|
|
|
|
Nokia claims Apple is unoriginal - Inquirer
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 30 Dec 2009 | 3:17 am Italy May Censor Torrent SitesAn anonymous reader writes "Following a Pirate Bay block more than a year ago, Italy continues its attempts to censor torrent sites. The Italian Supreme Court has ruled that copyright holders can now force ISPs to block BitTorrent sites, even if they are hosted outside Italy. The torrent sites which 'hold' copyrighted materials are accused of taking part in criminal activity. It seems someone should enlighten Italian jurists about technology."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Gizmodo | 30 Dec 2009 | 2:44 am Blue moons and naming the decade - Times Daily
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 30 Dec 2009 | 2:36 am 10 Things You Need for Your Social Media Road TripEver since two friends and I staged a two-week jaunt around the Midwest to attend a great new conference earlier this year, I've been more and more aware of a growing trend: the social media road trip...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 30 Dec 2009 | 1:44 am UPDATE 2-Novo Nordisk says FDA's Victoza feedback delayed* FDA's formal feedback on Victoza delayed beyond year-endSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 30 Dec 2009 | 1:43 am Three E-readers to Watch in 2010 [Voices]By Jon Stokes, Senior Editor, Ars Technica All signs indicate that the e-reader is to CES 2010 what the razor-thin LED-backlit TV was to CES 2009—a technology whose time in the commercial spotlight is now at hand, and which will make a huge, multi-vendor push into the market in the coming year. A whole raft of e-reader devices and technologies will be on display at next week’s CES—were I to cover all of them, this article would run for many pages. This being the case, in this short preview I’ll offer a quick look at three of the most promising e-reader efforts that we’ll be watching closely for this year’s CES coverage. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 30 Dec 2009 | 1:05 am Star Wars YouTube Battle [Voices]By Benjamin Sarlin, Contributor, Daily Beast While Avatar may represent the future of filmmaking, a current Star Wars-related Internet phenomenon signifies how the Aughts’ DIY mashup approach has changed popular culture. On paper, the viral video making the rounds recently is bizarre even by Internet standards: a 70-minute review of 1999’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace delivered by an elderly schizophrenic who talks like a cross between Dan Aykroyd in The Blues Brothers and The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill. “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was the most disappointing thing since my son,” the narrator begins. “And while my son eventually hanged himself in the bathroom of a gas station, the unfortunate reality of the Star Wars prequels is that they’ll be around forever.” Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 30 Dec 2009 | 1:04 am Totlol Creator Learns the Hard Way He Can’t Build a Business on YouTube [Voices]By Liz Gannes, Blogger, NewTeeVee Over the past two years, developer Ron Ilan built a site called Totlol that features a moderated selection of YouTube videos appropriate for kids. He hoped to build a business on it — and actually started charging membership fees earlier this year to avoid shutting the site down for lack of money. This week Ilan is crying foul, saying YouTube prevented him from his preferred business model, advertising, by changing its terms of service. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 30 Dec 2009 | 1:03 am How to Destroy the Book [Voices]By Jade Colbert, Writer, thevarsity.ca On November 13, Cory Doctorow spoke to a crowd of about a hundred librarians, educators, publishers, authors, and students on “How to Destroy the Book,” as part of the National Reading Summit held at the ROM. Doctorow has a pretty impressive bio: co-editor of Boing Boing, former Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California, visiting Senior Lecturer at Open University, and New York Times bestselling author. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 30 Dec 2009 | 1:02 am Ten years of BlackBerry [Voices]By Chris Ziegler, Editor, Engadget The year is 1999. Bill Clinton is the President of the United States, gas is 94 cents a gallon, Bondi Blue iMacs are a staple in dorm rooms across the country, and Microsoft (MSFT) is trying to bring the desktop Windows experience to the pocket, pushing its Palm-size PC concept (after Palm had quashed the original “Palm PC” branding) on a world still feeling jilted by the failures of the Apple Newton. 3Com (COMS) subsidiary Palm and its heavyweight licensee Handspring have figured out something interesting about the still-nascent PDA market, though: people like simplicity. If an electronic organizer does what it says it’s going to do, keeps your information in sync with your PC, runs for forever and a day on a single set of batteries, and does it all with a minimum of fuss, people will buy. Read the rest of this post on the original site
Source: Gizmodo | 30 Dec 2009 | 1:00 am Daily Crunch: Rescue Robot Edition
TenYears: Unexpected Success Stories
Source: CrunchGear | 30 Dec 2009 | 1:00 am China Starts Restoring Internet in Divided Muslim Region
|
 Voice of America | Obama set to launch vision for NASA USA Today By Bill Ingalls, AFP/Getty Images By Bart Jansen, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — President Obama will chart a course for NASA within weeks, based on the advice of a handful of key advisers in the administration and Congress. Obama, who met Dec. ... 9 astronomy milestones in 2009 2009: A Year of Discovery and Promise in Space NASA marks year of triumph, tension |
I typically use the Weather iPhone app once a week, at most. The only reason I would ever use the application is if a friend asked me the weather for a certain day of the week. Outside is trying to change the way we see weather applications on the iPhone with their new iPhone app developed by Robocat.
Outside combines current weather and local forecasts with custom push notifications on the iPhone. With Outside, you can setup push notifications for various weather conditions and get alerts when the weather matches your criteria, even when the app isn’t running. To get the notifications, you have to sign up for a subscription service. You get 30 days of push notifications when you purchase Outside, and then for $1, you get another 90 days of notifications. A yearly plan is in works as well.
The application’s UI is beautiful, and it’s the work of Michael Flarup, one of the most amazing designers I’ve seen on the internet. Just his blog is breathtaking, which of course translates to the apps beautiful design as well.
In the end, Outside is really trying to change the way we see the weather applications, and make them enjoyable to use, and I can definitely see Outside making that happen.
The app is $2.99, and available on the App Store today. [iTunes Link]
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
National Geographic Magazine has been one of the most important publications ever printed. From the insightful articles to the brilliant photography, NatGeo has been the benchmark that other magazines compare themselves to. Now, you can own a copy of every single issue without having to build a new addition to your house to store it.
What you get is a digital version of every issue, including the articles, pictures, maps, advertisements, everything that’s made NatGeo great over the years. It comes on a 160GB external hard drive, of which only 60GB is actually pre-loaded. Of course, you could probably pick up a 160GB drive for only $80, but it wouldn’t have all the NatGeo content. The package also comes with a DVD offering tips on better photography, a behind the scenes look at how National Geographic is produced and interviews with some of the photographers about their most famous pictures. It’ll set you back $199.95, but I think it’s totally worth it. Honestly, I’ll probably be ordering a copy for my personal library.
[via Download Squad]
 The Guardian | Leaked Nexus One documents: $530 unlocked, $180 with T-Mobile CNET News A tipster just sent in these Nexus One screenshots that supposedly confirm two things: that Google will sell it unlocked and unsubsidized for $530, and that Google will sell it itself. Plus, some other very interesting details. ... The Nexus One marketed by Google at $ 530, $ 180 at T-Mobile Google Nexus One to Cost $530 Unlocked, $180 With T-Mobile Google's Nexus One smartphone set for January launch |
What do Thomas Siebel, Condoleezza Rice and $26 million have in common? They are all connected to stealth energy startup C3, which may be entering the business of managing carbon cap-and-trade systems for corporations. In the past two weeks, C3 has filed three Form Ds with the SEC disclosing financings totaling almost $26M. Very little is known about the company publicly, and the company declines to comment on its future plans (or anything else). But from other publicly-available sources, an interesting story can be pieced together.
C3 is the brainchild of Thomas Siebel, former CEO of Siebel Systems which was bought by Siebel’s previous employer Oracle for $5.7 billion in 2005. Siebel has brought in a lot of familiar talent, including former Siebel Systems and Oracle executives Patricia House and Edward Abbo. House is a star, serving on a number of boards and in the past being named one of Fortune’s 50 most powerful women. Abbo is the former CTO of Siebel Systems, among other positions. The holdover team from Siebel, including its CTO, points towards enterprise software.
Also among the C3 board of directors are former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Senator and Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham. Both are powerful Republicans, which comes as no surprise as Siebel played a role in introducing Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin to California. Far more interesting is the role each might play. C3 is focused on energy management and a former Secretary of Energy is a logical (and valuable) asset in that business. More interesting is the potential role of Rice. Rice’s most visible experience is as America’s lead representative to the world, suggesting that C3 is planning an international play.
Another key Director is Jay Dweck, a Managing Director and Global Head of Strategies and Technology for the Institutional Securities Group at Morgan Stanley. Mr. Dweck’s insider knowledge of institutional securities and the underlying technology at least raises the possibility that C3 will seek to securitize and/or create a market for some kind of carbon security.
So what does an enterprise-software, energy-management company with international ambitions, $26 million in capital, and sophisticated financial securities software do? Besides make a lot of money of course.
One logical answer is that the company is planning to create software/platforms for the management of carbon emissions. What makes the space potentially so valuable is cap and trade. These systems substitute a market for regulation; an enterprise’s carbon emissions are measured against a specific amount, the cap. Companies with emissions below the cap can sell their extra “space,” while companies whose emissions exceed their cap need to purchase permits for their overage. Cap and trade is not currently in use in the United States, although it has been proposed and is being pushed by the Obama Administration, but it is being used to reduce carbon emissions on a cost-efficient basis elsewhere, notably in the EU.
Two large and related problems plague cap and trade systems. One is measuring emissions (in an officially sanctioned manner) and the other is pricing them, and those two problems could very well be C3’s targets. The goal in this scenario would be to get licensed or approved to create and run cap-and-trade markets. If cap and trade is ultimately adopted as the way to control carbon emissions in the name of reducing global warming, it will be a multi-billion dollar market.
C3 bills itself as an “Energy and Emissions Management” company. Limited information about it is currently available at c3welcome.com, itself an unlikely website. The company also appears to own c3-carbon.com, and may be shopping for a more euphonious domain as it has chosen to remain at the welcome site as opposed to the longer term c3-carbon.com, which redirects.
There are other companies tackling this problem such as Greenstone Carbon Management, Carbon Hub, and Carbon Trust, but the glowing board/leadership pedigree on top of nearly limitless access to capital make C3 a diamond in the rough, so to speak.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
So there's actually two things to tell you about here; for one thing, you can play Tekken 3 on your HTC HD2 phone. That's cool and all, but the big story is the emulator used to play it. The emulator, named FPSECE, not only supports the Playstation 1, but the touchscreen as well.
(Click for large. Two versions of W Magazine cover featuring Demi Moore, one for the US edition, one for Korea. Note the apparent difference in the area around the hip. Comparison here.)
Lawyers representing Demi Moore sent a threatening letter to Boing Boing over the holidays which demanded that we remove a post I published in November, or face legal consequences. In the referenced Boing Boing post, I published photographer Anthony Citrano's speculation that a recent W Magazine cover image of the actress may have been crudely manipulated by magazine staff to alter her hip, and appear thinner.
And here is Boing Boing's response to Ms. Moore's attorneys (PDF), prepared by Marc Mayer of the law firm MS&K. The letter is a thing of beauty, and I encourage you to read it in full.
The letter from Moore's attorney, Martin D. ("Marty") Singer, claims that we set out to slander Moore (Boing Boing did not, nor did Mr. Citrano). The letter also includes denials from people involved in the production of the W Magazine cover who insist that the image was not manipulated at all.
Since receiving this letter, we have discovered that an alternate, and seemingly more anatomically correct version of the W magazine cover (with more hip-flesh) was published in W's South Korean edition. We have also been informed that Ms. Moore's attorneys have sent similar letters to other blogs that discussed the possible digital alteration of the US cover image. The story is now being covered by a number of other news organizations and blogs.
A little background: Digital manipulation of photo and video content (good, bad, or disastrous) is an often-revisited subject here on Boing Boing. A quick Google search reveals that more than 3,600 items in the boingboing.net archives reference the digital alteration of images with Photoshop. A series of Boing Boing posts in September and October of this year examining how a Ralph Lauren model was slimmed to impossibly slender proportions became the subject of widespread media interest, and legal threats directed at this blog from Ralph Lauren's camp.
But fashion photos aren't the only digitally altered images to have been discussed on Boing Boing.
Sometimes the "Photoshop Disasters" we blog have more critical news value. Back in 2008, I blogged about an image credited to Iran's state-run media agency that showed multiple missiles defiantly shooting into the sky. The LA Times, New York Times and other major news organizations ran the image as legitimate. Our readers and other "citizen forensic analysts" discussed the image, and proved it to have been altered to fake the appearance of more missiles, thereby implying greater military strength on Iran's part. Still earlier, in 2003, our readers spotted and discussed an anomaly within a photo about soldiers in Iraq published in the New York Times. And way back in 2001, we blogged about a hoaxed image that purported to be an unaltered shot taken seconds before a plane crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11.
So, back to Ms. Moore: On November 17, 2009, I published the Boing Boing post titled "Was Demi Moore Ralph-Laurenized on 'W' mag cover, with missing hip-flesh?." This post consisted entirely of a guest editorial of sorts from Anthony Citrano, a Los Angeles-based professional photographer with whom I am socially acquainted.
In the post, Mr. Citrano examined the possibility that a W Magazine cover featuring Demi Moore had been digitally altered in a manner that left clues indicating it had been altered. Specifically, it looked like a portion of her hip had gone missing. Before I published the Boing Boing post, the Gawker Media blog Jezebel had already asked the same questions, and other blogs and news/tabloid websites soon followed.
Within days, Ms. Moore responded on Twitter to deny that her hips had been digitally altered ("Here is the original image people my hips were not touched don't let these people bullshit you!"), and linked to another version of the W Magazine cover shot which she claimed was "the original image."
I promptly published another Boing Boing post with the full text of Ms. Moore's denial, and an offer from Mr. Citrano to make a $5,000 donation to a charity of Ms. Moore's choosing if the image she'd published were provably the unretouched original.
Boing Boing commenters discussed the possibilities that the disputed image was or was not retouched, and the technical methods one might employ to alter, or detect alterations, in such an image. The UK newspaper Telegraph went so far as to publish an article speculating that Ms. Moore's head may have been photoshopped onto another model's body. Interest in the story gradually fizzled out on our blog, and other websites where the matter had been discussed.
But then, weeks later, we received a letter from Mr. Singer, the attorney representing Ms. Moore. So did Jezebel, Anthony Citrano, and the blog Oh No They Didn't. Citrano published a detailed post examining image forensics. Links to all known responses, and to ensuing media coverage, at the bottom of this post.
If there is any party we feel is due criticism, it is not Moore, a beautiful 47-year-old who proves that age is no impediment to youth—but rather those who apparently feel that no-one is fit to be seen without some aspect of his or her appearance being "worked."
In fact, it's now practically unheard of for an image to go from camera to press without some degree of digital manipulation. When fashion photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott write (in the statement accompanying the letter we received from Ms. Moore's attorney) that no retouching whatsoever was done to Moore's hips, waist or legs, it's an unusual claim: perhaps they would consider releasing other photographs from the shoot to help clear up the matter.
At no point was it the intent of this blog, or this blogger, to insult or offend Ms. Moore, who has embraced the openness of internet culture by way of frequent and intimate Twitter updates. Discussions about whether and/or how a widely circulated image may have been altered are common here on Boing Boing. We are a blog about digital culture, after all, and the technical and creative details that go into producing the images we consume are an essential part of our culture.
Yes, the discussion at hand is only about an image of a celebrity on the cover of a fashion magazine. But the ability to freely discuss the provenance and technical history of a photo, including those with more crucial news value—say, images of detainee abuse, or Iranian missles—is a freedom we believe should be preserved.
Image comparison below, courtesy Boing Boing reader Mark Koeppen.
RELATED URLS:
Letter sent by Demi Moore's attorneys to Boing Boing (PDF).
Response to Ms. Moore's attorneys, prepared by Marc Mayer of MS&K.
Demi Moore cover image, "W Magazine Korea" and direct JPG link.
Demi Moore cover image, W Magazine US
Anthony Citrano's responses to threat letter from Demi Moore's attorneys:
1) first response blog post
2) Singer's letter to Citrano, published in PDF
3) blog post on Korean W Magazine cover
Jezebel's response to threat letter from Demi Moore's attorneys.
Oh No They Didn't responds to threat letter from Demi Moore's attorneys
NEWS LINKS: Media coverage of the controversy over threat letters sent by Demi Moore's attorneys:
Litigation and Trial (legal affairs blog)
Related reading: Wikipedia entry on "The Streisand Effect."
Earlier this evening Gizmodo published leaked images that apparently show off the pricing details for Google’s upcoming Nexus One phone. The Nexus One comes in at a hefty $530 for an unlocked device, or $180 with contract on T-Mobile — pricing that’s pretty standard for a smart phone. But even still, it’s a very big deal. It also looks like Gizmodo’s screenshots may have included clues hinting at a previously unannounced feature for Android: automatic backup of your data.
Under the section for Optional Accessories, the Nexus One will apparently have a docking station available (as did the Droid). The description for the dock is as follows: “Charge your phone while streaming music and backing up your data“.
Now, that text isn’t terribly specific. In the case of the streaming music, I think Google is probably referring to an app like Pandora. In the case of backups, Google could be referring to using one of the third party backup solutions available on Android Market, like the top rated MyBackup Pro. Or it might just be saying that you can manually back up your phone to your computer while it’s charging. Or, it could be referring to a natively supported backup option. I’m guessing it’s the latter.
Up until now Android hasn’t had a native backup solution. Unlike the iPhone, which backs up your data every time you plug the device into a computer, Android simply mounts your device as a USB drive. Granted, you could drag and drop these files to your computer’s desktop if you wanted to, but that’s hardly an intuitive solution and it doesn’t let you selectively update only the files that have changed.
But what would an Android backup service look like? Google obviously favors the cloud, so it seems logical that it could back up your essential data wirelessly. Then again, Android already does that for much of your data, like Gmail and Contacts, because it’s tied to your Google Account. The fact that this backup is done while the phone is docked seems to imply it’s more time consuming. Perhaps it’s something that involves a desktop client — something that Google has avoided until now and would be at odds with their cloud-based strategy.
We’ll likely know for sure by January 5th — the date that the Nexus One is rumored to make its public debut.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
AFP - In the Japan of 2020 a stressed-out salaryman may unwind from his hectic futuristic lifestyle by time-travelling back a few centuries and taking a virtual stroll through medieval Tokyo.
So there’s actually two things to tell you about here; for one thing, you can play Tekken 3 on your HTC HD2 phone. That’s cool and all, but the big story is the emulator used to play it. The emulator, named FPSECE, not only supports the Playstation 1, but the touchscreen as well.
The software is free, but you’ll have to provide your own ROMs of course. The setup can be a bit twitchy but the developers site has some links to video to help you get it set up properly. Who cares though, cause at the end of you’ll be playing Tekken 3 with a touchscreen. How sweet is that?
[via WMPoweruser]
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
So you’ve got a company without an all-that-recognizable name, and you really want to ramp it up. What do you do? Well, if you’re jWIN you buy some street cred by striking up a deal with Polaroid, making your products have a connection with a legacy of creativity and innovation that you had nothing to do with.
jWIN, producer of inexpensive electronics, just announced that they have entered into a licensing agreement with Polaroid, the film and camera titan that’s fallen onto tough times lately. Obviously, this all comes down to what’s in a name, and jWIN is hoping to leverage the Polaroid brand into the new digital world that Polaroid couldn’t find their own way in.
From the press release:
PORT WASHINGTON, NY – (December 29, 2009) – jWIN Electronics Corporation, a leading consumer electronics company that brings uniquely styled brand name quality products to consumers worldwide, announced the signing of an exclusive long-term licensing agreement with PLR IP Holdings, LLC, (PLR) owners of the Polaroid brand. jWIN acquired the exclusive rights to produce and market in numerous countries throughout the world an extensive assortment of peripherals for PC’s, console games, mobile phones, audio/video as well as telephones, certain laptop carrying cases and cleaning care accessories starting January 2010.
“Polaroid is excited to partner with jWIN, a solid company with proven product development and distribution capabilities in the US and around the world” said Scott W. Hardy, president of PLR.”
“We are proud to partner with PLR in this major licensing agreement that will enable jWIN to offer quality Polaroid-branded products by leveraging our core competence of creating award winning innovative products at competitive prices with the global awareness and built-in equity of the Polaroid brand,” says Sean Cho, director of marketing and strategic planning at jWIN. “We thrive in the consumer electronics, peripherals and accessories markets by offering consumers high quality products with innovative designs at smart prices. We look forward to bringing that same value proposition into the new line of Polaroid branded products.”
For more information on jWIN products please visit www.jwin.com and www.i-luv.com
Would the prophet Muhammad have played soccer, were he alive today? Is it okay to eat meals with my parents, even though they're unclean? All this and more he asked, and we know this because Wired Danger Room dug up a slew of links.
The following post credited to "Farouk1986" is to me the most chilling of all, because it is the most human. As was the response that followed, from another guy on the forum who'd been to the same emotional place—c'mon, haven't you? And yeah, that's a slightly enlarged version of the actual messageboard emoticon Farouk adorned his post with. No, I'm not joking.
Loneliness (Farouk1986, on gawaher.com)Basically, the problem I'm having is that I've been having extreme loneliness...for many years. I don't really know what to do because I'm not the type who likes to go out much, and I'm just shy and quiet. Even on the internet, I don't feel comfortable posting much because it exposes myself. Sometimes people are so mean.
So I'm trying to figure out what to do. I just wish I had someone to give me attention and stuff. I wish I had someone who would be there to listen to me, and always be nice to me. It really hurts to have someone neglect me or be mean. Unfortunately, a weakness of mine is that I'm sensitive, but I think I became more sensitive after something bad happened some years ago.
I wish I had at least one nice person to talk to, maybe over e-mail or Messenger. Of course, if I could find someone to marry, then Insha'Allah I would have someone in real life to give me all the attention and affection I wanted. So far, the families we've met aren't interested in me, though.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sit back and enjoy a trailer that shows a bit of gameplay of Borderland’s next DLC expansion, Mad Moxxi Underdome Riot. [via Joystiq]
Ford, who recently announced dealer installed WiFi in Sync-enabled vehicles, has now announced that some vehicles will have HD radio and iTunes tagging in 2010.
Ford is the first automaker to announce this technology which will turn normal radio into nearly CD-quality sound with an added bonus of being able to tag songs for later purchase on iTunes. And it is a very simple process as well. Users simply need to hit the “TAG” button on the radio display when they hear a song they want to purchase. The vehicle is able to store up to 100 “tags” so unless you decide you like every single song you hear as you drive from California to New York, you should be fine.
Once you hit that tag button, the data is transferred to a connected iPod. Then, once you sync your iPod to your iTunes, you’ll be able to view all the songs you tagged and decide if you like them enough to purchase them or not.
So now, if your like me and always tell yourself “Ok, I want this song!” as your driving down the road but forget by the time you got home, you are in luck. Ford is promising amazing quality music and the ability to purchase it later. Pretty cool in my opinion. Big question though, if your in a car that is a roaming hotspot, why would you need to tag your songs if you can just pull up your laptop and purchase them before you go into the hardware store?
Read [Mashable]
Full Story » | Written by Greg Billetdeaux for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
After our earlier post on the Nexus One, there was a lot of debate surrounding how much the thing would cost. It appears that this information is out there now. According to some leaked documents sent to Gizmodo, the Nexus One will be $529.99 unlocked and $179.99 if you sign up for a two-year T-Mobile contract (which runs $79.99 a month). This information is not 100% confirmed, but it seems in line with earlier reports and common sense.
So what does this mean? Well, at first glance, it’s pretty standard, really. For example, you can buy an iPhone without having to sign up for a contract, but it will cost you $599 or $699 depending on the storage size of the device. With a contract, those models run $199 and $299, respectively. The difference is that those phones, and many of the others you can buy without a contract, are still carrier-locked. That means that even if you buy them without a monthly contract, you will eventually have to sign-up for some kind of plan through that carrier, if you plan to use that device. That is, unless you plan to manually unlock it, something which in most cases voids the warranty — if it works at all.
But Google is supposedly selling this $530 Nexus One completely unlocked. That means that you can use it with any carrier — provided that carrier is running a compatible GSM network, which the Nexus One is built to run on. In the U.S., that basically means the device will be able to run on T-Mobile or AT&T. Though given earlier leaked specs, it would seem that if you do run it on AT&T, it may only work with EDGE data, and not the faster 3G variety. In other words, the thing still is rather locked down. In order to use it to its full potential in the U.S., you’ll likely want to be using it with T-Mobile anyway. But that’s not so bad since T-Mobile offers pay-as-you go SIM cards, though they are not a great deal.
Still, the fact remains that this in an important moment in the mobile industry in the U.S. While unlocked phones are common abroad, they’re almost unheard of here where the carriers rule with an iron fist. The iPhone was able to break this domination somewhat, but they’re still only tied to one carrier (AT&T). Google directly selling an unlocked phone, even if it’s limited, is a big step in the right direction. As we noted earlier, the next step for them is to sell an unlocked device that is compatible with both GSM and CDMA networks, then things will really start to get interesting. And even if they don’t do that, in the next couple of years, the next generation LTE networks will come into play, and those promise a more unified mobile experience from a hardware perspective.
So yes, while it’s true that Google is unlikely to be selling a $530 phone in droves, its existence means something. It points to a future where the carriers don’t dominate the mobile scene with their ridiculous contracts and lock-in policies. And that’s a good thing.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Looks like 2010 is turning out to be the year of the e-book reader. I’m not sure at what point these are going to stop being news, but here we go again. Insdream is launching the SX601 which seems to borrow some significant design ideas from another rather popular e-book reader. The Insdream does use a different type of screen from the source material (can you say Kindle), but looks pretty much the same otherwise.
Insdream states that 6-inch DSTN panel is better then the E Ink display that Amazon uses, however refresh rate is really not all that important when you are talking about e-book readers. Insdream’s reader is also missing a wireless connection and support from the Amazon.com website, however it does have a text to speech in Mandarin Chinese, something that the Kindle does lack. The Insdream supports TXT, HTML, PDF, EPUB, PDB, and several other popular e-book formats. Battery life is expected to be around two weeks of regular reading.
I wouldn’t expect to ever see this anywhere other then China, considering the potential for lawsuits, and we have no idea what it’d cost anyway.
[via SlashGear]
Two weeks ago, Apple opened the floodgates for video recording apps on the iPhone, ending a longstanding ban. Nobody was waiting longer for the change than mobile video startup Qik, which tonight is further building out its collection of iPhone apps with the launch of the Qik VideoCamera. The new app allows the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G to locally capture video — something that only the 3GS has been able to do until recently.
Qik has, of course, made its name building live streaming apps that allow users to broadcast their video directly from their phones to the web. Their live streaming app, which is called Qik Live, was released less than a week ago.
You’re not exactly going to be grabbing high quality video with the the Qik VideoCamera, but it could be worse. The first application to enable video recording on the older iPhones was iVideoCamera, which captures a mere three frames per second at a 160×213 resolution. Qik claims to record at 7FPS and 352×288, which is obviously a big step up. But it still pales in comparison to the iPhone 3GS’s 30FPS and VGA (640×480) resolution.
Just to recap, Qik now has three applications available on the App Store. First, is Qik for 3GS, which was the company’s ‘workaround’ for Apple’s ban on video — it was for 3GS users only, and would upload videos after recordings were completed. Second is the live streaming app released last week that lets users broadcast from any model iPhone directly to the web. Today’s release is Qik’s third on the app store.
Also see Ustream’s Live Broadcaster (covered here) which offers both live streaming and local recording in the same app.
Here’s a demo the Qik app’s video quality, recorded using an iPhone 3G:
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
For our readers who live in China, you may be excited to learn that Acer and Asustek may be manufacturing 3G cell phones specially designed for China. As of now, it is still a rumor until we hear concrete confirmation from either Acer and Asustek, but as of now there are only some reports and rumors.
Acer and Asustek will be working with China Mobile and China Unicom (some Chinese carriers) to market the specially designed 3G cell phones in 2010. The new cell phones will be operational on TD-SCDMA and WCDMA. Asustek, in terms of cell phones, is perhaps best known for their Garmin-Asus phones. Therefore, it makes sense Asustek plans to tweak, upgrade, and customize the Garmin-Asus smartphones to fit China’s technology. Meanwhile, Acer already has plans to launch around eight smartphones for European and Asian countries in 2010. So, it would not be out of the realm of possibility that they will be offering customized cell phones for China.
Via [Digitimes]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Apple’s apparent filing for the “iSlate” trademark and purchase of the iSlate.com domain has some convinced that iSlate will be the official name of Apple’s rumored touchscreen tablet. Some more digging around led to the discovery of a trademark application for “iGuide,” which bears striking similarities to the iSlate application. The theory, then, is iGuide could be another name candidate for an Apple tablet.
MacRumors, who originally reported evidence that Apple purchased iSlate.com, found that the iGuide trademark application was signed by Apple’s senior trademark specialist Regina Porter, who was also the signer of the the iSlate paperwork. The iGuide application describes features that could be part of a general-purpose gadget:
Computer hardware and computer software for accessing, browsing, searching, recording, organizing, storing, transmitting, receiving, manipulating, streaming, reproducing, playing, and reviewing audio, video, games, music, television, movies, photographs, and other multimedia content
Also, a detail perhaps overlooked by MacRumors — the address of the listed applicant, iGuide Media LLC, shares the same address as the applicant listed for iSlate, Slate Computing LLC: “1209 Orange Street, Wilmington DELAWARE.” That address is linked to Corporation Trust, an agency that assists corporations in expediting legal services and other requests. The implication, then, is Apple hired Corporation Trust to file for the iSlate and iGuide trademarks. Corporation Trust presumably set up accounts as “iGuide Media LLC” and “Slate Computing LLC” for filing their respective trademarks.
Wired.com consulted trademark experts to help assess the iSlate trademark application. They declined to speculate on Apple’s plans, but based on the legal expertise they provided, Wired.com finds it inconclusive that a future Apple product will carry either the name iSlate or iGuide.
Jane Wald, chair of the trademark practice group at Irell and Manella, noted to Wired.com that the iSlate trademark has not been registered in the United States; it’s only been filed. In U.S. trademark law, a company can only win registration of a mark once it provides sufficient evidence it is going to sell the product. That means “iSlate” is not a name set in stone; it could be abandoned.
Furthermore, a company can file for multiple trademarks that are potential candidates for a product’s name. However, a company must file for trademarks in good faith, meaning it must at least be considering using the name in commerce.
“If you filed 100 different [marks] for the same product years in advance, you probably wouldn’t be having a good faith intent, but a few of them doesn’t ring alarm bells,” Wald explained in a phone interview.
In summary, based on appearance of Apple’s trademark specialist on both applications, it’s safe to conclude iSlate and iGuide are trademarks filed for by Apple via the agency CT. And if we are to believe iSlate and iGuide are candidates for an Apple tablet, then there could be a few others out there — but not very many.
iGuide, though? Bleh.
See Also:
Illustration of an imaginary iPhone tablet: Flickr/vernhart
You remember OnLive, right? The service, which lets you play any game remotely on a distant server, has produced much skepticism and much interest, and is now in public beta. We got a good look at it back in March when we were at GDC, and it appears that things are much the same. However, the combination of crowd noise and my bad playing made for a less-than-optimal viewing experience. This video is much clearer and much longer (it's essentially a guest lecture at Columbia), so if you're still interested in the OnLive thing, it may be for you.
This video deals with some of the technical issues that have been brought up. I haven't watched the whole thing (skipped around to get the interesting bits) but he does address some of the compression and packet loss issues they have to deal with.
You remember OnLive, right? The service, which lets you play any game remotely on a distant server, has produced much skepticism and much interest, and is now in public beta. We got a good look at it back in March when we were at GDC, and it appears that things are much the same. However, the combination of crowd noise and my bad playing made for a less-than-optimal viewing experience. This video is much clearer and much longer (it’s essentially a guest lecture at Columbia), so if you’re still interested in the OnLive thing, it may be for you.
This video deals with some of the technical issues that have been brought up. I haven’t watched the whole thing (skipped around to get the interesting bits) but he does address some of the compression and packet loss issues they have to deal with. I remember being told it’s about 4-5Mb/s for 720p/60FPS, which actually seems a bit low for streaming video, but with a specialized codec and stream they seem to have made it work, even with tricky bits like crisscrossing lines and slow gradients. They have a routing technique that they claim reduces latency as well, but can they really guarantee <20ms pings for everyone using the service? Seems optimistic, but overall pretty convincing.
Here is the "business model" slide:
I notice they leave out a very significant number. They say they’re leasing servers, but I assume that’s for crunching video data and streaming it. They need a whole other set of devices to actually run the games. You want to run a game at 1280×720 and 60FPS? That’s a serious investment in hardware. Even with sophisticated planning algorithms for determining peak times and load sharing, you’re going to need thousands and thousands of machines to keep your service running. If I’m wrong and they’ve really avoided this, then I’ll eat my words gladly. Let’s just ballpark some hardware here:
The GPU will have to be at least mid-range, same with the CPU, or it won’t be able to run the newer games. Extra cooling will probably be done on a large scale, but is too squirrely a number to factor in here. Assuming there’s no case and they’re using onboard audio, then they’re looking at a bare minimum of $700 if they buy smart, probably more like $500 if they buy in bulk. Let’s call it $500.
He talks about running things on CPU only, and virtualizing things across servers, but really, when you’re advertising playing the latest games on release, like Assassin’s Creed 2 and Modern Warfare 2, people aren’t going to choose Tetris. The bulk of games people will want to play are going to use real hardware. You can’t sell a product for one purpose and spec it for another.
If each machine costs $500 and they have to serve 100,000 users, let’s say they need to have a third of those available at any time. That’s $500 x 33,000 = $16.5 million. I don’t see that figuring into their calculations anywhere. And I doubt Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA is likely to pony up that much hardware on credit. Depending on how much they charge for month, it might take users a year to “pay off” the hardware that enables their account. And don’t forget, OnLive will have to upgrade regularly, like us poor PC gamers.
I’m still skeptical of the whole service, or at least its scalability, but the fact that it’s publicly displayed and discussed makes it far more real than, say, the Phantom. I assume they’ll be at CES, and maybe we can put some of these concerns to the man himself.
[via Gamertag Radio and Joystiq]
 Channel 4 News | One leg of GSM encryption cracked, cell industry unimpressed Ars Technica A security researcher is in the process of building a table that will enable the cracking of GSM encryption, assuming that a parallel effort to crack its frequency hopping algorithm succeeds. By John Timmer | Last updated December 29, 2009 7:21 PM GSM ... GSM Encryption Cracked, Showing Its Age Secret mobile phone codes cracked Hackers Break GSM Cell Phone Code |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Computers, Hardware, Gadgets / Other
USB 3.0 is slowly becoming mainstream in the gadget world. But we haven’t yet seen a 3.0 flash drive until now. Power Quotient International Co., Ltd (PQI) is making three versions of its U366 flash drive, 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. It comes in an aluminum casing with a plastic cover and will ship in either blue or grey colors. Dimensions are 87mm x 22mm x 12mm. Big news is that it will be USB 3.0.
USB 3.0 means that these flash drives could possibly be capable of bandwidth up to 5GB/s while retaining backwards compatibility with older standards. PQI also states that the U366 will have transfer speeds of up to 97MB/s.
Read [PQI]
Full Story » | Written by Greg Billetdeaux for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
If anything, it looks more awkward than playing with dual analog sticks, but given the right game design, it could work well. Something where precise movement is less important than intuitive interaction (the Penumbra series comes to mind) might just make this fly.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Communications, Accessories, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones
Before the Google Nexus One has even touched a consumer’s hand, Seidio has announced they will be providing “the ultimate accessories.” Since Seidio has manufactured many accessories for BlackBerry, HTC, LG, Apple, and Samsung, we can assume the accessories they will create for the Nexus one to be of high quality, and useful.
While nothing has officially been announced yet, the accessories will probably be along the lines of screen protectors, travel chargers, desktop chargers, docks, and Bluetooth accessories. Unfortunately, there is no word on pricing or availability, mainly because there is no exact retail date for the Nexus One yet. As soon as a date becomes available, I’m sure Seidio will post product pages with pertinent information for the various accessories they have planned.
It is interesting to note the timing of Seidioi announcing they will have the ultimate accessories for the Nexus One. They are letting the public know well ahead of the official launch date for the phone, which is early January. It seems as if Seidio is banking on the Nexus One to be very popular ensuring people will buy their accessories.
Via [UnwiredView]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
By Eric Savitz, Blogger, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
Motorola (MOT) may be planning to announce a pair of new phones at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, according to Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
It’s almost January 1st, 2010 and we’ve been mulling over our favorites of 2009 – and the previous decade. Here we present another installment of our “Of the Decade” lists.
It was a decade of upheaval and of settling into niches. It was a decade of unexpected successes and, consequently, the losses they caused. This is by no means a complete list of the fallen, but we have put our heads together and decided on the few which truly represented the losers of the 2000s.
Now let us never speak of them again.
It’s almost January 1st, 2010 and we’ve been mulling over our favorites of 2009 – and the previous decade. Here we present another installment of our “Of the Decade” lists.
Once consumer trepidation regarding e-tailers wore off, it was really only a matter of time before physical stores with limited stock and pushy salespeople bit the dust. Among the fallen we have Circuit City, CompUSA, and Gateway stores among others. Sure, for sundries, your Wal-Mart and Big K are doing just fine, but they also sell sweaters and apples. Best Buy is doing all right, but they’re really the Alamo of tech retailers. Poor bastards know what’s coming to ‘em, too.
The combination of low prices, reseller markets, the long tail effect, and the rise of internet literacy among the buying class has resulted in a ridiculous among of growth among the biggest e-tailers. And while I doubt we’re going to see a return of the glorious Kozmo.com, things like Amazon Fresh and Trojan horses like the Nook and Kindle suggest that even further dominance is to come.
 Motorola
Around the time of the iPhone being announced, the RAZR was the hottest handset on the market. It was thin as hell, looked futuristic, and did absolutely nothing different from any other phone. In fact, Motorola hadn’t made a phone that did anything different in years. And as things like Blackberrys and semi-smart phones began gaining traction on the mid-range-handset market, Moto continued to put out “improved” versions of the RAZR, or body modifications like the KRZR or whatever. Never mind that the phone was garbage fundamentally, let’s just keep pushing it! No long term plans necessary! They’ve salvaged themselves somewhat with the Droid, but that can’t last long; the Android market is too mercurial. Moto threw away an enormous lead and brand name, and barring a miracle, I don’t see any way they can get it back. |
 RIAA/MPAA
What can I say here? These stodgy and litigious institutions continue to dig their grave to this day. A renaissance in media distribution was unfolding before their eyes, and instead of taking the bull by the horns, they sued the audience. Can you think of a worse way to handle the last decade of technological and cultural changes? I can’t. At every turn these Associations (and their counterparts throughout the world) have made the exact wrong choices. Suing children, fabricating numbers, instituting ridiculous DRM schemes — it’s been a decade-long disaster, and when the major labels all fall over dead, I’ll dance on their graves. |
 AOL
Let me just say: I appreciate what AOL did. It put a lot of people online. It put them into a weird pseudo-internet, sure, but it broke the ice for millions and familiarized them with the web, e-mail, and A/S/L. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really a lot of room for AOL in the new order of things — AOL or the other big services like it. AOL’s role in the world today is much different than what it was, but instead of becoming a powerful brand in itself (like Yahoo!), it has receded into the background. And the fact is that’s because it represents all that was going to go wrong with the internet: it represents the corporate-controlled, content-locked, closely-monitored internet that the big guys would just love to foist on us. |
Doug: Internet Explorer, both the mobile and desktop versions. At the height of its reign in the middle of the decade, it had over 95% market share. Now that number’s hovering around 65% thanks to Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome and, to a certain extent, Opera (especially on mobile devices). I haven’t personally used Internet Explorer for any significant amount of time in the past three years despite using it for everything in the early part of the decade. It’s mind boggling that Microsoft sat on its hands and watched other browsers eat its lunch for so long.
Matt: As much as Toshiba lost in its investment into HD DVD, the consumer lost even more because of the silly format war. All we ever wanted was an easy way to watch high definition content on our HDTVs. Instead we got the HD DVD vs Blu-ray format war that did nothing but confuse the general public and infuriate early adopters. Although the format war definitely caused more people to look take a serious look at digital downloads, which is somewhat of a win for everyone.
Nicholas: I’d nominate myself as biggest tech loser of the past decade, but that would sorta violate the spirit of this here category. That aside, I might go so far as to say Sirius XM just based on what the two companies (back when they were two companies) were supposed to be: revolutionary radio~! It very much has lost its appeal, as has radio in general thanks to things like the iTunes Store, Spotify, Pandora, and the less-than-legal sources of acquiring music. Talk radio—Hannity, Limbaugh, Opie and Anthony, Ron and Fez, Howard Stern (I guess, not really a fan) and the like—is obviously a different story;XM channel 202 is the only reason I still bother to subscribe. If O&A and R&F were ever to leave so would I. So yeah, the whole idea of commercial, music radio, specifically Sirius XM and how it/they tried to be different but really aren’t, would be a pretty big loser.
Dave: Print media has really taken it in the shorts in the last 10 years. Once considered the first, best, and only way to get your information, people have come to realize that traditional print media is a lumbering dinosaur, trying to keep pace with a fast changing world that they are always 12 hours behind. I do feel sympathy for the old guard, but unless they can learn to evolve quickly, print media will be going out with the baby boomers – because they are the only ones who actually buy newspapers any more.
John: Dead tree books. I just bought a Stephen King book – Under the Dome – for the Kindle. My buddy showed me the actual book. It was a 1000 pages long and so horribly thick that it looked overly daunting. When guys like me, guys who like to read, just don’t want to carry around a ream of paper onto the plane, the publishing industry needs to worry. Maybe they’ll get a boost from Mr. Sparky Pants but as Seth Godin writes:
Amazon and the Kindle have killed the bookstore. Why? Because people who buy 100 or 300 books a year are gone forever. The typical American buys just one book a year for pleasure. Those people are meaningless to a bookstore. It’s the heavy users that matter, and now officially, as 2009 ends, they have abandoned the bookstore. It’s over.
I agree and I think books – in electronic form – still have a long and lucrative life ahead of them.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
What's so hard about this, guys? I mean, obviously you can't make a controller that works with all the games out there, but if you make a good, cheap, basic one, plenty of developers will add a control option that accommodates it. Instead, we get garbage like the Game Grip and this plastic Batarang-looking thing.
 Globe and Mail | Why Aren't GPS Navigation Systems More Reliable? PC World We've been down this road before: A trusting soul gets bum directions from a GPS navigation system, winds up in the middle of nowhere, and may or may not survive the ordeal. The latest incident took place a few days ago in the Eastern Oregon desert, ... GPS gets couple stuck for three days GPS No Substitute For Common Sense, Preparation Cheery-voiced GPS units lead drivers into danger |
What’s so hard about this, guys? I mean, obviously you can’t make a controller that works with all the games out there, but if you make a good, cheap, basic one, plenty of developers will add a control option that accommodates it. Instead, we get garbage like the Game Grip and this plastic Batarang-looking thing.
Look. You have a handle, some buttons… here, I’ll save you the trouble of hiring a designer:
How’s that look? Doable? My god, can it really have taken three years for something like this to come out?
[via Engadget]
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
January 5. That’s the day we’ll learn all we want to know about the Nexus One. Google didn’t explicitly say anything about the device in its invites today for an “Android press gathering,” but we all know what is coming. And T-Mobile, which will be the initial carrier option for the Nexus One, does too. And while other Android devices such as the G1, the myTouch 3G, and most recently, the Droid have garnered a lot of buzz, the Nexus One could be different. And its unveiling should mark an interesting moment in the brief history of the Android platform.
Google is unveiling the Nexus One just two months (nearly to the day) after the Verizon Droid was released. The Droid, of course, was seen as the Android platform’s Messiah by some, and the one phone that could maybe hold a candle to the iPhone. Sales have been good, and the general consensus is that the phone is a winner. But now, just two months later, we have a new Android phone that by just about every account is better than it. In fact, the only real upsides for the Droid over the Nexus One is that it runs on Verizon’s network, and that it has a physical keyboard. The Verizon point is certainly a fair one — there’s a reason why everyone is clamoring for a Verizon iPhone. But the physical keyboard argument seems moot, as the consensus is that the Droid keyboard is a pretty poor one.
I don’t know about you, but I’d be pretty annoyed if I just shelled out my money for a Droid, and locked myself into a 2-year contract (even one with Verizon). It reminds me of when Apple first unveiled the iPhone for $599 then slashed the price just a few months later, leaving all the early-adopters bitter. Apple eventually gave a partial rebate to those buyers, but it still was a curious move. And Google’s is arguably worse here, as it’s not just about the money, but about the unveiling of a superior piece of hardware so quickly after it put a lot of its own marketing muscle behind the Droid, trying to convince customers that it was the Android phone to buy.
Of course, after news of the device got out, Google’s official stance was that this new Android phone was simply an experiment that it was using internally. But the “eating your own dogfood” excuse quickly evaporates when you open these devices to the public less than a month after writing that. Instead, this looks to be a situation where Google is eating its own children, or at the very least, its own tail.
All that said, while I feel for the early Droid buyers, I admire what it looks like Google is doing here from bigger picture perspective. They don’t seem to care that they’re potentially alienating their existing mobile partners by bringing their own phone, that they will sell themselves, to market. This has long been the exact argument as to why Microsoft would never make its own hardware. (Of course, that stance is not working out so well for them right now as Windows Mobile market share continues to fall.) It would appear that Google realizes that the best way to make a truly great mobile device is to take control of most of it themselves.
The single biggest reason that the iPhone is great is because Apple is in nearly complete control of it. In fact, the only thing they’re not in control of, AT&T’s network, is its greatest weakness. Before the iPhone, no device manufacturer, let alone software manufacturer, had anywhere near the type of control that Apple does over a mobile device. With Nexus One, Google is moving in that direction too. And that’s the right call.
I have no doubt that at their event, Google will have plenty of spin for why they are taking the reins on this device. I’m sure we’ll hear about the dogfood aspect, I’m sure we’ll hear about how great this device is for developers, and I’m sure we’ll hear about “choices” (as in, there are a huge range of Android phones on a wide range of carriers). But make no mistake, the Nexus One will be the Android phone to get. And I suspect that will be the case until Google comes out with the Nexus Two. Hopefully, that won’t be in a couple months from now.
And I hope Google continues down this path. If they do, they’ll be taking power away from the carriers and traditional mobile handset manufacturers, and giving more of it to consumers in the U.S. Those guys have had their time; they have failed. The next logical step for Google along this path is to create a device that can run on both GSM and CDMA networks, so any consumers can pop in any SIM card from any carrier and use their device as they see fit. Of course, obtaining a SIM card without a contract from some of the carriers will still likely be an issue, but moves like this from Google can help pressure them into that.
And further down the line, as we move into the 4G networks, interoperability might actually be something that we see. Imagine a U.S. where the carriers have to have the best network or customers will just leave and join another one as they see fit. Androids may dream of electric sheep, but that’s what I dream about.
Update: For more on the supposed Nexus One pricing, see here.
[photo via]
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
The contract manufacturer Compal Communications will ship 600,000 Pixi smartphones to Palm (PALM) in the calendar fourth quarter, rather than a previously projected 800,000, according to DigiTimes, citing a report in the Chinese-language Commercial Times.
The brief story says that the lower shipments reflect the failure of the cellphone’s software to pass tests conducted by Verizon Wireless (VZ), which is widely expected to start selling the phone sometime in 2010. The piece says that shipments to Verizon will be delayed to the first quarter.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Sales of the iPhone in China appear to be picking up steam after a relatively underwhelming start. Though it took China Unicom, Apple’s (AAPL) carrier partner in the country, 40 days to sell its first 100,000 iPhones, the company managed to sell another 200,000 in the 20 days that followed.
So, 300,000 iPhones sold in China since the device arrived at market in early November. Clearly, that’s not the nearly the number Apple sold in the U.S. when the iPhone debuted in 2007. But it is an improvement over the paltry number sold at launch.
Stone soup for online crowdsourcing DIYers! This month, the folks at Instructables.com launched a pilot for creating a working restaurant (or a fun dinner party) using crowdsourcing. The whole thing is a collection of other Instructables on the site. Arne Hendriks says:
This means not only the food but also the lights, the furniture, the decoration etc. Of course everything in the place comes with full credits and instructions so people leave the restaurant knowing how to re-create all the things they used and ate.
Make an Instructables Restaurant (Thanks, Arne!)
Source: Boing Boing | 29 Dec 2009 | 2:57 pm
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Did you buy a present via your iPhone this holiday season? EBay (EBAY) says the chances you did increased greatly this year, citing a threefold increase in items purchased via smartphones during the holiday season.
For the year, the company said, buyers and sellers did around $500 million worth of transactions using their phones.
I assume Amazon (AMZN) saw a similar trend, particularly since it rolled out well-received shopping apps for both Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry and Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone this year.
But note that for whatever reason, Amazon doesn’t mention mobile in its annual “let us tell you how awesome are holiday sales were, without actually attaching any real numbers to these claims” release.
[Image credit: ktylerconk]
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Google
It looks as if January 5, 2010 is going to be the day that we find out the details on the Nexus One. And thankfully it will be the official details which will be coming straight from Google.
According to a recent posting over on Engadget, Google has announced plans for an “Android press gathering” in Mountain View on January 5th. And yes, that was correct, the event is taking place in Mountain View and not at CES in Las Vegas.
Now, assuming we see the unveiling of the Nexus One and it becomes available immediately…who is going to be willing to part with their hard earned cash?
Read [Engadget]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Google’s much-anticipated new phone, the HTC-designed Nexus One, could make its debut next week.
Google has scheduled a press event for Tuesday, January 5 at its Mountain View, California, headquarters. Though the company hasn’t mentioned Nexus One, the invitation mentions Android, Google’s mobile operating system for phones, and the company is widely expected to show the device that has had smartphone industry watchers buzzing for weeks.
The invitation-only event will be held two days before the Consumer Electronics Show begins in Las Vegas and just one day before many CES exhibitors have scheduled major press conferences.
It’s a move straight out of the Apple playbook. In January, 2007, Apple famously upstaged CES when it unveiled the first iPhone at an event in San Francisco — even as most technology journalists and executives were huddled in Las Vegas for the trade show.
Google hasn’t commented about Nexus One. But recent online leaks suggest the Nexus One will be a GSM-device with a 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, accelerometer and compass. It is expected to run the latest version of the Android operating system, Android 2.1.
Where Google could really innovate is how the phone is sold. The Nexus One is likely to be sold unlocked, which means consumers don’t have to be tied into long-term contracts with telecom carriers. T-Mobile, which offered the first Google phone, could provide “billing, coverage, features and rate plans,” says TMONews, a blog that tracks T-Mobile. The Nexus One could also go on sale the morning of Jan. 5, says the site, though there’s no word yet on possible pricing.
Will Google offer expensive unlocked handsets in the United States — a la Nokia — or can it come up with a clever model to subsidize the device cost through mobile advertising or carrier support? Google’s press conference next week should answer that question.
See Also:
Photo: Cory O’Brien
By Jimmy Wales and Andrea Weckerle, Founder, Wikipedia and Founder and President of CiviliNation, respectively
In less than 20 years, the World Wide Web has irrevocably expanded the number of ways we connect and communicate with others. This radical transformation has been almost universally praised.
What hasn’t kept pace with the technical innovation is the recognition that people need to engage in civil dialogue. What we see regularly on social networking sites, blogs and other online forums is behavior that ranges from the carelessly rude to the intentionally abusive.
Flare-ups occur on social networking sites because of the ease by which thoughts can be shared through the simple press of a button. Ordinary people, celebrities, members of the media and even legal professionals have shown insufficient restraint before clicking send. There is no shortage of examples—from the recent Twitter heckling at a Web 2.0 Expo in New York, to a Facebook poll asking whether President Obama should be killed.
The comments sections of online gossip sites, as well as some national media outlets, often reflect semi-literate, vitriolic remarks that appear to serve no purpose besides disparaging their intended target. Some sites exist solely as a place for mean-spirited individuals to congregate and spew their venomous verbiage.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Everybody has a damn iPhone app nowadays, and why should NCAA programs be any different? Row27 Studios, a design firm that has 58 NCAA clients including the Cal Bears, UNC Tar Heels and Florida Gators, has begun to fill that void. They’ve created an iPhone app that is perfect for University sports programs, and provides them with a way of reaching their fans through the mobile device we all know and love (or not). They launched their first app for the Kansas University Jayhawks, and it boasts great features such as live scoring, RSS feeds of team news and a couple cool minigames to occupy you during half-time.
The Kansas University app is just the first iteration of this platform, which can be re-purposed for any other NCAA sports program. According to Creative Director Jonathan Dusing, due to Row27’s close relationships with other NCAA sports teams, their iPhone app will probably soon be appear under many other college sports names.
Perhaps even more interesting than the launch of the app is the fact that Row27 didn’t spend a dime of its own money on development. The app was built as a custom project for Kansas University and Row27 managed to keep the rights to re-purpose the same application for other college sports teams. Besides being a great way to run a business, it also means that no other sports team has to take the risk KU did when requesting development of the app. Granted, KU bit the bullet – but they also got the special attention of getting to decide all the features and the specifics of the app themselves. It’s a win-win.
The app itself is pretty cool. Besides features that are available elsewhere such as live scoring and in-depth game-by-game statistics for all major sports, the app also has tons of additional features perfect for a University-specific sports application. For example, you can chat with other KU fans within the app – a great way to ask questions such as “What’s the best happy hour after the game” or “How do we make sure Cal doesn’t upset us during our game tomorrow?” Furthermore, it’s connected to KU’s news feeds so fans can get all of the sports news their hearts desire.
But one of the real benefits is for fringe sports – if you’re interested in Volleyball, Soccer, Softball and Baseball, it can be hard to get real-time sports statistics at the collegiate level on mobile. Because this is a University-sanctioned application, Row27’s app can provide data that no other application can. They are integrated to the standard NCAA statistics management system (Stat Crew) so they can stream statistics for any game that have live statistics.
It’ll be interesting to see if such turn-key branded applications do well on the App Store. With football season gone, it may be a while until the Kansas University app will do a couple thousand sales, but I have no doubt that you’ll soon see branded apps across most NCAA programs. It’s just a matter of time.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks, Household, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous
E-readers seem to be the hot thing this season; evidenced by the amount of Kindle sales this season. But one company claims to be going on the offensive in this booming market. Paradigm Shift Sourcing and Manufacturing will introduce two e-readers during CES next month. One will have a 5-inch display and the other will have a 7-inch display. The kicker is that both of these readers will have high resolution, high contrast, full-color display.
But another cool thing is that they claim that these E-readers will be more than just E-readers. The 5-inch EER-051 will double as an MP3-player and photo viewer. It will come with 1GB of memory built-in, expandable with an SD expansion slot; and it will support many E-book formats including; ANSI, Unicode TXT, DOC, PDF, HTML, FB2, PDB and unprotected EPUB.
The 7-inch EER-071WF will have even more in it because it will run Windows CE with a full touchscreen display, built-in WiFi, and the ability to read DRM encrypted E-books. Paradigm Shift is calling this one more of a UMPC rather then just an E-reader because it will be able to use chat programs through E-buddy and be able to access and view videos on YouTube. It will also be able to read Microsoft Word and Excel files, PDF files, flash video and AAC, and MP3’s. It will have 2GB of memory built-in expandable by a microSD expansion slot.
The 5-inch version will come in a variety of colors including white, pastel blue, pastel periwinkle, pastel pink, black and silver and cost $150. But the 7-inch, more professional version it seems, will only come in black and white and cost $200. Paradigm Shift claims that the devices will begin shipping in late February.
Read [Electronista]
Full Story » | Written by Greg Billetdeaux for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Let’s face it: The iPhone’s “Genius” recommendation tool for finding apps is mediocre at best. Fortunately a startup cooked up something better. It’s called Appsaurus.
You “train” Appsaurus into understanding you better by tapping apps on a list that you like; you swipe to remove those you dislike. Every time you tap an app you might like, a new list pops up with possible recommendations. You keep tapping and deleting apps until Appsaurus grows familiar with your preferences. The app breaks its learning process into “Evolution Stages”; the final one is “All-Knowing.” It doesn’t end there, either: It keeps learning with each app you select or ban.
I had some time to test drive Appsaurus and found a few gems after tapping through. To me, an even more useful feature is the ability to perform a custom search for a type of app you’re looking for based on a search term and category. From there on, Appsaurus narrows down the lists based on your criteria, and you find recommendations the same way — tap apps you like and swipe those you wouldn’t consider.
Appsaurus is a slick-looking app, and it’s better than Genius. The App Store’s Genius tool makes recommendations based only on the apps currently installed on your iPhone, and it spits out a pretty bland list of recommendations, from my experience.
Appsaurus’ approval can be considered a triumph. In November, Wired.com published a story documenting a major risk of developing for mobile platforms controlled by larger corporations: You can be easily squashed if you inadvertently compete with the giant. Software development house Hello, Chair was an example. The team of three was working hard on an App Store recommendation tool called Appsaurus, but Apple beat them to the idea by releasing App Store Genius in September.
Put yourself in Hello, Chair’s shoes, and you’ll face some tough questions. Do you keep moving forward with Appsaurus? Is Apple going to reject the app since it does something similar to a built-in iPhone feature (as the company has done with apps that “duplicate functionality” of the iPhone)? Ultimately, is it wise to continue competing with a giant?
Hello, Chair opted to finish Appsaurus and submit it. Apple did, in fact, reject the app a number of times: The initial submission of Appsaurus pulled information from star ratings and user reviews to help make recommendations, but Apple is extremely protective of that data and wouldn’t allow it to be used in the app.
Finally, after a series of confusing phone calls with Apple and tweaks to Appsaurus, the app showed up in the App Store on Monday. And, albeit a compromise, the end result is still pretty sweet. It’s available in the App Store for $1.
Download Link [iTunes]
See Also:
 PC World | O2 Joins AT&T in Blaming iPhone for Network Issues PC World O2, one of the leading providers of wireless service in the United Kingdom, has apologized to customers for recent network issues including the inability to make or receive calls, or transmit data. Like AT&T, the United States exclusive ... AT&T: The most hated company in iPhone land AT&T Resumes NY iPhone Sales The Mysterious Big Apple iPhone Lockdown |
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Google
BGR managed to obtain a T-Mobile release which contains information on Google’s plan with the Nexus One. Instead of having various wireless companies sell the phone, Google will completely sell the handset via the web. If you decide to purchase the phone, you can then go to T-Mobile and they will provide the voice and data services.
In addition, the phone is set to be available in early January, presumably after CES 2010. Interestingly enough, Google alongside HTC plan to field all support questions, instead of T-Mobile. I guess that makes sense since they are the ones who designed all the hardware and probably know the device the best.
Now all we need to know is the pricing for such a phone and whether T-Mobile customers will be willing to flock to Google and pick up a Nexus One.
Via [BGR]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
There have been whispers around the rumor mill for roughly a week now that Google was planning on throwing a press shindig right before CES – and sure enough, the invites just went out.
Google’s not saying much about the event, outside of the fact that it’s focused on Android — but really, what do they need to say? Google’s Nexus One handset has been given to employees, documented from just about every angle, spec’d out, and confirmed by T-Mobile; at this point, the press conference is a formality.
Either way, expect the TechCrunch network to be there with cameras in hand and live-blogging on the mind.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
FROM APPLETELL - Pedal Brain is here to help motivate your feet to start pedaling, and does so by tracking your rides and driving you to do better.
MORE »
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
ABC News has published an "exclusive" series of photographs identified as the customized undergarments of a fellow who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane over the holidays with the explosive PETN. Above, an image identified on abcnews.com as "UNDERWEAR WITH EXPLOSIVE PACKET." I wonder how they obtained these images, and from whom?The photo series also includes separate detail shots of explosive powder packet, and the syringe which, according to reports, contained some sort of acid that was to aid in the detonation process—thankfully, it failed. A quick YouTube search yields several videos of questionable origin with titles like "PETN 40" and "PETN 50 UNDERWATER," presumably X grams of the explosive being detonated. If the videos and quantities are legit, it really is frightening to imagine what 80 grams in the dude's drawers could have done if he'd succeeded.
This is the creepiest wide-distribution media image I can remember seeing for many years. What distasteful internet parodies and fetish riffs may yet come?
What better way to round out this scorched and shitty decade than to gaze thoughtfully into the charred, soiled underpants of a stranger. A troubled young man who seems to have hated America only as much as he hated his own junk.
EXCLUSIVE: Photos of the Northwest Airlines Flight 253 Bomb (ABC NEWS)
An internal T-Mobile memo from 12/29,
Google, with support from T-Mobile, is scheduled to launch a new Android device in early January. The Google Android phone will be sold solely by Google via the Web.
That pretty much says it. Now, how about a confirmation on the $199 price rumor?
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
Section: Web, Web Browsers, Google
At this point many of you that frequent Gadgetell have most likely noticed the Chrome advertising that Google has been doing on their search page. And for those that have not, the ad was placed in the upper right hand corner and displayed a small Chrome logo with text that read “A faster way to browse the web.” Of course, it also gave a link to download, but as a whole the ad was small and unobtrusive.
That said, there are now some new (or maybe ones that I am just noticing) ads that are beginning to show up online. The latest that I found was on YouTube, granted it was all the way on the bottom, just above the comment box. But hey, for some reason people love to comment on YouTube so I guess the placement is actually pretty decent.
That and, the ad, which can be seen below is promising a way to view YouTube “in a fast, new web browser” and seems to imply that by using Chrome you will be able to see your YouTube videos a little faster.
Either way though, its nice to see Google making such a push with Chrome. While I would not try and convince everyone to make the switch, it does go back to the whole theory that competition brings better products for everyone.
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
I have newfound respect for online moderators who slog through potentially problematic user content all day. They get a real glimpse into the downside of humanity.
Facebook developers recently initiated me into Facebook Community Council, a secret shadow organization of vigilantes who destroy the content of ne'er-do-wells and miscreants. Our Council's blood oath: "To harness the power and intelligence of Facebook users to support us in keeping Facebook a trusted and vibrant community."
There's a whiff of McCarthyism or worse to the whole notion of people in a community reporting others for un-Facebookian activities. I signed up immediately. Immediately after I passed a tutorial and got certified, I got a long hard look at the seamy underbelly of Facebook and the nebulous concept of "community standards."
Turns out Facebook Community Council is less like vigilantism and more like beta-testing a crowdsourced tagging system where you are limited to one of eight options each time. Four are self-explanatory: Spam, Acceptable, Skip, Not English. The other four are the key problem areas, and I saw plenty of all of the specified naughtiness over time:
-Nudity (such as "visibility of pubic hair or genitalia, the display of sex toys, and solicitation of cybersex")
-Drugs (especially promotion or use of "drugs illegal in the United States... This includes depictions of marijuana plants/leaf logos. This does not include the use of alcohol or tobacco...")
-Attacking ("direct attacks on non public figures")
-Violence (such as "visible mutilation of humans (including self-harm) or sadistic violence against animals... images of urine, feces, vomit, and semen.")
Yum! Your tags are then compared to other Community Council members', and if there's enough of a match, some sort of action is apparently taken. It's strangely hypnotic, like Google Image labeler, mainly because you want to see how bad the next reported page or group is.
The majority are acceptable, reported by some overly sensitive person. The main categories of reported pages are:
Whew! That was a lot of detail! If that bugs you, I recommend joining a flagged Facebook group I marked Acceptable:
i hate it when people go into detail about everything.
FROM GAMERTELL - DJ Hero truly makes playing with music a realistically immersive and enjoyable gaming experience with a lot of thanks due to its controller…
MORE »
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
If you owned a bike when you were a kid, you would have, at some point, turned it into a “motorbike”. You would have taken a clothespin and a playing card and attached the latter to the chain-stay with the former. The resulting flickety-flack sound was enough to turn your pushbike into a roaring speed machine. And it was free, as long as you didn’t suffer punishment for choosing any card other than the joker.
The Turbospoke does exactly the same, only it costs $25 and is way better. It even uses a card to do the sound-making: There are three differently “tuned” cards in the pack, and they are made from longer-lasting plastic. These cards fit into a supplied clamp and onto this you mount the exhaust. And this is the best part, as the exhaust not only looks like a motorbike exhaust, but it acts as a horn speaker to amplify the sound.
About that sound. It’s less “motorbike” and more “lawnmower”, but it sure beats the old fashioned, home-made way of doing it. In fact, if the kids in your street ever get one of these, it’s likely to be just as annoying as the teenager who guns his two-stroke 125cc bike past your house twice a day. So annoying would it be that I’m thinking of strapping one on at the next bike polo game to psych-out the other team.
Turbospoke Product page [Turbospoke]
Turbospoke review [Gram Light Bikes]
There comes a time in every TV series when you know the show is desperately fighting cancelation. No, it’s not the episode where the main character meets their doppelgänger (although that is a good indication). It’s the one where the hero is saved from a deadly bullet to the heart by a cigarette-case/book/cellphone luckily placed in the breast-pocket.
As ever, when a home-made solution becomes well-known, it is quickly commoditized, and the The Damned is just such a product. The Damned is a bulletproof pocket handkerchief designed to protect the heart of the gentleman from well-aimed or wayward projectiles. The 270 x 270mm (10.6-inch) square woven from “ballistic strength aramid fiber”, a material similar to Kevlar. But can a small fold of fabric really stop a bullet? From the blurb:
If a gun is aimed at you, fired, and the slug hits you, you will be hurt despite the properties of the square; The impact of the projectile itself is likely to fracture, crack or break your bones bones and bruise you. According to the specifications of the textile, a ballistic projectile such as a bullet will not pass through thirty two layers of this material. We take NO responsibility for those who feel compelled to test the endurance or resistance of the textile in any way.
We certainly won’t be calling this one in for a Gadget Lab review. Not through fear, you understand. No, we don’t need it because we already know a foolproof way to protect a gentleman’s heart: Stay away from girls. €95 ($137).
The Damned [Sruli Recht via Geekologie]
Sprint has pushed out the 1.3.5 update for the webOS which runs on the Palm Pre. Along with this are Palm’s release notes, which are thankfully a lot more detailed than the single paragraph that Sprint teased us with yesterday.
There’s a lot going on in the update, from the merely aesthetic (a new font for the screensaver clock) to the welcome (better battery life in areas with poor signals) to the downright scary (“A user can perform a full erase by pressing and holding Sym + the orange/Option key + power for 10 seconds”). There’s even support for ancient technology, in the form of properly displayed animated gifs in the browser.
Most of the big changes, though, are in the app store. You can now download multiple applications at once, and they continue in the background if you want to do something else. There’s an “update all” button, auto-resume for interrupted connections and best of all, you can fill up the whole of the Pre’s memory with applications if you want to.
Once you have installed this update, future updates will be downloadable over a 2G connection, not just 3G.
But the best change is the silliest. You know that little line over the ē in “Prē”, the one everybody ignores? Palm has finally removed it from the default email signature, as apparently it wasn’t showing up properly on some receivers’ phones.
The update is free, and available now.
Software update information for Palm Pre Sprint [Palm]
See Also:
Ryan Vanderbilt is the Creative Lead at Google Creative Lab. And like most Googlers, he doesn’t spend all his time working. Unlike most Googlers, Ryan built his own awesome desk.
The Table&Tennis is a beautiful, classic hardwood and chrome desk by day, and a beautiful, classic hardwood and chrome ping-pong table by, erm, also day (remember what we said about Googlers not working all the time?). The net slides from a slot within, and the paddles and balls are kept in the kind of slide-out drawer normally seen cosseting grandmother’s silverware. All you need to do is find your laptop somewhere safe to sit while you play.
With some irony, we think that Ryan’s project is a one-off, destined to remain forever in beta, which is a shame. We could certainly do with the exercise here at the Gadget Lab.
Table&Tennis blog [Ryan Vanderbilt via Core77]
Illustration: =Em-j-akahana
Avatar doesn't have a bad story, but its unswerving direction does make it a predictable one. Since the internet's already hashed out the cultural angles of James Cameron's splendid epic, let's take a look at the storytelling mechanics--something he approached with a caution only $400M buys. What risks could Cameron have taken to add some surprise, without spiking the straightforward narrative?
Here's five ideas to get us started...1. Jake actually betrays the Na'vi
Our hero's journey is smooth sailing: Jake so badly needs his destination that there's never much ambivalence about the journey. This lack of internal conflict manifests when the Na'vi tribe rejects him: his only betrayal of them is the plain fact of his original mission, which he'd had abandoned in any case. Wasn't it obvious that he might be telling others what he'd learned about the tribe? As the first "warrior" dreamwalker, no less.
If Jake instead pursued an explicit and timely opportunity to betray his new friends, his 'going native' afterward would have been a powerful moral turning point rather than a faint point on a 'character arc.'
2. Give his rival some balls
In Dune, off-worlder Paul Atreides is forced to kill to gain acceptance with the locals when his own kind finally forces him into the wilds. In Avatar, however, Jake only has to show up on a fancy ride. Instead of becoming a nonentity after their earlier aikido warmup, Na'vi chief-to-be Tsu-tey could have drawn a line in the moss: I represent the caution and tradition of my people, and you'll have to beat me down to change and lead us. If Jake has to defeat, even kill an ally who hates him, it tarnishes his character--but Pandora is red in tooth and claw, after all, and it is what he's fighting for.
3. The savages show how smart they are
Jake masters the bow and horse. Why not let one of the Na'vi surprise everyone by getting to grips with some of that weird sky-people tech? And perhaps even do a little betrayal of his or her own.
4. Show the colonel's hidden depths
You can't just let Steven Lang take a role like that and then bury him in cartoon villainy. Colonel Quaritch is evidently a spiritually blasted former soldier who went private-sector after tiring of fighting dirty wars. As Lang says in an interview, "I didn't play a villain; I played a man who is doing his job the best way that he can." But he isn't given much space for that nuance by the script. For example, he knows that his brief is to protect a blood diamond operation, not patriotic duty, and yet in his climactic battle with Jake, he asks him how he could betray his people. What he really means is, "How could you not be a soldier, son?"
In the movie, Jake simply snarls. A retort would be sweeter. "Is that what they told you when you quit Venezuela?" does the the trick. The Colonel knows he's lost, after all, and getting irony thrown in his face offers him a chance to choose his own doom--without any need for the leaden pathos that often comes with such turnarounds. Consider the many suggestions that Quaritch is the only human on Pandora to feel at home there in his own body--he is much more like the Na'vi than he'd like to admit.
5. Kill Carter Burke
That brings us to the disinterested corporate apparatchik in charge of the whole show. He's the real villain of the piece, who gives the natives none of the respect offered them by his soldiers and scientists, at least until his decisions' moral consequences are thrown in his face by Ripley.
Wait... wrong movie. In any case, Mr. Cameron had the right idea the first time around. Kill the slimeball--or better yet, let an alien do it.
The Christmas news used to be about the iTunes Music Store, and it went like this: Lots of kids got iPods as Christmas gifts, and then they went crazy downloading music.
Now, it’s not just music. According to mobile analytics company Flurry, iTunes Store downloads for the iPod Touch leapt almost 1000% on December 25th. That indicates that a lot of kids found iPod Touches under the tree this year.
There are now clearly added temptations in the iTunes Store, with a full line up of music, games, movies, TV shows and pretty much everything else teenagers used to head to the mall to spend their allowances on, and this alone would explain the spike. But what goes unsaid here is that the iPod Touch is stealthily killing off the regular iPod. Who, apart from joggers, would buy a $180 iPod Nano when they could spend an extra $20 and get a whole computer and games console thrown in?
While everybody is looking over there at the iPhone, or talking about Mac vs PC market-share, Apple is already pushing into obsolescence its entire product line, with things like notebooks and desktops headed for niche, professional uses. If and when a Apple tablet appears, it will do the same to the MacBook as the Touch is doing to the old iPod. Mobile devices like the iPod Touch are the future of computing, and while Microsoft is still waiting for people to get to the office to sell them its wares, Apple is doing what all respectable drug-dealers do: starting ‘em young.
Flurry: App Store Sees Record Breaking Christmas, 50% Growth from November to December [MobileCrunch]
Updated 12/29 with additional details
Ray Kurzweil, a prolific inventor who is best known for his prediction that machine intelligence will surpass that of humans around 2045, still has a few things to offer carbon-based life forms. Kurzweil has introduced new e-reader software, called Blio, that approaches e-reading from a completely different angle than the current E Ink-based devices like the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook and Sony Reader.
Blio is not a device. Rather, it is a “platform” that could run on any device, but would be most obviously at home on a tablet. The software is free and available currently for PCs, iPod Touch and iPhone.
“Everyone who has seen it acknowledges that it is head and shoulders above others,” says Kurzweil. “We have high-quality graphics and animated features. Other e-readers are very primitive.”
Blio is set to debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week.
E-readers have become a hot consumer electronics product. About 5 million e-reader devices are expected to be sold by the end of the year. Meanwhile, electronic books for the Kindle outsold physical books on Amazon for the first time this Christmas, said Amazon, one of the largest online book retailers.
Kurzweil — who is better known for his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near — has worked extensively in areas such as optical character recognition, speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis. His company Kurzweil Technologies has a joint venture with the National Federation of the Blind called knfb Reading Technology to create reading products for people with disabilities. knfb Reading is the company that has created Blio.
One of Blio’s major advantages over current e-book readers is that the software offers a full color experience. E Ink, which is the black-and-white display used currently in almost all e-readers, works best for text, and even then most e-books still look ugly, thanks to design limitations in the readers.
Blio actually lays out the “pages” as they would be seen on paper, with typography and illustrations copied across. It also supports video and animation. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of the interactive magazine applications (also meant for upcoming tablet devices) shown off by the likes of Time Warner, Popular Science publisher Bonnier and Wired’s parent company Conde Nast.
Add to that some nifty features such as text-to-speech and the ability to synchronize things (like bookmarks, highlights and the page you last read) across multiple devices, and it makes for an interesting e-reader.
“We can take a PDF and an audio book and merge the two to get a combination such that you can hear the audio book and see the words highlighted on the PDF at the same time,” says Peter Chapman, an executive at Kurzweil Technologies.
For publishers, says Kurzweil the advantage is that Blio preserves the original book’s format, including typsetting, layout, fonts and pagination.
Though it sounds nifty, Blio is up against some stiff competition. Kurzweil and his team are betting against the trend of dedicated e-reader devices such as Kindle, Nook and Sony Reader.
“People don’t want an extra piece of hardware,” says Kurzweil. “They want to take one device and do everything with it and they want color screens.”
Instead, Kurzweil is betting that tablets that are scheduled to be launched next year — including the much speculated Apple tablet — will be used by consumers instead for reading digital books. Blio could fit well on those tablets.
Blio will also go up against existing e-reader software such as Stanza for the desktop. Amazon acquired Stanza earlier this year, and its Kindle for PC and Kindle for iPhone apps also sync with the Kindle device. Barnes and Noble also plans to offer desktop and smartphone-based e-reader software that will work with its Nook. But Kurzweil says they can’t support multimedia and text-to-speech like Blio does.
Blio creators are also working with major book publishers to port their e-books from the Adobe PDF format to Blio for free. They are trying to partner with Google to make its massive library of free book titles available in Blio.
On its own, Blio looks solid, but it signifies something much bigger: the end of the paper book. Right now, e-books are poor copies of paper books, with a single advantage: convenience. A book is just a container for text, not its natural home.
The upcoming rash of tablets could provide a better place for reading words than these old wads of paper, usurping print the way Gutenberg usurped hand-copied manuscripts.
A chart from Blio shows how the software compares to its rivals:
See Also:
Photos: Blio/knfb Reading Technology
| World : News Archives | Business | Entertainment | Sports | Technology | Science | Marketplace Audio |
| India : News | Business | Entertainment | Sports | Telugu | |
| Blogs : Humor pages | Norkay's Blog | Kids Stories | Indian Recipes | Database Tech Blog |
| Sundries : World Video Clips | Songs Clips | Indian Video Clips | |
