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Troubling portrait emerges of Fort Hood suspect (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 Nov 2009 | 3:16 am Fish Tank Friday: BlowfishThis fish tank is a real object, designed for a real (albeit conceptual) purpose. I’ll tell you all about it after the jump. But first, take a good look at that picture, and see if you can guess...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 2:34 am Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of San Francisco archival film night, Dec 4Jeff sez, "'Guerrilla archivist' Rick Prelinger is once again joining forces with the Long Now Foundation for the 4th in his series of screenings titled, 'Lost Landscapes of San Francisco.' In the first talk of this series, Rick unveiled a jaw-dropping, now-famous restoration of a first-person perspective streetcar ride up Market Street, circa 1905."Rick Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 4 « Spots Unknown San Francisco (Thanks, Jeff!)  Source: Boing Boing | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:56 am Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of San Francisco archival film night, Dec 4Jeff sez, "'Guerrilla archivist' Rick Prelinger is once again joining forces with the Long Now Foundation for the 4th in his series of screenings titled, 'Lost Landscapes of San Francisco.' In the first...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:56 am Succeedblog: awesome stuff captioned with SUCCEED The Succeedblog is a lovely, optimistic, "wonderful things" approach to the web -- rather than amusing its readers with pictures of bad things, captioned with "FAIL," it focuses on pictures of great things, captioned with "SUCCEED". Lovely.
Succeedblog
(via Make) Succeedblog: awesome stuff captioned with SUCCEEDThe Succeedblog is a lovely, optimistic, "wonderful things" approach to the web -- rather than amusing its readers with pictures of bad things, captioned with "FAIL," it focuses on pictures of great things,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:52 am Midnight Droid madness in Manhattan - CNET News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:50 am Sofa modelled on brainwavesThe Brainwave Sofa is a sofa modelled on your very own brainwaves. Stop thinking spiky thoughts. Try to think, you know, cushy. Soft. Inviting. That's it. Right there. Hold it now. Print! Dutch industrial...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:50 am Sofa modelled on brainwaves The Brainwave Sofa is a sofa modelled on your very own brainwaves. Stop thinking spiky thoughts. Try to think, you know, cushy. Soft. Inviting. That's it. Right there. Hold it now. Print! Dutch industrial designer Lucas Maassen, co-designer of the Brainwave Sofa with Belgian designer Dries Verbruggen (of Unfold), had his brain activity measured at the EPI (Eindhoven Psychology Institute) while he closed his eyes for 3 seconds. The moment a person closes his eyes, during this measurement, the Alpha-activity becomes 8 to 12 Hertz larger. This Alpha-activity prepares the brain for multiplication of the visual stimuli when the eyes are opened again. Such a measurement creates a 3D Landscape of (brain)waves, which looks different with every measurement. This three dimensional form, in other words is a unique display.Brainwave sofa by Unfold & Lucas Maassen (via Medgadget) Source: Boing Boing | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:50 am LHC Shut Down Again — By Baguette-Dropping BirdPhilip K Dickhead writes "Is Douglas Adams scripting the saga of sorrows facing the LHC? These time-traveling Higgs-Boson particles certainly exhibit the sign of his absurd sense of humor! Perhaps it is the Universe itself, conspiring against the revelations intimated by the operation of CERN's Large Hadron Collider? This time, it is not falling cranes, cracked magnets, liquid helium leaks or even links to Al Qaeda, that have halted man's efforts to understand the meaning of life, the universe and everything. It now appears that the collider is hindered from an initial firing by a baguette, dropped by a passing bird: 'The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:50 am Sofa modelled on brainwaves
Dutch industrial designer Lucas Maassen, co-designer of the Brainwave Sofa with Belgian designer Dries Verbruggen (of Unfold), had his brain activity measured at the EPI (Eindhoven Psychology Institute) while he closed his eyes for 3 seconds. The moment a person closes his eyes, during this measurement, the Alpha-activity becomes 8 to 12 Hertz larger. This Alpha-activity prepares the brain for multiplication of the visual stimuli when the eyes are opened again. Such a measurement creates a 3D Landscape of (brain)waves, which looks different with every measurement. This three dimensional form, in other words is a unique display. Brainwave sofa by Unfold & Lucas Maassen (via Medgadget) Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:49 am UPDATE 3-Japan's Elpida to outsource chips to Taiwan's ProMOS* To outsource DDR3 chips to meet demand for faster PCsSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:47 am Sweet Revenge: Phone-Jack Powered Lamp Rips Off Telcos
A lamp this cheap and ugly would never usually get a mention here at the Lab, but as you will have guessed, there is a clever twist. Instead of hooking up to the mains or even a USB port to get its power, this 8-LED reading light plugs into the telephone socket. Yes, at last you have a use for your abandoned landline socket, something for the person whose phone never rings. The cord ends with an RJ11 jack and takes power from the phone company, the supplier of the trickle of electricity to your phone. And remember, this power stays on even when your regular power is out. Which leads us to the question: Is this legal? I know that in the UK, anything that you can hook up to a phone jack need to be certified for that use. It’s hard to see telcos being happy about this freeloading lamp, so we guess you should grab one of these pink plastic monstrosities while you can. The price? An almost-free €3.18 ($4.73). Product page [UXSight via Oh Gizmo!] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:43 am Stephen Fry's Twitter Wobble: I Know Just How He Feels [Voices]By David Schneider, Writer, Guardian.co.uk Although my passport has me down as British, anyone monitoring my computer use over the last few months would know I should really have dual nationality as a citizen of the UK and of Twitter. So imagine my panic when the Twitter King, Stephen Fry, threatened to walk away from the social network this weekend because of “aggression and unkindness”. And then yesterday Katie Price broke down in no-more-than-140-character sections, telling her “haters” to just attack her and get it off their, er, chest (her words). Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:26 am Developers Stealing From Developers: An App Store Tale [Voices]By Jeff Smykil, Writer, Ars Technica If you are Paul Haddad of TapBots, LLC, it isn’t unusual to get requests for contract work. When your applications are as eye-catching and functional as his, you garner attention. So when he received an e-mail earlier this month with a subject line of “I’m interested in Tapbots,” it didn’t really come as much of a surprise. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:21 am Buying Twitter Followers? [Voices]By Stephen Baker, Senior Writer, BusinessWeek I’ve been carrying out a small experiment in one of the areas of greatest potential abuse of social media: Twitter marketing. If you Google “Twitter buy followers,” you’ll see lots of choices. One outfit called Quick Online Tips offers 100,000 followers for a mere $3,479. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:17 am Beamer Makes a Case for Flash on the iPhone
Quirky’s, erm, quirky approach to product design and marketing seems to be working. The company’s latest crowd-sourced gadget is the Beamer, which is not a German car that turns its owner into a boorish prig but an iPhone case with its own built-in flashlight. And like its Powercurl cord-winder and Kickster Nano case, the Beamer production line will only be powered up when enough orders have been received — 500 in this case. The Beamer itself is a two-part plastic case with an LED lamp on the back and a recessed silicon switch on the side. Hit the switch once and you get ten seconds of bright light, enough time to snap a photo with the iPhone’s camera. Press it twice, quickly, and the light stays on until you press the switch again. The case runs off a lithium coin-cell, like many bicycle lights, and should last for around ten hours before it dies. If you want one, sign up now and have your card billed for $32 when production starts. Product page [Quirky] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:14 am Social-Media Pranksters Had Fun With Walmart's Caskets [Voices]By Craig Daitch, Writer, Ad Age When it comes to social media, it’s best to start with a solid listening strategy. And while you’re fine-tuning the “what, where, when and how” as you’re eavesdropping on conversations around the social web, remember that while analysis can be assisted through technology, it’s by no means a fully automated process. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:13 am UPDATE 1-Melrose gets approval to develop Bulgarian gas field* Says trying to ramp up gas projects in Bulgaria, RomaniaSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:10 am The Beatles Finally Go DigitalBy Chris Scott Barr For years people have been predicting that The Beatles would finally make their way onto the iTunes store. Fans collectively held their breath when Apple announced a press conference...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:09 am TechCrunch/OfferPal Drama – Much Ado About Very Little [Voices]By Sean Ryan, CEO, Meez.com So the inevitable “offers are scams” story finally blew on to the scene last week at the Virtual Goods Summit when TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington attacked OfferPal’s Anu Shukla for having misleading offers (e.g. sign up for Netflix, get 10,000 coinz) as a core part of her business. Anu responded with the now classic line “shit, doubleshit, and bullshit”, and the fun escalated over the past few days (see TC post here). At this point, market leader Zynga has thrown itself on its sword, saying it had made some mistakes with offers but was correcting them, MySpace has rushed out a press release against scam-like offers, Hot Or Not is proclaiming its saintliness by not accepting offers, blah, blah, blah. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:07 am UPDATE 3-NEC plans $1.5 bln share sale after losses* Money to help NEC restructure, shift to cloud computingSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:05 am Almost Famous: Brizzly's Chris Wetherell [Voices]By Drake Martinet | Intern, All Things Digital, Intern, All Things Digital A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about. This week: A video visit with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Chris Wetherell and his creation, Brizzly, a Web-based social media reader, one of many in the hot status update arena.
Who: Chris Wetherell What: VP of Technology, Thing Labs, creator of Brizzly. Why: Brizzly is a Web-based social media software client, for microblogging sites like Twitter or Facebook, expands attachments automatically and allows users to describe and define the trending topics for all its users to see. It’s in invite-only beta. Where: @cw (Twitter); massless.org (Wetherell’s personal blog); San Francisco (HQ for Thing Labs and Brizzly) Who else: TweetDeck, Seesmic, TwitIQ Five Stats You Won’t Find in his Facebook ProfileWorst Job: Assembly line at Fujitsu, making rack servers Has a Geek Crush on: Mihai Parparita, Google developer in Boston Gadget of the Moment: Roku’s digital video box. “It’s got Netflix, You Tube and TV. Damn.” Wishes There Was an App for: The legal arena. “They need to, like, use a computer.” Fails at: Anything related to email Bio in 140 CharactersFrom Beaverton, Ore. Dropped out of Berkeley. Got hungry as an indie rock drummer. @Google Reader. Left Google, invented Brizzly. The Five QuestionsWhy should I care about Brizzly? It depends on what you’re looking for. If one of the things that interests you is how a large community is experiencing life–I mean really interested in the community and not just the idea of your friends–then Brizzly does that a little more easily than other things. [Brizzly's assets are] no small difference for those who are interested in it. Why are all Twitter-related logos, including yours, so darn cute?
Yeah, we’re a little cheeky, right? I think it’s probably just because of a pendulum swing. I mean, the last thing [Thing Labs' CEO Jason Shellen] and I worked on was the exact opposite. Google Reader is not cuddly. It’s friendly, but cuddly it isn’t. The other thing is, we were hoping to try what strong branding is like–in terms of anthropomorphic animals. The bear design [was drawn by] both Jason and [Twitter Co-founder] Biz Stone. What can we expect from Thing Labs and Brizzly three months out? We will have at least three richer sets of experiences, some of which include entirely different products all connected through our letsbetrends.com API. Every geek has a memory where they saw something new and had to say to themselves, “Dang, I love living in the future.” What’s yours? One big one for me was at Google–it was my first day and someone says, “Hey, have they taken you to see the robots yet?” I was like, “Hahaha… No.” They took me to this building where there was a room filled with these Rube Goldbergesque mechanical devices. Large cages with metal bars and wires, culminating in this ball in the center. This girl climbed into the thing. She put her feet in these stirrups and sat in this weird chair, and then this book slides out. The girl started tapping her feet on this base drum pedal and doing this thing with her hands, and then the book slides away [they were scanning the books]. I was like, “What is this?” and they said, “Well, this is Ocean [the internal name for Google Books].” What struck me was the scale. It was clear to me that they were going to scan ridiculous amounts of information very, very quickly, and I realized: Whoa, THIS is very different.” Are you really competitive with rivals? I just don’t have that kind of fight in me. I mean, I want to kick my own ass. I know there are lots of guys out there who can totally drop the names of someone they want to just crush. I just don’t have it. I get more frustrated with me, more than anyone else. I’m like Jim Carrey in “Liar Liar”: “I’m kicking my ass.” The In Living Color Interview[ See post to watch video ] Source: All Things Digital | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:05 am Not April Fools Anymore: Tauntaun Sleeping Bag Now AvailableRemember the Tauntaun sleeping bag from April 1st? If so, you probably remember this from April 3rd: ATTN Tauntaun Fanatics! Due to an overwhelming tsunami of requests from YOU THE PEOPLE, we have decided...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:04 am Meet Drake Meeting Brizzly: A Spanking New ATD Feature [BoomTown]
Today, All Things Digital debuts a new feature called “Almost Famous” in our Voices section. No, it is not about Kate Hudson and nascent rock stars. Well, you might meet geek rock stars to be. Focused on innovative, interesting or just plain odd start-ups, we thought it was a good way for ATD readers to get a gander at some up-and-coming ideas and trends. We cover start-ups, of course, on the site, but–given we have a small staff that breaks a lot of big-company news–it is not on a regular time frame. So, while we are no good at predicting what will work and what will not and who will make it and who will fail, every Friday, Drake Martinet will be paying a video interview visit with, asking some questions of and gleaning a few pertinent stats about a wide range of companies. Here’s our first effort: Chris Wetherell, creator of Brizzly, a Web-based social media reader. The San Francisco start-up, which just rolled out support for Twitter lists last night, is also just wrapping up a new $600,000 round of funding, according to Jason Shellen, CEO of Thing Labs, from which Brizzly sprung. Brizzly had already raised $1.5 million from Polaris Venture Partners last year. Now, it is getting more cash from investors such as Ron Conway to further its software and other efforts. But don’t rely on BoomTown for info about Brizzly–check out Drake’s take. Source: All Things Digital | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:03 am Zynga CEO Mark Pincus: “I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues”
But what he didn’t say in that blog post is that Zynga has been scamming users from the beginning quite intentionally as part of their revenue model. Rather, he pointed much of the blame at middlemen offer companies: “We need to be more aggressive and have revised our service level agreements with these providers requiring them to filter and police offers prior to posting on their networks.” Last spring, though, he gave a much clearer explanation to an audience at a Startup@Berkeley mixer, admitting that scamming users was part of Zynga’s business model from the start. And it was all caught on video. I think everyone sort of knew that this was exactly Zynga’s gameplan. But to hear it said so directly is just shocking. The full 30ish minute video is here. We’ve taken the relevant section of the video, roughly starting at around the 10:40 mark, and embed it below. From the video:
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Source: TechCrunch | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:02 am Zynga CEO Mark Pincus: "I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues"Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said earlier this week that he intends to make sure his company's games don't include scammy offers in the future. Our full background on this story is here. But what he didn't say...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:02 am TABLE-Insight -1qtr parent results3 months ended 3 months ended 6 months to Year toSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:01 am The Sluggish Pace Toward An IPO [Voices]By Scott Austin, Lead Editor, Venture Capital Dispatch, The Wall Street Journal In light of Ancestry.com’s IPO today, tech site Vator.tv calculated the average age of the venture-backed tech companies that have gone public this year. As its chart below shows, most of these companies are downright old in tech years – in fact, Derek Jeter’s New York Yankees have won five World Series in the average time, 13 years, they made it to the public markets. Read the rest of this post on the original site
Source: Gizmodo | 6 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am Sean Parker's "Causes" to Leave MySpace: Does It Matter?The wildly popular nonprofit fundraising application Causes reportedly emailed users of its MySpace app on Tuesday to tell them that all Causes will be removed from MySpace on Friday morning, in three...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:56 am UPDATE 5-Sumitomo Trust, Chuo Mitsui say to merge* Share swap scheduled for April 2011, full merger year laterSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:56 am UPDATE 1-Coloplast Q4 EBIT tops consensus, to buy back sharesCOPENHAGEN, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Danish healthcare products maker Coloplast posted a slightly bigger rise than expected in fourth-quarter operating profit and said it planned to buy back up to 1 billion...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:54 am Carlyle to buy restaurant chain in $232 Mln MBOTOKYO, Nov 6 (Reuters) - The Carlyle Group [CYL.UL] said on Friday it would buy a Japanese restaurant chain operator in a 21 billion yen ($230 million) management buyout, its second deal in Japan in two...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:53 am Southern Telecom gets 3 bln rouble credit linesMOSCOW, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Russian regional fixed-line telecom operator Southern Telecom has secured 3 billion roubles ($103 million) of credit lines to fund current activities and refinance debts.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:41 am TABLE-AnGes MG -9-mth group resultsRESULTS RESULTS Sales 489 mln 701 mlnSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:40 am KPN to sell some Belgian assets - paperBRUSSELS, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Dutch telecoms group KPN is considering the sale of its business-customer unit and fibre network in Belgium, Belgian daily De Tijd reported on Friday, citing several unidentified...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:39 am Transgender papayaTransgender papaya: scientists change the sex of a tropical fruit to help farmers. With papaya, there are three options: male, female, "intersexed." The latter taste best, but don't breed so well. (via...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:25 am Transgender papayaTransgender papaya: scientists change the sex of a tropical fruit to help farmers. With papaya, there are three options: male, female, "intersexed." The latter taste best, but don't breed so well. (via oxbloodruffin)Source: Boing Boing | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:25 am Transgender papayaTransgender papaya: scientists change the sex of a tropical fruit to help farmers. With papaya, there are three options: male, female, "intersexed." The latter taste best, but don't breed so well. (via...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:25 am Woman Objects To Giving Cell Phone Number To Her Boss (Dear Abby)Dear Abby - DEAR ABBY: My boss wants my cell phone number for "work purposes." He has trouble with limits, and I am reluctant to give it to him. I don't want to receive text messages, unsolicited calls or contact outside of work. My private life is just that -- private.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:16 am China bureaucratic war over online Warcraft heats up (Reuters)Reuters - China's Culture Ministry has accused the publishing watchdog of abusing its authority by threatening access to the popular online game, World of Warcraft, stoking bureaucratic rivalry over control of the Internet.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:14 am Samsung dual screen camera big bucket of fail
Samsung really wants you to like this camera, as evidenced by the massive media campaign that they’ve been running (smiling monkeys, anyone?) but it seems to have been for naught. Wired reviewed the camera today and they’ve rated this one a 4/10. In addition to the laundry list of problems listed above, the image quality is also poor, much less then you would expect from a 12.2 megapixel camera.
Source: CrunchGear | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am HBO's "Terror in Mumbai""Terror in Mumbai," an HBO film premiering Nov. 19, explores the planning of the Mumbai terror attacks with extensive cellphone audio of terrorists coordinating attacks and preparing to die. (Thanks, Susannah Breslin)Source: Boing Boing | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am Finally: Panasonic to convert Sanyo into 100% subsidiary next month
The deal has been in the making for months now, but yesterday Panasonic finally announced a tender offer for Sanyo Electric, paving the way to convert Sanyo into a wholly owned subsidiary as early as the middle of next month. The tender offer is being supported by Sanyo’s board, and the company’s three main shareholders (all of them are in the finance sector) have agreed to sell their shares to Panasonic. The shares from the companies account for 50.13% of all Sanyo shares. Both the Sanyo brand and the company’s listing at the Tokyo Stock Exchange remain untouched however. Panasonic says the primary goal of the acquisition was to boost the company’s position in the field of green energy, i.e. by tapping Sanyo’s expertise in batteries and solar panels. One of Sanyo’s biggest hits in the past few years has been their eneloop series of rechargeable batteries and related products. The new giant will rival Japan’s biggest electronics company, Hitachi, in terms of sales.
Source: Gizmodo | 6 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am ScamVille: New Offerpal CEO Admits Mistakes, Makes Bold Promises
Garrick, who has been the CEO of Offerpal for less than 48 hours, is already taking a polar opposite approach to his predecessor. He left a lengthy comment, reprinted below, on a post earlier today about Facebook’s policy and enforcement changes around application offers. The full comment is below. But he doesn’t beat around the bush. Garrick admits that Offerpal made mistakes – “I have quickly concluded that regrettably, Offerpal has been guilty of distributing offers of questionable integrity from some of our many advertisers.” And he says that recent communications with partners stating that Offerpal was in compliance with Facebook rules were innacurate – “…we’ve also made some erroneous communications to partners and developers about the state of our compliance. In particular, we recently sent a letter to our Facebook developers which assured them that we were completely in compliance with Facebook standards, when in fact we were not.” Garrick also makes a series of promises in the comment, including “any offers we distribute meet stringent standards of integrity and quality, as specified by our partners, credible industry experts, and good old common sense” and “we will do everything we can within reason to lead the industry and set the example in these efforts.” Garrick is very much taking the Mark Pincus approach to dealing with this situation. He’s admitting mistakes and he’s promising his company will do better. Compare his words to Shukla’s a week ago. It’s night and day. Offerpal Today:I am the new CEO of Offerpal (as of yesterday) and although I’ve only got 48 hours under my belt, and have entered this industry in the midst of a recent firestorm of controversy, I thought it was time to share some of my thoughts and plans. Direct marketing, in particular lead-gen, has always been full of questionable, misleading, and outright fraudulent marketers and offers. We all get these daily via snail mail, email, phone, and late-night TV. Unfortunately, this is the nature of the Direct Marketing beast. Although a distribution channel which carries or distributes such offers does not actually create the offers, I do believe that a channel that wishes to be perceived as credible and of high integrity does indeed have a responsibility to make sure that the offers it distributes are not deceptive or “scammy”. Over the last year, the use of offer-based payment systems such as Offerpal has skyrocketed, and it’s pretty clear today that the industry has not kept up with its explosive growth in terms of properly policing the offers that are being distributed. I am not going to comment on events leading up to this situation, nor on other players in the industry, but I have quickly concluded that regrettably, Offerpal has been guilty of distributing offers of questionable integrity from some of our many advertisers. The policies we’ve had up until now have not been thorough enough to prevent such offers from airing, nor has our organization had the proper focus and accountability to ensure quality assurance over the offers we distribute. As a result, we’ve had a number of offers which were recently taken down by either ourselves or our partners. Although we believe that the majority of our offers were valid and not misleading in any way, we have acted conservatively by taking down the majority of our offers and we are now in the process of letting them back into the system after inspection. However, we’ve also made some erroneous communications to partners and developers about the state of our compliance. In particular, we recently sent a letter to our Facebook developers which assured them that we were completely in compliance with Facebook standards, when in fact we were not. This was not a deliberate tactic of any kind, it was a mistake that reflected our ineffective checks and controls. But nevertheless, it was an inaccurate claim and for that we take full responsibility, and I apologize to Facebook and to their user community. The good news in all this is that it has brought to light some very important issues for our collective industry which need to be addressed immediately. For our part, we will be doing the following: 1. It will be a fundamental part of the Offerpal culture that any offers we distribute meet stringent standards of integrity and quality, as specified by our partners, credible industry experts, and good old common sense. 2. We will individually inspect and approve every single individual offer before it is allowed to go into distribution on our system. 3. We will customize our offer profiles to meet the needs and standards of each partner and will not attempt to have a “one size fits all” approach. 4. We will do everything we can within reason to lead the industry and set the example in these efforts. Over the coming weeks you will hear much more from us on this issue, but more importantly you will see action and results. I will remain personally involved in this initiative and consider it one of my highest priorities in assuming my new role here. Offerpal a week ago:Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Nov 2009 | 11:52 pm Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs. Motorola Droid Round 2
My inbox is in pain. Almost immediately after I hit the publish button on last week’s iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid Smartphone Showdown, a torrential blast of comments and questions has been barraging just about every communication inlet I’ve got. Phone calls. Twitter DMs. Lots, and lots, and lots of emails. Across the board, it all seems to indicate one thing: people want more. We hear you. There are a number of worthwhile topics I simply didn’t get a chance to touch on, and a few observations I’ve made since that are worth mentioning. For those, may we present: Round 2.
Source: CrunchGear | 5 Nov 2009 | 11:11 pm Brizzly Marries Groups And Twitter Lists
When it was first unveiled at our Realtime Crunchup in July, easily one of the best features of the web-based Twitter client Brizzly was Groups. Basically, it allowed you to sort your Twitter followers into subsections, to make specific groups of users easier to follow. Of course, with Twitter’s new Lists functionality, you can basically do the same thing. So Brizzly is screwed right? Nope. First of all, Brizzly has decided to make Groups play nicely with Lists — very nicely. Starting tonight, Brizzly is importing all of the Lists that its users have made on Twitter and it will begin showing them within Brizzly. But that’s not all: It’s also going the other way. Any Group that you made in Brizzly will be converted to a Twitter List. To be clear: A private Twitter List. So no, no one will be able to see that you put them in the “Loser” Group on Brizzly. And of course, Brizzly does much more beyond Groups. Notably, it recently added Facebook support. That alone is worth the price of admission right there. But Brizzly also offers Direct Messaging capabilities that are superior to twitter.com. And it allows you to upload photos to its servers. And it displays pictures and video inline, in your tweet stream. So Brizzly should be just fine even with Twitter’s Lists now rolled out to everyone. Brizzly expects the Groups to Lists transition to be complete by tomorrow night, co-founder Jason Shellen tells us. Here are the other main features he laid out in an email:
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Source: Gizmodo | 5 Nov 2009 | 11:00 pm Dashboard Reveals What Google Knows About YouCWmike writes "Ever wonder exactly what Google knows about you? Google took a step today to answer that question with the unveiling of Google Dashboard, which is designed to let users see and control the copious amounts of data that Google has stored in its servers about them. 'Over the past 11 years, Google has focused on building innovative products for our users. Today, with hundreds of millions of people using those products around the world, we are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, and our responsibility to protect your privacy and data,' Google said in a blog post today. 'In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we've built the Google Dashboard.' Dashboard is set up so that users can control the personal settings in each Google product that they use. Google said the tool supports more than 20 products, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts and Google Latitude. Consumer Watchdog said in a statement today that it applauds Google for giving users a single place to go to manage their data. But at the same tine, the group also came down hard on Google, contending that it needs to give users a vehicle for stopping the company from collecting any personal data."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Nov 2009 | 10:46 pm ZooLoo Gets A Facelift With Revamped Homepage, Navigation, And Widgets
Back in July we took a look at ZooLoo, a service that looks to help users build their own websites (complete with vanity URLs) where they can manage their entire social network experience from one place — when it launched we described as an iGoogle meets Facebook, in that it’s a single hub that lets you interact with your Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts. Since then the site has seen some significant improvements, including an overhauled UI that makes the site both nicer on the eyes and easier to use. The biggest changes to the service is its revamped, streamlined navigation system. The old icons, which you can see in this screenshot have been replaced by a series of dropdown menus that are cleaner and easier to use. Another big addition is a home page, which aggregates your feeds from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and brings them together in a single feed. At the top of the feed is a box where you can enter a status message, which then you can then syndicate to each of the services you’ve connected to ZooLoo. The service has also updated its website creator, which allows you to tweak your page as you’d like. The new version includes added support for CSS and HTML tweaking. Other additions since the July launch include support for Facebook Connect, and widgets that you can add to your ZooLoo dashboard (including PayPal, Google Voice, and LinkedIn). Looking forward, the service has an iPhone app in the works that it expects to release in the next few weeks. The company describes it as “ZooLoo Home Page Plus” for the iPhone — basically a feed of your social network activity (which you can use to update across multiple services), as well as links to your photos, friends, and messages.
 Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Nov 2009 | 10:45 pm New Japanese Avatar trailer features new scenes
Reactions to John Cameron’s next big movie Avatar, scheduled for release (almost) worldwide on December 18, can be called mixed at best. We’ve shown you two trailers already, and now Japan gets a third one with a handful of scenes not seen before. The two-minute clip has English dialogue and is free of spoilers as far as I can tell. Watch the newest trailer here:
Source: Gizmodo | 5 Nov 2009 | 10:20 pm Broadband Expansion Would Spur Minnesota Economic, Quality-of-Life OpportunitiesSAINT PAUL, Minn., Nov.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Nov 2009 | 10:01 pm Nov. 6, 1944, '71: A Double Nuke AnniversaryIn 1944, weapons-grade plutonium is first produced, making the atom bomb possible. Twenty-seven years later, see how things have progressed.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm Out of the Blue: Islands Seen From SpaceThis collection of images taken from space by astronauts and satellites showcases some of Earth's most beautiful and interesting islands.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs. Motorola Droid Round 2
My inbox is in pain. Almost immediately after I hit the publish button on last week’s iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid Smartphone Showdown, a torrential blast of comments and questions has been barraging just about every communication inlet I’ve got. Phone calls. Twitter DMs. Lots, and lots, and lots of emails. Across the board, it all seems to indicate one thing: people want more. We hear you. There are a number of worthwhile topics I simply didn’t get a chance to touch on, and a few observations I’ve made since that are worth mentioning. For those, may we present: Round 2. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Nov 2009 | 9:49 pm Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid Round 2
My inbox is in pain. Almost immediately after I hit the publish button on last week’s iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid Smartphone Showdown, a torrential blast of comments and questions has been barraging just about every communication inlet I’ve got. Phone calls. Twitter DMs. Lots, and lots, and lots of emails. Across the board, it all seems to indicate one thing: people want more. We hear you. There are a number of worthwhile topics I simply didn’t get a chance to touch on, and a few observations I’ve made since that are worth mentioning. For those, may we present: Round 2.
Before we start, I should say: these aren’t all details everyone will care about, by any means. Some of them are quite important; others are downright nitpicky. I highly recommend that you read Round 1 before you read this – it covers many of the major topics, from aesthetics and keyboards to browsers and user interfaces. Also — and I might regret saying this later — feel free to use the comments section down below to ask any lingering questions you may have. I don’t have nearly enough time to test every last minutia – but if you’re curious and I’m able, I’ll add a bit to the post about it. Foreword: While we are expanding upon the things mentioned in Round 1, the overall conclusion remains the same. To summarize where we left off last time: both the iPhone and the Droid are absolutely incredible for their own reasons, and both have far too many merits for one to truly “defeat” the other. How happy you are with either depends largely on who you are. With that said, lets begin. Screens, Part 2 – the Sunlight Test:
As stated in Round 1, the Droid screen demolishes anything we’ve seen in a US smartphone to date – including the iPhone. While the iPhone’s 3.5″, 480×320 will more than satisfy anyone but the pickiest gadgeteers, the Droid’s 3.7″ 854×480 screen is, to resort to an incredibly cheesy cliche, a thing of beauty. However, there is one place it falls very, very short: under direct sunlight. It is not alone in this, however – the iPhone, too, fails this test miserably. Both handsets essentially go blank under direct sunlight, even with the backlight cranked all the way up. I’m about as suntanned as Casper’s backside in the middle of winter, so it’s not too big of a deal for me – but for anyone who does, you know, go outside, know that you’ll probably need to turn in such a way so as to shade your handset just to make it usable when the sun’s on high. Winner: Neither. Ringer Volumes:
I always carry my phone in my pants pocket and rely primarily on the vibration to alert my concert-deafened ears of incoming calls. After Round 1, we got lots and lots of requests from people who carry their handset in purses/backpacks, and thus rely on it’s ability to sing. To be completely candid: We do not have a scientific way of testing this. To be completely candid for 99% of other gadget blogs, neither do they. Our completely unscientific test involved putting each handset exactly 5 feet from a microphone with the speaker in roughly the same place, recording their default ringtones into Audacity, and then comparing overall loudness. I also tested it by putting it in a backpack and pretending my ears were sensitive enough to unquestionably decide. Winner: Droid, in both tests. Its default ring appears to be about at least 30% louder at its peaks than any of the iPhone ringtones we tried, and it was audibly louder in my bag. Camera: We weren’t ready to make a final decision with the Droid camera in Round 1, considering that we’d only taken a handful of pictures. We’ve taken a bunch more since, and our final verdict: it’s average at its best, and terrible at worst. Droid photos are on the left, with iPhone 3GS photos on the right:
The main issue is with the auto-focusing system, primarily because it just doesn’t work. More times than I care to count, I’ve seen the Droid auto-focus, lock on as clear as day for about half a second, and then immediately blur. This happens at short range, at long range, at medium range.. it’s just really, really bad at focusing. This can presumably be fixed in a software update, so all hope is not lost. The one strength the Droid has over the iPhone in the camera department is its flash – but it’s probably not all you’d hoped for. It’ll up the quality of your drunken bar shots a bit, but the vignette effect caused by the LED flash is almost unbearable for anything else. Android 2.0’s camera user interface is a bit more messy than the iPhones, but it also offers up considerably more: flash settings, white balance, color effects, etc. They tucked all that stuff into a slide out drawer that .. doesn’t like to slide. Pro-tip: Tap the drawer, don’t slide it. It’ll work a bit better. Winner: The iPhone, if only because it focuses when I ask it to.
I shot the same video on both phones whilst holding the two phones as closely together as I could without blocking either phones lens. Droid: iPhone: How is it as a phone?: There are a number of points to touch on on this matter, so we’ll break it down thusly:
Start-up time: We got more than a few e-mails about this, so for good ol’ comparison’s sake:
This was measured by recording both on video, starting each phone from a completely powered down state, and then determining the time based off the videos. Both handsets have e-mail configured, a few dozen apps, and plenty of usage on them. Winner: iPhone, by a bit over 8 seconds. Notifications:   Background notifications are like a godsend for iPhone users and developers alike – but it’s still a tacked on solution. Apple didn’t really go about developing the iPhone OS with the idea that such things would be necessary, and so the solution isn’t optimal. You get a maximum of one at a time, and they’re fired at you like a baseball to the crotch in an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos. I absolutely prefer the Android notification system. They’re thrown into a slide-out drawer rather than into your face, and can be pulled out, viewed, and cleared at almost any time. This also lets them throw in reminders, such as Birthday alerts (pulled from Contacts/Facebook) and calendar items. Android is also the only one of the two that allows you to turn off notifications without diving into the settings, via the fourth icon on the “Power Control” homescreen widget. When you’ve got 5+ apps constantly firing off bleepy-bloopy noises, being able to stifle them with a single click as opposed to four or five is a nice – if very small – touch. With all that said, Android’s system notification may be a bit much for the lay user. We’re not trying to underestimate the lay user here, but additional layers of complexity tend to.. well, complicate things. If I handed this phone to my mom and asked her to “slide out the notification drawer and check for new emails”, she’d probably respond with “So wait, I open my Google?” It’s no sweat for even a fledgling geek, but it might bewilder anyone who’s new to the smartphone scene for a day or two. Winner: Android/Droid. Its notification system is a bit more complicated, but far more capable. The Smudge Test: Here’s one you don’t see in reviews very often, but it’s important if you actually plan on using the phone. Any phone can be gorgeous when it comes out of the box – but carry it around in your lint-filled, sandy pockets for a few hours, and it’ll look like its seen wars. I’m not exactly a dirty person. I wash behind my ears and, outside of the days where I get to stay at home in my pajamas, tend to dress well enough. I ..can.. not.. keep my iPhone clean. Specifically the backside. After I lug it around for a full day, it comes back looking like it spent the afternoon in someone’s mouth. It’s inexplicably gunky and covered in fingerprints, to the extent that I’m convinced someone is stealing my iPhone and putting crap all over it. The Droid’s admittedly less exciting matte backside does a far better job of keeping prim and proper, in that I’d gladly hand it to someone without having to rub it across my pant leg first. The tables turn slightly when you start talking about the front side, though. While the Droid screen does just as good as the iPhone 3GS’ much touted oleophobic screen (in fact, we think the Droid screen might have an oleophobic coating as well), there is a gap around the edge of the screen that is juuuust big enough to pick up random particles of whatever crap you have in your pocket, but not big enough (as with the iPhone) that most of it falls right out. Winner: Tie. The Droid does a better job of keeping its backside clean, but the iPhone tends to have a neater face. Media playback:   Considering that Apple spent six years making the iPod prior to launching the iPhone, it’s no surprise that the iPhone’s iPod functionality is damn near flawless. The UI is drop dead simple, and it’s about as pretty as things get before things start getting extraneous. The Android Media player is none of those. The Droid music playback interface is all over the place, and the design is a sea of black. It’s not unusable by any means, but it lacks any real sign of polish or grace. The Droid video playback interface.. doesn’t exist. Even in Android 2.0, Android lacks out-of-the-box video support. You can download video apps from the Market, but we’ve yet to find one – be it free or paid – that is really up to snuff. We’d recommend the free Video Player app over anything we’ve seen so far; the interface is very bare bones, but it’ll play 3GPP and H264 videos. The Winner: iPhone. App Storage: Google made a fairly huge mistake in the design of Android, and they haven’t fixed it with Android 2.0. You see, the Droid only has 512 MB of internal memory. This is made okay by the fact that it supports microSD cards up to 32GB, and comes with a 16GB card. But here’s the catch: you can’t use that microSD card for app storage. In fact, you can’t even use all of the 512 MB of internal memory for app storage – you’re limited to 256 MB. Many Android applications are just 500 KB to 3 Megabytes, so you can squeeze dozens of them into memory without any issue – but that doesn’t mean everything is okay. On the iPhone, applications have free reign over whatever storage space is available on the internal hard drive, opening the door for rich 3d textures and high-fidelity voice/sound files. As a result, many iPhone applications are in the 40-50 megabyte range, with some (such as Myst, or Secret of Monkey Island) reaching up into the hundreds of megabytes. There is one solution: developers can make the application they host on the marketplace only a few megabytes large, and then have the application download the rest of its media onto the SD card after installation. From a user experience standpoint, however, this is a fairly terrible solution – once you’ve downloaded and installed, it’s time to play. Google needs to fix this as soon as possible, or its applications will be forever stunted. You can argue that mobile applications shouldn’t need to be hundreds of megabytes large, but I won’t be able to hear you over the awesome voice acting in Monkey Island. (Note: I am well aware that you can save apps to microSD if you root the Android device. We didn’t count jailbreak-only stuff in Round 1, so we definitely won’t count root-only stuff in Round 2) Winner: iPhone Conclusion: I stand by our original conclusion from Round 1 – heres the important bit:
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: Gizmodo | 5 Nov 2009 | 9:40 pm Ning Reaches 37 Million Users, Launches Developer Appathon
Tonight at a Ning’s developer event in Palo Alto, newly appointed COO Jason Rosenthal announced that Ning has reached 37 million registered users, as well as 1.6 million Ning networks created. The company also says that it grows another million users every couple weeks. Out of the 1.6 million Ning networks, 20% of the active networks are running at least one Ning application — reaching more then 9 million people. According to Ning, on average, each network installs more then two Ning applications. Since the Ning application directory launched, there have been over 100 applications created and submitted. Ning has also brought partners TokBox and Box.net on stage as well, to talk about how they have used the developer platform to integrate their products into Ning. Chief Product Officer Diego Doval also talked about some of the future plans of Ning, including analytics for Ning apps, as well as launching a payment service so that developers can sell their applications to users. Ning has also launched the Ning Appathon contest, to encourage developers to build on the newly launched Ning Developer platform. The best original application will win $5,000. Prizes for second and third place can be found on the Appathon site. Juding the Appathon competition are Marc Andreessen, Chris Anderson and Robert Scoble. The competiton ends on November 12, at 10pm PST. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Source: Gizmodo | 5 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm Judge orders US music website to drop Beatles songs
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 guardian.co.uk | Judge Bars Web Site From Selling Beatles Downloads Wall Street Journal A federal judge handed a preliminary victory to EMI Group Ltd. after the London-based music giant sued a Web site that sold music by the Beatles and other major acts without permission. The Web site's lawyer said he would base his ... Beatles copyright case down a legal rabbit hole Judge Halts Online Sale of Beatles Songs EMI Sues bluebeat Over Beatles mp3s |
Ah, Engrish. There’s a whole world of funny translations out there to laugh at.
Cyworld, the massive Korean based virtual world, is shutting down its U.S. site, which draws all of 112,000 monthly visitors according to Comscore. And while the shutdown is sort of sad, the message they sent to users more than makes up for it. The translation is bad. Not Matrix DVD cover in Korean bad, but bad.
Yes, I know Americans and others butcher other languages in reverse all the time. But that doesn’t mean I can’t laugh a little at this, too.
CyWorld first launched in the U.S. in 2006, and we estimate that they are the twelfth most valuable social network in the world overall. Email is below. Thanks for the tip, David.
Subject: Cyworld shuts down US cyworld service
Thank you to all members with Cyworld.
Due to Cyworld shuts down US service, US Cyworld will no longer be able to service.
We sincerely apologize for shutting down the service with unavoidable reason.
Before US cyworld close the service, you will continue to access to US cyworld contents but not
purchase items. Also, you will not use your acorns.
If you have unused acorns, you will be given a full refund for paid acorns only.
Refunds and data backup service is in progress, using the acorn will no longer be able to purchase for miniroom items, skins, etc.
@ Schedule for closing US Cyworld service
Due to Data Back-up and closing service issues, the service will be unavailable.
* Shop service will be unavailable since Nov 03, 2009
o Club service, Profile photo/data upload serivce will be unavailable since Nov 23, 2009
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A virtual pinball machine sounds like a really good idea. No less then 17 tables, on a LCD display (so the playfield doesn’t wear out). Best yet, the virtual pinball machine has some of the most famous Gottlieb games like 2001 and Gold Strike. Sure, it’s expensive, but compared to the cost of actually buying 17 pinball machines? It’s quite reasonable. And takes up a lot less space in the ol man cave.
The Multispin Digital Pinball machine uses a 32 inch LCD monitor for that play field, and a smaller monitor mounted on the back glass to replicate the scoring section of those classic games. There is just one thing that makes me nervous, and that’s the lack of flipper buttons on the pictures of the machine. Hammacher Schlemmers website says that it does have flipper buttons and a ball launcher just like the real thing, but I can’t seem to find it.
The Hammacher Schlemmer website lists the pinball machine as being currently available, however it will take 4-6 weeks for delivery, so order fast for Christmas. The Digital Pinball machine will set you back $6,000. I’ve got to say though, I think it’d be worth it.
[via Technabob]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AFP - A Motorola Droid smart phone goes on sale Friday, joining the growing ranks of smart phones on the open-source operating system backed by Google.
Earlier today, Kara Swisher reported in BoomTown that RealNetworks (RNWK) would sack four percent of its workforce–70 employees out of its 1,700-person staff.
Below, the official internal memo from RealNetworks Founder, Chairman and CEO Rob Glaser, breaking the bad news:
Team–
I’m writing to share some important and unpleasant news with all of you. Today we are implementing a reduction in force primarily within our TPS and MSS divisions, as well as in a few of our shared services groups. Approximately 70 employees around the globe are impacted, which represents about 4% of our total workforce. Of these 70 employees, 51% are located within the US and 49% came from our international locations.
These staff reductions are a result of some trends and strategic decisions in our TPS and MSS businesses. I’d bucket the reductions into three categories–efficiency gains associated with eliminating or streamlining duplication of effort, businesses that have been impacted by the recession and/or cyclical downturns where we need to lower our costs and get more efficient, and slower growth businesses in which we have decided to reduce our investments so we can instead invest in areas with better growth prospects.
As a result of these changes being made today, the TPS and MSS divisions are now better positioned to continue to weather the economic storm in the short-term and to thrive and grow in the long-term. On behalf of everyone on the senior management team I would like to extend my thanks and appreciation to everyone being affected by today’s actions for their contributions to our company. We are offering all impacted employees generous severance packages and we are working closely with the affected teams to ensure a smooth and professional transition. Additionally, we are encouraging impacted employees to look for other roles within the company, and HR will assist them in this process.
Thank for your support and understanding.
Rob
Section: Gadgets / Other, Miscellaneous
Android seems to be the go-to OS of choice for gadgets smaller than netbooks, especially now with the 2.0 version. It makes a lot of sense, its open source, free to put on any device and has a respectable number of apps available. Plus, its backed by Google. Today we’re seeing yet another Android device, this one a MID from MOTO (not Motorola).
MOTO is calling the new device the AMP (Android Media Platform), the 5-inch version being the first, with a 30inch and 10-inch version on the way by early 2010. The 5-inch AMP comes equipped with a front-facing 8MP camera, a Texas Instrument OMAP3430 processor, capacitive multi-touch display and 256MB flash that’s expandable via SD card. The screen is OLED, so the 720p video the device is said to output should look quite nice. It comes with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and an optional 3G module, which makes the included navigation app seem strange given the lack of GPS.
While for some it might be difficult to get excited about yet another Android device, the AMP looks to be quite the interesting device. If not the current 5-inch model, then certainly the 10-inch model which looks more like an Internet tablet. While there’s no price for it yet, with a 10.4-inch OLED display with multi-touch, GPS, and 8MP camera (front), a 3MP camera (back) and pen digitizer it looks to be even more than what the (assumed dead) Crunchpad was looking to do. How well Android will be able to translate to such a large screen remains to be seen, but if it does translate well there could at least be a decent open-source alternative to the presumed Apple tablet.
Read [MOTO] Read [MOTO AMP specs]
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
AFP - Microsoft's new-generation Windows 7 operating system hit the ground running, with US sales in its opening days blasting past those of its Vista predecessor, according to NPD Group.
The industry is all a buzz with the latest entry in the “I’m the thinnest laptop” competition. The latest Dell Adamo is definitely a strong contender, at 9.99 mm at some points. Of course, that’s just the official figure. I would have tested it myself but I forgot my calipers.
The Adamo definately does the sleek, simplistic look well. About two inches bigger in both directions than a sheet of paper and only 3.2 lbs, you could almost forget you were carrying this thing around. Although forgetting you have $1800 in your arms might not be the most desirable…
Dell replaced the usual manual cover latch with a heat-sensitive capacitor. Just swipe your finger across the front edge and the lock disengages. When you open the Adamo, the screen doesn’t so much fold up as the keyboard folds down. It rests in the crazy position you see below. And it’s not just for looks, kids. The open space under the unit allows for more effective airflow, meaning no more burning laps while you work. The keyboard has full sized, metal keys, and the angle didn’t interfere with my typing at all. The touchpad on the other hand, is a little on the small size. This thing has multitouch support, but even my small hands found trouble getting multiple fingers on there. Another thing I didn’t like was that when you adjust the angle of the screen, it moves the angle of the keyboard as well.
Now I’m sure the question you’re all wondering is how in the world does this thing sit on your lap? Its actually pretty comfortable, and you can type without fear of knocking it off your lap with each keystroke. However, it does only have two points of contact so its not as secure against people bumping into you as other laptops.
As for the device’s internals, nothing jumps out at the eye. The screen is 13.4″. Powered by a 1.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with integrated graphics and 4 GB of DDR3 RAM. You get 128 GB of SSD, no word on whether that is upgradable yet. Wireless comes in two flavors, 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1. The only ports on the laptop are 2 USB 2.0 jacks, audio, and a DisplayPort out. Ethernet, HDMI, and the like can connect through the use of an external dongle.
Another cool feature is the replaceable battery. But you’ll have to be replacing it every 2 and a half hours. Not very long for a laptop that is designed for maximum mobility, but at that size? Can’t beat it.
You can expect the Adamo sometime this holiday season. Windows 7 comes standard as well as the diamond-etched logo on the cover. If you’re into that sort of thing.
Facebook published a long blog post today about their enforcement efforts around app advertising and offer scams. And while they didn’t mention all the negative press that has hit them this week, that’s the reason for the new communication.
Facebook says that deceptive ads are a widespread problem on the Web (which is true), and they say they’ve been fighting these scams for some time (which is also true, albeit a little slowly sometimes). They point to their updated policies on third party ads on the Facebook platform from July – which are aggresively pro-user but have rarely been enforced. They also note that they have disabled two ad networks since then, and are disabling two more now.
In my talks with Facebook earlier this week they took the position that they’ve been aggresively protecting users, and they’re taking the same tone in this blog post. They say that with so many ads and so many apps its impossible to monitor the entire platform effectively. My answer was that it took me about 10 seconds to find really scammy ads on FarmVille, the most popular social game on Facebook with 63+ million monthly users. If they just start with the big guys, a lot of the problem will go away.
In our original post we showed a financial connection between these ads and Facebook. Apps take the money from the ads and then aggressively buy ads on Facebook, effectively giving them a cut. So slow enforcement against even the top apps when they are so blatantly violating the rules is both unacceptable and suspicious.
Facebook says they are building out teams and technologies to address the problem.
We’ve witnessed a remarkable effort this week by industry players to clean up the ecosystem, even while Facebook has been silent on the issue. MySpace, Zynga and RockYou all took steps to eliminate scams.
Which is remarkable when you think about it. Anyone who doesn’t engage in scammy behavior right now is at a monetization disadvantage. There are real similarities between this issue and steroid use in baseball. As long as the MLB didn’t really enforce steroid use among players, it was a competitive necessity to take the drugs, and so many more players took them than otherwise would. What we saw this week was the equivalent of the MLB staying silent while a group of the most popular players admitted to steroid use and promised to stop using it from now on.
If Facebook is serious about stopping app offer scams, it will all be a lot easier in the future for developers to abstain. Hopefully, this is the start of a much cleaner Facebook.
But if they continue with their arguments that Facebook is no dirtier than the rest of the Internet, and resist outside pressure to clean up their community, we could quickly be back where we were just a week ago.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Twitter has just activated the retweet button a a small number of accounts, according to a blog post. The new retweet functionality was originally announced back in August. Below, you’ll find a picture of what it was slated to look like when it was previewed back in September. (We haven’t actually seen this latest implementation yet, but feel free to send us screen shots if you are one of the lucky ones who has the retweet button activated.)
As we’ve written in the past, Twitter has been tweaking this new functionality for a while, making a pretty significant change to the API prior to launch. Previously, Twitter was requiring third party developers to check whether a tweet has already come in or not in any users’ stream to see if they should collapse it under the new retweet structure. Now, Twitter has built its own mechanism to check for those duplicate tweets into the API. This will ensure that only the first tweet is shown and the retweets go under it automatically.
We’ve already previewed how the new retweets will look in one third-party app, the as-yet-unreleased Tweetie 2.1. This implementation looks pretty nice, and is not as cluttered as the one previewed by Twitter itself.
Previously, it was also stated that the retweet function will only gather up to 100 retweets, which is limiting.
Here’s the text from Twitter’s post today:
“We’ve just activated a feature called retweet on a very small percentage of accounts in order to see how it works in the wild. Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy. In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know.
You may remember that we shared the mechanics of this feature with developers a while back so they could think about how to work it into Twitter apps. Now we’re ready to start trying it on Twitter. The plan is to see how it goes first with this small release. If it needs more work, then we’ll know right away. If things look good, we’ll proceed with releasing the feature in stages eventually arriving at 100%.”
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
So you live in Kansas, and you want to learn how to snowboard before that big trip to the mountains. What do you do? Well, you can always wait to get up the hill to buy some lessons, or you can pick up a Thrustmaster T-Freestyle NW controller, and you’ll be carving down a half-pipe in no time.
Made from real maple, the T-Freestyle is designed to work as either a snowboard or skateboard controller, the wooden deck replicates that flex and resistance that a real board posses, allowing for a better gaming experience. Thrustmaster also built in their new “rolling motion board” technology, which allows the controller to move like a real snowboard or skateboard, without dumping you on your tail.
The Thrustmaster T-Freestyle NW should be available at your favorite retailer at the end of this month, for the quite reasonable price of $29.99.
 Boston Globe | For Rear-Seat Passengers, Ford Puts Air Bags in Belts New York Times DEARBORN, Mich. — The Ford Motor Company has turned its seat belt into a marketing tool. Dean Jaradi, a research engineer at the Ford Motor Company, demonstrated the inflatable seat belts, which are meant to provide additional ... Ford Says Inflatable Seat Belt Could Reduce Crash Injuries Ford Announces Airbags for Backseat Passengers Ford to introduce inflatable seat belts |
We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on. There is one comment on Edge which I love, which is in Daniel Dennett's response to the 2007 annual question, in which he said that we have a population explosion of ideas, but not enough brains to cover them.The Age of the InformavoreAs we know, information is fed by attention, so we have not enough attention, not enough food for all this information. And, as we know -- this is the old Darwinian thought, the moment when Darwin started reading Malthus -- when you have a conflict between a population explosion and not enough food, then Darwinian selection starts. And Darwinian systems start to change situations. And so what interests me is that we are, because we have the Internet, now entering a phase where Darwinian structures, where Darwinian dynamics, Darwinian selection, apparently attacks ideas themselves: what to remember, what not to remember, which idea is stronger, which idea is weaker...
It's the question: what is important, what is not important, what is important to know? Is this information important? Can we still decide what is important? And it starts with this absolutely normal, everyday news. But now you encounter, at least in Europe, a lot of people who think, what in my life is important, what isn't important, what is the information of my life. And some of them say, well, it's in Facebook. And others say, well, it's on my blog. And, apparently, for many people it's very hard to say it's somewhere in my life, in my lived life.
Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Broadband Cards, Mobile, Computers, Wireless
Verizon, Verizon, Verizon—it seems they are determined to get some attention lately. We have seen the endless, but exciting Droid coverage, then earlier today we saw the BlackBerry Curve 8530 get announced.
Now, it looks like Verizon is getting into the pre-paid data game. Which personally I have to say it a wonderful thing. Especially for those who like to have Internet access on the go, but do not need it often enough to necessitate a service plan with a contract.
Anyway, detail wise it looks like customers will be able to get a daily, weekly or monthly option. And as you would expect, each of those levels comes with a set amount of data transfer. Here is a breakdown of the available data transfer along with the pricing.
Finally, I think they only thing that would have made this announcement better is if they would have offered the pre-paid service in a plan that worked with the MiFi. However instead users will be able to use the pre-paid mobile broadband plans with the Verizon Wireless USB760 modem which will be selling for $129.99.
In terms of what you can do with the above plans, here is a breakdown which comes courtesy of Verizon.
To assist customers in determining their service levels, the following chart provides examples of different applications based on approximate size assumptions. Actual file sizes may vary.
Data TypeE-mail (1 text page, no attachments)
- Daily: 25,600
- Weekly: 85,300
- Monthly: 170,000
Typical Web page lookup
- Daily: 500
- Weekly: 1,700
- Monthly: 3,400
Low-resolution digital photos
- Daily: 150
- Weekly: 500
- Monthly: 1,000
Read [Verizon Wireless]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 PhysOrg.com | Microsoft to fix holes in Windows, Office CNET News Microsoft said on Thursday it will issue six patches next week for 15 vulnerabilities, including three critical bulletins affecting Windows and two important Office-related bulletins. Affected software includes Windows 2000, XP, ... Windows 7 Still Vulnerable to Viruses — Durr, Really? Microsoft, Partners Beaming Over Windows 7 Early Windows 7 Retail Box Sales Up 234% Compared to Vista |
 CNET News | Congratulations to Steve Jobs, Fortune's CEO of the decade CNET News Last month Apple CEO Steve Jobs made his first public appearance since coming back from medical leave after receiving a liver transplant earlier this year. Love him or hate him, you have to admit that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has had a helluva ... Could Steve Jobs, "CEO of the Decade," Run Your Company? Fortune Names Apple's Jobs 'CEO of the Decade' Apple under Jobs: from muck to mountaintop |
AP - It's been a rough year for the video game industry, but Activision Blizzard Inc. reported a profit for its third quarter because of a lower costs and a good response for games such as "Guitar Hero 5" and "World of Warcraft."
Popular Science is reporting that a piece of bread, dropped by a passing bird, has managed to damage the Large Hadron Collider.
The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.
If this really is the work of time-traveling Higgs boson particles, however, they're demonstrating a lot of creativity, but not a lot of competence. The Bird Incident won't delay the reactivation of the facility, which is still scheduled for later this month.
Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down the Large Hadron Collider (Really), Popular Science. You should follow the link just to see their illustration "according to eyewitness accounts". Via stevesilberman.
Thinking of buying a Logitech keyboard or mouse? Now would be a good time. You can get the opulent G19 keyboard for $150 (technically, big savings), a G9x for $75, a G500 for $45, or a Performance MX for $75. And everything’s got free shipping!
Seriously, Logitech makes some of the best mice in the world, and these are great deals. For gaming, either of the G series mice will do, but for regular tasks, multiple CG writers swear by the Performance MX (or at least its MX revolution cousin). The deals are all at LogicBuy, which must have hijacked a truckload of these things.
G19 Keyboard
G9x Gaming Mouse
G500 Gaming Mouse
Performance MX Mouse
Found all these over at Tom’s Hardware, where they’ve got a few more deals of this sort today.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
Perhaps in an effort to not be outdone by Verizon, at least in terms of the BlackBerry, Sprint has also announced the upcoming availability of the Curve 8530. Though the Sprint unveiling was a little light on the details.
Instead of announcing the handset with a release date and price, Sprint choose to simply offer up an “introducing” style page that simply lists the details of the phone and notes it as “coming soon.”
Otherwise, we can tell you that the Sprint branded Curve 8530 will be 3G and Wi-Fi equipped and available in either black or royal purple.
One nice perk about the 8530 is the optical trackpad which comes in lieu of the trackball. Of course, I suppose that would just come down to a matter of personal preference.
Anyway, like I mentioned, nothing in terms of a release date or price. But if Sprint were smart they would release it very close to, if not on November 20 for $99.99, because after seeing the Verizon announcement that is what customers are now going to expect.
Product [Sprint]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Happy post-Halloween! Thanks for sending in your costumes and thanks, most of you, for following the rules. That said, I'm proud to show you the 11 best costumes in this line-up, as judged by all of us at CG. I added one extra because we just couldn't bear to choose between the various Iron Men we saw.
Here's how to vote:
By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
Activision Blizzard (ATVI) this afternoon posted slightly better-than-expected Q3 results, and reiterated its previous guidance for the full year.
For the quarter, the video game publisher posted non-GAAP revenue of $755 million and non-GAAP profits of 4 cents a share; previous guidance had been for $700 million and 3 cents.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
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We've covered Theodore Gray on Boing Boing a lot, and for good reason -- he's amazing. His Mad Science book was filled with spectacularly fun science experiments, he built a Periodic Table table with little compartments to hold samples of elements, and now he has a new coffee table photo book called The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe.
Each element is treated to a gorgeous two page spread, with photos and a fascinating short history.
Did you know:
... if you keep your household smoke detector around for a couple of thousand years, most of the americium will have decayed into neptunium (wait another 30 million years or so and it will become thallium, which the CIA can use to make Castro's beard fall out, if he's still alive)
... if you touch tellurium you will smell like rotten garlic for a few weeks?
... arsenic is commonly added to chicken feed (to promote their growth)?
... a chunk of gallium will melt in your hand (you can buy a sample here)?
... a speck of scandium ("the first of the elements you've never heard of") added to aluminum creates a very strong alloy (like the kind used in the Louisville Slugger that was involved in a recent $850,000 lawsuit)? Books that reveal how truly weird our world is are always welcome in my home. This one's a gem.
The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Nov 2009 | 3:10 pm
Web 2.0 cheerleader Michael Arrington’s inexpensive web tablet CrunchPad may be in mortal danger.
Higher-than-expected costs and repeated delays could mean the end of the project, says Silicon Alley Insider.
Arrington has said earlier the CrunchPad will be ready this year “for sure.” But the device has already missed a number of deadlines. It was last expected at the end of July or early August.
Arrington first wrote about the idea of a touchscreen tablet in June last year. He talked of a touchscreen device that would run Firefox and maybe Skype on top of a Linux kernel. The tablet would have low end hardware– a power button, a headphone jack, built in camera for video, speakers and a microphone. It would come with Wi-Fi, 512 MB of memory, 4 GB solid state hard drive and no keyboard. All this for a promised price tag of $200.
Since then, some industry watchers have suggested that the price of the CrunchPad may have doubled to at least $400 because of the cost of production.
If true, the CrunchPad risks alienating customers during a tough economic environment. But more importantly, its delay could push it against the widely-rumored Apple tablet scheduled for release early next year. Apple is reportedly working on a tablet PC that could be sold for around $700 to $800.
Through all this, the otherwise voluble Arrington has remained silent. He did not return Wired.com’s request for a comment.
Still the Crunchpad carries high expectations. The fact that no one outside Arrington’s inner circle has seen the device didn’t deter Popular Mechanics from naming it to its 10 most brilliant products of 2009 list.
See Also:
Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks
Norway’s Consumer Council is threatening to sue Amazon over the user agreement for its popular Kindle e-reader. The council insists that the terms of the agreement are in violation of basic consumer rights. Those terms include Amazon’s right to remove books from the Kindle if the terms are violated, their right to change the terms at anytime, and the fact that Kindle books can not be read on any other device.
That last issue is something the council has taken issue with in the past with other companies. They threatened legal action against Apple in 2006 because at the time items bought from the iTunes store were only playable on iPods. The complaints were dropped after Apple removed the DRM restriction and allowed songs bought there to be compatible with all mp3 players.
Amazon hasn’t had any comment yet but this bears keeping an eye on. Many Kindle users share the council’s complaints about books bought on Amazon not being compatible with other ebook readers. Amazon has slowly been opening up their platform though, first with a Kindle app for the iPhone and iPod Touch and soon will release one for PCs. With Sony, Barnes & Noble and other companies now offering their own e-readers for sale, Amazon will have it’s work cut out for it if it want to stay on top of the pile.
Read [BetaTales]
Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Microsoft has two new Windows 7 ads and, well, they are just like the first batch. A random regular person thinks that they designed Windows 7 when we all really know it was us nerds that posted every little Vista flaw on message boards and blogs. But we shouldn’t take all the credit. Regular people hate Vista too. One more video is after the jump.
 Ars Technica | Twitter's contribution to Modern Warfare 2 CNET News Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 might have been designed by a capable team of Infinity Ward developers, but the company had some help: Twitter followers. Infinity Ward Community Manager Robert Bowling told Develop Online in a recent ... Call of Duty sequel confirmed for 2010 PC Modern Warfare 2: it's much worse than you thought High Hopes for Tackling Terror |
 PC World | Inside Google's Android and Apple's iphone OS as core platforms Apple Insider By Prince mclean A new batch of smartphones based upon Google's Android platform have started to arrive, finally fleshing out what users can really expect of the platform. This article is the first in a series examining how Android stacks up in ... Android Market to see carrier billing soon BlackBerry shipments grew five times faster than iPhone in Q3 On Call: Does cell phone design still matter? |
Not sure what to make of this Droid-alike but it seems Verizon has another Droid on its way, this time called the Saygus VPhone V1. It looks very much like the standard droid but a bit smaller and with a 624MHz Marvell processor.
It’s abundantly clear that Verizon is going to run this Droid branding into the ground, ensuring a Droid army to overtake all comers. My question is who is this Saygus and why are they posting links to stories that essentially leak their own products?
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
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Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
While there are plenty of people that are getting excited about the upcoming handsets becoming available with Verizon Wireless, we now have one more to add to that list—it is the BlackBerry Curve 8530.
Of course, unlike the Motorola Droid and the HTC Droid Eris, the Curve 8530 is not going to be available just yet. Instead interested customers will have to wait until November 20 to satisfy their BlackBerry needs. Once available, the newly announced Curve will be selling for $99.99, which comes after a $100 mail in rebate.
Feature wise, the Curve 8530 will offer users an optical trackpad and the full QWERTY keyboard that BlackBerry users have come to both expect and love. Additionally, the Curve will also offer users 3G support, WiFi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1, a built-in GPS, a 2-megapixel camera with zoom and video recording and 256MB of internal storage.
And just one last bit, the Curve 8530 will be available in both black or smoky violet.
Read [Verizon Wireless]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Windows 7 is a valuable upgrade delivering an awesome new user interface, but don’t expect any major improvements in security.
Anti-virus software vendor Sophos tested Windows 7’s built-in anti-virus capabilities by feeding a clean system 10 pieces of the newest malware. Eight out of the 10 samples ran successfully, claims Sophos.
“Unfortunately, despite Microsoft’s claims, Windows 7 disappointed just like earlier versions of Windows,” says Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos, in a blog post. “The good news is that, of the freshest 10 samples that arrived, 2 would not operate correctly under Windows 7.”
Sophos’ findings aren’t surprising: Windows 7 promises backward compatibility with most software that works on older operating systems, such as Windows XP. It would be reasonable to infer most malware compatible with Windows XP or Windows Vista is likely going to harm Windows 7.
Also, prior to the release of Windows 7, Microsoft did not promise that the OS would be safer against viruses. Security enhancements that Microsoft highlighted were automatic data encryption for thumb drives, a feature for IT administrators to control which applications can run on a corporate network, and a malware filter in Internet Explorer 8 — nothing promising to prevent malware from working at all.
In fact, Microsoft has steadfastly insisted that Windows 7 users continue to run anti-virus software and regular system updates to stay safe.
“Security in Windows 7 is very multi-faceted and we have never advised customers to rely on just one specific feature in the OS,” a Microsoft spokeswoman said in a statement. “We recommend that customers configure their computer to download and install updates automatically, and install all security updates and service packs when available to ensure the highest level of protection against malware and other vulnerabilities.”
Many security researchers agree that Windows operating systems will always be more vulnerable to malware. That’s because the vast majority of PC owners are Windows users, and that gives “the bad guys” greater economic incentive to attack Windows systems.
Thus, even though Windows 7 ships with more built-in security features than Apple’s Mac OS X, the Mac is still safer because fewer malicious hackers are targeting the less-popular platform.
“If you’re a bad guy and you’re doing this to make money … you don’t want to spend 90 percent of your time on Windows and 10 percent on Mac,” said Charlie Miller, a security researcher and author of the The Mac Hacker’s Handbook, in a September interview with Wired.com. “You’re going to want to spend 100 percent of your time on Windows.”
Sophos says the “lesson learned” from its malware test is you still need to run anti-virus on Windows 7. That hardly seems to be a new lesson, since Microsoft never told anyone to stop running anti-virus in the first place.
So why is Sophos so “disappointed” with Windows 7? Clearly, the company is sensationalizing its findings in order to sell more anti-virus software. All of this should have already been obvious, though numbers do help confirm previous assumptions.
All you should gain from the Sophos report is reaffirmation of something you already knew: So long as you’re running Windows, you need anti-virus software. So keep running it.
See Also:
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Another week, another truckload of Samsung devices dumped onto the shelves. This week’s Samsung shipment brings two new TouchWiz-based touchscreen handsets: the Mythic, and the Flight.
Before we dive into the specs, we gotta give Samsung some grief for the names. Not because they’re bad – in fact, I really, really like both of these names. So much that I wonder why the hell Samsung is giving them to two random TouchWiz handsets. I mean, come on: LG has to resort to calling one of their best selling phones “Cookie“, and you throw away Mythic? For shame!
Anyway, on to the handsets:
Samsung Mythic:
Samsung Flight
Both handsets seem quite overpriced compared to the competition, launching at $199 and $99 respectively. Both will be available beginning Nov. 8th.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Section: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile
If you are salivating over the thought of getting your hands on a Motorola Droid as soon as humanly possible, check the hours of your local Verizon Wireless Store. Over two thousand locations are opening their doors as early as 7 or 8 am tomorrow morning in anticipation of Droid’s release.
Not only are stores opening early, but many locations are holding all day long in store Droid events. During these events, Verizon Wireless employees will be on hand to demonstrate all of the features of the first phone running the Android 2.0 operating system. The Droid is really the first phone to call out the iPhone and has been running “iDon’t” ads targeted at Apple’s mobile.
Verizon subscribers that enter into a new contract can get the Droid for $199 after the $100 mail in rebate. You will receive the rebate by mail in the form of a debit card. Current subscribers can speak to a Verizon Wireless rep regarding costs for upgrading their phone.
Site: [Droid]
Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
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Luke Iseman sells a Bicycle Defense Kit for $19.90.
The Bicycle Defense Kit (BDK) offers options for dealing with aggressive motorists. Contained within an altoids tin, the 8 tools vary in detectability, potential to cause damage, and legality.Specifically, cyclists can:
• Issue "citizen citations" with official-ish tickets.
• Label offending vehicles with an "I was a jerk to a cyclist" sticker.
• Introduce the risk of paint damage with a Jolly Rancher.
• Create certain coating cremation via DOT3 brake fluid.
• Make cars stink worse than their exhaust with a carefully-placed stink bomb.
• Throw a trusty bolt to dent offending traffic as it passes.
• Lock out loony drivers by filling their keyholes with super glue.
• Cut through tire valve stems with a utility blade.
Dell’s ultralight, portable MacBook Air competitor Adamo is back after a makeover. The new Adamo XPS is thinner, lighter and cheaper than its predecessor.
Adamo XPS will have a 13.4-inch high-definition display, Intel Core 2 Duo (1.4 Ghz) processor, 4GB memory and will run the latest Windows 7 operating system. The laptop, which claims the title of the thinnest in the market, is just about 0.4-inches thick and has a full-size keyboard. Compare that to the original Adamo that was 0.65-inches thick.
Dell launched the first Adamo laptop in March. The laptop’s sleek design though came with a stiff price tag. The basic version of the Adamo cost $2,000, while a more expensive model costs $2,700. It also did not have a user-removable battery, which has changed in the Adamo XPS. (See more photos of the Dell Adamo XPS)
With the Adamo XPS, Dell has refined on its earlier product to make it more attractive and less expensive.
Like the MacBook Air, Adamo XPS weighs just over 3 lbs. The Adamo XPS is priced starting at $1800. It still costs more than the cheapest version of the Air, which starts at $1500. But Dell is hoping the Adamo XPS’s sleek aluminum body, and portability factor will make it an attractive buy to those who really want it.
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Section: Computers, Mobile Computers, Netbooks
Call it karma or something else, the interesting relationship between Microsoft and Gizmodo continues to yield exclusive looks at the leaked tablet. Microsoft’s Courier was shown by the site in a video and now that video has been sliced to show how users interact with the Courier.
The user interface highlights different fingerswipes, tablet functionality such as geotagging and timestamping, camera focusing and cropping, handwriting recognition, ereader capabilities and more. The main purpose of this device looks to be “life” as the product seems to touch on many aspects. Clearly, this tablet is built for more than just surfing the web or playing some games.
Gizmodo shows off several images with user options and actions on each page. It is interested, but if you saw the video then you might have expected much of this. The pages look like little more than still images from the video, giving us no indication how far from reality this is.
Read: [Gizmodo]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
FROM APPLETELL - Apple has announced that developers have created over 100,000 apps for the App Store. They did not comment on whether they’re including the myriad “fart” apps in that number.
MORE »
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The Android army is on the march with the launch of yet another handset running the Google-designed open source operating system.
HTC, the torchbearer of the Android movement, has introduced its latest phone called the Droid Eris. The phone will be available on the Verizon Wireless network starting Friday. With its $100 price tag (along with a two-year contract and a $100 mail-in rebate), the Droid Eris is also the most inexpensive Android phone on the market currently. It also directly competes with Apple’s $100 offering, the 8-GB iPhone 3G.
The Droid Eris will be the second Android phone on Verizon’s network, fulfilling a promise that the telecom carrier made a few months ago to have at least two Android handsets in its portfolio this year. Last month, Verizon introduced the Motorola Droid for $200 with a two-year contract.
The HTC Droid Eris has a 3.2-inch multitouch display, a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera, Wi-Fi and GPS capability. It will feature a full HTML browser with Flash Lite capabilities. And it’ll run HTC’s Sense user interface, first seen in HTC’s Hero phone.
Just as with Palm Pre’s webOS and Motorola’s Cliq, HTC’s Sense UI organizes the phone around contacts from different sources such as e-mail, social networking sites and the phone book. It will allow users to add widgets that aggregate information such as Twitter feeds, weather data, e-mail or calendar. The UI will also have a profile feature called “Scenes” that lets users create different customized content profiles around specific functions or times such as “Work” and “Play.”
Right now the only drawback is that the Droid Eris will not ship with Android 2.0, the latest version of the Android operating system. Instead it will run Android 1.5. But HTC says it will upgrade the phone to Android 2.0 once it has worked out all the compatibility issues between the Sense UI and the newest version of the operating system.
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Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
The lesser known droid, the HTC Eris, is finally shown in an unboxing event. This Droid, unlike the Motorola Droid, has not hardware keyboard. The Eris is a touchscreen beauty running Android 1.6 with Sense UI skin for an HTC feel.
Boy Genius notes that their source says the phone feels lighter and thinner than the HTC Hero. Another tidbit is this phone supposed is the next best Android phone to date, after the Motorola Droid with 2.0 software.
Our Shawn Ingram had this to say about the Eris:
“The Droid Eris appears to be a repurposed model of the HTC Hero. It features the same Sense UI as well well as the exact same specs as the Hero. The only real difference comes in the phone’s body, carrier and price. While the Hero sells on Sprint for $180 (after rebates), the HTC Droid Eris will be sold by Verizon for $99 after a $100 mail-in rebate. Given the price point it’s obvious that Verizon views it more as the lesser model to the Motorola Droid. The phone does have a less powerful processor, a lower resolution screen, no hardware keyboard and runs on Android 1.5 as compared to 2.0 on the Droid so that viewpoint does make sense.”
Read: [Boy Genius Reports]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
There’s a silly study, conducted by Retrevo, making the rounds that purports to analyze how iPhone users fare in the dating world. I know, right? One stat to whet your beak: one in three iPhone owners have admitted to breaking up with their significant other via text message. Amazing.
Other fun stats:
• One in three iPhone owners say that owning old gadgets would turn them off from a potential significant other
• One in five iPhone owners have admitted to viewing porn on their iPhone
• One in four iPhone owners have broken up with a signifant other because they spend too much time on their mobile device
• iPhone owners prefer people who own “cool gadgets” over a college degree
I’m just going to stop right here because my brain hurts typing this out.
A comment on the Retrevo blog pretty much eviscerates the study, and I’ll highlight one (mind the sics):
“iPhone owners prefered cool gadgets over a college degree three to one.”
In my experience, the majority of iphone users are male… also in my experience, most males couldn’t give two $hits whether a chick possesses a degree or not (results from MY study here of course ;-). Anyway, if you asked football fans who they would find more attractive between a college graduate and a girl (or dude) who loves sports, who do you think they would choose? Exactly. Retrevo is basically stating that iphone owners like cool gadgets. Duh.
I’m sorry for wasting your time.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Stacks is a piece of software for the iPhone which adds spring loaded “stacks” of applications to any or all of the four coveted dock positions on your home screen. We first mentioned it back in the summer but now, despite still being in an alpha state, it is available (sort of) and ready to use. If you have a jailbroken iPhone.
There are a few advantages to cracking your iPhone open with a jailbreaking tool. You can install all sorts of applications that would never make through the Apple approval process, you can run those applications in the background (although your battery life may suffer) and you can install things that tweak the user interface quite drastically. Stacks is the latter.
The picture above shows Stacks in action. Once installed, you get four new icons somewhere amongst your applications. Drag one to the dock and you can rename it. For my first one I chose “News”. From there, press and hold any icon, just as if you were about to rearrange the apps like you normally do. Then drag any icon to the stack and it will pop open, just like a folder in the dock of a Mac. Drop the icon in there and you’re done.
To use the stacks, you just touch one and it will pop open, allowing you to touch one of the icons and launch the app. If you have too many icons in there to make a pop-up stack that will fit on the screen, Stacks switches to a window view which shows the icons arranged in a grid, again like the OS X dock. This is automatic, but you can lock it in as a default view in the preferences.
There are a few alpha giveaways: you can’t add icons for web-apps to a stack. I have a shortcut icon to Gmail on my iPod Touch and wanted to put it alongside the Mail application in a stack. It just won’t go. Second, there is little visual feedback. You don’t know if you have dragged the application onto the stack until you have let go and then popped open the stack to check. Third, there seems to be no way to rearrange the icons to choose which appears atop the stack. And lastly, icon badges are not displayed: If having a notification of unread mails is important to you, don’t put Mail in a stack.
To get the application you need to make a donation of over $1 to the developer via PayPal. You’ll also, of course, need to jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch. And you’ll have to be somewhat confident using the command line, as there is no one-click installer yet.
Otherwise, this is a fantastic add-on. It is sleek and feels as if it is actually part of the iPhone OS when you use it. Even if I use no other unofficial add-ons, this one is staying on my iPod.
Product page [Steven Troughton Smith]
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Yesterday, fellow Gadgetell writer JG told us about Walmart’s pre-Black Friday sale and one of the items up for sale is a $298 laptop from HP. According to the initial ad listing we could see that laptop has a 15.6-inch display with a 250GB hard drive.
Of course, there are many more specs to that and it was hard not to wonder if a sub-$300 laptop would be worth the money. Anyway, the laptop in question is the G60-519WM from HP. Bottom line, everyones needs and use will require something different, but in this case it seems worthy.
Luckily, said laptop is now listed in its fully spec’d glory over at Walmart.com.
Feature wise, the G60-519WM will offer users a 15.6-inch WXGA display with a 1366 x 768 resolution, a 2.2GHz Intel Celeron 900 processor, 3GB of RAM, a 250GB 7200RPM hard drive, LightScribe SuperMulti DVD drive and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit edition.
Additionally, users can also expect Ethernet, Wi-Fi, three USB ports, one VGA out, a microphone in, headphone, Altec Lansing audio and a 6-cell battery.
Sure, it may not be a screamer in terms of performance with the Celeron processor, but for $298 this could make a nice addition to the house. Of course, actually getting one may be a different story.
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
The HTC-built DROID ERIS will go on sale tomorrow at Verizon stores for $99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and two-year contract agreement. Equipped with HTC’s “Sense” user interface, the ERIS “offers customers the opportunity to customize a seven-panel wide home screen with a wide variety of widgets designed to bring the most important information to the surface.” On sale tomorrow at Verizon’s retail stores and website.
Here’s the full press release:
Bring an Android Device Home for the Holidays with DROID ERIS by HTC, Exclusively from Verizon Wireless
DROID ERIS by HTC Debuts with Verizon Wireless with HTC Sense Experience and an Ultra-Attractive $99.99 Price
BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and BELLEVUE, Wash., Nov. 5 /PRNewswire/ — Beginning Nov. 6, DROID ERIS(TM) by HTC will invade Verizon Wireless Communications Stores across the United States, bringing the power of the Android(TM) platform and the Verizon Wireless network together. DROID ERIS by HTC combines the popular Android platform with HTC Sense(TM), a user experience from HTC that makes it easy for customers to stay close to one another and create an individualized mobile experience tailored specifically to their needs.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20091105/NY05661)
DROID ERIS by HTC offers customers the opportunity to customize a seven-panel wide home screen with a wide variety of widgets designed to bring the most important information to the surface. DROID ERIS by HTC also includes the innovative "Scenes" feature, which allows customers to create multiple home screens, each with different widgets and shortcuts, to transform DROID ERIS by HTC from a "work" phone to a "play" phone with just a touch of a finger.
DROID ERIS by HTC also organizes interactions by person, which makes it possible to access text messages, e-mails, phone calls and even Flickr streams and Facebook updates from a single contact card.
The unique HTC Sense experience found on DROID ERIS by HTC is supported by an array of the latest mobile features, including:
- 3.2 inch capacitive touch screen and trackball interface
- 5.0 megapixel auto focus camera
- Expandable memory with pre-installed 8 GB microSD(TM) card (up to 16 GB supported)
- Supports USB mass storage
- Bluetooth®, Wi-Fi and 3.5 mm headset connectivity
- Integrated GPS and a digital compass with a sensor that enables the phone to know what direction it is facing
- Smart dialer for simplified dialing by name, number or initials
- Full HTML browser with Flash Lite capabilities
- Seamless compatibility with Google(TM) services like Google Maps(TM), Gmail(TM), Google Search(TM) and more
DROID ERIS by HTC will be available in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores and online at www.verizonwireless.comon Friday, Nov. 6, for $99.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement on a voice plan with an e-mail feature or e-mail plan. Customers will receive the mail-in rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.
For more information about Verizon Wireless products and services, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or go to www.verizonwireless.com.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
We said that we would have to wait for a final release of Mac OS X 10.6.2 to be sure whether Apple had really killed off support for the Intel Atom processor, and we were right. Stellarolla, the hacker who first reported that a developers seed of the upcoming OS update would break compatibility with the netbook processor, has updated his original post.
A new seed (the name given to the successive updates given to developers before the final release) has re-enabled support for the Atom chip, meaning that hackers who have installed OS X Snow Leopard on hackintoshed netbooks should be safe to upgrade. This makes it look like it was simply a temporary change in he code. Either that or Apple is playing all sneaky to lure unwitting hackers into a trap and break their computers. Stella:
Anyways, in the latest development build Atom appears to have resurrected itself zombie style in 10C535. The Atom lives another day, but nothing is concrete until the final version of 10.6.2 is out.
So we will wait and see what the final release brings. Our guess is that the Atom-based hackintoshes will continue to work just fine, as these machines hardly cut into Apple’s sales: Anyone who hacks one together just to have a cheap Mac is unlikely to drop a grand on a real MacBook anyway, and I’d guess that most hackintoshers already have a Mac and are just doing it for fun.
10.6.2 kills Atom and other news: UPDATED [Stell’s Blog]
See Also:
Superstar iPhone hacker George Hotz has just released Blacksn0w, an addition to his latest Blackra1n iPhone jailbreaking application. Why would you want it? Because it will take any iPhone or iPod Touch and jailbreak it with one click. It will also unlock any iPhone and allow it to be used on any cell carrier, anywhere in the world. It even restores internet connection tethering for iPhones running the latest 3.1.2 software.
Better still, it does all this in a few seconds flat.
George Hotz, you may remember, became infamous after achieving the first ever iPhone unlock using a soldering iron and some 1337 skills. Now he has styled himself as some kind of angel from a Caravaggio painting (see picture above) but he has also provided the easiest iPhone hack we have yet used. I tried it out on my iPod Touch. Here’s the how-to: Download the software (Mac or Windows). Run it. Wait a few seconds. Let the iPod reboot. You’re done.
GeoHot is asking for donations, but the app is free if you like. I’m going to use it to add enough background-running applications to drain the battery in mere minutes. IPhone users, with the carrier unlock and the tethering support, may find it more useful.
Product page [Blackra1n]
blacksn0w is live [On the iPhone]
See Also:
 New Zealand Herald | EU Leaders Bolster Internet Access Protections New York Times By KEVIN J. O'BRIEN BERLIN — European lawmakers on Thursday agreed on new protections for Internet users, striking a compromise between national governments seeking to impose tough anti-piracy laws and consumer organizations that wanted to enshrine ... EU Telecom Rules Are User-Friendly, But Do Little To Curb Piracy European Union Reaches Agreement on Internet User Rights EU adopts "Internet freedom" provision on Internet cut-offs |
A scant five months after releasing its retro-styled, modern-thinking EP-1. Olympus has detailed the EP-2. But don’t worry if you just bought the “old” model — the changes are mostly cosmetic, and the picture-taking internals remain exactly the same.
The first thing you’ll notice is the color. The EP-2 is black, a slightly more discrete color than the rather lovely bare metal of the original, and a world apart from the pimped-out white model. The only other external difference is a small port under the hotshoe on the rear of the body, to which can be connected a new hi-def electronic viewfinder or an external microphone.
On the inside, the 12.3 megapixel, ISO 6400 sensor is the same. There are two new art filters (Diorama and Cross), “iEnhance” (which boosts color), manual control of both shutter speed and aperture when shooting movies and, probably the most interesting to photographers, continuous autofocus, which will track a subject as it moves through the frame.
The price, when it goes on sale in December, will be $1100 for a kit with the body, the 14-42mm lens and the new viewfinder. That’s up from the EP-1’s launch price of $800 for the body and lens, so you’re effectively paying $300 for that finder.
As we said, EP-1 owners needn’t worry. You can wait for the EP-3 unless you really need that accessory port. In fact, there’s good news for you, too. Olympus also announced a pair of news zoom lenses, a 9-18mm ƒ4.0-5.6 and a 14-150mm ƒ4.0-5.6. That translates to an 18-36mm wide-angle and a super-zooming 28-300mm when you allow for the 2x crop-factor of the micro four thirds sensor. Both of these will be available in the first half of 2010, prices as yet unknown. And if you want to see some more pictures of the new camera, keep reading.
Press release [DP Review]
See Also:
The new EP-2 with electronic viewfinder
The viewfinder tilts, for stealthy shots or hard-to-reach angles
The hotshoe-mounted stereo microphone adapter
The rear view, with the new connector visible beneath the hotshoe
Yesterday morning, I had the pleasure of taking the 2010 Tesla Roadster Sport out on the town in Menlo Park, California. It's the latest from the eco-friendly, Silicon Valley-based super-fast all-electric-car company started by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk. I can't really afford one in my everyday life (this orange beauty retails at $150K), so I decided to test its street cred by taking it out to some classy American locales. There was drive-thru Jack in the Crack a few blocks from the Tesla showroom, so I decided to stop there for a cup of coffee.
It was lunchtime, and there were a half a dozen cars merging into the drive-thru lane from two entrances to get their fix of Ultimate Cheeseburgers and Jumbo Jacks. A Jeep Cherokee let me cut in even though he was clearly there first. (That would have never happened in my RSX.)
The Roadster Sport looks slick, but it is strangely devoid of typical sports car characteristics in the way it sounds and feels. Like its predecessors, the Roadster Sport doesn't have gears &mdash it has single speed transmission. Instead of a gear shift knob, there are buttons labeled P, R, N, and D. This means there's no rumbling or jerkiness when you accelerate; it just shoots up smoothly and silently like one of those crazy free fall rides at the amusement park. But still, this is one fast machine! It does 0-60 in 3.7 seconds--that's faster than a Porsche Carrera GT.
As I rolled up to the giant menu billboard, some guy in a beat up Toyota revved his engine and winked at me repeatedly. I smiled politely and ordered a coffee with extra sugar and a few packets of ketchup.
The Roadster Sport has one cup holder which folds out from the center console to the passenger side. I like that it provides utility without impeding on the clean design, but that also meant that the coffee resided under my passenger's legs, which made it hard to reach for.
In a way, this car is more like a drivable computer than an ordinary car. It runs on Li-Ion batteries, charges its internal battery at any electrical socket, and needs the occasional firmware upgrade. You never have to go to a gas station or get an oil change. Looking at the company's DNA, it's not hard to figure out why — only a third of the Tesla Motors' 500 employees were hired out of the auto industry. The rest are mostly Silicon Valley types, including industrial designers from Apple and engineers from Google and YouTube.
The company claims that the car averages about 244 miles per charge, driven at a normal speed. Each full charge costs about $4.90 worth of electricity at an ordinary 120V outlet in California. That means that it is very economical and ecological if you're rich enough to afford one. It's not ideal for road trips longer than 244 miles, though — what are you supposed to do if you run out of juice in the middle of a highway?
The great thing about Menlo Park is that, despite its vicinity to some of the greatest tech companies in the world, it is not devoid of good old suburban charm. To my delight, there was a Target just minutes away from the Tesla showroom — the ultimate place-to-go-to-buy-things-I-never-knew-I-needed. Some of the luxurious accessories on my Tesla were things I never knew I needed, too — a USB port, an iPod dock, two screens, inflatable lumbar support, and a carbon fiber exterior from France.
After short stops at Taco Bell (I like gorditas) and Oil Changers (I was just curious what they'd say — a nice Hispanic man politely told me that they do not service Teslas), I returned the Roadster Sport to the Tesla store...
...but not before giving it a friendly Hello Kitty makeover.
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Zynga CEO 
Bad news people, the Samsung TL225 camera that was released 
Yesterday Offerpal Media changed CEOs. Cofounder 
![Screen shot 2009-11-05 at [ November 5 ] 8.09.47 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-05-at-November-5-8.09.47-PM.png "Screen shot 2009-11-05 at [ November 5 ] 8.09.47 PM")
Iphone game developer 