes. "Yeasts are found in all kinds of vegetable matter—plants, fruits, stuff like that," Cano says. "It was fortunate for that yeast to be there at the time so it could become part of history."
Cano was fascinated by his find. Unfortunately, this ancient strain of yeast didn't have commercial applications that Ambergene could exploit. And none of Cano's other discoveries were yielding biomedical breakthroughs, either. "We did find two or three microorganisms that produced some new chemical compounds," Cano says. "But they were never pursued, because the company was broke. I was really disappointed."
Ambergene folded in 1997. Cano went back to his lab and pursued other research, like testing petroleum-degrading bacteria in sand dunes. That project scored enormous grants for Cal Poly, as did many of Cano's other research efforts. But he couldn't forget his brush with fame and fortune. "It was a scientific wild ride, like an E ticket at Disneyland," he says. "As you grow older, the thrill of the hunt becomes more and more acute, at least for me." Meanwhile, his ancient yeast—suspended in glycerol and nutrients—lay dormant in a deep freeze.
In March 2006, chip Lambert happened to meet a guy named Peter Hackett at a ski resort in Lake Tahoe, California. Hackett is a Northern California pub owner and brewer. Before long, the conversation turned to ancient yeast. "It started as a very casual, noncommittal, you-must-be-out-of-your-mind conversation," Hackett recalls. "He told me the story of how Cano revived the yeast, how it resembled brewer's yeast. And then he said, 'Wouldn't it be interesting if we could make beer with it?'"
Lambert and Cano had toyed with the idea for 12 years. Before Ambergene went under, the company made a batch on a lark. "We called it Jurassic Amber Ale or T-Rex Lager or something, and it was pretty good," Cano says. It was served at his daughter's wedding, and they even sent some to the Jurassic Park 2 cast party. That experiment had Cano and Lambert itching to release a beverage commercially. But they wanted it to be something respectable.
"Brewing beer is a biotechnological process," Cano says. "I know the essentials; I've taught it in classes. But the skills you need to actually make a quality beer? I had no clue." They needed a professional brewer to take their yeast for a serious test drive. But unable to interest one, they had put the idea on ice.
Hackett, 44, was a cocky upstart in the microbrew world, known for unique recipes like Bushwacker Wheat (made with tangerines, blackberries, and sun-dried mandarins). He hadn't really wanted to spend a cold, miserable afternoon discussing yeast from the Eocene. "But Chip is a very persistent man," Hackett says. "It was the only way I could get him to leave me alone." After some cajoling, the brewer agreed to try making a batch of beer with Cano's yeast.
But Hackett had his doubts about the 45 million-year-old Saccharomyces. Beer is the result of a chemical process that takes place when yeast gobbles up sugars and excretes carbon dioxide and alcohol. The flavor depends heavily on the type of Saccharomyces doing the eating, and very few strains perform well in the hostile anaerobic conditions inside a brewing tank. "It requires a robust cell," Hackett says. "My boss is a single-celled organism. If it's not happy, it will let me know."
Hackett combined the yeast with all the other ingredients that make up his popular Rat Bastard pale ale recipe, so he could easily taste its distinguishing characteristics. During the brewing, the ancient yeast's behavior was unusual, to say the least. "It ferments violently at the start," Hackett says, "then it falls out of suspension and the beer becomes almost clear." From a brewer's perspective, its behavior was schizophrenic: It began like a yeast used in ales, floating at the top. Then it began to act like yeast used in slow-fermenting lagers, settling to the bottom of the tank but not going dormant.
Normally, Hackett ends the primary fermentation process by "crashing the tank"—lowering the temperature to shock the yeast into dormancy. But that didn't work on Cano's yeast. "It was just sitting on the bottom and nibbling on the sugar like a couch potato," Hackett says. A strain that had survived 45 million years in suspended animation was not about to go quietly.
Hackett was prepared to pour the batch down the drain if it tasted awful. But he discovered that the flavor of the resulting ale was unique, and not in a bad way. It was light and crisp with a citrusy, gingery tang. It was definitely worth exploring further.
The brewer began experimenting with the ancient strain. He indulged its idiosyncratic behavior, letting it ferment for an extra month in a cold storage tank. He modified the hops, a plant that adds a characteristic bitterness to beer, to complement the flavor imparted by the yeast.
Cano's Saccharomyces coupled with Hackett's know-how to yield a very tasty libation, which is now made and distributed under the name Fossil Fuels Brewing Company. "We won the lottery," Hackett says. "It's such a random thing. A yeast cell, captured in amber, found by a mad scientist. For it to perform well, for it to perform uniquely ... I wouldn't have bet on it."
Fossil Fuels pale ale caused a stir among beer aficionados like William Brand, a former critic with The Oakland Tribune who raved about it on his blog. He noted its "light copper color and an intense clove aroma." He liked its sweetness and the "intriguing, very odd spicy note" in the finish.
Celebrator Beer News described the ale as having a "complex and well-developed taste profile" with "fruity flavor characteristics and just a touch of lemony sweetness. The fact that it is made with such old yeast is fascinating, and given how good the beer is, no mere novelty."
A 5-gallon glass jug containing hundreds of millions of Cano's yeast cells is sitting on the back porch of Hackett's brewpub in Guerneville, California, 70 miles north of San Francisco. Every half-hour or so, Hackett goes outside and shakes it up a bit. When the sun warms the contents of the jug to 70 degrees Fahrenheit, it'll be ready.
Hackett has been stirring malted barley into 150-degree water in an enormous stainless steel tub. The hot water will break down the starch in the grain, turning it into a sugary substance called wort, which is then diluted, boiled, and transferred to a fermentation tank. When the jar of yeast has warmed up sufficiently, Hackett dumps it into the tank, where it begins to gobble up the wort.
Normally, Hackett could reuse this yeast after separating it from the freshly brewed batch of beer. New characteristics may begin to present themselves as the tiny fungi go through tens of thousands of generations. "Over time, genetic drift can occur," Hackett says. "It mutates and evolves."
But for Fossil Fuels' brew, Cano prefers to create new colonies that are as close as possible to the original generation he reawakened from the chunk of amber. His yeasty beasties may not have made him a pharmaceutical millionaire, but he has finally discovered a use for them, and he wants to stay involved in the brewing process.
As Hackett finishes preparing his latest batch, Cano arrives. He has driven up from San Luis Obispo to get a pony keg of pale ale for his own personal use. And Lambert has come up from the East Bay. The scientists sit on stools as Hackett brings out pints of their beer, as well as fries, shrimp, and egg rolls hot from the brewpub's kitchen. They're soon ready for a second round of beer.
Fossil Fuels Brewing will start selling its beer in pubs and restaurants throughout California this fall. The company is creating beer-tap handles with hunks of amber embedded in the tip. A bigger brewery—one capable of bottling the beer when they're ready to put it on store shelves—has been enlisted to take on the commercial production duties.
Cano is delighted with the burgeoning success of Fossil Fuels ale. It'll earn him a little bit of money, and every pint or bottle sold could kick off a conversation about his momentous discovery 14 years ago. His only worry is that the unfiltered nature of this beer means that some of his yeast will invariably settle to the bottom of the glass or bottle, and an unscrupulous brewer could collect that and use it in another beer. The microbiologist has applied for a patent on his strains and has sequenced the genomes so he can tell if someone else has stolen it. "I am the keeper of the family jewels," Cano says. He isn't about to let them fall into the wrong hands.
Correspondent Erin Biba (twitter.com/erinbiba) wrote about GPS applications in issue 17.02.
Microsoft and Google have seen their rivalry kicked up a notch in recent weeks. First, Google announced Chrome OS, the company’s first operating system. Then Microsoft announced the new version of Office with major cloud app support. Then Microsoft announced its deal to take over Yahoo’s search business. Starting today, Google is back on the offensive, with a major promotional campaign to get the word out about organizations switching to Google apps for their daily computing needs.
The campaign, called “Going Google,” has a very clear target: Microsoft Office. A series of advertisements [disclosure: including on this blog] will begin touting how and why some 3,000 organizations are signing up to use Google apps each day. But the crown jewels of this campaign will be billboards on four major U.S. highways that will give a new message about Google apps everyday for a month.
The billboards will be placed on the 101 in San Francisco, the West Side Hwy in New York, the Ike in Chicago, and Mass Pike in Boston. Google says that the vinyl being used to create these new messages each day will be recycled or reused into either computer bags or shopping bags.
Google says that so far over 1.75 million businesses, schools and organizations have signed up to use the various combinations of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and the other Google apps. But that is of course a drop in the bucket compared to the number of companies that use Microsoft Office and its other enterprise solutions. Now, Google is clearly trying to be proactive in telling people why its solution is better before Office goes online in a big way with the 2010 version.
Google is also attempting to use the viral message platform of choice these days to spread the “Going Google” message: Twitter. At the bottom of its blog post on the matter, Google urges people that use its apps to “Tweet your story” and provides a link to auto-populate a tweet with the #gonegoogle hashtag. You can also follow the GoogleAtWork Twitter account to follow the Gone Google stories.
It has also set up a site to “Spead the word” about Going Google. This is similar to what Mozilla has long been doing to promote Firefox — and it’s worked to the tune of over a billion downloads. The site has a range of options for letting your company or organization know that you want it to “Go Google,” including things like fliers and pre-populated emails to send out.
And Google is also promising to give away “goodies” each week in August to users who have Gone Google and fill out a Google Doc describing their experience.
Will any of this work? Who knows. But I know that I can’t wait to see how Microsoft responds in this back-and-forth war. “Stay With Office” blimps, perhaps?
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Dog Patch Labs is the name of Polaris Ventures‘ San Francisco-based startup incubator, that it launched a little over a year ago. So far, it has helped launch LOLapps and Thing Labs, the startup behind Brizzly, a new Twitter app that was first shown at our Real-time Stream CrunchUp last month. And now they’re adding to the team.
Ryan Spoon, formerly the Vice President of Marketing & Business Development at Widgetbox, is joining Polaris as a senior associate, with Dog Patch Labs being one of his key areas of focus. Like other senior associates, Spoon will also be helping to generally assess investment opportunities and work with portfolio companies, but he will be working out of the Dog Patch Labs at Pier 38 in San Francisco.
Polaris general partner Mike Hirshland describes the space, which they share with the startup Social Media, as sort of a “frat house for geeks.” It offers space for promising young entrepreneurs to work out of, giving them desks, bandwidth, lunch and coffee. And it offers all of this for free, with no commitment to Polaris required. The idea is that many of these startups aren’t quite at the investment-ready yet, but they can use the labs to work towards that.
Hirshland expects Spoon, who is also the founder of the sports social network InGameNow and the high school althete college recruiting service beRecruited, to be a great resource for the entrepreneurs that hang out at the Dog Patch Labs. And he certainly has the right experience for the labs, Spoon is also the founder of sfEntrepreneurs, and SF-based collective for young entreprenuers. He also worked at eBay for nearly 5 years as the manager of the Internet marketing efforts.
Here’s Spoon’s own post on the move.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
We heard there was a “groundbreaking” announcement incoming from Nikon next week, but no one was quite sure what it was. Speculation was leaning towards a point-and-shoot with a built-in pico projector, and… it still is. Info from some insiders lends a little more weight to the hypothesis, and even… a code name.
The news is from French print photo mag Chausseur D’Image, who, as a mark of credibility, had the D300 and D300s specs in their July 25 issue, well ahead of schedule. Their next issue features prominently a device called the VP650:
In their august issue, they’re talking with A LOT of confidence (as if it was a sure thing) of a new Nikon product with the code name Nikon VP650 that should be announced in August and shipped in September. This camera would be a compact camera with a LED projector that could project up to 8×12 images in good quality in the dark. They are also stating that this projector could be manufactured by the company FoxLink (it’s in Taiwan).
Sounds reasonable to me. I wouldn’t call it groundbreaking, but I would say it “explores new territory.”
The concept may sound strange to Americans, but in some regions around the world cellular telephones are used almost exclusively on pre-paid plans, where users ‘charge’ up their phones sporadically with credit that can be used to place calls and send text messages. Unfortunately many people, particularly in poorer areas, find their credits dwindle toward zero with alarming frequency. Enter Aryty, a new startup that’s looking to help mobile phone users in India and the Phillipines by giving them a highly efficient way to receive money from their loved ones abroad.
Aryty CEO Nils Johnson says that it is quite common for families in America who have loved ones in the Philippines or India to send money on a fairly regular basis as a reminder that they’re thinking of them. But standard wire transfers, especially for small amounts of money, tend to be highly inefficient because of the way fees are structured — you might pay in excess of $10 in fees for a wire transfer of only $20.
In contrast, Aryty has no fees. Families can send money directly into the cellular accounts of their loved ones without losing anything in the process, which makes it more appealing for these ‘thinking of you’ transfers. To initiate a transfer, you simply enter your credit card information, and the credit is instantly added to the cellular account of your loved one abroad (they also receive a SMS message alerting them to the addition).
Generally speaking, Aryty users will send relatively small amounts of credit on a regular basis — say, once a month or every two weeks. The reason for the fairly small amounts is that most carriers in India and the Philippines don’t allow for ‘roll-over’ credit, which means any excess amount left at the end of the month will expire. Fortunately, Aryty also offers a scheduling feature that lets you send money as often as you’d like without having to remember.
Aryty has forged deals with major carriers in the Phillipines, and is now expanding into India, where it expects to have support for around 98% of the market by the end of the year. And while Aryty doesn’t charge any fees, it can still make money — carriers sell the company minutes at a discount, which it can then resell at the standard rate. Carriers like Aryty because it lowers user churn (users don’t want to switch carriers after they’ve established accounts that their family members are depositing money into).
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
There I was. On a train from Paris to Barcelona, passing the time by playing Roulette on my iPhone. Someone sits down next to me; I think nothing of it. Probably another bumbling tourist excited to go see Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. “Perdon, Senor, que hora es?” I look up to identify the voice. There she was: a beautiful Spanish girl in a short skirt; the warm sun shining on her perfectly tanned body. Takes me a second to realize I’m staring. Get it in gear, Gagan. Bumbling like a fool, I frantically thumb through the iPhone home screens to find it. Got it. Thank god I bought this app before I came. I ask her to repeat, “K or S?” She replies, “No, que hora es?” Ohhhh, Que not K. What does that mean again? I type away on my keyboard and search for “que”. It doesn’t recognize it. She asks again, “Que hora es?” This time I just type “qu” - no, not quail, not quit. Arggghh! These are just English words. Oh shit: all I’ve got is a one-way translator. The app doesn’t convert Spanish to English. I look up again, and say the only thing I know: “Sorry, no hablo espanol.” She, frustrated, gets up and walks away. There goes my chance. Red with embarrassment, I return to my iPhone. No Spanish ladies for me.
App #1 - Yubisashi Spain/China/Japan: Is “donde esta el bano?” about all the Spanish you know? Don’t even know that? (”Where is the bathroom?”) Then, Yubisashi Spain (iTunes Store) is the app for you. Or not. Phoenix Communications, a language software company in Japan, has released the Yubisashi language series in three different apps. The apps are essentially pocket dictionaries that allow you to type in English phrases/words and get translations of those words on your iPhone. But there’s no reverse translating. So, while the app is great for searching how to say “how much should I pay” in Spanish, you can’t translate the response “dieciocho pesos” into “18 pesos”. The interface is pretty solid, the search is good, and it even speaks out the translated phrase via your phone. But, without reverse translating - it just doesn’t provide sufficient utility to warrant the whopping $10 price tag.
App #2 - Making Faces: Uhh, I think the picture says it all. This app allows you to take a picture and then screw with it. It doesn’t have to be a face, but that’s what the developer, MetaTools, expects you to do with Making Faces (iTunes link). In fact, they’re even going to give $1,000 to the person who sends in the funniest picture. The app works OK, though the UI needs some work: there are tons of options on how to mess with the picture you take, but there’s no easy way to understand what each of the icons mean. Also, the method by which you actually edit the picture is not totally intuitive. But, it might be worth $3 if you think you can earn $1,000. Plus, taking pics of your friends and making them look like they’re balding might be entertaining.
App #3 - Astraware Casino: Currently #2 on the App Store’s Casino games, Astraware Casino (iTunes link) has everything you need to simulate that trip to Vegas you’ve been planning but can’t afford. Playing it probably won’t provide you the same thrills as the guys in The Hangover, but you also won’t almost miss your wedding or get arrested. 11 games for $1 is the real draw here, and there’s no other Casino app that can boast that kind of bang-for-buck ratio. The games are also fairly well-delivered. Though the graphics aren’t going to knock your socks off, it’s still a fun little time-passer Casino game. Definitely worthwhile if faux gambling is what you’re into.
If you have an app worth checking out, shoot us an e-mail at gaganATcrunchgearDOTcom (with the obvious substitutions in place, of course).
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This guest post was written by Leonard Speiser, a founder at Twables, an application platform for Twitter that launched earlier this year. Prior to founding Twables Leonard worked at Trinity Ventures as an EIR. Before that Leonard co-founded Bix, a website that enables anyone to create, enter or join a contest. Yahoo acquired the company in February of 2007 and Leonard took on the additional responsibility of running the Yahoo Groups business. Leonard has also previously worked at eBay and Intuit, and has founded two other companies.
It’s 11 p.m. on a Sunday night when I notice that Twitter founder @ev has just tweeted about FB140, our company Twables’ days-old service that helps you find your Facebook friends on Twitter. Since our launch, I’ve felt like a surfer, waiting for a wave of users to start using our service. A few smaller waves have trickled through in our first days since launch, but Ev’s post represents something totally different. I mean, here’s someone who has more than a million followers and receives personal messages from Lance Armstrong.
I was beyond excitement until I realized a tweet from @ev has the force of nuclear explosion. And a nuclear explosion makes a very, very big wave. I quickly IM’d my only developer to warn him. Then I ran a Twitter search on Ev’s tweet and saw that it was getting retweeted. A lot. Between midnight and 6 a.m. alone, 170 people had retweeted him. “Frak,” I thought, “we might not scale.” For the next six hours, my developer began spinning up machines on Amazon, reworking our code and rolling it out overnight as we tried to ride the wave without having it crash down upon us. By then, we were doing more traffic in an hour than we had all week. Fortunately, he’s a killer Java programmer, and we’ve stayed afloat so far. By 6 a.m., exhausted, I reflected on three things I’ve learned since stumbling into development on the Twitter platform just two months ago.
1. Business hours are dead. 24/7 is the new 9 to 5. Real-time messaging means that anyone can start talking about your product at any time and that talk can snowball before you know it. I happened to see Ev’s post nine minutes after he sent it, but what if I hadn’t checked Twitter at all? Our site would have been down and a golden opportunity missed. As much as I love all the new technology (Amazon Web Services, Twitter APIs, Google Apps) that makes it possible for a two-person company to operate, it’s tough, if not impossible, for two people to be on call at all times. Perhaps this means that business guys like me are going to have to start wearing ops pagers (what? business people actually earning their paycheck?). How can you sleep for fear that someone will say something to tens of thousands of people that you really need to respond to. Is our only solution to never go to sleep?
2. The Borg has finally arrived. On Friday afternoon, I popped my head into Dave McClure’s office to shoot the breeze and mentioned a thought that Twitter was a bigger threat to MySpace than to Facebook. Before the words were out of my mouth, he had tweeted it, Dave-style. Instantly, people started to respond with their thoughts, and I realized that Dave was crowdsourcing our discussion before he’d even formed his own opinion. Will we all use the real-time world to have conversations? While Dave has the unfair advantage of a lot of followers, most of you are just at the beginning of your Twitter experience. I predict that you’ll join the Borg soon enough. The reality is that many of you are accustomed to asking those around you for advice. The difference is that now you’ll be able to accomplish your information-gathering process in minutes instead of weeks. Our company gets advice from users within hours of our initial launch and we are able to release changes for those users on the same day. If the dialogue with customers is now real-time, then the process of incorporating feedback needs to be real-time, too. Sorry big companies, life is about to suck for you!
3. The Patriot Act can’t hold a candle to Citizen Paparazzi. An hour before Ev’s post, I was talking to two friends about Twitter. They mentioned that a friend of theirs had tweeted about their two-year-old son a few times, which they characterized as an “unusual” experience. Celebrities will finally have their revenge as two out of every three of your neighbors starts tweeting about everything you’re doing. The Supreme Court will have to revisit the definition of “reasonable expectation of privacy” when a father’s kid tweets that daddy is reading Playboy in the bathroom. (That happened to a buddy of mine. Not to me. A buddy of mine.) This may not seem like a new phenomenon, what with YouTube videos and the like already starting this trend. However, the pace at which things spread is now so close to real-time that it almost erases the line between past and present. Real-time communication invites the world to experience your life with you, as it happens.
I don’t know if the world after Twitter will be better or worse. (For me, I think it will be better.) But when your tidal wave approaches, will you be ready to ride it?
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
If you’re planning on getting a new laptop, think about waiting just a little bit longer. With Windows 7 coming out and new chips from Intel for both netbooks and high-performance laptops, it’s going to be a whole new world come the holidays. But you say, “Uh, neither Microsoft nor Intel make laptops,” and you’re right. They don’t — but they are two of the major drivers for change; as their products improve and change their capabilities, it forces laptop designers to accommodate them instead of just switching out a piece of silicon.
For example, the upcoming Pine Trail version of the Atom chip will be smaller, more efficient, and sport onboard graphics. That means there’s room for more RAM or for reconfiguring the PCBs to allow for a sleeker body design. And new Windows 7 features like the multi-touch APIs will make touchscreens more viable features.
So if you’re thinking of upgrading, just hold off. You’ll be able to get a monster holiday deal on a cool new laptop instead of paying top dollar for the last generation.
[CNET]
 CrunchGear | Kindle Users Sue Amazon Over Deleted Orwell Book PC Magazine Two Kindle users – one of them a high school student – have filed a class-action lawsuit against Amazon after the company remotely deleted copies of George Orwell's "1984" from their e-readers. Justin Gawronski, a teenager from ... Amazon Removes Books From Kindle Danny Westneat Hey, Amazon: Keep your ads out of our books! Amazon Sued For Erasing Orwell Books |
 TopNews United States | Fake ATM doesn't last long at hacker meet Computerworld Anonymous says: If anyone was serious about catching the people to installed the machine, they should have left it there and running... Anonymous says: I am not confused when somebody simply says "ATM" and "PIN". ... Security authorities seize malicious ATM machine installed at ... Malicious ATM Catches Hackers Ghost In The ATM |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Looks like the mythical Apple Tablet (or "Tapplet") has been handled in prototype form. I can believe that this guy is telling the truth because he's old-school journalism, working for Barron's. Not that Barron's is some infallible and extra-dignified news source, but it's an establishment and they have to be extremely careful about respecting confidentiality. And since this article is so incredibly vague, I can only assume that Apple did actually show the guy something, but also told him exactly what he could and could not write.
Taser, taser, burning bright
in a show of force tonight
When I posted that triple Taser the other day (apparently it's for taking down your female coworkers, watch the video), I speculated that the criminals would come back with greater numbers, creating an arms race between muggers and the mugged. But if there was one of these on every corner, all you'd have to do is get behind it and hit the trigger, and everything you can see gets Tasered. Boom, no more muggers!
All the improvements rolling out with Windows Mobile 6.5 (the new UI and set of tools is now "Windows Phone," though the name Windows Mobile is not completely gone) are coming along quite nicely. This video has many of them being demonstrated — some you've seen (My Phone) and some you haven't (Zune interface, alerts, Windows Marketplace stuff), and I have to say, it all looks quite nice. Internet Explorer actually looked pretty nice, though it was going pretty slowly. Honestly, these phones can run 3D games but panning around a web page brings them to their knees?
All the improvements rolling out with Windows Mobile 6.5 (the new UI and set of tools is now “Windows Phone,” though the name Windows Mobile is not completely gone) are coming along quite nicely. This video has many of them being demonstrated — some you’ve seen (My Phone) and some you haven’t (Zune interface, alerts, Windows Marketplace stuff), and I have to say, it all looks quite nice. Internet Explorer actually looked pretty nice, though it was going pretty slowly. Honestly, these phones can run 3D games but panning around a web page brings them to their knees?
I doubt it’s enough to turn the tide against Apple and Google (especially since Android Assault is just beginning), but it may help stop the hemorrhaging of users. Windows 7 will have a number of phone-integrative features as well, so that’s another wild card. In any case, I’d like to get my hands on one of these and try it for myself.
[via BGR]
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section:
Haven’t caught all of the Gadgetell news this week? Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles!
How great is this: in 2003, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies had a plan on the books to launch a cyberattack on Iraq that would have zapped the country’s money supply. In other words, Saddam Hussein wouldn’t have had any money to pay his troops or whatever. Three cheers for destruction!
Now, the military never actually went through with the attack since President Bush and his advisers were afraid of the external financial ramifications. (Nobody knew for sure what type of collateral damage would play out.) Says one cyberwar specialist, “If you don’t know the consequences of a counterstrike against innocent third parties, it makes it very difficult to authorize one.”
What could go wrong in a cyberattack? “The chances are very high that you will inevitably hit civilian targets—the worst-case scenario is taking out a hospital which is sharing a network with some other agency,” says a Silicon Valley computer security specialist.
It goes without saying that cyberwar peaked in 1983.
Section: Business News, Apple, Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones
To be clear: I was disappointed Apple did not approve Google Voice apps for distribution in the App Store. I was more than disappointed—I began to see what I believe could be the unraveling of iPhone domination. No matter the level of our frustration with Apple, government has no business looking into this. If you were not aware, the FCC is looking into the rejection of Google Voice apps by Apple. At a time when surely there are other things in Washington that might have a little more importance than an iPhone application, do we really have the time, money and resources to put into even an informal inquiry? If the government answers to the people, can we not agree that there are more pressing matters?
Am I trying to shield Apple? Ha! They hardly need my help. No, what is happening is Adam Smith’s invisible hand moving the market. If consumers don’t like a product or its App Store approval process, they are free to purchase other products. Today, competing mobile operating systems are more than up to the task, such as Android, BlackBerry, and webOS.
Can you see the invisible hand moving the market? Absolutely. Take a look around the blogosphere and you’ll find angry prosumers perhaps changing their mind on the iPhone. Take TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington for example, he is done with the iPhone. And the straw that broke the camel’s back? You guessed it, the rejection of the Google Voice apps, now the subject of an informal inquiry into Apple by the FCC. “I’m abandoning the iPhone and AT&T. I will grudgingly pay the $175 AT&T termination fee and then I will move on to another device.”
My economics studies led me to this obvious conclusion: educated consumers, making educated choices move the market. Here we have blogs bashing Apple (rightly so) for rejecting something that excites a very small number of people (that ought to excite a bunch more). We have several competing phones and operating systems more than ready and able to deal with Google Voice.
This not-formal inquiry comes during a time when the FCC is looking deeper at exclusive deals that keep exclusive phones on a particular carrier. I’ve come out against this notion as well, fearing advanced development will diminish as the return to present such advancement declines with limits on exclusivity. Or put another way, ideas stay on white boards instead of in retail stores because they can’t fiscally justify the results.
Without the government’s help, we’ve booted “Baby Shaker” off the phone. With out the government’s help, we’ve gotten Skype on the phone (albeit limited). We’ve seen apps like Eucalyptus rejected then accepted thanks to public outcry. There is no reason to think we can’t do the same here. Educated consumer make educated choices. Apple needs to respect that or reap the consequences.
Source: [Wall Street Journal]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Clever users with the beta of the new Xbox 360 NXE-thing have noticed something: the size of game installs on the hard drive have decreased. So, good news for those of you with smaller hard drives. (I’m still kicking about with the old school 20GB hard drive. I soldier on.)
For example, someone on the Cheap Ass Gamer forums reported that Left 4 Dead went from 4GB to 3.7GB. That’s a savings of 26 percent!
Then there’s NHL 09, which went from 5.7GB to 5.0GB.
And Rock Band 2 goes from 6.3GB to 4.6GB.
You really have to troll through message board after message board to get a list going.
Why is this happening? There’s no official reason, of course, but people think it’s because the new rips do away with much of the dummy data on the disc.
Now, how useful it actually is to install the games to your hard drive, I don’t know. You’re talking a matter of only a few seconds of load time, so…
This is a document that purports to show new Sprint WiMAX-having cities. It's terribly exciting.
This is a document that purports to show new Sprint WiMAX-having cities. It’s terribly exciting.
Some cities are bigger than others—San Antonio vs. Salem, for example—while Baltimore is actually do for an update. (All roads lead to Baltimore when it comes WiMAX.) Also, this are merely projections through the remainder of the year. It’ll still be a little while before other, bigger cities like New York and San Francisco get in on the WiMAX action.
Oh, and WiMAX, for you people who are blissfully unaware of its existence, is a wireless broadband technology. It’s still in the early stages of deployment around the U.S.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
“I agree on the one condition it’s not going to be a girl power post, ok”? That’s what Gali Ross requested when I asked to profile her for TechCrunch. So this isn’t going to be a ‘girl power’ post, but the fact of the matter is that female entrepreneurs are a rare breed. Let’s all try a mental game together… How many female startup CEO’s can you name off the top of your head? I am embarrassed to say that I have trouble coming up with more than a handful, but I don’t think I am alone.
Here’s what I find strange about all this: I speak to VC’s and private investors regularly, and have never EVER heard anyone comment negatively on deal-flow based on the entrepreneur’s gender. Startups—at least this has been my experience—are weighted on the merits of the product, market and the team, but never on gender. Frankly, I can’t explain why female entrepreneurs are a rare commodity in our industry. (Feel free to enlighten me about the gender bias underpinning the tech industry in comments).
The situation in Israel is not much different. But it should only be the quality that counts… To that end, here are three Israeli female entrepreneurs worth keeping tabs on:
Amit Knaani is best known in the Israeli startup industry as the former Senior Product Manager of Wix.com. She quit the hot startup to join forces with Yami Glick, another well-known figure in the local startup scene. Together the two founded Vikido, a video messaging service designed to allow kids (3-9) and their parents to send and receive video messages using an an interface with no reading prerequisites.
A mother of two girls (hence her familiarity with the need for such a product), Amit has been in our little industry for 10 years now, starting as a photo editor at Israel’s largest news site Ynet. She then moved on to manage the biggest medical site in Israel doctors.co.il, doing everything from spec’ing to selling media to business development. It was there that she started thinking about the idea for Vikido, mostly due to gaps of communication experienced by sick kids (information, connection with friends and parents).
By then it was clear to her that she wanted to be involved in consumer products with strong community reach and the ability to make an impact on people and what they do on the web. That’s when the Wix gig came about.
Team Vikido is planning to launch its product in September. In the mean time they are hustling to get funding, writing code, and chronicling the trials and tribulations of startup life in a weekly article series on Ynet called ‘The Transparent Startup’.
Beta Access: Register here.
Twitter: Amit Knaani (@amitos), Team Vikido (@vikidoteam)
Orit Hashay has also been active in in Israeli startups for over 10 years, having taken on software and business development posts with public companies such as Emblaze and Comverse, as well as consulting for various Israeli startups.
Orit is also somewhat of a local serial entrepreneur. She’s founded a Yelp-ish review site called Ramkol.co.il and mit4mit.co.il, the second most popular wedding review site in Israel. Most recently Orit held the Entrepreneur in Residence role at Decima Ventures, where she was responsible for technical and market analysis. Decima is also where her newest venture, Vetrinas was born.
Vetrinas is a virtual shopping window to hundreds of stores from across the fashion Meccas of the world, be it London, New York, Paris or Milan. Vetrinas is targeting three segments: Consumers with an interest in high-fashion. Retailers that want to expose potential on/offline shoppers to specific products or brand advertising. And finally, shop window designers that can display their work (art) in order to attain job offers.
Orit coded all of Vetrina’s herself and intends to generate revenue by way of affiliation through the site and rev-share through widgets that will syndicate content to blogs and websites. Vetrinas is currently in Alpha.
Twitter: Orit Hashay (@orithashay), Vetrinas (@vetrinas)
Gali Ross is one those people you (or at least I) hated in school because she made you (me) look so lazy and unfocused. She took physics, math and political science. Not having gone unnoticed, she went on to become an intelligence officer in the Israeli Defense Forces and then later an Information Systems Engineering graduate of the Technion (Israel’s MIT).
She then joined eWave where she kept busy with project management and, afterward, marketing, sales and business development. Two years later she joined Israeli dev house Clementina as COO. That’s where she worked with Israeli startups such as my6sense, Spikko, and Footbo. Temptation was in the air and Gali couldn’t resist so she recruited a partner and founded Razoss.
Gali is still very protective of her product so details and access are limited. In vague terms it can be described as a browser-based content promotion platform, where the idea is to enhance the browser beyond content display, to content management and distribution.
Initial funding was provided by Dr. Yossi Vardi a little over a year ago and a second investment is near closing. The product is in private alpha, with a wider release intended in a few months.
Beta Access: Register here.
Twitter: Gali Ross (@galiross), Razoss (@razoss)
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Section: Web, Downloads, Web Browsers
We all know that Firefox is just about the most popular web browser out there among those who know a thing or two about tech. We also know that it recently took up about 31 percent of the browser market share. That is definitely not bad for a browser that’s only been around for five years. Now Firefox has reached yet another milestone and Mozilla is celebrating.
On Friday, Firefox officially surpassed its one billionth download - a very impressive feat for any application. To celebrate, Mozllia launched One Billion + You, a site dedicated to thanking the audience that brought it to the milestone. The site also points out the benefits of the web, from the fact that almost any information you want is immediately available, to the idea of collaboration between people who may never have met in real life before. There’s also examples of what one billion of something would be, like “a bowl big enough to fit one billion goldfish would be as big as a stadium.”
It’s worth noting that one billion downloads does not equal one billion users, since there are those with multiple computers, or those who reinstall their OS and need a new copy of the browser. Even so, one billion downloads cannot be overlooked. It’s doubtful that Microsoft’s IE team is really scared of this one billion downloads, though the Google Chrome team might be wondering how long it will take them to reach the same milestone.
Read [One Billion + You]
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile
Look how easy it is! Behold, all the hard work building an iPhone app can be ported over to the hot, new and exciting Windows Mobile OS from Microsoft. In as little as three steps, developers can reap the joy, riches and camaraderie that comes from being part of the Windows Mobile experience.
Ummm. Okay if you say so. Yesterday, Microsoft’s Constanze Roman, Community PM with the Windows Mobile Community Team, posted a case study on the Windows Mobile blog. Obviously he didn’t get the memo that the “Windows Mobile” name is out and “Windows Phone” is in. Oh well.
The case study involved taking a rather complex iPhone application, Amplitude, and port it to the Windows Mobile OS. An impossible project you say?
Thompson’s case study shows, that even though there are some challenges in porting a multimedia-rich application from the iPhone to Windows Mobile, the task can be accomplished, especially with the help of developer-friendly tools like Visual Studio, the richness of community content that is available for Windows Mobile, and last but not least by planning the project ahead and doing all the necessary research in advance. With Windows Marketplace for Mobile getting ready to open its doors to millions of potential new customers, the opportunity is compelling.
The blog post was flanked with a MSDN article detailing developer Luke Thompson’s app port. The app Amplitude essentially magnifies sounds from the iPhone’s microphone, say a heartbeat or and makes it audible as well as providing a graphical output. The app sells for $.99 and has a 2 1/2 star rating in the App Store (though it looks like the app doesn’t play well with earbuds with a built-in microphone).
The blog post points out the negatives of the iPhone OS is: “When porting the app from the iPhone to Windows Mobile, Thompson had to pay attention to major differences in the OS, such as the fact that the iPhone does not support running applications in the background, while background operation is a requirement for all Windows Mobile applications. Adjusting the screen orientation as well as accommodating phones with keyboards was another area which required additional investigation, which led Thompson to MSDN, which ended up providing a workable solution.”
Thompson had apparently two major issues: Windows Mobile doesn’t accept transparencies and alpha blending (which I am pretty sure does not involve a can of ABCs and 123s and a blender) as well as screen size changes. Despite the challenges in porting an app, the developer was able to accomplish the challenge by utilizing all the resources MS and the developer community have provided. The dev was able to get his program to work on a pre-build of Windows 6.5 on a HTC Hero. Now the developer has stars in his eyes, already purchased a Mazzarati and palace in anticipation of the success he’ll have on Windows Mobile, or at least, that is what he would do if he were me.
Can Windows Mobile entice enough developers to care about its OS? Will 6.5 surprise us? Here’s to hoping.
Read: [Windows Mobile Blog]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
AP - A federal jury on Friday ordered a Boston University graduate student who admitted illegally downloading and sharing music online to pay $675,000 to four record labels.
| World : News Archives | Business | Entertainment | Sports | Technology | Science | Marketplace Audio |
| India : News | Business | Entertainment | Sports | Telugu | |
| Blogs : Humor pages | Norkay's Blog | Kids Stories | Indian Recipes | Database Tech Blog |
| Sundries : World Video Clips | Songs Clips | Indian Video Clips | |
