|
|
|
|
The iPad Questions Apple Won't Answersnydeq writes "Apple's reticence to reveal details prior to a product's launch is legendary. But when Apple extends this silence beyond a product's unveiling, historically this has meant that the product cannot deliver the functionality that analysts and journalists are asking about. InfoWorld's Galen Gruman lists eight key questions for the iPad, about all of which Apple has kept silent. Can you save and transfer documents to the iPad? Does the iPad support Microsoft Exchange email? Does the iPad support VPN? Configuration management? 'I have no doubt the iPad will be compelling to some users. But I now have major concerns that it will fulfill the potential beyond being an iTunes delivery screen that I and other industry observers saw,' Gruman writes."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Feb 2010 | 3:24 am Tiny Speck Uncovers Glitch, A New Flash-Based Massively Multiplayer Game
So what is it? As we suspected, it’s an online game in the vein of Game Neverending, the gaming project that eventually became Flickr (weird, I know). It’s a Flash-based massively multiplayer game that revolves around solving puzzles. While the game itself will be free, there will be some level of in-game purchases. Or as it’s described on the site:
Or, in English:
We’re told that the alpha testing will begin in the next week or so. And the there’s an interesting way Tiny Speck is thinking about doing it. “We’re going to try something we made up called ’strobe testing’ where we open the world up to testers for, say, 24 hours during a given week, then wipe it and start again. Some of the tests will be cumulative (so everyone invited to the last round will be in) and some will be fresh batches of people. Since most people who sign up to test give us some basic background info, we can do one strobe with all women, one strobe with all people older than 35, one with all hardcore gamers, one with maximal network density (via facebook connect), etc., and see how different groups of people react and what patterns of play emerge …,” Butterfield tells us. CNET has more about the genesis of the project, and we’ll be meeting with Butterfield tomorrow for more details. For now, be sure to watch the trippy teaser video on the site.
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Just like the Chocolate phone before it, the display has a 16:9 aspect ratio, in this case at 3.2-inches. LG hasn't released many details about the internals just yet, but we do know it has a 5.0-megapixel camera with face detection, Wi-Fi, and HSDPA 7.2Mbps connectivity. The lack of buttons, metal finishings and square corners make it look like it'll be part of their more "premium" range of handsets, so expect to pay a pretty penny if you want it PAYG, otherwise it'll most likely go for the usual month contract fees when it goes on sale in March in Europe—with worldwide availability expected shortly. I'm going to harass LG for confirmation of the OS, but with Mobile World Congress starting this weekend, I'm sure we'll find out a whole load more then. [LG]  Source: Gizmodo | 9 Feb 2010 | 2:36 am Google Now Taking User Phone Calls About Nexus One - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Feb 2010 | 2:31 am SAP to Hold SAPPHIRE(R) 2010 Customer Conferences in Europe and U.S.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Feb 2010 | 2:30 am UPDATE 1-Acer Q4 lags forecast in market share quest* 2009 net profit T$11.4 bln, down from 2008's T$11.7 blnSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Feb 2010 | 2:29 am Easy Talking Online Mobile Apps: Acapela Group Provides Online Speech Synthesis Capability for Iphone, Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian PlatformsSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Feb 2010 | 2:29 am Google warns Chinese knock-off to stop using logo (Reuters)Reuters - Google Inc has sent a cease and desist letter to the operators of a Chinese search website whose logo bears a close resemblance to its own.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Feb 2010 | 2:13 am UPDATE 1-Vimpelcom Ltd starts share exchange offer* Part of Telenor/Alfa deal is to merge Vimpelcom, KyivstarSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Feb 2010 | 2:13 am Improving Education Through Social GamingA piece up at Mashable explores how some schools and universities are finding success at integrating social gaming into their education curriculum. Various game-related programs are getting assistance these days from sources like the government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "For the less well-to-do educator, the Federation of American Scientists has developed a first-person shooter-inspired cellular biology curriculum. Gamers explore the fully-interactive 3D world of an ill patient and assist the immune system in fighting back a bacterial infection. Dr. Melanie Ann Stegman has been evaluating the educational impacts of the game and is optimistic about her preliminary findings. 'The amount of detail about proteins, chemical signals and gene regulation that these 15-year-olds were devouring was amazing. Their questions were insightful. I felt like I was having a discussion with scientist colleagues,' said Stegman. Perhaps more importantly, the video game excites students about science. Motivating more youngsters to adopt a science-related career track has became a major education initiative of the Obama administration. So desperate to find a solution that motivates students to become scientists, the government has even enlisted Darpa, the Department of Defense’s 'mad scientist' research organization, to figure out a solution."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This problem, unrelated to the sticky gas pedal issue that other drivers complained about. But I'm still wondering what exactly is bothering our Prius-loving friend Woz, who claims he has a faulty cruise control issue that is software related, not mechanical. Remember that old joke about if cars were as crash prone as computers? Yeah, not funny in 2010. [CNN] Source: Gizmodo | 9 Feb 2010 | 1:16 am Better Times for VCs? Redpoint Raise $400 Million Fund Focused on Social, Mobile, Cloud and Clean [BoomTown]
Redpoint Ventures announced that it had closed a new $400 million fund to invest in early-stage start-ups in the “social and mobile Internet, cloud computing and clean technology spaces.” The last fund that the Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture firm raised was $250 million in March of 2007, which was called Redpoint Omega and aimed at later-stage start-ups. The last early-stage fund, Redpoint III, was in February of 2007 and was also $400 million. While Redpoint’s new fund size did not increase, as they often do, is today’s closing a sign that things are looking up for the venture busines–especially in Silicon after one of the toughest years in a dozen, with the amount VCs made in 2009 dropping 37 percent, according to a recent report? Who knows–but here’s the skinny on the Redpoint IV fund:
Source: All Things Digital | 9 Feb 2010 | 1:15 am The iPhone is the New Internet Explorer 6, Says Mobile Developer [Voices]By Charles Arthur, Technology Editor, Guardian On the flip side of the debate about whether Flash is ill, in rude health, or simply untroubled by Apple’s (AAPL) wilful refusal to countenance it on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, we have an analysis from Peter-Paul Koch, a “mobile platform strategist, consultant and trainer” who says (with plenty of swearing to boot, if you’re in filter territory) that the iPhone is the Internet Explorer 6 de nos jours. Yes. That’s right. He’s saying: don’t develop for it. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 9 Feb 2010 | 1:05 am ‘Don’t Be Evil,’ Meet ‘Spy on Everyone’: How the NSA Deal Could Kill Google [Voices]By Noah Shachtman, Editor, Danger Room, Wired.com The company once known for its “don’t be evil” motto is now in bed with the spy agency known for the mass surveillance of American citizens. The National Security Agency is widely understood to have the government’s biggest and smartest collection of geeks — the guys that are more skilled at network warfare than just about anyone on the planet. So, in a sense, it’s only natural that Google (GOOG) would turn to the NSA after the company was hit by an ultrasophisticated hack attack. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 9 Feb 2010 | 1:04 am Toyota to recall over 50,000 Prius in Europe (AP)AP - Toyota Motor Corp. said Tuesday it is recalling some 50,000 Prius cars in Europe to modify the software for the anti-lock brake system, part of a wider global recall and the latest in a string of embarrassing safety lapses at the world's largest automaker.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Feb 2010 | 1:03 am More Posner Plagiarism [Voices]By Jack Shafer, Editor, Press Box, Slate Last week, a reader tipped me to an instance of potential plagiarism by Gerald Posner in the Daily Beast, for which Posner is chief investigative reporter. After I called the plagiarism to the attention of Daily Beast Executive Editor Edward Felsenthal, the site deleted five pilfered sentences and added an editor’s note to explain the deletions and to apologize. In an interview with me, Posner admitted he had plagiarized the Miami Herald in his piece—although he had no explanation for how he had lifted the copy. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 9 Feb 2010 | 1:03 am Enterprise Software is Entirely Bereft of Soul [Voices]By Vinnie Mirchandani, Blogger, Deal Architect I was in a session last year with Dave Girouard of Google (GOOG), when I asked him if he still believed in the statement he made 3 years prior about enterprise software. Without batting an eyelid, he asked me “Are you from SAP?” Leo Apotheker is gone as CEO of SAP (SAP). Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 9 Feb 2010 | 1:02 am Toyota's Low-Risk Dialogue on Digg [Voices]By Jon Fortt, Blogger, Big Tech, Fortune If you’re Toyota (TM) right now, the last thing you want is more surprises. That might explain why Jim Lentz, president of the U.S. sales division, will be fielding questions about the automaker’s troubles on social media site Digg today at 2 p.m. PT, 5 p.m. ET; it actually looks to be a pretty low-risk affair. Normally, “low-risk” and “Digg” don’t go together in the world of corporate PR. On Digg, users get to vote topics into popularity or oblivion– so it can be an image management nightmare. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 9 Feb 2010 | 1:01 am Philip Eliot Of Paladin Capital: Cyber Security Is Not Going Away [Voices]By Scott Denne, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal As high-profile cyber attacks, like the one that recently hit Google Inc. (GOOG), become more common, Internet security is getting more attention at commercial organizations and especially in the government. In light of this, Venture Capital Dispatch sat down with Philip Eliot, a principal at Paladin Capital Group, a multi-stage private equity fund with a focus on national security, to talk about why these threats are proliferating and how the opportunities are changing for entrepreneurs and investors in the space. At Paladin Capital, Eliot sits on the board of Unitrends Software Corp., a maker of data protection appliances, and helped manage its investment in CloudShield Technologies Inc., a maker of network traffic management equipment, that recently was sold to Science Applications International Corp. Here is an edited version of our interview: Read the rest of this post on the original site Well it's bad for Android, anyway: You're gonna need Android 2.1. At least. Because it provides some access Adobe needs to make the Flash magic happen. So, sorry everything but the Droid and Nexus One, at least for the moment. The "over the air" thing is also kind of "up in the air" as to what that means: It could come from your carrier, it could come from your phonemaker, or failing all else, it could come from Adobe. Which means, Flash isn't necessarily going to hit your phone at the same time as everybody else's. Depends on your phone. But, they're betting that over half of smartphones—53 percent—will have Flash Player by 2012. Not surprisingly, Adobe says Flash 10.1 is going to be all over some tablets, too, with accelerated performance on Nvidia's Tegra 2, Qualcomm's Snapdragon (like what's in the Nexus One), and Freescale's i.MX515. Lastly, Adobe would like you to know that this whole Adobe vs. HTML5 thing is silly, since they totally support HTML5, like all web standards. They love them some web standards, they say. But! They would also like you to note that HTML5 standardization is years away, and Flash works right now. And the reason you notice crappier performance on the Mac is sorta the Mac's fault, they say, because they need more access to APIs and they get half-assed crash reports. Plus, Adobe claims, apps tend to run faster in Windows than OS X generally, because performance is about 20 percent worse using OS X's GCC compiler, not to mention performance varies even within an OS, since Flash runs 20 percent faster in IE8 than Firefox, for instance. Either way, performance will be better on Mac with Flash 10.1, since it's shifting over to using CoreAnimation. Okay, you can resume your "death to Flash!" chants now (even though it's not going anywhere for a while, people!). [Adobe] Source: Gizmodo | 9 Feb 2010 | 1:00 am Daily Crunch: Pac Directions Edition
Lian Li “spider” case seen creeping around Taiwan
Source: CrunchGear | 9 Feb 2010 | 1:00 am Handsome booze packagingI know nothing about Bitter Sisters' cocktail mixes -- I don't drink hardly at all (puts me straight to sleep) and for all I know, this stuff tastes like gasoline. But the new packaging, designed by Shane...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:42 am Handsome booze packaging I know nothing about Bitter Sisters' cocktail mixes -- I don't drink hardly at all (puts me straight to sleep) and for all I know, this stuff tastes like gasoline. But the new packaging, designed by Shane Crawford, tickles my desiderata bone. Sure is purdy. Bitter Sisters Cocktail Mixers
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:42 am Microsoft E-health Research Taps Xbox, Mobile Phones (PC World)PC World - Microsoft is researching how gadgets like the company's Xbox game machine, surface computers and accelerometers in mobile phones could be used to improve health care.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:40 am Gamer to pay Nintendo $1.3 mln for illegal upload (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:35 am Google Reduces Its Nexus One Termination FeeCWmike writes "The only smartphone Linus Torvalds doesn't hate is that much less unlikable now that Google has quietly chopped $200 off its early termination fee on the Nexus One. Customers who cancel the service had been on the hook for $550, including a $350 Google cancellation charge. Google has reduced their fee to $150 — but users are still liable for a $200 ETF from T-Mobile. Users have a 14-day grace period during which they do not have to pay either charge, although they may be hit with a restocking fee. The $350 total fee matches one of the highest in the industry, charged by Verizon. Google did not announce the change but simply altered its online terms-of-service document." The price cut could add momentum to a phone that, by one reckoning, costs only $49 unlocked.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
That's right, Google's finally getting around to opening an ebook store too—called Google Editions, and it's been in the works for a while—the idea being that people will be able to read the books on any internet-connected device. What's incredible is how the Times says negotiations are now proceeding. Now that Apple and Amazon are fighting over publishers and their books—imagine how oh-so-hotly desired they must suddenly feel—publishers have real power to negotiate, and it comes with wondrous effects, like getting an information monolith like Google to actually back down. There will be no printing, no cutting and pasting. And 70 percent, like what Apple and Amazon are now offering, is apparently starting to sound dandier to Google. Another point Google gave in on, surprisingly, is search. Previously, they planned to make up to 20 percent of every book they sold through the store searchable, but that wasn't kosher with some of the publishing execs, so now they can choose to opt out of search. Google finally jumping into selling ebooks, with the idea of being the ebook seller to everyone—or at least, everyone not toting a special reading device, just your average thing with a screen and internet access—could definitely shake things up even more than they already are. And you know, a Chrome OS tablet with an ebook store would be slightly more interesting as a cheaper iPad rival. Publishers should enjoy the attention, and power, while it lasts. Because it won't. [NYT] Source: Gizmodo | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:13 am Back to the Future: How Apple is Becoming More Like a Carrier Every Day
Editor’s note: Is Apple going too far with its restrictions on developers? Alistair Goodman thinks so and explains why in this guest post. He is the CEO of 1020 Placecast, a location-based mobile advertising startup. Apple’s recent behavior bears an increasing resemblance to carriers with respect to the walled garden they are creating around the iPhone. Restricting applications, restricting the use of location on the device, blocking Flash, and now potentially taking advertising in house—these moves are taken from the carrier’s playbook with the hope of locking out meaningful competition. Ironically, Apple may very well become the barrier to open innovation in mobile in much the same way as carriers have been before the iPhone came along. What is clear from the announcement to developers last week about plans to deny some apps that deliver location-based advertising is that Apple intends to control the flow of marketing dollars on the iPhone. Less clear are their plans for sharing the wealth with the ecosystem—but if you look closely at acquisitions like Placebase, key hires and patent filings, what emerges is a potentially more ominous view of a company that can only compete in the direct advertising business head-to-head with Google by seizing control of location-based advertising. Location is now widely understood to be the key to successful mobile advertising because where a consumer is in the physical world and at what the time they are there is such a strong predictor of consumer behavior and intent. “If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store,” says Apple. While they have yet to entirely exclude developers and ad networks from the equation, their broader strategy around location-based programs certainly has the potential to do just that. Consider the following:
So what is missing from Apple’s strategy? Location intelligence —meaning the ability to return content (and advertising) on a consumer’s iPhone that is always correct, and always relevant for where they are and when they are there. As others have noted, just because a phone has a GPS on it that can locate a user does not mean that what is returned to them is meaningful. Location intelligence is the problem of returning relevant information based on place and time. It is actually pretty complex—this is something that both Apple and Google are only discovering as they begin distributing their apps to millions of consumers. And doing it at scale—meaning always returning customized content and advertising to millions of consumers in real time—is an extraordinary challenge because it requires managing location data and content at a level of accuracy that today’s online search algorithms are just beginning to grasp. Apple’s continued march down the path of the walled garden will become harder and harder as Google’s open Android ecosystem grows and the mobile ecosystem as a whole moves towards the more open Internet-like model. Meanwhile carriers will continue to use SMS to deliver location-based marketing across any open smartphone device or any feature phone. If Apple thinks the carriers are going to lie-down and settle for nothing from a new revenue stream in location-based advertising, they should think long and hard about the implications of this choice. Because as much as they are acting like the new carriers, they don’t actually own any wireless bandwidth or cell towers to carry all that data going to and from their phones. Photo credit: Flickr/Paul Englefield.      
Source: TechCrunch | 9 Feb 2010 | 12:12 am Game Development In a Post-Agile WorldAn anonymous reader writes "Many games developers have been pursuing agile development, and we are now beginning to witness the debris and chaos it has caused. While there have been some successes, there have also been many casualties. As the industry at large is moving away from the phantasmagoria of Agile, Gwaredd Mountain, Technical Director at Climax Studios, looks at Post-Agile and what this might mean for the games industry."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 8 Feb 2010 | 11:28 pm Hugh Hendry, Marc Faber, and Nassim Taleb Go to RussiaAn alternately sober-minded and gibbering mad but never boring and mostly riveting -- hour-long what-would-you-invest-in panel with Nassim Taleb, Marc Faber, Hugh Hendry and others from the just-completed...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 8 Feb 2010 | 11:27 pm Foursquare Signing Mainstream Partnership Deals Left And Right
Foursquare continues to sign interesting deals with major players in a wide range of fields. Following the service’s Bravo deal a couple weeks ago, they’ve reached a deal with restaurant rating guide Zagat, according to The New York Times. And AdAge has some details about deals with even more partners, including HBO, Warner Brothers, and the History Channel. The service has been on a roll lately. They’re now seeing over a million check-ins a week, with that rate doubling in the last month alone. And these new deals can only help them as they bring the type of mainstream appeal that it took services like Twitter so long to find. While Zagat is an obvious partner thanks to its restaurante recommendations, the entertainment partnership appeal may not be immediately apparent. But as you can see on the Foursquare page for the movie Valentine’s Day, those promoting the movie have added 50 “Romantic Tips” around the cities that the movie takes place in, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston. Any Foursquare user that checks-in at one of these places will unlock a special badge for the movie. The new HBO show, How To Make It In America, meanwhile, has four special badges that you can unlock: Culture, Living, Cocktails, and Nightlife. Each of these is obtained by visiting venues from the show. And the Zagat deal is interesting in that it goes beyond simply offering food and restaurant recommendations. The service plans to have a weekly web video series entitled “Meet The Mayor” in which they interview the Foursquare “mayor” of a restaurant in their guide. Another deal that Foursquare recently signed was with Harvard. These types of deals are crucial to Foursquare not only because they point to an eventual money-making opportunity, but also because they give the service a way to fend off attacks from Yelp (which just launched a check-in feature on its own iPhone app), and soon Facebook. Meanwhile, these deals give brands a fun way to interact with the public. It’s advertising, but it’s interactive. Now Foursquare just has to solve that douchebag problem… Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 8 Feb 2010 | 11:23 pm The Value Of Online Buzz For The Top 20 Brands
Nowadays, buzz around brands on the news, blogs, tweets and other social media that spreads through product launches, PR campaigns, earnings reports are as valuable as traditional ad campaigns. But buzz and social dialogue on the web is tough to quantify. General Sentiment has released a report that calculates the dollar value of the buzz, content, and conversation taking place online. General Sentiment’s technology evaluates the volume of mentions and sentiment value regarding a brand, company or person. The algorithm combines this data with website traffic and online news readership figures to determine the purchase-equivalent dollar value of the brand exposure across more than 30 million sources by gauging sentiment, frequency, and exposure of news mentions and social dialogue. Google topped the rankings, with value of its “buzz” itemized at $669.6 million. Google’s social media reach costs $402 million, with its Twitter reach alone valued at $22.8 million. On the other hand, Apple came in fourth with total buzz reaching $293.2 million; social media buzz valued at $223.7 million; and Twitter reach valued at $5.6 million. Here’s the list of the top 20 brands according the the value of their “Buzz”. Numbers are measured in thousands. The report is embedded below.
brand –      
Source: TechCrunch | 8 Feb 2010 | 11:00 pm Apple job posting hints at video option for iPads
So add it up: first you have support for video conferencing in the SDK. Add the fact that the leaked picture of the bezel shows a socket for a camera. Add to that, a job posting that recently appeared, looking for “a software quality engineer with a strong technical background to test still, video and audio capture and playback frameworks.” This all looks to add up to the inevitable fact that the next gen of iPad will have video capabilities. Makes you want to run right out and buy a first gen version, doesn’t it? Oh well. Apple will still sell a ridiculous number of the things.
Source: CrunchGear | 8 Feb 2010 | 11:00 pm The Prisoner viewable online
 I didn't watch AMC's remake of The Prisoner when it aired last November, but I was delighted to see that all 17 episodes of the original 1967-1968 British series are still viewable in full for free on the AMC site. If JG Ballard wrote a TV series, I'd imagine it would have been something like The Prisoner. For those who aren't hip to it yet, the show is a trippy psychological drama about a former spy held captive in a mysterious resort-like prison. The Prisoner video player (AMC, apologies if non-US viewers are shut out) Source: Boing Boing | 8 Feb 2010 | 10:59 pm The Prisoner viewable onlineI didn't watch AMC's remake of The Prisoner when it aired last November, but I was delighted to see that all 17 episodes of the original 1967-1968 British series are still viewable in full for free on...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 8 Feb 2010 | 10:59 pm The Prisoner viewable onlineI didn't watch AMC's remake of The Prisoner when it aired last November, but I was delighted to see that all 17 episodes of the original 1967-1968 British series are still viewable in full for free...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 8 Feb 2010 | 10:59 pm Youthful harmonica prodigies have the bluesMurray sez, "I recently launched a podcast at the UK-based harmonica website www.harpsurgery.com. The episode here features five young players aged 14-18 (with one 22-year-old to mess up our average)...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 8 Feb 2010 | 10:48 pm Youthful harmonica prodigies have the bluesMurray sez, "I recently launched a podcast at the UK-based harmonica website www.harpsurgery.com. The episode here features five young players aged 14-18 (with one 22-year-old to mess up our average) who...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 8 Feb 2010 | 10:48 pm Youthful harmonica prodigies have the blues
Murray sez, "I recently launched a podcast at the UK-based harmonica website www.harpsurgery.com. The episode here features five young players aged 14-18 (with one 22-year-old to mess up our average) who are playing WAY beyond their years... and in some cases, pushing harmonica-playing into dark scary places where it was never meant to go.
The podcast is a little ragged but the playing is great. I thought it pertinent to send this through after Roger Daltrey's shabby harp solo at last night's Super Bowl show. Any one of these kids could destroy Roger Daltrey with a single fog-horn like blast from their instrument. All he'd leave behind is a smoking pair of hush puppies."
Damn skippy: these kids are honkin' and smokin'. Harmonica Podcast: The Kids Are Alright
(Thanks, Murray!)
Beautiful Japanese gramophonesAlan sez, "A Japanese company is producing gramophones with natural touches such as bamboo needles." The player is produced by world-class hobbyist supplier Gakken, and the quality shows. This gramophone...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 8 Feb 2010 | 10:43 pm Beautiful Japanese gramophonesAlan sez, "A Japanese company is producing gramophones with natural touches such as bamboo needles." The player is produced by world-class hobbyist supplier Gakken, and the quality shows. This gramophone...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 8 Feb 2010 | 10:43 pm Beautiful Japanese gramophonesAlan sez, "A Japanese company is producing gramophones with natural touches such as bamboo needles."Gakken Premium Gramophone (Thanks, Alan!)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 8 Feb 2010 | 10:43 pm Iceland's paper of record bans linkingMorgunblaðið, Iceland's oldest newspaper and most-visited website (now co-edited by the former prime minister and head of the central bank) has just announced an anti "deep linking" policy saying that Icelanders aren't allowed to link to individual pages on the site, only the front door. Which is to say, the people of Iceland can no longer talk about any news online unless it happens to still be on the front page of the newspaper. Ah, there's the commitment to public service that makes journalism so critical to a free society! (Thanks, Halli!)Source: Boing Boing | 8 Feb 2010 | 10:40 pm The Long Tail Of Video Sites Capture Half Of All Viewing Minutes
YouTube might be streaming more than 13 billion videos a month, or nearly 40 percent of total individual streams, but when you measure by time spent YouTube only accounted for 26 percent of all viewing minutes on the Web last year. It is not surprising that it commands a smaller share of time spent watching videos than number of streams watched, since most YouTube videos are so short. But what is surprising is how fragmented the Web video landscape remains once you go out past the top 25 sites. According to comScore’s 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review, more than half of all time spent watching videos on the Web (52 percent) last year was on Long Tail video sites beyond the top 25. What you see is a real barbell distribution, with Youtube on one end and the Long Tail sites on the other. Total video views more than doubled between December, 2008 and December, 2009, from 14 billion to 33 billion streams. So there is hope yet for niche video producers. The Nos. 2 through 25 sites account for the remaining 22 percent of video minutes. This group includes No. 2 video site Hulu, which just hit 1 billion monthly video streams in December, and fast-rising Netflix (no. 19). Hulu’s 1 billion streams accounted for 5.8 billion minutes of viewing time, up 140 percent from a year before. For more from comScore’s report, see my earlier post on Ten Biggest Advertising Publishers On The Web or download the entire report here.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 8 Feb 2010 | 10:01 pm Botox May Paralyze Reaction to Negative EmotionsAre emotions only skin deep?Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm Feb. 9, 1870: Feds Get on Top of the WeatherPresident Grant signs the law creating what will become the Weather Bureau and eventually the National Weather Service.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm blueKiwi Rides the Freemium Wave
Instead of community managers simply engaging with outside audiences via social networking tools, blueKiwi pulls outside conversations into internal discussions in order to leverage the thoughts and ideas of its user base, much like Salesforce aims to do with Chatter or Bantam Live. It is social CRM. Bluekiwi combines a slew of web 2.0 capabilities: such as collaboration, document sharing, blogging, event posting, and polling, into a single, unified solution. The use of social analytics tools ensures that the most pertinent conversations reach the eyes of the community managers. The blueKiwi dashboard allows the community manager to integrate outside feeds—be they RSS feeds, Twitter, or Facebook—in order to stay on top of external chatter. The “Notebook” shows anything and everything in the blueKiwi community which involves the user. Any chatter which involves the user is threaded in a Facebook status-esque interface, making it simple for users to stay up-to-date on conversations in which they are directly involved.
To ensure the product is being utilized most efficiently, the product has an automated personal assistant, Alice, programmed to make recommendations to community managers in order to keep them on top of important tasks. If part of an online community seems to be slacking in a certain department, Alice will make recommendations to try and increase efficiency. The homepage of blueKiwi also gives suggestions based on analytics to further this goal. The free version of blueKiwi supports one external community, which can range from customer forums, to channel programs, to developer groups—basically anything where the majority of the users are outside the internal network—but allows unlimited internal groups and external members. Within the community, admins can vary the access privileges of individual members. Internal and External members can see everything which goes on in these groups, or admins can restrict access to only internal members. As conversations continue to grow, admins can change access privileges as well. blueKiwi was founded in 2006 by Carlos Diaz and Christophe Routhieau. They have raised a total of $12.3 million in funding from Sofinnova Partners and Dassault Systemes. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 8 Feb 2010 | 9:48 pm IBM Releases Power7 ProcessorDan Jones writes "As discussed here last year, IBM has made good on its promise to release the Power7 processor (and servers) in the first half of 2010. The Power7 processor adds more cores and improved multithreading capabilities to boost the performance of servers requiring high up-time, according to Big Blue. Power7 chips will run between 3.0GHz and 4.14GHz and will come with four, six, or eight cores. The chips are being made using the 45-nm process technology. New Power7 servers (up to 64 cores for now) are said to deliver twice the performance of older Power6 systems, but are four times more energy efficient. Power7 servers will run AIX and Linux." And reader shmG notes Intel's release of a new Itanium server processor after two years of delays. The Power7 specs would seem to put the new Intel chip in the shade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 8 Feb 2010 | 9:40 pm Saving Private Ryan to storm Blu-ray
So we know it’s coming May 4th, from the Blu-ray release schedule, but that’s about all the information we have. No word on what special features, extras, how much it will cost, box art. Nothing. It’s a whisper of a dream, and if you ask too many questions, that dream with burst like a soap bubble on a cacti.
Source: CrunchGear | 8 Feb 2010 | 9:30 pm IBM Launches Eight-core Power7 Processor, Servers (PC World)PC World - IBM on Monday launched its latest Power7 processor, which adds more cores and improved multithreading capabilities to boost the performance of servers requiring high up time.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Feb 2010 | 9:25 pm BioShock 2 Review - GameSpot
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Feb 2010 | 9:14 pm Video: “Parisian Oops” Mocks Google’s Super Bowl Commercial
It actually took longer than I would have expected for someone to come up with a good mocking of Google’s “Parisian Love” commercial that played during the Super Bowl yesterday. But today brings us just that. The video comes compliments of the Upright Citizens Brigade Beta Team “The Brig.” They’ve named their video “Parisian Oops” and have given it the tagline, “Romance, Consequences, Awkwardness. Search on.” Update: We’ll embed the video in a bit when it goes up on YouTube (their embed is throwing fits). For now, watch it here. Funny stuff. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 8 Feb 2010 | 9:14 pm Six Great iPhone Apps Flying Under the Radar - San Francisco Chronicle
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Feb 2010 | 9:12 pm OpenSAF in Commercial DeploymentHigh availability middleware open source project reaches key milestone in less than two years Sure, Google's Superbowl ad was cute and left us giggling, but how would a French romance powered by Google really go? [UCB—Thanks, Mackenzie!]Source: Gizmodo | 8 Feb 2010 | 9:00 pm Hipster puppies hipsterpuppies.tumblr.com (via @tokyomango) The Ten Biggest Advertising Publishers On The WebLast year, Yahoo still dominated display advertising on the Web in terms of sheer number of ad impressions on its properties, but social networking sites MySpace and Facebook came on strong. Some new data from comScore in its just-released 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review ranks the top Web properties by the number of display ad impressions. Yahoo served up an estimated 521 billion impressions last year, according to the report, followed by Fox Interactive Media (i.e. MySpace) with 368 billion, and Facebook with 330 billion. Microsoft sites (No.4) only served up 218 billion display ads, whereas Google (No. 6) served up only 70 billion. (These numbers do not include paid search text ads)
Here’s the full ranking:
in billions of impressions (comScore) Obviously, the biggest sites with the most visitors serve up the most display ads. This year, Facebook doubled in size to the point where it is well past MySpace and catching up to Yahoo in audience size. It is already bigger than Yahoo in terms of pageviews. Facebook has more advertising inventory than it knows what to do with, although not all of it is desirable. But Facebook is now selling all of its display ad inventory itself after it renegotiated its ad deal with Microsoft. Biggest doesn’t mean most profitable. Facebook might be serving up more ads than almost anyone else, but they are still selling at very low ad rates because they perform poorly for the most part. If Facebook can figure out a way to make the ads on its site become more relevant and useful, it has a lot of room to boost its ad rates. You can download the entire comScore report at this 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Reviewlink.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 8 Feb 2010 | 8:41 pm LG, Samsung Go Social With Latest Handsets
|
 CBC.ca | Astronauts giving shuttle a post-launch scan msnbc.com Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour will scan their spacecraft overnight to search for any signs of heat shield damage from their early Monday launch. The shuttle blasted off Monday at 4:14 am ET from NASA's Kennedy Space ... Crew inspects shuttle after launch, heads for space station Space Shuttle Lights Up Night Sky NASA's Endeavour launches 'complicated' mission |
For quite a while now, I’ve been following the progress of the Pandora, an open-source handheld for music, movies, and games. It’s hard to stay excited, though, when there’s the constant threat of the thing ceasing to exist. That seemed to be a risk for a while, but now we’re being told that all the hurdles are jumped and the thing will start rolling off the assembly line any moment now. Just thought you should know.
What are you waiting for? Get your pre-order in before the whole first run gets snapped up!
The Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition takes place March 12-14 in Emeryville, CA. Organizers promise "the best elements of traditional science fiction and fantasy conventions, [combined] with the passion, ingenuity, and hands-on workshops of Maker events, in a steam-powered, neo-Victorian setting that spans the 1830s through the early 1910s, from the cultured salons of gaslit London to the rugged coast of San Francisco." Sure sounds fun. I'm delighted to see a number of folks we've covered on Boing Boing before, including Jon Sarriugarte, Kimric Smythe, and The Neverwas Haul Crew in the "kinetics" portion of the event.
[ Image: Neverwas Haul, photo by Redteam. ]
Previously:
The Media Systems team is looking for a software quality engineer with a strong technical background to test still, video and audio capture and playback frameworks. Build on your QA experience and knowledge of digital camera technology (still and video) to develop and maintain testing frameworks for both capture and playback pipelines.
Based on the demand for someone to work on video capture frameworks for a device which can't even capture video we could presume that Apple's exploring some future options. As if we didn't already think that. [Apple via MacRumors]
Since the launch of the Nexus One, early adopters have likely had one question lurking in the back of their minds: who to take the phone to if it broke. You see, when the phone was first launched, Google was directing people to either T-Mobile (Google’s carrier partner) or HTC (the device manufacturer) depending on the problem, which could lead to an endless circle of hold times and few results. Today, Google has just rolled out its solution: it’s launching its own phone support line specifically for Nexus One customers. Call 888-48-NEXUS (63987) and within a few minutes, you’ll be talking to a real live Google support tech (the line is open from 7AM to 10PM EST).
This is, of course, a fairly major departure from Google’s standard protocol of making it incredibly difficult to reach anyone for phone support for most of its products. It doesn’t come as a total surprise though — last week there were reports of a Google job listing for “Phone Support Program Manager, Android/Nexus One” to be based out of its headquarters in Mountain View, CA.
The news was first reported at TMO News, and we’ve gotten a response from a Google spokesperson explaining the company’s logic behind the support number:
By design, we focused initially on providing the best possible customer support through our on-line channel, and our experience in the four weeks since the Nexus One launch enabled us to significantly enhance that on-line support offering. We have been able to address a large majority of customers’ inquiries successfully through on-line support, in combination with phone support from our partners, HTC and T-Mobile. That said, our approach with our new consumer channel is to learn fast and continue to improve, and we have, therefore, also been developing our capabilities to provide a number from Google, 888-48-NEXUS (63987) for live phone support for the Nexus One. Live phone support from Google, combined with an optimized on-line support experience, enables a superior Nexus One customer experience.
In other words, Google probably would have liked to have gotten away with online-only support, but it quickly became clear that wasn’t going to cut it.
In other news, Google has also announced that the early termination fee (ETF) for the phone is down to $150 from $350 (they’re actually calling it an “equipment recovery fee”). But that’s still on top of T-Mobile’s $200 fee. The drop may have well been spurred by the ETF inquiry recently launched by the FCC.
 Siliconrepublic.com | Survey tries quantifying iPad hype, suggests interest waning Ars Technica "iPad hoopla" has passed, according to a survey by electronics shopping site Retrevo, and consumers have lost interest after the product's unveiling less than two weeks ago. ... Apple iPad Price Cut: Blunder or Brilliance? Apple's iPad and the Evolution of Books iPad pricing: How low can you go, Apple? |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Mount Everest may be the tallest mountain on Earth, but that's only if you're measuring from sea level. Thanks to the curvature of the planet, Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is the highest if you're measuring from the center of the Earth. In fact, by this system, Everest comes in fifth. (Via Chris Pasco-Pranger)
Standard vaccine injections, done with a 1-in.-long needle, aren't as effective in obese patients. Instead, they need a longer needle to get the same level of immune response. Researchers aren't sure why, but it's possible that fat prevents shorter needles from delivering the vaccine directly into muscle, where it has better access to immune cells.(Via Ivan Oransky.)
Got a Kindle? Get thee to the British Library! Not only are they giving away a ton of old 19th-century literature in e-book form, but they’re a special “first edition” e-book with the original typeface and illustrations baked in. The 1800s encompass nearly all of my favorite literature, so this is actually making me want a Kindle pretty bad right now. Original typefaces! O lawd!
If Dickens and Austen aren’t your thing (pity) there are lots of other great works as well. None of the articles describing the project list more than a few titles, but I’m guessing you are likely to have some Dumas, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, and of course Melville. Whatever the case, they’re going to be beautiful copies that make good use of those high contrast e-ink screens.
The project is funded by Microsoft, which donated “a very generous amount” to the library to enable the giveaway. They’ll be made available in the spring, at which time I’ll probably post again because I love love love this.
The whole American food system, from farm to fork, accounts for about 10% of the energy we use in this country. Of that, the largest single portion, 32%, is the energy involved in household food storage and cooking.
Put it another way: If we reduced agricultural energy use by 5%, nationwide, we'd save about 20 trillion British Thermal Units of energy a year. Them's no small potatoes.
But if just 5% of American households got a more efficient refrigerator, we'd save 54 trillion BTU.
Context: I'm spending today and tomorrow at a conference on energy efficiency in agriculture, put on by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. Those stats come from a presentation by Martin Heller, a researcher with the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems.
Today, BoomTown gassed up the Mini Cooper and motored down to the Sunnyvale, Calif. HQ of Yahoo, this time with a tiny bit of trepidation.
Ok, not that much, but some!
Why? Because Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz had invited me to be the first in a new speaker series for employees at the Internet giant, called “Yahoo From the ‘Outside In,’” due to my intense–some might say obsessive–interest in the company.
The twist: Bartz herself conducted the interview with me in front of about 600 Yahoos gathered in its URL’s Café, the main cafeteria at the company.
As it turned out, she was pretty good at playing the journalist, asking about a range of things, including how I got the sources I did (I never kiss and tell), what I would do if I ran Yahoo (run it right into another wall, I am sure) and what Yahoo should focus on (content, content and content–also mobile!).
The Yahoos had some good and also tough questions for me too, including about my sometimes snarky tone in posts, my personal relationship with a Google exec (see my copious disclosure here) and my thoughts on the future of content (bright for Yahoo, not so much for newspapers).
We also talked about a variety of tech companies, such as Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), Facebook, Twitter and Amazon (AMZN).
And, as Yahoos have tweeted, I did say I had a “man-crush” on Bartz (but only after she claimed I had a regular one) and described myself has a “sparkly vampire,” when asked about my late-night blogging habits.
Overall, I think these kind of encounters are a good thing, especially since they allowed each side–if there are sides–to understand perspectives better.
It is easy for the press to be too glib and reactionary to a lot of stuff we cover and much harder to be fair and get it right.
But, as I told the Yahoos who wondered why the media in general were so down on the company at times, I am not there to make them feel better about their company. Instead, I am there to try to accurately write about what’s going on inside the iconic and pioneering Silicon Valley company–hopefully, some innovation–for better or worse.
While I have asked Yahoo for a video of the interview Bartz did of me that I can embed, here’s one I made of my visit–which includes a chat with Bartz, a forced BoomTown chant by Yahoos and a glimpse of the true power behind the Yahoo throne, Bartz’s longtime assistant Judy Flores (pictured here)–as well as the internal memo I was leaked by many, many Yahoos before my event (May, it’s moot now!):
From: Yahoo Communications
Date: February 1, 2010 12:36:33 PM PST
Subject: Special Event with Carol Bartz and Kara Swisher on Monday, February 8th
Reply-To: Yahoo CommunicationsYahoo! from the “Outside In”: Special Event with Carol Bartz and Kara Swisher on Monday, February 8th
Searching for a new perspective? We’re excited to announce “Outside In,” a new speaker series aimed at putting Yahoos in the very same room with technology luminaries and experts.
Our debut event will be hosted by Carol Bartz and will feature Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor of All Things Digital, a website devoted to news, analysis and opinion on technology, the Internet, and media. Kara also hosts the Boomtown blog and is co-producer of D: All Things Digital, the successful high-tech and media conference.
Kara started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco bureau in 1997. Prior to that, Kara worked as a reporter at the Washington Post. She is also the author of “aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web,” and the sequel, “There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future”.
This exciting session will be Yahoo!’s opportunity to turn the tables on Kara and ask her questions about the industry, media, Yahoo! and our competitors, so don’t miss it! There will also be a portion of the hour dedicated to Q&A with Yahoos.
A video of this session will be posted on Backyard shortly after the event.
Details
Monday, February 8th
10:00 – 11:00 a.m. PST
URL’s Café, Building C, SunnyvaleNote: URL’s will be closing at 9:45 a.m. on Monday for this event.
Probably the most controversial thing about the blogging service Tumblr is that it doesn’t have a built-in way to comment on posts. You sort of can do it now if you reblog an item and add your own note (which then shows up under the original post), but it’s not the same. And while they still haven’t added comments, tonight they’ve temporarily turned on a new feature: Photo Replies.
While it doesn’t appear the feature is working just yet, Tumblr notes that they’re going to turn it on for the next 48 hours as an experiment. When it is on, you will presumably see a new photo icon in your dashboard which will allow you to upload a picture in response to a Tumblr post. So yes, basically it’s a photo comment.
To enable it on any post, simply check the box that reads “Let people photo reply” in the Tumblr backend for your blog.
While Tumblr itself doesn’t have a native commenting system, many users choose a third-party commenting option. The Tumblr Staff Blog, for example, uses Disqus.
[top photo via]
 UberGizmo (blog) | Windows 7 Just Being Honest About Battery Life PC World Last week I wrote about reports that some Windows 7 users are experiencing anomalies with battery life, or at least how Windows 7 reports remaining battery life. The issue seemed worthy of exploring, but not big enough to cause any ... Microsoft: your battery is the problem, not Windows 7 Microsoft Says Windows 7 Battery Issues Are Batteries' Fault Microsoft: Battery Issues Not Windows 7's Fault |
Sit back, relax, and enjoy this extensive HD video tour of International Space Station. You better enjoy the ISS while you can. There’s a good chance it’s going to crash into Planet Earth within the next couple of years because of budget issues unless the ESA can save it.
Initially the study done at the Aalto University School of Science and Technology, Finland, was intended to analyze reciprocity—the likelihood of an individual receiving as many calls in return as he or she makes. But during the course of the research, a clear difference was discovered in the calling habits of prepaid and postpaid users:
Postpaid users tend to be more prolific, having on average 5.41 people they call. Prepaid users, by contrast, have only 3.41 contacts on average (although the notion of "average" is a little strange here since there is a very long tail on these distributions).
Postpaid users also made about 10 times as many calls as prepaid users while 25 percent of prepaid users had odd relationships in which "one participant makes more than 80 percent of all calls."
Technology Review suggests that the differences in calling habits could be explained by the fact that prepaid users are more likely to be younger individuals, but I'd go as far as considering that the unlimited mobile-to-mobile or weekend benefits of postpaid plans may play a role as well. [Technology Review via NY Times Bits]
Beware the coming of the spider! This strange creature was seen in a back alley, eating cats, small dogs, and any memory chips it happens to find. It has the capability to disguise itself as the Lian Li T1 Pitstop, which is a Mini-atx case with room for a full size power supply. Of course, no word on pricing, availability, or even if we’ll see this case in the US, but it’s a fun video to watch.
Like a Star Trek convention minus Leonard Nimoy, Macworld Conference and Expo 2010 kicks off Tuesday at San Francisco’s Moscone Center with no official presence from Apple.
Though the event will lack a Steve Jobs keynote and won’t have an Apple product introduction to generate buzz, 250 vendors will be showcasing Apple-related products at the convention, and a few key members of the Apple community will be giving speeches and presentations to the estimated 30,000 Apple fans who are expected to attend.
“The really important thing with Macworld is that it’s popular, and it’s one of the last bastions where just a regular old user can come, go shopping and go to conference sessions,” said Paul Kent, International Data Group’s general manager of Macworld Expo 2010. “Macworld in the absence of Apple becomes a fan fest.”
Apple in 2008 announced it was pulling out of Macworld because its retail presence had grown strong and trade shows were no longer necessary to connect with customers. Apple has expanded from just two retail stores in 2001 to 280 retail locations worldwide to date.
Ross Rubin, an NPD Group analyst, said Apple’s move symbolized its focus on a mainstream audience of consumers.
“It reflects Apple’s move beyond a core community of Mac enthusiasts through a very broad multiproduct company,” Rubin said.
Without Apple, Macworld remains a community event for Apple enthusiasts, developers and entrepreneurs to mingle and talk shop. This year’s show will highlight iPhone apps with a mobile apps showcase hosting 70 iPhone developers, according to Kent.
Attendees can also watch keynote presentations featuring members of the Apple community, such as New York Times technology columnist David Pogue, film director Kevin Smith, former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki and Daring Fireball blogger John Gruber.
Nonetheless, Macworld Expo’s future remains in question. In the past when Apple has pulled out of other Macworld trade shows, they each subsequently shuttered.
“Take a quick look at the history,” writes The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, who has been attending Macworld Expos since 1996. “Apple pulled out of Macworld Expo Boston/New York — it failed; Apple pulled out of Macworld Expo Tokyo — it failed; Apple pulled out of Apple Expo Paris — it failed.”
As was expected, exhibitor numbers have seen a decline. Macworld Expo 2010 will feature about 250 registered vendors. 2009’s Macworld Expo saw 400 vendors.
IDG expects 30,000 attendees at Macworld Expo 2010. However, this number is not comparable with attendance in years past, because IDG made “basic admission” to the Macworld Expo 2010 show floor free. Previously, IDG charged $25 for a floor pass.
“We don’t pretend it’s not a big a deal that Apple is not participating in the show,” Kent said. “But the Mac marketplace continues to grow, and so has the value of having an independent company that serves as an advocate for the customers and the developers.”
Macworld Conference and Expo runs from Feb. 9 to Feb. 13. For the full schedule, visit the Macworld Expo website.
See Also:
Photo: Laughing Squid/Flickr
The Olympus E-PL1 budget micro four thirds camera launched last week but Amazon already has it available for pre-order. On one hand this pre-order will ensure you’re one of the first kids at school with the new toy, but that’s not going to be until next month away so you may wanna hold on to your $600 a bit longer. Something a bit more tantalizing might come along.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
By Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Verizon Wireless (VZ) said Monday that its recent blocking of parts of 4chan was caused by “potentially disruptive” traffic from the popular site.
“Our network security system found traffic from some of the 4chan web sites that were potentially disruptive of the Verizon Wireless network and could affect our customers’ use of their services,” Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for the wireless carrier, said. “Upon further investigation, and ensuring no current risk of harm, [we] are giving the green-light to all 4chan traffic.”
4chan itself wasn’t blocked, he added.
Christopher Poole, 4chan’s founder, said in a blog post Sunday that visitors who were Verizon Wireless customers reported problems reaching the site’s image boards.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Short Version: It’s an external USB hard drive for your Mac. It’s white.
Features
Pros
Cons
Review
So this is just another external hard drive. Yeah, there isn’t anything special about it besides the white case. That’s not to say it’s a bad drive because from what I can see, it’s fine. But it’s clearly meant for those MacBook owners who must have matching accessories. You know who you are.
The drive comes formatted in OS X-friendly HFS+. This always means that it’s ready for Time Machine making it a solid, out-of-the-box backup solution. Or Windows users always have the option of formatting the drive in NTFS.
Speed-wise, the USB 2.0 5400 drive is on par with Seagate’s 1TB bus-powered drive. Both drives took 0:50~ to transfer a 970MB file. Not too shabby in my book.
The drive clearly tries to replicate the MacBook’s premium feel and look, but actually fails. While the G Drive mobile is sleek, clean, and feels solid, the drive’s only seam partly protrudes from the top, reveling a harsh edge. The whole package is also a lot larger and heavier than other 500GB options from Seagate or Western Digital.
Bottom Line
The G Drive mobile USB is a fine drive even with the questionable build quality. The only real strike against it is that it’s somewhat pricey with a $139 MSRP for only 500GB of storage. A quick search online will reveal a dozen 500GB drives for $99 or less that are the same speed but also physically smaller. Still, if you must have a drive to match your new MacBook, this is probably your best option.
AP - A disappointing outlook from Electronic Arts Inc. sent shares of the video game publisher sharply lower Monday, a sign that significant cost-cuts and layoffs have not ended the company's slump.
Nothing like a commemorative hard disk to remember one of the greatest pop stars of all time. At least, that’s exactly what Samsung was thinking when they thought up this one. Now when people ask you what that gaudy gold contraption on your desk is, you’ll have an answer other than censored from last night.
Under the hood, you get a S2 Portable HXMU050DA, with 500 GB capacity on USB 2.0. Oh, and a DRM locked copy of This Is It. Don’t worry, you’ll also get a little voucher with the activation code you need to watch it. Heaven help you if you want to burn it to a DVD to watch anywhere other than on your computer.
I’m not completely sure if this is designed as an “Oh, here’s a free copy of this movie with your hard drive purchase” sort of thing, or a “Hey, I really want a copy of this movie. Might as well get a hard drive with it!” Either way, units will start moving on February 24th for $123 a pop.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
“We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on [the iPhone and iPad] if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen.”
Apple’s refusal to support Flash on the iPhone–and soon the iPad as well–might not be a death knell for Flash, but it will surely hasten its decline, if Adobe isn’t careful.
Certainly, the fact that the iPhone’s lack of Flash hasn’t really hurt it suggests that Flash may not be quite as important for the Web as Adobe (ADBE) would like us all to think. And now, with some new video players ably demonstrating the promise of HTML5–like this one–the company is clearly worried about Apple’s (AAPL) unflagging exclusion of Flash and CEO Steve Jobs’s recent, and quite vicious, dismissal of it.
So much so that Adobe is publicly promising to improve Flash’s performance on Mac systems. In comments appended to a blog post about the iPad’s lack of Flash support, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch said his company is working to improve Flash performance on the Mac.
“Flash Player on Windows has historically been faster than the Mac, and it is for the most part the same code running in Flash for each operating system,” he wrote. “We have and continue to invest significant effort to make Mac OS optimizations to close this gap, and Apple has been helpful in working with us on this.”
Elaborating, Lynch catalogs progress to date. “Vector graphics rendering in Flash Player 10 now runs almost exactly the same in terms of CPU usage across Mac and Windows, which is due to this work. In Flash Player 10.1 we are moving to CoreAnimation, which will further reduce CPU usage and we believe will get us to the point where Mac will be faster than Windows for graphics rendering….With Flash Player 10.1, we are optimizing video rendering further on the Mac and expect to reduce CPU usage by half, bringing Mac and Windows closer to parity for video.”
Welcome news. But enough to prompt Apple to suddenly reverse course and begin supporting Flash on its mobile devices? That seems unlikely. Apple’s repudiation of Flash on the iPhone and iPad seems–to me, anyway–quite a bit like its repudiation of floppy drives in the first iMacs. It’s a move that inevitably generates great controversy and criticism, but ultimately proves to be ahead of its time.
 Globe and Mail | Do-It-Yourself Super Ads New York Times That seems to be the message in the aftermath of the crowded, frenetic advertising bowl that took place inside Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday. Among those commercials consistently deemed most effective, memorable and talked-about, ... In Super Bowl ads, laughs beat out sex Doritos' 'House Rules' ad is tops with users Google Touts Search Engine in Super Bowl Commercial |
No one likes early termination fees, but for one reason or another they can sometimes become a necessary evil. When Google introduced a new channel for buying the Nexus One, I was excited at the thought of grabbing a phone without being hassled by a retail sales rep. The only downside was that if I bought it at the subsidized price and wanted to cancel within 120 days, Google would charge a $350 device recovery fee… on top of the carrier’s cancelation fees!
Luckily, Google has decided to drop that price down to $150. Not bad, but it’s still not appealing when added to T-Mobile’s $200 early termination fee. Owning a Nexus One could get expensive if you decide to cancel your contract! At the very least, if you cancel and it’s all said and done, you’ll end up paying exactly what you would have if you purchased the device unlocked and contract free.
[via Nexus One Terms of Sale]
Section: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile
Finally, some real photos of the HTC Legend have surfaced. They look pretty similar to renders which were previously released. It looks like the Legend will sport a pretty durable build, as can be seen from the back photo. The aluminum-like exterior looks like it will be very comfortable and solid when held in the hand. The area around the camera and flash looks incomplete, as expected from a pre-production build. From the looks of the dots, it probably houses speakers or video recording mics. While nothing has been confirmed yet, it seems to use the Sense UI which is a pretty sweet choice.
Via [Engadget]
Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
When Apple’s iPad tablet debuts next month on retail shelves, it could sound the death knell for JooJoo, a tablet from an unknown Singapore-based startup that was once the talk of gadget blogs.
The $500 JooJoo is on target to ship at the end of February, a full month before Apple’s scheduled release date of the first iPads. But despite Fusion Garage’s optimism, many industry watchers are skeptical if customers will actually bite.
“Pre-orders have exceeded our expectations,” says Chandra Rathakrishnan, CEO of Fusion Garage. “We think the market is big enough for both Apple and us.”
JooJoo started its life as CrunchPad, an ambitious project dreamed up by Web 2.0 chronicler Michael Arrington. About a year and a half ago, Arrington posted a note about creating a $200 Linux-based tablet on his TechCrunch blog. Eventually, he partnered with Singapore-based company Fusion Garage to launch the product.
But a fallout between the two led to a lawsuit and Fusion Garage renamed the CrunchPad to JooJoo. In December, Fusion Garage showed pre-production models of the device. But weeks later, Apple joined the party with the introduction of the iPad, priced from $500 to $830 depending on storage and availability of 3G access.
Apple’s iPad could push JooJoo into obscurity, says Michael Gartenberg, vice president of consulting firm Interpret.
“The JooJoo is about as long a shot as you can get in this type of business, particularly with Apple sucking the oxygen out of the room in that space,” says Gartenberg. “Few consumers are going to say I want a JooJoo over an Apple iPad.”
JooJoo’s hardware design, though, is straight out of Apple’s playbook. Weighing 2.4 pounds, the device has an easy-to-use 12.1-inch capacitive touchscreen display. It has one USB port and a standard headphone and microphone jack. (For more details, see “Hands-On With the JooJoo.”)
JooJoo runs a custom operating system built by Fusion Garage and boots in just under nine seconds directly to a homepage screen. The device comes with Wi-Fi access but no 3G connectivity — though Rathakrishnan says the company may offer 3G in later models.
But slick hardware alone may not be enough to get a product like JooJoo noticed.
“This is an execution play from a company with no track record of execution,” says Gartenberg. “The question is, can they run a sustainable company that can deliver enough products?”
Rathakrishnan says his company is on track so far with its plans.
The JooJoo will be manufactured by a Malaysian company called CSL. CSL will pay for all the manufacturing costs in exchange for “very low single digit” percentage of the device sales. “This is lower than the fees charged in typical distribution deals,” says Rathakrishnan.
Even if Fusion Garage can churn out JooJoo products, going up against Apple’s marketing machine won’t be easy.
Rathakrishnan says the iPad launch didn’t catch his company by surprise. “We knew it was coming for a long time,” he says. “Apple went on and announced a device for the category we created in December.” He’s also counting on the JooJoo’s larger screen, the support for Flash technology and customers outside the United States to drive sales of the device.
“I love Apple and the brand, but it is a bit overblown,” says Rathakrishnan. “Despite the launch of the iPhone, Nokia remains the market leader, especially in Asia.”
Ultimately, it may come down to the perception of utility that the two devices — JooJoo and iPad — offer, says Gartenberg. Without the iPad’s photo app, e-book reader, video viewer, e-mail client, productivity apps and App Store, JooJoo could be a one-trick pony, ideal for web surfing but little else.
“You can’t discount the fact that Apple will have hundreds of developers creating native apps for the iPad, something that JooJoo will find difficult to do,” says Gartenberg.
Photo of JooJoo tablet: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
See Also:
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This isn’t official or anything, just a concept that happens to use some Microsoft assets, but what it Windows Mobile 7 looked like this? I think we all know it will not, but until the hammer actually falls at MWC, hope springs eternal. The “location-based desktops” idea is a good one for a MID or powerful smartphone that acts alternately as your email client, GPS device, and TV.
While pundits were arguing about whether Doom was damaging to us kids, we were busy having our sensibilities shocked by the phenomenally violent Rise of the Triad. While it wasn’t as flashy as Doom (it was Wolf3D-based), it had crazy weapons, fire, and enemies that would beg for their lives. So ahead of its time! At any rate, it was a fun game and I played through the demo a million times. And it’s coming to iPhone (yes, and iPad).
1up reports that it’s coming “soon” and will be a full port with all the levels of the commercial game. I’m not really a big fan of iPhone shooters like this, but the old, simple ones fare pretty well with the new control schemes. It might be that an iPad will be a great old school game platform — can you imagine playing X-COM on one? I got goosebumps!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks
The delays of the Barnes & Noble nook seem to be coming to an end. The news comes by way of a Barnes & Noble press release which spills the details of the availability, the timing with Valentine’s Day and some additional in-store content.
True to the press release, a quick check of the Barnes & Noble website reveals that the nook is listed as being “in stock now” and also accompanied by free shipping. As far as in-store availability, the nook is expected to be in the “majority of Barnes & Noble stores beginning mid-week.” And just in case anyone did not notice—that is “just in time for Valentine’s Day.” What a coincidence.
Wrapping up the nook news for the day is the exclusive in-store content. In-store visitors will be able to take advantage of the free Wi-Fi and browse ebooks, magazines and newspapers. Additionally, you can enjoy a short story by Adriana Trigiani, get a Valentine’s Day recipe for red Velvet cupcakes from Anne Byrn, the Cake Mix Doctor as well as check out “Read Between the Wines” which is a regular feature by wine expert Kevin Zraly.
Keep reading to check out the full press release…
Barnes & Noble Launches Exclusive In-Store Content and Promotions
Barnes & Noble, Inc., the world’s largest bookseller, announced that its popular nook eBook reader—the ultimate gift for book lovers—is in stock online at nook.com and will be rolling out in the majority of Barnes & Noble stores beginning mid-week, just in time for Valentine’s Day. While in-store, nook customers will enjoy exclusive holiday-themed online content, kicking off this month.
Barnes & Noble quickly sold out of nook stock online over the holidays due to unprecedented customer demand. Since then the company has ramped up production and is shipping stock to the majority of its stores, beginning this week. Customers can visit the Barnes & Noble nook In-Store Locator at www.bn.com/nook/instore, updated daily beginning February 10, to find local stores with devices in-stock.
Enhanced in-store connectivity allows nook customers to seamlessly access fast, free Wi-Fi in Barnes & Noble stores. There, they can browse the extensive library of more than a million eBooks, magazines and newspapers and enjoy exclusive “More In Store” content and promotional offers, officially launching in February, which include:
—A short story by bestselling favorite Adriana Trigiani featuring characters from her newest blockbuster, Brava, Valentine.
—A Valentine’s Day recipe for red velvet cupcakes from Anne Byrn, the Cake Mix Doctor.
—“Read Between the Wines,” a regular feature by renowned wine expert Kevin Zraly, guides readers and wine lovers through the mystery of pairing books with the perfect vintage.“nook is the perfect Valentine’s Day gift for anyone who loves reading. Demand for nook continues to be very high, and we’re pleased our customers will be able to try and buy nook in our stores and online and enjoy it in time for the holiday,” said William J. Lynch, President of Barnes & Noble.com. “In Barnes & Noble stores, nook owners will enjoy exciting nook-only content from their favorite authors and other valuable offers, along with fast and free in-store Wi-Fi, which nook customers have been accessing in droves over the last few weeks.”
New Barnes & Noble in-store content will be updated weekly and available for a four-week period. nook users can stay apprised of upcoming exclusive More In Store content at www.bn.com/nook/moreinstore. Also in February, nook users in Barnes & Noble stores can enjoy 10 percent off any CD. nook customers need only show the special offer on their nook to the cashier to redeem.
Barnes & Noble has continued to optimize nook software for an improved reading experience with the newly updated nook v1.2. Automatic over the air (OTA) updates, which do not require any action from nook customers, are underway and will be conducted seamlessly through this week. nook customers currently using the previous version can also immediately download v1.2 at www.nook.com/support, where additional update and technical support information is available.
nook marries innovative technology and sleek minimalist design with access to the Barnes & Noble’s digital store of over one million eBooks, newspapers and magazines. nook’s color touch screen for navigation along with a best-in-class E Ink display offer an immersive, enjoyable e-reading experience. It offers both 3G wireless and Wi-Fi access and is the first to offer digital lending for a wide selection of eBooks through its LendMe(TM) technology.
To learn more and experience nook, visit www.nook.com. Follow our eBooks and other updates on www.bn.com/twitter. To learn more about the free Barnes & Noble eReader software and Barnes & Noble eBookstore apps, visit www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooks.
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Earthtimes (press release) | Publishers Win a Bout in E-Book Price Fight New York Times The enTourage eDGe, shown at a trade show in Las Vegas last month, combines an e-book with several other functions. With the impending arrival of digital books on the Apple iPad and feverish negotiations with Amazon.com over e-book ... Amazon's Grip on E-book Pricing Slackens, But the War's Not Over FAQ: Amazon vs. Macmillan -- The IPad Wins Amazon, Macmillan Settle Price Dispute |
Section: Communications, Smartphones, Gadgets / Other
The folks over at Pocket-lint scooped up some really interesting info about the upcoming announcement of Inbrics’ Android-based M1 MID, scheduled to be revealed at the Mobile World Congress next week.
The M1 is really a little bit of everything. It is a “smartphone-like device” sporting a 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen display, a 3-megapixel camera and a front-facing VGA camera (probably for video calls). It also has a slide-out 5-row QWERTY keyboard. Other specs are GPS, 16GB of internal flash memory and a microSD card slot. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G or WiMAX. Inbrics aims to make the M1 a media controller as well. It sees media convergence from TVs, DVRs, mobile phones, digital cameras, laptops and desktops, where the M1 MID acts as the controller that pushes data to any device the customer chooses.
If all goes well, the MID M1 will be introduced in Europe in 2010, or early 2011.
Read [Pocket-lint] Via [Engadget]
Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Market research firm IDC has just released their quarterly report on the top selling smartphones (or “converged mobile devices”, as they call them) in the US for the fourth quarter of 2009. RIM and Apple dominate the list in an almost absurd manner, but a few welcome surprises managed to sneak their way in.
Want to test your mobile expertise? Make a mental list of what you’d wager were the best selling phones at the end of 2009, and then click through to see how many you got right.
Top 10 Best Selling Phones of Q4 2009:
RIM absolutely dominates the list, snatching up more than half of the slots for themselves. Apple follows close behind on two counts: they’ve got the second best selling handset, and they’re the only other manufacturer with more than one handset in the top 10. The Motorola Droid continues to pave the way for Android in the mainstream, securing a higher spot on the list (#3) than any other Android handset has in the past.
It’s important to note that this list only represents vendor sales, and not consumer sales. In other words: if a third party vendor ordered 500,000 units but only actually managed to sell 400,000 to end-users, it’s still counted as 500,000 sales. It’s an inevitable weakness of studies like this, considering how secretive carriers tend to be with their handset numbers.
Still pictures? That’s so 20th century.
Camera makers must figure by now that if they don’t have high-definition video, they don’t have squat, and Canon’s latest models are no exception.
Canon added to the pile of pre-PMA 2010 announcements on Monday with its newest low-end SLR, the EOS Rebel T2i. This camera has a new 18-megapixel sensor, a Digic 4 processor, and can shoot full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) at 30fps. It can also shoot standard-def, 640 x 480 video at 60fps, or blast out full-size 18 megapixel stills at 3.7fps.
It’ll cost $800 for the body only, or as a kit with Canon’s popular, low-end EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens for $900.
The press release doesn’t state the size of the T2i’s image sensor but it’s almost certainly the APS-C standard used in previous Rebels, or 22.2 x 14.8mm.
The T2i follows on the heels of last year’s not-so-surprising hit camera, the Canon 5D Mark II, which was one of the first single-lens-reflex cameras to shoot HD video, following the pioneering Nikon D90.
But the real power feature of the 5D Mark II was its low-light sensitivity, which let you take decent pictures in low light by dialing the ISO up as high as 64,000. While the T2i doesn’t go quite that high — and the quality of its images at high ISO levels remains to be seen — it does support ISO settings up to 12,800.
Not in the market for a big-ass SLR? Canon’s also got a handful of pocket cameras that shoot HD video, although these only do 720p: the PowerShot SX210 IS, PowerShot SD3500 IS, and PowerShot SD1400 IS. (A fourth model, the SD1300 IS, doesn’t shoot HD video.)
The $350 Canon PowerShot SX210 sports a 14x optical zoom lens that goes from 28mm (equivalent) at the wide end to 392mm equivalent.
The $330 PowerShot SD3500 has a more modest 5x zoom range but starts at a very wide 24mm equivalent, and its 3.5-inch LCD is bigger than most.
Both cameras have 14.1-megapixel image sensors.
The SX210 and T2i are scheduled to be available in March, and the others in February.
Press release: Canon Rebel T2i
Press release: Canon’s four new PowerShots
When the Nexus One was announced, many folks were questioning Google’s game plan and why it would release such an amazing device shortly after the Motorola DROID’s release. If that wasn’t enough to make some DROID owners envious, the Nexus One received a multitouch update last week which allowed pinch-to-zoom gestures within Google Maps, the Android browser and photo gallery. What could possibly quell all this Nexus One envy?
If getting multitouch for Google Maps wasn’t enough for DROID owners last week, they’ll be thrilled to know that their handsets are going to be graced with Android 2.1 in the future. Best of all, it’s coming with all the bells and whistles that can currently be found only on the Nexus One. Here is a run-down of what’s included according to Engadget:
Sadly, you’ll have to exercise some patience because there is no time frame for this update’s release. In the meantime, don’t look at your DROID with disdain and resentment. Instead, appreciate it and constantly remind yourself that when the Android 2.1 update comes out, you can one-up the Nexus One by saying, “Well, at least mine has a physical keyboard.”
[via Engadget]
Update: Motorola announced on its Facebook page that the Android 2.1 update will begin rolling out this week! Keep your eyes peeled for the update.
If you’ve been camping outside of your local T-Mobile store ever since word first got out that they’d be replacing busted trackballs on a handful of BlackBerry models, you should probably run to the store and grab some more supplies. Looks like things have been pushed back a few days.
According to TmoNews, the trackball replacement program has been pushed back to February 24th, 9 days after it was originally expected to launch.
Why the delay? According to details from T-Mobile’s intranet, RIM has decided to replace the tweezers in the ball replacement kit with a specialized tool they call a “spudger”. Wikipedia defines a spudger as a “wiring [tool] used for poking or adjusting small wires or components, generally in the electronics or telecommunications industries”, while I define it as “an awesome name for the totally killer rock band I’ll eventually create”.
Section: Peripherals, Displays/Projectors
BenQ’s V2220 21.5” LED LCD monitor seems to have bagged many world titles, from the “world’s slimmest” to the “world’s highest dynamic contrast ratio.” Boasting a thinness of only 15mm, the monitor is also very green. Power consumption is reduced by 28.6% compared to traditional CCFL models. When you switch to Eco mode, it further saves power by up to 52%. Not only does it help you save electricity, it is also very environmentally-friendly.
The dynamic contrast ratio is very, very high as compared to mainstream monitors. At a dynamic contrast ratio of 10,000,000:1 (that’s 10 million to one), it can display truer blacks and give you a more detailed display in darkly lit areas. The V2220 is scheduled for a Taiwan launch in February and March, along with the 18.5” and 24” models. The 23” model will be launched in June. The products will then be available worldwide. No words on the pricing, though.
Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Vertu, French for “virtue,” has a pink phone just in time for Valentine’s Day. It’s the Constellation Ayxt, only it’s pink. Fascinating.
There’s really not too much to say about the phone. It originally launched late last year, and it’s Vertu’s first “fold phone,” which surely must impress those of you living in the year 2006.
I’m going to venture a guess: if you buy your lady friend a pink phone for Valentine’s Day, you’re probably a jerk.
FROM APPLETELL - RealNetworks has released the public beta for their latest RealPlayer software package for Macintosh, which allows you to download video and convert it for your device in just two clicks.
MORE »
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
The iPad’s $500 starting price was lower than people expected, but Apple could still make price cuts if the device fails to gain traction among consumers, says an analyst.
Recounting his meeting with Apple executives, Bill Shope of Credit Suisse said Apple indicated it would consider lowering prices if initial demand appears to be slow.
“While it remains to be seen how much traction the iPad gets initially, management noted that it will remain nimble (pricing could change if the company is not attracting as many customers as anticipated),” Shope wrote.
If Apple did make price cuts shortly after the iPad launch, it would be reminiscent of the original iPhone release. Apple sold the original 8GB iPhone for $600 when it hit stores in June 2007; two months later, the company dropped the price to $400.
Wall Street analysts estimate Apple will sell between 1 million and 5 million iPads in its first year. Charlie Wolf with Needham & Company said that because Apple is defining a new category of devices, sales of the iPad are likely to ramp slowly, but “the $500 starting price point is low enough to attract a sizable portion of the early adopter crowd, consisting of iPhone and iPod owners.”
See Also:
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Artists frequently turn to technology for inspiration or commentary, utilizing components such as chips, ink cartridges and disk drives to make their art. Remember the Mona Lisa created from motherboard bits or the motorcycle from old hard drives?
Now, London artist Nick Gentry has turned forgotten floppy disk drives into art by using them as a canvas for mixed media paintings.
“The whole world was totally reliant on these physical media formats,” he says. “Now suddenly we are at a time where they are obsolete, replaced by countless intangible data files. Will humans be compatible with our own technology?”
Inspired by Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz’s giant world map made entirely of old computer parts, Gentry adopted floppy disks as his medium.
“I looked at using the disks in a grid to create photo-fits, constructing imaginary faces and identities that could draw connections to the personal information stored on the disks,” he says.
For instance, a metal circular hub on the reverse side of the disk worked as a metaphor for the human eye.
The number of disks varies in each painting. A small one can use up to 6 disks, while larger paintings can take up 100 disks or more.
“I ask people to donate the disks through my website but mainly I buy them,” Gentry told Wired.com. “They are still relatively cheap to buy as they are seen by most people as junk.”
To create a piece, Gentry starts with a preparatory sketch that is mapped into a grid, with each section the size of one disk. Spray paint is applied to the disks using a stencil to preserve the label and metal slider. The disks are then placed in tonally appropriate areas, almost like pixels, to create a collage, he says. Gentry then uses oil paint to finish other details of the piece.
The paintings are priced from £300 to £700 (approximately $470 to $1,100).
Get a glimpse of a few more of his paintings below.
Photos: Nick Gentry
When it comes to bar-shaped smartphones, it takes a good amount of effort to design something visually appealing. There’s really only so much you can do with a flat slab – and whatever can be done likely already has.
With that said, there’s just something about this handset, the Qisda QCM-330. I’m not sure what that “something” is, but I like it.
The QCM-330 has emerged as one of the winners of an iF mobile design contest, though the awards won’t be passed out officially until CeBit in March. Congratulations and all that to the design team for snatchin’ up a trophy, but we’re far more interested in the handset itself.
Check out the beast of a display on the front; not only does it measure in at a massive 4 inches, but they’ve also purportedly managed to crank the resolution on that thing all the way up to 1280×1024 (though, with a widescreen like that, it’s more likely to be running at 1280×720). That’s a considerably higher resolution than we’ve ever seen on a smartphone, as far as I know. The recognizable home key on the bottom right gives us high hopes that this thing is rocking Android, though they’ve yet to confirm as much.
What has been confirmed, however, is the WiFi, HSDPA, 3 megapixel camera, and accelerometer packed inside. The only thing we don’t like about this handset? There’s no indication thus far that it’ll be heading stateside.
If you’re a Russian reader, the guys over at MobileReview have the scoop on a handful of other (considerably less exciting) design contest – but if you’re English-only, Unwired View has a pretty exhaustive write-up in your tongue.
Asus has released the EeeTop ET1610PT, an all-in-one computer or nettop, that features a 15.6” touchscreen display (hence the letter “T” in the model name) with a resolution of up to 1600x900 pixels. The EeeTop ET1610PT is really nothing to shout about; other specs include an Intel Atom D410 processor, integrated Intel GMA X3150 graphics, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, six USB ports, a 5-in-1 card reader, 0.3-megapixel webcam and an Ethernet port. It doesn’t come pre-installed with a Windows 7, though. Asus somehow decided to include Windows XP with this nettop. You can, of course, upgrade it to Windows 7 by buying it yourself. It should be coming to Europe soon, with a price tag of under 400 Euros ($540)
Via [Ubergizmo] Via [Eee PC - Blog]
Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
There isn’t much to be said about a few in-the-flesh images leaked about a device we’ve all heard of other than the confirmation of a few things. To start, it looks identical to renders seen in the past, and the images depicted in HTC’s handset line-up which was leaked back in early December.
The form factor looks exactly the same and we can even see the clickable, optical trackpad that replaces the trackball typically seen on HTC Android devices. The back of the device tells us this is going to be a solid, aluminum device. Not sure what’s going on at the top where the camera and flash are located, and all the dots indicating a speaker and perhaps something else. One thing to keep in mind is that this is likely a pre-production device. Lastly, I’m glad to see Sense UI on what looks to be the successor to the Hero as it is an absolutely gorgeous interface over Android’s plain, bare-bones look.
[via EngadgetMobile]
FROM APPLETELL - Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and we’d like to help you out when it comes to iPhone applications to enjoy with your sweatheart.
MORE »
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Computer geeks over the weekend had a dorkgasm at the sight of a report hinting at an upcoming MacBook Pro equipped with Intel’s latest mobile processor.
Readers of MacRumors.com spotted Geekbench benchmark results for what appears to be a MacBook Pro featuring a 2.66GHz Core i7 M620, a high-end dual core processor featuring Intel’s Hyperthreading and Turbo Boost technologies.
The benchmark results appear plausible, as they suggest the alleged Core i7 MacBook Pro outperforms 2.66GHz MacBook Pros with the current Core 2 Duo chip. However, take this with a grain of salt. You have to wonder why an Apple employee would run this test and post the results in public.
Geekbench creator John Poole told Wired.com that Geekbench results can be faked, but he believes the Core i7 MacBook Pro benchmark is real.
“If the system information for this system has been faked, it’s a convincing fake; there aren’t any inconsistencies in the system information, the Mac OS X build number matches Apple’s numbering scheme for new hardware builds, and the processor matches people’s expectations for what will appear in the refreshed MacBook Pro,” Poole said. “In other words, I believe this result is authentic.”
Intel announced its latest mobile chips at CES 2010, and many notebooks are beginning to ship with the new processors. Observers believe Apple will upgrade its MacBook Pro family to include the new Intel chips.
MacBook Pros received an upgrade in June 2009, and Apple typically refreshes its notebooks every six or seven months. So if the Geekbench results are to believed, we should expect to see a Core i7 MacBook Pro soon.
See Also:
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Section: Features, Gadgetell Announcements
Listen up, Gadgetell is looking for a few quality tech/gadget bloggers, well more specifically we are looking to fill two positions.
The first being someone who can contribute often, and by often I mean on a daily, or at least an almost daily basis to include weekdays and weekends. I would say this person would average roughly 10 posts per week.
The second being someone who wants to write primarily on the weekends. Of course, anyone who fills this role will be welcomed to post during the week. But the main focus is for weekend coverage. This person would most likely average about 4-6 posts per weekend.
Assuming you are ok with those roles and posting expectations—we need someone who loves tech/gadgets. You know the type—the person who loves tech so much that other people get tired of hearing them talk because that is all they talk about. Or the person who sits at the dinner table with a laptop, tablet or smartphone because they cannot part with the Internet for even a few minutes. In short, we are looking for the tech obsessed.
If you are interested, here is what you need to do to apply. Send an email to robert (at) gadgetell (dot) com and include;
* For new bloggers, three sample posts that would fit on Gadgetell. Don’t worry they will not be used, but we want to see what you are capable of.
* For experienced bloggers, show us some links to other writing that you have done. These should be relevant to tech/gadgets and should also be current.
Also tell us a little about you, what you currently do, how much time you can realistically dedicate to Gadgetell and why you think you would be a good fit. And make sure you let us know how to get back in touch with you just in case we like what you submit.
And yes these are paid positions.
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
FROM GAMERTELL - The New Orleans Saints have just taken the superbowl - as predicted by EA Sports.
MORE »
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Websites, Google, Features, How To
The folks at Verizon Wireless were kind enough to send me a Palm Pre Plus and a Palm Pixi Plus to play with for a little while. And because of them sending out a few review units, I will in-turn be able to offer some hands-on posts about my use and experience as well as answer any questions that you may have.
That said, being a Google fanboy user, the first thing that I did upon receiving the phones were to install gDial Pro (a Google Voice app), and login to my Gmail account. With that Google login I should have had access to my email, calendar entries and contacts. Well, the first two items worked like a charm, but the contacts were an issue.
After a little use, I noticed ‘some’ of my contacts were missing, so I went into the Contacts app on the Pre Plus and hit up the Preferences section. From there you can click on your Google account and it will tell you the number of contacts you have synced with your phone. Mine said 47—wrong, incorrect, not even close.
I should have had 155 total. So I tried a few things—mostly the obvious. I deleted the contacts from my phone and tried to resync. Still 47 and nothing more.
I did a few Google searches and found that I am not the only person having this issue. And most searches said the same thing, either delete and resync or fix your contacts to not include certain characters. Not willing to go through 155 contacts and “fix” them, I continued to look thinking there had to be a better (simpler) answer.
It turns out there was a simple fix, which I found on the Palm Support Community website. Here are the details;
After that, I had, and still have my 155 contacts on the Palm Pre Plus. Big issue, simple fix. Of course, I would highly suggest that you make sure your data is backed up before making any big changes, just in case.
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Fear not, people who jailbreak your 3GSes! PwnageTool for the latest firmware, 3.1.3, is available and ready to crack, hack, and otherwise damage your iPhone.
I’ve stopped hacking my 3GS simply because too many things break after unlock. You should also keep your “SHSH hashes” backed up (basically keep the keys to previous versions lying around so you can revert. If you don’t know what it means, don’t upgrade.)
Otherwise, rock out, friends. 3.1.3 awaits.
| 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 | |
Last July, 
It’s crazy how the slightest little hint of something starts all the rampant speculation about Apple’s product development. This is the third clue that the next generation of iPad will have a camera, if not video capability. It certainly explains the stuff that was 
With the continued success of 
You might want to sit down for this one. Are you ready? Saving Private Ryan is coming to Blu-ray. Yep, the 1998 Academy award-winning movie is finally coming to Blu-ray on May 4th. Expect the ad machine to fire up some time in April, since you’re going to want to buy another version of this movie as well, right?
