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Japan debut for mobile fuel cellAn alternative to batteries that uses methanol and water to recharge gadgets is to go on sale in Japan, according to the BBC. The Dynario fuel cellMade by Toshiba can triple the battery life of portable...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Oct 2009 | 3:38 am Awesome Leather Oxfords - Classy Maison Martin Margiela Oxford Shoes Update a Classic (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Oxfords are always in style. They're classy, timeless and sophisticated. The new Maison Martin Margiela Oxford shoes are all of the above, and they're now available at BrownsFashion...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Oct 2009 | 3:20 am Long-term use of mobile phones 'may be linked to cancer'A 20million ($33million), decade-long investigation overseen by the World Health Organisation (WHO) will publish evidence that heavy users face a higher risk of developing brain tumours later in life,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Oct 2009 | 3:11 am Triangular Teepee Art - Steven Harrington Signed Prints Released on Arkitip (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Steven Harrington's new collection of prints titled "Past, Present, Future and Somehow, We All Seem Connected" incorporate comic book style with modern art. The teepee art is an eccentric...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Oct 2009 | 3:10 am Verizons new ad campaign: Dont Text and DriveDont Text and Drive. Verizon's latest advertising campaign aimed at drivers' safety. [via IntoMobile] The new ad campaign will blitz television, radio, print, online, billboards and non-traditional...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Oct 2009 | 2:43 am Elder-Assist Robotic Suits, From the Real CyberdyneTasha26 writes "No, not the one which will end up building terminator robots. BBC's Click brings news of a Japanese company, Cyberdyne, which is in the process of building different robotic suits to assist the elderly in accomplishing simple body tasks such as walking and lifting. Even though still in R&D, this video (@3m15s) shows a pretty promising future for the elderly."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 25 Oct 2009 | 2:02 am NOAA Winter Outlook: Wet(-ish) WestHere, in graphical form, is NOAA's latest El Nino precipitation outlook for the U.S.: Wetter than usual for California, but dry in northern Oregon and Washington.Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Oct 2009 | 1:03 am Awful 1962 marriage textbook speaks out against feminism, communism and interracial dating This 1962 high-school textbook, "When You Marry," is a long, mind-bendingly awful manual for marriage, including sticking to traditional gender roles, staying away from race-mixing, resisting communism and saving yourself for your wedding night.
Love, 1962 American High School Style
(via Making Light) Awful 1962 marriage textbook speaks out against feminism, communism and interracial datingThis 1962 high-school textbook, "When You Marry," is a long, mind-bendingly awful manual for marriage, including sticking to traditional gender roles, staying away from race-mixing, resisting communism...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 Oct 2009 | 12:18 am Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner: review - Telegraph.co.uk
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 25 Oct 2009 | 12:01 am Apple dumps Sun's ZFS - Register
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 Oct 2009 | 11:40 pm ARM Launches Cortex-A5 Processor, To Take On Atombigwophh writes "ARM launched its new Cortex-A5 processor (codenamed Sparrow) this week, and while it's not targeted at the top end of the mobile market, it is a significant launch nonetheless. The Cortex-A5, which will likely battle future iterations of Intel's Atom for market share, is an important step forward for ARM for several reasons. First, it's significantly more efficient to build than the company's older ARM1176JZ(F)-S, while simultaneously outperforming the ARM926EJ-S. The Cortex-A5, however, is more than just a faster ARM processor. Architecturally, it's identical to the more advanced Cortex-A9, and it supports the same features as that part as well. This flexibility is designed to give product developers and manufacturers access to a fully backwards-compatible processor with better thermal and performance characteristics than the previous generation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 24 Oct 2009 | 10:50 pm SKorean disgraced cloning scientist awaits verdictAfter a three-year trial, a South Korean court is Monday due to pass judgement on a scientist hailed as a national hero until his apparently landmark stem cell research was ruled to be...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Oct 2009 | 10:08 pm NSFW: Weezer, plane crashes and everything else that’s worrying about the real-time web
The bulk of the weirdness stems from the make-up of the crowd: a dozen feet below me in the main auditorium there are maybe a couple of thousand writhing teenagers – Weezer fans to a (wo)man, cheering and shouting and jumping and sweating and doing all the things I remember doing a little over a decade ago. These are the invited fans; those lucky enough to have been chosen to attend this ’secret show’, organised by MySpace. You know, for kids. Every so often one of the stage lights picks out a tiny puff of smoke in the crowd. Ah, you crazy kids and your pot: I feel like I’ve been transported back in time. By contrast, there are no kids up on the VIP balcony. Instead there are the ‘important guests of MySpace’ – or at least those who had enough sway with MySpace PR to get on the invite list. If you’d told me back in 2001 – the last time I last saw Weezer live – that when I next saw them I’d be standing next to noted-non-rock-kids Scoble and Loic LeMeur (”is zis Weezer a famous band?”), I wouldn’t have believed you. I’d also have asked you what ’scobul’ is. And yet despite the obvious differences between the two groups -the kids down there and the grown ups up here – there is one thing we have in common. Almost everyone – young or old – has a phone in their hand. As befits their demographic, the kids are using their Nokias as cameras – pointing them at the stage in anticipation of their heroes’ arrival. And as befits our demographic, we grown ups are using our iPhones to tweet that same anticipation, but only – of course – after we’d checked in to the venue on Foursquare. “Wow. The real-time web is awesome”, I remarked, to no one in particular. And Weezer, to their credit, agreed with my sarcasm. After their first song – Hash Pipe, if you’re interested – Rivers Cuomo came to the front of the stage to talk to the audience. For a man who has been doing this longer than most of the crowd have been alive, he was oddly ill at ease. Still, he had the measure of his fans: “remember,” he said “this is a secret gig, so shhhhhh, no writing about it on Facebook or Twitter.” Somewhere across the room, a MySpace PR groaned, and threw herself off the VIP balcony. Cuomo was joking of course – a ham-fisted attempt at a target reference – but there was a strange and tragic truth in his plea. I mean, what were we all doing? Filming and tweeting and checking in rather than just putting our phones away and enjoying the gig. Why does the world need two thousand photos of the same band on the same stage, all taken from a slightly different angle. That kind of 360 degree imagery might have been useful on the day Kennedy was shot – not least because it would have kept Oliver Stone quiet – but for a Weezer gig? And what’s the point of checking in on Foursquare at a ticketed event that no one else can get into. You might as well tweet “I’m a dick” and be done with it. And yet this real-time mentality – pictures/tweets or it didn’t happen – continues to seep into every aspect of our lives, both personally and professionally. Whereas once we might attend a conference to watch the speakers and perhaps learn something, today our priority is to live blog it – to ensure our followers know we’re on the inside; first with whatever news might be broken. And it’s not just journalists doing the live-blogging, but anyone with a laptop and a wifi connection. Hell, we can’t even have lunch or drinks with a friend without tweeting, Foursquaring and probably photographing the occasion. No matter how unimportant the event, the actual experience of something has become secondary to our capturing of it and telling our followers. (Even celebrities aren’t immune – to the point where studios like Disney have started to include non-Tweet clauses into contracts to stop their stars real-time broadcasting spoilers and gossip from on-set.) Worse still, we’re told that this is the future. The real-time web – a web where every single thought that enters our head, or image that passes our eyes, can be instantly captured, shared and archived for the approbation of our friends and followers. At O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Summit both Google and Microsoft announced deals with Twitter to integrate tweets with search results. Marissa Mayer proudly boasted that this would allow Google users to find information so fresh that there hadn’t even been time for anyone to write a proper indexable blog post about it. No more of that irritating forethought or composition. The week before O’Reilly’s event, ReadWriteWeb hosted a ‘Real Time Web Summit‘ to talk about all things instant. Last year’s LeWeb in Paris had the somewhat nebulous theme of ‘Love’; this year the theme is – yep – the real-time web. Hell, even TechCrunch is in on the game with its ‘Real-Time Crunch-Up’s. And of course every ten minutes somewhere in the world, Jeff Pulver is hosting another of his 140 Characters conferences. I hear the one in Antarctica is a sell-out. The assumption at all of these events is the same: real-time is where we’re heading; real time is good. Newspapers were good, cable news was great, blogs were better, instant attention bursts are best. Hmmmm. This week, the Christian Science Monitor reported that American judges are having to remind jurors that they’re not allowed to tweet from the jury room. I shit you not. In February, a juror in the trial of an Arkansas lumber supplier tweeted – during deliberations – his opinion that the defendant’s company will “probably cease to exist, now that their wallet is 12m lighter.” Meanwhile in Philadelphia, a juror posted daily updates from the courtroom including – and this is awesome – on the eve of their verdict: “stay in touch for a big announcement on Monday everyone.” Don’t touch that dial, folks, we’ll be in jaw-dropping contempt of court right after these messages. Less illegal, but just as worrying, is how the real-time generation reacts whenever disaster strikes. I first noticed the trend back in 2005 when London’s transport network was bombed by mentally defective al-Quaeda fan-boys. The first footage to emerge from the attacks was not from the BBC or CNN but camera phone imagery taken by survivors as they walked through the Underground tunnels to safety. The pictures caused all manner of hand-wringing at the time: is that what has become of London’s famous Blitz spirit, pundits asked, documenting our fellow man’s suffering as if it were some macabre reality show that we might want to re-watch time and again with our friends? Just four years later – after the Hudson crash and a hundred other real-time news events – we wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Advocates of the real-time web argue that this is simply a branch of citizen journalism – a desire by those holding the cameras and laptops to ensure that the world knows that something dramatic is happening. In truth the desire is far more cynical: to ensure that the world knows that we were there when something dramatic happened. I was on the scene, I was somewhere you weren’t – and I have the photos and tweets and videos to prove it. Check out my YouTube account; follow me on Twitter. LOOK AT ME, LOOKING AT THIS. And it’s not just a question of micro-ego: when a juror is tweeting teasers from the jury room, part of them must know that a guilty verdict is much more exciting to their audience than one of innocence. How can that not subconsciously influence them? Likewise when we – the real-time generation – watch someone being attacked in the street or a plane crashing into our building and instinctively reach for our phones, can we be sure that our first impulse will be to dial 911, rather than firing up Tweetdeck or clicking the camera icon to ensure we get props for being there? I mean, really sure? In a perverse twist on the uncertainty principle, knowing that our behavior is being observed inevitably changes it for the more dramatic. Just look at reality TV. And that’s when the real-time web – for all the attention it’s getting right now – starts to look less like a brave new world, and more like the path to a hideous dystopia. A world where our reaction to any event, no matter how serious, is influenced, not by what’s right, but by how it will play with our micro-audience. An audience that, thanks to Google and Microsoft’s wholehearted support of the real-time web, is about to get even bigger and more tempting. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors 
Source: Gizmodo | 24 Oct 2009 | 9:20 pm Wearable hummingbird feeder: they'll think your eyes are juicy, delicious flowers!A face mask with which to attract hungry, curious hummingbirds, $80 from heatstick.com. The masks do look silly, and the website is nothing if not homebaked. But if the maker's YouTube videos are to be believed, these contraptions do attract the little buggers and make for amazing eye-to-eye encounters with one of the most magical winged creatures on the planet. I'm kind of dying to try one out.
Video embedded above: "Chris Makes a New Friend" [YouTube] Product: "Eye to Eye Wearable Hummingbird Feeder." The guy behind it lives in California's Humboldt County, and has invented some other neat earth-gadgety stuff, too, like the Veg-a-Lot growing shelter [heatstick.com].
(Thanks, Dean Putney!) Wearable hummingbird feeder: they'll think your eyes are juicy, delicious flowers!A face mask with which to attract hungry, curious hummingbirds, $80 from heatstick.com. The masks do look silly, and the website is nothing if not homebaked. But if the maker's YouTube videos are to be...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Oct 2009 | 9:03 pm Microsoft's new anti-virus program - Washington Post
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 Oct 2009 | 9:03 pm Sergey Brin's Surprise Web 2.0 Visit: The VideoOn Thursday, Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a surprise visit to the Web 2.0 Summit and was interviewed on-stage by John Battelle for about 18 minutes. Our full notes from that day are here, but...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Oct 2009 | 8:51 pm Sergey Brin’s Surprise Web 2.0 Visit: The VideoOn Thursday, Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a surprise visit to the Web 2.0 Summit and was interviewed on-stage by John Battelle for about 18 minutes. Our full notes from that day are here, but the video above gives a good sense of where Brin’s head is at right now. Also check out his what he’s wearing on his feet at the beginning. I’m not sure if those are shoes or rubber socks. Brin touches on Twitter, Bing, Android, the growing network of Google alums heading up other companies, the book settlement, his surprising lack of baseball knowledge, and Chrome for Mac, among other subjects. He points out that search ads were at the bottom of the barrel when Google started. They were considered the equivalent of remnant ads, but that Google’s success is due to seeing value where nobody else was looking. In the same way, he says, it is impossible to predict where the most value will be created on the Web in the future. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: Gizmodo | 24 Oct 2009 | 8:40 pm What If They Turned Off the Internet?theodp writes "It's the not-too-distant future. They've turned off the Internet. After the riots have settled down and the withdrawal symptoms have faded, how would you cope? Cracked.com asked readers to Photoshop what life would be like in an Internet-addicted society learning to cope without it. Better hope it never happens, or be prepared for dry-erase message boards, carrier pigeon-powered Twitter, block-long lines to get into adult video shops, door-to-door Rickrolling, Lolcats on Broadway, and $199.99 CDs."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 24 Oct 2009 | 7:47 pm SK Energy to supply car batteries for Daimler unitSEOUL, Oct 25 (Reuters) - South Korea's SK Energy said on Sunday it has been chosen as a supplier of lithium-ion batteries for a hybrid electric vehicle project for Daimler unit Mitsubishi Fuso.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Oct 2009 | 7:24 pm 69adget’s OhMiBod Freestyle Review
The OhMiBod Freestyle Vibrator lets you DJ your own orgasm – literally. The vibrator wirelessly connects with your iPod or iPhone and vibrates along with the beat. Perfect for those of you who get turned on by the hot new Jay-Z song (or Ricky Martin, it’s cool, he’s on my playlist too), whatever your music of choice may be, this vibrator will redefine the way you look at your iPod.
In the Box: I’ve seen my fair share of sex toys, but this one is completely different from the second you lay your eyes on it. The kind folks at OhMiBod sent me the OhMiBod Freestyle as a sample to review and thought of everything – from packaging to concept. The vibrator comes in a hard plastic case with padding on the inside for maximum portability to school, work, business trips, the supermarket, or the gym… What makes it even better is the fact that it comes with three different electrical adapters so you can use your vibrator whether you find yourself in Europe, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, or the U.K. You will never be left high or dry next time you find yourself away from home – thank you OhMiBod! High Tech Hotness: The Freestyle comes with a charger and a 2.4GHz wireless transmitter with adjustable intensity for syncing with your music player. The vibrator has two functions: manual and music sync mode. A pretty intense vibration, it’s not for the faint of heart. In manual mode, there are seven programmed patterns and in music sync mode, the pulse patterns depend on your playlist of choice. What’s really cool is that you can sync the vibrator with pretty much anything that has a 3.5mm port, which includes iPhones, iPods, CD Players, a Stereo System or other MP3 music players. Completely wireless, the vibrator runs for 5 hours on a full charge and is a whopping 8 inches long and 1.5 inches thick. The only downside is that it’s a little large and made of hard plastic, which may turn off someone looking for a more realistic look or feel. The $130 vibrator is simple to set-up: plug the transmitter into your iPod and then plug in headphones or let it blast out loud from your iPod dock. The hardest part about setting the thing up is choosing the right playlist. My first thought was that my techno playlist might be interesting because that is probably the most beat driven music you can get. Surprisingly, songs with strong melodies felt the best. Think Kanye, Beyonce, and Britney. The awesome build up had me craving the chorus. And if “All the Single Ladies” doesn’t have the melody to make you get there, you can always twist the vibrator to manual mode mid session for a constant vibration and a strong finish. It’s also great for couples, although that’s clearly not necessary! My Playlist: Bret Michaels “Nothing but a Good Time” Beyonce “Single Ladies” Justin Timberlake “Rock Your Body” The Verdict: Dump Your Boyfriend: The main reason why a self love session cannot usually stand up to a real love session is because you are completely in control when alone. You know exactly what’s coming next. The Freestyle solves this problem because it incorporates so many different levels of intensity, leaving you feeling surprised and wondering what’s coming next. If Madonna sings an especially loud note or if the bass kicks in, you’ll feel it. This element of surprise totally rules and mimics the type of orgasm you would have with a partner thanks to the varied pulses, unexpected vibes, and changing intensity. But way better. You’ll be begging for the next song on your playlist to begin. For more about the latest sex toys and technology, check out 69adget.com
Source: CrunchGear | 24 Oct 2009 | 7:00 pm Startup School: Mark Pincus Talks About Becoming A Great CEO, With Tony Robbins’ Help Zynga founder Mark Pincus is the final speaker at Y Combinator Startup School 2009. My notes on his talk are below. Pincus kicked off his talk by asking the audience how many wanted to become great entrepreneurs (much of the room raised their hand). But fewer raised their hand about becoming a world class CEO, which is something Pincus says they need to address. Out of college, Pincus says he went into banking and then business school, after which he worked in major corporations. He says that sometimes entrepreneurs are born after finding that nothing lese works for them, explaining “I got kicked out of some of the best companies in America”. Pincus’s first lesson: You should set a goal for what you want to accomplish. Pincus says he was Fred Wilson’s first consumer deal (”he loaned me $250k and gave me four months to do something”). He started FreeLoader. The company was acquired, but the CEO of the company that bought it “had a nervous breakdown”. At this point Pincus says he had his ‘greencard’ to be an entrepreneur. Pincus said that after selling FreeLoader, he had some downtime — ”And then you get a new group of friends… A ghetto version of the show Entourage” — friends go out on Monday night at 1:30. But that gets old after a couple months.” Pincus then started another company, called Support.com. “We created this service that nobody wanted, figured out quickly that nobody wanted it.” Pincus says that when you have a friend who has a ‘hairbrained’ idea that they think nobody understands yet — you may want to have an intervention. If you have an idea that can’t get funding, it may be a good idea, but it may be a bad idea. “What I would do is find five friends, give them your pitch, write a powerpoint as if you had $30 million in funding, and come back and tell me here’s what my service will be when this is spent.” Support.com had core technology that let you clone old PC into new PC called MoveIt. Interviewed people on the street, and they wanted a way to move kids’ games to their new computer. So they actually had something people wanted, even if it wasn’t the core focus of the company. Pincus says the second lesson he’s learned: not having a clear goal when you set out leads to death by a thousand compromises. Death by a thousand compromises Pincus says he then went to Tony Robins (seriously). Attendees at the conference consisted of 4000 out-of-work realtors. But it works. Robbins says to set very high goals but take any path to get there. With Zynga, Pincus says he wanted to make a company that put out a consumer service that would be around and would matter for a long time. As Tony Robins says, “Control Your Destiny”. In 2007, he says you don’t have the luxury of just building a feature, you have to build the whole thing. Referring back to his issues with the board, If you’re profitable, you can control your board. He says we negotiate for the wrong thing because we don’t know what our goals are. “Who gives a shit what your valuation is? At the end of the day your valuation will be more impacted by a board made up by a bunch of old white men who show up once a month for half a day. It’s a lot easier if you just tell them what you’re going to do”. Second Thing. On Fake CEOs: Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: Gizmodo | 24 Oct 2009 | 6:00 pm Startup School: Tony Hsieh On Delivering Happiness
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has taken the stage at Startup School this afternoon to talk about company culture and delivering happiness. Hsieh started out by talking about his beginnings at LinkExchange, a company he sold to Microsoft in 1998. The reason LinkExhange sold to Microsoft was because of the company culture, according to Hsieh. After LinkExhange, Hsieh was an investor in Zappos, and two months after the founding of Zappos, Hsieh came in as the CEO. Zappos started in 1999 with no sales, and last year in 2008, had over $1 billion in gross sales. Hsieh mentioned that the biggest source of revenue for Zappos is word of mouth, as well as repeat sales. Zappos is best known for their customer service. When Zappos started out, there was no company culture. In 2003, Zappos decided that they needed to differentiate themselves from all the other companies, and chose customer service. Zappos now follows the 3 C’s; Clothing, Customer Server and Culture. Now, in 2009, Zappos is all about delivering happiness, both for employees and customers. What makes Zappos so great, among other things, is their policy on returns. If something doesn’t fit, or you want it returned, Zappos gives the customer 365 days to return the item. Decisions like these have powered Zappos to the top in company culture. Hsieh talked about the Zappos hiring process — each time Zappos interviews a candidate, Zappos sends a shuttle to the airport to pick up the interviewee. The shuttle driver then will tell the recruiting team what happened in the shuttle so that Zappos can get a better understanding of the interviewee. Zappos has 10 core vallues that each employee must meet in order to work at Zappos. All 10 of these core values are talked about during the interview process as well. Hsieh mentioned that if employees don’t have the right company culture, they won’t be welcomed in the Zappos culture, so they make sure they hire employees with the right company culture. In July 2009, Amazon announced their intention to acquired Zappos, which is still waiting for government approval. Photo by Adam Jackson Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2009 | 5:25 pm iPhone 3G/S hard shell case showdownFROM APPLETELL - For those who who’d rather keep their iPhone safe than slim, here’s our latest roundup of iPhone 3G/S hard shell cases built specifically for your peace of mind. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 Oct 2009 | 5:15 pm BBC Planning To Launch Global iPlayer VoD ServiceAn anonymous reader writes "The BBC is reportedly mulling over plans to come up with an international edition of its hugely popular iPlayer service, in a bid to allow global audiences to catch up with some of its top shows, according to BBC Worldwide, the corporation's profit-making arm. BBC Worldwide said that the move would help revamp its business model, and thereby help the corporation in raking in significant profits through its premium content."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 24 Oct 2009 | 4:45 pm Slacker confirms plans to phase out hardware playersSection: Audio, Portable Audio
According to the details given, the hardware player does not “fit with the company’s long-term strategy” which is shifting towards the online music service as well as mobile apps. In other words, Slacker is ditching the G2 and not coming back with any new hardware based player to replace it. Slacker currently offers a streaming service that is browser based as well an app for Windows based PC’s. Additionally, they also offer mobile apps for devices to include the iPhone and BlackBerry. Both mobile apps are nice, however the iPhone does not allow the ability to cache music for offline use, the BlackBerry on the other hand does. In terms of making money, Slacker is currently ad-supported, but they also have a paid option available that costs $3.99 per month. Those that subscribe lose the ads and also get the complete song lyrics and the ability to skip an unlimited amount of tracks. Finally, for those still interested in the hardware G2 player, it is still available and selling both on the Slacker website and also at big-box retailer Best Buy. Read [WSJ] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 Oct 2009 | 4:03 pm Internet Archive Puts 1.6M E-Books On OLPC Laptopswaderoush writes "Brewster Kahle of the San Francisco-based Internet Archive announced today that all 1.6 million books scanned and digitized by the Archive will be available for reading on XO laptops built by the Cambridge, MA-based One Laptop Per Child Foundation. The announcement came during a session on electronic books and electronic publishing at the Boston Book Festival. Kahle said the Archive has been collaborating with OLPC for a year to format the e-books for display on the XO laptops, some 750,000 of which are in use by children in developing countries."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 24 Oct 2009 | 3:45 pm Startup School: An Interview With Mark Zuckerberg Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken the stage at Startup School, where Y Combinator’s Jessica Livingston is interviewing him. I’m liveblogging the interview below. Mark Zuckerberg: “I love being here. These are like, my people.” Q: I want to go way back, before Facebook. What did you learn from those experiences? Q: How were the first users using Facebook? Q: Tell us all the dumb things you did. Q: But that’s a problem for startups — it’s not valuable til people start using it (chicken/egg problem). Q: Who were your first investors. How did you pitch them? Q: What would you do now different? Q: What did you do differently at Facebook? Q: How do you keep this environment? Q: I ask lots of successful founders did you know it would be as big as it is? Tell me a couple moments when you went, woah, this could be huge. Q: Did you ever have a scaling issue? Q: What have you learned about running a big company? — Q: We know so much about people’s history because of Facebook. I want to know how you’ll make this available to people 2000 years from now. It’s just bits. How will anyone know what we were up to when it’s all digital. Q: One of the stories I heard about you was when you made changes. You were reported as saying “the most disruptive companies do what they need to do. What was behind that rationale” Q: Can you talk what it’s like in order to speak publicly so people don’t pounce on you? Seems like you’ve changed since 2006. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2009 | 3:37 pm Please release me: Rock Band iPhone, Small Worlds, Eufloria, LostWinds, Space Invaders Extreme This week has seen a number of excellent and much publicized and high profile releases -- Rockstar's conversion of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars from DS to PSP and Gearbox's post-apocalyptic co-op sandbox shooter Borderlands -- but no game has eaten as much of my time this week than a downsized iPhone version of a rhythm favorite.
Rock Band [Harmonix/EA Mobile, iPhone]
EA Mobile's downsized port of Harmonix's rhythm-standard enters an App Store dominated by clones and competitors (the Tap Tap series chief among them), and what sets Rock Band apart from the rest is a subtle but massively important distinction. With Harmonix's access to a staggeringly large library of original masters, the iPhone game is able to do what none of the others can: make the music itself reactive to your play.
By comparison, Tap Tap plays as a transparent overlay on top of any given track: keep your hands away from the screen and the music cheerily plays on, unperturbed by your quiet failing. That Rock Band gives you its now embarrassingly too-familiar skronk on every missed note is key to sustaining the illusion that you're participating in the performance, even just by slapping a thumb onto a glass sheet.
The iPhone version, unlike Rock Band Unplugged -- Backbone's similarly excellent PSP version released a few months back -- only lets you play one instrument or vocal track at a time, which allows for RB's least publicized and surprisingly well implemented feature: in the absence of three additional people to play its Bluetooth-enabled local multiplayer, players can send out invites to Facebook friends to participate in asynchronous "band" play.
With it, each of the 2-4 players complete their individual instrument on their own time, submitting their score back to the 'band' afterward, at which time a total score and fan-increase is tallied and push-notification submitted back to each, making you feel far more connected than you would expect from such an otherwise solitary game.
Losing the plastic-instrument charade might at first seem a down-step too far for more casual players, but with its promise of a continually refreshed music library (its in-app music store already includes six two-packs of add-on tracks), Rock Band is a long, long overdue and essential musical addition to the App Store.
Small Worlds [David Shute, web]
The week's other best surprise -- going off indie-circle buzz -- is David Shute's Small Worlds, a Flash game entered into the Casual Gameplay Design Competition hosted by free/web powerhouse site JayIsGames.
Like so many indie efforts, the less said about the game up front the better: this CGDC's theme was 'Explore', and it's the play on exploration that makes Worlds so unique. Know, at least, that what it does best is take the iron-grip compulsion to 100% map screens in exploratory games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or Metroid and bring it directly to the fore of the game itself, making it its own reward.
If this seems too frustratingly vague, it's because the Small Worlds experience is short, sweet, and immediately available: don't miss carving out some 20 minutes of your weekend for it.
Eufloria [Rudolf Kremers & Alex May, PC]
Elsewhere, Rudolf Kremers and Alex May have finally released their Indie Games Festival finalist Eufloria, formerly known as Dyson. As you can see above, it's a game that'll feel familiar to any iPhone gamer that's taken part in the arcade-strategy planetary invasions of Galcon, but with a fantastically gorgeous ambient score (courtesy Brian 'Milieu' Grainger) and visual design that soothes you into and through its dizzying floral battles, it's truly in a league of its own. Find it either via the official homepage, or through its Steam release.
LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias [Frontier, Wii]
Frontier's platformer LostWinds marked the stateside debut of Nintendo's console downloadable service WiiWare, and its long-awaited sequel also marks the services 100th release, and arguably remains the best exclusive the service has to offer (sitting happily alongside 2D Boy's World of Goo and Gaijin's BIT.TRIP series).
Still unrivaled in its split approach to Wii-mote and joystick play, the game gives you both direct control over its vulnerable child-hero Toku, who's helped through his journey by Enril, a spirit of the wind, here represented by the flourishes of your Wii Remote. Its Melodias sequel brings every bit of the quiet charm of the original, and adds new seasonal powers giving you the ability to turn frozen ponds to deep-diving pools and a 'cyclone' ability to help puzzle your way further into its world and should be on top of the weekend download list for any Wii owner.
Space Invaders Extreme 2 [Taito, DS]
Finally, this week also saw the stateside release of another highly anticipated follow-up with Space Invaders Extreme 2: Taito's retro-futurist re-imagining of its arcade classic, still one of the finest reworkings in game history (edging out even their own masterful iPhone re-invention Space Invaders Infinity Gene).
Following down the same disco-dance road as Q Entertainment's cult-classic Rez, Invaders Extreme is classic play done up in techno-rave clothes, each shot contributing to the deep-thumping remix beat that runs underneath. Its sequel adds the still perplexingly devised 'Bingo mode', and remains as essential an experience as the first.
Source: Boing Boing | 24 Oct 2009 | 3:34 pm BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 10-18-2009Section:  We may not cover Apple 24x7… but we know someone who does! Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 Oct 2009 | 3:02 pm No Cheap Replacement For Hard Disks Before 2020siddesu writes with disappointing news to anyone who'd like to see solid-state storage dominate in the near-term future. "A new study of storage technology by the former CTO of Seagate predicts that hard disks will remain the cheapest storage technology in the next decade and probably beyond."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 24 Oct 2009 | 2:45 pm India says will start 3G auction in January (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Oct 2009 | 2:32 pm Your Windows 7 Upgrade: Why and How - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 Oct 2009 | 2:29 pm Sequoia Capital Invests In Bump Technologies, The iPhone-Tapping Data Swap App
Bump once again declined to comment on the funding and the amount, but the cat is out of the bag. We’ve heard the amount raised was over $1 million, and are looking into getting more details. For those who haven’t used it, Bump offers mobile apps that let you transfer information (like contacts and even multimedia) simply by tapping two phones together. The company is also Y Combinator-funded, and has been featured in Apple’s TV ads. Bump Technologies Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2009 | 2:12 pm Gene therapy experiment restores sight in a fewPHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Nine-year-old Corey Haas can ride his bike alone now, thanks to an experimental gene therapy that has boosted his fading vision with a single treatment.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Oct 2009 | 2:06 pm Startup School: Paul Buchheit Wings It, Tells Us What He’s Learned
FriendFeed Co-Founder, Paul Buchheit has taken the stage at Startup School at UC Berkeley. Buchheit is talking about what he’s learned so far as an entrepreneur, from creating Gmail to founding FriendFeed. Buchheit made some interesting points from his career at Intel, Google, FriendFeed and now Facebook. He’s also winging his presentation to see how it goes (and he’s doing a good job at it). Buchheit talked about his past at Google, where he is of course known as being the creator of Gmail, as well as Intel. At Intel, Buchheit learned that he didn’t enjoy working at large companies. People often ask what’s the formula to startup success. Buchheit answered with that Google had a formula for making successful products that everyone had to follow. Buchheit also mentioned that he left Google because “it seemed like a good idea.” He said the same thing for why FriendFeed sold to Facebook. Buchheit’s biggest learning experience from Facebook so far is that Facebook ins’t like Google. Buchheit talked about college, and whether or not to go. He said that you have to pay for college, while if you have a startup, you get paid. Also, the formula of success — there is none. You have to figure it out yourself. Paul Buchheit – Been at your job too long? QUIT! – Startup School 2009 from Alexa Lee on Vimeo. Video by Alexa Lee Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Source: Gizmodo | 24 Oct 2009 | 2:00 pm Mandatory H1N1 Vaccine For NY Health Workers Suspendedlunatick writes "The controversial mandatory swine flu vaccine for health care workers in NY has been suspended. While the reason for the suspension was stated as a shortage of the vaccine, a connection was found showing state Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines, M.D. and/or his wife may directly profit from the sale of the vaccine. Within hours of that connection being questioned on a radio show and the podcast being distributed, the announcement was made suspending the order. The health care community of NYS is petitioning the State Attorney general to investigate the connection."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 24 Oct 2009 | 1:43 pm White House opens Web site programming to public (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Oct 2009 | 1:37 pm White House moves to open-source programming for its Web site, takes code from publicWASHINGTON - The White House has relaunched its Web site with programming code written by the public. The White House says it has overhauled the technical aspects of the site and now...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Oct 2009 | 1:37 pm Rich-poor divide could be Copenhagen climate 'deal-breaker'World leaders could fail to reach a new climate deal at a UN summit in Copenhagen if rich countries refuse to financially help developing nations tackle climate change, government and NGO...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Oct 2009 | 1:35 pm Weekend Update 10.24.09–Drinking From the Fire Hose Edition [Digital Daily]
Wednesday morning, Boomtown opened with the exclusive confirmation we’d all been waiting for: Microsoft’s Bing search engine had inked deals with Twitter and Facebook. The age of real-time is upon us. As if the world weren’t complicated enough, Microsoft (MSFT) opened its own Apple stor… er, Microsoft stores to challenge Apple’s (APPL) retail success. Kara went in like lion and out like Carl Icahn this week with a Friday profile of the mogul. Icahn, activist investor and owner of the world’s best name to precede “haz cheezburger,” quietly left Yahoo’s board this week waving a flag of defeat at CEO Carol Bartz. Digital Daily took a hard look through the Windows this week. John covered the Microsoft’s release of the new leaner, meaner Windows 7. John’s conclusion: Microsoft’s lucky number could be seven, even if that’s just because it’s anything but Vista. Hopefully they programmed this one with 20 percent more customer goodwill. John reminded us this week that you never can tell what John McCain is going to do next, unless you follow the money. Maverick McCain introduced a bill to prohibit the Federal Communication Commission from implementing the Net neutrality rules it released in recent weeks. Digital Daily wasn’t too surprised to see Sen. McCain take the bold position, as it’s squarely in front of the same telecom industry that has been so generous to him in the past. To round things out, John covered a particularly interesting legal chess game/slap fight between Nokia and Apple. Nokia (NOK) may have sued Apple (AAPL) over cellphone patents, the analysts say, as a way to fend off possible suits in the other direction over Nokia’s multitouch assets. MediaMemo makes sense of that crazy New York state of mind. That clarity was more valuable than ever this week when Demand Media got in our faces. Peter explained Demand’s model for flooding the net with cheap news stories designed to maximize clicks and add revenue. We’ll have to see how the “content by the numbers” game plays out. In the latest installment of the Condé Nast saga, Peter brought news of a new attempt to grab some of those new media dollars. GQ Magazine will offer its December issue in an iPhone version. This move comes during a round of downsizing all over the Condé empire. While Condé Nast’s strategy seems to be to get users to pay for something they couldn’t get before, it appears that Hulu plans to ask users to pay for something they can currently get for free. Hulu doesn’t know how it will happen yet, but the video service is looking for a way to begin monetizing its vast collection of movies and TV shows. If the company goes with “Hulu Plus” as a subscription option, maybe Peter will get a nod to the naming rights. Walt spent his column inches this week on the evolution of the Mac. Midweek, Apple released refreshed versions of the iMac and MacBook, as well as the new Magic Mouse. All signs seemed positive with the new products, which feature updates like a larger screen option for the iMac and a rounder, more lovable case for the white plastic MacBook. When Walt went out to check the mail, Mossberg’s Mailbox was again full of Windows 7 questions. Walt discussed some of the new low-vision features in Windows 7, explained the admittedly complicated price points and told readers where to download the operating system. Katie brought a sparkle to the week with a review of Goby, the self-proclaimed search engine of fun. While she was impressed by the concept, she spotted some gaping holes in search returns, like hundreds of missing events she knew to be on the calendar and others that had already come and gone. Goby might be a great idea, but Katie won’t be relying on it until things like accuracy and timeliness are better addressed. Weekend Update can make two promises for what’s coming next. First: If it is happening in tech, you will find it at AllThingsDigital. Second: Weekend Update promises to keep the ghost puns to a minimum in the next edition. Source: All Things Digital | 24 Oct 2009 | 1:30 pm Startup School: Ev Williams And Biz Stone Admit Even Twitter Thought Twitter Was Stupid At First Ev Williams and Biz Stone have just taken the stage at Startup School, where they’ll be taking many questions form the audience. You can submit questions by tweeting a question like this “@poll _________” (where the blank is your question). I’ll be liveblogging the session. Q: What was the original motivation behind Twitter? Biz: We (Jack Dorsey and Stone) did a thing where we had two weeks to build something and demo. Build it, try it out over the weekend. If it sticks we may keep working on it. I was ripping out carpeting during a heat wave and then my phone vibrated in my pocket, and it was Ev. And it said he was sipping pinot noir. I realized I was totally engaged in this product. So we decided we should keep working on it. At the beginning it was “okay this seems compelling”. Early on someone said “twitter is fun but it isn’t useful”. Ev said “Neither is ice cream”. So what if it’s just fun? SXSW 2007 was a huge watershed moment for us, first time we saw real potential in the tool. Saw people tweeting about a good session to go to. Q: How long did the first version take to build? Q: What about scaling, was that a problem? We tell startups if you have that problem you’re lucky… Q: How did you estimate the size of the market? Q: Any advice you got early on that you didn’t take that you wish you had? Q: What advice to you have for anyone developing projects on Twitter? Q: I know when you got started people questioned what you were doing. What did people misunderstand? : Do you see yourselves going public? Q: How important was API to your success? Q: Geolocation. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2009 | 1:30 pm Twitter Finally Removing Deleted Tweets From Search Results
Now, when you delete a tweet, it will instantaneously be removed from Twitter’s search index as well. We’ve tested it out this morning, and it is in fact the case. Even better, those tweets are also removed from the search API. We’ve tested several third party apps, and none contain the tweets that I deleted. This is good news for users from a privacy perspective, as deleted tweets showing up in searches have been troublesome in the past. In one extreme example, a series of tweets that were sent the night two people died in a sweat lodge, but then were deleted, resurfaced on Twitter search. Of course, with retweets and various services indexing and pulling tweets now, there’s still a very high likelihood that anything you tweet, will still exist somewhere on the web even if you delete it. Speaking of indexing tweets, the reason Twitter finally got this done may have had something to do with its new search deals with Microsoft and Google. It’s one thing for deleted tweets to show up in Twitter Search, but imagine if a tweet you really didn’t want to send was sitting at the top of a Google search result page. Awkward. It’s also worth noting that a few services which specialized in finding deleted tweets, like Tweleted, are likely dead in the water now. I tried to use it this morning to find my removed tweets, and it returned no results. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2009 | 1:16 pm Coby issues battery recallSection: Video, Portable Video
The players involved in this recall have an 8.5-inch screen and the product number TF-DVD-8501. The recalled batteries all have serial numbers starting with “HY.” If you have one of the affected batteries remove it from the player immediately and call Coby at 877-305-2629 for a free replacement. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is asking anyone who has suffered injury or property damage as a result of an overheating battery to contact them here. You can also call their hotline at 800-638-2772. Read[PRNewsWire] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 Oct 2009 | 1:09 pm Why The Little Guy Can’t Get A Break In Consumer Electronics And 5 Ways To Find A Leg Up Every few months we get a press release about some great device from a no-name manufacturer who promises to change the world. One example was the TXTR reader from Germany last January. Another is zzzPhone, a company selling dual-SIM Android powered smartphones from China. Neither company produced much of anything.
Era of the Silicon Valley success story - two guys making something cool in a garage and selling it - is over, at least in hardware. The costs of making consumer electronics, including cellphones and computers, on a small scale have risen so much as to be prohibitive and then the marketing costs of that same hardware is even more prohibitive. Whereas, once, two nerds in a basement could build a computer company I worry that it takes more resources than any one man or woman can muster these days to even approach something like success.
Source: Gizmodo | 24 Oct 2009 | 12:35 pm Now Linux Can Get Viruses, Via Winefsufitch writes "Wine has advanced enough to make Linux not immune to Windows viruses. However, just like many Wine applications, it takes a bit of effort to get the program off the ground. Also, just like some Windows programs running via Wine, not all features may work — in this case, the crippling of the system, immunity to the task manager, identity theft, etc."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 24 Oct 2009 | 12:31 pm Appletell reviews Wacom’s Bamboo Touch and PenFROM APPLETELL - Wacom has refreshed their Bamboo line of tablets, adding touch functionality, among other things, in the process. And not only touch, but multitouch. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 Oct 2009 | 12:20 pm A look at how the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory (VAIL) is changing the world
Volkswagen is taking great strides in making the roads safer and remove the dangerous fun from driving by developing fully autonomous vehicles. I had a chance to talk to Dr. Burkhard Huhnke, director of the Volkswagen Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) about the future of the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory (VAIL) at Stanford University and how the technology developed there is being integrated into Volkswagen Group vehicles. You may be able to buy a real-life K.I.T.T before you know it. It probably won’t be a Pontiac though. You may recall that Volkswagen was the first team to complete the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005 by having a fully autonomous Volkswagen Touareg SUV (his name was Stanley, btw) drive 132 miles through the Mojave Desert. Then for the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, a VW Passat Wagon took second place behind Tartan Racing team from Carnegie Mellon University in a 60 mile urban course. But those two challenges are nothing compared to what’s on tap for next year: Pikes Peak in an autonomous Audi TT-S. CrunchGear: How about we start with an overview of the project. The VAIL is an initiative that we started here from our electronics research lab in Palo Alto to initialize automotive center at Stanford. We got the smartest people from all over the world in one place. We already had experience with the DARPA Grand Challenge race success. We won the desert race with the autonomous driving cars together with the Stanford racing team. Then we repeated the success in the Urban Challenge in 2007. So we thought how can we bring each competence together, create a platform for a convenient automotive industry and Silicon Valley partners to look into the future and find some solutions for the mobility, safety and environmentally-friendly problems, which we have to face together. The Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory funded a building, which will be dedicated and opened tomorrow (10/24/2009). We’ll fund the research projects with $750,000 per year for the next five years. CrunchGear: How is Stanford involved in the project? We expect first that we collaborate with the Stanford genius together on the solutions that we create for the future. We divided the VAIL topics into three major themes One is how do we want to drive autonomously in the urban environment. We have so many problems that we have to solve like direction recognition, lane warning, lane detection, but all these obstacles have to be observed by camera systems in the urban environment, which is one of the biggest challenges. What we would like to create for all of these three topics, and I’ll come back to the 2nd and 3rd, is initiatives. The vision for urban driving is to drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles autonomously and that involves traffic jams and obstacles. What can we do to provide to our drivers with? They want to text while driving and we have to make that safe. We already established systems in our current models like blind spot detections, adaptive cruse control but what’s the future for that? Can we already allow them to press the auto button to start texting? So that’s the vision. Drive along the highway and allow the driver to do something other than driving. The second vision is up to the limits together with the driving dynamics department at Stanford. If you come to a critical situation, you generally have to take the control over from the driver. Let me explain it to you this way: If you brake your car without control, you will definitely hit the obstetrical in front of you. Can you imagine that we can try to find the emergency parts for the driver and turn the car into a different path to avoid any impact any with the obstacle? It would be a smart system that acts within the limit’s range of the car that would find an emergency solution. The driver would never be able to do this because there is too much information within the milliseconds. The idea for up to the limits is to look at the best drivers to give us super examples how to react in critical situations. So we looked at a German rally driver that drives up Pike’s Peak. It’s a really critic race, but it’s a challenge for us to try to understand what makes this rally driver so special and get this knowledge into the car. We built a next generation autonomous car that’s able to drive like a rally drive and drift into the curves. It drives even in extreme situations. We think we can actually drive up hill to Pike’s Peak next year. That’s the second project. The third one is with multitasking. We actually sponsored a project seen in the NYT on what people are really able to multitask or are they not really able to focus on one task and fulfill that. It’s really an interesting study. But for us it’s really interesting because we would like understand what the perfect interface between humans and machines. Do you believe in your car? Do you believe that if you press the autopilot button that the car would actually do what you would expect. Or do you have blue screens like we experience everyday – I don’t want to blame Windows – but with our operating systems. We have to prepare the highest reliability for systems. But what do you expect in these relationships between the car and the driver in the future. These three founding purposes are the main intentions at VAIL. CrunchGear: What type of testing has the Pike’s Peak vehicle seen so far? We actually tested that at Salt Flats to have the open area available to be able drive up to the limits without any risks. It sounds crazy but we needed the smartest people actually at Stanford to prepare to the algorithms because you have to control systems again in the in-stable mode and the few years ago we thought it was impossible. But we did test already and we created a movie to show that’s possible and we think we can go one step farther and do this crazy race. Again I told you that it’s rally style driving. It’s really incredible; up to the limits. CrunchGear: One of the reason they use Pikes’s Peak is because of the environmental conditions. How does the altitude affect the vehicle? We have the best system actually to use for that in the Audi TT-S and it’s working perfect. We tried it already at Pike’s Peak in slow mode to figure out what type of problems we might have in that environment. CrunchGear: What else has changed in the Audi TT-S If you saw our Junior VW Passat Wagon urban environment, we had many roadblocks to avoid and accidents with any person in that car. We don’t need the rack on the roof anymore. We don’t need big sizes for that at all. It looks almost like a stock car. You would only see three antennas on top of the roof. That’s all. We fit the computer in the trunk. We really want to show off that we’re coming closer to an actual product. It’s not too far away.
Source: CrunchGear | 24 Oct 2009 | 12:15 pm A Tale of Two Windows 7stheodp writes "It was the best of operating systems, it was the worst of operating systems. When it comes to the merits of Windows 7, it looks like Slate's Farhad Manjoo and PC Magazine's John Dvorak are going to have to agree to disagree. Manjoo gives Windows 7 a big thumbs-up (a sincere one, unlike Linus!), calling it a 'crowning achievement,' while Dvorak is less than impressed, saying, 'Win 7 is really just a Vista martini. The operating system may have two olives instead of one this time out, but it's still made with the same cheap Microsoft vodka.' So, for those of you who've had a chance to check things out, are things really different this time?" Multiple readers have also pointed out that there have been problems with the download and installation of Windows 7 upgrades obtained through the student discount offer, which Microsoft has confirmed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 24 Oct 2009 | 11:26 am $79 Pantech Reveal hits the streets, or you can win oneSection: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile
Those looking to attempt scoop one of these phones for free can do so via Pantech’s contest on Facebook. To enter, simply become a fan of Pantech and make a Reveal-related post on the fan page wall. A new winner is chosen every day. AT&T’s new HTML mobile browser and att.net home page are preloaded on the Pantech Reveal. The browser is reportedly very fast and should be a standout feature. Other features include 3G service, GPS (with available turn-by-turn directions for a monthly fee), Napster and eMusic compatible as well as video and still pictures. Pantech is sending out a review unit so check back in as I share my thoughts on this new gadget. Product page: [AT&T] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 Oct 2009 | 11:05 am Orexigen obesity drug shows added benefits-studies* 34.5-48.2 pct of patients lose at least 10 pct of weightSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Oct 2009 | 11:00 am NASA Releases Cool, Free iPhone Applenehey writes "A new free iPhone app provided by NASA was released today. The app lists each of NASA's missions, and allows you to see a brief description, the latest news updates, images, videos, etc., corresponding to that mission. A timer is also provided for each mission, logging the days, hours, and seconds until (or since) the mission launch."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 24 Oct 2009 | 10:59 am Hot gaming news for the week of 10-18-2009Section:  No need to scour the interwebs for hot gaming news, Gamertell‘s already done that for you! Here’s a look at this week’s top stories…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 Oct 2009 | 10:42 am Danish PM warns of 'painfully slow' progress in climate talksDanish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen warned Saturday that the current pace of climate negotiations was too slow for an international agreement to be reached at a UN climate summit inSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Oct 2009 | 10:04 am Review: Fonera 2.0n
Review For those not sufficiently well-versed in FON, it’s kind of like Boingo for Communards. You buy a router and you automatically gain access to FON routers around the world – up to 700,000 in all. You can see a map of access points on the Fon website. The device itself costs $99 and is a small four-port router with one Internet input. It runs at 801.11n speeds and can act as a 3G-to-WiFi converter with the right hardware. You can also connect a hard drive to create a NAS server. When you’ve connected your router you log in type in a WPA key printed on the side of the device. You then can add all of your information including your YouTube, Facebook, and Picasa logins. Why? Because the router can take over your image and video uploads after you’ve completed them, offloading some of the upload time to the router itself. Want to download torrents? The Fonera box will do it for you while you sleep and it will save the downloads to the attached hard drive. The coolest thing, however, is how it shares your WiFi. You have complete control over how much bandwidth you want to share and you even even share in the revenue generated by the share. When you turn on the router it starts two access points, a public one and a locked private one. The public one displays a pay wall for users, the same pay wall that you will use to gain free access when you’re travelling. Bottom Line Regardless, it’s not expensive, there are plenty of great built-in features, and even if the FON dream fails you can still say that you’re supplying WiFi in the mode of “From each according to his DSL connection, to each according to his needs.”
Source: CrunchGear | 24 Oct 2009 | 10:00 am Nokia files lawsuit against AppleSection: Business News, Apple, Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones
The technology is multi-faceted and includes wireless data, security, encryption, and speech coding. Nokia says it doesn’t want to stop iPhone sales, it simply wants to be compensated for the use of its patents. Just last year Nokia reached a settlement with Qualcomm which required it to pay over $2 billion and arrange future royalties for use of Qualcomm’s 3G related technology. The companies say they plan to develop phones and mobile devices together. Apple has refused comment on the lawsuit. Read [Wall Street Journal] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 Oct 2009 | 9:02 am The Work Office: WPA-inspired participatory performance art The Work Office in New York City is a participatory performance art installation inspired by the Works Progress Administration of the Great Depression. Over the summer, the two administrators of The Work Office -- Katarina Jerinic and Naomi Miller -- interviewed, hired, and assigned creative types to do various, er, odd jobs, like reinterpretng a newspaper photograph, start an American tradition that you'd like to be preserved, or giving a concert for your houseplant. A week's wage is $23.50 and the paychecks are distributed at public parties/openings. Jerinic and Miller are currently seeking funds via Kickstarter to re-open The Work Office again soon. The Work Office (Thanks, Miss Heather Sparks!) Source: Boing Boing | 24 Oct 2009 | 8:42 am New “Get a Mac” ads target Windows 7FROM APPLETELL - “Time to upgrade… to a Mac” is the theme of the latest Get a Mac ads. Apple has, of course, seen an increase in its user base, something which Apple itself feels is fueled by a dislike of Vista. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 Oct 2009 | 8:27 am The Macalope Weekly: 7 herbs and spices (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - The Macalope pays a visit to an old friend this week. Well, more specifically, a crazy old friend. Whoâs not actually a friend. More just a crazy old man. Then itâs off to the Microsoft Store opening in Scottsdale Arizona, where the dress code is surprisingly formal. And, last, youâll never believe whatâs missing from Windows 7.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Oct 2009 | 8:10 am Facebook Gets Another Homepage Makeover - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 Oct 2009 | 8:06 am Facebook Gets Another Homepage Makeover (PC World)PC World - Facebook rolled out a revamped home page on Friday. The changes once again shake up the information that you see by default when you visit your home page on the social networking site. It demonstrates how Facebook continues to adapt and try to find the right balance of status updates and details to deliver to users.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Oct 2009 | 8:05 am Hulu to start charging next yearSection: Business News, Web, Websites, Online Music/Video
When the news broke, Twitter erupted. Angry users began throwing the idea of a site boycott around and blasting the decision. “Hulu will be the next Megavideo. Don’t companies get it? We don’t pay for media anymore. If we appreciate the song/movie, we’ll buy it!” said one user. “The good times are over,” lamented another. “Screw you, Hulu!” Hulu isn’t the first online media outlet to decide to implement a pay model. Newsday, a Long Island based newspaper, has announced it will begin to charge non-subscribers $20 a month, or $5 a week, to access the paper’s website. With newspapers dying and more and more people relying on the Internet to get their news, entertainment and other information, such moves make sense. The old media is starting to realize not only the large audiences the net offers, but also the need to embrace new media sources to keep their bottom line up. However asking people to pay for something they are used to getting for free is never easy. Hopefully, Hulu will find a way to soften the blow and make the change easy to swallow. If Hulu does decide to make more than just special programming available for a fee, it may well drive business to such sites as Amazon and iTunes. They both offer TV shows for purchase either per episode or full season, but unlike Hulu which doesn’t let you save content to your hard drive or mobile device, they do. That’s a big deal to a lot of folks. There are some third party programs that claim to let you download and save Hulu content but they aren’t free and likely violate Hulu’s ToS. Offering such a download and save feature might be just what Hulu needs to make their transition to a pay service have a better chance at success. Read [LA Times] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 Oct 2009 | 7:32 am Why the little guy can’t get a break in consumer electronics and 5 ways to find a leg up
Every few months we get a press release about some great device from a no-name manufacturer who promises to change the world. One example was the TXTR reader from Germany last January. Another is zzzPhone, a company selling dual-SIM Android powered smartphones from China. Neither company produced much of anything. Era of the Silicon Valley success story – two guys making something cool in a garage and selling it – is over, at least in hardware. The costs of making consumer electronics, including cellphones and computers, on a small scale have risen so much as to be prohibitive and then the marketing costs of that same hardware is even more prohibitive. Whereas, once, two nerds in a basement could build a computer company I worry that it takes more resources than any one man or woman can muster these days to even approach something like success.
The first sad truth is that most consumer electronics cannot be made in “expensive” countries like the US or the Euro zone. During a visit to the Suunto watch factory in Finland, for example, I learned that while many of the watches are made near Helsinki a large percentage of them are made overseas and drop shipped from Asia. The company just couldn’t make anything in bulk without resorting to off-shoring. This means you either invest in an expensive small run of hardware overseas, something the Asian manufacturers do not do particularly well, or invest in a massive run of inexpensive hardware in Asia that you risk having to recycle if your company goes belly-up. This doesn’t mean you can’t make it big anymore. Take TiVo, for example. It sprung out of obscurity a decade ago and filled a niche in the living room that has yet to be challenged by any manufacturer. Unfortunately, when someone – probably Samsung, LG, or Apple – figures out how to take over the DVR market, TiVo is toast. The same is true of Palm who, to all intents and purposes, is now a small company. The big guys are eating their lunch thanks to Android and it will take some fancy footwork to survive. The small guys are, sadly, always at the precipice of failure. Other companies like Neuros and Slingbox simply sell a wrapper for their software. Sometimes this works but sadly it also leads to retrenchment when companies like Slacker pull out of the hardware business due to lack of interest and cost. Then there are success stories like like FyreTV [NSFW] which will do well because they focus on porn. Not everyone can focus on porn.
The second problem facing small CE companies is marketing. Micro-companies like Zeo and FitBit get a huge initial boost thanks to online media but then disappear once the news cycle has moved on, leaving the companies with amazing technology in the dark. This is an era of constant marketing, a situation that forces companies like Apple and Sony to put their message in front of consomers almost constantly in multiple media. Anecdotally, I’ve seen companies receiving 8,000-10,000 pageviews with one good launch, more if its an interesting product. That initial boost translates into a percentage of good sales – those are good eyeballs, not just random traffic – but it rarely turns into repeat or continuing business. That said, here are some of the best practices I’ve seen from small to medium CE companies who know how to do it right. This may not apply to you and yours, but it’s something to think about when you get excited about a product (Gizmondo anyone?) only to find it has crashed and burned. 1. Tell multiple stories. When you start out you have one story: Why your product is good. Prepare multiple stories for the next few years including ideas tagged to pressing issues of the month or year. Do you have a fitness gadget? Work on a story about post-holiday stress and weight gain. Have a DVR? Put yourself in the Super Bowl frenzy with blogger outreach and giveaways. That first boost is nice but if you’re a small company it’s the next four boosts that will push you through the rest of the year. 2. Price yourself competitively if not suicidally. Even if it’s suicidal, price yourself at just above the average price in your market. Aiming at rich, cosseted professionals is nice but the sharper Image model of doing business is over. Consumers want more for their money (even if they often get considerably less) so while $999 might seem like a nice number for a NAS or a piece of audio gear the consumer is more accustomed to $499. 3. Be quiet. Hide your light under a bushel. Patent your idea and don’t launch until the product is completely ready. I’ve seen too many companies splattered with the vaporware monicker because they failed to deliver on time or at all. Once you’re done, support your product forcefully and quietly. If someone has a problem, address it quickly. Send out new hardware before putting someone through tech support hell. 4. Change your trade dress regularly. This fickle market thinks anything that looks the same as it did last year is old. Why do iPods change every few months? People want to think they’re buying the new hotness, not the old and busted. If you can’t change your trade dress, change your website. 5. Slow and steady wins the race. None of the greats made it overnight and it’s harder than ever to truly make it. If you’re a small CE manufacturer, Godspeed. It’s a tough race so don’t sprint it. For a great look at this topic, read The Song of the Powersquid, our 6-part story on the creation of a CE product.
Source: CrunchGear | 24 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am Travel help for road warriors part of expanded iPhone apps catalog (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - Two new apps aimed at business travelers are among the latest additions to InfoWorld.com's iPhone business apps catalog -- an interactive listing of Phone apps of use to professionals, businesses, and IT staff. The two travels apps are Airport Maps, which now provides facilities maps of major Canadian airports in addition to U.S. ones, and Flight Track Pro, which lets you check real-time flight information directly from your iPhone.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am The Back Burner: Things we didn’t post this week
A big thank you to everybody for filling our tips-at-crunchgear-dot-com inbox with wonderful, unique, and newsworthy items. Here are a few that we missed.
Hi Tony, Let me just make sure that you and I are huffing the same glue here. As I understand it, you’re looking for some advice on how to spend two years of your life similar to how an average person spends two years of their own life? What have YOU been doing up until this point? Whatever it is, keep doing it. The average person’s life is pretty mundane and boring and it sounds like you’re looking to fit in with the rest of us. As for activities to avoid: anything that has to do with poo from any species, print journalism, or a combination of the two. You’re pretty much safe with anything else.
Hi Cynthia, The title of your e-mail intrigues me and, although I can certainly appreciate the idea of loving someone from the inside out, you really glossed over that whole “what I am” thing. I probably don’t need to ask, seeing as though you’re identifying yourself as someone named Cynthia while the sender’s name is John Silver. Sure I’m flattered, maybe even a bit curious, but I’ve had bad luck with my profile at (singles). If you don’t mind though, I have a friend named Tony who’s looking for at least a two-year relationship. I can pass your e-mail along to him if you like. Just take it slow, he doesn’t want to rush into anything.
Ryan, Boy am I glad you sent this message over. We have a LOT of inventory to unload. In particular, we have an excessive amount of the following words:
Anything you could give us for them would be fine. Click here to read previous Back Burner posts…
Source: CrunchGear | 24 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am Universal Phone Charger Coming SoonITU has given its stamp of approval to an energy-efficient one-charger-fits-all new mobile phone solution.The announcement comes as ITU lobbies hard to have the essential role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) recognized in the draft Copenhagen Agreement as a key part of the solution towards mitigating climate change.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Oct 2009 | 5:30 am Illegal Tiger Skin Trading In ChinaThe Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) recently went undercover in China to reveal the illegal tiger skin trade there.Covert filming showed the trading and selling of tigers and other rare animals, such as snow leopards.The skins are sold as luxury items and are used for clothes and home decor.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Oct 2009 | 5:20 am Americans More Skeptical About Global WarmingA new poll released this week shows that Americans are becoming more skeptical about global warming.The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press polled 1,500 US adults from September 30 to October 4.The new poll found that only 57 percent of Americans believe there is “solidSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Oct 2009 | 5:15 am Spectator throws out public safety, embraces sensationalism and AIDS denialismA film that denies the link between HIV and AIDS is being screened in the UK by the Spectator, in the name of "spurring debate." The Spectator's editor, Fraser Nelson, describes his motivation: "It's one of these hugely emotive subjects, with a fairly strong and vociferous lobby saying that any open discussion is deplorable and tantamount to Aids denialism. Whenever any debate hits this level, I get deeply suspicious."And here comes our Ben Goldacre, explaining why "deeply suspicious" (which, to my ears, is a foreshortened phrase whose entirety is "deeply suspicious that I might sell a crapload of newspapers through a reckless disregard for public safety and the truth") is deeply stupid and deeply dangerous: Of course people will have some concerns. Despite international outcry, from 2000 to 2005 South Africa implemented policies based on the belief that HIV does not cause Aids, and declined to roll out adequate antiretroviral therapy. It has been estimated in two separate studies that around 350,000 people died unnecessarily in South African during this period. We should also remember that "teach the controversy" is a technique beloved of American creationists, and of antivaccination campaigners (with whom Fraser Nelson has also, oddly, flirted). These groups know that in our modern media, where truth is halfway between the two most extreme views, to insert doubt is to win.Aids denialism at the Spectator Source: Boing Boing | 24 Oct 2009 | 3:00 am From the 3G Industry Summit in Kunshan, China: 16 demos from Chinese mobile startups
Earlier this week, I was in Kunshan, China, to attend the 3G Industry Summit [CN], a four-day event that has attracted a few dozen speakers and an audience of over 200 people, making it one of the biggest of its kind in this country. The annual event is organized by the Kunshan government and Mobile 2.0 Forum, a communication platform with more than 1,500 members, almost single-handedly run by industry veteran Leo Wang.
The summit reassured me of one thing: The Chinese market for mobile hardware, software and contents is big already and it's bound to become huge in the very near future.
Information and stats on China's mobile web sector and profiles of 16 Chinese mobile startups after the jump.
Source: MobileCrunch | 24 Oct 2009 | 2:55 am
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A little before 9pm on Wednesday night and I’m standing on the ‘VIP’ balcony of San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom, holding a can of something called ‘MySpace Buzz’ and waiting for Weezer to take to the stage. It’s a weird scene, all told, and not just because I thought Weezer was dead.
Using and enjoying the feeder is a two step process. The first is to acquaint the hummingbirds with the feeder. We set an old can of paint on a small shelf on the side of the barn and slipped the feeder onto the can. It wasn't long before the hummingbirds found it, and after a little searching, found the feeding station. Then we let them get familiar with the feeder for a few days. Finally we set a chair next to the shelf, removed the feeder from the can, slipped it on and waited. One never forgets the first time a hummingbird suddenly arrives at the feeder right in front of your eyes. 
This news hardly comes as surprising, but according to Jim Cady who is the current president of Slacker, the G2 will be phased out sometime during the second half of 2010. 
We knew it had to happen. There was no way the great white–and blue, and whatever color Yahoo (YHOO) is–search engine sharks could resist the fire hoses full of text-chum Twitter produces 24/7. Heck, Twitter even chops it’s textual fish heads into lovely bite-sized chunks. 
While most users may have not realized it, Twitter has had a rather annoying problem for some time now: If you deleted a tweet, it would still reside in Twitter Search’s index. This meant that if you said something you didn’t mean to, or made a mistake that you hoped to correct by deleting the tweet, it was still easily accessible by anyone who simply typed your username into Twitter search. Finally, that’s no longer the case.
Coby Electronics has announced a recall of nearly 20,000 rechargeable batteries sold with its portable DVD players between January 2007 and September 2009. The electronics manufacturer says they may overheat, creating a fire hazard. So far they have had 10 reports of such an incident and 8 of them resulted in fires. Fortunately no one has been injured.
Pantech and AT&T kick off the holiday line up of quick messaging phones with the release of the sleek slider Reveal. One of the only phones I am aware of that has both number keys and qwerty keys always active, the Reveal is destined to become a hit with the texting crowd. The phone will cost $79.99 after 2-year contract, AT&T mail-in rebate.
Just as Apple prepares to introduce the iPhone in China, they were hit with a lawsuit from Nokia alleging patent infringement. The suit pits the world’s largest manufacturer of cellphones against the maker of the most popular smartphone in history. Nokia says Apple refused to enter into a licensing agreement, unlike the 40 other cellphone makers who use Nokia’s technology. 
The rumors that started in June appear to be becoming a reality. Hulu will soon start charging for content. Hulu board member Chase Cary said it’s time for the site to adopt a “meaningful subscription model.” He was quick to add that the entire site would not be fee based but was unsure exactly what the pay wall would contain. He suggested maybe the site would offer special programming or advanced screenings.
![nosoliters[1]](http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/nosoliters1.jpg "nosoliters[1]")
