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Music While Programming?BubbaDoom writes "In our cubicle-ville, we have programmers intermixed with accounting, customer support and marketing. As programmers, it is our habit to put on our headphones and listen to our portable music players to drown out all of the noise from everyone else. The boss recently sent an email just to the programmers demanding that we do not use our music players at work because he thinks it distracts us from our jobs and causes us to make mistakes. Of course, we've explained to him that prattle from the other people is much, much more distracting, but he insists his policy is the right one. What is the Slashdot community's experience with music at work for programmers?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 12 Dec 2009 | 3:09 am Real scientists should care more about fraud - Calgary Herald
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 12 Dec 2009 | 2:30 am Europe's Seed Investors Huddle-up At The First SeedSummitYesterday some of Europe's most influential and active seed/angel investors got together in London for a 'summit' organised by Seedcamp, the pan European early stage startup programme. We understand the...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 Dec 2009 | 1:45 am Europe’s Seed Investors Huddle-up At The First SeedSummit
Held at the offices of NESTA in London, the event was outlined by Seedcamp’s Saul Klein on his blog. Attendees included around 60 people, including high profile investors like Jeff Clavier, Martin Varsavsky, Brent Hoberman, Lukasz Gadowski, Stefan Glaenzer, Dave McClure, Andy Philips, William Reeve, Robin Klein, Jyri Engestrom and Sherry Coutu. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Source: TechCrunch | 12 Dec 2009 | 1:45 am The Rise and Rise of Muni Bond ETFsIn looking at ten-year data on the holders of municipal bonds in the U.S. an asset that has almost doubled in the period there are some striking trends. To make them more obvious, I have indexed things...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 Dec 2009 | 1:39 am Dazzling meteor shower peaks Monday morning - Napa Valley Register
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 12 Dec 2009 | 1:03 am RIAA, MPAA and US Chamber of Commerce declare war on blind and disabled peopleEarlier this week, I told you about an open letter for writers in support of a treaty that would ensure that blind and disabled people all over the world would have legal protection when they converted...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 Dec 2009 | 12:51 am RIAA, MPAA and US Chamber of Commerce declare war on blind and disabled peopleEarlier this week, I told you about an open letter for writers in support of a treaty that would ensure that blind and disabled people all over the world would have legal protection when they converted books and other written matter to accessible format.You'd think this would be a slam-dunk at the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization. Who could oppose non-profit blind/disabled groups helping disabled people get access to written work? Well, The US Chamber of Commerce, the MPAA and the RIAA, that's who. All three organizations have urged the US trade delegation to oppose the treaty, because they fear it might set a precedent that users have rights to copyrighted works. Copyright Owners Fight Plan to Release E-Books for the Blind Update: My wife reminds me of the accessibility research that says that 70% percent of us will experience vision disability in our lifetime. So even if you're not blind or disabled, this probably directly affects you, too. (Thanks, Freddie!)
Previously:
 Source: Boing Boing | 12 Dec 2009 | 12:51 am Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US borderMy friend, the wonderful sf writer Peter Watts was beaten without provocation and arrested by US border guards on Tuesday. I heard about it early Wednesday morning in London and called Cindy Cohn, the...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 Dec 2009 | 12:45 am Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US border
My friend, the wonderful sf writer Peter Watts was beaten without provocation and arrested by US border guards on Tuesday. I heard about it early Wednesday morning in London and called Cindy Cohn, the legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She worked her contacts to get in touch with civil rights lawyers in Michigan, and we mobilized with Caitlin Sweet (Peter's partner) and David Nickle (Peter's friend) and Peter was arraigned and bailed out later that day.
But now Peter faces a felony rap for "assaulting a federal officer" (Peter and the witness in the car say he didn't do a thing, and I believe them). Defending this charge will cost a fortune, and an inadequate defense could cost Peter his home, his livelihood and his liberty. Peter's friends are raising money for his legal defense. I just sent him CAD$1,000, because this is absolutely my biggest nightmare: imprisoned in a foreign country for a trumped-up offense against untouchable border cops. I would want my friends to help me out if it ever happened to me. Update: Here's more from Peter, in his own words: "Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario's first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night. "In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face."
Sf writer David Nickle writes,
Update: David Nickle adds, "there's a very small correction I need to make to the account that's gone, erm, viral. I had thought that Peter had made his way back on foot; in fact, police released him in shirtsleeves at the Canadian side of the border. It was a winter storm, he was in shirtsleeves, but he didn't have to cross the bridge on foot. I'd misunderstood Peter's account on that point. " Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 12 Dec 2009 | 12:45 am ZOMG The Google Phone Is “Like An iPhone On Beautifying Steroids” We told you the Google phone was confirmed. And now some Googler's seem to be confirming it, too. There is a lot of chatter on Twitter about Google employees with HTC-built unlocked Google Phones running Android 2.1. And the devices look to be coming out in January.
We noticed a Twitter message from a Google Program Manager, who writes "Stuck in mass of traffic leaving work post last all hands of 2009. ZOMG we had fireworks and we all got the new Google phone. It's beautiful."
Another guy, Jason Howell, says he had his hands on the device, which he says is made by HTC and is running Android 2.1: "The new Google Phone runs on HTC hardware. I saw it w/ Android 2.1. Homescreen has new visual enhancements like animated desktop wallpaper."
"Supposedly, Google employees were given tons of these phones today. unlocked," he adds.
Source: CrunchGear | 12 Dec 2009 | 12:43 am ZOMG The Google Phone Is “Like An iPhone On Beautifying Steroids”
We told you the Google phone was confirmed. And now some Googler's seem to be confirming it, too. There is a lot of chatter on Twitter about Google employees with HTC-built unlocked Google Phones running Android 2.1. And the devices look to be coming out in January.
We noticed a Twitter message from Google Program Manager Leslie Hawthorn, who writes "Stuck in mass of traffic leaving work post last all hands of 2009. ZOMG we had fireworks and we all got the new Google phone. It's beautiful."
Another guy, Jason Howell, says he had his hands on the device, which he says is made by HTC and is running Android 2.1: "The new Google Phone runs on HTC hardware. I saw it w/ Android 2.1. Homescreen has new visual enhancements like animated desktop wallpaper."
"Supposedly, Google employees were given tons of these phones today. unlocked," he adds.
Source: MobileCrunch | 12 Dec 2009 | 12:26 am ZOMG The Google Phone Is “Like An iPhone On Beautifying Steroids”
We noticed a Twitter message from a Google Program Manager, who writes “Stuck in mass of traffic leaving work post last all hands of 2009. ZOMG we had fireworks and we all got the new Google phone. It’s beautiful.” Another guy, Jason Howell, says he had his hands on the device, which he says is made by HTC and is running Android 2.1: “The new Google Phone runs on HTC hardware. I saw it w/ Android 2.1. Homescreen has new visual enhancements like animated desktop wallpaper.” “Supposedly, Google employees were given tons of these phones today. unlocked,” he adds. And one last one: “A friend from Google showed me the new Android 2.1 phone from HTC coming out in Jan. A sexy beast. Like an iPhone on beautifying steroids.” It looks to us like Google may have handed out a lot of the new Google Phone devices today to employees, and naturally they’re showing it to friends.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Source: TechCrunch | 12 Dec 2009 | 12:06 am ZOMG The Google Phone Is "Like An iPhone On Beautifying Steroids"We told you the Google phone was confirmed. And now some Googler's seem to be confirming it, too. There is a lot of chatter on Twitter about Google employees with HTC-built unlocked Google Phones running...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 Dec 2009 | 12:06 am Mars Express Captures Phobos and Deimoswesttxfun writes "The Mars Express Orbiter captured a very cool movie of Phobos and Deimos on Nov 5. Besides the 'wow factor,' the images will be used to refine models of the moons' orbits. The orbiter has also captured high resolution images of Phobos back in July. 'The images were acquired with the Super Resolution Channel (SRC) of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The camera took 130 images of the moons on 5 November at 9:14 CET in a span of 1.5 minutes at intervals of 1s, speeding up to 0.5-s intervals toward the end. The image resolution is 110 m/pixel for Phobos and 240 m/pixel for Deimos — Deimos was more than twice as far from the camera. '"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 11 Dec 2009 | 11:40 pm Tiger Woods Won’t Win 19 Majors -- Nicklaus’s Record is SafeSo, Tiger Woods is going to take an "indefinite" amount of time off from golf. Assuming that sooner rather than later (versus never, which seems unlikely) Woods comes back to the sport he has dominated...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2009 | 11:29 pm Apple Sues Nokia, Claims Infringement - BusinessWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 11 Dec 2009 | 11:22 pm Anti-Olympic mural censored in VancouverGreg sez, "Yesterday the Crying Room Gallery got a visit from City of Vancouver bylaw inspectors who demanded that they remove "graffiti" from the front of their gallery. The graffiti in question was...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2009 | 11:20 pm Anti-Olympic mural censored in Vancouver
Greg sez, "Yesterday the Crying Room Gallery got a visit from City of Vancouver bylaw inspectors who demanded that they remove "graffiti" from the front of their gallery. The graffiti in question was an anti-Olympic mural by a local artist.
The City says it had 'nothing to do with content' and everything to do with graffiti bylaws, but the Crying Room has had art up in that space for the better part of ten years without complaint.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has come out against the City's crackdown.
The BCCLA Legal Observer Program, set up to monitor for rights violations during the Games, has started a gallery of Olympic censorship in Vancouver."
Vancouver orders removal of anti-Olympic mural
(Thanks, Greg!)
(Image: Globe and Mail)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2009 | 11:20 pm Elevator mural casts you as Adam on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling
Scanned from an unknown source, a mural near the elevator in a plastic surgeon's office that casts the rider in the role of Adam on the Sistine Chapel.
Advertising / Be Born Again (via Geisha Asobi)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2009 | 11:14 pm Elevator mural casts you as Adam on the Sistine Chapel's ceilingScanned from an unknown source, a mural near the elevator in a plastic surgeon's office that casts the rider in the role of Adam on the Sistine Chapel. Advertising / Be Born Again (via Geisha Asobi)...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2009 | 11:14 pm Homebrew, $300 book-scannerWired has a great feature on grad student Daniel Reetz $300 homebrew book-scanner (David linked to the Instructable for it in April). The device uses a couple of digital cameras, some acrylic and some wood to scan a 400 page book in 20 minutes, converting the scans to text with free software.DIY Book Scanners Turn Your Books Into Bytes
Previously:
Source: Gizmodo | 11 Dec 2009 | 11:00 pm Facebook Backs Off as Founder's Pictures Go Public
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 BBC News (blog) | 3 Facebook Privacy Mistakes ChannelWeb No organization is exempt from screwing up, but lately that holds especially true for Facebook. While perhaps well intentioned, Facebook has committed a series of blunders with recent changes to its privacy settings in ... Facebook Changes Privacy Settings Yet Again Facebook backs off in privacy spat Facebook Adjusts Friends List Settings |
 Reuters | Nov. 'biggest month in Xbox 360 history' - Microsoft GameSpot Despite dip in console sales, Aaron Greenberg says Xbox 360 hardware, software, and accessories sales were a record $838 million--thanks largely to Modern Warfare 2. Yesterday, the NPD Group reported that US game sales sank ... Sales of XBox 360 break sales record in November NPD Top 20 Reveals Nintendo Titles, God Of War Remakes Video games sales drop, but still strong |
AT&T Wireless customers in San Francisco are in a froth after the network’s wireless data services went offline Friday afternoon.
Reports started appearing on Twitter with the hashtag #attfail starting around 2pm Pacific time. Customers reported having voice service and several bars of signal strength, but no internet connectivity.
Wired tests confirmed that AT&T’s internet service was out from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., and continues to be offline as of this writing. Attempts to use internet services were met with the error message, “Could not activate cellular data network.”
Visual voicemail also appeared to be unavailable, but SMS text messaging was working normally as of 5pm Pacific.
AT&T has suffered numerous intermittent connectivity problems thanks in large part to the popularity of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. The combination of unlimited internet plus a web-friendly phone means that people with iPhones use them for internet browsing far more than users of other smartphones do, studies have shown (and Wired.com’s traffic logs confirm). Also, some applications, such as the live video streaming built into the Major League Baseball app, use large amounts of data bandwidth. These problems have led AT&T to add capacity; the company has also recently floated the idea of providing “incentives” to limit the heaviest users.
“We are seeing a hardware issue in downtown San Francisco that is causing some degradation in service. GSM and Edge voice and data services are still accessible. Our experts are aware and working to resolve it as quickly as possible,” said Fletcher Cook, a spokesperson for AT&T.
Cook wouldn’t comment on when AT&T first noticed the problem, or when it would be fixed. “Our priority is to resolve it as quickly as possible, and then we will focus on what happened.”
See Also:
I’m not saying this isn’t awesome. I’m just saying are you kidding me?
[via Neatorama]
FROM APPLETELL - Apple announced today they’re countersuing Nokia for infringing upon 13 Apple patents. Fight fire with fire, I suppose.
MORE »
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
The Tumblr staff has done an interesting little breakdown of the metadata on Tumblr blog photos. I'm sure you guys have seen Flickr's equally-interesting Camera Finder page, which is used as a sort of talking point by Apple fans due to the iPhone dominance; this was a similar examination, though with seriously different results. Tumblr's analysis also takes a look at the lenses being used by the Canon users, a metric more interesting to gearheads than tech buffs.
This kind of information is a dream come true for people who like to transmute raw data into conclusions. They call themselves analysts, but it's more alchemical than analytical, isn't it? At any rate, the data are interesting to anyone interested in photography or blogging, so take a look.
Posted by a French blog, the video above purporting to leak Apple’s touchscreen tablet is obviously a fake, but it’s fun to watch anyway. Check it out yourself and tell us if you can spot the stuff giving away its phoniness.
NoWhereElse.Fr Via The eBook Test
See Also:
The Tumblr staff has done an interesting little breakdown of the metadata on Tumblr blog photos. I’m sure you guys have seen Flickr’s equally-interesting Camera Finder page, which is used as a sort of talking point by Apple fans due to the iPhone dominance; this was a similar examination, though with seriously different results. Tumblr’s analysis also takes a look at the lenses being used by the Canon users, a metric more interesting to gearheads than tech buffs.
This kind of information is a dream come true for people who like to transmute raw data into conclusions. They call themselves analysts, but it’s more alchemical than analytical, isn’t it? At any rate, the data are interesting to anyone interested in photography or blogging, so take a look.
If I had to draw conclusions from this, I would say that first of all, Apple really got their foot in the door with Photo Booth and iSight. Built-in webcams are still associated with Apple products although even the lowliest netbooks sport bezel-mounted cams of similar (that is to saw, low) quality. They’ve also done very well with the easy sharing of photos from your iPhone, which likely puts them on Flickr for most people but clearly has trickled down to Tumblr as well. I see Android overtaking them soon, however: once you have Android phones with simple picture-sharing apps being offered free with a contract and ~$50 monthly fee, there will be a lot more Android photos being pushed straight to web services. Apple should enjoy its time in the sun and not be discouraged if it loses its crown.
The other thing I notice is that the Canon users (Tumblr didn’t analyze Nikon or others) are overwhelmingly using the kit lens to take their photos. That’s understandable since most retail stores push that kit box instead of body-only, but the tactic is a one-time sell, apparently. These people aren’t going on to buy more lenses, because they don’t know what a good lens is. You sell them a garbage wide-angle zoom (the new IS version is supposed to be better, but still) and they think that’s all there is to it. Again, you can’t blame the users; not having shot an SLR before (as is the case with many consumer DSLR buyers), they don’t see the benefit of better glass — though they can see the cockamamie prices.
Now, I’m no glass fiend (though things might be different if I could afford it), but I think every DSLR user should get a chance to try a decent prime. The kit lens goes for around $100; the 50mm F/1.8 II is cheaper than that, and would be an excellent first lens. I traveled around the world with just that lens, and I think I’m a better photographer for it — plus I’ve invested in a few other lenses, having seen what this one is capable, and incapable, of doing. So Canon ought to offer two kits versions, one with that 18-55mm and one with a prime, 50mm or otherwise. It’ll drive glass and accessory sales and make a bunch of new photographers better.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For nearly two years, Daniel Reetz dreamed of a book scanner that could crunch textbooks and spit out digital files he could then read on his PC.
Book scanners, like the ones Google is using in its Google Books project, run into thousands of dollars, putting them out of the reach of a graduate student like Reetz. But in January, when textbook prices for the semester were listed, Reetz decided he would make a book scanner that would cost a fraction of commercially available products.
So over three days, and for about $300, he lashed together two lights, two Canon Powershot A590 cameras, a few pieces of acrylic and some chunks of wood to create a book scanner that’s fast enough to scan a 400-page book in about 20 minutes. To use it, he simply loads in a book and presses a button, then turns the page and presses the button again. Each press of the button captures two pages, and when he’s done, software on Reetz’s computer converts the book into a PDF file. The Reetz DIY book scanner isn’t automated–you still need to stand by it to turn the pages. But it’s fast and inexpensive.
“The hardware is ridiculously simple as long as you are not demanding archival quality,” he says. “A dumpster full of building materials, really cheap cameras and outrageous textbook prices was all I needed to do it.”
Reetz went on to upload a 79-step how-to guide for building a book scanner (.pdf). The guide has sparked more than 400 comments. It has also spawned a website, DIYbookscanner.org, where more than 50 independent book scanners spread across countries such as Indonesia, Russia and Britain have contributed hardware refinements and software programs.
Now wearing a large black coat and a carrying a duffel bag that’s stuffed with a scanner made from laser-cut plywood, Reetz goes to conferences to show how anyone can create a machine to scan all the books they own.
As consumers turn to e-readers — about 3 million are expected to be sold by the end of the year — they are also looking for ways to bring their old textbooks and paperbacks into the digital world. And a small group is discovering that the best way to do that is to create a scanner yourself. The scanner is also helping digitize out-of-print books and help people with disabilities get features like text-to-speech that publishers won’t offer or are downright opposed to.
A DIY book scanner also raises questions of piracy and copyright. The basic question being: Do you really own a book in all its forms when you buy a book?
At the same time, ironically, the DIY book scanner is helping new create new tools to make copyright information more accessible. Tulane University is building a scanner based on Reetz’s design that would let it digitize its collection of copyright documents. That is expected to help the university develop a web-based service called ‘Durationator’ that would allow anyone to search copyright information about any particular book, to see if it is currently in the public domain or not.
“It’s amazing that a DIY book scanner is helping create the very tool that will offer copyright information,” says Reetz. “It makes me very proud.”
Scanners are commonplace — just walk into a Target, and you can find a scanner-printer combo for $100– but those machines are designed to digitize photos and documents.
A flatbed scanner can take between 15 and 30 seconds to capture a single page, so a 400-page book could take about an hour-and-a-half to three hours of work. Not to mention that the design of the scanners means that you have to open the book binding wide and press it flat, which can damage the book.
Instead, book scanners are designed to hold the book open at a 90-degree angle. A cradle holds the book face up so that it is gentle on the binding. This kind of scanner is also faster, because it can capture images of two pages simultaneously, using a camera instead of a scanning element. But commercial book scanners that are completely automated cost anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000. The $50,000 Kirtas book scanner, for instance, can capture 3,000 pages an hour.
Reetz’s scanner cuts that cost to a bare minimum: All you need are two basic digital cameras and some readily available construction materials. All the software and post-processing programs are open source and available for free.
But creating the system required a few hacks and a dash of ingenuity. Inexpensive digital cameras are ideal, but they have limitations. For starters, you need to hold down a button to click a picture. And the two cameras in a book scanner need to be synchronized.
Reetz found a program called Stereodatamaker for Canon cameras that could synchronize multiple cameras and flash. All users have to do it is download it to a SD card and insert it into their camera.
“Sure, the cameras are running hacked firmware, but it works pretty well,” he says.”Then we take it to a whole new level for processing the images.”
Daniel Reetz shows his DIY book scanner.
That would be with some help from Scan Tailor, an open source application written by 29-year old Russian programmer Joseph Artsimovich. Scan Tailor can take the raw, scanned images of the book and split the pages, add or remove borders and process all of the images into a single file.
“You absolutely need post-processing software for digitizing books,” says Artsimovich. “If you try
to digitize a book without such software, chances are you will give up because it’s just too much work.”
From there, a program called Page Builder — written by a friend of Reetz — can take the images and process them into a PDF file.
Reetz says the DIY book-scanning forum isn’t about distributing pirated content, but he can see the temptation.
“My project was founded in angry desperation,” he says. “It was a watershed moment for me when I realized getting an 8-megapixel Canon camera was cheaper than buying a bunch of textbooks.”
So are Reetz and the builders of the DIY scanner pirates? That would depend on who you talk to, says Pamela Samuelson, a professor at University of California at Berkeley, who specializes in digital-copyright law. Trade publishers are almost certain to cry copyright infringement, she says, though it may not necessarily be the case.
Google was recently forced to pay $125 million to settle with angry book publishers and authors who claimed copyright infringement as a result of the search giant’s book-scanning project.
But not so individual users who already own the book, says Samuelson. If you scan a book that you have already purchased, it is “fine, and fair use,” she says. “Personal-use copying should be deemed to be fair, unless there is a demonstrable showing of harm to the market for the copyright at work,” says Samuelson.
For publishers, though, the growth of the DIY scanning community could hurt. Publishers today sell digital versions to customers who already own hardcover or paperback versions of the same book.
“You cannot look at this idea from the perspective of whether the publisher can make extra money,” says Samuelson. “Publishers would love it if you can’t resell books either, but that’s not going to happen.”
Instead, communities such as these are likely to force publishers to offer more value to customers, she says.
“There have to be things that you get with an e-book that you don’t get by making your own copies,” says Samuelson. “It’s not such as stark challenge for copyright owners, because not many people are going to take the trouble to make their own scanner system. Most of us want the convenience of buying digital books for the Kindle, Nook or Sony Reader.”
And unless, it becomes a hotbed of pirated content, the DIY scanner is unlikely to have a Napster-like end, says Samuelson.
Check out the video below of Daniel Reetz talking about why DIY scanner is fun.
DIY Book Scanner Introduction and Motivation from Daniel Reetz on Vimeo.
The DIY book scanner looks like this, from different angles.
Top Photo: DIY book scanner/Daniel Reetz
Second photo: Daniel Reetz shows his DIY book scanner. (sloanro/Flickr)
With the launch of iTunes 9, Apple revamped many of the areas of the iTunes online store so that they were rendered with WebKit, the open source web layout engine (which browsers like Safari and Chrome also use). Alongside this, the whole store was redesigned. But one area that remained untouched were the pages for individual apps in the App Store. Today, those are finally starting to be revamped as well.
While the new layout isn’t live for all apps yet, it is for plenty of them. As you can see below, the new pages look much nicer. Instead of being text-heavy by default, the new pages have much of the text area collapsed, and the emphasis is clearly on the images. Instead of just one app screenshot being shown, there are now 3. It’s just much, much nicer.
It will be interesting to see how this change affects the way app developers do their descriptions. Now that the emphasis is clearly on the first few sentences of the description, developers should be more concise in describing their apps, since that’s all that shown by default. If you click the “…More” link, the area will expand to show all the text, but again, that’s not the default look anymore.
[thanks Paolo]
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Section: Gadgets / Other, Household, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous
Thats right, according to a recent study, the economy is bouncing back in the retail world, according to the personal finance site, Mint. The study shows that sales post-Black friday have seen a significant rise compared to last year.
Electronics had the most significant rise with big name retailer Best Buy having a 18.3% year-over-year growth. Next is Fry’s with a growth of 12.2%. General stores such as Walmart had the next biggest growth in sales followed by clothing stores as seen by the above graph.
High end stores also saw a rise this year which is a nice change to the negative trend we observed last year.
It seems that the Santa is bringing more then just hula-hoops and bicycles this year. He’s also packaged a nice boost to our economy which we will cherish much longer than a bike we’ll outgrow by summer. Besides, everyone can benefit from an improved economy, but i can’t hula-hoop if my life depended on it…
Via [Gizmodo]
Full Story » | Written by Greg Billetdeaux for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
When the PS3 was first launched, Sony was losing about $200 for every console sold. As time has passed, Sony has worked out cheaper ways to manufacturer the console, but they are still losing money on every sale.
Now, with the release of the PS3 Slim, the amount lost has dipped down to an estimated $31.27 with each console sold. Not a huge amount, and definitely an improvement over the $200 they started at. Still a loss, sure, but assuming they sell a few games and accessories, it’s becoming a much more realistic loss leader.
[via Gizmodo]
By Scott Austin, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
“Ladies and gentlemen, in the red corner, out of Bellevue, Wash….You know this company for its coin counting, but it also operates more than 22,000 Redbox DVD rental machines across the nation. Here to defend its title in DVD dispensing, please welcome….Coinstar!
And in the blue corner, our challenger, hailing from the suburbs of Atlanta….A virtual unknown to consumers, you may have encountered one of its nearly 3,800 blue Blockbuster Express kiosks. This company grew up as National Cash Register, let’s here it for NCR!”
Okay, so this little rumble may not be as exciting as we’ve made it out to be. But after NCR (NCR) acquired 1,300 DVD machines through the acquisition of venture-backed start-up DVDPlay, it’s clear Coinstar (CSTR) and NCR will be slugging it out toe-to-toe for the right to rent DVDs for $1 a night in supermarkets and convenience stores.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Maker Media has just published a new book called Make: Electronics, by Charles Platt, and it's the best electronics primer I've ever come across (admittedly, I'm the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Charles' friend, but I really do think it's the best).
Here's what Gareth Branwyn (the book's editor) said about it:
I'm thrilled to announce our latest offering from O'Reilly/Make: Books, Make: Electronics, by Charles Platt. This is a book that we've wanted to do for awhile. Many of us at Maker Media have had an interaction that goes something like this: You're at a talk, Maker Faire, or elsewhere, and someone spirits you aside, like they're going to confess to a petty crime or some marital indiscretion. What they want to whisper sheepishly into your ear is that they love MAKE, all of the excitement they see over open source electronics, and the cool kits we sell in the Maker Shed, but they have NO IDEA how electronics work, and the "beginner" books and resources they look at online zoom quickly over their heads and frustrate their efforts to learn. Ultimately, they find themselves too embarrassed to admit their lack of high-tech smarts or to ask questions (which is why they've taken you behind a dumpster to confess their ignorance).So we decided to make it our mission to create a book that would patiently guide readers into the world of electronics in a way that was fun, clear-spoken, graphical, and experiential. Charles dubbed it "learning by discovery." He has you experimenting with parts right out of the gate, licking batteries (really), breaking and frying stuff, and then you learn what happened and why, the theories behind the parts and processes, and how to do the experiment correctly. For all of those would-be makers and wireheads who've been looking for a book that will finally let them in on all the fun, we made this one for you!
In 340+ pages, Make: Electronics takes you from the most basic aspects of electronic components and theory to essential techniques, such as soldering and using a multimeter, gathering basic tools and setting up a workshop, all the way up to working with integrated circuits, microcontrollers, and building sophisticated devices such as robots. The book is full-color, with hundreds of photos, illustrations, schematics, even fun cartoons. Charles Platt, being the true Renaissance man that he is, did all of this himself. So the book has something of a charming, handmade feel to it.
To give you an idea of what the book feels like, we've put together this 40-page PDF. It contains the cover, table of contents, two complete projects from the book, and the index.
The deluxe kit, shown above, has many of the tools you'll need to make the projects in the book.
Make: Electronics
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2009 | 5:15 pm
The Toshiba Dynario fuel cell was made official in late October and surely some people jumped on them right away. But this is the first teardown of the next-gen recharging device I’ve seen. Check it: mysterious electronic parts none of us understand. [Tech-on via SlashGear]
FROM GAMERTELL - Think games are not art? Plebeian. The Smithsonian American Art Museum obviously disagrees and is putting together a six-month exhibit for 2012…
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Today started out like any other, which is to say, the AT&T connection on my cellphone was somewhat working, depending on where I was positioned in my apartment. It sucks, but things like this are a fact of life that AT&T customers have grown accustomed to in cities like San Francisco and New York. But this afternoon I started getting an abnormal number of messages from friends over email, IM, and Twitter because they apparently couldn’t text or call me. I tried to use my phone, and sure enough, no dice.
Calls are working sporadically, but the AT&T data network in San Francisco seems to be completely borked right now. There is obviously a lot of talk on Twitter about this right now. Everyone, it seems, has the same problem, “Could not activate cellular data network.” I should mention that it’s raining in San Fracisco today, so perhaps that’s to blame. I know how hard it is for AT&T to be reliable on a regular day, so rain is apparently completely out of the question.
This outage comes just a couple days after AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega made comments that the company was hard at work on improving the service in cities like San Francisco and New York. Talk about bad timing. His comments were also controversial as he said things like, “What’s driving usage on the network and driving these high usage situations are things like video, or audio that keeps playing around the clock. And so we’ve got to get to those customers and have them recognize that they need to change their pattern, or there will be other things that they are going to have to do to reduce their usage.” The emphasis is mine there.
To be blunt, as paying customers, with contracts, we don’t need to change shit. What we need is a reliable network. We’re all paying around $100 or more a month for a service that remains unbelievably unreliable. Blame the iPhone, blame whatever — that doesn’t change the fact that we’re still paying for a service, and all-too-often, you’re not delivering. It’s unacceptable.
Speaking of timing, Fake Steve picked a perfect day to take his shots at AT&T, it seems.
I’ve reached out to AT&T for comment on this, and will update if and when I hear back. Though it clearly won’t be over the phone.
Update: You know the situation is bad if AT&T has yet to respond (normally they are very quick with that). Here’s something that someone in San Francisco (who apparently has phone service to make a call) was able to get:
Just got off the phone with AT&T — data + SMS in San Francisco is down. It will take 24 to 48 hours (!!!) to fix.
A day to two days of no data or SMS. Fuck you very much AT&T.
Update 2: Okay, an AT&T rep has finally gotten back to me, here’s what they had to say:
We are seeing a hardware issue in downtown San Francisco that is causing some degradation in service. GSM and EDGE voice and data services are still accessible. Our experts are aware and working to resolve as quickly as possible.
Update 3: AT&T has just reached out again to say that services should be restored shortly:
AT&T has fixed the hardware issue and data services are quickly returning to normal. Speeds should be back to normal within about a half hour.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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 TopNews United States | Yahoo Faces Off Against Google In Search War With Microsoft Funds ChannelWeb By Joseph F. Kovar, channelweb Yahoo and Microsoft are moving quickly to start acting on their recently-signed agreement to collaborate on search technology, with Microsoft agreeing to increase payments to Yahoo and Yahoo identifying 400 engineers it ... Week in review: Getting real with Google, Yahoo Yahoo Prepping Engineers for Microsoft Partnership, Will Take $150 Million Search Giants Rev Up Innovation Engines |
The overflowing inbox. It’s a problem many a journalist or blogger has had to deal with, but it’s often a necessary evil. After all, we’re all on the hunt for the next big story, cool gadget, or interesting startup, and Email has long been the standard for receiving pitches. Unfortunately, Email is really bad at filtering through the noise, so it’s easy for good stories to fall through the cracks. That’s where eGether comes in. The new site is looking to offer an alternative to the pitch-by-Email method. It’s essentially a social network for people who are pitching, and people who are looking to be pitched.
eGether was founded by Vincent Nguyen and Ewdison Then of SlashGear, a rapidly growing gadget site, so they know a thing or two about some of the problems with the standard Email pitch. Nguyen says that the site combines elements of many social sites, like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to create a social network that’s optimized for efficiently submitting or reading pitches, as well as for learning about the people behind them.
Like Facebook and Twitter, the site lets you update your status, which you can use to share articles you’ve found interesting or converse with other members using an @reply system. These updates have a 144 character limit, and are shown in a Twitter-like stream. There’s also a second class of update: The Pitch. These are longer updates that allow members to upload text, documents, images, entire media kits, and more. In effect, they’re much like the Email pitches many PR people send out every day. But they’re limited to a maximum of 999 characters.
That’s not much — the previous two paragraphs come out to just over 900 characters. But that’s exactly why eGether is imposing the limitation. Anyone who has read many press pitches knows that they can become overly verbose, filled with unneeded backstory, explanations, and quotes. It can be struggle to tell what exactly a company does when that information is buried in a full page of text. And that problem is only magnified when there are dozens of other pitches coming in every day. eGether forces users to condense their pitches to the most important material. You can see a sample pitch in the shot below.
eGether has some solid ideas, but it’s going to face the classic chicken and the egg problem: it needs to get press, agents and other people looking for pitches onto the platform. Otherwise, it won’t be very appealing for PR people and authors to submit their pitches in the first place. That said, I don’t know many press who aren’t willing to try out an alternative to their mountains of Email, so eGether may not have such a tough time generating interest, after all.
Disclosure: CrunchGear editor John Biggs assisted Nguyen with some of the site’s functionality.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
There’s always a moment of letdown when you get that brand new 1TB drive formatted and find it’s only got 930GB available. What the hell, right? But that’s just the way it is. That data is reserved for all kinds of secret hard drive needs, the kind of thing we don’t talk about on family blogs like this one. But Western Digital appears to be taking steps to minimize that reserved space by restructuring how that meta-data is stored.
The diagram above should give you a general idea of how it’s done (essentially the meta-data is bunched together to reduce wasted bits), but if you want the whole technical explanation, head over to PC Perspective. Unfortunately, while most systems can handle the new drives just fine, XP can have some trouble. All you really need to do is use this utility or connect a jumper before you use the drive.
 Sky News | Wired.com Readers' Favorite iPhone Apps of 2009 Wired News Earlier this week we asked Wired.com readers to submit and vote on their favorite iPhone apps of 2009, and the winners have been chosen. The voting process was simple: Add your favorite app(s) using our Reddit widget, then vote up or ... Putting the iPhone to work -- at work When good apps go bad Mobile-app makers prepare for a gold rush |
Earlier this week we asked Wired.com readers to submit and vote on their favorite iPhone apps of 2009, and the winners have been chosen.
The voting process was simple: Add your favorite app(s) using our Reddit widget, then vote up or down on each other’s submissions. Surprisingly, the list of your favorites is fairly short. So many of you adored one particular app that rather than vote on the existing submission, you decided to submit it over and over and over. That led to about 80 redundant submissions of the app, giving it a resounding victory.
In the end, only five iPhone apps accrued enough votes to be deemed your favorites of 2009. That’s OK — quality over quantity, right? Here they are.
Yes, the iPhone game that readers loved so much they nominated it again and again was Words With Friends. It’s an iPhone version of Scrabble, which is hardly original, but the social integration of the game is done beautifully. You can invite and play with multiple iPhone users at the same time; you can chat within the app; and you can also set up Words With Friends to send you a push notification whenever it’s your turn to make a move. All very Web 2.0 savvy.
My favorite feature is a pair of eyeballs that pop up in the corner of the screen, signifying when your opponent is looking at the board. That’s just darn cute. There’s a free version, Words With Friends Free, which is ad-supported, and the $3 version, Words With Friends, is ad-free.
Apparently a lot of you enjoy gauging your intelligence (or lack thereof), because The Moron Test received a lot of votes. The app is a series of tests evaluating your ability to understand and follow directions. Touch the ducks from biggest to smallest, for example, or tap the green button twice, then the red button and the blue button. Whenever you mess up, the screen reads “FAIL!” and you can either choose to start over or use a continue. Fun stuff, albeit a jokey method to test one’s smarts. Moron Test is $1 in the App Store.
When you’re sitting around bored at work, do you ever fantasize about torturing small creatures for fun? Clearly, a lot of Wired.com readers do, and fortunately their outlet is not their pets or younger siblings, it’s an iPhone app called Pocket God. It’s a free-form scenario of sorts where you assume the role of a sadistic god and you can abuse the living hell out of a group of islanders, known as Pygmies. You can control the environment in countless ways to kill the Pygmies: throw lighting bolts, feed them to the sharks, harpoon them underwater and so on. Politically correct it is not. Pocket God is $1 in the App Store.
Taking good photos with the iPhone is a challenge, thanks to the gadget’s shoddy camera. Even the superior autofocusing camera on the iPhone 3GS only goes part way to fixing the problem. That’s why Adobe’s Photoshop.com app is a huge help, because it can make you look like a less crummy photographer. The app features very basic editing tools that are extremely easy to apply, such as setting exposure, adding soft focus and adjusting tint. That’s pretty nifty, and the best part is it’s free.
A sizable number of you voted on the card game Thirty One. In the game, each player gets dealt three cards, and the goal is to get a hand with an added value of 31 (or closer to it than your opponents) by only counting cards in the same suit. It’s a buck in the App Store.
See Also:
Photo: Stephen Hackett/Flickr
Startup Emo Labs, which creates invisible speaker technologies, has raised $1.5 million in funding according to an SEC filing. The startup, which presented at this year’s DEMO conference, previously raised $16 million in funding. Emo Labs was a co-winner of the top prize at DEMO, winning a shared $1 million in advertising.
Emo Labs’ flagship product, enabled by the company’s Edge Motion technology, provides invisible, zero-footprint speaker systems. The speaker systems, which is a plastic device, aims to transform the screen of a flat panel display product into a stereo loudspeaker. Here’s a demo video that where Emo Labs’ CEO Jason Carlson demos the product.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Cigar box guitar Christmas albumCigar Box Nation offers our own gift of music to you. This album is free for everyone this Christmas...just go ahead and download. We've compiled almost one hour of holiday music played on cigar box guitars, ukuleles, dulcimers and more. Please spread the word (and holiday cheer)! May the world ring with the awesome sounds of cigar box guitars this Christmas.
If you have trouble downloading the album, try this alternate download link. A huge thanks to CBNation member, Thomas Boatwright for the awesome cover artwork!
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Short Version: Looking for a solidly-built gun accessory for the Wii? This is it right here. Looking for a gun controller accessory that grants you easy access to the D-pad, 1, 2, +, –, and Home buttons on the Wii remote? Keep on moving.
Review:
I opened up the Innex Buckshot Controller for Wii and was instantly impressed by its heft. This thing’s built to last, with an included Nunchuck fused right into the product itself, a satisfying pump-action barrel, and nice rubber grips all around.
The Buckshot maps itself to the Wii remote by using the trigger as the A button and the pump action on the barrel on the B button. The Nunchuck controls are the same, so the built-in Nunchuck corresponds to the control stick, Z, and C buttons.
Sensing an opportunity to buy a new Wii game in the name of work but not wanting to spend too much money, I rushed out to Micro Center and picked up the highly-rated, yet deeply-discounted Resident Evil 4. After all, the gun’s packaging said it was compatible with Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, so I figured I’d keep it all in the family.
I got home, fired up the game, and, whoops, I have no way to access the Wii remote’s control pad, 1, 2, +, or – buttons since the Wii remote snaps all the way inside the Buckshot at which point a metal flap folds down to seal the Buckshot up nice and tight.
No worries, though, as maybe I can re-map some of the buttons from within the game, right? Strike two – it can’t be done. So in the game, you press and hold B to aim and A to fire which corresponds to half-cocking the barrel of the gun and then pulling the trigger. Reloading is done by holding the B button and shaking the Wii remote up and down – kind of tough to do when using the pump-action barrel seems much more straightforward. Also, the 1 and 2 buttons are used for the map and options screen, respectively.
You see where I’m going with this.
I had a lot more fun with Wii Ware title “Wild West Guns” – a simple shooter that features an actual setting for a gun controller (or Wii Crossbow accessory). Trigger shoots, pumping the barrel reloads. Done and done.
So the Buckshot is an excellently-built accessory in a sea of cheap and dumb Wii accessories, but you’ll really want to make sure the games you want to play can be completed without using the secondary buttons on the Wii Remote or feature settings to customize your control setup. The box says the gun is “ideal” for games in the Call of Duty series, for instance, but any of the missions that make use of motion controls, and simple things like throwing grenades and steering jeeps and whatnot will present a challenge.
Product Page: Innex Buckshot Controller for Wii
FROM APPLETELL - The Razer Orochi is a solid, capable mouse that supports both bluetooth and wired play. But for $79.99, you can get a Razer mouse with much better functionality.
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Despite the fact that you'd have to be a stupid idiot to still text and drive, plenty of teens in the U.S. still text and drive. “By the time [the police] pull you over, the chances are you are going to be done with your text anyway so they can't exactly prove that you were texting.” Good thinking there, sport.
The cellphone market in Shenzhen is like a flea market where everyone is selling the same thing. If it looks like an iPhone, it's here. There are hundreds of models, hundreds of odd names, and hundreds of people arrayed along the inside of a huge room. There are four or five floors of this mess. This is the Shanzhai market.
Shanzhai is a strange amalgam of counterfeiting, national pride, and Robin Hoodism. The word itself means "mountain fortress" and suggests a romantic image of brigands working together to outwit the rich and powerful. It's been called a reaction to the cellphone monopoly but in reality it's a sort of personal test, more akin to the piracy "scene" than anything else. Shanzhai products are, in their early stages, more like graffiti tags than anything else. Every fake iPhone is someone's way of saying "I'm here, I did this, and I beat the big guys."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 TG Daily | 2010: The Year of the Tablet Computer? PC World In China, 2010 will be the year of the Tiger. In the tech world, 2010 will be the year of the Tablet -- or so it seems. A bevy of tech companies have teased, talked, and have not denied rumors that they are working on a fabled tablet computer. ... TechCrunch counterpunch: Blogger sues Fusion Garage Mike Elgan: Hello, tablets. Good-bye, netbooks! Fusion Garage sued over joojoo tablet |
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Haven’t caught all of the Gadgetell news this week? Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles!
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By Yukari Iwatani Kane, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Since the first Mario Bros. game was released by Nintendo in 1983, the little Italian plumber and his brother Luigi have become iconic characters. As of September, various versions of the game that debuted over the years had sold more than 222 million copies.
That strong-selling tradition continued with the “New Super Mario Bros. Wii,” which was released on Nov. 15. The game sold nearly 1.4 million copies in the U.S. in its first two weeks, making it the No. 2 best-selling title for the month of November, according to market research firm NPD Group, which released the data on Thursday.
In an interview, Bill Trinen, a senior manager of product marketing at Nintendo of America, spoke to The Wall Street Journal about the latest game.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Zombie-Attack ScienceNew York Times ninth annual "Year in Ideas" issue (Thanks, Daniel!)Working with a professor and two other graduate students, Munz built a mathematical model of a city of one million residents, in which an outbreak occurs when a single zombie arrives in town. He based the speed of zombie infection on the general rules you see in George Romero movies: after getting bitten, people turn into zombies in 24 hours and sometimes don't realize what's happening to them until they change.
When he ran the model on a computer, the results were bleak. "After 7 to 10 days, everyone was dead or undead," he says. He tried several counterattacks. Quarantining the zombies didn't work; it only bought a few extra days of survival for humanity. Even creating a "cure" for zombification led to a grim result. It was possible to save 10 to 15 percent of the population, but everyone else was a zombie. (The cure in his model wasn't permanent; the cured could be rebitten and rezombified.)
There was only one winning solution: fighting back quickly and fiercely.
 MiamiHerald.com | Another 'UFO' from Russia msnbc.com Just a day after a Russian rocket launch set off a spate of UFO sightings in Norway, yet another missile test created a similar sky show over the heart of Russia. Like Wednesday's launch of the submarine-based Bulava missile from the White Sea, ... New Russian missile may be behind Norwegian lights Norway spiral: A rocket scientist explains the mystery Russia's Failed Missile Test: Fireworks For Obama |
Most agree that the original TomTom iPhone app is a tad overpriced at $99 for just the app. That doesn’t include the $119 windshield mount. Esspecially now that Google has made its mark on the GPS market with the free Google Maps Navigation app. And so that brings us to the latest TomTom GPS app. This one is US-only, but only costs $50.
Actually it’s somewhat of a smart marketing move by TomTom. The company probably didn’t plan this from the start, but at least now there is some justification thanks to the international maps as to why the $99 app costs so much. It’s like the company is stating buy the cheap app if you don’t plan on leaving the States.
Even at half the price of the original app, $50 probably still carries a hefty profit margin and now more folks *might* be more likely to spring for the expensive mount. Although those people should still be reminded that standalone options can be had for less and come with a larger screen. Just saying. [App Store via Mac Rumors]
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Here’s a nifty little Google Easter Egg on this fine Friday. If you go to the Google homepage and click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button with no query entered, a countdown timer will appear below the buttons. As of right now it stands at 1765472, with each second ticking off the last number in that sequence.
Some quick math (with Google’s help) tells us that 1,765,472 seconds equals a little over 20 days. What happens in 20 days? It could be the end of the world, when Google becomes self-aware, or 2010. You decide.
To make sure, we went ahead and switched our system clocks to trick it into thinking it was December 31, and sure enough, the countdown ends at January 1 at midnight. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a payoff when the timer hits zero. Maybe Google will add that later. That is, if they got it done before the code freeze.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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OLED displays are not just for consumer electronics. With a dash of creativity, they can be modeled into a nice dress. English fashion designer Gareth Pugh put together an outfit made of flexible OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) displays. OLEDs are gaining popularity because they are more energy efficient than traditional LED screens.
U.K. based company PolyPhotonix made the OLED display used in the dress that was shown earlier this week at a conference to promote plastic electronics. Plastic electronics technology allows circuits to be printed onto any surface and over large areas and is seen as a a low-cost alternative to conventional silicon-based electronics.
The dress is created from a special fabric coated with a thin, flexible layer of OLED film that can change color when triggered by an electronic signal. A microcontroller sewn into the fabric controls the signals.
The OLED dress is interesting but nowhere near as cool as the LED dress created by two London-based designers. The ‘Galaxy’ LED dress was embroidered with 24,000 full color LEDs and 4,000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals.
A video shows us a brief glimpse of the OLED dress on a catwalk.
[via OLED-Info]
Photo: (bisgovuk/flickr)
![Screen shot 2009-12-11 at [ December 11 ] 12.05.23 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Screen-shot-2009-12-11-at-December-11-12.05.23-PM-275x300.png "Screen shot 2009-12-11 at [ December 11 ] 12.05.23 PM")
After more than a month of listening to their U.S brethren blab about how great the Droid is, folks in the UK finally got the chance to nab its European-doppelganger, the Milestone. Well, for about 3 hours anyway.
eXpansys, reigning handset online retailer kings of the UK, managed to lock in an exclusive distribution deal on the launch of the Milestone. They opened up sales yesterday morning – and within 2.5 hours, their stock was depleted.
In a comment from eXpansys sent to Pocket-lint:
“The demand for the Motorola Milestone has been staggering. We received the units at 10am on Thursday, 2.5 hours later we had sold out. A second shipment is already on the way and should be arriving in time for Christmas orders”.
While that’s certainly impressive, it’s not at all clear just how many phones were sold. They had a pre-order supply of about 1,000 handsets, which they later doubled to meet demand. Retailers will often match or double their pre-order sales for on-site inventory – so even if we’re lenient with the numbers, we very well could be talking about a total inventory of 5 to 6 thousand handsets. If thats the case, selling out in 3 hours doesn’t seem all that incredible – especially considering that eXpansys was the only retailer that could sell the handset in the UK at launch. If anything, it’s just bad planning on Moto’s part.
Either way, it appears the handsets are back in stock, if only temporarily. Get’em while they’re hot, UK-folk.
[Via Engadget]
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Earlier this week, BoomTown motored over to the San Francisco HQ of Aardvark, the social search engine that has been the subject of much attention since it was founded in late 2007.
While there, I got a tour of the 30-person start-up, which has raised a total of $6 million from August Capital and others to perfect and distribute its service.
Aardvark uses social networks, such as Facebook, to get relevant answers via email and instant messaging. It also has a Web version.
In many ways, Aardvark is yet another version of the iconic Six Degrees, mixed with Yahoo Answers or expert sites, a cup of Twitter-like sociability, and completed with a big dollop of algorithmic calculation.
Its founders, including Max Ventilla and Damon Horowitz, worked at Google (GOOG) and wanted to try to solve the problem of data that cannot be easily reduced to a keyword query.
At least that’s the goal of the innovative Aardvark, unless it ends up selling itself off to any of a wide range of companies, from Google to Facebook to Yahoo (YHOO) to Microsoft (MSFT) to IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), to differentiate that company’s lagging Ask search service.
Or not.
Ventilla tries his best not to answer that potentially multimillion-dollar question in this interview with Horowitz.
The video also includes a tour of Aardvark, whose offices are, of course, called the Mechanical Zoo.
Here’s the video:
Section: Apple, Communications, Cellular Providers, Mobile, Gadgets / Other, Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack
As the holidays roll up on us far too quickly, thankfully the tech companies of the world have provided us with a bounty of things to talk about at Christmas parties. If you get stuck at one of these festive events where you are supposed to pretend hanging out with the mouth-breathers in your department, try getting everyone riled about by talking about:
Why does AT&T’s network get picked on? AT&T has a one word answer: iPhone. iPhone users are sluping up so much data, it is crippling the network in big cities like New York and San Fransisco. The solution? AT&T will provide incentives for iPhone users to use less data.
Incentives? That’s a fun economics term that will probably mean extra fees for high data consumers. The upside might be that the company lowers data fees for users who consume less while hitting the always-downloading crowd with increases. This should shift consumers to use less. This could mean using WiFi whenever possible or just using your JooJoo pad to surf over your home’s WiFi connection.
Gadgetell’s Sue Walsh had this to say, “If they think they are going to convince smartphone users, especially iPhone owners, to use less data, they are going to be sorely disappointed. Then again, if Apple finally decides to end it’s exclusivity agreement with them, they may well find lack of coverage to be the least of their problems. Where the iPhone goes a good chunk of their customer base may go too.”
How to kill ebooks? Delay, delay, delay. Count Simon & Schuster as well as the Hachette Book Group in the We Hate Ebookers club. This group wants desparately to cling to their way of life despite the advance ebook reader army. Paper, ink, stupid jacket covers that don’t stay on, forever!
Maybe I am being too harsh. Ebookers like our Editor, Robert Nelson says, “honestly, this move, except for maybe a very rare case would not be any cause for me to put my Kindle down and pick up a hard cover book. Which means that at least for me, they are just delaying the inevitable ebook sale.”
Maybe the price of ebooks need to rise? Doing so would ease the minds of publishers, allow new releases on Kindles and their ilk while those who can hold out get the lower price. Something is got to give.
It seems good old Facebook wants to go public and is taking you along for the ride. The new privacy roll out tools are freaking everyone out. Our Sue Walsh explains it best: “...overall Facebook has seen to it that they have actually taken away some of their users privacy and that is not acceptable at all. C’mon Facebook, wake up. These new “tools” are a horrible idea!”
By getting your status updates public, they become searchable and Facebook’s footprint on the web grows exponentially. The more they can wrestle away from you, they can use to spread around. Sue gives us some pretty good ideas on how you can save what is left of your privacy on Facebook and where to complain about it.
Joojoo to actually make it to consumers hands?
TechCrunch’s vision, now called JooJoo since Fusion Garage decided to cut Arrington out of the deal is now awaiting pre-sales beginning tonight. This whole deal along with a new rumor about Apple’s mythic tablet rolling in on the hour has me reconsidering my excitement about tablets. I believe we can put tablets in the category of UMPCs. Neat but we really don’t want them.
I couch surf with my iPhone just fine. Something bigger is better, but by how much? $500 worth isn’t the answer for me. The problem is the form factor; you go from a handheld, like the iPhone where you can one hand surf to the JooJoo where you lean it on your lap or on a table and the ergonomics are all wrong.
The solution? Simple, get a stand to hold the JooJoo at an angle and make a keyboard that attached with a hinge (that’s smart because it will protect the glass face of the JooJoo). Even better, if you whisper the name “netbook” at your local best buy when you want a JooJoo, they’ll give you one like we’ve just modified above for $200!
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Los Angeles Times | NASA Comet Hunter Set For Monday Launch InformationWeek NASA delayed until Monday the launch of a space telescope designed to create a highly detailed map of the heavens and spot comets and asteroids that could pose a threat to life on Earth. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, ... NASA Delays WISE Launch NASA sky-mapping mission delayed Rocket Steering Glitch Grounds NASA's New WISE Space Scope |
By Tiernan Ray, Blogger, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
Microsoft (MSFT) has lost the war for consumers’ hearts, most particularly in the smartphone category, argues influential newsletter publisher Mark Anderson, who pens the Strategic News Service, as New York Times columnist Steve Lohr writes in the Bits blog late last night. Anderson says aside from the Xbox gaming franchise, “it’s game over” for Microsoft in consumer categories of products.
“Microsoft doesn’t have consumer DNA,” Mr. Anderson told Lohr at a dinner last night, the journalist writes.
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Despite the fact that you’d have to be a stupid idiot to still text and drive, plenty of teens in the U.S. still text and drive. “By the time [the police] pull you over, the chances are you are going to be done with your text anyway so they can’t exactly prove that you were texting.” Good thinking there, sport.
Those are the words of a 17-year-old Arizona girl, who spoke to Reuters to corroborate her friend’s story that “nobody is going to listen” to laws banning cellphone use in cars. Teens are the key age group when it comes to reducing cellphone-related car accidents, but if they’re going to be so cavalier in their attitude toward the law? Clearly we need tougher punishments if the police catch you texting and driving: you have to sit through an episode of Jersey Shore, including the commercials.
No one will text and drive ever again.
It’s a real problem, of course, this texting and driving nonsense. As mobile phones have become so vital to a person’s (especially a teen’s) life , it becomes harder to pry them away. The temptation may be too great for the average 18-year-old to not check his phone every time it dings. How you go about changing behavior is what the authorities are trying to figure out.
Again, we appeal to your better angels: don’t text and drive. You wouldn’t drink and drive, right, so why should this be any different?
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UC Davis (my alma mater) is getting into iPhone apps, too. The university is offering its first iPhone app development class, similar to the course taught by Stanford.
Granted, the Davis course is taught by professor Ken Joy, and Stanford’s is led by Apple employees. Still, it’s great to see more computer science programs teaching code for newer platforms. Hopefully we’ll hear about a slew of Android development courses as well.
“Nothing is more relevant than the iPhone or iPod Touch right now,” Joy told CNET’s Erica Ogg.
Universities offering iPhone development classes are signed up with iPhone University, an Apple program that hands out the iPhone software development kit to students for free. More details on the UC Davis iPhone development course are available at CNET, which first reported this story.
Go, Aggies!
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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Evidently, Microsoft is back in a buying mood. Yesterday, the company announced plans to acquire health-care software outfit Sentillion. And now Microsoft (MSFT) says it plans to buy Opalis Software, a maker of data center management software.
Financial terms, first reported by The Deal, were not disclosed. That said, when rumors of the acquisition began circulating in October, the purchase price was said to be $60 million.
Writing in a company blog post, Microsoft corporate VP Brad Anderson said Opalis is an essential piece of Redmond’s “dynamic data center initiative.”
“This deal brings together the deep datacenter automation expertise of Opalis with the integrated physical and virtualized datacenter management capabilities of Microsoft System Center. I believe Opalis’ software together with the System Center suite will improve the efficiency of IT staff and operations, and customers will gain greater process consistency. Opalis’ software captures the IT processes, in a documented and repeatable way, which can be run over and over again. These capabilities will be added to Microsoft System Center to help customers automate complex IT processes, increase cost savings and shorten timeframes for IT service delivery across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.”
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
It looks like Sprint is preparing to make a change in their contract terms, and yes that means users will be able to (in theory) cancel their current contract without having to pay an early termination fee. Of course, I say “in theory” because your individual mileage may vary, as it usually does with these sorts of changes. In other words, your ability to cancel will likely be determined by how nice you are, how good of a case you present and most important the agent that you are speaking with. That said, it cannot hurt to try.
Anyway, according to the details, which are coming courtesy of PhoneNews, Sprint will be increasing the regulatory charge to $0.40 and is currently in the process of changing terms.
Regulatory Charge/Ts&Cs Changes
Effective 1/1/10, the Regulatory Charge will increase to $0.40/line. Visit Sprint Ts&Cs or sprint.com/taxesandfees for details; also effective 1/1/10, the Sprint Terms & Conditions (Ts&Cs) are changing. Please review them carefully at sprint.com or on request.
According to Sprint’s Terms & Conditions;
If a change we make to the Agreement is material and has a material adverse effect on Services under your Term Commitment, you may terminate each line of Service materially affected without incurring an Early Termination Fee only if you: (a) call us within 30 days after the effective date of the change; and (b) specifically advise us that you wish to cancel Services because of a material change to the Agreement that we have made. If you do not cancel Service within 30 days of the change, an Early Termination Fee will apply if you terminate Services before the end of any applicable Term Commitment.
The key part being “materially adverse change of contract.” Of course, what this means is that you should be able to cancel without paying an ETF as long as you do so within 30 days of notification. In addition, Sprint is also going to be adding an additional $4.99 fee to accounts with spending limits.
This time, I think I just may give this a try, just to see what happens. Fortunately, or unfortunately I have a contract with Sprint that I am not particularity attached to (thanks to having a Google Voice number) and may try and cancel and switch over to Verizon.
Via [PhoneNews and PreCentral]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Outside of hardware renders and a few prototype appearances at trade shows, there aren’t a whole lot of photos of the nearly mythical xpPhone — the phone that runs Windows XP or, according to the manufacturer, Windows 7 — floating around. In fact, after hearing next to nothing beyond talks of pre-orders in almost six months, I’d begun to wonder if this thing actually existed.
Today, the manufacturer ITG released real world shots of their latest product sample, color-customized in white/green. They also add that “More videos of real sample will come out soon”, which might just mean this thing is gettin’ close to production.
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This kind of information will appear in Suggest either above or below the suggested search terms for a variety of queries. For example, you can type "delta 140" to see the flight status. You can also quickly discover the current time, figure out how many Euros you'll get per dollar, or even brush up on metric conversions. In total, there are currently 10 universal search features available in Google Suggest: weather, flight status, local time, area codes, package tracking, answers, definitions, calculator, currency and unit conversions — and we plan to add additional features in the future.
By Nitrozac and Snaggy
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
FCC listings are always fun, they give us something to speculate about, then later hope to see come true. Anyway, one of the latest phones that has made the required FCC appearance if the Acer Liquid (S100) A1 and it is showing that it will have support for AT&T’s 3G bands here in the US. Of course that does not mean that we will see it available with AT&T anytime soon, or ever for that matter. But that is the fun in the speculation.
Otherwise, what we can tell you about the Acer Liquid A1 is that it will be powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and have a 3.5-inch touchscreen display, Wi-Fi, GPS and a 5-megapixel camera with auto-focus.
And yes, this FCC listing does add some truth to the previous rumors of it being on its way to AT&T. Now if we could just see an official announcement from AT&T, because there are many that are sitting and waiting not so patiently for them to announce their first Android based smartphone.
Read [FCC] Via [unwired view]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Staying loyal to his roots, Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak said he would purchase an Apple tablet next year, assuming it ever ships.
Wozniak, who is now a chief scientist of storage company Fusion-io, said during a conference he’d buy an Apple tablet no matter what.
“If there is such a thing,” he said of the rumored Apple tablet. “I buy everything Apple comes out with.”
Attention, Segway: Here’s a prime opportunity for you to get started on a remote control app for the Segway. Charge $1,000 for it, and Woz will probably buy a copy for himself and each member of his Segway polo team.
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Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
For much of this year, AOL made a point of boasting about each and every traditional journalist it hired. Message: We’re dead serious about becoming a content company, not one that sells Internet access to people who don’t know any better.
These boasts grew less frequent in recent months as the company’s hiring binge drew to a close, then switched into reverse when AOL announced it would need to shed a third of its staff. Meanwhile, AOL’s plans to inject automation into its content factory freaked out both employees and outsiders.
So the company’s most recent hire, announced shortly before AOL (AOL) separated from Time Warner (TWX), may help soothe some frayed nerves: New York Times (NYT) veteran Saul Hansell, who will run AOL’s new Seed.com content-creation platform.
I talked to Hansell yesterday and the answer is…not really clear.
Hansell, who spent 17 years at the Times, can’t spell out exactly what he’s going to do at AOL because he’s not exactly sure himself. He says he reached out to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong when the paper announced its most recent round of buyouts in October, and then he and the company went about creating a job that made sense for him.
But beyond his new title, “programming director,” a lot of what Hansell will do at his new gig is do is up in the air. The positive spin: That’s okay because uncertainty is a way of life at a start-up and AOL is in many ways a company that has to reinvent itself on the fly, just like a start-up. You can fill in the less positive interpretation of this yourself.
Hansell does have some big-picture ideas about AOL’s ability to combine its audience, workforce, technology and ad sales to produce a next-generation publishing platform. And in the interview, he offers a very nice parable about visiting Amazon’s (AMZN) warehouse, where technology and humans coexist quite nicely.
Okay. But what about the robots he’s supposed to be in charge of? “I don’t know anything about the robots,” Hansell says. “I haven’t gotten there.”
Anyway, Hansell was a good sport about letting me shove a Flip camera very close to his face, and he can tell his story much better than I can. So here you go:
By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
Kaufman Bros. analyst Aaron Kessler this morning lifted his rating on Yahoo (YHOO) to Buy from Hold, inching up his price target to $20, from $19.
Kessler cited four reasons for the upgrade:
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It’s tough at the top. When you’ve got tens of thousands of developers vying for your acceptance, your every decision is scrutinized and criticized. Such is the case with Apple; if they approve a thousand applications and deny one, that one that got cut off will be the one you hear about.
It looks like Apple might be making moves to loosen up their restrictions, if only ever so slightly. Earlier this week, Apple finally let a live video broadcasting app through the gates, after apps of that genre sat on the review backburner for months. Today, they’ve willingly approved another application that calls upon one of Apple’s private (and generally blacklisted) APIs.
For the sake of those who might not have their programming acronym cheatsheet nearby, API stands for application programming interface. In a nutshell, an API is a set of programming functions provided as part of a piece of software (such as the iPhone OS) to allow you to do certain things (such as access the camera hardware or the GPS) without having to reinvent the wheel. Apple keeps a small chunk of these APIs private, for reasons of security, standards, battery life efficiency, and God knows what else.
The application in question, iSimulate, allows developers to test the multi-touch and accelerometer functions of their applications in the OS X iPhone Simulator – generally, such tests would require the app to be loaded onto the handset. They made use of private API UITouch._touchFlags, to which Apple responded:
Thank you for submitting your update to iSimulate to the App Store. During our review of your application we found it is using a private API, which is in violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement section 3.3.1; “3.3.1 Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.” While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate to resolve this issue in your next update.
The non-public API that is included in your application is UITouch._touchFlags.
Please resolve this issue in your next update to iSimulate.
Does this mean that all private APIs are open game now? Of course not. Try to sneak background processing support into your app, and Apple will most likely drop the banhammer in a heartbeat. But until we hear otherwise, we’re taking all of this week’s progress as a sign that someone over in Cupertino finally said “Hey, guys – relax a bit.”
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Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks
Yesterday it was Simon & Schuster and The Hachette Book Group that mentioned how they were planning to release ebooks with roughly a 3-4 month delay as compared to the hard cover release, and today we have yet another publisher announcing similar plans.
Todays publisher is HarperCollins, and they have stated that this affect about five to ten books per month in the upcoming year. It seems that they also are concerned about the less expensive digital copies, but they have spun that statement to make it seem like they are doing it for the readers. According to HarperCollins;
“Mr. Murray said that if new hardcover titles continue to be sold as $9.99 e-books, the eventual outcome will be fewer literary choices for customers, because publishers won’t be able to take as many chances on new writers.”
As far as the delay of the release, it could be anywhere from four weeks up to six months. Luckily for the readers, Brian Murray who is the chief executive of News Corp.‘s HarperCollins Publishers stated that they are “going to experiment with this” which means it could still change in the future. We can only hope.
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Asus’ Eee brand was once strong and so much a part of the early netbook market that the words “Eee” and “netbook” were almost interchangeable. Now, Asus sprays the name around like a tomcat sprays… well, you get the idea.
The latest will be called the Eee Pad and will, according to Digitimes, have a four-to-seven-inch touch-screen display. This is, you’ll notice, a rather vague description and we think it more likely that Asustek will actually bust out a range of tiny touch-screen devices. The tablets are supposedly “inspired by the rumors of Apple’s planned tablet device”.
It may seem somewhat strange to plan your future business based on nothing but rumors, but we’re not surprised. The fabled Apple Tablet is affecting everyone, to the extent that Apple has almost single-handedly created a product category without doing anything. How’s that for influence? Sadly, we doubt the Eee Pad will be up to much: If the original Eee inspired the compact size and low prices of the nascent netbook market, it also lent it its bad design and low-quality hardware.
Asustek planning to launch Eee Pad device [Digitimes]
Photo: Claire Wroe/Flickr
In a very concise statement, Apple has let the public know that it has today filed a counter suit against Finnish handset maker Nokia, who at the end of October 2009 took the Cupertino company to court over alleged patent infringement for technology related to its GSM, UMTS, and WiFi “standards”. Read our detailed report here.
In its response lawsuit, Apple says Nokia infringes on 13 of its own patents, and even outright accuses the company of theft:
“Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” said Bruce Sewell, Apple’s General Counsel and senior vice president.
By Lauren Goode, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
One might think celebrities would have multiple cellphones or at least use a smart phone to help manage their Rolodexes, but that’s not the case for some of the boldface names gathered at Donna Karan’s Urban Zen loft Thursday night.
Several of them said they barely use cellphones at all, despite the numerous calls they receive.
Ms. Karan, who uses a Motorola (MOT) Razr, said “a new phone” was at the top of her Christmas list.
“I text a lot–all the time,” the designer said. “But then the texts disappear on me. I’m not sure where they go.” (A text message appeared on her phone just then.)
“Oh, and I don’t use email,” Ms. Karan added. “I’m really more of a visceral person, I guess.”
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On Oct. 22, Nokia filed suit against Apple, accusing the company of hitching a “free-ride” on its intellectual property. This morning, Apple filed a searing countersuit accusing Nokia of the same thing.
In counterclaims filed in the U.S. District Court of Delaware, Apple (AAPL) denies infringement and asserts that Nokia (NOK) attempted to copy the iPhone and infringed 13 Apple patents in the process. Apple’s complaint specifically cites Nokia models S60, E71 and 5310. The company seeks dismissal of Nokia’s complaint in its entirety, with prejudice, damages for Nokia’s alleged infringements, interest and legal fees.
“Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” Bruce Sewell, Apple’s general counsel and senior vice president, said in a statement.
Youch. Mess with the bull, you get the horns, as this excerpt from Apple’s counterclaim makes clear:
In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone a ground-breaking device that allowed users access to the functionality of the already popular iPod on a revolutionary mobile phone and Internet device. The iPhone is a converged device that allows users to access and ever expanding set of software features to take and send pictures, play music, play games do research, serve as a GPS device and much more….The iPhone platform has caused a revolutionary change in the mobile phone category.
In contrast, Nokia made a different business decision and remained focused on traditional mobile wireless handsets with conventional user interfaces. As a result, Nokia has rapidly lost share in the market for high-end mobile phones. Nokia has admitted that, as a result of the iPhone launch, “the market changed suddenly and [Nokia was] not fast enough changing with it.
In response, Nokia chose to copy the iPhone, especially its enormously popular and patented design and user interface….
As Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s executive Vice President and General Manager of Multimedia, stated at Nokia’s GoPlay event in 2007 when asked about the similarities of Nokia’s new offerings to the already released iPhone: “[i]f there is something good in the world, we copy with pride.” True to this quote, Nokia has demonstrated its willingness to copy Apple’s iPhone ideas as well as Apple’s basic computing technologies, all while demanding Apple pay for access to Nokia’s purported standards essential patent. Apple seeks redress for this behavior.
Among the patents Apple accuses Nokia of infringing:
The full text of Apple’s counterclaim against Nokia:
Star Wars was pretty obviously a rip off of Samurai movies, right down to the lightsabers and Darth Vader’s outfit. So what better to celebrate George Lucas’ “homage” to Japan than a pair of “Lightsaber Chopsticks”?
For just ¥2,900 ($33) you can pop sushi into your mouth with this most honorable of weapons, and because they are made of plastic instead of beams of dangerous light, your cake-hole should remain safe throughout the meal. Choose between Vader’s (red) Luke’s (blue) and Yoda’s (a kind of yellowish green, apparently) colors. Delicious! The wasabi is strong in this one.
Lightsaber Chopsticks [Geek Stuff 4U]
It’s flawed, but I love my Kindle 2. The reading experience is great, and if I can forget about the DRM I can enjoy any of the books Amazon deigns to sell to foreigners. It is also a fantastic personal newspaper when combined with Instapaper, the excellent web-page clipping service.
We already wrote a guide to de-crippling the Kindle, but a combination of an update to Instapaper (it now offers a Kindle-friendly package of your clipped articles for direct download) and some Automator kung-fu, the process of loading up your e-reader with hand-picked articles is as easy as plugging it in.
First, get yourself an Instapaper account. This is free, and allows you to clip entire web pages to read later by simply clicking a bookmarklet in your browser. The article is then stripped of ads and other junk leaving only beautifully formatted text that can be read on your iPhone or Kindle, or even printed onto (gasp) paper. Once set up, go to your own Instapaper page and you’ll see this:
Here you should copy the url of the “kindle” link.
Now fire up Automator. You’ll find it in the Applications folder on your Mac (sorry, non-Mac users, this how-to is Apple-only). Automator lets you automate (duh) many aspects of your Mac. What we’re going to do is make an Automator workflow that will detect your Kindle, download your latest Instapaper articles (they come in a .mobi file) and put them into the right place on the Kindle itself. All this will happen in the background as soon as the Kindle is plugged into you Mac.
Next, create a new workflow in Automator and choose to make a “Folder Action”. At the top you need to choose the “Volumes” folder. The easiest way to do this is to press Cmd-Shift-G together and type in “/Volumes/” (without the quotes). this will get you to the volumes folder, which is where any mounted disk lives.
Next, add the action “Get Specified URLs” and enter the URL you copied earlier. Some magic seems to happen here: The actual url is generic - “http://www.instapaper.com/mobi” - so you need to be logged in to actually get your file. I am assuming here that Automator presents itself as Safari and uses its cookies.
Last, pick the action “Download URLs” and then, in the popup, navigate to the “documents” folder of your Kindle.
Save the action, giving it a recognizable name. I chose “Instapaper Kindle”. Now, whenever you plug in your Kindle, this action will grab the latest copy of Instapaper and add it to the e-reader, ready to go. It will look like this.
There is one problem with this method: right now it will trigger the script when any drive is plugged in, which could be a pain on a portable Mac. There are some workarounds on the web, notably the third-party Automator action called “Check for Disk”, which will only run the action when a specific drive is mounted, but I could’t make it work. If this is a problem, just save the action as an application instead and either stick it in your dock or in the toolbar of you Finder window, from where it is just a click away.
Hopefully this easy how-to will encourage you to get your hands dirty with Automator. It will also bring us one step closer to having a real, self-chosen daily newspaper delivered to us automatically, without paying Amazon’s fees to send it over the air.
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It took them a while, but now RIM finally is ready to follow Apple and enter the world’s biggest mobile market, China, with the Blackberry. The company issued two press releases in the last days outlining their market entry strategy that’s built upon a strategic partnership with Beijing-based IT service provider Digital China (which is the country’s biggest).
Digital China was chosen by RIM as the official Blackberry distribution partner and is expected to help sell the phones to end consumers and companies through their established sales network for computer systems and IT equipment.
Currently, there’s only one Blackberry model officially available in China. That handset was introduced by China Mobile as early as 2006 and has been sold exclusively to selected clients in big corporations since. (The iPhone, on the other hand, is being distributed in China by China Unicom, the country’s second largest telecommunications company.)
But the bigger and more important partner for RIM in China is China Mobile Communications, the world’s biggest telecommunications company. RIM has signed a contract with that company, promising to deliver Blackberry phones that support China Mobile’s proprietary TD-SCDMA network. The first customized Blackberry model (details haven’t been announced yet) will be released early next year, according to RIM.
In 2010, the over 700 million mobile phone users in China will also get RIM’s App Store “App World”, their IM service FETION and a number of other Blackberry services. RIM says details will be announced at a “later date”.
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Yesterday some of Europe’s most influential and active seed/angel investors got together in London for a ’summit’ organised by 
But that prospect doesn't sit well with American business. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest lobby representing 3 million businesses, argues that the plan being proposed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay, "raises a number of serious concerns," (.pdf) chief among them the specter that the treaty would spawn a rash of internet book piracy.
I’m trying to remember the last good thing to come from the Transformers franchise and am sadly unable to do so. Well, that’s not entirely true, the awful 
