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OpenSolaris Or FreeBSD?Norsefire writes "I am in quite a predicament. I decided a while back to branch out and use a new operating system (currently running Debian). After a bit of searching (trying Gentoo, Gobo and Arch along the way), I decided to use something that isn't Linux. Long story short: I narrowed the choices down to OpenSolaris and FreeBSD, but now I'm stuck. OpenSolaris is commercially backed by Sun, has nice enterprise-y tools in the default install, and best of all, a mature implementation of ZFS. FreeBSD is backed by a foundation, has a minimal default install and a rather new (but recently improved in the 8.0 release) implementation of ZFS, however it offers the Ports Collection (I quite like the performance boost due to compiling from source, no matter how small it might be) and a bigger community than OpenSolaris. That is just a minimal mention of the differences. I would be interested to see what the Slashdot community thinks of these two operating systems."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Nov 2009 | 3:14 am Apple's iPhone arrives in tech-savvy South Korea (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Nov 2009 | 2:50 am Video Professor Tries To Bully Washington Post, Fails
Essentially Video Professor is arguing that they didn’t have the chance to respond to our post before we published, and that in general we aren’t behaving very journalistically. One of my favorite habits of journalists is that they refuse to state an opinion. Instead, they find a source to say whatever it is they want said and then quote them. And when I say “favorite,” what I really mean is that I hate it. The story the journalist writes has the look of objectivity but really it’s just the same as if the journalist wrote what she or he meant, directly, in the first place. A gold star journalist will then find a “balancing” quote from someone else, often the person or entity being attacked. “When did you stop beating your wife,” etc. I prefer to just skip all that nonsense and get right to the meat of a matter. And most of my favorite bloggers do the same. None of us have the audacity to think that we are your only news source. You can find other opinions elsewhere, and judge them on their merits, too. The Video Professor Scam Video Professor was a side note in our original Scamville post, just one of a bunch of scams that were making their way into social games on Facebook and MySpace. But now we’re focused on them like a laser. Video Professor is unlike mobile scams which look to get a relatively small $10 – $20/month subscription on your mobile bill and hope you never notice. They go for the big kill: $190 – $290 charged to your credit card on time. I haven’t found the Video Professor scam on Facebook social games since the Scamville posts, but the site is still live, and there are still lot of links from Google and Facebook (they still advertise directly on Facebook). What you see when you first hit the site depends on how you got there – directly or via an advertising partner. The least scammy version is what you see if you go to videoprofessor.com directly. On the home page in very small font is a statement that you are going to be charged $290 if you engage in a transaction with them. But that’s the only on-screen disclosure you’ll see. Click on a product and go to the next page and you are told you get lots of stuff for free, all you have to do is pay up to a $10 shipping charge. You choose your product and you’re on to the checkout page. Nothing is stated about the $290 charge. After that you are on the final checkout page, showing a total price of $4.56. There’s no fine print, just two links on the page to pages with hugely long agreements with text hidden in the middle of it all that you are actually being sent tons of products and you’ll be charged $290 for them all if you don’t cancel in ten days. Needless to say, people who get this stuff either don’t read fine print and are charged, or try to return it. There are hundreds of user complaints about refunds not being paid. 271 complaints to be exact, on RipoffReport alone. I’ve put the purchase flow at the bottom of this post. Remember that this is the least scammy version I’ve found (here’s how they lured people in from Facebook a couple of weeks ago). For users who hit the site via Facebook, Google or other advertisments, it’s even scammier. Is This A Scam? You’re damn right it’s a scam. Users are obviously being tricked into buying something they don’t understand and wouldn’t want even if they did understand the details. The company says they comply with federal and state laws. But they continually refine the landing and checkout pages to comply with the bare minimum of legal requirements while maximizing ROI. Jump to 3:15 of this video for a description of how services like these trick users into buying useless products. Here’s an easy way to determine if something is a scam – would users pay for it if they knew exactly what they were buying? In Video Professor’s case, the answer is no, and the company has to resort to tricking the user into paying nearly $300 for a bunch of CDs. Our governments should be protecting us from this nonsense, but they can’t or won’t. I’m be damned if I’ll stop writing about it, though. Here’s what people have to say about video professor. See this article and comments, as well as Amazon and epinions reviews. And to the people behind these companies – how do you sleep at night knowing that you are nothing but a deadweight loss to society, taking money from people who aren’t Internet savvy enough to know they’re being scammed? When you’re 80 and look back at what you’ve done with your life, is this really what you want to have spent your time doing? History Of Threats I’m not surprised that Video Professor is going to so much effort to shut me up – this is how they do business. Video Professor has gone after people who’ve criticized the company. Some of the links in this article pointing to other criticisms are now dead links – victims of litigation? When Video Professor sent me an email after my post arguing that they weren’t a scam, I replied “It’s a huge fucking scam. And you know it.” Which pretty much summed up my position on the matter. Here’s the letter they sent to the Washington Post. Note that they argue that they simply want to tell their side. I argue that their website tells their side of the story:
The Washington Post’s response? In a nutshell, “you’ll have to discuss directly with the editors at TechCrunch.”
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Source: TechCrunch | 28 Nov 2009 | 2:35 am Video Professor Tries To Bully Washington Post, FailsVideo Professor continues to be angry that I called them a scam in my original Scamville post. They've gotten nowhere reaching out to me directly (more on that below), so now they've tried complaining...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 2:35 am Man killed in Jacksonville house fire - MiamiHerald.com
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 28 Nov 2009 | 1:11 am Canadian border guards want to be sure that foreign journalists don't criticise Vancouver OlympicsThe Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's As It Happens radio show covers the story of Amy Goodman's recent' border crossing into Canada. Goodman -- host of the US public radio show Democracy Now! -- was coming to Canada to give a speech at a library, and Canadian border guards questioned her intensely about the subject of her talk, even reading her notes for her speech. They were fishing for something, but Goodman couldn't figure out what, until the guards asked her outright whether she was planning on talking about the upcoming Canadian Olympic Games. When she assured them that she hadn't been, they eventually released her (it had been a 75 minute detention) but stamped a control-order in her passport giving her only 24 hours' stay in Canada.(Thanks, Bill!)
Previously:
 Source: Boing Boing | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:46 am Canadian border guards want to be sure that foreign journalists don't criticise Vancouver OlympicsThe Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's As It Happens radio show covers the story of Amy Goodman's recent' border crossing into Canada. Goodman -- host of the US public radio show Democracy Now! -- was...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:46 am Canadian border guards want to be sure that foreign journalists don't criticise Vancouver OlympicsThe Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's As It Happens radio show covers the story of Amy Goodman's recent' border crossing into Canada. Goodman -- host of the US public radio show Democracy Now! -- was...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:46 am iPhone's debut in S.Korea means paradigm shift: experts (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:31 am Apple's iPhone arrives in tech-savvy South KoreaTech-savvy South Koreans began getting their coveted iPhones on Saturday amid fanfare and expectations they will shake up a local market dominated by domestic giants Samsung and LG. ...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:21 am Flexible, Color OLED Screens for E-Readersnadiskafadi writes "Taiwanese researchers have shown off several flexible display technologies in an endeavor to promote e-readers and e-paper. One of the newest technologies from the Industrial Technology Research Institute was a flexible 4.1-inch color OLED (organic light emitting diode) display, which it claims is for the next era of portable devices."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:12 am Japan launches new spy satelliteJapan on Saturday launched a next-generation spy satellite as part of efforts to beef up its surveillance system against the threat of North Korea's missiles, officials said. An H-2A...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:11 am Over $315,000 raised for flood victims through SMSVietnam's Ministry of Information and Communication raised over 5.7 billion dong for flood victims in the central region via mobile text messages. Vietnamnet reports. Some people sent hundreds of messages...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 28 Nov 2009 | 12:10 am Does Chrome OS mean anything for schools? - ZDNet
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 27 Nov 2009 | 11:49 pm Tweets while in furlough land screenwriter Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction) back in regular old jailThe web has been buzzing with the odd discovery that Pulp Fiction co-screenwriter Roger Avary was apparently tweeting while serving his sentence in a work furlough program for a fatal car crash. The LA Times now reports that the furlough deal is off, and that Avary was placed back in a regular old jail on Thanksgiving day, presumably because of his tweets. They included details of cavity searches and drug deals witnessed at the furlough facility. His last tweet claimed the "rollup" to jail was punishment for "exercising First Amendment rights."Source: Boing Boing | 27 Nov 2009 | 11:07 pm Tweets while in furlough land screenwriter Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction) back in regular old jailThe web has been buzzing with the odd discovery that Pulp Fiction co-screenwriter Roger Avary was apparently tweeting while serving his sentence in a work furlough program for a fatal car crash. The LA...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Nov 2009 | 11:07 pm Tweets while in furlough land screenwriter Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction) back in regular old jailThe web has been buzzing with the odd discovery that Pulp Fiction co-screenwriter Roger Avary was apparently tweeting while serving his sentence in a work furlough program for a fatal car crash. The LA...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Nov 2009 | 11:07 pm Stylophone synthesizer at Restoration Hardware
Invented in 1967, the Dübreq Stylophone is a small synthesizer played by touching a built-in stylus to the metal keyboard. It was famously used on David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Kraftwerk's "Pocket Calculator." I just spotted it in Restoration Hardware's catalog for $29. I was slightly surprised to see it there, but not too much as Restoration usually has terrific gadgets and toys for sale along with their classic (and costly) American home furnishings. For more Stylophone fun, check out the below video of Brett Domino performing a "1980s Hits Medley" on the device. (UPDATE: They're only $20 at ThinkGeek!)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 27 Nov 2009 | 10:45 pm Stylophone synthesizer at Restoration HardwareInvented in 1967, the Dbreq Stylophone is a small synthesizer played by touching a built-in stylus to the metal keyboard. It was famously used on David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Kraftwerk's "Pocket...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Nov 2009 | 10:45 pm Stylophone synthesizer at Restoration HardwareInvented in 1967, the Dbreq Stylophone is a small synthesizer played by touching a built-in stylus to the metal keyboard. It was famously used on David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Kraftwerk's "Pocket Calculator...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Nov 2009 | 10:45 pm Apple Forced To Clean Up Its Fine PrintBarence writes "Apple has been forced to tidy up its online terms and conditions, at the behest of the UK's Office of Fair Trading. The company has redrafted its Ts & Cs so that it now accepts liability for faulty or misdescribed goods sold from its website or the iTunes store. Apple must also ensure that its conditions are 'drafted in plain or intelligible language' and that they 'do not potentially allow changes to be made to products and prices after an agreement is made.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 27 Nov 2009 | 10:09 pm Call of Duty Franchise Nets Over $3 Billion in Sales
The Call of Duty franchise has sold over 55 million copies of its games across platforms to date, and that number is only expected to rise with the holiday season upon us. Even with the criticism leveled against Modern Warfare 2 because of the graphic nature of one of its levels, the game is being hailed by critics and will most definitely be in the running for game of the year. The games are published and owned by Activision, and the two main developers have been Infinity Ward and Treyarch, but others have had a hand in some of the spin-off and hand-held versions of the games.
Source: CrunchGear | 27 Nov 2009 | 9:23 pm Japan launches 5th spy satelliteJapan launched its fifth spy satellite into orbit Saturday in a bid to boost its ability to independently gather intelligence, the government said. The domestically developed H-2A rocketSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Nov 2009 | 9:21 pm Australia PM plays down climate snap poll fearsAustralian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd played down speculation of a snap poll over controversial carbon laws on Saturday, but emphasised his commitment to their passage ahead of global...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm Algae Could Be the Key To Ultra-Thin BatteriesMikeChino writes "Algae is often touted as the next big thing in biofuels, but the slimy stuff could also be the key to paper-thin biodegradable batteries, according to researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden. Uppsala researcher Maria Stromme and her team has found that the smelly algae species that clumps on beaches, known as Cladophora, can also be used to make a type of cellulose that has 100 times the surface area of cellulose found in paper. That means it can hold enough conducting polymers to effectively recharge and hold electricity for long amounts of time. Eventually, the bio batteries could compete with commercial lithium-ion batteries."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 27 Nov 2009 | 8:00 pm In The Age Of Realtime, Twitter Is Walter CronkiteThe year is 1963. It's November. At 1:40 PM ET, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite comes on the air. "In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Nov 2009 | 7:43 pm In The Age Of Realtime, Twitter Is Walter Cronkite
Thankfully, we have not yet had a tragedy of that magnitude in the age of the realtime web. But we will. It’s just a matter of time. If it were to happen today, most people would still turn to their TV sets to get the most up-to-date information on such an event. We saw that on September 11, 2001. But a large number of people would also now turn to the web. And there they would likely find the information they were looking for faster than those watching on television. We’ve seen it time and time again recently. Earthquakes, the massive San Diego fires, the shootings in Mumbai, the situation in Iran, and even Michael Jackson’s death. The realtime web beat the mainstream media easily to each of these stories. And this disparity will only increase going forward. We’re entering a new age of realtime information. Some people don’t like that because they fear inaccurate reports. They’ll cite the Balloon Boy example as how things get out of control on services like Twitter. Well you know where the Balloon Boy reports were way more out of control? On CNN and the other cable news channels. And you know where I first heard sound arguments that there is no way that balloon could hold a full-grown child? Twitter. Those same people seem to want to believe that the mainstream media does all kinds of fact-checking before rushing to the air. That’s why it took them 45 minutes longer today to get to the Tiger Woods car accident story, they conclude. But let’s revisit what CNN posted those 45 minutes later:
That’s it. If it took them 45 minutes to figure that much out and get it up, they’re in more trouble than I imagine. Others will say that CNN took the time to make sure they only wrote “injured” rather than “in serious condition,” as the first reports indicated. But that’s not true either. Watch this video for proof of that. Those people seem to believe that BNO News, which was the first source of the story for many of us, simply pulled the “serious condition” statement out of thin air. That’s not the case. How do I know? Because I had Michael van Poppel, who is behind BNO News, send me the report that he based his information on (pasted below). The key part to look at is obviously where it says “Injuries: Serious.”
This is the release directly from the Florida Highway Patrol. BNO News labeled it correctly as a “report.” This is journalism. Just because BNO News got to it and posted it some 45 minutes before CNN doesn’t mean they pulled it out of nowhere based on nothing or hearsay. This is the information from the police report. It turns out that Tiger Woods is okay. And that’s great. But you know where I also heard that first? Twitter. That’s the point. This is the realtime information cycle. We get delivered news, the story unfolds a bit (as it did when various local reports of the incident starting popping up on Twitter and Google, again, way before CNN), it unfolds a bit more, and if we keep watching the full story is revealed — right before our eyes. You have to be smart enough not to take everything as absolute fact, and to have your own filters for information, but this is the way going forward. And it’s captivating, to say the least. Some will say they don’t mind waiting an extra hour to get just the facts. That’s fine. But that’s not really true. It may be true for a relatively small incident like a minor car crash, but imagine if a national (or worldwide) catastrophe happened. Do you honestly believe that any one of those people would be content to sit back and wait for the 100% fact-checked version of the story? No. Not one of them would. The same was true back in 1963. Watch the entire Cronkite broadcast below. You’ll notice he says things like, “their [the President and Texas Governor Connally] condition is as yet unknown.” The report than switches over to KLRD in Texas where they note, “as you can imagine, there are many stories that are coming in now as to the actual condition of the President. One is that he is dead.” That was not known as the time, and was not known until much later in the broadcast. Did anyone care that they were stating unconfirmed things on the air? No. In fact, had they not, everyone would have turned to another channel. The point is that people want this information. Should a disclaimer be included that it’s just a report or unconfirmed? Of course, but it was today, just as it was back in 1963. The difference is that had the Kennedy assassination happened today, it would not have taken 38 minutes from the time of President Kennedy being declared dead to the time Cronkite broke the news on the air. Actually, it may have. But it would have been reported on services like Twitter much sooner. Had it played out that way, where do you think people would turn the next time there was an event unfolding in realtime? I understand that a lot of people view Twitter as stupid, and certainly not worth $1 billion dollars. But step back for a second and look at it this way: For much of this argument, I’m just using “Twitter” the way my colleague Steve Gillmor uses it, which is to say, as a word not tied to one brand but meaning the “realtime web.” It doesn’t matter what method we use for this realtime information dissemination, what matters is that it is happening. And this is the future. That said, there is no denying that right now, Twitter, the brand, is the winning channel for this new type of news consumption. It’s the Walter Cronkite for realtime information. And when the next major event happens, an increasing number of us will be huddled around our computer screens, watching. And even more the time after that… And that’s the way it is. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Source: TechCrunch | 27 Nov 2009 | 7:43 pm Dell Offer Custom Chromium OS Download For Mini 10V
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 The Associated Press | KT Brings iphone to South Korea eWeek South Koreans finally have the chance to purchase Apple's iphone, available this Saturday from KT, the country's second largest mobile carrier. After years of anticipation and pent-up demand, Apple's iphone smartphone is coming to South Korea via ... iphone Tries to Crack Korea Starwatch consumer | South Korea awaits the iphone Apple's iphone set to make splash in South Korea |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
What's that Roomba, you say Timmy is stuck in a well? A Roomba vacuuming robot did more than clean the floor for one family in Israel, killing a venomous Vipera palaestinae by, apparently, running over the snake and wrapping the creature around one of its rotating brushes. The family credits the robot for sparing their children and pets from possible snakebite. Good boy. (Via Engadget)
By Music Ally Weblog
We noticed a funny thing today when browsing our RSS feed of new iPhone music apps. A company called Apptism has released a bunch of apps called ‘Sing Along With…’, except not with the actual artist names in the app title. They offer collections of lyrics from the stars’ back catalogues.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Despite what the Internet said a few weeks ago, Microsoft tapped Family Guy to advertise Windows 7. The first one aired last weekend, but the video above and the one after the jump have just been posted to YouTube proving the partnership isn’t dead after all. Watch and enjoy, but don’t expect anything edgy and hip.
[via Gizmodo]
AP - For more than 20 years, Mike Nolan was known to radio listeners as the "eye in the sky." He flew over Southern California freeways in his single-engine plane, reporting on the nation's worst traffic.
Undoubtedly by now you’ve heard about Tiger Woods’ car crash. Early reports had him in serious condition (which remember, is better than critical condition) after he apparently hit a fire hydrant and a tree while leaving his home in his SUV. The latest reports say he has been released from the hospital and is “fine.” But I’m not going to speak to any of that because that’s not what we do (you can find out more here).
Instead, as I’m watching this unfold infront of my eyes on the Internet, I’m reminded that this type of story is exactly why the web is destroying newspapers, and should eventually even take down television and the main source of news for most people. I first heard the news via a BNOnews bulletin sent via push notification to my iPhone. I immediately pulled up Twitter and already some 10-15 people had retweeted it and the news was appearing in my stream.
The message read, “BULLETIN — REPORT: FAMED GOLFER TIGER WOODS SERIOUSLY INJURED AFTER CRASH NEAR FLORIDA HOME.” Sure, not a lot of information there, but it’s clearly labeled as a report, and yes, it did turn out to be correct. And thanks to Twitter, thousands of people had access to this information about 45 minutes before it appeared on CNN or ESPN, the “worldwide leaders” in news in their respective fields.
Of course, there is something to be said for these outlets independently verifying the news, but the the fact of the matter is that there was a report out there, filed by the police department and BNOnews was able to get it and send it out via Twitter much, much faster than any traditional news source.
Information wants to be free, and the web, with services like Twitter, provides the easiest way for that to happen.
Google was almost as fast on the case, as some 10 minutes after the tweets were flowing, it started showing reports from local Orlando news outlets (where the crash occurred) giving details of the crash. Within 15 minutes, we knew what time the crash occurred at, apparently what happened, and some other important details (like no alcohol being involved).
Cut to about 30 minutes after that. CNN finally got its “breaking” story up. And what did it contain? This:
(CNN) — Golfer Tiger Woods was injured in a car accident near his home, Florida officials say.
Seriously. That’s it.
That apparently took 45 minutes to get up. They could have called anyone on Twitter 30 minutes ago to get those details from what officials were saying based on what they had already read thanks to Twitter and Google.
Anyone who doesn’t understand Twitter should look no further than situations like this. Which has been very clear for a long time. From earthquakes, to the massive fires in San Diego (in 2007), to the Mumbai shootings, to the situation in Iran, this is the future of information population, like it or not.
It’s interesting to note that MSNBC.com recently reached a deal to take over the @breakingnews account (the one tied to BNO News). Here’s to hoping they don’t slow it down to CNN speeds. But if they do, someone else will come along with another service that will replace it. That’s the beauty of the Internet. It’s Darwinism unbound.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Over the last few days, Facebook has apparently been rolling out some UI changes to a small number of users, moving many of the navigation elements that currently rest at the bottom of the screen back to the left sidebar. The changes are subtle enough that they probably won’t spark yet another user rebellion against Facebook — aside from the people who will hate it automatically — but they’re very significant.
The changes in the screenshot above are nearly identical to the shots that were presented at Facebook’s developer garage a month ago. But there are some key differences. First, search now has much more prominent placement, appearing just above (and almost as an extension of) your News Feed. Previously the search box was positioned in the far upper right of the screen. The search box itself appears to have grown by around 50%, as you can see in the comparison shot below.
There are a few other changes from the design we saw in October. The top navbar has been tweaked, especially in the upper left where there are now icons for your invitations, inbox, and notifications. Again, search is going to get a boost from these changes — each of these icons will be tagged with a bright red badge whenever you have a new update, immediately drawing your eye to that part of the screen when you log in. And, surprise, search is right next to them. It’s also worth noting that some of these changes (particularly the use of icons in the main navigation bar) were first explored in Facebook Lite.
So why the new emphasis on search? Facebook search has long been a rough patch for the site. For a very, very long time, it was just plain bad. Facebook does a great job using algorithms behind the scenes to help surface people you may know at the top of your search results, but actually navigating those results was a pain. Facebook rolled out a much improved version of search in August, but I suspect few people have really explored the new search features, given their poor experiences in the past. And that needs to change: Facebook needs to get people to start using search more if it wants to leverage its Everyone updates as a viable alternative to Twitter’s realtime search.
Again, these changes are part of a bucket test, so don’t be surprised if you don’t see them. It’s also possible that Facebook is only testing this design — the one it eventually rolls out to everybody could look different.
For more shots, check out this blog post (it’s in French, but the screenshots are easy to access).
Thanks to Matthew Carrozo for the tip.
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Interrupting your Thanksgiving Day weekend (and my Team Fortress 2 Sniper marathon) with a quick deal that will appeal to many of you (I should hope). You know Steam, right, Valve’s digital distribution deal? There’s a crazy, multi-day Black Friday sale going on right now that includes Left 4 Dead 2 at $37.99 (25 percent off the regular price) and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for $2.49 (75 percent off the regular price). A vanilla bullshit at Starbucks costs more than that.
Keep in mind that this is a multi-day sale. It started yesterday, and will continue for a few more days. My advice is to check the Steam site every morning for the next couple of days lest they sell, I don’t know, Half-Life Source for 75 cents or something.
There’s probably a million and one such deals online. I recommend you keep your eyes on a site like cheapassgamer.com for Black Friday/Cyber Sunday/Cyber Monday deals.
Back to sniping.
Edgar A. Poe Memento cameo necklace in black stainless steel (via Wonderland)
![Screen shot 2009-11-27 at [ November 27 ] 10.51.35 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Screen-shot-2009-11-27-at-November-27-10.51.35-AM.png "Screen shot 2009-11-27 at [ November 27 ] 10.51.35 AM")
I’m still a big bag of mixed reactions when it comes to Samsung’s new mobile OS, Bada. On one hand, Samsung has always proven themselves to be pretty bad at the software side of things (Need proof? See the hot mess that is the Samsung Behold II). On the other, that’s nothing that a bit of man-power and money can’t fix, both of which Samsung has plenty of.
We’ll just have to wait and see how things look when Bada launches, which according to this invite we just got will be on December 8th at a press conference in London. We’ve confirmed two speakers so far: Dr. HS Lee, Samsung’s EVP and Head of Media Solution Center, and Kevin Thau, Head of Mobile at Twitter. That latter appearance makes us think Bada will have a bit of a social twist to it – but these days, what doesn’t?
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
If I had $3.2 million dollars to throw away on something like a phone, I’d much rather just build an army of robot carrier pigeons to deliver all my messages by hand. Some, I suppose, prefer a bit more rationale in their complete irrational purchases – thus the existence of this $3.2 million dollar iPhone.
The man behind the bedazzler was Stuart Hughes. First he covered it in 22 cts gold plating, then slapped on a total of 190 diamonds – 136 on the front, 53 flawless diamonds on the logo, and one big ol’ 7.1 cts diamond replacing the home button.
If only the “I Am Rich” application hadn’t been pulled off the app store, we could totally make a “There’s an App for that!” joke.
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 CBC.ca | Shuttle Atlantis glides home after station visit CNET News KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.--The shuttle Atlantis dropped out of a crystal clear Florida sky and glided to a "picture-perfect" landing at the Kennedy Space Center Friday to close out a successful 11-day space station mission, ... Shuttle Ends 11-Day Mission With a Perfect Landing Space shuttle Atlantis returns to Earth Space Shuttle Atlantis Scheduled for Black Friday Return |
In time for Black Friday, Microsoft and eBay are partnering to offer eBay Daily Deals to Internet Explorer 8 users directly from the browser. Via a Internet Explorer Web Slice, Microsoft will offer users the best “Daily Deals” from eBay from within the browser.
The deals will be found within Favorites Bar on IE8, and will be updated daily within the browser. In conjunction with the new feature, eBay will also launch a “12 Days of Deals” promotion that will feature a deal of the day within the browser starting tomorrow. The search feature will also let you search eBay from IE8 and will show suggest popular products on eBay to users. And you can find and preview eBay items from any site you are on without leaving the page. eBay previously launched a browser highlighter for IE last year.
In time for the holiday online shopping season, Microsoft is also touting IE8’s malware and phishing protections. And the browser’s InPrivate Browsing feature lets people control what the browser saves in terms of cookies, history files and data.
The Microsoft and eBay partnership is odd but eBay is pushing hard this year to get a piece of the holiday shopping market. The e-commerce giant recently launched a new iPhone application dubbed Deals and upgraded its shopping app for the iPhone and iPod Touch platform and debuted an enhanced mobile website.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Yoichi Wada is the president and CEO of Square Enix. Square Enix is a very big video game developer and publisher, responsible for games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts. Hence, his words mean an awful lot. His latest words: console gaming, as we know it today, has only a few years left in it. The future? It’s all about the network, baby!~
The background: Yoichi Wada gave an interview to MCV, a British publication. Good on him. It’s not exactly a wide-ranging interview, instead strictly focusing on the future of video games. Considering his job title, you’d have to assume he knows what he’s talking about.
The big points: physical media (DVD-based games and the like) has no future, so you’d better be cool with things like Xbox Live, PSN, or Steam; 2005 will be seen as the year that everything changed, when console manufacturers changed their mentality from being primarily hardware/console-based to network-based (Xbox Live and eventually~! PSN); Final Fantasy XIV, which is an MMO, may well be more important for Square Enix than Final Fantasy XIII since it’s part of the “new wave” of online, social games.
OK!
Now that that’s out of that way, well, yeah, Wada is 100 percent correct. Console gaming, as we know it, or even used to know it, will die either with this generation or the next. Think of your Xbox 360 and PS3: they’re basically low-end PCs, especially in the 360’s case. (Though I think it’s safe to say that the PS3 has some life left in it, it’s just going to take someone with a lot of money to actually develop a game from the ground up for the system. I’m thinking God of War III will be that game.) Microsoft is most up-front about this: play with Twitter or Facebook! Watch Zune movies! Have a party with your friends! Oh, also, it can play video games, too!
The Xbox 360 came out four years ago. If it weren’t for Xbox Live, or the constant updates the system has seen via software updates (the NXE, Netflix streaming, Twitter/Facebook, etc.), we’d be clamoring for info about the next Xbox already. When was the last time you read so much as a thinly sourced rumor about the next Xbox?
In other words, we’re going to be with the current generation of consoles for a little while, which speaks to Wadas’ point: from 2005, the network matters just as much, if not more so, than the consoles themselves.
(Incidentally, I’m currently in the process of building a gaming/new main PC to replace a 3-year-old iMac for this very reason: why should I play Team Fortress 2 with, what, 15 other people on Xbox Live (versus the several thousand on the PC version), or play Fallout 3 with no access to mods?. I just bought this monitor, and will be adding components as the weeks go by. Any tips (GPUs, CPUs, motherboards, etc) would be greatly appreciated.)
And then there’s casual games! Not everyone has the time required to play “hardcore” games like Fallout 3 or Dragon Quest, so why not fire up a round of Wii Sports, kill off some steam, then go about your business? Needless to say, game publishers make a nice chunk of change on these “simple” games, being that they cost so little to develop, making them fairly important for the bottom line.
If you want to get crazy, then you can think of things like the OTOY and OnLive and Spawn Labs, which promise, to varying degrees, HD-level games over a broadband connection. How well that actually turns out in the real world, who knows, but you can be guys like Wada are paying attention.
I don’t know, this is all over the place. The gist of it is this: we need to recognize that game consoles are little more than dumbed down, low spec PCs. That’s not an insult, of course, just a statement on their underlying technology. Soon, if not already, it’s going to be less about the number of gigaflops the system can process than wether or not you can play Fun Simulator 2 with 87 of your Twitter friends.
You know what I mean, right? I don’t know, too much apple pie yesterday~!
FROM APPLETELL - For Black Friday, Apple’s offering free shipping on orders over $50, free iPod engraving, and sales on everything from the iMac and MacBook Pro to the iPod, Apple TV and iWork.
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FROM APPLETELL - You won’t believe what companies are just giving away for cheap or free this year, but you have to get them now. Games, cases, apps…check back for updates.
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Last Tuesday, Xbox announced that it would integrate Twitter, Facebook, Zune video compatibility, and Last.fm into its Live services. The software update was free, and has thus far been a success. We recently reported that over 2 million Xbox live subscribers used the Facebook feature from their consoles in the first week. Equally as impressive, is the fact that last.fm has netted nearly 1 million new subscribers from the partnership. Since the introduction of the service, last.fm has seen a record number of new subscribers in a 24 hour period and Live users have streamed over 120 million minutes worth of music to their consoles.
As with most services on Xbox Live, only Gold subscribers get access to the streaming capabilities of last.fm. Since only paying users get access to the service, it seems probable that Microsoft and last.fm are involved in some sort of revenue-sharing agreement, although neither company will comment on this postulation. Either way, this partnership seems to be a great move by both parties. Microsoft adds more features, while last.fm has increased its (potential) userbase.
I have yet to use this service on my 360, but I’m sure many of you have. Sound off in comments and let us know what you think of the latest integration.
FROM GAMERTELL - This year’s eCost Black Friday bargains are still only a tease, not revealing whether they are members-only deals and not even listing them all.
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Perfect for Black Friday: JustBought.it lets you share what you’re thinking of buying – or what you’ve already picked up – with your Twitter and Facebook friends in just a couple of steps.
When you sign up for the service, you can have it connect directly to your Twitter and/or Facebook account, giving you the opportunity to share your shopping experience with your social graph by letting your friends and followers know what you’ve purchased where (including pictures and product links). You can hook up with other people who have similar interests, and easily determine if you have friends who are already using the service on Gmail or Hotmail.
So if you stumble on what looks to be a good deal today, inform you friends and have them help you decide using the website or the accompanying free iPhone app (iTunes link), if you’re into the whole social shopping thing.
Do you have an Android-powered phone? Check out the startup’s augmented reality application, which shows you what others have purchased in the stores you visit.
JustBought.it is an initiative from Adarsh Pallian, who has in the past started other projects related to Twitter such as Tweetizen and Chart.ly. It was first launched a couple of months ago, but just recently relaunched with a new design and some additional features.
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Section: Video, Content, Video Providers
Those interested in picking up a Roku set-top box may want to pay close attention because for a limited time this morning (Friday November 27) you will be able to grab the top of the line Roku HD-XR for half price.
This offer is going to be available once the Roku Store opens this morning (hint, head there now) for the first 500 people that order the Roku HD-XR.
This is the set-top box that is normally going to retail for $129.99, but those first 500 people will be able to get it for just $64.99.
Product [Roku Black Friday]
Black Friday limited offer: Roku HD-XR Player for 50% off Starts at 8am PST!
Welcome to our craziest deal ever – 50% off of our top-of-the-line Roku HD-XR Player for the first 500 lucky customers. Our Black Friday deal starts at approximately 8am Pacific Standard Time on Friday November 27th. Please come back then to participate in this limited offer promotion.
Roku is already the best way to watch Netflix and more instantly on your TV. The Roku HD-XR Player takes it further with extended range Wireless N performance, so you can stream HD movies virtually anywhere in your home..
Good luck!
From the Roku teamPS: Did you know that you can now get Pandora music, Flickr photos, and Facebook photos on Roku, absolutely FREE? We’ve got a bunch of great new content to listen to, watch, and enjoy in our new Channel Store, free with all Roku players. Learn more about the Roku Channel Store here.
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FROM GAMERTELL - The Sam’s Club Black Friday offerings includes some tasty Wii bundles for video game lovers…
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 Soft Sailor | Roku Offers 50 Percent Black Friday Discount on HD-XR Player eWeek Starting at 11 am EST, Netflix and Amazon streaming high definition streaming device the Roku HD-XR will be available for 50 percent off via the company's Website, but only for the first 500 customers. Roku has announced a special Black Friday offer on ... Pandora, Facebook, Flickr come to Roku box Roku HD-XR Excels at Streaming Media to Your TV Hot Black Friday Roku HD-XR Player Deal For 50% Off |
We reported today that Digital Garage, Twitter’s partner in Japan, is ready to roll out a new, Japan-only way to monetize the service. The way it’ll work is pretty simple: Japanese Twitter users will soon be able to charge their followers to view tweets – on a monthly basis or per single tweet. Otherwise they will only see excerpts or no text in the postings at all. Digital Garage gets a 30% cut.
Not charging companies for holding accounts but having users pay to view tweets? What may sound like a bold move at first actually makes sense, as the web in Japan (where I am based) features a number of peculiarities that play into the hands of Digital Garage’s Japanese operations:
It’s unclear at this point if only users of the Japanese interface will be able to see if Digital Garage’s experiment (Twitter Japan doesn’t exist as a separate entity) turns out to be successful or not. Another question is how the payment option will be handled in the API and how closely Twitter in the US is watching what’s going on in Japan. We’ll stay tuned.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
There are more than 100,000 approved apps in the App Store now, making it harder and harder to spot the really good ones. One of these apps that don't get enough airtime (and that I viewed a demo of recently) is called Makibishi Comic (iTunes link) and is offered by Tokyo-based GungHo Works (it's available in Japanese and English).
FROM APPLETELL - Coming in a simple interface, BarcodeScan allows users to have access to user reviews, competing prices, and other details about products you own (or want to own).
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There are more than 100,000 approved apps in the App Store now, making it harder and harder to spot the really good ones. One of these apps that don’t get enough airtime (and that I viewed a demo of recently) is called Makibishi Comic (iTunes link) and is offered by Tokyo-based GungHo Works (it’s available in Japanese and English).
Makibishi is an interactive manga/action game with excellent graphics, a cool soundtrack and quirky gameplay: The objective of the game is to hunt down a total of five powerful Ninja who are hiding in different stages and to find hidden treasures along the way. Every time you defeat a Ninja boss, you advance a bit further in the story (which is told using manga-like cut scenes).
The game isn’t huge, but the ideal time-killer for fans of Japanese humor and pop culture (like me). It’s available for $0.99 in the App Store. Developer Makibishi also offers another iPhone app called Ninja Book (iTunes Link, $1.99), and their casual PC browser game “seven” is pretty weird and cool, too (all of their stuff is available in English and Japanese).
Here’s a demo video for Makibishi you should watch before you buy:
Click here for more English apps that are made in Japan.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Our buddies at Watchismo are offering a Nixon Newton Watch to one lucky commenter. You have your pick of the litter and you’ll be the most stylish fellow on your cellblock when you pull this watch out of wherever you hid it from the screws!
The Nixon normally costs $98 but for you, my friend, it’s free. Simply comment below and we’ll pick one winner at random on Monday.
Since the 1990s, 2D fighting game series King of Fighters has always been the (smaller), and some hardcore gamers say better, counterpart to Streetfighter. Streetfighter saw not one but two live-action movies based on the thin story lines of the games, and now someone in Hollywood decided it’s time for a King of Fighters movie. And does it surprise anybody the promo trailer that was just released looks horrendous?
Official plot:
The last surviving descendants of three legendary clans are continuously transported to other dimensions to test their martial arts skills against an evil force that seeks to invade and infect the real world.
The movie (whose official site doesn’t work for me) is scheduled for release next year in the US and this is a one-minute promo trailer that features the music from Dark Knight of all movies. Maggie Q (the evil woman in Die Hard 4) plays Mai Shiranui.
Via Worst Previews
View CrunchGear Deals in a larger map
Hey, Bargain Hunters, what did you turn up? Report here which stores have the best deals and who actually has inventory. Don’t forget to add city and state info and we can add points to a Google Map this weekend.
Don’t forget to check out our Black Friday deals on CrunchGear.
By Drake Martinet, 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 lunch date with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Loren Bendele and his deal-finding social network, Savings.com, just in time for the holiday shopping wars!
Who: Loren Bendele
What: CEO of Savings.com.
Why: Savings.com combines an Web 1.0-style coupon site, with social networking and crowd sourcing, to create live lists of discounts offered by over 4,000 major online retailers.
And, gasp, the site is profitable.
Where: Savings.com/about (corporate bio); Santa Monica, Calif. (analog place); No Twitter profile (egads!).
Who else: couponcabin.com, retailmenot.com.
Worst Job: Bag boy at a Tom Thumb supermarket outside Dallas, Tex. “I was good though. I always got awards for being the fastest.”
Has a Business Crush on: Yelp.
Gadget of the Moment: iPhone from Apple (AAPL). “I love the Flight Tracker app. It’s a game–all about control.”
Wishes There Was an App for: “I know exactly what I want; a simple app where I can assign levels of importance to contacts. The app would remind me when I haven’t called them in a while. Like, some people I want to call once a week, or a month or a quarter. Just something that helps me keep up relationships.”
Fails At: Details. “I hire others who are much better at that.”
Born outside of Dallas, TX. Chem Eng @Texas A&M. Dow Chemical, then to Teleflora, via consulting firms. Became CEO of Savings.com in 2007.
Isn’t your model a little too, “Pets.com, Web 1.0 bubble” to work?
It is sort of Web 1.0. But really, it’s a social network connecting deal fanatics. So, connecting people who are passionate and knowledgeable about getting great deals.
Some people engage at a very deep level with their own blogs and interaction. We call them our “deal pros.” You can also just come to the site and see what deals are being [rated as the best] by those deal pros. It’s based on votes of the people in the community.
What is this I hear about you being profitable? Don’t you know the start-up rules?
Well, our revenue model was important from the start. We make money because we partner with the retailers whose deals show up on our site. When someone sees a deal on our site, they click the link and go to [for instance] the Gap (GPS) Web site and buy something, we get paid.
We have relationships with 4,000 plus merchants–all of the top online merchants, and when a deal gets uploaded to our site [by a deal pro] we attach a tracking ID to that deal and report it to the merchant. I’m driving over $4 million per month to our top merchants. I’m the top sales driver for a lot of them.
We’ve been profitable since September 2007.
What is the single biggest immediate growth area for Savings.com?
International. We opened a site in England that has been growing like crazy. We had been doing it all from the U.S., with no team over there. You can do a lot remotely, but you can’t make those partner relationships, being face to face, getting the exclusive deals.
You can’t take them out to lunch and make the connections. We’ve just hired a team there full time. We actually hired the guy who was in charge of partner marketing for Amazon (AMZN) in Europe. He was so big on the opportunity that we have, that he left them for us.
What businesses would the world be better off without?
Ugh, I can’t stand predatory online businesses; cashforgold.com or those payday loan places. There are lots of those check-out services, where they offer you free magazine subscriptions and it turns out that they start charging you and you don’t find out until year later.
They tell you they are going to do it, but they do it in tiny print and it’s just dishonest. We get offers to include those sorts of things on our site all the time. It’s just not what we want to do. It’s important to keep the community pure.
When did you get the business bug?
My parents had a popcorn and yogurt shop, so they could buy things wholesale. When I was in fifth grade, I guess, I started selling Blow Pops out of my backpack. Remember those things? I could buy them for like seven cents apiece and sell them for 50 cents.
I made a lot of money doing that until the teachers shut me down.
Although BoomTown is still in a tryptophan coma of turkey, I will not be missing one of our All Things Digital columnists on “The Martha Stewart Show” today.
That would be Katherine Boehret of the Mossberg Solution, who will be appearing on the television program this morning (check times for your area) to talk tech gadgets with Martha.
For those who do not know it, Martha is actually a geek in disguise. I met her at a Consumers Electronics Show more than a decade ago, where she was hanging with top nerds. And, she has been a regular note-taking attendee of our D: All Things Digital conferences over the years too.
Boehret, who can match her in that department, is showing a range of products, all centered around the holiday gift theme. Gadgets include the Demy Recipe Reader by Key Ingredient and more.
Here is a link to the preview for the show (Martha apparently does not embed!) and I will post video clips when they become available.
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With the release of 
The year is 1963. It’s November. At 1:40 PM ET, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite comes on the air. “In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.” Rapidly, everyone in America descends upon the closest television set to tune in.
Gris-Gris was the first record credited to Dr. John, and to most listeners he seemed to have dropped out of nowhere with his mystical R&B psychedelia and Mardi Gras Indian costumes. The album, however, was actually the culmination of about 15 years of professional experience, during which Dr. John -- born Mac Rebennack in New Orleans -- had absorbed the wealth of musical influences for which the Crescent City is famed. Gris-Gris's roots reach back well beyond the dawn of the twentieth century, even as the album took in cutting-edge influences such as 1960s progressive jazz, and pushed into territory that no popular musician had ever explored in quite the same fashion.
They have smashed water mains, damaged homes, buildings and the local airstrip - threatening emergency medical evacuations - and scared local residents from venturing outside.
Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Ebay has released an auction app for BlackBerry smartphones. The free app is available for download in BlackBerry App World and was co-developed with RIM. It allows users to search for, track and bid on auctions from their BlackBerry phones. The app also integrates with the BlackBerry calendar to allow the user to set up auction reminders and it will alert the user to changes in bidding status including being outbid and if they’ve won or lost. 
Rob sez, 
If you’re anything like me – and let’s for all of our sakes pray that you’re not – then your first thought as you stagger back to your desk today, bloated and giddy after 
We all know that 
