|
|
|
|
Opera Releases Beta Of Native Opera Mini 5 App For Windows Mobile Phones
Interestingly, the new WinMo version of Opera Mini does not require Java. That basically means any Windows Mobile phone can accommodate the app. Despite not requiring Java, Opera Mini 5 beta for Windows Mobile includes the same feature set as the Java-based version. That means features like tabbed browsing, speed dial, bookmarks and the password manager are built right in (also see video below). To download, simply point your current mobile browser to m.opera.com/next.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 4 Mar 2010 | 3:15 am Skype for Symbian Enters the Nokia Ovi Store - Techtree.com
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 4 Mar 2010 | 2:56 am HTC Denies Apple's Accusations, Google Supports - Techtree.com
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 4 Mar 2010 | 2:52 am LibDem Lords seek to ban web-lockers (YouSendIt, etc) in the UKSince I posted yesterday about the UK LibDem Peers' introduction of a pro-web-censorship amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, the Peers have withdrawn their proposal and entered a revised one jointly...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Mar 2010 | 2:34 am LibDem Lords seek to ban web-lockers (YouSendIt, etc) in the UKSince I posted yesterday about the UK LibDem Peers' introduction of a pro-web-censorship amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, the Peers have withdrawn their proposal and entered a revised one jointly with Conservative Lords.Unfortunately, this amendment is even worse in some ways. In a posting on Liberal Democratic Voice, Lord Clement-Jones explains that his amendment is intended to attack "web-lockers," such as YouSendIt and RapidShare: The Digital Economy Bill, as currently drafted, only deals with a certain type of copyright infringement, namely peer-to-peer file sharing. Around 35% of all online copyright infringement takes place on non peer-to-peer sites and services. Particular threats concern "cyberlockers" which are hosted abroad.The idea that web-lockers should be blocked nationwide by court order is a bad idea: 1. Web-lockers are useful for more than piracy. I routinely use web-lockers for my own business and personal affairs. When I need to send a large video of my daughter playing to my parents, a web-locker is the simplest way of doing this. Web-lockers are also a vital part of how I produce my audiobooks and podcasts, since they allow me to privately share large pre-release audio-files with readers, editors and publishers. Web-lockers are also how I communicate with my attorneys and accountants for transmission of sensitive documents, such as scans of my passport and bills. 2. The reason web-lockers are useful for piracy is because they support privacy. The entertainment industry's principle objection to web-lockers is that their contents are private, and cannot be readily survielled by copyright enforcement tools. When I send a video of my daughter in the bath to her grandparents, the only people who can download that video are the people who have access to the private URL for the locker. This is the same mechanism that infringers use to avoid detection: upload an infringing file and share the URL with friends. You can't fix the web-locker problem without attacking the right of Internet users to privately share large files with one another. 3. The establishment of a national blocklist is itself a bad idea. Creating a facility whereby ISPs can be compelled to block entire websites is a bad idea on its face. The security problems raised by such a facility are grave (a hijacker could use it to block the BBC, or Parliament, or Google), and the temptation to extend this facility for use in other civil actions, (say, libel) will be great. Also, as my friend Lilian Edwards has pointed out, the LibDem proposal does not stipulate how long sites must be blocked for, nor what the procedure is for unblocking them. 4. There is no evidence that this will work. Dedicated infringers have shown a willingness and capability to use technologies such as proxies to evade firewalls. These proxies -- many of them legitimate businesses at home and abroad -- are cheap and easy to use, and make it trivial to evade ISP-level filtering. However, "good guys" (small traders, individuals wishing to share private material with friends and family) should not have to bear the expense and difficulty of evading the Great Firewall of Britain to do legitimate business on the net. 5. This is bad for the nation. The only country to enact anti-web-locker legislation to date is South Korea, which brought in a similar measure to the LibDem proposal as a condition of its Free Trade Agreement with the USA, whose IP chapter focused largely on locking down the Korean Internet. In the time since the US-Korea FTA, Korea has slipped badly in the global league tables for ICT competitiveness, going from being a worldwide leader in technology to an also-ran. I have sent a version of these comments to both of the LibDem peers using ORG's Write to Them links. I hope you'll get in touch with them, too. This is a grave blunder for the supposed "party of liberty," especially on the eve of a national election.
Previously:
 Source: Boing Boing | 4 Mar 2010 | 2:34 am Digital Stocks' YTD Performance: Meh (Stay Private, Mark!) [BoomTown]In a Wall Street Journal article today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is portrayed as not being particularly eager to take his social networking phenom public. That’s pretty much been his well-known attitude for a long time now–which has sometimes put him at odds with others at various times–for a range of issues from the company not being ready for prime time to Zuckerberg’s most likely distaste of having Wall Street investors second-guess him. His ability to stay private and avoid an IPO–at least for the short term–was, in fact, sealed by a recent giant funding the company received from a Russian investment firm. And looking at the stock performance of four big digital companies so far this year, there’s not been much upside yet for Facebook to jump into. For the year to date: Yahoo (YHOO) shares are down 7.2 percent. Apple (AAPL) stock, normally a fizzy one, is down .67 percent. Google (GOOG) shares have dipped 12 percent. And Microsoft (MSFT) is down 6.6 percent. You get the idea, but here’s the chart below: The story goes that a Microsoft employee by the name of Josh Weisberg wandered into the Canon press tent at the Olympic Press Center, and got given a 70-200mm Canon L-series lens. Or so he thought, probably tucking it safely in his backpack before Canon realized they had gifted him a lens instead of a branded pen or hat. I hope he wasn't too disappointed when he realized it was a thermos. I'd happily take it off his hands. [PDN Pulse via CrunchGear] Source: Gizmodo | 4 Mar 2010 | 2:20 am DMCA Amendment Proposed For UKGrumbleduke writes "During today's debate in the UK's House of Lords on the much-criticized Digital Economy Bill the unpopular Clause 17 (that would have allowed the government to alter copyright law much more easily than it currently can) was voted out in favor of a DMCA-style take-down system for websites and ISPs. The new amendment known as 120A sets up a system whereby a copyright owner could force an ISP to block certain websites who allegedly host or link to infringing material or face being taken before the High Court and made to pay the copyright owner's legal fees. This amendment was tabled by the Liberal Democrat party who had so far been seen as the defenders of the internet and with the Conservative party supporting them. The UK's Pirate Party and Open Rights Group have both strongly criticized this new amendment."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
It's been around for some time on other platforms (BlackBerry and Symbian as well as the iPhone), and certainly isn't the first barcode reader for Android—but Tag is worth checking out as not only is it a free download, it's also a more advanced way of reading barcodes. [MSDN via SlashGear] Source: Gizmodo | 4 Mar 2010 | 1:55 am Hydro Floors Disappearing Swimming PoolBy Evan Ackerman There’s one reason I don’t have a hypothetical swimming pool in my apartment, and it’s this: it would take up all the room I need for my hypothetical badminton court...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Mar 2010 | 1:43 am Samsung unveils fridge with built-in Internet (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 4 Mar 2010 | 1:25 am Fighting a Flood of Counterfeit Tech Products [Voices]By Rachael King, Freelance Writer, BusinessWeek.com Edward Dimmler dips a cotton swab in acetone and rubs it on the surface of a computer chip that was ostensibly manufactured by Samsung. The white tip turns black–the first clue that the part may be fake. Dimmler, director of warehouse operations at electronics distributor PCX, then inspects the chip under a microscope and sees the word Samsung smeared across the top of the chip. Clearly, this memory chip is counterfeit, ineligible for resale. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2010 | 1:05 am How Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Think About Real-Time Search [Voices]By Liz Gannes, Blogger, Giga Om Perhaps inspired by the speed of the medium, the integration of real-time tweets and other updates into major search engines has happened more quickly than I might have expected. It’s pretty amazing that raw Twitter posts already show up by default right on Google (GOOG) search results pages. They’re a little more buried on Microsoft (MSFT) Bing and Yahoo (YHOO), but still quite prominent and also launched in the last couple of months. Today at the Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara, Calif., product managers from the three major search engine gave insight into their companies’ approaches to the quickened pace of the web. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2010 | 1:04 am Smartphones: So Advanced, Yet So Hampered by Ancient Business Models [Voices]By Larry Dignan, Blogger, Between the Lines, ZDNet AT&T (T) manages to remove Google’s search from an Android device. Verizon Wireless (VZ) on the Devour drops in its Verizon Navigator to compete with Google’s (GOOG) GPS capability. Meanwhile, apps like Bing are being force fed to users and browser choice is a pipe dream on most mobile phones. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2010 | 1:03 am Virtual Musicians, Real Performances: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Music [Voices]By Eliot Van Buskirk, Contributor, Epicenter, Wired.com Ever wonder how Jimi Hendrix would cover Lady Gaga? The day is approaching when you should be able to find out. Musicians’ opportunities to sell their recordings may be drying up due to cultural shifts brought on by changing technology, but other aspects of technology are creating a promising new market for music: The licensing of the musical style or personality of recording artists. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2010 | 1:02 am Why the Social-Media Aggregator Has Croaked [Voices]By Caroline McCarthy, The Social, CNET A couple of years ago, they were everywhere: Fresh, design-savvy start-ups, taking everything you might ever want to know your friends were doing on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, and goodness knows what else. Social-network feed aggregators–FriendFeed, Socialthing, Plaxo’s Pulse–have been part of the dizzying array of Web apps ever since it became evident that the average Internet user was using more than one of these nifty social-media services and just might want to have them all in one place. But they’ve been on the way out for some time: FriendFeed sold to Facebook, and Socialthing to AOL (AOL), both brands buried within their sprawling new owners. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2010 | 1:01 am Sprint Exec Bonuses No Longer Tied To Post-Paid Sub Adds [Voices]By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s Sprint (S) today disclosed some illuminating changes in its short-term incentive plan for the company’s execs. The revised scheme is based on performance in the 2010 first half. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2010 | 1:01 am Fortis Bank NL posts smaller profit on impairments* Impairments rise to 412 mln euros, from 331 mln in 2008Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Mar 2010 | 12:50 am UPDATE 1-SVG asset values up, portfolio improvement shows* Asset value up 3O pct from half-year point, 7 pct on yearSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Mar 2010 | 12:26 am Hacked Roomba will google your houseSwedish hackers have put together the GgleBot: "a 'home crawler' consisting of a vacuum roomba with an on board webserver and camera. While the vacuum goes about its business, it extracts text from the...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Mar 2010 | 12:11 am Hacked Roomba will google your houseSwedish hackers have put together the GåågleBot: "a 'home crawler' consisting of a vacuum roomba with an on board webserver and camera. While the vacuum goes about its business, it extracts text from the images it takes. The text is later put in a database on the roomba and searchable through a web interface." The idea is that you release this thing and it crawls your house and indexes everything that has text on it. Later, you can google your house, asking the index to find you books, groceries, CDs -- anything with a label. Lots of people have written to me to tell me that this reminds them of the roommateware I wrote about in my novel Makers, and I can see what they mean. But to my mind, the science fiction that this most strongly evokes is Paul Ford's Robot Exclusion Protocol, one of the funniest and most prescient bits of technospeculation I've ever read (go read it now, it's short and you'll thank me).
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 4 Mar 2010 | 12:11 am Report: North Korea Develops Own Linux Distribution
• An Anchor Bay 1080p upscaler for analog-to-digital video, making every gadget you line in available on your TV via a single HDMI cable • Sound Retriever AIR for improving quality of MP3s and other compressed formats, a step-up from something that we found actually worked well on previous models • Advanced microphone-enabled automatic room calibration (called MCACC) for balancing speakers • Precision Quartz Locking System (PQLS), which provides jitter-free CD playback when combined with a compatible Pioneer Blu-ray player |
 Washington Post | Comedy Central yanks Stewart and Colbert from Hulu The Tech Herald If you're a Hulu user with unwatched episodes of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report presently sitting in your queue, we'd suggest you get 'em watched by Wednesday of next week because Comedy Central is pulling the ... Hulu Drops 'Colbert,' 'Daily Show' Viacom to Pull Comedy Central Shows Down From Hulu Hulu Loses 'Daily Show' and 'Colbert' |
A group of gamers from around the world created a 100,000+ keystroke script for speedrunning The Legend of Zelda, which was used by a blind gamer in Ontario complete the game. Jordan Verner, who is blind, posted a video of himself playing Zelda and asking for help to complete the game. This inspired other gamers to spend two years composing a script that Verner could follow, and at last he did:
So Williams and thee other diehard gamers each took different parts and copied down every single move.Camden man's project helps blind man beat video game (via Neatorama)"Every time we make a move, we roll, jump, do anything, we type down on the computer exactly what we're doing," said Williams.
Verner would then take the script and have his computer read it to him as he played.
An average gamer will take about a week to play through the entire thing, but this project took almost 2 years and more than 100,000 keystrokes. Finally, Jordan beat the entire thing.
"I felt great," said Jordan. "I felt strong. I felt like the sky's the limit."
"I'm glad everyone can see and learn from this that just because a person has a disability doesn't mean they can't do a normal thing, like play a video game," said Williams.
AFP - Australians are more likely to pay for music and movies online than to hand over money to read newspapers on the Internet, a survey released Thursday said.
 Los Angeles Times | Former Infinity Ward Heads Sue Activision 1UP.com The Infinity Ward situation has just gotten even uglier, if that's possible. Joystiq is reporting that former studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason West having filed suit against Activision, seeking compensation as well as ... '2011 Call of Duty' not Sledgehammer action-adventure Call of Duty MMO: How It Could Work Fired Founders Sue Activision |
The Jalalabad Fab Fi Network Continues to Grow With a Little Help from Their Friends (via Futurismic)Pictured below is a makeshift reflector constructed from pieces of board, wire, a plastic tub and, ironically enough, a couple of USAID vegetable oil cans that was made today by Hameed, Rahmat and their friend "Mr. Willy". It is TOTALLY AWESOME, and EXACTLY what Fab is all about.
The boys at the Jalalabad Fab Lab came up with their own design to meet the growing demand created by the International Fab surge last September. As usual all surge participants who came from the US, South Africa, Iceland and Englad paid their own way. Somebody needs to sponsor these people.
For those of you who are suckers for numbers, the reflector links up just shy of -71dBm at about 1km, giving it a gain of somewhere between 5 and 6dBi. With a little tweaking and a true parabolic shape, it could easily be as powerful as the small FabFi pictured above (which is roughly 8-10dBi depending on materials)
In December 2008, Microsoft surprised a lot of people by releasing an iPhone app — Seadragon Mobile. A month later, they ensured the move wasn’t taken as a joke or gimmick by launching another app, Tag, into Apple’s App Store. Now, they have a few, including an app for Bing. And starting today, they’re doing the same for Android.
Tag for Android is the first Microsoft-made app launched on the mobile platform. This is notable, of course, because Android is the mobile platform by Microsoft’s chief rival: Google. Still, as we saw with the iPhone, Microsoft has no problems getting its technology out there, even if it means using rival platforms. Aside from Android and iPhone, Tag also currently works on Windows Mobile, J2ME, Blackberry and Symbian S60 phones.
Microsoft’s Tag technology allows you to use your phone as a mobile barcode reader. You simply point your phone’s camera at a tag (think: a smaller QRCode), snap a picture, and the Tag program will interpret it. This can be used to place things like coupons in physical locations, for example. Other companies, including Google, are working on these mobile barcodes as well. In fact, just prior to the Nexus One unveiling, all Google employees were given the device with a special barcode on the back that other Android devices could scan to get that person’s information.
Despite the high level on animosity between Microsoft and Google, it’s great to see that Microsoft isn’t above creating apps for the increasingly popular Android platform. Microsoft made its own big mobile headlines last month with the unveiling of Windows Phone Series 7, a complete reboot of its mobile strategy, due to launch later this year. That move should help Microsoft better compete with the current hot mobile platforms, Android and the iPhone.
The Tag application is available today in the Android Market; it’s a free app.
Not only will you be able to keep your gloves on during cold weather and use a sausage as a stylus, not only is this product compatible with any iPhone on the market, NOT ONLY is this stylus not fit for consumption. Not only all of that, but it is also going to be tested by yours truly!
And I must shamefully admit that I'm excited about a small package of these sausages being on its way to my home so that I can test the special sausages against regular sausages, hot dogs, bacon, and cheese sticks. In the meantime, you can order your very own iPhone Sausage Stylus for a buck a pop*.
*Shipping and handling not included on this limited time offer. [CaseCrown]
 CBC.ca | Chilean quake shortened Earth's day, but not by much Los Angeles Times A JPL scientist says we ended up losing 1.26 millionth of a second of a day, and that the magnitude 8.8 quake also shifted the axis around which the Earth rotates. By Carla Hall When a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck South America last weekend, ... How Chile's quake could have shortened a day Temblor Tilts Earth by Inches Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Earth's Axis, NASA Scientist Says |
If you head over to YouTube right now, you may find that the videos on the homepage are significantly better than usual. Well, maybe not — but at least they’ll have a strong bias for startups, Silicon Valley, and the tech industry in general. That’s because YouTube has invited us to be part of their ‘Curator of the Month’ program, which means we got to submit a playlist of our favorite videos, which will be shown on the homepage throughout the day. You can find our full list of choices right here.
To build the playlist, we polled the whole TechCrunch crew for their favorite clips, which range from JESS3’s State of the Internet to a Jeff Bezos talk on minimizing regret. There are a few oddballs in there too, like this bizarrely catchy song about Excavator Trucks (a favorite of TC co-editor Erick Schonfeld’s kids).
Hope you like our choices, and feel free to share your favorites (hopefully tech related) in the comments!
Also, if I had one on my desk, I could stop dragging my family onto it. My wife has written a new chorous to the themesong (which goes, "There's a great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day"): "There's a great big hairy Cory Doctorow, sitting in the front row every day."
Making Smarter Dumb Mistakes About the Future
When confronted with a new technology and asked to predict its application, it's tempting to look for existing, unsolved problems to which the technology might apply. For example, in a notorious early ad for personal computing, Honeywell depicted a satisfied, modish hausfrau cheerfully setting the dip-switches on her kitchen's PC in order to recall recipes. It's easy to follow their thinking: Computers are used by giant companies to store and manipulate files in the workplace. What files do housewives have to store and manipulate? Recipes! This is the "horseless carriage" fallacy: tomorrow's world will be like today, but moreso. Faster transport will get us to the same places, but faster. Faster communications will let us talk to the same people, but better.So it's natural to think that HD television will be twice as unifying as old, standard-def sets (in fact, one of the big selling points for HD is that it will allow a small percentage of the household, usually Dad, to watch sports matches with his friends, while the rest of the family waits it out somewhere else).
 KATU | RealNetworks and Movie Studios Settle Lawsuit Over DVD Copying BusinessWeek March 4 (Bloomberg) -- RealNetworks Inc. said it will pay $4.5 million and drop its appeal of a court order barring sales of its DVD-copying software to settle a lawsuit by Walt Disney Co. and other Hollywood movie studios claiming the ... RealNetworks surrenders in RealDVD case Real, Hollywood Agree to Kill RealDVD Real Settles Lawsuits, Will Stop Selling RealDVD |
Atheist Agenda, a campus group at U Texas San Antonio, has created a "Smut for Smut" program, where they'll trade you high-grade porn in exchange for your Bibles and other religious material. The idea is to highlight that the Bible is as full of bad ideas and bad depictions of those ideas ("a woman is worth half a man") as pornography.
Many of my friends espouse some kind of faith, and it's clear to me that they get some good out of it. My feeling is that religion and faith, like music or sports or drugs or creativity, is a way of making parts of your brain light up in a way that is pleasurable and that often encourages you to do good. I think that part of it is good.
But just like all of those things, religion and faith make some people do bad things, as they find pathological ways of evoking the pleasurable sensation in their minds. I also think that the pleasurable sensation that attends the numinous state is a powerful conditioner of behavior, and that it can be exploited to get people to do terrible things (cf violent religious extremism), or merely things that are not good for them (deferring to religious authorities with bad ideas, giving money they can't afford to religious causes).
Well, we have Bronze Aged tribal nonsense, these things written by people in tents ages ago, and we're using this to renounce science standards in our classrooms in America. We're using it to kind of influence our political agenda.Trading bibles for porn in San Antonio (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)And we've read it. Atheists actually tend to be rather knowledgeable about scripture, and we are using this as a medium to get people to know what's actually within the religious text that they hold so dear.
(Image: Holy Bible, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Steve Snodgrass' photostream)
Source: Boing Boing | 3 Mar 2010 | 10:13 pm
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile
It seems Nexus One developers didn’t spend enough time working out the bugs and rushed the release of its multitouch capabilities. Rumors and random oddities had surfaced before but no one was ever able to recreate the glitch effectivly until Robert Green of Battery Powered Games came around. He too had experienced these bugs but unlike the others, he worked to prove it.
To do that, he created a simple application called Multitouch Visible Test. Using raw data, the application would draw two circles where the phone thought your fingers were. In simple, easy-going tests of the basic uses of multitouch, everything seemed to be normal. But once your fingers get too close together, the Nexus One starts to forget where you are and messes everything up. The phone begins to think your fingers are on opposite sides of the phone; you can’t get much more wrong than that.
Just to prove it wasn’t glitches in his own code, another user recorded himself testing the application out on a Droid and a Nexus One to demonstrate its legitimacy. Hopefully if the developers didn’t realize by now, this application will really bring it up to eye level. Now that it is concrete, more and more blame will be placed until the problem is fixed. So lets hope for this in the next software update.
Read [MobileCrunch]
Full Story » | Written by Greg Billetdeaux for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
The Compass Table is a project from Instructables that puts 500 mini compasses underneath a glass tabletop. That alone looks awesome. Add rare earth magnet coasters to the mix and watch as the compass roses spin you into geek furniture rapture.
Compasses are cool for, like, finding your way around and all that, but none of my personal usage has ever rivaled the undulating awesomeness displayed in that video.
Another benefit of the Compass Table: it's the only one I know of that makes your guests want to use coasters. And that's worth something. [Instructables]
Down for the Count (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
It’s no secret that VeriFone hopes to eliminate mobile startup Square before it even officially launches. Not only did they unveil their PAYware Mobile credit card-reading device just a week after Square made headlines with its unveiling, but they almost immediately started a major advertising push in places such as New York City cabs. And now they have perhaps their strongest weapon yet in the fight: placement in Apple stores.
Starting this month, Apple retails stores around the country will begin selling the PAYware Mobile reader (which is required for the accompanying app to work). It will also be sold through Apple’s online store. VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron disclosed this information during VeriFone’s conference call yesterday afternoon.
Obviously, this placement could potentially mean a lot for VeriFone. It’s one thing to advertise your product, and say you can buy it online, it’s another to say you can go to an Apple Store and pick up the entire package in one fell-swoop (iPhone + PAYware Mobile reader). Bergeron also noted that the company plans to introduce PAYware mobile editions for Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. While Square is also currently iPhone (or iPod touch)-only, the card reader itself was made to plug into a headphone jack so it should work on a variety of mobile platforms eventually.
Square, while yet to formally launch, is currently being tested by a number of partners. We’ve used it a few times to accept donations, and have been very pleased with the results. PAYware Mobile also seems pretty solid. This should be an interesting battle.
Here’s the key parts from Bergeron’s comments:
Let’s move on now to our PAYware mobile initiative. The iPhone version of this complete end-to-end payment solution comprise of a VeriShield Protect-enabled card encryption sleeve, an Apple-certified software app, and payment gateway service, commenced shipment in the last week of January. Channel development is key to this initiative’s success. To better reach individual and small business end users, we have launched a highly-effective marketing campaign that has garnered the attention of the national press, including Newsweek, CNN Money, and Fox Business news. We have also made progress in working with our traditional processor and financial institution partners to support this initiative and we will be making key announcement shortly.
In addition, we have established PAYware mobile gateway processing relationships with over 70 ISOs to-date, allowing them to assist existing or new (inaudible) customers in processing payment via the iPhone. Finally, and importantly, customers will also be able to purchase our PAYware mobile solution through our paywaremobile.comdirect sales site, which provide – which forwards transactions to one of five blue-chip processors. And starting in March, at Apple Retail Stores in the United States and the Apple Business Store online.
At the same time, we are also targeting large national, international party and in-home direct sales enterprises who may have already been outfitted with iPhones. Integrating secure, card present payments into these existing applications across hundreds of thousands of users is the next logical step. Later this year, we intend to deliver an EMV pin based version of PAYware mobile for the iPhone, allowing us to meet payment need for iPhone users worldwide. We are also planning to introduce PAYware mobile edition for Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.
death of a median, part I: an ode to Aurobindo Marg (Thanks, Dave!)Don't blame the bicyclists. They don't mean to. But it's been a long day at work and an even longer ride home, and these old bikes are heavy; they're trying their best to lift their bikes up and over the median, but every so often they catch one of their metal pedals or drag the teeth of their gears. Which nicks the cement.
It's nothing! A grain of sand! The median is still good as new!
Except the path has been tramped down, so this is where people think to cross. So one bicyclist is followed by another. Nicks coagulate into notches. Notches coalesce into ruts. Ruts amalgamate into grooves wide enough to roll bicycle wheels through. And while the grooves are made wider and deeper, the material being ejected from them is collecting into a little pile of rubble. That gets bigger. And as the groove is graduating into a fissure, so too is the pile moving towards becoming a ramp. Just the kind of ramp that a motorcyclist can utilize.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Google
Phone companies today seem to getting kind of lazy. No longer must the company make every bit of software for their device but instead, just take the time to make an SDK for the device. Then, they can just sit back and watch other people do their work for them while the reap the royalties. It is a brilliant idea, but sometimes it just seems a bit unfair.
But at least Google is finding a different way to compensate their top developers other than just giving them some of the profits made off of their applications. If you are an Android developer who has at least one app that has a 3.5 out of 5 ranking or better, and has been downloaded a minimum of 5,000 times, you are being sent a free phone! Specifically, you will get either a Droid or a Nexus One.
In America, it will be random which phone you receive. If you’re in Canada, the EU, Norway, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Singapore, you get a Nexus One. Anywhere else… sorry but the phones aren’t certified out there apparently. But neither phone is really that bad at all. So congrats to you guys.
Here is the email from Google:
Due to your contribution to the success of Android Market, we would like to present you with a brand new Android device as part of our developer device seeding program. You are receiving this message because you’re one of the top developers in Android Market with one or more of your applications having a 3.5 star or higher rating and more than 5,000 unique downloads.
In order to receive this device, you must click through to this site, read the terms and conditions of the offer and fill out the registration form to give us your current mailing address so that we can ship your device.
You will receive either a Verizon Droid by Motorola or a Nexus One. Developers with mailing addresses in the US will receive either a Droid or Nexus one, based on random distribution. Developers from Canada, EU, and the EEA states (Norway, Lichtenstein), Switzerland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore will receive a Nexus One. Developers with mailing addresses in countries not listed above will not receive a phone since these phones are not certified to be used in other countries.
We hope that you will enjoy your new device and continue to build more insanely popular apps for Android!
Read [TechCrunch]
Full Story » | Written by Greg Billetdeaux for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 TrustedReviews | WD releases its first consumer SSD BusinessWeek Western Digital today announced that it has started shipping its first solid state drive (SSD) aimed at consumers. The new 2.5-inch SiliconEdge Blue SSD comes in capacities of up to 256GB and features a native serial ATA 3.0 gigabits ... Western Digital intros its first consumer SSD Western Digital Announces New Solid State Drives WD Ships Its First SSDs for Consumer Devices |
Darina and Niko, we all want to marry you now. Happy life! [Offbeatbride via Boing Boing via Twitter]
Late last year, we published a list of the top 10 IPO candidates of 2010. Leading that list was Facebook, which has grown to 400 million users and is finally starting to turn on the revenue pumps as it works toward its inevitable IPO. But this evening, the Wall Street Journal published an article penned by Jessica Vascellaro that may dash the hopes of anyone who thinks that will happen in the immediate future. The lengthy piece, which is well worth reading in its entirety, touches on quite a few issues related to Facebook’s history and its future, and largely revolves around CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who doesn’t sound all that keen to take his company public.
While the article covers a lot of familiar territory about Facebook’s past, there’s plenty of new information too. Of note, the article says that Facebook executives have “discussed how revenues for 2010 could hit between $1.2 to $2 billion” — figures that exceed even the $1.1 billion InsideFacebook’s Eric Eldon reported yesterday (clearly, the number is looking big). The article also asserts that Facebook is working on a tool for sharing your physical location with Facebook (something that we’ve been hearing about for quite a while, and that I believe will be key in the future).
With regard to Facebook’s IPO, the article discusses Zuckerberg’s penchant for “delayed gratification”, which he says he has a special capacity for. And because Zuckerberg still maintains firm control over the company, and when it will IPO, delayed gratification seems to be the law of the land.
There are also a handful of interesting anecdotes about Zuckerberg. According to the article, a Facebook engineer once wrote an internal memo called “Working With Zuck”, in which he warned other employees not to hope for much in the way of back-patting from their CEO, explaining they should not “expect acknowledgment for your role in moving the discussion forward; getting the product right should be its own reward.”
You kind of have to watch to see what it’s all about. This little Rube Goldberg-esque machine, takes its steel marble passenger up to the top of the tower using only gravity and a few other natural little tricks. It’s all hand-built and seems to be the third built by its creator, who says at the end of the video that there is still some work to be done on it.
And the fun isn’t over once it reaches the top (well, it is in the video, but hey) — the machine is good to go as soon as the marble gets to the peak; it can be delivered to the bottom again and will run for 24 hours straight, limited only by the potential energy of a single large weight used to reset some of the mechanisms. Wish I had the time (and skill, and space, and wood) to build something like this.
[via Reddit]
News broke yesterday that Comedy Central would no longer allow popular video site Hulu to present episodes of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." "Yes, we intend to do so," PR rep Tony Fox told THR. "My feeling is if (websites) are making money on our copyrighted content, then that is a problem."
What a big steaming pile of epic fail. How 'bout blogs (like, oh, let's say Boing Boing) start suing Viacom for every time a Comedy Central writer lifts an idea, a blog post, a funny turn of phrase, or a story—and fails to credit, namecheck or pay us? Cmon guys, you know you do it. Television suit-people, when will you ever learn: we are the internet. We are your traffic machine. We are your idea machine. We are the engine that propels your shows. Why do you treat us like thieves? (via EFF)
According to Palm, this is the breakdown of the new features:
- Enhanced Inbox – Now, your inbox lets you compose, send, and reply, so you can always access your Facebook messages.
- Photo albums – Now you can view photo albums from all your friends, not just the photos in their news feeds. Uploading photos is easier as well, and includes the ability to add captions.
- Profiles – The new app lets you view users' profiles, whether they are your friends or not. View and post to their walls, view their information, and see their photo albums (subject to privacy settings, of course).
- Events and birthdays – Now you can see upcoming birthdays from your friend list as well as upcoming events.
- Friend search – Easily find your friends using the Friend Search feature. This takes you to their profile, where you can see and post to their wall, view their information, and look at their photos.
Anyone tried the update yet? How do you like it? [Palm via Engadget]
This is definitely the greatest coffee thermos out there — or at the very least the best I’ve seen today. Apparently they were giving these out at the Olympics press center (or likely “centre” — those clowns), and Microsoftie Josh Weisberg was the only person there to think of putting it on the internet. A room full of photographers and no one took its picture? Give me a break!
Unfortunately I doubt they’ll be available for us plebes to buy. As if those big-shot photo-journos need any more thermoses!
[via PDNPulse]
Section: Business News, Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Web
In an effort to generate additional revenue, some newspapers publish all their content online but charge for membership access. Personally, I can find my news elsewhere and I wouldn’t be spending my money for a paid subscription, but that’s a separate story. The Washington Post has recently announced plans to charge for their iPhone app, even though some offer their respective apps for free and some also charge.
Yearly, the app would cost you a simple payment of $1.99, which isn’t that big a deal but it still should rake in some nice profit. I wouldn’t rule out a potential price change after the experimental year is over. And who knows, maybe the Washington Post will try to expand to other platforms such as Android. Other news outlets such as The Guardian and CNN also offer iPhone apps, but charge money. Sometimes when you are away from a television, radio, and a computer mobile news is necessary, which is why apps are definitely profitable.
I don’t really have a problem with a $2 fee, but if I don’t use the app everyday there is no need to spend that money. It will be interesting to see Washington Post release their numbers and see if it is a profitable venture.
Author’s Note: The above image was taken by PaidContent, but the app has since been removed.
Read [PaidContent] Image Credit [PaidContent]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
My love of Pixy Stix is known throughout the seven seas, but that doesn’t mean I’d wear a watch like this. Really, now. You’d have to be the most candy-loving, grill-sunglasses-wearing, Surge-sucking rave-master in Neo-Tokyo to even consider it. Or I guess you could just be a kid who likes colors. And robots.
The obvious question then becomes where is a kid like that going to come up with the ¥19,000 (~$215) required to purchase this thing? His allowance? Man, I used to get a quarter a week! I could barely afford to keep myself in SweeTarts!
[via Doobybrain]
Of course, the $148 estimate is just for an 8GB Touch. When you get into 64GB territory, you're looking at a grand savings of $348! I don't know exactly where these signs are posted, but that's probably for the best—it'd take no time at all to whip up my generous offer of $51.01. [The High Definite via The Daily What]
Kwedit, the innovative new alternate payment product for social games and just about any other virtual good, is on a roll. They’ve raised a second round of financing – $3.3 million in a round led by Maveron. And they were also on the Colbert Report last night. Just, not so much in a good way.
Colbert ridiculed the company as a “website that hooks little kids on borrowing credit.” You can watch the clip here.
One of Kwedit’s products is a sort of credit system. Users promise to pay back the Kwedit, and social game gives in game currency based on that promise. There’s no enforcement mechanism if the user doesn’t pay, other than a lower Kwedit score and difficulty in getting more in game Kwedit. See our overview here.
So while the Colbert clip is funny, it’s not very accurate. The company says that they absolutely do not encourage use by young children. You must be at least 13 to use Kwedit. And while Kwedit teaches users how to use credit, it’s not actually a credit product. The credit business is about charging interest over time, ideally on balances that are never fully paid off. There is no interest in Kwedit.
Kwedit says they’ve signed six new merchant contracts since launch across a variety of verticals. PokeTalk, a VoIP provider, is among them, as well as a MMO, a test prep service and a credit record protection service.
PokeTalk is using the Kwedit Direct product, which allows users to agree to pay for something online and then pay for the item by mailing in cash, or by going to a local 7-11 and paying there. Pre-paid cards also require a big up front investment in printing and distribution to get up and running.
Some of Kwedit’s partners seem to be very interested in that 7-11 angle. It’s very hard to get any kind of presence in those stores, but they can get in immediately by using Kwedit. In fact, says the company, they are seeing “tremendous interest” in the Kwedit Direct product.
Kwedit also says that they can enable charitable donations via Kwedit Direct, and neither they nor 7-11 will charge any fees for these payments. So charities looking for a new way to accept payments will likely give this a look.
As I said in our launch post, I’m very intrigued by Kwedit. It’s the only truly unique payment product I’ve seen recently and has a real chance of helping social gaming companies and other virtual goods companies increase revenue per customer in a world where only 1-3% of users are willing to open their wallet. Colbert may joke about it, but Kwedit is, actually, serious business.
An increasing number of people are watching video, including TV shows and movies, on their computers, instead of via traditional TV sets.
Many young people don’t even bother with a cable or satellite subscription and just use their PCs or Macs to get their video fix.
But computer screens are small, so some folks hook the computer up to the TV for their viewing sessions. The problem with this is that it can be complicated for the technically challenged. And it can involve long cables stretching across the floor, or leaving a computer you might want for other tasks permanently connected to the TV. So companies have been working on ways to beam Internet video wirelessly from your computer to your TV.
I’ve been testing two of these wireless PC-to-TV solutions. Both require a secondary device that remains connected to the TV to receive the wireless signal from the computer.
One product is a new system from Intel (INTC), several major laptop makers and the networking equipment company Netgear (NTGR). It’s called Intel Wireless Display, or Wi-Di for short. The other is a software product called PlayOn, from a company called MediaMall. It beams video to your TV through popular game consoles such as Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360, Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii. Both of these products only work on Windows computers.
In my tests, both systems mostly worked as advertised, but each had some downsides. The Intel system works with any video from any site you can play on the computer, but the video disappears from the TV if you are playing it in full-screen mode and get the impulse to use the computer for any other purpose while it is playing. And it only works on a handful of new, specially equipped PCs.
The PlayOn system will work on an existing computer, and it keeps showing a video even if you choose to use the PC for some other task. But it can’t beam just any old video to the TV, only those from services PlayOn has enabled. For instance, you can watch TV shows and movies from Hulu (partly owned by News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal and its Web sites) but not from your favorite random Web site.
Intel’s new Wi-Di system is so far only available on three specific laptop models, one each from Toshiba, Sony and Dell (DELL), that range from $900 to $1,050. And these laptops are so far only available from Best Buy (BBY). It also requires a small $100 adapter called Push2TV from Netgear, which comes free with these laptops.
Wi-Di requires computers equipped with Intel’s brand new 2010 Core processors, Intel’s graphics chips and Intel’s wireless chips. Netgear and Intel say the feature will be available on other PC models later in the year.
I tested Wi-Di with the $900 Toshiba E205, a capable laptop with a 14-inch screen. Setup was a breeze. I just plugged the Netgear box into my TV and pushed a special Wi-Di button on the Toshiba. I typed in a code number the first time I used it, and I was in business.
Instantly, anything showing on the Toshiba’s screen was wirelessly replicated on the TV screen, even though I was eight feet away.
I tested the system with YouTube, Hulu and many other Web sites with no hitches or glitches. I also played videos stored on the PC’s hard disk.
Video mostly played smoothly over Wi-Di, though the quality on the TV was a bit degraded from that on the laptop screen, and HD videos didn’t look nearly as good as normal HD TV broadcasts. Also, the system isn’t satisfying unless you are streaming a video that can be viewed in full-screen mode on the PC.
I tested PlayOn with a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop and a PlayStation 3. After hooking up the PS3, I installed the $40 PlayOn software, which runs in the background. I then navigated to the Video section of the Sony’s menu, found PlayOn listed and used the Sony’s remote control to select from supported services, which include YouTube, Hulu, Netflix (NFLX), CBS.com (CBS), Amazon (AMZN) Video on Demand, CNN.com,and ESPN.com.
PlayOn also allows third-party plug-ins to add other Web video sources, such as NBC.com, but the company admits that the plug-in process can be clunky.
Video quality was about the same on PlayOn as on Wi-Di, and most programs played smoothly. With PlayOn, you don’t see the actual Web site, and you’re limited to the navigation system and options of the game console you’re using. So, I had to tediously find shows on the Sony by trolling through long lists.
PlayOn failed to display videos and photos stored on my PC, though to be fair the company lists this as a beta feature. And it displayed brief error messages frequently, even when it proceeded to play my chosen video properly.
PlayOn costs $40, and can be downloaded from www.playon.tv. You also must own or buy a game console, or one of a smattering of less- well-known TV adapters that the system supports.
Watching Internet video is a better experience with no wires to get in the way. But it can cost a lot, and needs some work.
Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.
This poor link jockey over at Gizmodo got the tip from a pair of in-ears stuck in the ol’ ear canal. Our hearts and minds are with this brave lad in his time of tribulation. I’m surprised they didn’t use a vacuum or something. Note: I don’t recommend that course of action.
You see, readers, these are the risks we bloggers take every day to bring you the freshest posts. And just so you know, I’m using “fresh” in that sentence the way Vanilla Ice did.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Android users have a new way to search their phones today, and it’s pretty damn cool. Google has just released a new application called Gesture Search that lets you search your phone’s contacts, bookmarks, applications, and music simply by scribbling out letters with your finger. No hunting and pecking — you just draw out each letter as if you’re finger painting. The new application is currently only available for devices running Eclair (Android 2.0, which is currently only found on the Nexus One and Verizon Droid).
Using Gesture Search is quite simple. First, you boot up the Gesture Search application, which you need to download from Android Market. After installing it, your phone will prompt you to ask if you want to add the application to your home screen (which you’ll probably want to do if you intend to use it with any frequency). Tap the application, and you’ll see a black screen, where you’re supposed to start drawing the first few letters of your query. As you complete each letter, the application will refine your results. If you mess up, you can delete the last letter by drawing a horizontal line to the left (you can delete the entire word by swiping to the right).
I’ve been playing with the new application, and the character recognition seems to work pretty well. It’s still too early to tell how useful this will be on a day-to-day basis, but it has potential. For one, it’s great for people who don’t like having to flick through long lists or use the phone’s integrated keyboard. And because everyone knows how to draw these letters by heart, it makes for a good way to search when you can’t keep your eyes on your phone (don’t take this as a recommendation to use it while driving, though — that’s never safe).
At long last, webOS has been granted a Facebook application worth its weight in kilobytes. A completely revamped version of the Facebook application has just gone live in the Palm App Catalog – and boy, is it an improvement.
Palm has offered some level of Facebook support on webOS since the launch of the Pixi – but as we noted in our Pixi review, calling what it had “Facebook support” was probably exaggerating. You could sync your Facebook contacts, read your news feed, and.. well, that’s it.
The new app, however…
Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>
Section: Peripherals, Storage
It’s not surprising to see very little fanfare accompanying announcements of new thumb drives, but the Corsair Voyager GTR thumb drive that utilizes a quad-channel architecture certainly deserves a little more attention. What is a quad-channel architecture, you ask? Basically, the technology allows you to get higher data transfer speed out of your sluggish USB 2.0 ports. The Voyager GTR thumb drive boasts a data transfer speed of up to 34MB/s. Of course, a thumb drive with USB 3.0 support would easily beat that speed, but USB 3.0 drives are also a little pricier. If you’re looking for more bang for the buck, the Corsair Voyager GTR thumb drive is definitely something you should consider. It comes in three different capacities; 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB. No words on pricing yet, but it should be cheaper than USB 3.0 drives.
Via [HotHardware]
Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
At long last, webOS has been granted a Facebook application worth its weight in kilobytes. A completely revamped version of the Facebook application has just gone live in the Palm App Catalog – and boy, is it an improvement.
Palm has offered some level of Facebook support on webOS since the launch of the Pixi – but as we noted in our Pixi review, calling what it had “Facebook support” was probably exaggerating. You could sync your Facebook contacts, read your news feed, and.. well, that’s it.
The new app seems much more properly endowed, offering up access to your news feed (with full liking/commenting support), full profiles, people search, photo albums, inbox, events, photo uploading, and more. And of course, it’s still fully intertwined with webOS’ Synergy system, allowing the user to automatically sync Facebook friends to their relative contacts, complete with profile pictures as caller ID photos.
We’re just cracking this app open for the first time right this second, but it certainly seems like the fully featured Facebook app that webOS deserves.
Update: Added a few screenshots below!
Update #2 Some people are reporting that the application in the App Catalog is still the old version. If that’s the case for you, try using the App Catalog’s built in update feature (Open app catalog, tap the shopping bag on the bottom right).
Valve is in the midst of a media blitz at the moment — not that you’d notice, since their idea of a media blitz is secretly launching a complex alternate reality game, or emailing single novelty screenshots to six different media outlets. You could be forgiven for expecting a full-site skin for 1UP, or a week-long series of “developer diaries” on IGN — that’s what every other game company out there thinks makes games sell. At any rate, GDC is coming up and the expected announcements are Steam on OS X (definite) and possibly a peek at Portal 2, Half-Life: Episode 3, or both (speculative).
Of course, the idea of Steam on the Mac makes fanboys of all stripes froth delicately at the mouth — but while an excellent game-distribution client like Steam would be welcome on the Mac, it may not be the gaming renaissance people are hoping for. It’s worth taking a bit of time to look at, since gaming is increasingly a major source of revenue and a wedge to increase market share. Let’s take a look at what Steam is up against.
Read the rest of this story on CrunchGear…
Valve is in the midst of a media blitz at the moment — not that you’d notice, since their idea of a media blitz is secretly launching a complex alternate reality game, or emailing single novelty screenshots to six different media outlets. You could be forgiven for expecting a full-site skin for 1UP, or a week-long series of “developer diaries” on IGN — that’s what every other game company out there thinks makes games sell. At any rate, GDC is coming up and the expected announcements are Steam on OS X (definite) and possibly a peek at Portal 2, Half-Life: Episode 3, or both (speculative).
Of course, the idea of Steam on the Mac causes a delicate froth to appear on the lips of several kinds of fanboys — but while an excellent game-distribution client like Steam would be welcome on the Mac, it may not be the gaming renaissance people are hoping for. It’s worth taking a bit of time to look at, since gaming is increasingly a major source of revenue and a wedge to increase market share. Let’s take a look at what Steam is up against.
Unlike the majority of games and programs for Windows, Mac apps are frequently distributed whole, with a nag screen and 30-day limit or the like — shareware, essentially. This has been the standard for as long as I can remember; one example I’m sure many readers recall fondly is Escape Velocity, the demo for which was practically the whole game, except that once you passed the 30-day trial period, a rogue fighter ship piloted by one “Cap’n Hector” would harass you and steal your credits (the scoundrel). A more modern equivalent would be the ability to download, say, the Aperture 3 trial and instantly convert it to the full version by entering a license key. Add in the faultless update system in OS X (compare with XP’s monstrous Windows Update), and it’s clear that Mac users have less to gain, and more to expect, from a digital distribution platform on their OS. They take Steam’s biggest selling point for granted to begin with.
That can, of course, go both ways. One could argue that Steam is a natural fit for OS X, since digital distribution and automatic updates are so very Mac-ish, but users will also tend to reject non-Apple programs that perform Apple-like duties. “Apple does it better,” they’ll say, and they’re probably right, since Apple made the OS. On that note:
Steam doesn’t really fit in well with OS X
This may sound like a superficial complaint, but no one has yet successfully overestimated the superficiality of Mac users. On Windows, I’m resigned to the constant interface changes: applications with hard-coded Vista-style buttons, flash-like interfaces, or ugly (but functional) open-source programs that look like they just stepped out of Windows 95. Steam is far from ugly, but it is a custom UI, with different spacing for buttons, and an embedded browser that until recently was IE-based, and a number of other issues. Sure, it works, and it doesn’t look bad, but can you think of how out-of-place it might look on a Mac? GUI consistency is not just pretty, it’s functional. And that consistency has always been one of OS X’s strengths (notwithstanding the occasional overlap, like Marble in Aperture and whatever-it’s-called in iTunes).
It’s an objection which could be overcome by Valve, but they’ve invested in the Steam look (it’s deliberately and irreversibly associated with Valve’s branding) and haven’t made too many concessions to Windows. So while they’re capable of making it look right, I don’t know that they have any inclination to do so. And that’s something which will rankle the design-conscious masses of Mac users.
If a gamer on the Mac (ahem) really wanted to do it right, anyway, there are tools in place. I wrote about the launch of GamersGate’s Mac store, which I’ve used and found perfectly convenient. Its web-based interface means no commitment, but also no sweet features. Still, it’s something to add into the discussion stew we’re brewing here.
Really now: there aren’t many games for the Mac
I suspect there will be some resistance to this point, but it’s kind of a throwaway since the next one is more important anyway. But let’s be honest here. There aren’t a hell of a lot of good games on OS X. At best you get big titles a year or two late, if you get them at all. 9 out of 10 games on the Mac are colorful casual games, point-and-click adventures, and the occasional inexplicably cross-platform indie game. I’m not saying there aren’t any good games coming out, but lord, they ain’t coming down like autumn leaves, that’s for damn sure. Here’s a list of Steam games with a native Mac port. Not pretty, and as commenter Scott notes, there’s no guarantee any of these games will launch with Steam OS X, though we can hope.
And we’re okay with that. Apple hasn’t recovered as a gaming platform since the Great Halo Betrayal of 2000, and as some great rhetorician said, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me – you can’t get fooled again.” How true. But maybe Steam would bring a new enthusiasm to the Mac gaming community, right? Don’t be so sure. Valve has reported that it has approached Apple many times but seen no real accommodation on their side. It takes two, you know. And when your partner is busy eying that sexy tablet form factor across the room… you might find:
OS X is no longer the platform Apple cares about for gaming
If Apple has dropped the ball on PC-like gaming (FPSes and all that), it’s led the game in the casual/mobile sector. Although I wrote some time ago that Nintendo has little to fear from Apple in that area, I by no means meant to suggest that Apple was anything but a success in the mobile games world. My argument was, in fact, that games were far more successful than Apple could have guessed, and that was why they were only now starting to push them. But Apple is smart enough to pick its battles, and it needs to get into the desktop gaming business right now like it needs to get into the llama farming business.
It doesn’t take a lot of faith to see that the iPad and next iPhone are going to have gaming as one of their primary foci (focuses?). What better use for the perfectly capable 3D graphics chip they’ve got in there? Recent investigation shows more similarity between the iPad and iPhone 3GS than previously supposed, so it’s likely that there will be a significant overlap in releases. Hardware and code base homogeneity is a huge advantage for games developers, and I’m guessing you’ll see a nice blossoming of seriously cool games once the iPad hits and a value proposition is settled on.
Where does that leave OS X? Out in the cold, obviously. Sure, Apple wants people to buy games for it, that’s money in their pocket. But there’s a lot more money to be made in iPhone and iPad gaming because they can leverage the App Store, against which Steam is powerless. Now, if Steam were to run on the iPhone too, that’d be insane, but I guarantee Apple would rather eat glass than have a powerful alternative to the App Store catering to a market they’re just starting to exploit.
Even with all that I’ve said here, I’m still excited. The announcement, expected to be next Thursday (Valve’s Gabe Newell is scheduled to speak), could be a lot more or a lot less than what we expect. The Orange Box for Mac? Don’t get your hopes up. But when Valve does something like this (especially with such a crazy run-up as they’re doing), you can bet they don’t do things by halves. There’s more care taken in this teaser image (via RPS; the rest are at MacRumors) We’ll report the goings-on as soon as they occur, so point your browsers this way next week for that and all the rest of our GDC coverage.
Update: Added Caruso comic (not my joke)
Lots of news coming out of CeBIT this year, including the latest projector from Acer, the K11. The K11 is a pico projector, so it’s the latest in the current crop of smaller display options. Measuring a mere 122 x 116mm, it’s ideal to stuff in your laptop case to take to that next meeting.
The K11 is a little different then some of the other projectors coming out though, in that it uses DLP with LEDs as well as the standard lamp configuration. Acer has said that this will give the K11 a display life of 20,000 hours before failure, which is quite reasonable. The K11 also has a built in USB port, and an SD card reader. The 2000:1 ratio will allow you to project widescreen as well as the standard 4:3 format, with a 200 lumen brightness ratio. We’re working on getting one of these to review, and we will be comparing it to a couple of other projectors in this market segment, the 3M and the Optoma.
Q:
In your review of the new Quicken for Mac, you didn’t mention if it can print checks, as the prior 2007 version does. I have heard it doesn’t. Is this true?
A:
Yes. Among the features Intuit (INTU) omitted in the new, stripped-down Quicken Essentials for Mac was the ability to print checks. In addition, as I noted in my review, the new product cannot track individual investment transactions, perform electronic bill paying, or export data to TurboTax—all of which the prior Mac version could do, despite its generally poor reputation.
Q:
I have a Mac laptop with the Intel Core 2 Duo chip. Can I run Quicken for Windows on my Mac? Thank you.
A:
Yes, if you install Windows on your Mac. Many hard-core Quicken fans do this, since the Windows version of the program is superior.
Q:
Are there any laptops with screens measuring 19 inches or larger?
A:
A cursory search of available laptops from major manufacturers didn’t turn up any models with screens that large. But a number of companies offer laptops with screens that measure 18.4 inches.
You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital web site, walt.allthingsd.com.
AP - Hulu's days as a free online video site could be ending soon.
Section: Audio, Portable Audio, Video, Portable Video, Communications, Gadgets / Other, Web, Web Apps, Websites
Yesterday marked the day when Zune HD users could finally access Facebook from a handy app. To the dismay of many enthusiastic Zune HD and Facebook users, the app had several bugs, most notably an inability to download and collect user data. The app has since been improved by the engineering teams of Microsoft and Facebook. Earlier today Facebook announced that the problem had been solved, and they offered this message: “Users should now be able to access the full functionality of the Facebook application for Zune HD.”
Thankfully Facebook and Microsoft tackled the problem right away because Facebook is a must for many mobile users and having access to it at all times is essential for teens and adults alike. Feel free to let us know in the comments below whether your Zune app works well or if problems are still lingering.
Read [Facebook]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
The Israeli military called off a raid on a West Bank town after a soldier posted on his Facebook page that his combat unit was going to “clean up” the area, Haaretz reports.
“‘On Wednesday we clean up Qatanah, and on Thursday, god willing, we come home,’” he wrote, according to the Israeli paper. He also posted details such as the time and place of the planned operation. The soldier was reported by his friends, court-martialed and sentenced to 10 days in prison, the Associated Press writes, adding that the Israeli military is “cracking down on soldiers’ use of social networking Web sites.”
Read the rest of this post on the original site
NSFW just like every other Zero Punctuation.
Well, TV manufacturers are definitely embracing 3D for the home. Obviously it’s going to require the networks to jump in too, as evidenced by Sony and CBS building the “Sony 3D Experience” in the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.
The showcase is designed to give consumers a chance to really understand how the 3D technology will work, and is going to feature the latest television and Blu-ray technology that Sony has to offer. People will walk through several demonstrations of exactly how 3D broadcasting is done, and get a taste of what they should expect from channels like ESPN 3D (that’s launching this summer), and the newest content from Sony, IMAX, and Discovery. They also plan on having different examples of the latest 3D glasses as well, showing off the latest from RealD. The “Experience” will be in the CBS Television City research facility inside the MGM Grand Hotel, and should be similar to the displays that the manufacturers had set up during CES2010.
[via CEPro]
 PC World | Can TiVo Premiere Give Blockbuster a Boost? PC World TiVo is taking a big step with its brand new TiVo Premiere. The Series 4 set-top box, officially unveiled this week, brings a refreshed design and host of added features to the decade-old DVR system. TiVo Premiere boasts an HD-ready interface, ... TiVo Premiere: Blockbuster, Netflix, Amazon On Your TV TiVo turns the DVR into a Flash-based app platform TiVo Introduces Boxes Combining Web, Television |
Google Buzz was pushed out the door too early and force-fed to users by placing it in Gmail. The launch has been marked by both privacy and usability issues. But the team at Google behind it, led by Bradley Horowitz, is working hard to fix problems and respond to user feedback. In fact, earlier today, Horowitz pointed people via Buzz and Twitter to an official Google product idea site for making suggestions to improve Google Buzz. The site is powered by Google Moderator, which lets people suggest ideas and then vote them up or down.
Below are the top ten ideas and feature requests on the site right now, which already has 13,607 votes on 338 ideas from 692 people. They range from making comments more manageable to fixing Twitter update imports so that they are more realtime to better filters and a ReBuzz button.
Hmm, sounds like people want it to be even more like FriendFeed. What’s your top feature request for Buzz?
Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Mobile
The Virgin Mobile experiment with post-paid customers is over. Virgin Mobile has confirmed that it will shut down its contract services on May 25, 2010, and revert back to offering only prepaid services.
The closure of Virgin Mobile’s post-paid arm brings to end to a venture that’s less than two years old. Virgin began offering contracts when it acquired Korean carrier Helio in June 2008, but Virgin was then bought by Sprint the following year. It doesn’t make sense for Sprint to continue operating those post-paid contracts when it wants to focus on promoting Sprint calling plans and phones. The company has decided to keep Virgin Mobile as its prepaid option.
Sprint is offering discounts to ease the transition from Virgin Mobile, though it will not be automatic. Current Virgin Mobile subscribers have the option of letting their current contract expire and moving to another carrier. Here is a statement from the company regarding the transition.
No customer will be automatically migrated to Sprint’s post-paid service. However, Sprint has created a special offer for our customers.
Current post-paid customers are being given $50 towards the purchase of a Sprint post-paid handset with a new two-year agreement. This credit is in addition to any applicable rebates that may apply. Post-paid customers moving from Virgin Mobile to Sprint will also receive $150 off of handsets as part of Sprint’s standing new customer offer. Activation fees will also be waived.
Read [MobileCrunch]
Full Story » | Written by Andrew Kameka for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Most of us don’t think twice about lugging a $2000 object to a public place and then leaving it for five minutes to grab a coffee refill — with no other assurance that it won’t be stolen than that there are other people around. I’ve started being a bit more careful since laptop theft has gone up around here, but it’s just as easy to forget that laptop rustlers don’t just hang out in cafes. And if they’re savvy, they may even employ wireless signal trackers to pinpoint the location of laptops hidden under car seats, in trunks, or in garages.
It seems (although I’m not sure how true this is for different types and makes) that some laptops keep their wireless on for a set time after being shut or told to sleep — probably because people often remember something they needed to look up, and pop the laptop back open. Laptop thieves make use of cheap wi-fi strength indicators available at any Fry’s to find a likely car and then, I suppose, bust it open the usual way.
People are advised to shut down their wi-fi before putting their computers to sleep, or else fully shut down the machine. Seems reasonable enough, but why do I suspect most people won’t take this advice?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Mobile, Computers, Mobile Computers, Wireless
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson spoke at a conference yesterday and let drop some interesting bits about the iPhone and iPad. Stephenson didn’t confirm iPhone exclusivity, other than saying it will be an important part of AT&Ts line up for “quite some time.” However, Stephenson did comment on how his network will respond to the iPad.
“I am anxious to see the customer response and usage” the CEO said. He also let loose that he doesn’t expect a lot of network usage; he believes the lower-priced WiFi version will be the bigger winner. That’s a sizable gamble that AT&T got wrong with the iPhone, it consumes far more data than AT&T anticipated (or perhaps hoped for?).
As many of us grapple with the decision over going with the cheaper WiFi version or the 3G equipped, no contract version, one thing is clear: AT&T isn’t betting big on the iPad. Does that speak to an end of exclusivity or just a CEO tired of hearing about how the iPhone cripples his network in NYC and Frisco?
Read [Wall Street Journal]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Oh, February 11th. I remember it like it was just a few weeks ago. A report came out claiming that Palm was halting production of the Pre and Pixi, and everybody panicked. Then it turned out that it was an entirely pre-planned production vacation for the sake of their Taiwanese employees who wanted to celebrate Chinese New Year.
Well, that little hiatus is now over. While the company didn’t release a press release indicating that the Palm factory lines were fired up again (and why would they?), Palm’s VP of PR Lynn Fox told CNBC, “Yes, I can confirm that manufacturing is back up and running.” They may be having a hard time selling them right now, but they Pre and Pixi aren’t going anywhere just yet.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The red ring of death is an inevitable conclusion for most Xbox 360 owners. But instead of mourning his console’s loss, U.K.-based student Jasper Stevens did something fun to give his lifeless and out-of-warranty Xbox 360 a second chance.
Stevens took it apart and harvested its parts to create a mechanical robot called Roboman.
“The copper wire used in the piece, the flexicable stuff and some other pieces of wiring is from outside,” he says. “Everything else is from the Xbox.”
It’s the first sculpture he has made out of gadget parts. And it took just about three hours to create.
“My recent art exam was around the theme ‘discarded’ ,” he says. “So I salvaged the parts and used some of the wire I had hanging around to make this.” Stevens then clicked a few photos and sent it to the Technabob blog.
The entire piece is connected using wiring and there’s no glue or tape holding the parts together. The Xbox 360’s DVD drive founds its place as the base of the sculpture. The robot’s joints are flexible but it doesn’t have any batteries so you can only move it around like an action figure.
Check out more photos of his fun and creative re-use of electronic parts.
See Also:
Photos: Jasper Stevens
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple and Google are engaged in a fascinating battle of mobile OS’s. Among other things, they’re duking it out on patent infringement, developer relations and carrier support. Lines are being drawn, and everyone’s taking sides.
That begs the question: what’s the difference between the App Store and Android Market for developers? And how does this affect their bottom line? Mobclix, a TC50 Company, just released a report comparing the Android Market to Apple App Store. They are a mobile analytics and advertising platform whose footprint includes over 6,500 publishers including ngmoco, SGN, and NewToy (creators of Words with Friends).
The data revealed that about 60% of Android apps are free of charge, compared with 20% for App Store applications. Furthermore, about 20% of Windows Mobile and Blackberry are free as well. It’s an intriguing phenomenon and a difficult one to decipher. Are Android developers more inclined to use advertising instead of direct payment to monetize? Or does the more democratic nature of the Android Market make free apps more successful?
Another potential explanation is that Android doesn’t even allow paid apps in many countries, including Canada, China and India. That may be scaring developers off from the platform.
Mobclix’s data also showed clear differences between average price of apps in the various stores. While Android and Apple have the largest number of apps, they are also the cheapest: the average paid Android app costs $4.10 and the average paid App Store app is $3.37. In comparison, WinMo apps average at $7.48 and BlackBerry at $8.58. That doesn’t necessarily translate into more revenue, but it does mean that the market dynamics of each store are causing different pricing options for developers.
Vishal Gurbuxani, CTO and Co-Founder, also shared that Mobclix is nearing profitability and has served over 3.5 Billion ad impressions. By comparison, advertising network AdMob (recently acquired by Google) announced in November that they had served 1.7 Billion impressions by that date.
Below is the full presentation, with more interesting data like a comparison of Android vs Apple across all categories (e.g. Books or News):
While visiting Japan in September, 26-year-old Stanford graduate Eddie Kim picked up a book about coding Android apps because he thought it might be a fun hobby. Little did he know that six months later, his casual creation would earn him more money than any of his full-time jobs.
Kim, a former Volkswagen engineer and co-founder of San Francisco-based startup Picwing, now earns $13,000 each month off an Android app called Car Locator (right), which helps users find their parked cars. Kim’s app, which he sells for $4 per download, took him only three weeks to code.
“I thought about making an app for the iPhone, but my thoughts were, it’s such a crowded space right now, and I thought Android would be a better opportunity to get involved in,” Kim told Wired.com.
“Plus, I learned that you need a Mac to do iPhone development, and at that point I lost all interest,” said Kim, a proud Windows user.
Kim’s success story is the first we’ve heard from an independent coder developing for the Android platform. While the iTunes App Store was still just months old, we saw a handful of reports about independent developers making copious amounts of money off their iPhone apps. For example, independent coder Steve Demeter said he made $250,000 in profit in just two months with his iPhone game Trism. Later, programmer Ethan Nicholas raked in $600,000 in a single month with hot sales of his game iShoot, and he immediately quit his job. Because of these success stories, many technology observers have deemed the mobile app opportunity a digital gold rush.
Google’s Android Market, which opened in October 2008, has been around almost as long as the iPhone’s App Store. But only in recent months, with the introduction of the Motorola Droid and Google’s Nexus One, has the Android platform been gaining serious momentum. In February, Google announced that 60,000 Android phones are shipped each day.
Still, stifling Android developers is the lack of a simple market for third-party apps. Google doesn’t own a prominent platform for distributing apps, as Apple does with iTunes. And some developers have shied away from the Android platform in fear of fragmentation — having to develop and support several versions of the same app for various different phones from several manufacturers. By comparison, the iPhone offers a relatively clear-cut audience of 75 million iPhone and iPod Touch customers, with smaller differences in features between the various models. (Though the advent of the iPad, with its larger screen, may complicate Apple’s market further.)
Citing Google’s weaknesses, Gameloft, a major game company, said in November 2009 that it was significantly cutting back its investment in Android.
“It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone,” said Alexandre de Rochefort, Gameloft’s finance director, during an investor conference. “Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android, nobody is making significant revenue…. We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android.”
Against that background, Kim’s success story is all the more impressive.
So what exactly did Kim do to rake in some serious dough? First, he employed a “freemium” strategy, offering a free version of Car Locator for users to try out, in addition to the paid version of the app, for which he charged $2 at first. Kim’s sales started out small, netting an average of about $80 to $100 per day. Then, his app became featured in the Android Marketplace, at which point Car Locator began netting an average of $435 per day. Kim then gradually raised the price to $3, and then to $4, and surprisingly, sales grew even stronger. (Kim illustrated his progress in the chart below).
What’s more, Kim doesn’t find developing for Android particularly difficult. He said the concerns about fragmentation are overplayed: There are currently four different versions of Android, and it’s not hard to account for a few variations of the same app.
“It’s not a huge pain in the butt for developers right now,” Kim said.
At this rate, Kim is set to earn a six-figure yearly income. But he said he doesn’t plan to quit his job or start churning out Android apps. After all, luck was a big factor in helping Kim’s app succeed, just like it was for Demeter and Nicholas. (In an interview with Newsweek, Demeter says he only really struck it rich after investing his App Store earnings in the stock market. Nicholas hasn’t come out with a big hit like iShoot ever since, and he told Newsweek he’s “very worried about being a one-hit wonder.”)
For now, Kim hopes to ride on Car Locator’s success for as long as he can.
“Just from last month’s sales, it’s making more money than when I was employed as an engineer at Volkswagen, though I’m not sure how long it will last,” Kim said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Web
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has a reputation of being dismissive of what his company’s competitors do. He downplayed Android in 2008 and hasn’t been impressed by Apple’s growing market share in computer sales over the past few years.
But Ballmer isn’t afraid to admit that Google dominates the search engine wars because “they did it right first.” At the Search Engine Marketing Expo, Ballmer said in an on-stage interview that Google is top dog because it was the first company to provide a better way to search the web, while “Microsoft started later. There’s a value to incumbency.”
Don’t let that honesty convince you that Ballmer’s softening on his take no prisoners approach. He still believes that Bing can eventually become the number 1 search engine by providing “more relevant” results, despite Google holding 65 percent of the U.S. market for search. Bing has grown from 8.4 percent to 11.3 percent and expects to jump to 30 percent once Microsoft’s deal to supply search results for Yahoo goes into effect.
“No one aims to be second,” Ballmer replied when asked about being No. 1. “I hope my kids - 30, 40, 50 years from now - they’ll still be using Bing.”
Read []SeattlePI.com]
Full Story » | Written by Andrew Kameka for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Video, Accessories, Content, DVD/DVR/Blu-ray, HDTV, Gadgets / Other, Household, Lifestyle
TiVo introduced the next generation TiVo devices but also improved on their iconic peanut-shaped remote. The new remote not only maintains the classic TiVo look but features a slide out keyboard, just like a smartphone. The remote looks amazing and will be offered as an upgrade to the new TiVo DVRs.
TiVo won awards for their original peanut remote control and looks to be on track for more with this QWERTY slider remote. The new remotes uses Bluetooth to communicate with the set top box for extended range and line-of-sight issues that drive us all crazy. The slide out QWERTY will make searching far faster than clicking and moving around an on-screen keyboard. The remote will be an add-on accessory and will ship later this year at an undisclosed price.
The new DVRs from TiVo are built on Flash, which should make the menus snappy and fresh. The boxes aim to bring all entertainment to your TV, from cable to web to local network. Two models, capable of output up to 1080p, were introduced, the Premiere ($299) and Premiere XL ($499). The units still rely on the CableCARD slot. The Premiere can hold 45 hours of HD and the XL can hold 150 hours with THX.
“It has never been this easy to get all your entertainment in one place, on the big screen, in HD, right at your fingertips. And the beauty of TiVo Premiere is that finding what to watch is just as fun as the watching the TV shows themselves. We accomplished it by using pictures and graphics to make the whole television guide experience come alive in a way that it never has before,” said TiVo’s President and CEO Tom Rogers. “TiVo Premiere is your new cable box, it’s your movie box, it’s your web box, and music box; it’s the one box that can give you access to almost anything you want, whenever you want it. We’ve taken millions of pieces of content and organized it for you in a way that makes so much sense you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.”
Wondering how I ever lived without it is exactly how I feel about my first TiVo (I am on my second). It is impressive that TiVo has delivered a new device that looks capable of making users feel that way all over again.
Company site: [TiVo] via [Engadget]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Uh oh.
On at least a few occasions, Android developers have mentioned to me that the multi-touch sensors on certain Android handsets — especially the Nexus One — seemed a bit.. flaky. I’d had nothing but solid experiences while dabbling with multi-touch in all of the apps I could find that support it, so I chalked it up as a coding error on the developer’s part until something a bit more solid came forward.
Well, something a bit more solid has just come forward.
Our buddy Taylor Wimberly of AndroidAndMe was chatting with Robert Green of Battery Powered Games, who was reporting the same Nexus One multitouch sketchiness we’d heard of previously – but Robert had proof.
Robert threw together a simple multi-touch application called Multitouch Visible Test. As the name implies, it makes your multitouch input visible by drawing large circles beneath your fingers wherever the phone thinks they are. It’s all pure sensor data right from the phone; there’s not any data processing going on here, so there’s not a whole lot of room for software bugs on Robert’s end.
As you can see in the video below, the Motorola Droid seems to handle all of the default multitouch gestures with ease. The Nexus One, however, flounders; while it handles slow pinch-and-zoom motions just fine, it goes all kinds of crazy once your fingers get too close together. The output data gets flipped, reporting your fingers as being in the polar opposite locations of where they actually are.
It’s somewhat understandable how this bug slipped through the cracks: for standard pinch-and-zoom behaviors, things would seem to behave correctly enough that the difference may not be noticeable. It’s a different story with games, however; imagine having to control two things on the screen at one time, and having said things mysteriously rocket off in the wrong direction because your fingers got too close together. Suck.
It’s not a bug that’s likely to come up on a daily basis, but its not exactly trivial – and either way, a bug is a bug. If you have a drink tonight, cheers to the idea that this might be fixable with a software update.
Have you ever noticed any multi-touch oddities on the Nexus One (or any other Android handset)? Let us know in the comments.
The longer wait for a 3G-equipped iPad, which is set to launch late April, could be frustrating for some eager Apple fanatics. But AT&T thinks the iPad will be primarily used on Wi-Fi anyway.
Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, said he doesn’t see the iPad resulting in many new subscriptions for AT&T because consumers will primarily use Wi-Fi with the device.
“My expectation is that there’s not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription,” Stephenson said during an investor conference, adding that the device would be a mainly “Wi-Fi driven product.”
Apple on Jan. 27 introduced two versions of the iPad: One including 3G and the other without. The Wi-Fi-only version of the iPad is set to go on sale late March, and the 3G iPad will debut a month later, according to Apple.
For the 3G version of the iPad, customers will not be required to commit to a contract. Instead, they’ll be required to prepay for a month — $15 for 250MB or $30 for unlimited data.
When the iPad was announced, we also speculated the iPad would be primarily Wi-Fi driven, since you’d mostly be using it in your living room or a coffee shop. The 3G version will likely be the choice for road warriors who plan to use the iPad often while commuting or traveling.
Personally I’m torn on whether I’ll get a Wi-Fi iPad or a 3G version. I see myself mostly using the iPad on Wi-Fi, but regretting not having a 3G connection when I’m traveling. If you’re buying an iPad, which one are you going for? Add your thoughts in the comment section below.
See Also:
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
 CBC.ca | Spanish "botnet" potent enough to attack country: police Reuters People surf the Web during the annual ''Campus Party'' Internet users gathering in Valencia July 28, 2009. MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish criminals who stole bank details from computers around the world did not realize the power of the illegal network they ... Spain, IT Security Companies Sting Mariposa Botnet Bot herders arrested in Spain Spanish police arrest masterminds of 'massive' botnet |
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile
Yesterday, the world was abuzz with Apple’s lawsuit targeting 20 alleged patent violations by HTC. Many of these devices named in the suit run Google’s Android operating system. Google preemptively sent a statement regarding the issue, refusing to sit idly by while HTC took the punches.
“We are not a party to this lawsuit. However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it,” said a Google spokesperson in an email.
Google, it seems, is ready for the fight. Apple didn’t name Google in the suit, which is a bit odd, but many believe this suit is about one thing: smartphone war. Is Apple looking to clear the deck? If so, why wait until now to do something about it? Some devices like the G1 have finished their useful lifespan already.
Is there any correlation between Google flicking the multitouch switch on the Nexus One and the filing of the suit? Was Apple waiting for a device that could match the iPhone, one that could be threat? We’ve seen the Nexus One prepping for launch on the Verizon network. A good device on a great network, that could give the iPhone some competition.
We suspect Google will give a lot more than lipservice to aid HTC in this. The big guns are coming out.
Read: [TechCrunch]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
I was tempted to just post the photo above with “That is all.” as the text – but I suppose that’s not very helpful.
Looking to fill the needs of the massive “People who want an iPhone slip case, but really, really like TV dinners” crowd, Etsy seller Coolbeans717 has been hand-cranking out these Hungry Man-inspired beauties. The good news: unlike real Hungry Man dinners, using this daily probably won’t make you gigantic. The bad news: they’re sold out.
Fortunately, Coolbeans717 (or “ol’ beansie” as we call him [or her] around the imaginary ‘Hood) has a few other worthwhile handmade designs if you really want an iPhone slipcover but your heart isn’t absolutely set on waiting for the turkey-and-gravy-packed offering above to come back in stock.
[Via IntoMobile]
Dwight “The Houston Tiger” Silverman, like so many tech dudes, likes the Palm Pre and Pixi and, in a way, doesn’t understand why Palm is on the rocks. However, he got an email from a reader who described her Verizon experience as sub-par at best. It began poorly:
My original salesperson, upon hearing me say I was there for the Palm Pre, immediately mentioned that they were running a special on the Droid. I said terrific but I’m here for the Pre. The salesman finally got one out for me but no one at Verizon had any idea how it worked, how to set it up, or even how the screen functioned. It took Verizon over 3 hours just to the Pre “set up”, apparently because “the guy” who knew about the Pre was not there. I lovingly took my Pre home.
And got worse. Generally, it feels like Verizon and, to a degree, Sprint, have lumped WebOS in with the rest of the feature phones OSes. It’s not flashy enough to be an iPhone killer nor is it popular enough to beat Android in the mindshare game. It’s a floater, friends, and we all know where those eventually go.
 DailyTech | Google Wants US to Weigh Challenging China in WTO BusinessWeek March 3 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration is weighing the merits of taking China's censorship of Google Inc. to the World Trade Organization as an unfair barrier to trade, a move that could further raise diplomatic tensions. ... Google Urges Anti-Censorship Trade Rules US Could Challenge China on Google's Behalf at WTO Internet freedom and security |
Virgin Mobile’s Broadband2Go prepaid 3G data service made a splash last summer by offering no-contract plans that came close to competing with two-year offerings from the likes of Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. The major drawback was that the top plan, at $60, only allowed for 1GB of data usage, whereas you’d get 5GB on a contract plan.
Well Virgin Mobile’s just given everyone a big reason to go month-to-month by upping the data allotment of its $60 plan to a full 5GB. It’s increased the data buckets on two of its other, lower-priced plans as well.
The base $10 plan still gets you 100MB of data that must be used within 10 days, but the $20 plan now gets you 300MB instead of 250MB and the $40 plan now gets you 1GB instead of 600MB. As previously reported, Broadband2Go uses Sprint’s EVDO Rev. A network.
Mobile Broadband Service [Virgin Mobile]
TiVo, the box that pretty much changed the way we watched TV, was getting a little old. But that’s OK: The new TiVo Premiere looks like it might do the same thing all over again.
The new, hi-def Series 4 box, the smallest TiVo so far, not only shifts live programming like any other DVR, it also sucks in movies and TV from across the internet, letting you access Blockbuster, Netflix and Amazon content, YouTube and (this is huge) video podcasts. You can also stream music from Rhapsody and listen to radio on Live 365.
In short, the Premiere is the one set-top box you’ll need to access almost any content out there, all with the TiVo features you already know and love. Better still, the Swivel Search feature has been extended to search the internet, so in a few clicks you can track down movies featuring, say, a favorite actor and be streaming them to your TV.
There are two Series 4 models (and you’ll have to buy one — series 3 boxes cannot be upgraded): the Premiere with a 320-GB hard drive for $300, and the $500 Premiere XL with 1 TB, THX-certification and a backlit remote.
There are some oddities. Neither model has Wi-Fi built-in, which for a machine so obviously designed to connect to the internet is a rather cheap-looking omission. You’ll have to buy an 802.11b/g USB dongle for another $60, and the widescreen, HD interface is built on Flash which, although as a lot of content out there is still in Flash this isn’t so odd.
The original TiVo put an easy-to-use, almost telepathic DVR into the homes of regular people, essentially killing rigid TV schedules. It looks like the new Premiere could be the box that fulfills the promise of bringing internet content into your living room. And the podcast support, hidden under the label “web videos,” essentially puts a zillion amateur and niche shows onto the TV, bypassing the networks entirely. This could be the most disruptive product we have seen in years.
Both Premiere models will be available in April.
TiVo Premiere [TiVo]
Did you look at your Verizon Droid minutes ago and wonder why you hadn’t gotten any emails within the last few minutes? I did. I just marked it up as the start of a good day, but apparently I was exactly wrong. Verizon’s data network is down and my Gmail inbox is full. Damn.
There’s no ETA as of yet and New York seems to be fine. Your best bet is just to hang tight and let the VZW folks do their jobs. They want the network back just as much as you do.
Burley, better known for its bike-trailers for carrying kids and pets, has come up with a lightweight, foldable bike trailer for carrying, well, anything. As long as it weighs under 60-pounds.
The new Burley Travoy looks a lot like a roll-along suitcase trolley. Once unfolded, the Travoy hitches to your bike’s seatpost and sits at around 45-degrees, ready to tow. As part of Burley’s Urban Trailer System, the Travoy can also be paired with a range of bags that turn it into a kind of trailer/pannier mashup.
The trailer is all about portability. The sub 10-pound Travoy is made from aluminum and the folks at Burley say that it is very stable. You can quickly hitch it and remove it from the bike and wheel it indoors (or around the market) just like a shopping trolley. There is even a bag for the trailer itself so you can store or carry it with you.
The Travoy is currently under testing, so we don’t know how much it will cost. You can check out more pictures over at Burley’s Flickr photostream. We particularly like the idea of using this with a folding bike: a great compact cargo solution.
Burley Travoy [Flickr. Thanks, Eric!]
Burley trailers [Burley]
Burn, Coca Cola’s take on horrible taurine-laced energy drinks, has introduced a new can which will help those who can’t manage to choke down more than a couple of mouthfuls in a single session.
The new soda-can, available in the Netherlands, features a resealable top. The plastic stopper twists open, releasing any fizzy-pressure and revealing the mouth-hole. When you are done, twist to re-seal and toss in the trash, happy in the knowledge that the remains won’t leak out onto the floor.
Despite the need for yet more packaging materials, I like the idea of a resealable soda-can, especially when cycling. It’s just a shame that it has to be this particular drink, which I have tasted and found to be disgusting (although thankfully lacking the vomit-smell of the market leader). I’ll stick to the energy drink of the ages, the beverage which has fueled rock-n-roll behavior, bar-fights and unwanted tattoos throughout history: cheap Tennessee whiskey.
Burn [Burn Energy via Geekologie]
Western Digital’s e-ink hard drive labels have jumped from the desktop to the pocket with its new My Passport Studio portable HD. The Studio range will work with any computer, but has habitually been targeted at the Mac user, with its white case, FireWire 800 interface (along with USB) and a higher price. They also come ready-formatted for Mac use, but as this is something that takes seconds to do yourself, it’s kind of pointless.
The updated drives get a similar e-ink panel to that on the bigger My Book drives. The display, which remains on even when the drive is disconnected, shows the name of the disk, along with the capacity in both numerical and graphical forms. We prefer this to glowing LEDs, anytime, although the annoying WD SmartWare software that comes pre-loaded, and insinuates its way onto your desktop every time you mount the drive, should be euthanized immediately.
The My Passport Studio comes in 320GB, 500GB and 640GB sizes, for $150, $180 and $200. Available now.
My Passport Studio [Western Digital]
Skinput uses a bio-acoustic sensing array coupled with a wrist-mounted pico-projector to turn your skin into a touch-screen. Confused? Don’t be. It’s amazingly simple.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, along with Microsoft’s research lab, have come up with a way to use the skin of your arm (or any other part of your body) to act as a display and an input device, without actually implanting anything weird into you. It consists of two parts. A tiny projector beams the image onto your skin. Tapping the “buttons” causes ripples to run through your skin and bones.
These waves change depending on where you tap, as they run through bone, soft tissues and the like. Special software analyzes these waves, and uses the information to work out exactly where you touched, just as if you were tapping an iPhone screen. Specific locations can be mapped to certain functions: in the video you see somebody playing Tetris by tapping their fingers.
Both sensor and projector can be put into the same armband, but the display is unnecessary: Another use is to tap the tips of the fingers to control an MP3 player, a task simple enough to rely on the user’s memory.
Various tap-based interfaces are possible, and the thing that impresses us about all of them is the simplicity for the user. We worry a little though. We already mistake people muttering into their Bluetooth headsets for crazy people who talk to themselves. Now we have to distinguish joggers skipping tracks on their iPods from drug-fried nut-jobs who twitch and scratch at imaginary insects crawling over their flesh. Thanks, researchers.
Body acoustics can turn your arm into a touchscreen [New Scientist via Mashable]
Thieves are using Wi-Fi detectors to sniff out notebook computers hidden in office drawers and car trunks, even when those computers have been shut down. How are they achieving this impossible task? As far as we can tell, it’s magic.
The claim comes from Credant, a UK-based data encryption company that sells “solutions” to big business, and clearly has an interest in scary stories about data and laptop theft. The story goes like this: people close their notebooks and stow them in a filing cabinet drawer or in the trunk of their car. The notebooks go to sleep. Or do they? Credant’s *marketing*, Sean Glynn:
because the latest laptops have a set time - sometimes up to 30 minutes - before they go into sleep mode when the laptop lid is shut, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that shopping malls around 6pm on weekdays can be a prime source of potential notebook computers, just waiting to be stolen from cars. [emphasis added]
Perhaps Credant should ask somebody other than the sales boss about the tech side of the business, because those laptops are not sleeping. If you shut the lid and the Wi-Fi radio stays on, or the fans keep spinning, your computer isn’t asleep. It’s pretty easy to tell, too: All MacBooks sleep almost immediately (there is a period of less than a minute while the contents of RAM is written to disk) and then the little sleep-light flashes. My old MSI Wind would sleep immediately, even when it still ran Windows.
By contrast, some notebooks do stay on, but it is also easy to tell. The Alienware M11X I tested at CES in Las Vegas kept glowing and spinning its fans when I closed the lid. In fact, I had to yank the battery just to shut it up and get some sleep (I was a little drunk after the WIRED party).
So, let’s assume that you do in fact have a laptop that keeps its Wi-Fi radio lit up for a half hour after you tell it to go to sleep. How would this actually help the thief? All a Wi-Fi detector does is tell you that a signal is available, how strong it is, and possibly - with some models - the direction of the signal’s source. Is this accurate enough to spot the right trunk in a crowded car-park? Probably not. And it would be almost impossible in an office, where there would be plenty of desktop machines still switched on to confuse things (and assuming the entire office staff leaves within half-an-hour of you stowing your machine).
Remember, also, that a notebook will not be broadcasting an SSID, which is what a detector will look for (unless you have explicitly set it up to create a network).
If you still doubt that this is a scaremongering scheme, the press release admits that in the UK, nobody is actually stealing laptops this way:
it is only a matter of time before this type of laptop detection technique finds its way to the UK.
So what should you do to keep safe? You guessed it:
You may not be able to totally prevent your laptop being stolen, but only switching on your WiFi when you really need it, and, of course, encrypting your data on the notebook drive [emphasis added].
The press release is not yet available on the Credant site, so I have pasted the entire email below.
Credant press releases [Credant]
Photo: redjar/Flickr
Augmented reality app 
Pretty huge news in our book: 
