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Jonathan Lethem's CHRONIC CITY, surreal and beautiful sf explores the authentic and the unreal
Jonathan Lethem's extraordinary new novel Chronic City tells the story of Chase Insteadman, a washed up, grown up child actor living off his sitcom residuals in wealthy, Upper East Side New York. Chase is caught between two improbabilities: his fiancee, a dying astronaut stranded on a space-station walled off from Earth by a Chinese orbital minefield, from which vantage she commands daily headlines; and Perkus Tooth, a media-obsessed Philip-K-Dickian ex-rock-critic who lives in a weed-smoke-filled cave of a rent controlled apartment from which he obsessively watches obscure movies and reads obscure books.
Chase's story -- magnificently told in Lethem's most poetic language -- is the quest for authenticity. An actor, Chase finds himself acting the part of the grieving widower-to-be, of the handsome beefcake at the swanky party, of the sincere sidekick to the ascerbic and unintelligible Perkus Tooth. And as Chase begins an affair with Oona Lazlo, a celebrity ghostwriter autobiography writer, he finds himself even more drawn to the questions of what is real and what isn't? For example: is America at war? Depends on which edition of the New York Times you read -- their "war-free" edition is flensed of all mention of the war. Or how about this: what is the true nature of the "escaped tiger" that is destroying Manhattan one bodega and run-down apartment building at a time? Is it really a two-storey-tall tiger? Or is it (as Chase's City Hall insider pal insists) a cover story for a rogue 2nd Avenue Tunnel-digging machine that got lonely and now marauds beneath New York? The story grows progressive weirder and more mystic -- there's a sub-plot involving the true nature of Marlon Brando's relationship with the "Gnuppets" (a thinly veiled version of the Muppets); another involving a fictionalized version of Second Life; a third involving "chaldons," mystical vessels that can only be found on eBay, where you are always, always outbid. In some ways, Chronic City is the bookend to one of my favorite Lethem novels, the brilliant Motherless Brooklyn (if you can find the audiobook read by Steve Buscemi and only available on cassette, jump at it). Motherless is all about the gritty, the real, the urban -- street kids who work as hoods-for-hire for a dirty private eye. In its own way, it's also about authenticity -- about whether the "authentic" street identity of the characters is just a role, just another put-on. By moving uptown to the genteel and posh precincts of rarified wealth and pathological intellect, Lethem is able to summon all his PK Dick chops, to channel the media-nuts who circulate in literary scenes, to ask important, hard-to-articulate and impossible-to-answer questions about what is genuine, what is artifice, and when it matters.
Previously:
 Source: Boing Boing | 4 Dec 2009 | 3:26 am Hello Kitty Music Player Premium
The Hello Kitty Music Player Crystal, made in cooperation with luxury brand Swarovski, I blogged about in October drew the attention of quite a few (mostly female) CrunchGear readers. One of the problems was the price: $150 for a fairly basic music player isn’t cheap. But now Japan-based Mouse Computer, in cooperation with iriver Japan, is offering a similar device. And their so-called Hello Kitty Music Player Premium [JP] is less expensive.
The device comes with 4GB of internal memory (the Swarovski model had just 2GB), which – according to Mouse Computer – should be enough for around 960 songs. It weighs 16g and is sized: 45.2×17.0×35.5mm. You can connect it to your PC (Windows only) via a cute USB cable (pictured above) that’s included in the price. The player supports MP3 and WMA files. It’ll hit Japanese stores on December 18 for $90. If you’re interested but live outside Japan, I suggest you contact import/export specialists The Japan Trend Shop, Geek Stuff 4 U or Rinkya.
Source: CrunchGear | 4 Dec 2009 | 3:20 am 200 Invites To The Put.io Cloud Storage StartupWe recently previewed the upcoming put.io cloud storage service which fetches media files and lets you stream them immediately. The service has created a lot of buzz, because it's able to keep redundant...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Dec 2009 | 3:03 am 200 Invites To The Put.io Cloud Storage Startup
The service has created a lot of buzz, because it’s able to keep redundant copies of your files which you can access from anywhere with a browser, including files for the iPhone and PS3. These can be fetched automatically from bittorrent networks, FTPs, direct download links, Rapidshare links or basic http authenticated links. And you can stream your downloaded files instantly with an appropriate player. For example, Divx Web Player for DivX files. Cleary it has the potential to create something of a media storm. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. 
Source: TechCrunch | 4 Dec 2009 | 3:03 am GM says sells China car JV stake to SAIC for $85 mlnSHANGHAI/HONG KONG, Dec 4 (Reuters) - General Motors Co [GM.UL] will sell a 1 percent stake in its China car venture to partner SAIC Motor Corp for $85 million, Nick Reilly, GM's executive vice president...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Dec 2009 | 3:00 am UPDATE 2-Amec to double EPS with acquisition drive* To focus acquisitions on Australasia, Brazil, Middle EastSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Dec 2009 | 2:46 am WRAPUP 1-GM, China partner take aim at booming India market* SAIC expansion in line with China's global auto dreamsSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Dec 2009 | 2:38 am Spain's Proposed Internet Law Sparks Protest, Change[rvr] writes "Last Monday, the Spanish Government published the latest draft for the Sustainable Economy Act, which would enable a Commission dependent of the Ministry of Culture to take down websites without a court order, in cases of Intellectual Property piracy. On Wednesday, using Google Wave, a group of journalists, bloggers, professionals and creators composed and issued a Manifesto in Defense of Fundamental Rights on the Internet, stating that 'Copyright should not be placed above citizens' fundamental rights to privacy, security, presumption of innocence, effective judicial protection and freedom of expression.' Quickly, more than 50,000 blogs and sites re-published the manifesto. On Thursday morning, the Ministry of Culture Ángeles González Sinde (former president of the Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) organized a meeting with a group of Internet experts and signers of the Manifesto. The meeting was narrated in real time via Twitter and concluded without any agreement. On Thursday afternoon, the Prime Minister's staff had a private meeting with the Ministry of Culture and some party members (who also expressed their opposition to the draft). Finally, Spain Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced in a press meeting that the text will be changed and a court order will continue to be a requirement, but [the government] still will search for ways to fight Internet piracy."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 4 Dec 2009 | 2:37 am Another Legal Tussle for eBay–and It's Not Skype This Time!–as Former CEO and Calif. Guv Hopeful Whitman Kicks Off Craigslist Trial Monday [BoomTown]
Auction giant eBay is headed to court again on Monday and, for once it is nothing to do with the litigious Skype co-founders. Instead, it’s a battle in Delaware with craigslist, the San Francisco online classified powerhouse that eBay holds a minority ownership position in. That stake is actually precisely what’s at stake. Currently, the San Jose, Calif.-based eBay (EBAY) has a less than 25 percent one, although it had acquired about 28 percent in a deal in 2004. It waged a lawsuit last year against the privately-held craigslist for diluting its ownership position by issuing more stock and, thereby, causing eBay to lose its board seat. That happened, alleges eBay, through a “coercive plan” by craigslist Founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster. “We have acted in good faith as a minority shareholder,” said eBay spokesman Alan Marks. “We are simply asking the court to restore our original interest in the company.” I sent a late email to craiglist’s rep and will post the reply if I get one. Whitman–who is running for the Republican nomination for California governor–takes the stand on opening day on Monday to talk about the original deal with craiglist. She will be followed by eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar. Of course, craiglist has its own suit in San Francisco, alleging eBay stole confidential information to create a competing classified service called Kijiji–a dopey name that BoomTown hereby rules someone should be arrested for thinking up–and other misdeeds. But, so as to be consistent in its awkward legal messes, there is a Skype link: Its current CEO Josh Silverman had been the craigslist board for eBay and played a key role in developing Kijiji. Under Whitman’s leadership, ebay also bought Skype in 2005 and then sold a big stake recently. It was a very controversial sale, which, in turn, led to a series of ugly lawsuits from the Skype co-founders, which were just settled last month. It will be interesting to see what Whitman, who has recently declared that the disastrous Skype acquisition was a good one, says about the craigslist debacle. Perhaps that eBay should have limited its investing during her watch to antiques and other fine collectibles? Source: All Things Digital | 4 Dec 2009 | 2:33 am Bing search site suffers outage - BBC News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 4 Dec 2009 | 2:24 am Darlington Hires Town Tweeter [Voices]By Mercedes Bunz, Media Reporter, Guardian The Darlington Partnership has hired a teacher to be the north-eastern town’s “Twitterer in residence”, posting under the name TheDarloBard. Mike McTimoney will use Twitter to inform people about news and events in Darlington. He has used social media for quite a while now, and is married (to another tweeter of course) with two kids. He loves to ride his bike, and he blogs about it. Read the rest of this post on the original site
Source: Gizmodo | 4 Dec 2009 | 2:20 am The Anti-Social-Network Social Network [Voices]By Jenna Wortham, Technology Reporter, New York Times Facebook and LinkedIn are great for connecting with friends and business associates you already know. But what if you want to expand your social circle and meet new people? For that, there’s By/Association, a still-tiny site that is a new twist on social networking — not that its founders would describe it that way. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 4 Dec 2009 | 2:18 am Anti-Piracy Group Refuses Bait, DRM Breaker Goes To Police [Voices]By Enigmax, Contributor, Torrent Freak At the end of October, a Danish citizen took drastic action to draw attention to some restrictive and seemingly contradictory copyright legislation. Henrik Anderson told TorrentFreak that in order to force his government’s hand on laws which allow him to copy DVDs for his own personal use, but forbid him to remove the DRM in order to do so, he decided to turn himself in. Henrik informed the Danish anti-piracy outfit Antipiratgruppen that he had broken the DRM on more than one hundred legally-purchased DVD movies and TV shows for use on his home media center, an act forbidden – but seemingly also allowed – under Danish laws, both detailed below Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 4 Dec 2009 | 2:13 am Microsoft Game Software Preps Soldiers For Battle [Voices]By John Fontana, Contributor, Network World Soldiers may go into battle better prepared to handle equipment and with a greater knowledge of their surroundings after an intellectual property licensing deal Monday between Microsoft (MSFT) and Lockheed Martin (LMT) that will deepen the defense giant’s access to visual simulation technology. The intellectual property agreement between the two focuses on Microsoft ESP, a games-based visual simulation software platform for the PC. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 4 Dec 2009 | 2:08 am New Generation of Online Games Attracts Millions [Voices]By Scott Duke Harris, Reporter, San Jose Mercury News Facebook has grown into a Web medium that more than 350 million people use as an extension of their authentic selves, not their alter egos. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 4 Dec 2009 | 2:03 am Hearst Plans Digital Magazine, Newspaper Service [Voices]By Shira Ovide and Geoffrey A. Fowler, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal Publisher Hearst Corp. plans to launch next year a service called Skiff to sell digital versions of newspapers and magazines on electronic readers and other devices, in a system it believes will be more visually appealing to readers and more lucrative for media companies. Skiff would give publishers an alternative to Amazon.com Inc.’s (AMZN) Kindle store, which currently dominates the burgeoning field of digital reading. Through Skiff, Hearst said consumers will be able to buy digital publications that have better graphics and look more like their print counterparts, including the inclusion of advertising, than versions offered elsewhere. The service will include a digital storefront as well as a back-end system that publishers can use to render their publications for a range of electronic devices, including Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iPhone and small laptops called netbooks. Skiff, which Hearst has been developing for more than two years as a separate company called First Paper LLC, also is developing its own e-reading device with a consumer-electronics firm. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 4 Dec 2009 | 2:00 am EU OKs Watson Wyatt/Towers merger, with conditionBRUSSELS, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide gained conditional European Union regulatory approval on Friday to merge with rival Towers Perrin Forster & Crosby in an all-stock...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Dec 2009 | 1:58 am Comcast-NBC deal shows future is in content
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 G4 TV | Virginia: Dispute Over Flag New York Times By AP A 90-year-old Medal of Honor winner is involved in a dispute with a neighborhood association that wants him to remove a flag pole from his front yard. Supporters, among them a United States senator, are supporting the medal winner, Van T. Barfoot ... Medal of Honor release date clarified EA Reveals New Medal of Honor Game Modern-day 'Medal Of Honor' announced |
 AFP | Google adds translation to main search engine AFP SAN FRANCISCO — Google has began weaving an automated language translation feature into its universal search service. A new "translated search" tool lets people direct Google to seek results from Web pages written in an array of languages and then ... New Google Option Translates Search Results Google rolls out dictionary functionality Google Intros Translated Search Feature |
While the rest of the PC-making world – Acer, Lenovo, HP – were up at least 7 percent this year, poor old dell dropped 5.9 percent and to third place. And, as we all know, being third place means you’re the second loser.
Tech analysts iSuppli estimate that Dell sold 10.34 million PCs and laptops. This means that Acer, once an also-ran in the industry, has hit number two. This is a huge deal.
While there’s no accounting for taste, it’s clear that Acer and HP are selling what people want. Lenovo has always been popular with business and Toshiba is, well, Toshiba. Dell basically needs to step up its game or get left in the dust.
Google has begun its big push to bring extension support to its Chrome web browser. Currently, it’s accepting extensions from developers that it will be placing in some sort of gallery to launch at a later date. Last week, we showed the nice, new Aviary extension for Chrome. Today, we get very popular Firefox extension that is now Chrome-ready, Shareaholic.
As we noted in September when Shareaholic closed its seed funding, the extension has surpassed over 1 million downloads for Firefox. And for good reason: It makes sharing on just about every service on the web as simple as two-clicks. The new Chrome version works pretty much exactly the same as the Firefox version; you click the button and you are presented with a drop down list of social options for sharing. A shortened URL is automatically made for the webpage you are sending.
If you have a Shareaholic account you can set options for the extension including picking and choosing which social networks to include in the drop-down. You can also pick which URL shortener to use (Bit.ly is the default one). But you don’t have to have a Shareaholic account to use the extension, it will simply use the default sharing options (such as Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, etc) to populate your drop-down.
The extension is fast, and thankfully, does not seem to slow down Chrome at all. Obviously, extension support is a big key to Chrome competing with Firefox, the browser known for its extensions. And this simple extension support also gives Chrome a huge leg up over the top dog of the browsers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Shareaholic’s extension, which is technically still is beta, is accessible through this direct link. Once you download it, simply drag it into your Chrome (version 4.0 or greater, which is still testing) browser window to install it. One note: It’s not working correctly with the latest dev build of Chrome for Mac, but it is working in the latest Chromium builds for Mac. Chrome for Mac’s beta launch is imminent, but Google has stated that extension support will not be in that build right away.
Shareaholic noted that the team at Google helped them port the extension over to Chrome. Clearly, they want to have the best extensions available early.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Ever since Area 51 and the grassy knoll, we’ve all known the government was hiding something. What, exactly? Was it that Spain is really France? That hemp makes great rope? No. It’s that motion blur in LCDs isn’t that big a deal. And it’s time to blow this cover-up wide open.
Dr. Raymond Soneira at DisplayMate has blown the lid off this whole thing by writing a detail and somniferant look at LCD motion blur. His conclusions will surprise you: it doesn’t exist and all that talk of megahertz and poodlefurtz was all smoke and mirrors. We are down the rabbit hole, people.
Wham. Taste this science:
LCDs have their own gorilla: limited response time, which causes motion blur. As with plasmas and burn-in, this was a significant problem many years ago, and it too is no longer an issue now. But unlike plasma manufacturers, makers of LCDs have turned this into a brilliant marketing strategy, offering increasingly sophisticated and enhanced motion processing and ever higher 120- and 240-Hz screen refresh rates to repeatedly oversell a solution to a problem that is no longer a problem.
Why is some dude from a monitor calibration company doing going against the party line? Well, either the LCD manufacturers tried to kill him or this goes deeper. Maybe he’s sick of people talking about 240-Hz refresh rates, sick of people talking about lies and lies and more lies.
The sad part? Most people won’t read this story because it’s really long and about LCD refresh rates. But I’m here to tell you this goes all the way up… and all the way down.
I’ve been down on netbooks because a) they suck and b) they’re underpowered. Now, however, if your $299 kleinewunderbuk is too slow, the Internet has a fix.
YouTube, for example, can be a big resource hog on many netbooks. Streaming video through a Flash player? As if! The Space Shuttle can’t even do that kind of processing on the freaking fly!
Now there is YouTube Feather a stripped-down version of YouTube for people who can’t handle the full ‘Tube. Here’s how they describe it:
This is an opt-in beta for “Feather” support on YouTube. The “Feather” project is intended to serve YouTube video watch pages with the lowest latency possible. It achieves this by severely limiting the features available to the viewer and making use of advanced web techniques for reducing the total amount of bytes downloaded by the browser. It is a work in progress and may not work for all videos.
Look, YouTube videos are up there with Christianity and Big Macs in terms of Things Americans Deserve. If you bought into the netbook craze and can’t use yours to watch YouTube, then by all means force the Internet to work around your limitations.
I mean you NEED to watch this, don’t you?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Wow. Bing is completely and utterly down right now and has been for several minutes. The tweets about it are flying in at a massive pace — as are the tips to us. [Update below, it's back after about 30 mins of downtime.]
It’s one thing when startups, like Twitter, go down, which happens all the time. It’s another when a major search portal does it. If this is part of the new strategy to beat Google, Microsoft didn’t mention it in the Fall Release event the other day.
Remember the shitstorm when Gmail went down several months ago? Just imagine if it were Google itself — the Internet would grind to a halt.
Update: A Bing team member writes that they are “working on bringing @bing back up.”
Update 2: And at least now they have an error page (below):
Update 3: And they’re back. Total downtime around 30 minutes…
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
‘Tis the season for building systems — well, ’tis always that season, but right now you’ve got a pretty nice spread of components to pick from, whether you’re into the AMD or Intel flavor of things. Of course, if you’re feeling really spendy, or just want to have a different top-end processor from the guy next to you at the LAN party, then sometimes you have to get creative.
eBay, as always, is the place for semi-shady transactions like that. Right now (oops, it ended a while ago) There’s a prototype 6-core Westmere Gulftown 2.4GHZ LGA1366 CPU being auctioned off with a reserve of $1200. There’s no guarantee this is going to outperform a regular Core i7 or Phenom II, but it might just be worth it for the look on your friends’ faces when you say you’re running a Core i9.
If you want it, better bid quick; I don’t think these engineering samples are labeled for individual sale. It does say “Intel Confidential” on it, which doesn’t suggest public availability to me.
[via Tom's Hardware]
If you use Twitter frequently on your smartphone, there’s a good chance you use a native Twitter client. Between apps like Tweetie on the iPhone, Twidroid on Android, and Seesmic on Blackberry, there’s no shortage of quality apps that put advanced features at your fingertips. But, according to a post that just went live on the Twitter blog, there are still plenty of people who navigate to m.twitter.com, the Twitter mobile site that’s about as spartan as they come. Tonight, Twitter is showing off a preview of the new mobile site it’s working on, housed at mobile.twitter.com. And it’s a big improvement.
There are quite a few obvious changes in the new version. First and foremost, you’ll notice that it looks quite a bit nicer than the old site, with more color and a much improved layout. You’ll also see that everything more closely mirrors the desktop version of the Twitter.com homepage.
As with the desktop version, you’ll be shown Twitter’s real-time search engine when you first visit the site. More importantly, the new client includes all of the basic features that every Twitter client has had for years, but the old mobile page lacks. These include the ability to see @replies (mentions), favorited tweets, and direct messages. All of these were missing in the old version, but you’ll find them in a menu at the top in the new one. Some features, like recently-launched lists are still missing, though.
Other improvements include the addition of user profile pictures next to their tweets (you can turn these off if you’re on a slow connection), and a brief list of trending topics at the very bottom of the page.
Twitter’s blog post also notes that this was built using Twitter’s own APIs — in other words, it’s “eating its own dogfood” with the new mobile site (that’s what the title Takeout Dogfood on Twitter’s blog refers to). From the post:
‘M’ should also be fantastically innovative — naturally the best way to do that is use our own APIs. So, the mobile team here built a brand new mobile web client from scratch, using only Twitter APIs, and we’d like to share the results with you.
The Twitter blog post says that this works best on Webkit browsers, which are found on Android, the iphone, Nokia S60, and Palm OS. It’ll still work on other platforms, but the Twitter team hasn’t fine tuned it yet.
For comparison’s sake, here’s a shot of the old version (left) next to the new mobile site:
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It seems that every day there’s a new travel site looking to streamline the process of planning out your itinerary. And for good reason: trips, even the fun ones, are usually a total pain to plan. Those problems are only magnified when you’re trying to plan a trip with more than one person. Duffel is a startup that launched from TechCrunch50’s demo pit that’s looking to help. It’s giving users a straightforward, visual way to plan out their trips using a tool that’s long since proved its utility: a bulletin board.
Of course, as an online service Duffel’s bulletin board is virtual, but many of the concepts stay the same. To get started, first you tell Duffel what city you’re going to be traveling to. The site presents you with a virtual bulletin board populated with a handful of suggested activities and places to stay, each represented by a small note card. From there, you can add your own ideas manually (you enter a title, notes, and URL) or you can use the site’s bookmarklet to quickly save things from across the web to your Duffel.
The bulletin board is meant to serve as a central pool of all of the activities, restaurants, and modes of transportation that you’re considering. You can invite friends to brainstorm their own ideas and add them to the board. Then, when it’s time to actually plan out your trip, you can drag and drop each activity onto the timeline at the left side of the screen. To help plan out your activities, Duffel will automatically plot their location on a Google Map so you can see which items are closest. And when you’re ready to embark on your journey, you can print out an itinerary, which is automatically populated with information about the places you’re visiting. If you think your trip is particularly good, you can share it with the public. Likewise, if you can’t seem to find anything you want to do, you can browse the directory of trips shared by other users.
The site is well done, with a clean design and refreshing simplicity. But there are some features it lacks that competitors do have, like the ability to generate an itinerary with an hourly schedule (on Duffel everything is just listed by day, though some people may prefer it that way). More importantly it’s in a very crowded space — there are many travel sites out there, and even sites that help generate an itinerary for you aren’t very novel. Competitors include Nile Guide, GoPlanIt, Offbeat Guides, TripWolf and a host of others. Granted, there’s room for more than one player here to succeed, but Duffel is going to need to find a way to rise above the crowd.
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One overzealous IT worker. One school. One chance to run up your ratings on the SETI@Home scoreboard. Estimated cost to remove the software (according to the school): one… MILLION DOLLARS!!!!
A well-meaning IT worker decided that it’d be all right to install the SETI@Home client on the school computers. Sounds good in theory, but the school administrators certainly didn’t think so, and he promptly resigned. Of course, he installed the software back in 2000, if the report is to be believed (probably not). They are now pressing charges against the worker, and the school superintendent was quoted as telling a local newspaper that it would cost an estimated $1 million to fix the problem and remove the software. I say screw that, turn the computer club loose on the computers and promise them a trip to the Smithsonian or something. It’ll be done in an hour.
[via Neatorama]
Next Big Sound, a TechStars 2009 company that tracks the growth and popularity of music groups across major web properties like MySpace, Twitter, Last.fm, and others, has raised a seed round in the $1 million range. The company would not reveal the exact amount, but did confirm that they had recently raised the funding.
As Robin described it in August, Next Big Sound is a statistics and comparison engine à la Alexa or Compete, but for music artists and industry professionals. Next Big Sound measures number of fans, number of plays, and comments for bands.
According to an SEC filing, Next Big Sound filed a Form D for their seed round that stated they had raised ~$100k, though they have in fact raised significantly more. Foundry Group led the round, with Jason Mendelson taking a board spot. Also participating were SoftTech VC, Alsop Louie Partners, Professor Troy Henikoff from Northwestern University and TechStars Executive Director David Cohen.
Next Big Sound has been tracking over 500 million fan interactions and almost 500,000 artists since launch. Next Big Sound launched in August at the TechStars Investor Day in Boulder.
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When last we checked in on Ideal Bite, Disney’s green newsletter, there was a debate about whether the unit was folding, as its employees seemed to think, or in “transition” and “under review,” as Disney preferred to describe it.
This should clear things up: The site and its email editions are going on “indefinite hiatus,” according to an email the company plans to distribute next week.
Ideal Bite is supposed to eventually resurface in some form via the “Go Green” section of Disney’s Family.com site, but that won’t do much for the company’s employees, who I’m told will be out of work as of Dec. 9.
A person familiar with the company says the only two exceptions are co-founders Heather Stephenson and Jennifer Boulden, who will remain employed until March. I’ve asked Disney for comment, but haven’t heard back yet.
Ideal Bite is one of the many newsletters backed by Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group, which sold the company to Disney (DIS) for a reported $20 million in 2008. Pittman’s biggest success to date has been DailyCandy, which Pilot sold to Comcast (CMCSA) for $125 million a year and a half ago.
Here’s the draft text of the email Ideal Bite plans to send out next Monday:
Dear Biters:
For the past 5 years, Ideal Bite has helped make “light green” a way of life, leading to many meaningful changes. Together we’ve made the switch to organic food, CFL light bulbs, reusable water bottles, and paraben-free shampoos, and have inspired others to follow our lead.
Those small changes really have added up and have helped push green to the mainstream. As you’ve probably noticed, lately, our Ideal Bite guides, tips, and other content have become more family and home focused. And now, as part of the Walt Disney family of companies, it makes sense for us to join the Disney website Family.com, which focuses on women and moms, and is expanding the Go Green section of its site.
What does that mean for you? Starting next week, all Ideal Bite email editions and the website will go on indefinite hiatus as Family.com readies new ways to serve you Biters – through email, website, mobile, and video content. In the meantime, keep checking Family.com’s Go Green section for content and updates.
Thanks for Biting with us over these past years. We’ve had a blast sharing our tips with you all, and we look forward to downing a virtual glass of biodynamic wine with you in the future.
Until then, as always, Happy Biting.
The Ideal Bite Team
Who says Twitter isn’t mainstream? Vogue Italia has just dedicated an issue to the microblogging network. The magazine’s December cover features a montage of TwitPics of some of the world’s most famous models, including Gisele Bundchen, Christy Turlington, and Natalia Vodianova.
In the collage, models are taking pictures of themselves via popular Twitter photo sharing app TwitPic. And the layout of the editorial feature is also an ode to Twitter.
This isn’t the first time Vogue Italia has shown a little technology love. In 2007, the fashion-forward magazine devoted a cover to the rise of YouTube and webcams. While the Twitter-focused issue may take some by surprise, it’s not irrelevant to the fashion community. As Twitter becomes more of a platform for designers and consumers to converse about fashion, the platform becomes a key mechanism for both news and new styles.
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Section: Communications, Mobile
Surveys of any kind regarding technology are always tough to prove, though that doesn’t make them any less interesting. In a Motorola-commissioned survey, it looks as if the generational gap regarding “being connected” via technology is disappearing. The study was done to find out the connection “Millennials,” “Gen Xers,” and “Boomers.”
The study has shown that all generations relay on connectivity. To a majority of all the generations, being connected and accessible is viewed as more of a necessity than anything else, with Millennials having the highest rating of 79 percent. Not only to those surveyed feel a need to be connected, but 66 percent of all those surveyed have become to expect being able to access their media anywhere, at any time. There was also found an interest among those surveyed in customization of technology, which has been a recent selling point for many devices.
The one part of the survey I find to be fairly hard to prove is that fact that most Gen Xers (89 percent) and Boomers (74 percent) say that they influence their children’s tech habits. Surely parents are going to say that they influence their children’s decisions on many things, but those overwhelming figures for decisions regarding tech seem a bit questionable. Either way, it is showing that we, as an American society, are becoming increasingly reliant on connectivity through our technology. Say what you will about that idea, but I find it to be a good sign. It can be overwhelming at times, but more connectivity, to me, is always a good thing.
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Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
After you come down from the Obama LSD that David was peddling yesterday, you can take some Obama ecstasy tablets.
UPDATE: It appears that these tablets are phony adulterated piperazine, not ecstasy. The Erowid Experience Vault reports suggest piperazine is a bummer. It's like the President Obama story in pill form! (Thanks, Xeni!)
Obama E!
Source: Boing Boing | 3 Dec 2009 | 6:30 pm
As a fan of retro game stuff in general, I’m always on the lookout for cool Pac-Man/Space Invaders/Robotron 2084 stuff. Unfortunately, retro game gear isn’t usually very understated. When it comes to watches, I’m more of an old-school guy, but even if I were into cool new watches, I’d probably skip this one.
I’ll tell you what, though. Make a sweet Tempest or Gyruss watch and I’ll eat it up. No need to change anything, just design a display that looks like one of the levels! The ship could spin round the outside and shoot baddies every minute. Now that I’d buy.
Thinking of those games reminds me of these great long exposures of ‘em. The Gyruss bonus round is trippy and that Tempest one is actually quite beautiful.
[via Technabob]
 Telegraph.co.uk | Analysts Predict App Explosion in 2010 PC World IDC analysts have published a list of predictions for 2010. One of those predictions is that 2010 will be the year of the app. It may seem like apps are ubiquitous now, but if IDC analysts are even half right you haven't seen anything ... For the iPhone's App Store, Quantity Really Does Matter Presto! Porn Apps on the iphone! IDC Predictions Fail To Surprise |
Illustrator Michæl Paukner, whose poster art I've blogged a few times now, has started a terrific series of images paying tribute to the über-kitschy German science fiction television show Space Patrol (Raumpatrouille). Shown here, the Orion 7 craft. If you're unfamiliar with the show, this fan-site is a great place to start. Video clips and links to past appreciations of the TV series on Boing Boing after the jump.
Below, the opening sequence of an episode:
And here, a remix of the theme song with clips from various episodes:
Below, a misbehaving robot:
Below, some crazy dance moves:
Want to hone your journalism skills on the front lines of new media?
Wired.com is looking for an intern. We’re the news and online branch of Wired magazine, and we’ve been pushing the boundaries of online publishing since we launched one of the first news websites in 1995.
With an independent newsroom, we’re not just shoveling old-media content on the web: We’re breaking news, blogging daily, and producing multimedia stories that include video, audio, and — whenever possible — interactive features, mashups and more.
There’s no better place to hone your journalism skills, show off your new media talents, and get some high-profile clips.
The internship is with Wired.com’s biggest and highest-traffic blog, Gadget Lab. Successful applicants will be gadget freaks: You don’t have to own the latest gadgets, but you should be excited about them. If you aren’t annoying your friends because you can’t shut up about things like Android 2.0, Windows 7, the Apple tablet or Arduino, this internship isn’t for you.
This virtually unpaid internship requires you to be available to work one day per week in our San Francisco office, starting in January. You must be a student, and the internship must count towards your degree. (Clarification: You don’t have to be a journalism major. But you do have to get some kind of school credit for the internship.)
Interested? Send a brief (300-word) cover letter and links to 3-5 clips to Gadget Lab editor Dylan Tweney at dtweney@wired.com. No attachments please. Bonus points if your cover letter includes a sourced quote and a nut graf. Deadline: Thursday, December 13, 5pm Pacific.
Devin recently reviewed the ContourHD 1080p, a wearable HD camcorder designed to be worn during activities that would cause other camcorders to self-destruct. One thing it couldn’t do, however, was go into the water (though it resisted some splashing). It’s not designed to be waterproof out of the box, which definitely could be a problem for divers, rafters, or other water-sport enthusiasts.
The makers were clearly aware of this shortcoming, and they’ve come out with a waterproof housing that will protect the camera to a depth of 10 meters. This will help the ContourHD reach the level of the more ruggedized sport camcorders, but keep in mind that the added layer of plastic will likely cause some distortion and chromatic aberration (which will be more noticeable on the 1080p version).
In addition to the waterproof housing, ContourHD also announced a lens kit today. The kit includes a replacement lens cover, and an adapter ring that allows you to attach 37mm filters to the camera, for when you need that ND or polarizer.
Section: Computers, Hardware, Peripherals, Storage
OWC has launched a new line of portable hard drives. The Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini line sports the same brushed aluminum case as the Mercury Elite-AI Pro line but in a smaller package. This new line of hard drives is only 3.8 by 5.5 by 1.1 making them easy to tote around. They are bus powered, eliminating the need to carry a bulky AC adapter with you, but an optional one is available. The drives offer an eSATA port, USB 2.0 port and a pair of FireWire 800 ports. Cables for all are included along with a FireWire 400 to FireWire 800 cable.
The drives come in a wide variety of sizes and prices for every need and budget, starting with three 5200RPM/5400RPM drives. The 320GB model goes for $139.99, the 500GB for $169.99 and the 750GB for $249.99. There are also two 7200RPM drives, a 320GB for $149.99 and a 500GB for $199. For the big spenders there is even an SSD option-256GB for a whopping $839.99. Want to use your own drive? There are also enclosure kits available for $97.99 with an included software bundle including back up programs, or $89.99 without.
The only downside I see so far is buried in the fine print: “Over 2GB of Freeware, Shareware, and Public Domain software installed.” Now I don’t know about you but I prefer to decide what I want installed on my drives and devices. When I get a new computer the first thing I do is uninstall all the trial and junkware that comes with it. If you’re like me you may have to do the same with these drives!
Read [OWC]
Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
By Tim Hanrahan, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
The Metropolitan Police said Thursday it shut down more than 1,200 Web sites that purported to sell merchandise such as Tiffany jewelry and Ugg boots but instead shipped counterfeit goods or nothing at all, and put shoppers at risk of identity theft and financial fraud.
The Metropolitan Police said its Central e-Crime Unit worked with U.K. domain-name registry Nominet to shut down the Web addresses of the sites, and to keep them from being re-registered.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
I know, I know — this isn’t LampCrunch. But this is just too cool of a home accessory not to share. It’s designed by algorithm, I assume, and produced by a rapid prototyping machine. It can collapse like that because of science.
[via FastCompany and Dvice]
If this is the future of “dumbphones,” then sign me up. I love my Android, but the plain install I’ve got lacks panache. This HTC Touch.B is running on Qualcomm’s Brew platform, so it’s going to be missing all those apps and such, but it’s nice to see a featurephone not bogged down by an ugly D-pad-based UI.
[via WMPowerUser and Engadget]
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
FROM GAMERTELL - Walmart has announced if you purchase a Wii in-store between December 5-12, 2009, you’ll get a $50 gift card. Walmart has also announced that it has discounted 25 select games until December 24, 2009.
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Surprised Kitten, which was the subject of much squealing in a Boing Boing post, can haz a backstory. Aude Baron, the French journalist who previously wrote about YouTube star Tsimfuckus (the child who has Progeria and loves gangsta rap) contacted the mother of the teen who captured the kitteh that launched a gajillion clicks.
Here's the article, auto-translated from French. It appeared in Lepost.fr. After the jump, I summarize the contents in English.
THE TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY OF SURPRISED KITTEH
The kitten in this viral video hit is a female named Attila, as in "The Hun." She is fierce, hence the name.
But, wait for the paradox: she is also cute. Hence the surname, "fluff."
So, the kitten's full name is "Attila Fluff".
She was between 6 and 10 weeks of age when the video was made.
The teenager who shot the video is named Rosa.
Attila does not belong to Rosa. She belongs to a friend of Rosa's, who came by with the kitty one day to visit.
Rosa thought the kitten was so cute that she decided to shoot some video. The video ended up on YouTube.
Millions of people have watched the video now. Attila the kitty is famous.
Now Attila has a coke habit and wants implants, and thinks she might be a lesbian.
TMZ is posting rumors that Attila has invested in a franchise of catnip dispensaries supplied by the feline prison gang known as the Manx-ican Mafia.
How'd I do with the French translation? I hope I didn't mess any of that up.
AP - "Tony Hawk: Ride" ($120; Xbox360, Wii, PS3) is a groundbreaking video game that fits right in with the namesake skating legend's no-rough-edges appeal. It's a silky smooth experience with an inventive wireless skate deck controller and a friendly learning curve.
 Techtree.com | Microsoft To Fix Zero-Day IE Bug For Patch Tuesday Release ChannelWeb By Stefanie Hoffman, channelweb Microsoft will fix 12 security flaws, including a critical Internet Explorer 8 zero-day vulnerability, with a total of six bulletins in its upcoming Patch Tuesday release. The upcoming Patch Tuesday release, ... Microsoft Patch Tuesday for December 2009: six bulletins Microsoft to plug critical IE hole targeted by exploit code Three Critical Microsoft Patches Due Tuesday |
Section: Computers, Desktops, Laptops, Security, Software / Applications
Last week, the internet was ablaze with stories about the new “Black Screen of Death”, Gadgetell included. Sources claimed that the Windows 7 security update caused this new BSOD and even though Microsoft denied those charges, the blame continued on. But now, the same company who made the original claim against Microsoft, Prevx, now is stating that the black screen is most likely caused by malware, not the security update. It seems those Mac vs. PC commercials have finally gotten to our heads.
Prevx’z CEO Mel Morris made a blog post, apologizing to Microsoft.
“The issue appears to be related to a characteristic of the Windows Registry related to the storage of string data. In parsing the Shell value in the registry, Windows requires a null terminated ‘REG_SZ’ string. However, if malware or indeed any other program modifies the shell entry to not include null terminating characters, the shell will no longer load properly, resulting in the infamous Black Screen with the PC showing only the My Computer folder.”
Microsoft’s Chief Security Adviser of Microsoft EMEA Roger Halbheer retaliated to this post on his own blog.
Looking at that, you should now make your risk assessment and decide which source you want to trust. For me, the ultimate source for information you should build your assessment on is neither Twitter nor your brother’s sister in law’s father’s brother (unless he works for Microsoft’s security) but our website.
I can understand how people would believe that this would be Microsoft’s error. With all the problems that Vista had, and all the Mac vs. PC attack ads, its understandable that we have lost some trust in Microsoft. But that doesn’t mean we can believe every rumor that comes out about them. Microsoft has given reason to begin to trust them again, in Windows 7. Listen to both sides of the story in every argument.
Read [Mashable]
Full Story » | Written by Greg Billetdeaux for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Over the past few years, Nokia’s dominance of the smartphone market has been steadily eroded by competition from the likes of Apple (AAPL) and Research In Motion (RIMM). In its latest quarter, the company’s smartphone market share slipped to 35 percent from 41 percent.
With Motorola (MOT) and HTC building some compelling new Android devices and a new iPhone presumably on the way, there’s no telling what Nokia’s market share will be this time next year. The company desperately needs a worthy super-smartphone contender (it’s clearly not the N900 or N97) or it will end up reducing forecasts for market share and profitability in perpetuity.
So what should Nokia do? Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair has a suggestion.
Nokia should buy Palm (PALM)–for its webOS operating system and for the guy who quarterbacked its development, CEO Jon Rubinstein. And then the company should abandon its Symbian and Maemo operating systems–Blair dismisses them as “inferior” and “lacking polish and smoothness”–and build just a handful of smartphones, all based on Palm’s webOS.
“You need each other,” Blair explains in an open letter to Nokia’s leadership. “You have the manufacturing and distribution capabilities and global carrier relationships and Palm has the second best operating system behind the iPhone. Alone, it will be difficult for Palm to ramp globally and compete with the top players largely because it takes meaningful marketing dollars to ramp units across global carriers especially while you remain focused on R&D efforts. You, by yourself, will cede market share to your competitors each quarter as smartphones become a larger part of global handset sales and you fail to offer a compelling offering in that category.”
Continuing his evaluation, Blair says, “I know you said you expect flat market share in 2010 but that isn’t going to happen if you don’t act. I think you could lose 10% of your share by the end of 2010 to your competition, taking your global share under 30%. However, together, as a unified company the two of you would rock the foundation of the handset industry and create real worry for your competition because each of you bring critical elements to the table that the other lacks and you would be a powerful force complimenting each other’s strengths and addressing the other’s weaknesses.”
As Blair notes, stateside carriers might not have been so quick to dismiss the N900 and N97 if they had run webOS. And developers might not be so hesitant to write apps for webOS if the market for them was as vast as Nokia’s. Finally, with Palm’s market cap at around $1.6 billion and Nokia’s at nearly $50 billion, the Finnish phone maker could easily figure out a way to finance an acquisition.
Interesting proposal, yeah? Tough to see Nokia adopting it, though. The company has been pushing Maemo pretty hard lately. And it wasn’t so long ago that it invested some $410 million in Symbian and released it as a royalty-free open mobile platform. It seems unlikely that the company would simply dump it now. Even more unlikely when you consider that Symbian is by far the world’s leading smartphone software platform.
But you never know. Anything’s possible. And remember, it wasn’t so long ago that Nokia was making rubber boots.
PREVIOUSLY:
Does anybody go to Second Life anymore? It seems like a ghost town these days, although every now and then you hear rumblings of a quiet comeback for the proto-virtual world. Well, at the very least Second Life will be getting a second life at the movies. A documentary called Life 2.0 will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival.
Life 2.0 was produced by PalmStar Entertainment (which is theglobe.com co-founder Stephan Paternot’s indie movie company) and Andrew Lauren Productions (The Squid And The Whale). Here is how they describe the move in a release:
This feature-length documentary follows a group of people whose lives are dramatically transformed by the virtual world Second Life. More than an examination of a hot new technology, the film is foremost an intimate, character-based drama about people who look to a virtual world in search of something they are missing in their real lives.
Exactly.
If the movie is able to rouse the remaining residents of Second Life up and away from their computers to a movie theater with other actual people I, for one, will consider it a success. Although, I am not sure how many real movie theaters the people of Second Life can fill.
Below is a teaser trailer which tells you absolutely nothing about the movie:
“Life 2.0″ documentary teaser from Jason Spingarn-Koff on Vimeo.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
When we mentioned a few weeks back that GelaSkins was now printing custom skins for mobile phones, MobileCrunch reader Ankit Gupta said “This is something you guys should just do a contest for… give away 5 of these or something, you know?”
Yes, Ankit – we know. Ask, and you shall receive. We’ve teamed up with GelaSkins to give away skins to 5 lucky TechCrunch Network readers, custom printed for any one of 13 different phone models they support. Want one? Find out how to win after the jump.
How to enter:
Entering is about as easy as it gets: Design a skin for your phone, and send it to us at greg+skins@crunchgear.com.
Rules:
Our 5 favorite designs (whether they make us laugh or they’re just nice designs, anything can be our favorite) will win. We’ll pick the winners next Thursday, December 10th. Have fun!
As an example, here’s the design I would enter if I weren’t, you know, throwing the contest:
![Screen shot 2009-10-26 at [ October 26 ] 2.08.12 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Screen-shot-2009-10-26-at-October-26-2.08.12-PM.png "Screen shot 2009-10-26 at [ October 26 ] 2.08.12 PM")
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FROM APPLETELL - If you’re a watcher of Diggnation, then you already know Alex Albrecht was “shocked” to hear how low the price of the long rumored Apple tablet will be.
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Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
You could get skilled with the piano after years of practice, but imagine how good you’d be at playing an instrument you invented.
A college course and the iPhone are making that possible for computer-science students at the University of Michigan.
Now, at the end of the course, the class ensemble of 11 students are preparing to put on a live concert — one where every musician’s instrument is an iPhone.
Taught by Georg Essl, an assistant professor of computer science and music, the course (titled “Building a Mobile Phone Ensemble“) trains students to code their own musical instruments for the iPhone, using the Apple-provided software-development kit.
“What’s interesting is we blend the whole process,” Essl said in a phone interview with Wired.com. “We start from nothing. We teach the programming of iPhones for multimedia stuff, and then we teach students to build their own instruments.”
“We don’t stop there,” he continued. “We don’t just see this as an engineering exercise. We want to do the whole process where we start from nothing, and then we go to performance next week in a live concert, where people can come and listen to the outcome of what students have learned in the course.”
The advantage of digital music can be seen in instruments as far back as the electric guitar: the flexibility to manipulate bits of code to create different sounds, superseding the limitations of a traditional analog instrument. Naturally, technological advancement keeps raising electronic sound to new heights. In recent years, musicians have been experimenting with gadgets ranging from laptops to high-tech cellos, and from cellphones to bent circuits.
Essl said he’s been playing music with mobile phones since 2005, but the iPhone is unique because it starts out as a highly sophisticated blank slate with multiple sensors: a full touchscreen, a microphone, GPS, compass, wireless sensor and accelerometer.
Using the iPhone SDK and some supplemental audio tools provided by Essl, students in the course learn to program the device to play different sounds, based on the information it receives from one of its multitude of sensors. Tapping the display, shaking the phone or blowing air into the mic, for example, can all translate into different sounds.
Students in the class are experimenting with the iPhone in a wild variety of ways, Essl said. One student’s instrument uses the iPhone’s video-savvy screen and microphone to synesthetically work the relationship between color and sound. Another student is exploring what the iPhone can do with feedback and distortion.
“I think it’s an interesting spread,” Essl said. “People come to it not with a literal sense of, ‘I know piano. I want to build a mobile phone piano.’ They have a concept.”
The Michigan Mobile Phone Ensemble will perform Dec. 9 at 8 p.m. in the university’s Britton Recital Hall. See a video of the ensemble in a practice session above, and a video overview of the class below.
See Also:
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Web, Web Apps, Google
Prospective students now have another weapon to make deciding on a college easier: Google Street View. Google added two colleges and is soliciting for more, free of charge, to make choosing a college as easy as a few clicks. Google sent cars and trikes to take imagery to add to their Street View. The results: pretty cool.
Google has put the offer out there to parks, theme parks, schools, or anywhere Google Street View visitors might like to visit. The company partnered with LegoLand and Hershey Park to be among the launch locations.
Colleges have much to gain from this as well. Currently Boston University and San Diego State University are the two schools on board, but surely more will follow. The walking tour takes you through the school, under archways and winds through busy quads. How they get the college kids not to moon the camera must be a well-kept Google secret.
Product page: [Google]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Robert Scoble allows 1,768 people to know where he is at all times. Let me repeat that: 1,768 people know his location at all times. How do I know that? A new list from Osnapz told me.
Osnapz’ Top Foursquare Users list takes advantage of Foursquare’s new API to create a list that sorts the “top” users of the service. I put “top” in quotations because the way they determine this by default isn’t a very good metric: It’s the number of people you allow to follow you.
On Foursquare, unlike Twitter, you have to explicitly accept new followers. The reason for this is obvious: Foursquare is all about sharing your location, so your probably are only going to want to do that with people you actually know. Well, unless you’re Scoble, of course. But truth be told, I’m on this list as well, at #42, with 234 people I allow to follow me. I wouldn’t consider myself close friends with all (or probably even most) of those people, but I do generally accept people that I’ve met before. But I have plenty of others that I don’t accept. That’s not meant to be a slight to them, but simply because the idea of random people knowing where I am is still a little weird.
This type of symmetric social relationship is of course the key to Facebook as well. But the rise of Twitter has led to the popularity of the asymmetric network. Even Facebook is doing plenty of asymmetric things now with its “everyone” sharing button and fan pages. But location adds a different element to this because it’s the bridge between the online social world and the real-life social world. That’s undoubtedly the reason that Facebook is taking its time with implementing native location elements to its service.
With time, people will become more comfortable with sharing their location with others online. But sadly, we’ll undoubtedly also see some situations of real-world stalking (both extreme and not-so extreme cases) that will crop up. The fact that Scoble and Leo Laporte (#1 and #2 on the list), who are both web celebrities of sorts, basically seem to be using Foursquare asymmetrically is interesting in that regard.
To be fair, Osnapz also allows you to sort the lists by number of mayorships on Foursquare (basically, what you get when you’ve checked-in to a certain venue more times than other people). That would seem to be a better indicator of “top users.” You can also sort these lists by the various cities that Foursquare supports.
“The foursquare API has a low rate limit so I can only add a few members at a time, but my process runs every hour to add more users, so over time, the list will be more comprehensive,” Osnapz creator Tuyen Nguyen also tells us. I hope so because I’d love to know if someone is more stalker-friendly than Scoble.
[photo: flickr/r.f.m II]
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
After we found out about the Samsung Trance’s then-impending software update a little early, I honestly didn’t expect to hear about it again. If things had gone smoothly, I probably wouldn’t have.
We’re hearing a ton of reports that the over-the-air update is breaking things, primarily surrounding text messaging. Whenever people hop into their inbox or try to view new messages, their handset resets itself on the spot.
I’ve been indirectly involved with a carrier software update in the past, and the fact that a bug like this slipped through the cracks is pretty mind-blowing. All of the carriers are generally insane about their certification process, often keeping things in testing for weeks on end. Something like this is bound to be taken pretty seriously.
We’ve reached out to VZW for a comment on the matter – hopefully a patch is already in the works.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 BBC News | Intel 48-Core "Single-Chip Cloud Computer" Improves Power Efficiency PC World Intel unveiled an experimental CPU (central processing unit) cramming 48 processing cores into a single, stamp-sized piece of silicon. There are obvious implications in terms processing capabilities taking a quantum leap from what we ... 2010 Laptop Roadmaps for AMD and Intel Intel Shows 48-Core Processor for Research Intel Demos 48-Core CPU |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Audio, Headphones
Billed as music-infused headwear for those who hate wires, the i360 headbands and beanies provide wireless listening enjoyment. Could this be a Bluetooth A2DP solution we’ve all been waiting for? Anyone who has exercised around swinging headphone wires knows we need a better solution.
Instead of Bluetooth, i360 chose to go another route: it stores the iPod up in the headwear. Clearly this concept would work best with a smaller iPod Shuffle vs the longer Nano, but that doesn’t stop this company from going after both. Most products are offered in two versions, to support all generations of the Nano.
The company produces headbands, beanies and even hat beanies with pockets for the Nano and Shuffle at prices starting at $39.99. Controls are left exposed so you can pause, forward and rewind your tunes. In the video below, the brainchild explains that you can even play a music video on the screen showing people how bold you are.
Company site: [i360]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
![Screen shot 2009-12-03 at [ December 3 ] 12.28.30 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Screen-shot-2009-12-03-at-December-3-12.28.30-PM.png "Screen shot 2009-12-03 at [ December 3 ] 12.28.30 PM")
Way back in early October, we broke the story that an LG Lotus 2 was in the works. At the time, more than a few people didn’t seem to believe that a followup to the original Sprint Lotus would rock a touchscreen on the face. This morning, pics of the device have surfaced, and whaddya know – its got a touch screen.
Our sources still pin this one on a launch sometime in January, so if the idea of an LG Lotus decked out with a touchscreen and support for 32GB microSD cards gets you all hot around the collar, you don’t have too much longer to wait.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Mobile
The thought of being tracked is in the minds of many, personally it has crossed my mind more than I would care to admit. Now with always connected, and always tracking devices that possibility is becoming more and more commonplace. But aside from speaking of my paranoia, there may be reason to worry, or at least give a second thought—at least for those using Sprint.
It seems that Sprint has handed over the GPS location data more than 8 million times in the past 13 months. Now, to make that number seem a little worse, if we went ahead and broke that down into how any requests that meant per day I am sure many would have a sick feeling in their stomach. Of course, I would like to imagine that the requesting officials had a good reason to suspect you of having done something wrong.
Interestingly enough, due to the demand for these requests Sprint has gone and actually created a special web interface to make the process of giving up the data easier. Now, while we see the 8 million number, it is not clear how many actual customers were affected, and more worrysome was whether or not any warrants were needed to get this information.
Of course, in all fairness I should point out that while this is referring to Sprint, I would imagine that the other three major US carriers (as well as smaller ones) have done similar things when asked by law enforcement officials.
I guess the bottom line is that if you are not doing anything wrong then you should not have anything to worry about, but still it makes me feel a little uneasy.
Read [slight paranoia] Via [Engadget]
Sprint: 50 million customers, 8 million law enforcement GPS requests in 1 year from Christopher Soghoian on Vimeo.
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Though its had an application store of its own for many months now, Palm’s webOS has really yet to flourish as a development platform. As it currently stands, webOS’ App Catalog only offers up around 400 applications. This stunted growth is largely because Palm still considers the App Catalog “beta” – thus, they’re being rather selective with what gets in. Once the beta tag is pulled away, however, Palm expects a barrage of applications to hit their store.
While plenty of these new apps are sure to be free, their developers still need to put food on the table. Looking to capture these developers before the floodgates open, AdMob is today announcing beta support for the webOS platform.
They offer one ad unit at the moment, which can be placed inside of a webOS app to push CPC text ads or CPM banner ads. To comply with Palm’s app distribution strategy (which allows app developers to make apps for webOS without paying the $99 developer’s fee, be it that their application is completely open-source), AdMob has made their webOS SDK entirely open source.
You can check out the new SDK over at AdMob’s Google Code page.
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
Remember that leaked Android 2.1 ROM for the GSM HTC Hero from a few days ago? Looks like there was more to it than meets the eye. Tucked deep inside the ROM was a list of around 20 Android-based handset codenames, nearly all of which have never been seen.
The goods, as uncovered by maxisma over at AndroidSpin:
Some of these are handsets we’ve already seen hit the shelves (Dream = G1, Sapphire= Magic, Hero, etc) while others are codenames that were previously rumored (Passion, Dragon). Most, however, are brand new to the rumor mill. Might HTC really be working on 15+ new Android handsets? We can only dream.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Every few months Apple brags about the number of iPhone apps accumulated in its App Store (most recently the count was 100,000), and most of the tech press has been hasty to deflate the hype.
But what if quantity really is what counts?
Numerous observers argue that 100,000 apps isn’t that significant. That’s because a lot of those apps are garbage, ranging from fart apps to really lame games. And the apps that make the iPhone stand out, the ones with stellar quality, are few and far between. The popular Twitter app Tweetie is often hailed as a prime example for a piece of software coded with beautiful design and rich features.
These points are valid, and I don’t disagree that quality is extremely important. But in the short term, quantity is just as big a deal; in fact, I think it matters even more.
The more apps the App Store accumulates, the higher the chance the App Store has to appeal to each of the 40 million iPhone and iPod Touch owners out there.
We can ignore a horde of lousy iPhone apps, but there are also many low-profile apps that average consumers wouldn’t pay attention to or care to use. And their developers aren’t targeting consumers, either. I’m talking about niche apps catering to specific professions, hobbies and interests — those apps that slip past the average consumer’s radar. Some examples include iChart, an app for doctors to view and store patients’ medical charts; Rev, an app for mechanics to perform car-engine diagnostics; and BulletFlight, an app for military snipers to calculate ballistics. Niche apps are what make the iPhone special and, in my opinion, still the best general-purpose device.
“How many applications do you really need?” asked my colleague Philip Elmer De-Witt in an October column for Fortune. That was when the App Store had hit 93,000 apps, and the Android Market, which has the second biggest app store, had reached 11,000. (The Android Market has since climbed to about 19,000 apps.)
That’s a good question. I own about 45 apps. I’ll name a few niche apps I like: MuniApp lets me quickly look up the San Francisco bus schedules. Instapaper saves entire web articles to read offline later. Epiphany easily records in-person interviews with sources and MacTracker double-checks Apple product information. Of course, I have some megapopular apps, too, like Facebook, Tweetie and Amazon, and I own about 12 games.
See what I’m getting at? Personally I don’t need 100,000 apps (and nobody does), but my collection consists of pieces of software tailored for my life as a San Franciscan and tech journalist for Wired.com (and part-time human being with a sliver of a social life). That’s a pretty specific career, and the more apps in the App Store, the higher the chance for the iPhone to become closer to the only gadget I need.
In fact, a number of my downloaded apps are less than stellar. They leave a lot to be desired, but they enable me to perform tasks that other smartphones would not. But I would still rather have a mediocre app that gives me the ability to do something than not have the app at all.
One device that does it all — that’s the dream of the perfect gadget, isn’t it?
Inevitably, I found myself comparing my iPhone with my friend’s brandnew Droid. He didn’t even have enough apps to fit his primary screen — so few that I can remember most of them. Some of his apps were Amazon, Facebook, a Texas Hold ‘Em poker game and Sky Maps for viewing constellations. He isn’t the extremely geeky type, so I doubt even if he had an iPhone he would have more than 25 apps. But he loves games, and he complained that there weren’t many compelling titles available for the Droid.
Is upward of 19,000 apps for Android enough for customers? It wasn’t for my Droid-owning friend, because among those 19,000 apps, not many suited his interests. And he’s not alone.
The quantity of Apple’s App Store is significant not only for Apple’s audience — which includes upward of 40 million iPhone and iPod Touch owners. It’s also a direct reflection of the segment software developers are most interested in. From a developer perspective, it’s been economically advantageous to program for the iPhone, despite Apple’s questionable and inconsistent app-approval policy. There’s an element of risk with either route, but think of it like a game of BlackJack. Developers are essentially placing a stiff bet in a single circle when coding an app for Apple, as opposed to spreading smaller bets over multiple circles for other fragmented platforms such as Windows Mobile or Android.
(Of course, developers of niche applications wouldn’t be coding for the iPhone if they weren’t making decent money. This is where the long-tail principle comes into play: They can charge more for apps that are obviously going to sell less. The aforementioned car-engine diagnostics app Rev, for example, costs $40. When I spoke to Rev, the developer declined to disclose sales numbers but stressed that it was not aiming to sell a huge number of copies — because it could still make good money by selling Rev to a special audience of car enthusiasts and mechanics.)
Also significant about the number of apps is it suggests the App Store has reached a point of market saturation — enough apps to fill almost every need, which forces developers to compete more in terms of quality, said Phillip Ryu, a partner owner of Tap Tap Tap, which developed the popular iPhone app Voices.
“100,000 apps means the market is extremely competitive, and consumer needs have essentially been saturated,” Ryu said. “So what we have left to compete on is quality and value. On Android I imagine those are secondary concerns, after being first to market.”
The App Store opened July 2008 with 500 apps. Now, Apple claims it reviews 8,500 apps a week. Android opened with about 100 apps, and to date there are about 19,000 apps in the Android Market. That’s some healthy growth in the Android Market, and at some point its store could become as compelling as the App Store. It just needs more time to grow and mature the way the App Store has.
For now, quantity is helping the App Store win, and in effect it’s driving higher quality. One hundred thousand is a huge number, and it’s truly a big deal.
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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
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Considering that it’s still one of the App Store’s top grossing apps of all time, I Am T-Pain is pretty great. With that said, it’s not exactly something you’d want to pull out at your family Christmas party. Believe it or not, Grandma probably wont be impressed with the on-the-fly Auto-Tuning technology be it that you’re singing songs about strippers.
Making things a bit more family friendly while adding a bit of holiday cheer, Smule has just snuck a handful of festively themed tunes into the app’s catalog of songs.
The new songs are completely free, but Smule’s being pretty smart in the way that they’re listing them; rather than bunching them all up together, they’ve interspersed them amongst their premium songs. While the free songs are easily distinguished from the for-pay songs, it’s a pretty clever way of getting people to scan through everything Smule has to offer.
If nothing else, it’s great news for the lazy-but-still-festive. Door-to-door caroling is a pain; now you can just record it on your iPhone and, as an added bonus, you’ll sound like a totally awesome robot.
The new holiday tunes:
You can find I am T-Pain in the app store here.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Its hard to think of Gmail as anything other than an email service, but for a limited time this holiday season they are going to be in the business of mailing out postcards, by way of snail mail.
The holiday post card offer is going to be around for a limited time, and for a limited amount of people so if you want to send one you better not wait to long. As far as what you can choose from, they have a variety of six different designs, all of which can be personalized with a 255 character message. And yes, Google is even paying the postage, but that also means they are limiting your holiday post card sending experience to one per person.
I guess this is just about as close to a way to send some holiday cheer to that one person in your life that is not using email yet.
Send a Postcard [Happy Holidays from Gmail] Via [Official Google Blog]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Symbian, as it currently exists, is tired. It’s not that it’s not functional, mind you – it’s just that the UI is such a hot mess that said functionality seems hidden. The next version of Symbian was shown of at Nokia’ Capital Market Day, and it looks like they may well be on the right track towards cleaning it up.
Key points from the presentation:
[Via EngadgetMobile]
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The crocodile keyboard is coming to an Android phone near you on December 7! Instead of refreshing MobileCrunch every five minutes, on Monday you can instead refresh android.com every five minutes until the app is released! That’s the Christmas spirit!
David Baker at Crocodile Keyboards has been working with Brighton University to make this app a reality. It’s been in the works for some time, so it’s nice to see that it’s coming to fruition. Hopefully this will improve everyone’s experiences with on-screen keyboards!
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Section: Gadgets / Other
Personally I have always loved the idea of getting gift cards, mainly because I am nearly impossible to shop for. That said, I often like to give a gift card, mainly because I am a terrible shopper. Still, I understand that gift cards are generally a boring gift for many to receive.
But it seems that Target has decided to change that up a little bit with their new Remote Control Gift Card. According to the description, it is a “gift card and a remote-control toy all in one.” Basically what you get is a remote control with a few buttons that controls a little mouse in a shopping card.
Finally, these gift cards can be purchased with a value ranging from anywhere as low as $25 up to $1,000 and are available both in-store and online.
Product [Target] Via [OhGizmo!]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
The Gino Light Mount is $20 and 30 grams worth of ingenious minimalism. All it does is add a handlebar-diameter tube to your bike, anywhere that you have a 5mm braze-on thread. The mount itself is made from aluminum by Paul Component Engineering, and comes with an allen-bolt like the ones you’d use to attach a bottle cage.
But why would you want it? The main selling point is it means you can get your lights down low so they’re throw long, easy-to-spot shadows from any bumps and pits in the road ahead - this is for the cyclist to see his way safely on dark streets, and clearly not to make you visible to other road users: for that you’ll need a regular helmet or bar-mounted lamp. This is particularly handy in the city where you want to use removable lights for security: Try finding a clip-on lamp which will fit the narrow tube of a fork and you’ll see why the Gino exists.
And that’s it, a specific device for a single problem. In fact, Paul’s store is full of handy little bike tchotchkes, most of them damned handy, and many of them beautiful. Check it out. I have my eye on one of these lovely Flatbed racks.
Gino Light Mount [Paul Comp via EcoVelo]
Photo: Gino/Flickr Creative Commons
Until somebody builds USB sockets into standard power-outlets, we’re stuck stringing endless cables and hubs from our poor computer’s USB ports. And have you ever noticed just how long it takes to charge your laptop’s battery when you have a full complement of gizmos hooked up?
The 3 Port USB Hub with Line-In Dock connector for iPhone/iPod won’t help with the juice-drain, but it will keep the number of cables that festoon your desk to a minimum. The cable snakes into the three-port hub and reappears at the other end, terminating itself in an iPod dock-connector. As the rather long-winded name implies, the cable will both charge the iPod and allow data syncing.
At $15, it comes in at roughly the same price as other USB hubs, but thankfully also means you’ll need One Less Cable.
Product page [USB Fever via the Giz]
440 hours and innumerable cups of coffee went into this astonishingly faithful rendering of The Matrix in stop-motion Lego, made to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the original movie. And we mean faithful: Trinity Help (named for the scene depicted) is a “frame-accurate” remake, which means that animators Trevor Boyd and Steve Ilett “took all of the video frames from that part of the movie (that’s nearly 900 frames for just 44 seconds of footage) and reproduced them all in Lego.”
To put the amount of work into perspective, if Trevor and Steve wanted to make the whole movie in Lego (and allow time to eat and sleep) the project would stretch to 25 years.
The guys have documented the “making of” in just as much detail. The painstaking attention is quite ridiculous: the pair scoured the plumbing section of the hardware store for parts to build their OCR (Orbital Camera Rig), a piece of kit which allowed them to track the camera in any direction for the bullet-time effects. The camera itself was a Canon Ixus 850IS, with nothing done to the output but adding a custom white balance.
In fact, given the CGI-heavy production of the original, Trinity Help is ironically VFX-free. The effects were done solely in-camera, with not even wire-removal in Photoshop — Blu-Tack actually seems to be the most important tool here.
You should really head over to the site to read the full, scene-by-scene making-of notes. I have lost way too much time to it already today. There are some hacking gems in there, too. For instance, the bullet trails are made from sequins and flower-arranging wire. When Trevor bought them from the florist, two old ladies asked him what he was making:
“I am doing a stop motion Lego animation of a scene from The Matrix and I will be using the foam to hold wire bullet trails in place.”
“Oh, you’ll want dry then.”
I guess they have done it all before!
Amazing work, and the takeaway from the website is that this took a lot of work, but was also a helluva lot of fun.
Making of LegoMatrix [LegoMatrix]
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Void’s VO2 is a watch that looks much like a cross between an iMac and an old-fashioned car dashboard. And like any watch in this day of ubiquitous cellphone clocks, it is almost impossible to tell the time on it.
I used to own a Void. It was a space-age bracelet with enough strobing, pulsing LCDs and chip-tunes to fill an illegal Berlin drinking-den. I loved it, and I never, ever, knew what the time was.
The VO2 has a slab-like steel case into which is cut the mystery-slot. Long and short hands correspond with hours and minutes, as you would expect. But when the clockwise-moving hands reach the end of the display, the other end of that same hand slides in from the other side. If the first hand is white, the “second” hand will be red. To read the time, you need to decode the colors as well as the numbers and positions. Is your brain hurting yet?
Watch design, at this level at least, seems to be running counter (sorry) to interface design in general. While everyone except Motorola moves to make devices easier to read and use, watch displays become ever more beautifully convoluted. $200.
VOID VO2 Watch New Release [Watchismo Times]
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The FlipShare TV is a new set-top box from the Flip video folks, and it looks like nothing as much as a smoke alarm. The little box hooks up to your TV (HDMI or composite) and receives video wirelessly from a nearby computer via a proprietary USB dongle (using a tweaked version of 802.11n). A small remote control lets you, well, control things from the comfort of your sofa. It costs $150.
$150 for plug-and-play wireless video connection sounds pretty good to me (or it would, if my TV screen wasn’t smaller than my laptop screen), but there’s a catch (you saw that coming, right?). First, you’ll need to be running Flip’s own FlipShare software, an you will be limited to the formats that you can play, just like the Apple TV. You can stream standard-def video in AVI and MPEG-4 format, and HS (1280×720) in MPEG-4. Any other formats (including some actually created by the software), will need to be converted.
There are some other features, like the ability to share your clips on a kind of private YouTube for Flip owners, allowing grandparents to watch videos of the grandkids, for example, but it seems like an afterthought.
These various “solutions” (Apple TV, FlipShare TV and the Slingbox) are all temporary fixes. Soon enough, our TVs will be computers, and this stupid differentiation between types of screen will be dead. Until then, I’ll stick to watching my RSS triggered BitTorrent TV shows on my MacBook. In bed.
FlipShareTV [Flip. Thanks! Jamie!]
Pure Digital FlipShare TV Review [Wired.com]
As an Englishman, I know all about the benefits of the hip-flask, its amber contents able to sooth away the blues of the grayest morning and warm the bones enough to make it through a typical English day at the beach. But I am shocked by the cheek of online store Restoration Hardware, which is hawking sets of three disposable flasks for an astonishing $15, enough to buy a couple real bottles of cheap liquor.
These plasticized foil pouches have been around for years, housing everything from fruit purees for bartenders, to high-end, boutique ketchups. This is the first time we’ve seen them sold empty, though. Each sachet holds 7.5 oz (212 grams) of liquid, and the airtight lids screw down to keep the whisky in the jar. Apart from being much wobblier to use than my standard-issue (in England, we are given a flask on our first day of school) pewter bottle, they forego any stealth value they might have had by sticking the words “#1 Original Disposable Flask” on the side. Classy.
Apart from the price (and the decoration), I like these liquor-sacks. When you’re done, they fold flat, and their flexible form means that they could be easily secreted in the crotchal region to defeat all but the most enthusiastic of friskings. A win for secret alcoholics everywhere.
Sneak-It-In Disposable Flasks [Restoration Hardware]
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