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Offender Locator banished from iTunes App Store - CNET News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 7 Aug 2009 | 4:19 am OSS BSS Solutions Market Growing Rapidly in India, Reveals Frost & SullivanMUMBAI, India, August 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The phenomenal growth in the Indian telecommunication industry has led to the increased demand for Operation Support System and...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 4:16 am So How’s That iPhone App Working Out for You, Sirius? [Digital Daily]
“… Unlike an awful lot of applications on the iPhone, … we’re not offering free service,” Karmazin said. “What we are offering is the free download and a week’s trial, so this was never designed that we believe we were going to get a significant number of new subscribers. We are seeing an increase in the number of subscribers who are signing up for the $2.99 fee, to be able to stream the product in addition to having it, so a satellite radio subscriber who also has an iPhone is now able to do that with an incremental $2.99.” So the app is bringing in some new revenue. How much isn’t clear though, since Sirius doesn’t break iPhone app numbers (subscribers or revenue) out. Karmazin admits, however, that it’s not much. “You should not consider them to be a very significant number related to our number of subscribers, he said, adding, “It’s the right thing for us to do, we continue to believe in it, we’ll continue to do more of these things.” Source: All Things Digital | 7 Aug 2009 | 4:00 am You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - It's Apple versus the world this week, as it squared off against Google, hackers, and makers of not-safe-for-kindergarten iPhone dictionaries.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 7 Aug 2009 | 4:00 am Phyzios Launched Prototype of PHYZIOS StudioPhyzios Inc. released a prototype preview of PHYZIOS Studio, a web application based on its 2D physics engine, PHYZIOS Engine, at http://phyzios-studio.net/ on August 3rd, 2009.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 4:00 am ViewCast Corporation to Report 2009 Second Quarter and Six-Month Financial ResultsConference Call Also Scheduled PLANO, Texas, Aug. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ViewCast Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: VCST), a developer of industry-leading solutions forSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 4:00 am UPDATE 2-Logica tempers outlook, cost cuts help margins* H1 adj operating profit 127 mln stg vs 120 mln consensusSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 3:33 am UPDATE 1-Deals of the day -- mergers and acquisitionsAug 7 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals involving European, U.S. and Asian companies were reported by 0900 GMT on Friday.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 3:30 am Twitter Outage Moves Into Day 2 - Washington Post
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 7 Aug 2009 | 3:25 am EU mergers and takeovers (August 7)BRUSSELS, Aug 7 (Reuters) - The following are planned mergers under review by the European Commission and a brief guide to the EU merger process:Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 3:22 am Savvy Ways to Save When Heading Off to CollegeNEW YORK, Aug. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Across the country, recent high school graduates are transitioning to freshman at colleges and universities.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 7 Aug 2009 | 3:20 am Savvy Ways to Save When Heading Off to CollegeNEW YORK, Aug. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Across the country, recent high school graduates are transitioning to freshman at colleges and universities. There will be many decisions facing theSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 3:20 am iStubz - The Dumbest Idea I've Ever Wholeheartedly EndorsedBy Andrew Liszewski I wouldn’t go as far as to call these iStubz replacement sync/charge cables for the iPod and iPhone genius or anything, I mean they’re just shorter versions of the ones...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 3:18 am This Is Quite Possibly The Spotify Cap Table
Now, though, Swedish news site ComputerSweden is reporting that those music labels actually got their stock for free. “Sony BMG, Universal Music, Warner Music, EMI and Merlin…bought at the time in to Spotify - for a pittance. They received 18 percent of the shares in Spotify barely 100 000 kronor,” (about €10,000) says the report. Metro Teknik has also picked up on the story. We don’t believe that report is correct based on our sources that say that the labels paid roughly the same price as the venture investors for that stock. And we have now obtained that unverified capitalization table information, reportedly based on a filing in Luxembourg where the company is headquartered, showing the various ownership positions of the major Spotify shareholders, including the prices paid for the stock. We have reason to believe this is largely or completely accurate based on information it contains that we independently obtained from a separate source and have not previously published. With one exception - either the report inaccurately shows investments by labels as 1/1000 of their real amount (meaning three 0’s need to be added), or the report excludes most of these investment amounts. Here’s the cap table:
This cap table shows founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon with 23.3% and 28.6% of the stock, respectively, for a total of 51.9% of the fully diluted stock of the company. The four big labels plus indie aggregator Merlin own a total of 17.3%, and paid an aggregate of €8.8 million for that stock. Or, they paid €8,808 for that stock, which is what ComputerSweden is reporting. Based on all previous information that we’ve received about the company from sources, including additional discussions with people close to the company this evening, the aggregate investment by labels was €8.8 million. If the labels didn’t pay for the stock, all those previously sourced numbers are incorrect, which we think is highly unlikely. The new round of financing, from Wellington Partners, Li Ka-Shing and additional strategic partners (Based on the cap table above, Spotify has already closed on the Wellington portion of that deal) will be $50 million or so, at valuation of $250 million (yes, I know I’m mixing currencies, but the numbers are all roughly working out). Most of that, or about €26.5 million, may be accounted for. The key takeaway from this is that the founders have done an excellent job of raising a big bucket of money while retaining control of the company, and they are one of the very few music startups to actually get real cash from the labels. My esteemed colleagues see some big holes in the Spotify story, but there is clearly a lot going right with this company, too. The real hurdle is making the model work, meaning they have to generate real advertising and premium revenues to offset big royalty streaming payments to the labels. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: TechCrunch | 7 Aug 2009 | 3:17 am This Is Quite Possibly The Spotify Cap TableHot European music startup Spotify is back in the news today. On August 4 we broke the news that the big music labels have secretly been shareholders in the company since 2008, and that they paid roughly...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 3:17 am Palm Pre Battery Life TipsBattery for Palm Pre Optimization Tips & Accessories To Keep Your Palm Pre Battery At Maximum Power Now that over 100,000 Preonauts already have a Palm Pre in their hands it's clear that one of the...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 3:11 am UK National ID Card Cloned In 12 MinutesDeath Metal writes with this excerpt from Computer Weekly, which casts some doubt on the security of the UK's proposed personal identification credential: "The prospective national ID card was broken and cloned in 12 minutes, the Daily Mail revealed this morning. The newspaper hired computer expert Adam Laurie to test the security that protects the information embedded in the chip on the card. Using a Nokia mobile phone and a laptop computer, Laurie was able to copy the data on a card that is being issued to foreign nationals in minutes."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:50 am This Won't Be Cheap: Sony Prepping 2TB Memory StickBy David Ponce Considering SD cards are slowly trudging up to 64GB, it’s pretty impressive to hear good old Sony’s getting ready to drop a 2TB Memory Stick XC. The XC series will have the same...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:47 am China's Shenhua says H1 net profit up 13 pctHONG KONG, Aug 7 (Reuters) - China's Shenhua Energy Co said on Friday its first half net profit rose 12.9 percent to 15.98 billion yuan ($2.34 billion), according to Chinese accounting standards.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:43 am C-Quest invests in U.S. carbon offset companyLONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - C-Quest Capital has invested an undisclosed sum in Nebraska-based carbon offset company SunOne Solutions, the U.S. carbon finance company said on Friday.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:42 am How Would YOU Use This? Microsoft Developing Pressure Keyboard With 256 Levels Of Sensitivity (Oh, And Win Stuff)By David Ponce Lots of interesting stuff at SIGGRAPH this year. In this case, there’s a contest sponsored by ACM SIGCHI and ACM SIGGRAPH centered around a keyboard Microsoft Hardware is developing...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:38 am WRAPUP 1-China top refiners to trim Aug crude runs from recordBEIJING, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Top Chinese refineries will trim crude oil processing in August as demand fails to keep pace with production, although runs will still be near record levels seen in July after...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:36 am Iowa 911 Call Center Nation First To Accept Emergency TxtsBy David Ponce In a move that should have happened ages ago, a call center in the basement of the county jail in Waterloo, Iowa, became the first in the country to accept text messages sent to 911, starting...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:27 am Chinese Microsoft Office Rival Launching on Web Soon (PC World)PC World - A Chinese company that offers a rival suite to Microsoft Office is following industry trends by turning its software into a Web-based service.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:20 am Ophelia's Gaze: Making the Most of the Summer Stamp RallyExclusive to NWN, Iris Ophelia's ongoing showcase of all things stylish in SL Between the various fairs and shows that designers organize throughout the year, there are a lot of community activities for...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:18 am Gaiser High End PCs Can Cost More Than A New CarBy David Ponce It’ll never cease to amaze us how crafty some people are at separating others from their money. In this particular case, Gaiser High End PCs seems to make a line of computers that...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:15 am Twitter Outage Moves Into Day 2
Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal spent yesterday battling a DDOS attack that started around 6 am California time. Twitter and LiveJournal went down hard, Facebook stayed mostly online but was clearly under strain. CNET reports that a single individual’s accounts on the services may have been the primary target. Now, nearly 24 hours later, Facebook and LiveJournal appear to be performing normally. But Twitter is down completely and has been for the last few hours. As of 4 pm Twitter was saying things were looking better: “Site latency has continued to improve.” But for most users, all third party services have been completely unusable for the last 20 hours or so (Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Power Twitter, etc..), bringing down the entire Twitter ecosystem. The Twitter.com site itself hasn’t been reliable either. The Twitter status blog has been silent since that 4:14 update. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Source: TechCrunch | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:15 am Twitter Outage Moves Into Day 2Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal spent yesterday battling a DDOS attack that started around 6 am California time. Twitter and LiveJournal went down hard, Facebook stayed mostly online but was clearly...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 Aug 2009 | 2:15 am 10 Years After “Blair Witch,” Viral Movie Marketing Grows Up [Voices]By Aris Georgiadis, Assistant Managing Editor, Ad Age Imagine my surprise (or dismay) the other day when I read that the “Blair Witch Project” is 10 years old this summer. With the anniversary upon us, film sites are taking a look at studios’ relationships with viral movie marketing and their attempts to recapture that late-’90s vibe. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 7 Aug 2009 | 1:05 am Stats Confirm It: Teens Don’t Tweet [Voices]By Pete Cashmore, Founder, Mashable If you’re under 25 and use Twitter, you’re not the source of the site’s tremendous growth. While we recently questioned the findings of a largely anecdotal report from Morgan Stanley written by a 15 year old, Nielsen has now produced figures that confirm the trend: young people don’t Tweet. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 7 Aug 2009 | 1:04 am The Challenge Of User-Generated Porn [Voices]By Oliver J. Chiang, Intern, Forbes.com You would think that if anyone were making boatloads of money from Internet video, it would be high-traffic porn sites. You would be wrong. “Tube sites”–adult content Web sites that mimic YouTube in hosting everything from professionally made videos to user-generated clips–have quickly risen in popularity since they came onto the scene a few years ago, and rank among the highest traffic-getters globally. Source: All Things Digital | 7 Aug 2009 | 1:03 am It’s SO Over: Cool Cyberkids Abandon Social Networking Sites [Voices]By Richard Wray and Sam Jones, Communications Editor and Reporter, The Guardian From uncles wearing skinny jeans to mothers investing in ra-ra skirts and fathers nodding awkwardly along to the latest grime record, the older generation has long known that the surest way to kill a youth trend is to adopt it as its own. The cyberworld, it seems, is no exception. The proliferation of parents and teachers trawling the pages of Facebook trying to poke old schoolfriends and lovers, and traversing the outer reaches of MySpace is causing an adolescent exodus from the social networking sites, according to research from the media regulator Ofcom. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 7 Aug 2009 | 1:02 am Phil Schiller Responds Regarding Ninjawords and the App Store [Voices]By John Gruber, Editor, Daring Fireball Tuesday’s piece on Ninjawords was really about two stories. The small story is that of a clever $2 iPhone dictionary app, the developers of which removed “objectionable” words from its dictionary so as to get it published in the App Store. The big story is about the App Store itself, and whether Apple’s (AAPL) management is attempting to correct its course. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 7 Aug 2009 | 1:01 am Contest: Last Chance To Win The Fighting Space Chicken
So far, my fave was submitted by Alli. For more info, check here. Good luck!
Previously:
Source: Gizmodo | 7 Aug 2009 | 12:30 am Hacker attacks silence Twitter, slow Facebook
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 guardian.co.uk | Alaska glaciers shrinking fast: survey Reuters ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Three major glaciers in Alaska and Washington state have thinned and shrunk dramatically, clear signs of a warming climate, according to a study released Thursday by the US Geological Survey. ... USGS data: Ice in state down almost 75 percent from 100 years ago Report: Global warming has hastened glacial melt Interior Department confirms glaciers are shrinking |
 Thaindian.com | Tough luck Big Bang machine set to fire up Computerworld Computerworld - The world's largest particle collider is scheduled to go back online at about half power this fall in an effort to get the problematic machine working on some science. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, ... Particle Collider Will Operate, but at Half Power "Big Bang" Collider to Restart With Less Energy Large Hadron Collider restarts in November at half power |
In a development being hailed as “the greatest single step forward ever taken by civilization,” Japan has made a pair of wise-cracking robot arms that make and deploy up to 800 perfect bowls of ramen per day. Yes, we saw one like this back in July, but this is a whole other level. It’s like Wall-E vs. the talking toaster from Red Dwarf (admittedly, a solid robot). These truly awesome robo-arms boil the noodles, add flavoring and broth, then top it off with accoutrements like seaweed bits or pork. If this is what we have to look forward to after they take over, I… I no longer fear the Robocalypse.
If you’ve never had legitimate and fresh Japanese ramen, do yourself a favor and look up a place in town that offers it. I like the wide noodles — although I’d prefer it if you wouldn’t repeat that out of context. If I’m honest, though, the flesh-based ramen guys could deliver a bowl in less than the time it took these robots to do it, but they didn’t do it with as much flair or beautiful precision. They even horse around when they’re not working! I see no reason why these shouldn’t be on every street corner.
[via Wired]
Earlier today I had a debate about the Realtime Web with author Andrew Keen on a Blogtalk Radio podcast hosted by Supernova’s Howard Greenstein. (It is embedded below if you have an extra hour to spare).
Andrew thinks that real time streams such as Twitter are overwhelming and not very helpful for normal people yet. He pulled out the old canard that real time media will never replace traditional media or trusted Websites. I countered that kind of misses the point. The stream—be it Twiter, Facebook, or what have you—is simply a vehicle for directing attention elsewhere via short links and commenting on what is happening now. Those short links usually take you back to regular Websites or news articles, or even documents from years ago which all of a sudden are relevant once again. In that way, even events that happened long ago can be brought into the real time stream. It is like pulling an experience from deep memory and reliving it.
The argument veered into the philosophical (Keen challenged me to explain the difference between consciousness and memory), but fortunately we didn’t get too far down that path before wiser minds stepped in. Before I knew it investor John Borthwick from betaworks and Kevin Marks (who just joined BT from Google) were on the line schooling both Keen and me.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
By Tiernan Ray, Blogger, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
The cut-rate prepaid cellular market, though representing fully a third of the growth in wireless in the U.S., is not always a comfortable place to be, as evidenced by the results today from Metro PCS (PCS), the discount prepaid cellular operator whose stock was cut by a third after disappointing Q2 earnings.
In a note to clients, Thomas Weisel analyst James Breen cut his rating on the stock to “Market Weight” from “Overweight” and cut his price target to $10 from $21. Ouch.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Section: Audio, Portable Audio, Video, Portable Video, Communications, Gadgets / Other, Web, Web Browsers
The multifaceted Creative Zii Egg comes with a load of interesting features. Unfortunately, not much is known about the device partly because it is so new and isn’t ready for prime time action. However, today, Creative announced that the Zii Egg would be running the Opera Devices SDK 9.7 mobile browser.
The Zii Egg, with its ZMS-05 chipset and Plaszma OS, will be the first of its kind to support this type of an Opera browser along with that specfic chipet and OS.
Currently, a fully integrated version of the Opera browser is offered by ZiiLABS for Devices on their ZMS-05 applications processor. The Zii EGG is the first device to use the ZMS-05 chipset complete with the company’s freshly launched Linux-based Plaszma operating system. The open Opera browser is a clear fit for the open Plaszma and Android OS Zii Egg, as it can run “news feeds, Web mail, weather updates, social networking and other advanced Web applications.”
In addition, Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera, had this to say about the unique opportunity to work with ZiiLabs:
“We are excited to introduce our mutual customers to the power of Opera running on the Zii EGG StemCell Computer, based on ZMS-05. Opera has made it a priority to work closely with silicon vendors in order to create winning solutions that not only exceed customer expectations, but help them get their devices to the masses even faster. ZiiLABS shares Opera’s vision of delivering valuable solutions that will reduce time-to-market and make a positive impact on the device ecosystem.”
Overall, it looks to be a good fit for Zii Egg as developers create apps for the device; it should be able to integrate seamlessly with the Opera browser.
Read [Creative Zii Egg Press Release]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 TG Daily | Green is in for wireless companies CNET News NEW YORK--Green is the new black in wireless as companies like Sprint Nextel and Samsung announce new products and programs geared toward environmental sustainability. At a press event Thursday at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design ... Samsung Reclaim: Sprint's Lean, Green Smartphone Sprint to sell high-end AM-OLED phones from Samsung Sprint Offers 'Green' Samsung Phone |
As an online entity, Google is constantly evolving and improving its products. Some updates are silly, but some are far more serious and meant for good. Its update today to Google Earth to expand its Darfur coverage, is the latter.
Using data from the U.S. State Departments Humanitarian Information Unit and working with the United States Holocaust Museum Memorial, Google now shows more than 3,300 villages (yes, entire villages) that have been decimated during the genocide. Google notes that while the numbers have been known for some time, actually seeing the decimation in more detail than ever before provides a clearer understanding of the devastation.
For example, using the service’s newer historical data feature, you can see before and after pictures of the region. The results are pretty stunning. This feature is available on some 200 of these sites in the region.
All of this data is available in the Global Awareness folder in Google Earth. And Google is urging people to visit the U.S. Holocaust Museum Memorial website to find out more about what you can do to take action about the atrocities in Darfur.
While talk has seemed to die down in recently months about Darfur after the election cycle made it a hot-button issue, it remains a very serious situation. And it’s good that Google is using its long reach to keep the spotlight on it.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
We always liked the E71 and E71x, despite their being saddled with a less-than-gorgeous S60 OS. Well, the E72 is out there somewhere, being previewed by some very thorough Russians, and it looks like, in my opinion, that they’ve fixed all the wrong problems.
That’s not to say it’ll be a bad phone — it’ll almost certainly be a better one than the E71. The increased processor speed and internal memory, the (perhaps) improved keyboard, sweet camera, and the new optical pointer may make it a much more competitive handset. Still, it’s hard for S60 to compete against the more accessible smartphones out there. Fortunately, it doesn’t really have to, as dedicated S60 users often have no desire to switch out, like many WinMo users. It’s an establishment.
At any rate, it looks like a nice phone, and the improvements over the E71 are welcome, even if they don’t fix my primary issue with the phone (the interface).
[via Nokia Experts and Engadget]
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Digg has just announced that it’s going to begin rolling out Digg Ads, the site’s innovative and experimental advertising product that invites users to vote on which ads they like best, over the next week. Digg first announced the new advertising product in June, and they were briefly spotted in the wild in July, though Digg claimed at the time that the ads were limited to an internal test. Digg plans to roll the product out gradually over the next few days to a small subset of users, with plans for a larger deployment over several months.
Here’s how it works: the more upvotes an ad gets, the less advertisers have to pay, giving them an incentive to produce content that will appeal to the Digg userbase. At this point it’s too early to tell how the ads will fare (there’s a chance Digg users will just launch a bury brigade whenever they see one), but if the screenshot below is any indication they stand a fair chance at being a hit — I’m sure plenty of Digg users would jump at the chance to get a cheap Three Keyboard Cat Moon shirt, and there are plenty of other memes that sites like Threadless could capitalize on. Likewise, I’d imagine electronics companies could see good traffic by promoting discounted video games and equipment.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
We covered Doug Fine's radical off-the-grid lifestyle experiment last year on Boing Boing TV -- embed above. He is the author of Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living
I have a fiancee and a son to provide for, so I decided to take a hard look at our prospects for survival if our consumer safety nets went away. For now, my green lifestyle choices at my remote 41-acre outpost in the American Southwest are optional. You know, growing lettuce instead of buying Chilean. Using organic cotton diapers instead of buying Pampers. But what if one morning in, say, 2049, I wake up to milk my goats and find out that supplies are no longer streaming in from China and California? What would I do if both box stores and crunchy food co-ops suddenly were no more? In other words, I'm examining my place in a hypothetical post-oil, post-consumer society 40 years in the future.On My Ranch, Ready for the Great American Meltdown (Washington Post)Now, I'm not rooting for such a thing. Slave labor, forest depletion, climate change and global resource wars aside, globalization has a lot going for it. I love that I can email a musician in Mauritania and ask to download his latest album. And anyway, lots of people still see globalization as the economic model for the foreseeable future. But when I was covering the former Soviet Union as a journalist in the 1990s, every single person I met told me that they'd thought pigs would fly before the Politburo crumbled.
Spotted on the tumblog of photographer Clayton Cubitt, a collection of more than 700 black and white photographs taken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the early 20th century.
Clayton says, "Click on this archive link, and then click to submit on the search button at the archive site without entering any search terms, and it should return 73 pages of amazing."
There are so many powerful portraits in this collection, like the one above. I've been reading a lot about the current, ongoing violence in the Congo (here is one recent story about sexual atrocities committed against men). Clicking through this archive, I found myself thinking about the legacy of violence and colonialism, and how one generation of brutalities begets another. There are many images here that document horrible acts committed more than a century ago, such as the cutting off of hands of rubber plantation workers who failed to meet their quotas, or whipping people to death with hippo-skin chicottes.
Image at the top of this post: Herbert Lang, 'SENSE, A MANGBETU CHIEF. PORTRAIT 3/4 VIEW. PLASTER CAST OF FACE TAKEN' Belgian Congo 1909-1915.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
From Ice-Tea Man (thanks, Steve Woolf)
Source: Boing Boing | 6 Aug 2009 | 4:40 pm
As many of you have seen, the Internet entity known as “Cookie Bottom” took exception to my ripping apart of his Bing jingle last night. In response, he made a video attacking me, while at the same time proving just how right I was. As I told him, that video was much better than the Bing one, and maybe he should have submitted that. Still, it was war. And I’m happy to announce that I have won.
Cookie Bottom’s Twitter account has been suspended for what I can only assume is a complete and utter lack of taste. In music, in clothing, in humor — take your pick. Anways, I guess I don’t even need to do a response jingle. I win.
[Just to be clear, I actually have no idea why Twitter has suspended his account. Maybe he was behind the DDoS attack today...I kid, I kid.]
Update: And it looks like my nemesis makes a stunning recovery. I have never seen a suspended account reinstated that fast. I smell a conspiracy.
Update 2: Actually, it looks like someone hacked his account. Hope that wasn’t our fault — sorry Cookie Bottom. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hacked.
[thanks for the tip tanacea]
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Google began using billboard advertising for the first time earlier this month, though it may not have needed to. Because according to Millward Brown Optimor, the Google brand is the most well-known and valuable brand in the world.
The brand and marketing analytics firm released its BrandZ Top 100 report (PDF) today, pronouncing Google (GOOG) the number one brand for the third consecutive year. The company’s brand equity: $100 billion, a first for the study.
While Google dominated the study’s rankings, it wasn’t the only tech company to make it into the top 100 or the top 10, for that matter. Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM), Apple (AAPL), China Mobile and Vodafone (VOD) topped the list as well, ranking second, fourth, sixth, seventh and ninth respectively.
“Five of the top 10 in the BrandZ Top 100 are technology brands,” Millward Brown Optimor said in its report. “The rapid ascent of these brands and their high values reflect the strength and velocity of the technology category, which grew by 2 percent last year,” the report reads. “The rising popularity of online search advertising, which is cheaper than display, is benefiting Google which owns 73 percent market share in this area.”
Below, Millward Brown Optimor’s top tech brands (click to enlarge):
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The 59-year old director died in Manhattan of a heart attack. He brought us such iconic eighties films as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink. IMDB, Wikipedia, Slashfilm, TMZ, Variety. Above, a montage of scenes from his films, created by a fan to the tune of the Who's "Baba O'Riley." (via Bonnie Burton)
Source: Boing Boing | 6 Aug 2009 | 3:32 pm
A Japanese noodle shop is using two robots to create perfect bowls of ramen. At the Fuamen Ramen noodle shop, two robotic arms work in sync to create up to 800 bowls of noodles on a busy day.
As the video shows, the robots ladle the broth, boil the noodles and toss it in, and sprinkle the toppings. And the entire process take about one minute and 40 seconds for a bowl. It’s fascinating to watch them at work, so precise in their movements.
Apparently the benefits of using a ramen robot are ” the accuracy of timing in boiling noodles, precise movements in adding toppings and consistency in the taste.”
When there’s a lull in orders, the robots ‘play’ with each other and do some neat tricks to keep the customers entertained.
The noodle shop is still keeping some human employees around to take orders and serve the prepared bowls to customers. Wonder how long before those jobs disappear.
See Also:
Editor’s note: The following report comes from Don Dodge, who blogs at Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing and is a business development executive for Microsoft. TechStarsis a startup incubator that selects 10 teams and provides funding of $18,000 per team, as well as free office space, operational support, and mentoring from investors, entrepreneurs and business leaders.
TechStars has now been operating for three years. Three of the original ten companies from 2007 have already been acquired (SocialThing by AOL, Intense Debate by Automattic, and Brightkite by Limbo). Today, TechStars debuted ten new startups from their 2009 class in Boulder, Colorado. The teams presented today to about 150 VCs and Angel investors for the first time. These companies are about three months old and have two or three founder employees. Here are Don’s notes on each of the ten startups to present at TechStars today. (He also did this for us last year).
Next Big Sound – Measures the growth and popularity of music groups across major web properties like MySpace,Twitter, Last.fm, and others. Next Big Sound measures things like number of fans, number of plays, and comments. It’s best understood as a sort of Compete.com for bands. The company hopes to be the de facto standard for understanding band related metrics on the web. They currently track about 500,000 bands. They use the “Freemium model” with free basic accounts, and charge for premium services like more advanced reports, social media impact analyses, and other services. Current customers include Jason Mraz and about 30 other bands.
Everlater - This company enters the crowded but very lucrative online travel space with a site that allows users to richly document their travel experiences. Users can upload stories, experiences, photos, and more directly to Everlater or the site can pull items in from external services such as Flickr. There is also an iPhone app that enables offline recording of travel experiences which can be synchronized and shared later. Each user and trip has a unique URL like this one that can easily be shared with friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Everlater also allows users to share their travel experiences offline by generating and sending postcards, printing scrapbooks, and photo albums.
Vanilla Forums - Vanilla is a popular open-source application that already powers over 300,000 discussion forums on the web. It’s been around for many years. Today, the company announced that it has released a greatly enhanced Version 2.0 of Vanilla both as open source and for the first time as a hosted solution . Vanilla has a business model similar to Wordpress. They have vanillaforums.org for open source, free download/use, and vanillaforums.com as a hosted service, but with up-sells for things like domain name mapping, removal of ads, and single sign-on integrations. They should get a good bump in initial sales from the 300,000 installed base of free users, some of whom will be happy to pay for the additional services.
SendGrid - SendGrid is an email service that solves the problems faced by companies sending transactional outbound email (emails delivered by software applications such as sign up confirmations, shipping alerts, friend requests, and notifications). By using SendGrid instead of their current outbound email servers, companies can improve the delivery rates and solve scalability problems. SendGrid also solves many of the common problems faced by companies sending transactional email, such as CAN-SPAM compliance, link tracking, open rate reporting, and more. The company already has nearly 100 paying customers and has delivered over 100 million emails on their behalf.
Take Comics - Provides online digital versions of comic books. The company has relationships with comic book publishers and has technology which converts the print format into pixel-perfect digital formats optimized for desktop and mobile experiences. The comics themselves are visually stunning both on the desktop and on devices such as the iPhone. Comics can be purchased directly through the iTunes style application which also includes a variety of social features and content discovery mechanisms.
Rezora - An email marketing service specifically designed for the real estate market. It’s similar to Constant Contact, Vertical Response and many other similar services but it adds many real estate specific capabilities such as MLS integration and local real estate news feeds. The software is sold to agencies for use by their realtors and can track clicks to help realtors understand what properties, areas, and price ranges their clients are interested in. The company has already signed a major client with 1,100 agents.
Retel Technologies - Provides video surveillance analysis for stores and restaurants. It uses security camera feeds to deliver interesting metrics and analyses such as table cleanliness, service times, and employee activities. Many companies have tried to use sophisticated techniques to process daily video streams from security cameras with varying success. What’s interesting here is that Retel has re-thought the process and delivers human tested results using paid micro-tasks on services like Mechanical Turk. This enables the company to deliver sophisticated reports that include data points such as male vs female ratios, instances of theft by employees, and other actions that only humans can get right. The company charges a flat monthly fee per camera for these services. Retel already has some national chains as early customers and is reporting that $550K of a planned $750K raise is already committed.
TimZon - Pronounced “Team Zone”, this service is billed as “the easiest way to share visual feedback” and is targeted at virtual teams and customer service organizations. The service allows you to record a visual message that can include screen images, audio, video, and white-boarding /annotation., then easily share it as a URL. Because it requires no software to be installed in advance, this is an easy way for organizations to exchange complex visual feedback. The basic service is free to use, but TimZon provides paid packages for companies that want to systematically collect and organize visual feedback.
Mailana - Helps you share what really matters with the people who really matter. It analyzes your communication patterns from email, Twitter, and social networks to determine your inner circle. It then allows you to share your inner circle with the inner circles of your close connections. The idea here is that existing social graphs are too inclusive to be used to efficiently discover connections and expertise. Mailana aims to simplify this by implicitly generating only your “inner circle” based on actual communication patterns, then exposing that only to your most frequent and trusted connections. In theory this dynamic, current, and accurate social graph will expose the most efficient path to needed, trusted connections. The business model is likely to be something like LinkedIn, meaning advertising, and up-sells for premium services.
Spry - Spry provides insight into software development projects by monitoring all the tools and services used by a project team. Spry analyzes the data in real-time, generates progress reports, and enables clear and consistent communication throughout the team. This helps managers and developers make better decisions throughout the process thereby reducing the likelihood of failure and delay. What Spry is doing is analogous to the activity stream on Facebook, but based on the activity of the development tools and services used on a project. Spry is similar to 6th Sense Analytics which was acquired by Rally Software earlier this year. Spry will use the classic 3 tier (free, pro, enterprise) revenue model, with more features as you move up the scale.
TechStars will also unveil nine additional new companies in Boston (this is the first year for the Boston version of TechStars) coming up on September 10th.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 DailyTech | Marine Corps Bans Social Media On Military Network InformationWeek Wrestling with the changing nature of online communication and the need for operational security, the Marine Corps wants to formalize procedures for access to social sites on its network. By Thomas Claburn The US Marine Corps on Monday issued a ... Social Media Ban: Should Companies Join The Marines? 3 Reasons US Marines Need Social Networking UK Teenagers Leaving Social Networking Sites In Droves Says Ofcom ... |
Section: Computers, Security, Web, Websites
A new online scam targets the hundreds of thousands of unemployed people who use the net to job hunt and those who use it to fill job vacancies. Scammers are posting fake job ads on Craigslist and the big job sites such as Monster.com and Careerbuilders and then taking the resumes they receive and selling them. They are then sold to recruiters all over the world. These recruiters are told by the scammers that the resumes are all from individuals who are fully vetted and have been thoroughly checked out.
One blogger who made up several fake blogs to investigate the scam got calls and emails from recruiters in Canada, India, China, and across the globe about positions he hadn’t even applied for. Obviously the scammers are just harvesting resumes and selling them off without even looking at them. This is a tremendous waste of time for both job seekers and recruiters, and a waste of money for the recruiters too.
Another type of resume selling scam also involves fake job ads. When a job hunter responds they are told about several exciting and high paying jobs available to them, but in order to be considered they must pay to have a resume designed and written for them first. Another waste of time and money.
The third type of resume scam is more malicious. Scammers post fake job ads, and the resumes they get are harvested for the personal info they contain-addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, etc. This info is used for phishing and spamming purposes.
If you’re looking for a job online, stick to the well known job sites, put as little personal information on your resume as possible, don’t respond to vague ads, those with lots of grammatical errors, or those that promise high salaries for little experience. If you respond to an ad and are asked for your SSN or to visit a site and pay for a credit report, don’t! If you include your email address on your resume, open an account on Yahoo or GMail and use that instead of your primary address - just make sure the username you choose is polite and professional sounding.
Above all remember, if a job ad sounds too good to be true, it is.
Read [PCWorld]
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Here's Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi doing a live pitch of his proposed George Liquor Program to folks at Comic Con.
He says the inspiration for one episode came from his father, who grew up during the Depression and was always careful with his money after that. His father, said John, would buy cans without labels from the supermarket, which sold them for five or tens cents a can. Whatever happened to be in the can is what the family would eat.
Here's are a lot of photos and illustrations of John and George Liquor.
Source: Boing Boing | 6 Aug 2009 | 3:01 pm
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(This spring, the Hoefer family had their own MAKEcation event, the "Great Chair Challenge")
Gareth Branwyn, Senior editor at MAKE says:
We're excited about the MAKEcation events we're running on Make: Online through the end of the month. Phil Torrone came up with the idea of the MAKEcation last summer, when gas prices were crazy and people were staying home, their "Staycations" becoming fodder for the evening news' econopocalypse coping stories. Phil figured, if people were staying home, they might as well do something productive with their time -- get the family together to learn new things and make stuff. Thus, the MAKEcation was born.Let's take a Summer MAKEcation! | Teach your family to solder| MAKEcation Cooler Hacking ChallengeWe started off this year's MAKEcations with the Teach Your Family to Solder Challenge. We posted a bunch of pieces with soldering tutorials, tool suggestions, tips for newbies, and ideas for projects. This week, we've added the Cooler Hacking Challenge -- mod any type of portable beverage cooler any crazy way you like and send us the pics/video. These events will run through the end of the month and we'll be adding another, a special family vs. family challenge, next week. We have Camp Counselors, too. Dave Hrynkiw, of Solarbotics, is our soldering counselor, and our latest author to join the site, Matt Mets, is the Cooler Hacking counselor. They're around to answer technical questions, chime in with their expertise, and to help us in choosing our favorite MAKEcation projects.
We're giving away $100 Maker Shed certificates to our three favorite entries in all three challenges, plus books and Maker's Notebooks to the top 15 contestants who submit MAKEcation pictures and videos. Adafruit industries will also be awarding their soldering merit badges.
By Julia Angwin, Editor, Digits, The Wall Street Journal
Frank Eliason is famous for trolling Twitter as @comcastcares to solve customer complaints.
At the Comcast (CMCSA) New Media Exchange conference in Philadelphia Wednesday, he doled out his top tips for effective Twittering. “If you look at anything I’ve ever done, it’s really service 101, search 101,” he said.
Read the rest of this post on its original site
 TopNews United States | Why Microsoft didn't bungle Bing jingle CNET News I awoke on the floor of my house today with a thumping, bumping sound bashing lumps into my ears. Yes, someone had called me to play a winning Bing jingle down my cell phone. This was a friend, indeed. A friend with no conscience. ... Does Bing 'Find' Illicit ... Microsoft's Bing jingle called the worst ever Have You Seen Microsoft Bing's Award-Winning Jingle? |
Errol Morris' multi-part essays for the New York Times are always amazing, and this one, "Seven Lies About Lying" is no exception. Part 1 has an interview with Ricky Jay, the magician, ukulele-player, actor, and historian of sideshows and swindles.
ERROL MORRIS: And it can’t be accidental. You can accidentally deceive somebody, but you can’t accidentally lie to somebody. If you’re lying to somebody, you have to know you’re doing it.Errol Morris: Seven Lies About Lying (Part 1)RICKY JAY: I’ve written about verbal deception, for example, the P.T. Barnum sign – “TO THE EGRESS” — to make someone believe something that was other than what was intended. Even though there was nothing wrong with it — it’s deceptive. [The sign is intended make people believe that they are about to visit some exotic animal, rather than heading to the exit.] I wrote an article about verbal deception in “Jay’s Journal” on the Bonassus.
The Bonassus was presented in 1821 as this extraordinarily exotic creature. I’ll read just the opening: “The Bonassus, according to contemporary handbills, has been captured as a six-week-old cub deep in the interiors of America …” —blah, blah, blah… “It was presented to a populous eager for amusement and edification” — this was in London — “whose appetite for curiosities both animal and human was insatiable.” The attraction said, “A newly discovered animal, comprising the head and eye of an elephant, the horns of an antelope, a long black beard, the hind parts of a lion, the foreparts of a bison, cloven-footed, has a flowing mane from shoulder to fetlock joint and chews the cud.” And underneath the line, “ ‘Take him for all in all, we ne’er shall look upon his like again.’ — Shakespeare.”
And I say,
“Using every conceivable method of prevarication, the playbills of the day unabashedly conceal the true identity of the newly discovered Bonassus, this new genus” — that’s a quote — “of the African Kingdom had never before been seen in Europe. He was none other than the American Buffalo. As for never seeing his like again, in 1821 the buffalo was the most numerous hoof-footed quadruped on the face of the earth.”
We'll go ahead and make it clear, for the sake of those who missed the headline: This post is not something you want to peruse in your cubicle. We'll try to keep the post itself pretty clean, but clicking through just about any of the links within will lead you to pages packed with boobies, wing-wongs, and hoo-has. And yes, I did just use those words on TechCrunch.
Back in March, adult social network AdultSpace (who, we have reason to believe, spent at least 13 minutes coming up with their name) got a hot cash injection of $1.3 million from various angel investors. At the time, AdultSpace disclosed that one of their primary goals was to get into the mobile space.
Five months later, that goal has been reached — to some extent, at least.
We’ll go ahead and make it clear, for the sake of those who missed the headline: This post is not something you want to peruse in your cubicle. We’ll try to keep the post itself pretty clean, but clicking through just about any of the links within will lead you to pages packed with boobies, wing-wongs, and hoo-has. And yes, I did just use those words on TechCrunch.
Back in March, adult social network AdultSpace (who, we have reason to believe, spent at least 13 minutes coming up with their name) got a hot cash injection of $1.3 million from various angel investors. At the time, AdultSpace disclosed that one of their primary goals was to get into the mobile space.
Five months later, that goal has been reached — to some extent, at least. AdultSpace has now launched the mobile version of their site, opening the door for users to share pictures of their junk wherever they may be. Users can access the mobile site from any smartphone by pointing their browser at the normal AdultSpace.com URL, allowing them on-the-go access to member profiles, pictures, videos, blogs, forums, and classifieds.
Alas, it’s still all browser based. It’s convenient, but not cutting edge. AdultSpace’s goal here is to cut into AdultFriendFinder’s lead, but the latter has had a mobile site for some time now. Neither has managed to pull off a native application on any of the major smartphone platforms yet - which, of course, isn’t really their fault. Plenty of folks will argue handset sales numbers to death here, but the only platforms truly worth developing for at this point are those with centralized app stores. That is: Android (App Market), iPhone OS (App Store), BlackBerry (Blappworld), Palm webOS (App Catalog), and S60 (Ovi). Of those, the only store that such apps would even be considered for is Android’s App Market.
It’s too bad, really. The ridiculous popularity of premium “Semi-clothed chicks standing there looking sexy” applications proves that people are less reserved on their mobiles than most would have assumed. There’s money to be made in portable flirting (portaflirting?). Booty-calling is on the way out; it’s all about Booty-browsing, now
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
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FROM GAMERTELL - You can get a pretty sweet deal on the latest Madden installment, provided you can wait several weeks to play it.
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The annual Outside Lands Music and Arts festival is coming up August 28-30. Many who planned to attend were bummed to hear that the Beastie Boys, Sunday night's headlining act, had to cancel due to health problems with Adam "MCA" Yauch (read: Yauch Recovering at Home after Cancer Surgery). I'm on a conference call right now with Jack Black and Kyle Gass and a bunch of bewildered journalists, and the replacement act is now official: Tenacious D! (Wikipedia).
I wish more of the conference calls I have to sit through included Jack Black. The guy really knows how to liven up a party line full of reporters. Also lots of fart jokes.
Liveblogging notes after the jump.
* 12:20pm - Jack Black is berating his musical and LOLs partner for calling in on a cellphone speakerphone in a windy location. "Are you in a wind tunnel, dude?" (...) "We're literally phoning it in, this is awesome!"
* 12:30pm - OK, now the guys are promising to live-twitter throughout the entire performance, and to blog their setlist. Also, something about Skype grenades and Twitter costumes.
* 1236pm - Jack Black loves Taqueria La Cumbre in San Francisco, and specifically, carnitas burritos gordos.
*1238pm - Black says they've just recorded a "bomb-ass sci fi doomsday rock song called DETH STARR," which may or may not be debuted at the fest.
* 12:40pm - Black is discussing the quantum physics of creating a rip in the space-butt continuum.
* 12:44pm - Black and Gass are looking forward to seeing Silversun Pickups, Ween, and Modest Mouse at the fest, among others. Much excitement also about rumors of Dave Grohl's new supergroup, which is not scheduled to appear.
* 1245pm - "Bring some yogurt raita people, because our shit's so hot you're gonna get burned."
Section: Web, Web 2.0, Websites
Aliens? North Koreans? Fernando Valenzuela? At this point in time, we are unsure who is behind the DDoS attacks today on major social networking sites. Both Twitter and Facebook suffered from these attacks.
Twitter was down for most of the morning while Facebook was able to stay afloat. According to Wired’s Epicenter blog, “‘Earlier this morning, Facebook encountered network issues related to an apparent distributed denial-of-service attack, that resulted in degraded service for some users,’ responded Facebook spokeswoman Kathleen Loughlin via e-mail.”
Twitter meanwhile suffered a bit more than degraded service, from their status:
Ongoing denial-of-service attack 4 hours ago: We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly.
Update: the site is back up, but we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack.
Update (9:46a): As we recover, users will experience some longer load times and slowness. This includes timeouts to API clients. We’re working to get back to 100% as quickly as we can.
According to the Cleveland Leader, LiveJournal was also targeted after Facebook.
Who is behind these attacks? Will Thursday become known social networking blackout day (or get back to work! day for short)? We are certainly only that it is being investigated.
Read: [Wired]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
John already gave you his “quick look” on the 8520, but a second look never hurts. Take into account the fact that my main phone is the BlackBerry Curve 8900 and you can see why I’m anxious to give you my thoughts on the latest Curve to hit the streets.
It’s a budget BlackBerry that skimps on aesthetics, but manages to offer a lot of “must have” features that BlackBerry users have become accustomed to from other devices. Compared to the 8900, the 8520 is sans GPS and the 3.2-megapixel AF camera that’s on the 8900 is now a 2-megapixel variant on the baby Curve. Here are a few sample images taken side-by-side with the 8900. Video quality is somewhat similar, but the 8900 does a better job with color than the 8520. Check out the screengrab after the sample photos.
8520 sample images
8900 sample images
The biggest standout, though, is the loss of the physical trackball and what Samsung used to use on their smartphones in previous years, an optical trackpad. It works great. I’ve actually never been the biggest fan of trackballs, but that’s just me. It’s responsive and makes flicking through Web pages and long emails a breeze.
BlackBerry Media Sync, for anyone that hasn’t tried it yet, works seamlessly to transfer music to your BlackBerry device. It takes an unusually lengthy amount of time to eject the device from the application, though. That could just be the beta I’ve been running on my Mac, but maybe someone with a PC can tell me otherwise. Another first for the 8520 and RIM are the media dedicated buttons placed along the top of the Curve. The mute button now cohabitates with the play/pause button, which fits snugly in between the reverse and forward buttons. They continue to work even when you navigate away from the music player app.
Whether you need a hot swappable memory card on your mobile phone is up for debate, but I find no fault in having it available on the 8520. As advertised, the 8520 worked with my 16GB Kingston microSD card without fuss.
Overall specs on the 8520 aren’t much different than the 8900. Processor (512Mhz) and onboard memory (256MB with ~128MB free) are identical making the latest Curve just as peppy as every other BlackBerry device on the market.
The 8520 does what every other BlackBerry before it has done, which is what we want to hear, but it’s hard to ignore the hardware itself. It’s obviously a budget device and RIM cut a few corners to get this one under a bill. For instance, there’s no locking mechanism for the battery door (which doesn’t sit flush on my 8520) like on the 8900 and the screen’s resolution is a lowly 320×240. I have yet to scratch the screen of any of my previous BlackBerrys, but two noticeable gashes now reside on the 8520. There are no chrome accents, which I’m thankful for because most of the faux chrome on my 8900 has peeled off. It’s not a sexy looking BlackBerry, but that optical trackpad makes up for all its shortcomings.
And before I forget, the 8520 does make phone calls and they’re crystal clear. The speakerphone is actually really, really loud. If your kid has been begging you for a BlackBerry then the 8520 is the one to get them. No point in spending loads of your hard earned cash on something they don’t really need.
The BlackBerry Curve 8520 is available now from T-Mobile for $130, but you know where to find it for less than $50 (hint: Wal-mart).
BlackBerry Curve 8520 Frost [T-Mobile]
BlackBerry Curve 8520 Black [T-Mobile]
Curve 8900 vs Curve 8520 [RIM]
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You and I can rail like a beplagued Job against the unfairness of the Apple store but do we ever get emails from Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president? John Gruber does.
Gruber got an email from Schiller last night after the SVP talked through the Ninjawords debacle with the Application Approval team. As you recall Ninjawords is a dictionary app that seemed to include some saucy language and was given a 17+ rating and then banned from the App Store. However, the truth is a bit more mundane.
Schiller wrote:
The issue that the App Store reviewers did find with the Ninjawords application is that it provided access to other more vulgar terms than those found in traditional and common dictionaries, words that many reasonable people might find upsetting or objectionable. A quick search on Wiktionary.org easily turns up a number of offensive “urban slang” terms that you won’t find in popular dictionaries such as one that you referenced, the New Oxford American Dictionary included in Mac OS X.
The developer then whipped himself into a tizzy, deleting terms and essentially making a mountain out of a smaller mountain. Generally, the app was considered vulgar and it, in a sense, deserved its rating. In less general terms, Apple seemed to act like a faceless corporation until Schiller himself stepped forward and cleared things up. This teaches us two things.
First, we personify Apple. What do you think when you think of Apple? Steve Jobs. Maybe Justin Long. Maybe a hot girl with tattoos in a Genius Bar shirt. You don’t think of an army of nerds given a rule book and a mission - which is what the App Store approval team really is.
Second, if you whine enough someone will notice. Apple should have noticed earlier but it’s also not in their best interest to respond to us nutcases on a regular basis. However, as we all know, this is Apple’s sandbox and we’re just peeing in it. They can quite easily shut down the whole mess. But they won’t: they’re making money and you’re making money. Schiller was nice enough to reply to Gruber. Gruber’s a great guy, Schiller seems nice. But as much as we whine, this is still their world.
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Apple is the exclusive gatekeeper to its iPhone App Store, able to reject apps at will — as it did July 28 with Google Voice. But some developers aren’t taking the rejection lying down: They’re turning instead to an unauthorized app store called Cydia, where forbidden wares continue to exist — and even earn developers some money.
That store is operated by Jay Freeman, more fondly known in the iPhone “Jailbreak” community as Saurik. Only five months old, his app store Cydia specializes in selling apps that Apple would reject or ban (or already has). To use Cydia or the apps available through it, customers need to jailbreak their phones — hack them to work around Apple-imposed restrictions — a process that Apple claims is illegal.
Indeed, you can even get a Google Voice app, GV Mobile, through Cydia. After Apple pulled the app from its App Store, developer Sean Kovacs (who is not affiliated with Google) made it available for free through Cydia.
It’s difficult to get accurate data on how many customers have jailbroken their iPhones. But based on the number of unique device identifiers tracked on his server, Freeman claims that about 4 million, or 10 percent of the 40 million iPhone and iPod Touch owners to date, have installed Cydia. On a recent day, he said 470,000 people were connecting to the Cydia store, up from 350,000 per day just a few months ago. Among many free apps, there are also 15 paid apps in Cydia, and the store has earned $220,000 in overall sales in just five months.
“People are so annoyed by Apple and their shit, and if you give them opportunity to go around it, then they’ll even pay for it,” said Kim Streich, a developer whose app 3G Unrestrictor earned $19,000 in sales in just two weeks through Cydia.
Though Cydia is relatively young, the underground “Jailbreak” community has existed since the first iPhone launched in 2007. That year, Apple didn’t yet have an app store for its iPhone, stifling the true potential of the device. This limitation inspired digital rebels to hack away at the iPhone’s closed platform in an effort to free its mind. The result? An app called Installer, opening a door for early iPhone owners to add games, utilities and other third-party software coded by developers.
It wasn’t until 2008 that Apple offered a software development kit for third-party coders to make programs for its iPhone. That led to the opening of the official App Store in July 2008. Apple’s store grew rapidly, accumulating 65,000 apps and serving over 1.5 billion downloads to date. Many developers abandoned Installer for the more popular App Store, leaving behind an underground space where unauthorized wares could continue to exist. Installer died and became reborn as Cydia, which evolved from an app library into a store in March 2009.
To gain access to Cydia, iPhone owners must jailbreak their smartphones using some freely available tools courtesy of the hacker group iPhone Dev-Team. Given the nature of this procedure, it’s clear Cydia’s primary audience consists of nerdy rebels wishing to utilize the full power of their iPhones, restriction-free.
Cydia’s numbers appear small compared to the rare stories we hear about developers turning into millionaires with hot sales of their iPhone apps in the App Store. But the idea behind a store like Cydia is that you don’t have to be huge to make money. With a smaller market, fewer competitors and a reasonably large customer base, each developer has a higher chance for making a quick buck, Freeman said. Plus, you get more personal attention: Developers submitting their app through Cydia need only contact Freeman, and their app can be made available almost immediately. That’s an enticing alternative to Apple’s approval process, which can take months and is notoriously opaque: Some App Store developers have faced difficulty getting answers to simple questions from Apple about their apps.
It’s obvious what’s driving iPhone customers toward Cydia: Apple’s rejections and restrictions of major iPhone apps. Most notably, Apple recently banned apps supporting Google Voice, the search giant’s internet-based phone enhancement service that can provide cellphone users with free text messaging and transcribed voicemail.
Angry consumers and developers theorize that Apple banned the Google Voice apps so as not to detract business from its partner AT&T’s phone services. The incident has brewed so much controversy that even the Federal Communications Commission has gotten involved, sending letters to AT&T, Apple and Google inquiring about the reasons for the rejections.
“Looks like Apple and AT&T pissed off a lot of people,” Kovacs wrote in a July 28 blog post. “I’ll be releasing GV Mobile v1.2 on Cydia for free today or tomorrow.”
Another high-profile App Store regulation involves SlingPlayer, an app that enables iPhone users to stream video from a Slingbox device hooked up to a TV. When Sling originally submitted the app, it was capable of streaming over both Wi-Fi and the cellular 3G connection. However, Apple requested Sling to modify the app to work on Wi-Fi only. AT&T said this was a necessary move to prevent congestion on its 3G network.
That restriction spawned the most successful Cydia app to date, 3G Unrestrictor, developed by Streich. 3G Unrestrictor, a $2 app that has sold 9,500 copies, allows the iPhone to circumvent any network limitations imposed by Apple. For example, the app enables SlingPlayer users to stream TV over 3G as well as Wi-Fi; and when using the VOIP app Skype to place phone calls, customers can also use the cellular connection, whereas normally the app only enables users to dial over Wi-Fi.
“It’s just amazing what you can do on such a little cellphone, and Apple just forbids customers from doing these things, and it’s just a shame,” Streich said. “That’s why I’m so happy there’s a Cydia store.”
Another developer who reports positive experiences with Cydia is Jonathan Zdziarski, who said he has made more money through the unauthorized store than Apple’s App Store. In February, his app iWipe sold 694 copies in Cydia, compared to 91 copies of iErase in the App Store.
“I guess you could say the App Store is kind of like Wal-Mart, with more crap than you’d ever want to buy,” Zdziarski said. “And Cydia is like the general store that has everything you want and need, from fresh cuts of meat to those homemade cookies you can’t get anywhere else.”
Though some developers say they’re having better experiences selling apps through Cydia, it’s unlikely they will succeed on a longer term, said Rana Sobhany, vice president of Medialets, an iPhone app analytics company. She said the average consumer would prefer to purchase apps through a well trusted source such as Apple.
“There have been all these apps downloaded in the App Store because it’s easy for consumers to find, download and pay for apps,” Sobhany said. “This model is new because Apple has been training people how to download music to their iPods for years.”
However, even in the case of the App Store, developers who strike it rich still face challenges recreating their success, said Phillip Ryu, co-creator of the e-book reader Classics, which has sold over 400,000 copies to date.
“If you’re hoping to reach the mainstream, the best you can hope for is your app catches on fire and charts high enough for you to make a windfall,” Ryu said. “Essentially you aim for the jackpot, and if you don’t hit that, it’s not going to make you a living.”
Freeman said it was too soon to tell whether Cydia would provide developers stable incomes, but he recommends they give it a try, considering the successes some are experiencing. He admits, however, he isn’t making much money as the creator of Cydia: Like Apple, he takes 30 percent of each app sale to cover taxes.
“I don’t make much money off this project, but I value the community, and I look forward to how this changes the device landscape,” Freeman said.
See Also:
Photo: William Hook/Flickr
When Android made its handset debut on the T-Mobile G1 back in October of 2008, a nasty bout of drama between Facebook and Google kept the former from developing on the nascent platform. 9 months later, Facebook took a look at the ever growing number of Android handsets and decided to move past the politics. Work on the Facebook Android app began, with at least one Google engineer lending a hand.
Facebook has yet to officially acknowledge that an Android port is in progress, but a series of leaked screenshots suggest that it’s well underway. We can see that the application looks exactly as one would expect, toting a ton of Facebook’s signature design elements. Unlike the iPhone application, there are no static tabs along the bottom of the screen for jumping between sections of the app; Android apps generally tuck these away into a slide-out drawer, accessible via the “Menu” hardware button.
Additionally, one of the screenshots indicates that the Facebook application will have a companion widget for the homescreen, allowing users to update their status without opening the application. It’s more convenient than ever to tell your Facebook friends where you’re getting drunk.
The screenshots that have leaked so far are all rather small, but they do the trick. If someone involved in the development or testing is willingly sharing these shots, we can probably expect more to crop up before too long.
[LeakDroid Via AndroidGuys]
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Enjoy this insane contraption over at BB Video: "Theo Gray, Popsci.com columnist and "Mad Science" author, shows us how to perform DIY electrochemical machining with homemade gadgets."
Section: Computers, Peripherals, Mice / Keyboards
Microsoft has recently announced their latest keyboard and mouse set—the Wireless Comfort Desktop 5000. Just to begin with, the new set is wireless, with both the keyboard and mouse using a shared USB 2.4GHz transceiver.
They keyboard itself, aside from being Windows 7 ready, has a Comfort Curve layout with a soft-touch palm rest and low-profile quiet touch keys. The mouse offers an ambidextrous friendly shape along with rubber side grips and uses Microsoft BlueTrack technology for tracking.
Now, getting back to the Windows 7 ready features, the keyboard has a feature called Taskbar Favorites that will give users an easy way to access and open their applications. Other features specific for Windows 7 include Device Stage which gives the user easy access to common tasks as well as Windows Flip which will allow users to easily see a thumbnail preview of all open windows by pressing a single button.
The Wireless Comfort Desktop 5000 will retail for $80 when it hits stores later this month. However, if for some reason you feel the need to rush out and purchase this now, it is currently available for pre-order though Amazon.
Read [Microsoft]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
I'm really digging this metal coat rack inspired by a ribbon. It was designed by Hemal Patel of London.
[Headsprung via Dezeen]
Eco-friendly phones are all the rage among handset makers now. Samsung became the third phone manufacturer, after Motorola and Sony Ericsson, to offer a device made from biodegradable materials.
The new Samsung phone, called Reclaim, is a slider-style phone with a QWERTY keyboard and a 2 megapixel camera. The phone will be available on Sprint’s wireless network starting Aug. 16 for about $50, after rebates, and with a two-year contract.
Green phones have taken off this year. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Motorola showed its W233 Renew handset whose plastic casing is made of recycled water bottles. In June, Sony Ericsson announced two new eco-friendly phones.
Reclaim follows that trend. The phone is made from 80 percent recyclable materials, said Samsung. A bio-plastic material made from corn makes up about 40 percent of the phone’s outer casing. The device is also free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and nearly free of brominated flame retardants (BFR) — materials that organizations such as Greenpeace have been actively lobbying to eliminate from gadgets.
The packaging for the phone and the phone tray inside the box are made from 70 percent recycled materials, claims Samsung. Images and text on the box as well as the phone warranty information are printed with soy-based ink. And there will be no thick paper user manual offered with the phone. Reclaim’s charger is also Energy Star approved to meet efficiency standards.
Sprint said it has established a set of environmental design criteria for future devices and accessories.
See Also:
Photo: Samsung Reclaim/Sprint
Do the prices people are willing to pay for a phone app depend on the device or the type of app? A comparison of July prices in the iPhone App Store and the Android Market by app analytics firm Distimo found that across broad categories such as entertainment, navigation, and tools the average price for the Top 100 paid apps was very similar for both mobile computing platforms.
There were a few exceptions. The average price for a paid reference app on Android is close to $9, which is more than twice the average price for the same category on the iPhone. This disparity is mostly due to some dictionary apps on Android priced between $15 and $30 (mostly from Paragon Software). I'm not sure those are big sellers, but it bumps up the average. Finance and social networking apps are also slightly more expensive on average.
Games are on average about the same as on the iPhone, around $2.50. But if you look at the price distribution, that tells you a different story. While most of the top paid games on the iPhone go for $0.99, on Android many more games are priced between $1.99 and $4.99.
 Telegraph.co.uk | Clever rooks repeat ancient fable BBC News In the tale, written more than 2000 years ago, a crow uses stones to raise the water level in a pitcher so it can reach the liquid to quench its thirst. Now a study published in Current Biology reveals that rooks, a relative of crows ... Bird experiment shows Aesop's fable may be true Rooks Show Intelligence in Catching the Worm Bird's Tool Use Called 'Amazing' |
With Tron Legacy set to debut in 2010, don't be surprised if turquoise and, more specifically, turquoise LED strips get slapped onto anything and everything.
Exhibit A: The Pulse, a concept fixed-gear with electric turn signals and a luminescent frame...
Personally, I'm into it — as you can probably tell from my use of the color on BBG posts.
[via Core77]
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have figured out to make holograms touchable. Not only can you "move" the holographic images on-screen by moving your hands, but you can also feel pressure sensations on the skin when you push or squeeze it. The project is on display at Siggraph 2009.
[Touchable Holography via Pink Tentacle]
Recently on Offworld, our Ragdoll Metaphysics columnist Jim Rossignol takes us through an illustrated history of one of videogames' best mechanical conceits: the jetpack. From The Stamper Brothers' original JetPac, to Exile, to Tribes, Jetpack Brontosaurus (above) and beyond, he looks at how the 'pack has let us "explore strange new worlds where the sky is not the limit, and where the vertical axis is as just as essential as the horizons that lay all around us."
Elsewhere we marveled at the intricate rusted ironworks designs in the latest video of Amanita's upcoming adventure game Machinarium, saw Minotaur China Shop (and Jetpack Brontosaurus, coincidentally) creators Flashbang poke gentle fun at Braid creator Jon Blow, and found a wonderful series of T-shirts based on the glitched-out boot-up sequences of arcade games.
And for our 'one shot's of the day, two more fantastic pieces from artists appearing in the upcoming Autumn Society games/art gallery show: Zelda's Link aims for the eye, and the Swarovski crystal-studded queen Tetrisina.
One of the newer projects by French artist Aissa Logerot (who made the ironing board that flips into a mirror) is called Halo, and it's a graffiti can that sprays LED lights instead of spray paint. When the battery runs out, you have to shake the can to recharge it. A cool tool for light-writers.
[Artist's page via NotCot]
Section: Video, Content, DVD/DVR/Blu-ray, Web, Online Music/Video
Thought having Season Pass recording, direct Amazon movie downloads, and Netflix Watch Instantly was enough for TiVo? Think again. Starting August 5, 2009, TiVo will be offering over 100 free podcast channels, including content from networks such as G4, FOX, and CBS. Beyond these channels, independent video podcast providers can add their content to TiVo via RSS and H.264 video.
Users of TiVo Series 3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HDXL can watch the videos instantly or sign up for a Season Pass just like you would for a television show. You can search for TiVo podcast channels and individual podcast episodes via TiVo Search. If you can’t find the podcast you want to watch, you can enter its URL in TiVo’s “Video on Demand” menu.
TiVo’s move into video podcasts shows that not only is the podcast medium gaining in popularity, bu TiVo’s role in the home entertainment lineup is changing. TiVo has become much more than a DVR - it is starting to behave like the computer it is, all the while easing the average consumer deeper into the world of online video content.
Company Site: [TiVo]
Full Story » | Written by Merlyn Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Check out Stargate cast members, Alaina Kalanj, Elyse Levesque and Ming-Na doing their best Chewie impersonations.
The footage is from an interview the actresses gave to Wired at Comic-Con. The editing is compliments of my pal Fernando Cardoso.
Can you do better? I'd love to see this sucker get remixed again and again...
[via Underwire]
The expense notwithstanding, programs like GadgetTrak do result in equipment recovery now and again. The creators' blog explains how it works with a splendid real-world example:
The system was stolen two weeks ago and then connected to the Internet two days ago, the device was recovered this morning. GadgetTrak's MacTrak software captured a photo of who was using the system as well as pinpointed the location within a few meters, all of the data was uploaded automatically to the device owner's Flickr account and email. The NYPD followed up and recovered the system, along with two other stolen laptops from different cases.
Smart thieves reformat, but most thieves are not smart.
GadgetTrak Recovers Stolen iMac In New York [GadgetTrak via Gadget Lab]
Section: Business News, Communications, Cellular Providers
T-Mobile, arguably either the third or fourth place US carrier, looks to be in a bit of trouble at the moment. While AT&T adds more subscribers with each new iPhone, Sprint with the Palm Pre, and Verizon for its network, T-Mobile doesn’t look to be doing quite as well as the others. T-Mobile has never been the top carrier, but it’s also never reported such a slow quarter.
T-Mobile for the spring quarter of this year only managed to grab 325,000 new customers. Compare that number to the 668,000 of last year and you can see just what effect the iPhone and Pre can have on a carrier with no new super phone to compete against them. Included in that number is also a churn rate of 2.2 percent, meaning 2.2 percent of old customers were replaced by those new customers. Those new customers raised the amount of revenue for T-Mobile from data usage, though it actually managed to drop its average revenue per customer from $52 to $48 compared to AT&T’s average revenue of $60.21.
While T-Mobile has no big phone releases last quarter, with yesterday’s release of the MyTouch 3G paired with its new agreements to sell phones in RadioShack (err, I mean, The Shack, of course), things might be looking up. Anyone posting a great quarter whenever there’s a new iPhone would be greatly surprising. However, now with all of Apple’s ridiculous App Store policies, T-Mobile being the only Android carrier in the country right now might see some better numbers this quarter. Things might turn out better if T-Mobile had actually decided to bring the Hero to the US, rather than potentially allowing Sprint to snatch it up, but even that’s not a guarantee.
Read [Electronista]
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
With T-Mobile’s latest Android device, the myTouch 3G, now readily available, Billshrink has done what they typically do and released a fancy comparison chart to help you, the consumer, make the right decision about which device to pick. Despite Billshrink’s relationship with T-Mobile, all the info comes directly from each carrier. Let the flame wars begin.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 BBC News | On2 Purchase Spreads Google Even Thinner PC World What does Google do? Most people would say it's a search company. After all, that is where the company built its brand. That is how "google" became a household word. But now there's Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, and Google Voice, the Chrome Web browser, ... Does Google Want On2 for a Gaming Console? Speculation Sizzles Over Google's On2 Buy Is Google spending $106.5m to open source a codec? |
Anvil Motion is revolutionizing the kitchen:
Simply wave your hand and cabinet panels and doors rise and fall vertically with precision, concealing or revealing contents. Using a wireless touch-screen device, cabinets can also be programmed to open in unison or individually through preprogrammed scenes that customize your living space to the need at hand. In the kitchen, for example, a baking scene would open cabinets that house ovens, baking implements and standard baking ingredients.
The hand-crafted kitchen also comes with "biometric security," which means future teenagers will have to drug their parents to commandeer eyes and/or faces just to raid the liquor cabinet.
Awesome.
[via New Launches via Gizmodiva via Electronic House]
Let me preface this post by saying that this whole “green movement” is a freaking scam. No company is making it easier for anyone to “go green” and buying a cell phone that’s made with recyclable materials doesn’t do anything for the environment. You’re still plugging it in to charge and they’re still churning them out in the same factory as their other phones. Rant over.
So, kudos to Samsung and Sprint for launching the “green” Reclaim today in NYC. It wouldn’t be a Samsung announcement without some nod towards the fact that the Reclaim is the first mobile phone in the US to be constructed from eco-friendly bio-plastic materials. The $50 QWERTY phone will roll out on August 16 at Sprint, Best Buy and Radio Shack locations. With every Reclaim purchase, Sprint will donate $2 from each sale to The Nature Conservancy’s Adopt an Acre program.
If you really wanted to be green about this whole thing, Samsung, then you should have made the damn box that it ships in smaller.
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. & DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sprint (NYSE:S) is making it easier than ever for customers to “go green” with new eco-friendly products, services and programs and expanding its commitment as a leader in sustainability. Available on Aug. 16, Sprint and Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile), the #1 mobile phone provider in the U.S.1, today announced Samsung Reclaim™ as the first phone in the U.S. constructed from eco-friendly bio-plastic materials. Made from 80 percent recyclable materials, Samsung Reclaim is a feature-rich messaging phone that offers environmentally conscious customers a perfect blend of responsibility without sacrificing the latest in network speeds and must-have features.
Reclaim is the most full-featured QWERTY phone launched by Sprint at less than $50. It will be available on August 16 in all Sprint retail channels, including Best Buy, Radio Shack, Web (www.sprint.com) and telesales (1-800-SPRINT1) for just $49.99 with a two-year service agreement after a $30 instant rebate and a $50 mail-in rebate (taxes and service charges excluded). It will be available at Wal-Mart in early September.
When customers purchase Samsung Reclaim from Sprint, $2 of the proceeds will benefit The Nature Conservancy’s Adopt an Acre program, which supports land conservation across the United States and protects some of the world’s most beautiful and important natural habitats.
“This generous donation from Sprint will help us protect and restore some of America’s most beautiful and ecologically-important landscapes for future generations to enjoy,” said Mark Tercek, president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy. “We applaud Sprint’s sustainability efforts, as innovation and new technology are crucial to the future of conservation.”
Sprint is also launching several new environmental initiatives in an effort to support its aggressive long-term environmental goals:
* Sprint is the first U.S. wireless carrier to establish a set of environmental design criteria for future devices and accessories.
* Sprint is implementing a series of new environmentally-responsible retail initiatives including adding a dedicated display area in stores that highlights Sprint’s commitment to eco-friendly products and accessories.
* Sprint is committing to reduce paper usage by 30 percent during the next five years.“Sprint is widely recognized as a leader among telecommunications companies in environmentally-responsible initiatives, and today we are proud to announce an even stronger commitment to sustainability with new eco-friendly products and programs,” said Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO. “Samsung Reclaim enables customers to go green while getting the latest in wireless technology. When customers walk into a Sprint retail store, they will be greeted by the information they need to make earth-friendly wireless choices, coupled with Ready Now to learn about the rich functionality of this device.”
DEFINING GREEN WITH SAMSUNG RECLAIM
An eco-friendly overachiever, Samsung Reclaim from Sprint is designed with environmentally-responsible components and fully recyclable packaging, making it the perfect wireless phone for the eco-conscious consumer.* Its bio-plastic material, made from corn, makes up 40 percent of the Reclaim’s outer casing. Samsung Reclaim is free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), phthalates, and nearly free of brominated flame retardants (BFR): three materials commonly targeted on green electronics guidelines.
* The outer packaging and the phone tray inside the box are made from 70 percent recycled materials. The images and text on the box as well as the phone warranty information are printed with soy-based ink.
* The typical thick paper user manual has been replaced with a virtual manual that users can access at www.sprint.com/reclaimsupport.
* The charger is Energy Star approved for meeting the highest energy efficiency standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy. It consumes 12 times less power than the Energy Star standard for standby power consumption and is equipped with a visible notification to alert the user to unplug the handset once it’s fully charged.“Samsung Reclaim is more than just an eco-friendly device, it’s also a powerful and stylish phone that’s easy-to-use,” said Omar Khan, senior vice president of Strategy and Product Management for Samsung Mobile. “When you combine the Reclaim’s impressive feature set with its bio-plastic hardware and eco-friendly packaging, you’re using a phone that is good for you and the environment.”
Operating on America’s most dependable 3G network2, Samsung Reclaim boasts One Click, Sprint’s award-winning customizable user interface with quick access to such social networks as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube. A new green One Click tile makes its debut on Reclaim providing the gateway to several green applications including:
* Five Simple Steps from Discovery Channel provides five simple changes you can make to be more eco-friendly, from how you commute to what you eat for dinner;
* Green Guides from Discovery Channel offers handy guides to help you green your lives with ease, and understand why;
* Green Glossary from Discovery Channel provides words and explanations about the Earth and Climate Change; and
* All Things Green, a Sprint Web category contains dynamic green headline and links to downloadable content.Customers don’t have to sacrifice the latest in technology to be environmentally-friendly with Reclaim. The stylish, full-featured phone offers:
* a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard making it easy to access personal or corporate email as well as text and multimedia messaging;
* Sprint Navigation with Search, providing easy access to directory information and GPS-enabled directions;
* 2 megapixel camera with 3x digital zoom and camcorder;
* advanced stereo Bluetooth® 2.0;
* expandable memory storage up to 32GB;
* an integrated Web browser; and
* two color options - Earth Green and Ocean Blue.Sprint currently offers more eco-friendly accessories than any other U.S. telecommunications company. In May, Sprint announced the availability of new eco-friendly accessories, including the SOLIO Mono solar-powered charger and two new cell phone carrying cases made from 100 percent recycled plastic water bottles.
Sprint’s green-themed website, www.sprint.com/green, details Sprint’s green mobile applications and helps customers learn about Sprint’s sustainability initiatives, including online bill pay, wireless recycling programs and acquiring green tips, such as using mobile GPS to calculate the quickest route to save gas. Customers can receive Sprint updates on specific company-wide environmentally-responsible initiatives on Twitter via @SprintGreenNews and can visit www.sprint.com/green for additional green tips.
GREENING SPRINT RETAIL STORES AND PRODUCTS
Beginning in September, all Sprint-owned retail locations will feature a new dedicated environmentally-responsible section that highlights eco-friendly products and accessories such as the SOLIO Solar Charger and carrying cases made from recycled materials. Sprint also will implement a new sustainable design blueprint for all future Sprint-owned retail store builds and refurbishments.New and refurbished stores will implement numerous sustainable design elements consistent with LEED design standards, and will include energy-efficient lighting, low water usage plumbing fixtures and low VOC paint and carpet. The roll out of these energy efficiency upgrades is expected to reduce the carbon footprint of each store by about 19,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents.
Sprint’s Environmental Product Design Criteria Vision Statement applies to all products sold in Sprint channels. Sprint will work with its device and accessory suppliers to design and provide products that:
* Reduce the use of potentially hazardous materials,
* Are energy efficient,
* Include standardized audio and charging interfaces,
* Are more recyclable, and
* Have more sustainable packaging including standardized sizes, reduced weight, increased recyclability rate, and increased recycled content.Sprint also will work with its suppliers to measure and report on the environmental impact of their manufacturing processes.
LEADING IN SUSTAINABILITY
Wireless Recycling* Sprint is the industry leader in the reuse and recycling of wireless devices sold. Sprint has an aggressive industry-first goal of reaching a 90 percent phone collection rate for reuse/recycling compared with annual wireless device sales by 2017.
* Since 2001, Sprint wireless recycling programs have diverted more than 17 million cell phones from landfills for reuse or recycling. Sprint’s current collection rate is just under 35 percent, more than three times the national recycling average.
* Sprint is a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Plug-In To eCycling Program.Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Reduction Efforts
* Sprint has committed to reduce its GHG emissions by 15 percent by 2017 and to increase its use of renewable energy to 10 percent by 2017. In fall 2007, Sprint became the first wireless provider to join the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Climate Leaders Program.
* Sprint is the only U.S.-based wireless telecom to have a published GHG reduction target. In 2008, just its first year of measurement and reporting, Sprint achieved a 6.8 percent reduction moving from 2.18M metric tons of GHG emissions to 2.03M metric tons.Green Energy Use
* Sprint is an industry leader in the purchase of green energy and is at the forefront of using renewable energy sources such as Hydrogen. Sprint ranks #20 on the EPA’s Green Power Partnership Fortune 500 list.
* Wind power provides approximately 80 percent of the energy needed to run Sprint’s Overland Park, Kan. corporate headquarters.
* Sprint recently received a $7.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to expand its use of Hydrogen fuel cells as backup power for cell sites. An industry leader, Sprint has deployed more than 250 Hydrogen fuel cell generators across its wireless network and has received 12 patents from the U.S. Patent Office that include Hydrogen fuel cells.SAMSUNG’S CONTINUED COMMITMENT
Reclaim is Samsung’s latest contribution toward its commitment to the environment. Samsung Electronics Co. was recently named as the second highest rated company in Greenpeace International’s Guide to Greener Electronics scorecard. The research rates electronics manufacturers on reducing the climate impacts of products and operations, responsible recycling and take-back of unwanted electronics and the elimination of toxic materials from the products themselves.Samsung recently adopted a new green management initiative with comprehensive goals intended to make Samsung a leading eco-friendly company by 2013. The “Eco-Management 2013” plan includes commitments to:
* Reduce greenhouse gas emissions normalized by sales* from manufacturing facilities by 50 percent and cut total indirect greenhouse gas emissions from all products by 84 million tons,
* Ensure 100 percent of Samsung’s products are eco-friendly and exceed global eco-mark standards, and
* Invest $4.3 billion in various eco-management initiatives and enhance green partnerships with suppliers and partners.Samsung’s Mobile Take-Back Program™ is part of the Samsung Recycling DirectSM initiative. The Samsung Mobile Take-Back Program recycles end-of-life mobile devices by processing them to be reused as resources for manufacturers. The Samsung Mobile Take-Back Program is leading the effort to create a recycle-based society by distributing 100 percent recyclable mobile recycling envelopes made out of high density polyethylene. To find out more information on the Samsung Recycling Direct and Samsung Mobile Take-Back Program please visit, www.samsung.com/recyclingdirect.
Since June 2008, Samsung’s Customer Care Center has recycled 635 tons of cardboard, which has saved more than 10,700 trees, 38,000 pounds of air particles, 4.4 million gallons of water, 2.6 million kilowatts of electricity and 1905 cubic yards of landfill space.
BEST BUY JOINS IN GOING GREEN
Sprint’s partner Best Buy and its Greener TogetherTM initiative helps customers make smarter decisions about technology and energy use. Through Greener Together, Best Buy helps customers choose electronics and appliances wisely and use them more efficiently, plus find easy ways to recycle, reuse, or trade in products at the end of their life.Best Buy recently began offering electronics recycling at all of its 1,036 stores nationwide including televisions, monitors, computer CPUs and notebooks, small electronics, VCRs, DVDs and more. The program is the latest addition to the electronics and appliance recycling options Best Buy offers to consumers nationwide including recycling kiosks, appliance and television haul-away, appliance and television pick-up and Tech Trade-In. Visit www.bestbuy.com/green for more information.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Sprint has just announced a couple of new devices in the hot new area of Wi-Fi enabled, personal cellular routers. Both of these let you share your Sprint 3G or WiMax connection to a number of Wi-Fi equipped devices, like notebooks, cellphones or even Eye-Fi cards, although if you want WiMax service right now, you’ll have to head to Baltimore.
The main differences between the two boxes are size, and capacity. The smaller Personal Hotspot PHS300S (left in the picture) lets you connect just four devices and the bigger brother, the MBR-1000 will let 32 people hook up, and is aimed at setting up a mobile office.
Neither are as svelte as the little battery-powered MiFi, also available for Sprint (and which I am using to post this article from the Great Outdoors), but then, they’re really meant for getting work done rather than messing around in the park.
The boxes will cost $160 for the little one and $250 for the antenna-sprouting MBR-1000 and can be had only in areas which offer WiMax (Sprint will expand to Portland, Atlanta and Las Vegas in August). We have a feeling these handy little hotspots are set to take off, although it’s still a pain to have to carry two devices. What’s really needed is, say, a cellphone with both 3G and a Wi-Fi radio inside. We’d suggest the iPhone but that’s still gelded by AT&T.
Press release [Sprint]
What do we have here? The new hotness? mhmm. The HTC Touch Pro 2 is still a while away from being launched but somehow it was placed in front of a camera lens. Overall, it looks great with a clever eatching of the world on the backplate, a 3.5mm jack on the bottom, and a sleek design when it’s closed. Hopefully the keyboard works as well as it looks. According to the tipster, Verizon will probably have the phone sometime in early September.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile
Homebrew apps—now the Palm Pre has a place to get some. The smart guys over at PreCentral have built a very functional homebrew gallery for Pre applications. These applications are user submitted so they may be rough around the edges but their numbers are growing fast. Currently there are 72 apps waiting for you in the gallery.
Using a section of the Palm Pre SDK, applications can be loaded onto devices for testing. As such, all apps in the PreCentral gallery are beta versions for testing purposes. Regardless, there are some great looking apps, something that the Pre has lacked in any real numbers.
To get an app onto your Pre, it takes 2 steps to set your phone up. First, users must download webOSInstaller and then a program called Filecoaster. From there you can enter URLs in Filecoaster and the Pre will download the app file residing at that URL. Not a horrible way to go about it.
The apps are an interesting collection. You’ve got a fart application (no app collection is complete without it), a notification customizer, business calculator to augment the basic onboard Pre one, and some games. Now these games remind me of the old Palm games. There a minesweeper-esque game, hangman, magic 8-ball, snake, tic-tac-toe and the like. The hope is these apps will make it into the official App Catalog, but for now it is a fun way to get some more app love.
To me the standouts from a “Hey, I need that” are MyNotifications to further customize sounds, Go To Tool a neat looking geocaching tool, and dkGoogleVoice. Taking the last one as an example, this app was listed 7/31. Since then, it has been updated four times, the latest was yesterday and included a bunch of fixes. If this app is indicative of the attention being put into the Palm Pre app catalog, we are in store for a wave of apps soon.
Kudos to PreCentral for getting all this together in one place. Check it out for yourself.
Homebrew App Gallery: [PreCentral]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Audio, Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones
It’s pretty crazy with all the things phones can do these days - browse the Internet, play music, provide directions and navigation, and make calls. Well here’s another thing to add to that list; brand new from Samsung Mobile Innovator engineers, a software called Caxixi that plays a variety of percussion instruments on your Samsung Windows Mobile phone such as the Samsung Omnia.
The Samsung Caxixi can play around 50 different percussion sounds based on how you move your phone. For example, whether you shake and move it to the right, it will play one sound, but if you shake and move it to the left it will play another. Interestingly enough, if you can find several people with the Caxixi program installed on their phones you can start a drum circle. Basically each member would produce a different sound to get a beat going. For more on that see the YouTube video below which gives an explanation on Caxixi and how the drum circle works. In addition, the software comes with a studio in order to record the music you produce.
Of course, it won’t replace real, physical drums anytime soon but it definitely can provide some entertainment for long road trips, or if you are bored, you can whip out your Caxixi. The software is free to download on your Samsung Omnia smartphone.
Download [Samsung Mobile Innovator]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
The Watergate is a psychological barrier made physical. Instead of stringing wires or ropes across gaps to steer bleating flocks of people around, or to simply keep them where you want them, the Watergate fires jets of water across the gaps and provides a physical barrier which can easily be broken, but which - psychologically at least - is likely to be a better deterrent than more tangible solutions.
The gate could be used to replace turnstiles and has several advantages (other than the obvious fun use of shoving people into the water-jets). In an emergency, it can’t lock up, and even if the water fails to stop squirting, the worst that can happen is that you get wet. Also, they’re wider than regular gates so bikes and wheelchairs can fit through easily.
It’s certainly not high-security, but then, neither is any unmanned turnstile. I have seen people jumping barriers in London, New York and Barcelona. Ironically, the only city I have lived in where the metro doesn’t have gates is Berlin, where pretty much everybody pays for a ticket.
Oh. I almost forgot. Insert Nixon joke here: __.
Watergate - No Scandal! [Yanko]
If further proof were ever needed that inventors should leave the naming of their inventions to others, here it is. Swiss designer Andy Muff has come up with some clever new length-adjustable stem and layback-adjustable seatpost designs, and he has given them the snooze-worthy name of “ISA”, or Integrated Size Adjustment.
The seat-post fits any saddle, and clamps onto the rails in the way of any modern tilt-adjustable post. This one, though, has an internal, eccentric section in the middle which can be turned 180º to move the mount an inch backwards (or forwards, depending on where you start).
The stem works similarly, with an insert that can change position, like a big, movable shim, to alter the POSITION of the handlebars by 30mm, or just over an inch.
Neat, patent-pending and not yet for sale, these are of limited use but for the right purpose could be very useful, in a shared bike for instance (although if you’re going to spring for presumably expensive, specialist part, you should probably just buy another, cheap, bike).
Designer invents stem and post with 30mm of adjustment [Bike Radar]
Section: Computers, Mobile Computers, Laptops, Netbooks
A new Sony Vaio P has recently made its way through the FCC. Of course, as with FCC reveals, we were not given any information as to when we can expect to see this new model become available, however it does confirm some earlier rumors surrounding a new Vaio P.
What we can tell you about the new Vaio P is that it is carrying a model number of PCG-1RSL and is going to be the same size as the current Vaio P. In other words, this will be another small notebook that is not a netbook.
Other features that can be confirmed by way of the FCC listing include Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n support. Otherwise, it looks like the confidentiality agreement for this listing expires in October, which means at the latest, that is when more details will be available, that is, if the Vaio is not released before then.
Additionally and although this is just rumor and speculation, some are calling for the new Vaio P to include a speed bump and use a 2GHz processor, which would be up from the current 1.86GHz model.
Read [Sony Insider] Via [Engadget]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
You have to be seriously paranoid to put anti-theft software on a desktop computer, but for one lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) GadgetTrak customer, it turned out to be a good idea.
The iMac laded with the tracking software went missing in New York two weeks ago. Everything went quiet. Then, last wekend, things lit up. The MacTrak software started beaming SOS signals to world in the form of a photo of the new user (sent to Flickr), and the location data, IP address and even the iMac’s position on a Google Map, were sent to New York’s finest, who dropped by and picked up the lost machine.
But you wouldn’t want this running all the time, and giving away your position to some faceless company, right? It appears that MacTrak sits, waiting, and checking to see if you have sounded the alert. If you log in to the web page and give the alarm, only then will the computer start beaming its information out to the world. $25 per year.
GadgetTrak Recovers Stolen iMac In New York [GadgetTrak blog. Thanks, Ken!]
Unlicensed, un-defeatable, and undoubtedly awesome. Toot-toot is his death cry, and he will crush you as he screams his sweet revenge, all in the voice of Ringo Starr.
Thomas the Transformer is actually a man-mashing mix-up of Thomas the Tank Engine and two of his train-shed friends. The toy has already sold for a whopping $10 (Singapore dollars, which is about $7 US) and there is no mention as to names of his companions. Digging into the flash-heavy official Thomas site (which of course makes no mention of this toy), I can see that the friends appear to be Percy (in green) and, wait. The red is James, surely, if I remember my books correctly. James, it appears, has been offed from the official lineup.
Of course, just because the toy flouts intellectual property law (and I’m sure all the money from the official merchandise is making its way to the Rev. W. Awdry’s family) doesn’t say anything about the seller, who has a top-end 98.8% positive rating on Ebay. But that doesn’t stop us relishing his wonderful, spy-movie like offer on the auction page: “Can meet you at MRT station (if pass by) for delivery without delivery charges.”
Auction page [Ebay via Oh Gizmo and Geekologie]
Mother! Bring me my Dremel. Hurry woman, and put down that gin. I have to make me one of these wonderful iPod Nano cases, toot-sweet.
I, dear reader, am of course a Victorian master inventor. You, modern weakling that you are, might prefer to buy a retro case to cosset your fourth generation Nano device, for a mere $50 Canadian in today’s money. The tapes come from thrift stores and are “gutted, routered and rebuilt” in Vancouver until they are the perfect fit for the little Nano. They are named the 45 Nano (45 in this case is half the length of a D90 tape in minutes, not the speed of a vinyl “single” pressing).
What I love the most, from my expert, imperial engineering point-of-view is the stark contrast here. The shiny, bon-bon colored iPod against the old, rattly, dull plastic tapes. Wonderful. Now, mother, bring me that gin. And cover up the table legs: I’m feeling giddy.
Product page [Contexture via BBG]
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Though it was eagerly anticipated by the industry and Sirius (SIRI) subscribers, the satellite radio provider never expected that much from it’s new iPhone App. During a call with analysts Thursday to discuss 
It shouldn’t really come as a surprise considering the fact that we’ve known for some time that Samsung is hard at work on multiple Android devices, but the NYT is reporting that Samsung will have multiple touch-screen Android devices in the market next year for under $100.
With Twitter down this morning and reports of failure all over the social Web, I figured FriendFeed would be up, if denuded by the Twitter outage. Well, sorta. In fact, FriendFeed searches are down. How the hell does a denial of service attack plague reach into the coolest service no-one will ever use, as former user Mike Arrington once put it. Is the realtime Web screeching to a halt on purpose, did rssCloud have something to do with making things too really simple, or what? For now, I'll Blame FriendFeed.
As long as FriendFeed keeps rolling out updates to realtime, FriendFeediots like myself are smug in our uber view that no matter what happens to the rest of the Web, regardless of whether Google buys a patent-safe video codec for HTML 5, not caring whether Apple and AT&T collude to keep Google Voice out of the carrier business, not worried about whether the Sun/Oracle deal is held up for months, etc. — no matter what, FriendFeed will solve all of my social media problems before anybody else does.
Since the early days of the Facebook Platform, 
