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Worm attack bites at Apple iPhone - BBC News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Nov 2009 | 3:30 am Burberry taps social media with trench coat site (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Nov 2009 | 3:05 am Apple TV Re-synced Content Issues Fixed - Techtree.com
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:58 am 5 Years On: ReadWriteWeb's 2004 Interview With Tim O'ReillyFive years ago I interviewed tech publisher Tim O'Reilly about a new term that his company had just coined: Web 2.0. The first Web 2.0 conference had been held the previous month, October 2004, and O'Reilly...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:53 am My Favorite New World Notes Posts From Last WeekIf you missed them last week here's a last chance to check them out before they slide off the front page: How to make Second Life truly mass market, Part 1: Deep Integration With Facebook (Very interesting...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:52 am Forget iPhone MMS, Share 100 Pictures In An Instant With KnockingAs we were all painfully aware, it took AT&T forever to bring MMS to the iPhone. A new app has just been released that hopes to one-up it. Knocking, made by Pointy Heads Software, is basically a photo-sharing...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:45 am Forget iPhone MMS, Share 100 Pictures In An Instant With Knocking
Knocking, made by Pointy Heads Software, is basically a photo-sharing app on steroids. With it, you can pretty much instantaneously share up to 100 photos at once between two iPhones. This works by establishing a connection between the two phones, during which one user selects another user with the app and “knocks” the pictures over to them. The video below shows just how simple and fast this process is. Naturally, for this to work, both people must have the Knocking application. But the app, which is free for the first 50,000 downloads, has other advantages, such as being able to control the photo viewing experience on another phone. So, for example, if I want to send some pictures to my mom and show her specific ones, I would simply create a Knocking connection and send them over where I could then control which ones she is seeing. She would also be able to save any of those pictures to her phone with the click of a button. MMS allows you to send multiple images but the sending process is slow, and the selection process is cumbersome. With Knocking, you can easily share entire albums, not just individual pictures. And MMS limits you to sending 5 pictures. Again, Knocking’s limit is 100. And even with that many photos, it takes only a couple of minutes to sync them all between the two phones. There is also Facebook Connect integration to allow users to share their “knocks.” And Knocking works over both 3G and WiFi. You can find the Knocking app here. Again, it’s free for the first 50,000 downloads. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. 
Source: TechCrunch | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:45 am UK's Channel 4 to Broadcast In 3Dfatnickc writes "The UK's Channel 4, from the 16th of September, will be broadcasting a few programmes in 3D, the full list of which can be found here. While the likes of a 3D Miley Cyrus concert aren't exactly groundbreaking, this will give 3D viewing at home much more publicity, paving the way for even more interesting projects in the future. In partnership with retailer Sainsbury's, Channel 4 are producing free 3D glasses so that as many people as possible can watch them, although it's unclear which of the various types they'll be. "Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:42 am Mobile Advertising and Commerce in the UKThe Guardian on the UK's love affair with text messaging and how it's being used successfully in marketing and commerce. Although mobile advertising is likely to grow as new functions are added to handsets,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:41 am Cyclehoop Turns Every Street-Sign Into a Bike Rack
Here’s a genuinely good idea for bike parking, which is currently, and surprisingly, being trialled in London. The Cyclehoop is a steel hoop which clamps onto lampposts, street signs and other urban poles and turns them into proper bike racks. The advantages to the host city are great: it’s a lot cheaper and quicker than the digging and re-concreting required for normal racks, and the Cyclehoop takes up almost no space in comparison. And its good for cyclists, too. The ‘hoop is put purposely low on the post to discourage top-tube-only locking, which is apparently a major encouragement to thieves. It also allows more than one bike to lock to a single post much more easily and stops them being lifted over the top. The units are secured using shear-bolts, which are bolts which lose their wrench-shaped heads at a specific torque, leaving behind a smooth, conical head that cannot be turned. But there is one more advantage to the Cyclehoop — it legitimizes locking bikes up to street furniture, something most cyclists do anyway. Here in Barcelona, the law somewhat fuzzily says that you can’t lock bikes to lampposts or trees. This is so widely ignored that the cops let it go, usually, but of course that doesn’t stop the occasional old lady ticking you off. The CylceHoop is being trialled in the Islington and Southwark boroughs of London. Any Londoners who have seen or used these brightly colored froot-loops locks, let us know what you think of them. Product page [Cyclehoop via Corpus Fixie and Bike Radar] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:33 am Android Smartphone Pioneer Hits Turbulence in Q3 - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:30 am Nokia Initiates Charger Exchange ProgramESPOO, Finland, November 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Nokia (NYSE: NOK) today initiated a charger exchange program in which consumers owning certain Nokia-branded chargersSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:28 am Popular iPhone App TweetDeck Gone Missing From The App Store
Now it seems the TweetDeck iPhone app is MIA from Apple’s App Store completely, barring new users from installing the app on their phones and existing ones to upgrade to a new version. Apparently, last Friday when the upgraded iPhone app was pushed, too many crash reports resulted in Apple pulling the tool from the store and holding out for a bug-free version. An updated version was quickly resubmitted that same day, prompting TweetDeck community manager Richard Barley to tweet that he was going to try and push for a fast return of the (free) app on the store. No such luck, however. A couple of hours ago at the time of this writing, Barley sent out another message saying that he was ’sorry’ and felt ‘frustrated’ because the updated app still hadn’t found its way back onto the App Store. Of course, Curpertino isn’t exactly at fault here, since it’s the responsibility of TweetDeck’s (admittedly small) team to assure that submitted apps aren’t bug-ridden, which was apparently the case with the first update they had pushed last Friday. But it goes to show exactly how much control Apple has over the whole process, being able to drop applications from the store in a heartbeat and then forcing developers to sit and wait until they find time to review updated versions, with no ETA ever given. According to Louis Gray, these are the features the new TweetDeck iPhone app will boast:
Also, here’s a video of the upgraded app, which will hopefully be reinstated by Apple soon: Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Source: TechCrunch | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:24 am Popular iPhone App TweetDeck Gone Missing From The App StoreA couple of days ago, I checked if there were any updates for the applications I have installed on my iPhone, and one that was identified as having published a more recent version in the App Store was...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:24 am UPDATE 2-Sonova to buy Advanced Bionics Corp for $489 mln* Total transaction costs 510 mln Sfr at current rates * Sonova sees deal adding to earnings 2nd year after closeSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:20 am ICICI, Temasek revive Firstsource stake sale-sourcesHONG KONG/MUMBAI, Nov 9 (Reuters) - India's ICICI Bank , Singapore state investor Temasek and another large shareholder have revived plans to sell their stakes in back-office firm Firstsource Solutions...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:15 am GE, Comcast Reach Agreement on Valuing NBC Universal [Voices]By Reporters, The Wall Street Journal General Electric Co. (GE) and Comcast Corp. (CMCS) have settled on how to value NBC Universal now and in the future, clearing a key obstacle to giving Comcast control of GE’s television and movie company, according to people familiar with the matter. After weeks of wrestling, both sides have agreed to value NBC Universal in the neighborhood of $30 billion, people close to the talks said. The agreement includes a mechanism that could reduce the cash Comcast would have to kick in when the deal closes, two of those people said. The two companies are now ironing out the final details of an agreement, according to the people. An announcement could come as early as the end of this week, the people said. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:00 am eLong to Announce Third Quarter 2009 Unaudited Financial Results on November 23, 2009 at 7:00 pm US Eastern Time / November 24, 2009 at 8:00 am Beijing/Hong Kong TimeBEIJING, Nov. 9 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- eLong, Inc. (Nasdaq: LONG), a leading online travel service provider in China, today announced that it will report its financial...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 2:00 am UPDATE 1-India's Reliance close to $6 bln overseas buy-paper* Reliance Industries declines direct comment on reportSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:58 am Philippine oil firms may halt imports -officialsMANILA, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Philippine oil companies may halt imports of refined petroleum products as losses mount from a state-imposed cap on fuel prices, company and government officials said on Monday...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:42 am USB-powered gloves that keep your fingers warm (but why?)
My first reaction – when I saw today on Thanko’s web site that the notoriously silly gadget maker from Tokyo is selling USB-powered gloves with built-in heaters [JP] – was: Who actually buys this kind of stuff? I mean Thanko is a real company, they have brick-and-mortar stores in Tokyo (two of them), they have employees etc. But they have been surviving for years now, even though they closed their English online store last month. You can connect the gloves (black is for men, white is for women) to your computer’s USB port and expect them to keep your fingers warm while you type. Again: Who in god’s name would do that? And it’s not even Thanko’s only USB gloves, they have models that are shaped like teddy bears, too.
People living outside Japan can order the new USB gloves for $27.75 per pair plus shipping over at Geek Stuff 4 U.
Source: CrunchGear | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:42 am VASCO Data Security Enhances DIGIPASS 830 with an Alfa-Numeric ScreenOAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill. and ZURICH, Nov. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VASCO Data Security Inc. (Nasdaq: VDSI; href="http://www.vasco.com/">www.vasco.com ), a leading softwareSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:37 am Sun Drive Is Everything You Could Ever Want In A Solar USB KeyWhile I certainly applaud the concept behind festooning random gadgets with solar cells, I have to question how useful it actually is. I mean, even with dedicated solar chargers with lots of panel area...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:36 am Citizen Journalism: I’ll Take It, Flaws and All [Voices]By Mathew Ingram, Communities Editor of the Globe and Mail Paul Carr, who started writing for TechCrunch not long ago, is an entertaining writer, and he often puts his finger on issues that others tend to avoid in their headlong rush towards whatever is shiny and new, which is why I’m glad Mike Arrington hired him. But I think his latest rant against “citizen journalism” is misplaced. In the piece, which is entitled “After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth,” Carr talks about how a soldier on the base where the shootings occurred last week was posting to Twitter throughout the ordeal. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:36 am Senior Citizen Sexting on the RiseThe American Association of Retired People (AARP) Web site recently posted a story that details the growing popularity of raunchy text exchanges among senior citizens. More and more of the 50+ set,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:32 am EDF plans to launch UK grid sale in December -sourcesAMSTERDAM/LONDON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - French utility EDF has set an indicative timetable in its sale of Britain's biggest electricity distribution network as industry and financial parties begin to form...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:32 am UPDATE 1-Gazprom Q2 profit falls 36 pct, beats f'castMOSCOW, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Gazprom , the world's largest natural gas company, beat analyst forecasts with a 36 percent drop in quarterly net profit that signalled demand for its gas in Europe had picked...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:30 am Birmingham Wragge Team to Focus on Online Comment Defamation [Voices]By Tom Scotney, Writer, Birmingham Post Birmingham’s largest law firm has launched a new team to track down people who make anonymous comments about companies online. The Cyber Tracing team at Wragge & Co was set up to deal with what the law firm said was a rising problem with people making anonymous statements that defamed companies, and people sharing confidential information online. And Wragge boasted the new team would ensure there was “nowhere to hide in cyberspace”. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:29 am Rupert Murdoch vows to take all of Newscorp's websites out of Google, abolish fair use, tear heads off of adorable baby animalsFor months (years?) Rupert Murdoch has been waving his jowls around and shouting that Google is stealing from him by not paying to index his material. And all along, we've been saying, "Pffft, right. If you don't like it, just add a robots.txt file that tells Google not to index you. Until you do, stop whining and put it back in your pants."Now Rupert has promised to do exactly that. He claims that he's going to take all of News Corp's websites pay-only and have them removed from Google when he does. You know what? He's lying. But I think it'd be entertaining if every reporter who interviewed him, for the rest of his life, said, "Hey, Rupert, when are you going to take all your company's websites out of Google?" It'd also be hilarious to get the CEOs of the various pieces of Rupert's empire to comment on whether they want all their company's materials invisible to search engines. Rupert also thinks that fair use is illegal and that the right court case would result in it being "barred altogether." Again, another hilarious interview question for the rest of his career: "Hey, Rupert, when are you going to abolish fair use? How's that plan coming, pal?" Epic Win: News Corp Likely To Remove Content From Google (Thanks, Dustin!) Update: So here's what I think it going on. Murdoch has no intention of shutting down search-engine traffic to his sites, but he's still having lurid fantasies inspired by the momentary insanity that caused Google to pay him for the exclusive right to index MySpace (thus momentarily rendering MySpace a visionary business-move instead of a ten-minutes-behind-the-curve cash-dump). So what he's hoping is that a second-tier search engine like Bing or Ask (or, better yet, some search tool you've never heard of that just got $50MM in venture capital) will give him half a year's operating budget in exchange for a competitive advantage over Google. He may, in fact, get a taker. And it will be a disaster. A search engine whose sole competitive advantage is "We have Rupert Murdoch's pages!" will not attract any substantial traffic. The search engine will either go bust or fail to renew the deal. On this fair use question, my guess is that some evil Richilieu in the legal department has been passing torrid whispers to Rupert about how the Berne Convention's "Three Step Test" for exceptions to copyright is overstepped by US fair use and by many countries' fair dealing rules. So Rupert thinks that he can take a case to the WTO (membership in the WTO is contingent on compliance with the Berne Convention) and get all these rules struck down. Of course, Rupert's own media products make frequent and copious fair use of other copyrights -- you can't create without fair use. But the mustache-twirling lawyer at Newscorp probably didn't mention this to Rupert Palpatine (the lawyer probably thinks it'd be OK if every single one of those fair uses was replaced by a process in which lots of lawyers negotiated the terms of every use, probably all reporting to him). They're wrong, of course. The WTO's rules -- and Berne -- are necessarily subservient to realpolitik, viz., the US gets $1 trillion of economic activity out of fair use, and it's not going to get rid of it because it makes some UN agency sad (if the UN mattered to the US, the US'd be paying the billions in back-fees it owes). And if the WTO imposes trade sanctions on the US, they'll just be ignored, because the world's factory-states (China, with also-rans such as India and Vietnam) can't afford to stop sending shipping containers full of Happy Meal toys to America. And if the WTO tries to embargo China, it'll quickly discover that the rest of the world isn't prepared to live without plastic tchotchkes and junkware either.
So good luck with that, Rupert. have a delightful, Howard-Hughesian dotage, acting out a crazed, Moby-Dick dumbshow against the Internet, hoping that the world's politics and economies will reform themselves to suit your fevered imaginings. This is how history will remember you. Rupert Murdoch vows to take all of Newscorp's websites out of Google, abolish fair use, tear heads off of adorable baby animalsFor months (years?) Rupert Murdoch has been waving his jowls around and shouting that Google is stealing from him by not paying to index his material. And all along, we've been saying, "Pffft, right. If...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:29 am The Internet is Killing Storytelling [Voices]By Ben Macintyre, Associate Editor, London Times Click, tweet, e-mail, twitter, skim, browse, scan, blog, text: the jargon of the digital age describes how we now read, reflecting the way that the very act of reading, and the nature of literacy itself, is changing. The information we consume online comes ever faster, punchier and more fleetingly. Our attention rests only briefly on the internet page before moving incontinently on to the next electronic canapé. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:23 am Did Google Steal Sidewiki From a Startup?Web annotation is a sexy and increasingly crowded space in the market. As in any such pool, the amount of elbow-rubbing between individuals and similarity between products can lead to suspicion of theft...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:09 am Virtual Goods Start Bringing Real Paydays [Voices]By Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone, Writers, New York Times Silicon Valley may have discovered the perfect business: charging real money for products that do not exist. These so-called virtual goods, like a $1 illustration of a Champagne bottle on Facebook or the $2.50 Halloween costume in the online game Sorority Life, are no more than a collection of pixels on a Web page. But it is quickly becoming commonplace for people to spend a few dollars on them to get ahead in an online game or to give a friend a gift on a social network. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:08 am UPDATE 2-Vodacom H1 profit drops, cautious on outlook* Mobile customers base up 16.5 pct (Adds CEO comments, shares)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:06 am Tweeting From the Scene: Citizen Journalism or "Tragi-Porn"? [Voices]By David Quigg, Blogger, DavidQuigg.com NYU Prof. Jay Rosen posted this on Twitter this morning: “Paul Carr is going contrarian on citizen journalism’s ass. Jerks with cell phones and Twitter accounts appall him http://jr.ly/mypg” The Fort Hood killings, to hear Carr tell it, amount to “the perfect example to support my view” that “social media might not be an unequivocally Good Thing in terms of privacy and human decency.” Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 9 Nov 2009 | 1:01 am New 'Call of Duty' game could set entertainment record - San Jose Mercury News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Nov 2009 | 12:57 am How Men vs Women approach technology problemsMen and women have different approaches to dealing with technology problems, according to a gadget helpline. [via the BBC] Among other findings, the service found that: -- 64% of its male callers had...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Nov 2009 | 12:41 am Discovery News Has MovedDiscovery News has moved. This feed is no longer being updated. Please subscribe to the new feed at news.discovery.com.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 9 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am Why Doesn't Exercise Lead To Weight Loss?antdude writes "The New York Times' Well blog reports that 'for some time, researchers have been finding that people who exercise don't necessarily lose weight.' A study published online in September 2009 in The British Journal of Sports Medicine was the latest to report apparently disappointing slimming results. In the study, 58 obese people completed 12 weeks of supervised aerobic training without changing their diets. The group lost an average of a little more than seven pounds, and many lost barely half that. How can that be?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 8 Nov 2009 | 11:40 pm 3D printer jargon in actionThis Shapeways tutorial on "Prepping Blender Files for 3D Printing" is not only useful for 3D printers, it is a treasure-trove of 3D printing jargon.If you have a model created from several objects or meshes, first make sure that each individual mesh is manifold (water-tight). You can tell this by going into edit mode, pressing A (once if any vertices are selected or twice otherwise) to select none, then hit ctrl-alt-shift-M (on a Mac it's ctrl-opt-shift-M).Prepping Blender Files for 3D Printing (via Beyond the Beyond)
Previously:
 Source: Boing Boing | 8 Nov 2009 | 11:21 pm Color film of 1927 LondonThis early (1927) color film shows 10 minutes of remarkable vintage London -- especially the Petticoat Lane market scenes around 6:00, which are a rare glimpse into the life of everyday people (it's even cooler if you were actually down on Petticoat Lane yesterday, as I was!). The Open Road London (1927) (via Making Light)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 8 Nov 2009 | 11:19 pm Slow News: designing reflection and contemplation into the news-cycleDan Gillmor sez, "Slow food was a great idea. Maybe we need 'slow news' in an era of accelerating -- and wrong -- information."Like many other people who've been burned by believing too quickly, I've learned to put almost all of what journalists call "breaking news" into the categories of gossip or, in the words of a scientist friend, "interesting if true." That is, even though I gobble up "the latest" from a variety of sources, the closer the information is in time to the actual event, the more I assume it's unreliable if not false.Toward a Slow-News Movement (Thanks, Dan!) Source: Boing Boing | 8 Nov 2009 | 11:14 pm Replacing $100K diagnostic chip fab with Shrinky-Dinks and a laser-printerCCrawford sez, "Michelle Khine couldn't afford the $100,000 fabrication gear to make micro-fluidic chips needed for chip-based diagnostic tests. She turned to Shrinky-Dinks and found a new way to solve the problem."A children's toy inspires a cheap, easy production method for high-tech diagnostic chips (Thanks, CCrawford!)
(Image: Dave Lauridsen) How the ambient sound at Walt Disney World worksNoah sez, "An interview with the man who designed the ambient sound at Disney World, ensuring a constant experience rather than one that ends with the end of the ride. It was initially a little uneven, with sound changing volumes depending on where you stood, so they used algorithms to position 15,000 speakers around the park so that the levels would never change."I like the way there's often running water or waterfalls between different soundscapes to act as a white-noise buffer. It's subtle but incredibly effective. You almost never hear two contrasting soundscapes at once. In the mid 1990's, the park started researching the problem. It would eventually find no existing solution, so the engineers had to design and construct, on their own, one of the most complex and advanced audio systems ever built. The work paid off: today, as you walk through Disney World, the volume of the ambient music does not change. Ever. More than 15,000 speakers have been positioned using complex algorithms to ensure that the sound plays within a range of just a couple decibels throughout the entire park. It is quite a technical feat acoustically, electrically, and mathematically.How Mr. Q Manufactured Emotion (Thanks, Noah!) Source: Boing Boing | 8 Nov 2009 | 10:52 pm Man walks into own funeralOn the Day of the Dead (Dia de Finados) in Brazil, Ademir Jorge Goncalves walked into his own funeral. His family had thought he had died in a car wreck but Goncalves had actually been out drinking. According to CNN, "the sight of... Goncalves alive shocked relatives, some of whom tried to jump out of the windows of the funeral home in southern Brazil."Source: Boing Boing | 8 Nov 2009 | 10:35 pm AP IMPACT: Framed for child porn by a PC virus (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Nov 2009 | 10:10 pm iTab Mania: Wired.com Readers Beat Apple to Producing a Tablet<< previous image | next image >>
Rumored for an early 2010 release, Apple’s touchscreen tablet is shaping up to be one of the most anticipated gadgets since the iPhone. But words aren’t doing it justice. Tipsters have described the device as a “giant iPhone” of sorts, which doesn’t sound terribly exciting. That’s why Wired.com challenged readers to mock up illustrations of an Apple tablet for a chance to win prizes. The contest rules were simple: Use your digital design powers to dream up an Apple tablet and submit your illustrations to our Reddit widget. We’re rewarding prizes for two categories: Most Realistic Mock-Up, for the most realistic, convincing illustration of an Apple tablet based on the consensus of various rumor reports; and Most Creative Mock-Up, for some swanky art depicting an Apple tablet that we all really want. We received 18 tablet illustrations from participants, and we’re presenting 10 of our favorites to you in this awesome art gallery created by readers. Click through for the winners and some amusing visuals. 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm Hyatt Selects Trintech for Financial Process ComplianceHyatt Hotels Corporation, headquartered in Chicago, is a leading global hospitality company with a proud heritage of making guests feel more than welcome. Thousands of members of the Hyatt family in 45 countries strive to make a difference in the lives of the guests they encounter every day by providing authentic hospitality. The company's subsidiaries manage, franchise, own and develop hotels and resorts under the Hyatt®, Park Hyatt®, Andaz(TM), Grand Hyatt®, Hyatt Regency®, Hyatt Place® and Hyatt Summerfield Suites(TM) brand names and have locations under development on five continents. Hyatt Vacation Ownership, Inc., a Hyatt Hotels Corporation subsidiary, develops and operates vacation ownership properties under the Hyatt Vacation Club® brand. As of June 30, 2009, the company's worldwide portfolio consisted of 413 properties. For more information, please visit www.hyatt.comSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm Nov. 9, 1963: Dual Disasters Stun JapanA mining explosion and a train crash combine to kill more than 600 people.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm iTab Mania: Wired.com Readers Envision Apple's TabletWhy wait for Apple to deliver a touchscreen tablet if you can do it first? Wired.com readers submitted illustrations of an Apple tablet as part of iTablet mock-up contest.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm Nippon Avionics Launches Sales of Intelligent Projectors 'iP-01UE' and 'iP-01BE'TOKYO, Nov.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm MythTV 0.22 Releaseduyguremre writes "After a little over a year and a half in the making, the developers of MythTV announced that MythTV 0.22 is now available. There have been a lot of large changes since 0.21, including a port from Qt v3 to Qt v4 and a major UI rewrite to convert to MythTV's new MythUI user interface libary. As always, this release adds support for some new hardware, in this case VDPAU video acceleration, DVB-S2, and the Hauppauge HD-PVR. The MythUI toolkit allows themes much greater control over the user interface and today we're announcing a competition to design new themes for MythTV. With the new release comes a theming competition too. For a more complete list of changes and new features, read the Release Notes on the wiki."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 8 Nov 2009 | 8:33 pm Dragon Age Gift Giving Guide Located - PS3 News - PSX Extreme
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Nov 2009 | 8:21 pm Third Singaporean Mobile Operator to Offer IPhone (PC World)PC World - Singaporean mobile operator StarHub will start selling Apple's iPhone before the end of this year, the company said Monday.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Nov 2009 | 7:50 pm A Smartphone Owners Bill of Rights (PC World)PC World - Many smartphone owners are frustrated with the high prices they pay to wireless service providers, as well as the treatment they get from providers once they're locked into a two-year service contract. Americans have limited choices in mobile broadband devices and services, and mobile operators in the United States currently enjoy relative freedom from regulation.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Nov 2009 | 6:02 pm Sleep: more important than you think (Psychology Today)"Getting enough sleep, on a regular cycle, may make us a better version of ourselves. And even though my greatest wish is usually more time in the day, I'd rather feel good and perform well than get to be a crankier, impulsive, sick version of myself for a few extra hours a day."Source: Boing Boing | 8 Nov 2009 | 5:24 pm Massive Power Outages In Brazil Caused By HackersHugh Pickens writes "CBS reports on 60 minutes that a massive two-day power outage in Brazil's Espirito Santo State affecting more than three million people in 2007, and another, smaller event in three cities north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005, were perpetrated by hackers manipulating control systems. Former Chief of US National Intelligence Retired Adm. Mike McConnell says that the 'United States is not prepared for such an attack' and believes it could happen in America. 'If I were an attacker and wanted to do strategic damage to the United States, I would either take the cold of winter or the heat of summer,' says McConnell, 'I would probably sack electric power on the US East Coast, maybe the West Coast and attempt to cause a cascading effect.' Congressman Jim Langevin says that US power companies need to be forced to deal with the issue after they told Congress they would take steps to defend their operations but did not follow up. 'They admit that they misled Congress. The private sector has different priorities than we do in providing security. Their bottom line is about profits,' says Langevin. 'We need to change their motivation so that when see vulnerability like this, we can require them to fix it.' McConnell adds that a similar attack to the one in Brazil is poised to take place on US soil and that it may take some horrific event to get the country focused on shoring up cyber security. 'If the power grid was taken off line in the middle of winter and it caused people to suffer and die, that would galvanize the nation. I hope we don't get there.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 8 Nov 2009 | 5:17 pm Startup Claims Google Copied Web-Annotation ProductAn anonymous reader writes "Web annotation startup ReframeIt claim Google copied their web annotation product when releasing Google Sidewiki. At first glance, the products do look quite similar, and this eWeek article has some interesting evidence, including suspicious user registrations by Google employees and an attempt by Google to hire off ReframeIt's lead engineer."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 8 Nov 2009 | 4:02 pm Monsieur’s Oreo is ready, monsieur
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Source: CrunchGear | 8 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm Splurb Surfaces The Most Popular Links Across Social Media Sites There are many sites that show trending links across the web including TweetMeme, Topsy, and Bit.ly. Recently launched splurb is now in the mix with its site that shows the most popular links that are trending on social media sites. splurb currently indexes Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Propeller, TweetMeme, Yahoo Buzz and Fark. Splurb tallies the number of votes from the various sites and number of sources that list links. The more sources that cite a link, the larger the story appears on splurb. To get listed, a link must be popular on at least two social websites. The site’s founder, Bill Chasen, said he created splurb because the most popular content on the web has a tendency to repeatedly show up on the seven hubs which are indexed. From there, he says, content then moves to blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media. I’m not so sure about that statement, but I do think that sites like TweetMeme and Topsy help us understand what links and news are trending on the web. To a certain degree, these sites are able to help us understand the importance of certain links vs. others. Of course, Chasen says that splurb is not a replacement to its competitors, but rather serves as another layer for people to discover the best content without having to dig deep into each site. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: TechCrunch | 8 Nov 2009 | 3:15 pm DocuPen X-series: A pen scanner that scans at 600 dpiSection: Gadgets / Other, Miscellaneous
Pen scanners have been around for a few years now, though they haven’t yet been all that spectacular in actually scanning. They didn’t always have a lot of on-board memory, and didn’t scan at very high resolutions. The new DocuPen X-series from Planon looks to change that. The DocuPen X-series are the first pen scanners to be capable of scanning at a full 600 dpi, making them just as good as most normal scanners. Planon also managed to put in 64MB of storage, Bluetooth, and an OLED screen onto the new devices. With all of these features, the DocuPen X-series will make scanning documents away from a normal scanner much easier, and more reasonable. Now you can easily scan documents with the DocuPen, send them to a netbook via Bluetooth, then email them off to where they need to go. Despite the possible uses, the $369 price tag for the introduction model, the X05, makes them just a bit out of reach for most users. Then you also have the X10 and X50 for $389 and $439 respectively. Outside of businesses, the price tag is likely to make the DocuPen X-series largely meaningless. They are certainly interesting tech, but the possible uses are limited. Perhaps if the price came down they’d be more interesting. For now they remain outside the price range for most users, and remain arguably meaningless for many. Read [PlanOn] Via [jkOnTheRun] Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 8 Nov 2009 | 3:09 pm SNEGENES “portable” console plays SNES, Genesis, and NES games
Note that in the video above, everything is flipped left-right. While this would make for an interesting twist on some of your old favorites (imagine running left in Sonic), it is in fact just a video issue (shot in Photo Booth, I believe). Now, as we’ve seen with the handheld Genesis I reviewed just a few weeks ago, you an easily put a Genesis and some games on a chip and it’ll work great. But if I’m not mistaken, the actual hardware and PCBs of all three systems (clones, but still) are integrated into the construction of this grotesque gaming Cerberus. Again, this somewhat affects its portability. Yet, that said… why do I want one so bad?
Source: Gizmodo | 8 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm Malware Can Download Child Porn To Your Computer2muchcoffeeman writes "The Associated Press tells the story of Michael Fiola, a former Massachusetts government employee who was arrested in 2007 after child porn was found on his state-issued laptop computer. He was eventually cleared of all charges after some digging by the defense found that the laptop was infected with malware that was 'programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute — an inhuman feat. While Fiola and his wife were out to dinner one night, someone logged on to the computer and porn flowed in for an hour and a half. Prosecutors performed another test and confirmed the defense findings. The charge was dropped — 11 months after it was filed.' The article also discusses the technical aspects of how it could happen and about similar cases in the United Kingdom in 2003."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 8 Nov 2009 | 2:47 pm First IPhone Worm Spreads Rick Astley Wallpaper
|
 TechCrunch (blog) | Zynga To Remove All In Game Offers Washington Post Zynga insists they are serious about cleaning up the industry. And today Pincus has announced that the company will remove all offer advertising from their games. All offers will be removed by the end of today, says Pincus, "until we can control their ... Zynga explains why it is suspending offers in its games and why offer quality ... After Facebook Bans FishVille, Zynga Pulls Plug On All Performance-Based Ads Zynga's FishVille Swims With The Fishes For Ad Violations |
Watching this video, it doesn’t seem very much more than a demo for a rather anonymous-looking little touchscreen device, a PMP prototype maybe. Then you find out that the whole thing is running an 8-bit processor with 4KB of RAM. Touchscreen tricks like scrolling momentum are implemented perfectly well, and there appears to be little or no lag. Pac-Man runs at 60fps, which is more than I can say for the version on my G1.
The touchscreen is salvaged from an off-brand PMP, and the CPU is a 12Mhz Atmega644 — not something I’m familiar with, but I trust the author when he says it’s about 3% of the speed of an iPhone. And it’ll render a polyhedron (though I doubt it can texture it).
The question this brings up for me is why aren’t all interfaces so snappy at this point? I understand there’s more going on under the hood in a smartphone than in a demo application like this thing, but seriously, I’m going to have lag when I hit the home button on a CPU faster than the one I had in my PC a few years ago? Make it better.
[via MAKE]
AFP - "Modern Warfare 2" strikes on Tuesday in a worldwide assault eagerly anticipated by lovers of the blockbuster role-playing battle videogame franchise.
FROM APPLETELL - The day of the Droid came and left with relatively little press coverage compared to what we’ve seen from the iPhone in previous launches. However…
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Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Last week Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said that they would take steps to remove scammy advertising offers from their social games. There have been a couple of missteps since then, and Facebook responded by taking Zynga’s newest game, FishVille, offline.
Zynga insists they are serious about cleaning up the industry. And today Pincus has announced that the company will remove all offer advertising from their games.
This isn’t a meaningless action. Offers account for 1/3 or so of Zynga’s rumored $250 million in revenue.
All offers will be removed by the end of today, says Pincus, “until we can control their inclusion and presentation ourselves.”
The blog post also discloses that Zynga is an investor in DoubleDing, an offer provider that competes with OfferPal and SuperRewards. DoubleDing was serving the mobile offers that popped back onto Zynga on Friday.
Pincus’ blog post:
Ensuring zynga’s user experience – removing all cpa offers
michael arrington posted yesterday on mobile offerings still being shown in our new game fishville. I want to explain why this occurred and how we are taking more aggressive steps to ensure this never happens again.
zynga has not been able to control the ad content as it is managed by the offer companies that we work with.
with regards to yesterday’s incident, the offer provider, doubleding, told us this was the result of their failure to remove an optimization queue which was still showing these ads to 10% of pageviews. i want to be clear that zynga had no control over the pages being shown and never filtered them from michael or anyone’s view.
we recognize it is our responsibility to ensure that offers which generate a bad user experience are not shown with any of our games.
therefore, we are removing all CPA offers across zynga games until we can control their inclusion and presentation ourselves. This will be effective by end of day today. this move is worth it for the long-term user experience and value to our partners like facebook and myspace.
yesterday’s mobile offer issue was particularly painful as we had helped fund doubleding earlier this year in the hopes of cleaning up the space and raising the bar on user experience. we intend to influence them and others to improve their ad content and be long-term focused for the success of the social gaming and social networking industries.
as I said in my post last monday, my mission is to build zynga into a sustainable consumer service with enduring value to our users. we will continue to do whatever it takes to earn our users trust and respect for the long-term.
We’ve also heard from DoubleDing President Matt Handal, who responds to our article yesterday:
Michael,
I am the President of DoubleDing and this is not the way I wanted to meet you. I wanted to provide you with some additional information and offer more details for your Zynga article dated Nov. 6. It is my desire that you relay this information to your readers as soon as possible.
It is our intention to fully comply with all Facebook, as well as partner (e.g. Zynga), advertising standards. Zynga’s standards require us to remove all mobile offers which do not offer a clear user value. We take 100% responsibility for any issues that arise from our actions and commit to correcting any errors.
As evident from our logo on the bottom of the offer wall, DoubleDing powers the offerwall displayed in this article. Mobile offers were displayed because of a technical glitch in our system. We have an optimization engine that serves advertisements to 10% of the traffic. Sometime late Thursday or early Friday, a bug in this engine began pulling previously removed mobile offers and displayed them in the mobile tab of our wall. If a user would have refreshed the page 10 times, they would have seen offers in the mobile tab only once. We identified the bug and corrected this within 30 minutes of being notified today. There was NO IP BLOCKING of any sort, beyond the normal country and fraud blocking.
Finally, to reiterate our commitment and seriousness of our intent to adhere to high standards and bring value to the growing virtual currency space, we will be donating ALL revenues derived from this and any future mistakes of this sort to charity. DoubleDing will NOT derive any financial benefit from any such issues.
If you would like any more information or to discuss further, please feel free to contact me directly.
Thanks,
Matt Handal
President
www.DoubleDing.com
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Here are some stories from this week on CrunchGear:
Japanese company announces Dragon Ball headphones
Toyjector: Cute mini projector to be released in Japan
Choken Bako: Cute Japanese piggy bank
Japanese company announces Dragon Ball headphones
Toyjector: Cute mini projector to be released in Japan
Choken Bako: Cute Japanese piggy bank
Video: Strange Japanese hamburger vending machine
The Electrobite makes it fun and exciting to be handicapped
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Zynga’s most recent Facebook game, FishVille, has temporarily been taken offline by Facebook for advertising violations.
FishVille will remain suspended, Facebook tells us, “until Facebook is satisfied that Zynga demonstrates compliance with Facebook restrictions — as well as Zynga’s own restrictions — on the ads it offers users.”
This is a relatively light slap on the wrist since the game only launched two days ago and had a couple of thousand users (Update: Zynga says FishVille had 875,000 users yesterday. wow). Zynga’s other games, including FarmVille with 63 million monthly users, remain online, despite the fact that they were showing the same ads.
But this does send a clear message to Zynga and other game developers that Facebook isn’t ignoring the problem. Whether it’s a real concern over the user experience or simply embarrassment from the press suggesting Facebook is a haven for scammers is somewhat irrelevant.
Facebook has also shut down a total of four ad networks in recent months for ad violations, including Tatto Media and Gambit. Other networks, such as SendMe Mobile, which was founded by ex-CNET executives, have largely taken their place by offering similarly questionable offers that trick users into mobile subscriptions.
This is also a bit of an arms race. Zynga may be specifically filtering Facebook employees from seeing ads that violate Facebook terms and conditions, making it difficult for Facebook to enforce the rules.
And the relationship between the two companies is complicated. Facebook battling Zynga on the advertising scams. But Zynga is also one of Facebook’s largest advertisers, probably accounting for between 10% and 20% of total Facebook revenue.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Section:
No need to scour the interwebs for hot gaming news, Gamertell‘s already done that for you! Here’s a look at this week’s top stories…
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Gadgets / Other
Beatles fans everywhere rejoice! The band’s catalog is finally being released in mp3 form, but don’t go running to iTunes. Record company EMI is releasing the entire catalog of 14 albums on a special edition 16GB USB drive. The drive, which is shiny green and shaped like an apple, will set fans back a whopping $330 and only 30,000 were initially offered for sale. Pre-orders are already being taken, and it will be officially released on December 8th. Along with the remastered tracks are rare photos, liner notes and 13 mini documentaries. It promises to be a real Christmas treat for any Beatles fans with the spare cash to spend or who have a generous friend or relative willing to play Santa.
Does this mean we’re closer to seeing the band on iTunes? EMI isn’t saying. So far it has refused to let any retailer sell the band’s music digitally. Of course that hasn’t stopped BlueBeat.com from selling the entire catalog. The site offered individual Beatles tracks for .25 cents each and full albums for around $3.25. When confronted by EMI the site insisted they weren’t doing anything wrong because their offerings are recreations using a process called “psychoacoustic simulation”. Um yeah. The site ignored EMI’s cease and desist action and refused to stop selling the tracks until they were slapped with a lawsuit and restraining order. Whether they thought they could get away with such blatant theft by shrouding it in technical mumbo jumbo or actually believe their copyright infringement is perfectly okay remains to be seen.
If you want one of the Beatles USBs act fast. EMI says demand has been so overwhelming that they are trying to acquire an additional supply above and over the 30,000 they initially planned to sell.
Read [PCWorld]
Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 Techtree.com | Windows 7 Planning Tools Ease the Upgrade Process Washington Post Businesses planning a move to Windows 7 need a more rigorous planning and assessment tool than the consumer-grade Upgrade Advisor. Businesses planning a move to Windows 7 need a more rigorous planning and assessment tool than the consumer-grade Upgrade ... Windows 7 Sells Well, but Microsoft Isn't Out of the Woods Yet Komando's Q&A: Windows 7 discount comes with a catch Microsoft (MSFT) Windows 7 And The Renewal Of The PC Industry |
Section:
We may not cover Apple 24x7… but we know someone who does! Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Telegraph.co.uk | Al Gore: It's not just about the planet CNET News CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Al Gore, a self-described "wanna-be geek," is on the road talking about solutions to multiple problems. The former vice president gave a speech at the First Parish Cambridge Unitarian Universalist church here on ... Al Gore takes climate fight to Green Hills Gore's Latest Book Focuses on Solutions Efforts to stem global warming moving at a glacial pace |
The Kindle EULA is a good example. Section 3, which deals with "Digital Content" (such as downloaded books), says that "Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content." In other words, you are forbidden to lend or sell the book you've just "bought". In real-world terms, you can't lend your copy of 1984 to a friend or donate it to the school jumble sale.Kindle readers beware - big Amazon is watching you read 1984Under the subsection on "Use of Digital Content', the Kindle EULA says: "Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use."
Translation: you can't back up your electronic books on to any other device - which means that if your Kindle packs up, or if Amazon moves on to another technical standard, you're screwed: your entire digital library has effectively been vaporised. Then you look round your house and note the number of electronic devices that no longer work.
In today's Observer Business column, John Naughton discusses what a ripoff it is for ebook vendors to "sell" you books with abusive, multi-thousand word "license agreements," pretending that because you bought your book over the network, it wasn't a sale, and so you don't get to own it. These "licenses" aren't about upholding copyright (if they were, you could replace thousands of words of lawyerese with four simple words: "Don't violate copyright law"). They're about overriding copyright -- which has all kinds of guarantees for the rights of book-owners -- with a private law that gives every advantage to the publisher or retailer, converting you from a noble reader to a wormy, contemptible licensor who doesn't deserve to own books.
The Kindle EULA is a good example. Section 3, which deals with "Digital Content" (such as downloaded books), says that "Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content." In other words, you are forbidden to lend or sell the book you've just "bought". In real-world terms, you can't lend your copy of 1984 to a friend or donate it to the school jumble sale.Under the subsection on "Use of Digital Content', the Kindle EULA says: "Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use."
Translation: you can't back up your electronic books on to any other device - which means that if your Kindle packs up, or if Amazon moves on to another technical standard, you're screwed: your entire digital library has effectively been vaporised. Then you look round your house and note the number of electronic devices that no longer work.
Kindle readers beware - big Amazon is watching you read 1984
These newspaper carrier bags are made in India by an NGO that provides education and shelter to street kids. The bags themselves are very sweet and good for several uses before they're ready for the recycling box, and make good use of the striking designs from the newspapers they're folded from (I like the Bollywood poster ones, too!).
(Thanks, Alice!)
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
While we here at Gadgetell have been wondering just how well the Palm Pre is actually doing, it seems like we are still getting mixed signals overall. And in this particular case, the mixed signal is actually a price drop. And a price drop that has quickly followed another price drop.
In this case that means that our friends who are north of the border, well those who are either on or willing to switch to Bell will be able to score a Palm Pre for just $99.95 (CAD).
Now normally I would consider a price drop a nice thing, and and just rejoice in the fact that any would be customers can save a little money, but in this instance I am left wondering if the drop has anything to do with poor sales.
You see, I only say that because the Palm Pre was given a $50 price drop back towards the end of last month which brought the price down to $149.99. And now another $50 price drop has brought it down to $99.99.
Either way, good for Bell customers, maybe bad for Palm and Bell. Maybe now we can see a little bit of that lower Pre pricing come down here to the US and Sprint. Of course, with all the recent press Sprint has been getting for their Android offerings lately, a price drop on the Pre may be a helpful thing.
Read [Bell]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
FROM GAMERTELL - Walmart has just announced some online only specials that will last as long as the products are in stock. Some of the deals include a Wii bundle with Wii Fit Plus and a $25 gift card for $299.00 and a $79.00 Xbox 360 Guitar Hero World Tour Band Kit.
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The TechCrunch Japan TokyoCamp 2009, a demo event for web startups that took place this Friday, was a total blast. No less than 350 people came to the demo pit and meetup, which were co-organized by DESIGN IT!, LLC (a Sociomedia group company that runs TechCrunch Japan) and Nikkei Digital Core (a community under the umbrella of the Nikkei, Japan’s biggest business publication).
This time, TokyoCamp gave a total of 29 startups from three Asian countries (Japan, Singapore and Korea) the chance to present their services to Japan’s leading journalists, fellow entrepreneurs, top-level VCs and TechCrunch readers. Here are thumbnail sketches (of varying depth) of all companies that were present at the event. (Here is my report on the first TokyoCamp that took place in August this year.)
Demos from TechCrunch50 alumni from Singapore, Korea and Japan
iTwin
Singapore-based iTwin was one of the two non-Japanese startups demoing at TokyoCamp (it’s a spin-off from A*STAR, a Singapore government-funded research agency). Their two-part USB drive iTwin, showed to the world at TechCrunch50 in September, is intended to be a “cable-less cable”. After connecting the iTwin to a computer, you can give one part of it to someone else who’ll have remote access (over the web) to the computer via his own computer.
iTwin’s Kal Takru told me his company is currently plans to release the device in five to six months, with the price likely to be $99 including worldwide shipping. Initially, the iTwin will be available online only – even though following TechCrunch50, the company was bombarded with inquiries from retail chains all over the world.
Sealtale
Social widget service Sealtale was Tokyocamp’s guest from South Korea and another TechCrunch50 finalist. Sealtale users can express their interests, preferences or causes via so-called seals (interactive widgets). Once these seals are integrated into your blog or social network page, you can communicate with other people who have the same interests as you within the seal itself (via RSS feeds, comments, posts, audio and video files). Sealtale works across various blog platforms and social networks.
The three members of the six-man company (all of whom are college students) who were invited to Tokyo told me they now feel there’s life before TechCrunch50 and after. Following TC50, Sealtale in South Korea apparently got a boost in terms of user base, massive media attention (the service was even featured on national TV) and increased interest from brands and companies. Just one example: Sealtale was chosen as a partner for a media campaign in Korea’s political space and distributed more than 120,000 seals to users all over the country in the process. Sealtale’s major global roll-out is planned for the middle of next year.
Spysee
Tokyo-based people search engine Spysee launched its English version during TechCrunch50 in September (the service was in the TC50 demopit). You can use it to look for any person on the web, with Spysee scraping various information on that person off the web (bio, news, blog posts, videos, related individuals etc.) and displaying it on a single page (example: Barack Obama’s Spysee entry).
LIFEmee
LIFEmee is a life management service that allows you to store and share the significant aspects and events of your life online (from “the cradle to the crave”). You can keep a diary, list up significant events in your life (career history, places you lived in, hobbies etc.), share your future plans, manage assets, store your last will or compare certain elements of your life with other LIFEmee users.
The service launched at TechCrunch50 (LIFEmee presented at the demo pit) in English. The LIFEmee team has since been working on localizing the service into Japanese and collecting early user feedback for the English version to optimize features and functions.
Demos from Japanese startups
Joker Racer
Joker Racer, a service that just recently won the Grand Prix at another big demo event in Tokyo, lets users from all over the world control Wi-Fi- and GPS-enabled models cars through the browser or iPhone (in real-time). The cars are customized and offered by JokerWorks, the new company behind the service, itself. A bunch of videos can be found here.
But at TokyoCamp, CEO Yoski Akamatsu presented the “Joker Racer R/C Server” for the first time, the world’s first linux server exclusively designed for R/C model cars to be controlled over the web (specs and more pics here). This means you can buy the mini server, connect it with your own R/C car, and then control the car using its standard servo/speed controllers and a mounted standard web camera.
For end users, the server’s final price and release date are yet to be determined. But JokerWorks already accepts inquiries from event organizers and advertising and promotion agencies.
Lang-8
Youyou Ki, CEO of Lang-8, showed a revamped version of his award-winning language learning site whose interface is available in 14 languages. The main idea is to let users write in the language they’re learning and have native speakers of that language correct the text (this video shows how this works). Lang-8 users can get in touch with each other directly through the site, too. The service is free.
Cerevo Cam
I’ve written an extensive article on the Cerevo Cam, a digital camera that automatically uploads pictures to various social media sites via Wi-Fi or 3G, in late August. Now, roughly nine weeks later, the device is finally priced (just under 20,000 Yen/$220) and dated. The Cerevo Cam and Cerevo Life, a photo management site specifically designed for buyers of the camera, will be available at the beginning of next month. CEO Takuma Iwasa is still determined to sell the camera outside Japan but couldn’t give me details.
At TokyoCamp, I tried out a fully working prototype, which instantly uploaded pictures to a nearby panel computer via a 3G modem stick plugged into the camera.
HaaLee
HaaLee isn’t a web startup, but the company, whose team is based out of China, Japan and the US, showed a pretty cool blue-tooth stereo headset that does not plug-up the ears. Instead, users are supposed to place the speakers against the skin just in front of the ears. The idea is to be able to listen to music on your cell phone or portable media player while still being able to hear sounds around you. HaaLee is currently in discussions with various brand companies and carriers to take the headset to market.
Jingoo
Tokyo-based MetaCast presented Jingoo at Tokyo Camp, a Japanese-only add-on for Firefox or the Internet Explorer. Once installed, Jingoo occupies a column on the right of your browser window (”Jingoo Zone”) that allows you to access customized apps that are supposed to make your life on the web easier. These apps (there are 17 at this point) can be anything from games you can directly play in the “Jingoo Zone”, a clock, maps, shopping tools, a tweet stream etc. Jingoo is free.
Pixiv
Launched in September 2007, the Japanese-only “social illustration” service Pixiv broke the one million member mark in June this year (it’s currently ranked at 60 in Alexa Japan). Users (talented amateur artists, pros and art enthusiasts) spend more than 13 minutes on the site per visit, submitting 15,000 drawings per day on average and discussing them in a social network that’s built around the drawings.
Here’s how a typical drawing, submitted by a Pixiv member, looks (each piece gets a dedicated page):
The free site makes money mainly through display ads and premium memberships ($6 per month) but also organizes real life events. Learn more about Pixiv in the excellent English Wikipedia entry.
Patent Bureau
Patent Bureau is a technology media company that aims at automating the process of delivering relevant technology and intellectual properties information in real-time. The company claims their interactive data base, dubbed astamuse (Japanese only), is being used by patent offices in Japan for trial decisions and court precedents for intellectual patent cases. astamuse wants to be the ultimate destination site for anybody involved in creating, using and managing technology and intellectual properties to explore their territory. Patent Bureau is currently working on covering additional languages.
Rigureto
Rigureto is a free community and communication platform through which users can anonymously express and share their negative feelings (i.e. “I just lost my girl friend.”) with other users who can then post messages of comfort (i.e. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon find another one.”). This happens virtually in real-time, as it usually seems to be a matter of a few minutes or even seconds to get a reaction. Think an online, crowdsourced Dear Abby (even though some users post just in order to communicate with other human beings – and it usually works). Rigureto users receiving positive comments can thank other members by sending them “arigatou” points, which can later be redeemed on the site. The service is Japanese only at this point.
UserHeat
UserHeat is an in-page web analytics tool that visualizes user behavior in three different ways (mouse movement tracking, clicking behavior and “gazed” area, an educated guess of which areas of a given page were viewed the most). Install the tool on your web site, wait for a certain period of time to analyze how visitors use it (1,000 to 1,500 page views are apparently the minimum) and let UserHeat display the result via “thermographic” images that are superimposed over your site (sample heat map for a Japanese site selling contact lenses). The service is available in English, Chinese and Japanese, and it’s free.
Notable mentions
Here are the 16 other services demo’d at the TokyoCamp event: fabric video (a video delivery system to be made available next year), MOT (an ASP business tool), Photiva (a digital signage solution), Tabereko (an iPhone app for gourmets), Wombit (a Wi-Fi-enabled touch panel computer currently being developed by Tokyo-based Omnibit), Ataritsuki CM (a solution that links TV commercials to the web), Speeda (a database that users can access to get structured economic data in an SaaS-like model), Orihime (an online shop set up by a college student who sells self-designed and made-in-Japan PC bags and cases), AdLantis (an online ad management system), Cognitive Function Balancer (a piece of interactive software for self-test and training for mild cognitive impairment), Phroni (a Firefox add-on that displays information on keywords you highlight on a web page), RainbowApps (a platform that allows you to list up your iPhone apps and discover which apps other iPhone owners have installed), Conit (an iPhone app developer), Istpika (a social gaming company developing for Facebook, iPhone and other platforms), Pankaku (one of Japan’s most successful iPhone app development companies) and Linkthink (an entertainment content provider).
Many thanks to all attendees, demo companies and Nikkei Digital Core for making TokyoCamp a success. Special thanks to TechCrunch50 finalists and Asian guests iTwin and Sealtale for the journey to Tokyo. Another TokyoCamp might follow very soon!
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Broadband Cards, Mobile, Computers, Laptops, Netbooks, Wireless
Courtesy of a Best Buy Reward Zone member advertisement, we now know that the Nokia Booklet 3G will be available as of November 15. Which is of course much nicer than the previous time frame of sometime during the holidays.
For those interested, the Booklet 3G will set you back $299.99, but that price does required a two year commitment. Otherwise, those looking to make the purchase contract free can expect to pay the full retail price of $599.99. And yes, for good or bad that contract is with AT&T.
Additionally, although we did know many of the details and features surrounding the Booklet 3G, except the actual release, I did at least get a nice little chuckle from the
“Windows 7 operating system is crazy fast”
comment in the ad. Crazy fast, really? That is the best they can do.
Anyway, for those waiting, well for those that are also a Reward Zone member, you can now head out to Best Buy and get your pre-order in.
Read [Nokia Mobile Blog]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
FROM GAMERTELL - Haven’t caught all of the Gamertell news this week? Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles! 28,275 PSPgos sold on the November 1, 2009, launch in Japan” Famitsu featured an interesting news story pertaining to the PSPgo today. The system launched November 1, 2009 in… MORE »
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As we were all painfully aware, it took AT&T 
A couple of days ago, I checked if there were any updates for the applications I have installed on my iPhone, and one that was identified as having published a more recent version in the App Store was 
To test her idea, she whipped up a channel design in AutoCAD, printed it out on Shrinky Dink material using a laser printer, and stuck the result in a toaster oven. As the plastic shrank, the ink particles on its surface clumped together, forming tiny ridges. That was exactly the effect Khine wanted. When she poured a flexible polymer known as PDMS onto the surface of the cooled Shrinky Dink, the ink ridges created tiny channels in the surface of the polymer as it hardened. She pulled the PDMS away from the Shrinky Dink mold, and voilà: a finished microfluidic device that cost less than a fast-food meal.
