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It's man vs. bird in quest for power - Las Vegas Sun
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 Mar 2010 | 3:03 am Gorrie: For 'climategate' scientist, nuance is the enemy - Toronto Star
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 Mar 2010 | 2:36 am Could the Tumbleweed Rover Dominate Mars?astroengine writes "Mars has been visited by orbiters, landers and rovers, but could the future of Martian exploration be inspired by a wind-blown sphere? NASA and other research institutions have been developing the Mars Tumbleweed rover for the last decade, but with the help of the Planetary Science Institute, the Tumbleweed is now vying for some serious funding to further develop the technologies required. Although the Tumbleweed would be wholly dependent on the prevailing winds on the Martian surface, the lightweight and relatively cheap design could lead the way for a 'swarm' of independent Tumbleweeds to explore vast regions of the planet (video link). In 2003 and 2004, NASA even tested an inflatable Tumbleweed prototype on Greenland and Antarctica — it traversed hundreds of miles with ease, continually relaying location and environmental data."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 Mar 2010 | 2:01 am Zynga Cofounder Andrew Trader Out
As of a month ago Trader’s title had been downgraded to VP of Partnerships and Studio Services, although no top sales or business development replacement executive has yet been named. Why is he gone? No one is saying. CEO Mark Pincus says only “AT [Andrew Trader] and zynga have parted ways. He made an awesome contribution. We need to continue scaling the company.” Trader hasn’t yet returned a phone call asking for his comment. Zynga’s revenue growth has been nothing short of astronomical over the last 18 months, so it would be hard to blame him for not bringing in the dollars. Perhaps he took the fall for the Scamville saga although that has largely blown over now. Trader was with Zynga nearly three years, so he’s vested on a lot of his stock. Given how much money is at stake, the whole story about why the first cofounder of Zynga has left the building may never come out. Zynga raised $180 million in December 2009, at a rumored valuation of above $2 billion. And no, I have no idea why he’s holding a banana in the picture.      
Source: TechCrunch | 6 Mar 2010 | 1:46 am Post Announcement of Portal 2, Valve Maintains Mystery - TopNews United States
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 Mar 2010 | 1:33 am Diamond-shaped ice-moldI generally like the idea of this diamond-shaped ice-cube mold as a fun freezer-toy: I wonder if the ice-diamonds will keep if you make one, pop it out and leave it in the freezer, then make another...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Mar 2010 | 12:07 am Diamond-shaped ice-mold
I generally like the idea of this diamond-shaped ice-cube mold as a fun freezer-toy: I wonder if the ice-diamonds will keep if you make one, pop it out and leave it in the freezer, then make another. It'd be cool (so to speak) to have a bathtub full of these, is all I'm saying.
Diamond Ice Mold (Thanks, Rina!)
Previously:
 Source: Boing Boing | 6 Mar 2010 | 12:07 am Obsolete professionsCCrawford sez, "NPR highlights a dozen obsolete occupations that have either been despecialized (typist), obsoleted by tech (switchboard operator), or dead but experiencing a small comeback. Accompanied...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Mar 2010 | 11:15 pm Obsolete professions
CCrawford sez, "NPR highlights a dozen obsolete occupations that have either been despecialized (typist), obsoleted by tech (switchboard operator), or dead but experiencing a small comeback. Accompanied by some great B&W photos." Shown here: a "Lector" -- someone employed to read left-wing newspapers to cigar-rollers while they worked. The practice may have originated in Cuba. Each piece is also accompanied by some audio of people remniscing about the obsolete trade.
The Jobs Of Yesteryear: Obsolete Occupations
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Mar 2010 | 11:15 pm YouTube Makes Captioning Available To Alladeelarshad82 writes "Google's YouTube announced that it has moved its automatic speech-recognition and closed-captioning technology out of beta and has now made it available to the YouTube community at large. Most, if not all, YouTube videos now include a 'CC' button that, if pressed, will automatically generate the closed-captioning technology. The technology processes the audio feed using the speech-recognition technology used in the core voice search feature that has also been built into the Android voice search feature, the GOOG-411 phone search, and other products."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Mar 2010 | 10:55 pm Meet The New Foursquare. Same As The Old Foursquare — But Prettier.
Earlier today, the latest version of Foursquare, 1.6, went live in the App Store for a brief period of time. I’ve been using the build for a couple of days, and while the functionality isn’t all that different from the previous versions, the look-and-feel has been completely revamped. This is notable because the vast majority of Foursquare users are still using the iPhone (67%). So this update will be a welcome change for many, especially as Foursquare and Gowalla continue to compete. Gowalla, while smaller than Foursquare, is generally considered to be the prettier of the two. Certainly, with its new website revamp, Gowalla still holds that title on the web, but the new Foursquare app looks pretty nice compared to the Gowalla iPhone app now. So what’s different? The entire color palette is now a mixture of silver, blue, white, and bright green. Some may not like the bright green elements, but it’s effective to let people know where to click when you want to check-in. Also new is the fact that the “Shout” button is emphasized on the upper left part of the main screen. “Shouting” is basically the equivalent of tweeting out a message, it allows you to send a message to your followers without having to check-in at a place. It’s a bit odd that this is now a main button on the left side while the “Check-in” button is on the right side (considering most people read left to right). Another new element is the idea of categories. As we wrote about a couple of days ago, Foursquare is starting to categorize venues into certain categories. While there isn’t much you can do with these yet on the new iPhone app, you are able to see icons that represent how a venue is categorized. Something else new that is nice is that you can click on individual venues in your friend stream to load that venue’s main screen (which now shows who is there, right away). Previously, you had to click on your friend, then click over to see the venue — so this saves time. While using the app, I wondered if Apple would approve it given that it uses the text, email, and phone icons used by the iPhone itself within the app (see screenshot below), but apparently if they accidentally put it in the store today, they’re going to be okay with those icons. These icons are shown on the new profile pages, which also show how many mayorships a member as, as well as how many badges they’ve earned. Interestingly, the point-based element of the app has been depreciated a bit, as that’s how a harder-to-get-to area of the app. As a bonus to this advanced iPhone preview that some users got today, Foursquare also launched a new version of its Android app tonight. I’ve been playing with that for a few minutes, and that seems very solid as well. Look for the new version of Foursquare iPhone app at some point late next week when SXSW starts.
     
Samsung opened this particular factory in 2008 and its been putting out products ever since. Aside from quality inspections, it appears that from the moment components arrive in gigantic sacks from Korea nearly everything is automated in this factory—from hot plastic being piped into molds to microcircuits being produced to the little logos being stamped onto panels. Humans mostly oversee the production and yes, occasionally tighten molds. Guess we're still needed for something. [English Russia] Source: Gizmodo | 5 Mar 2010 | 10:40 pm Microsoft Pulls Plug on Business Server Package
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 Sydney Morning Herald | Apple iPad Launches April 3 Wall Street Journal Apple Inc. said the iPad will hit stores next month, a few days later than expected but not enough to rattle investors eager to see how consumers respond to the new device. The Cupertino, Calif., company ... Remote computer access and 2D car racing: iPhone apps of the week Key to Apple iPad? Uh-Oh, It's Magic Reader: Steve Jobs says no tethering between iPad and iPhone |
Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks
By now we all know that the iPad is being released on April 3, with pre-orders coming on March 12. Now seems like a perfect time for a study to come out saying people want to buy the iPad. This study comes from ChangeWave, and largely deals with those who own or plan on buying ebook readers.
According to ChangeWave’s study, 27 percent of current ebook reader owners regret not waiting for the iPad, with only 45 percent of current owners still choosing their current ebook readers over the iPad. Among the surveyed, 40 percent of those planning to buy an ebook reader in the next three months expect to buy an iPad. The Kindle came in second with 28 percent, with the Nook and Sony Reader following at 6 and 1 percent, respectively. It is worth noting, however, that only 34 percent of those surveyed cited reading ebooks as the top reason for buying an iPad, with 68 percent saying Internet browsing is the main feature.
The results here really aren’t entirely surprising. The iPad isn’t a dedicated ebook reader, and there are still those who prefer dedicated devices for some uses. What might be surprising is that watching video was the top feature of the iPad for only 24 percent of those surveyed. More people (28 percent) were most interested in reading magazines and periodicals on the device.
Speaking as a happy Nook owner, I can say I am not regretting that choice. The iPad is a nice looking device, and I’ll surely get one eventually, but having the e-ink screen is very nice for reading. What will be most interesting is seeing how these numbers hold up after the iPad release, when the rest of us can compare it to other devices.
Read [Electronista]
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At the Toy Fair this year I picked up a game from TechnoSource called Bubble Talk. I rarely write about many board games mostly because I always equate them with a story my buddy Lou told us about his ex-girlfriend. Regardless, a good boardgame like Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne are always fun to play of an evening.
So what is Bubble Talk? Well, it’s sort of like the first LOLCat game in the whole universe. Each player (minimum of three players) takes a set of cards containing funny captions (“This is going to leave a mark,” “I need your W-2s and 1099s if you have them,” etc.). You draw a picture card – usually stock photos of animals and people in potentially funny situations – and one person acts as a judge. The rest of the players slap down the caption cards, trying to pick the funniest caption or bubble. The judge chooses one and the winner collects the photo. The one with five photos wins.
It sounds kind of dumb but if you have enough people – and the right kind of sense of humor – it’s great. We made a drinking game of it last weekend (we mostly just drank and played) and had a blast.
The game will be available in a few months from TechnoSource and is really worth picking up. It’s a great party game (provided the party is fairly small) and, as dopey as it sounds, it’s actually quite fun.
Photo grabbed from BoardGameGeek
To be clear, these were some of the bigger stories of the conference, at least for American audiences. We've written a few other CeBIT stories up as well, which you can find here, but by and large, the event just sort of came and went. So, this is what was happening over in Hanover this week, while the rest of the tech world was going about their business.
Pierre Cardin Tablet: Wikipedia tells me that Pierre Cardin is a "Italian-born French fashion designer" who is famous for his "space age" clothing designs. He's paired up with a small Taiwanese OEM to make a tablet—the old foldy kind, not the slate-like new kind. It's pink, and it will cost $450, if it ever hits stores in the US.
ASUS EeeTop ET2010PNT and ET2010AGT On the exterior, ASUS EeeTops are basically a budget take on the AIO concept you're familiar with from the likes of the iMac and HP's Touchsmarts. On the interior, as with most ASUS products, they're incomprehensible parts soup.
Shuttle I-Power External GPU: Breaking news, for people who would like to buy a box that's nearly the size of a netbook and which can help boost their notebook's graphics capabilities! (But only certain notebooks, because you need a special adapter!) The Shuttle I-Power External GPU is ready to accommodate your fantasies.
1Cross B'ook ereader: Entourage eDGe on a budget: The first step here is to try to remember what the Entourage eDGe is. Now that you've done that, the second step is to figure out why you care about this cheaper, gaudier, and somehow less practical take on the same concept.
Intel Atom for Storage Devices: Intel's Atom processors, traditionally meant for netbooks and cheap laptops, are about as unglamorous as tech products get. I'd even hold that this was true five minutes ago, which was before I'd even heard about the Intel Atom for storage devices, which is a special version of the platform for household and small business network storage devices.
New Intel Classmate: Intel's ultra-budget Classmate convertible tablet PCs are evolving! (Slightly!) Here is the reference design for the newest one, which is quite similar to earlier reference designs on the outside, but adjusted slightly for cost and performance reason on the inside.
LG 12x Blu-ray drives: Did LG not have 12x Blu-ray writers before? Are these just new versions of their old Blu-ray devices? Such are the mysteries of CeBIT, which could easily be solved, if anyone cared enough to Google for backlinks.
ASUS O!Play USB 3.0: We're big fans of the ASUS O!Play set-top boxes around here and we're not very slightly more enamored with the concept, now that it supports USB 3.0.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AFP - US government cybersecurity efforts are being hampered by a need to better define the roles of the agencies responsible for defending against cyber threats, a US Congressional watchdog said Friday.
AFP - Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak on Friday held firm to his love for Prius cars despite what he suspects is a Toyota software problem behind sudden spikes in acceleration.
FROM GAMERTELL - Act fast on this one (and click through to get the discount codes you’ll need)...
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By William M. Bulkeley, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
The famed Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology unveiled its new home, a $90 million, six-story playpen. It’s designed to let some of the world’s smartest and most creative engineers explore their inner robot, create new social networking tools or build intelligent music systems.
Frank Moss, director of the Media Lab, and a former entrepreneur and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) executive, said the new building is designed to foster interdisciplinary cooperation by having floor-to-ceiling windows surrounding every lab. That makes work in each lab visible from primary-colored stairways that cross the building’s soaring atria.
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So this is odd. In reading up on Final Fantasy XIII, I decided to see how much it would cost to buy a PS3 and the game. The system is all but sold out all over the Internet! It’s backordered on Newegg, GameStop, and Best Buy (partially), and can be found on Amazon for quite the mark-up—there’s no way I’m paying $370 for the 120GB SKU. Did the Sony factory lose power or something, or is Final Fantasy XIII that big of a system-seller?
It looks a little bit better than it did before when it’s in focus, and with a Bold for comparison. Click for the high resolution version, or head over to BlackBerry Leaks for the rest.
People are falling over themselves trying to decide whether this is going to be Bold-branded or Storm-branded. I see no reason why they shouldn’t launch as a whole different line — a tweener model. I mean, you’ve got keyboard-on-face, you’ve got no keyboard, and now you’ve got keyboard-underneath. What could be a clearer three-pronged attack on the mobile world? A budget Bold, a sweet all-purpose Storm 3, and then something in between, for wafflers. Lots of wafflers out there.
I know only that I want it, not what I want it for.
Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard [Brando]
Reuters - Apple Inc said the first iPads will be in U.S. stores on April 3 and hit nine international markets later in the month, easing concerns that manufacturing constraints could delay launch.
Travis J. I. Corcoran says, "Burger King has an interactive nutrition web page. I played around with it and found something horrifying. The picture that goes with it is pretty good."
It has 5 patties, 5 slices of bacon, and 5 Whopper Junior patties.
Contemplate the sheer awesomeness of a 6,880 calorie burger that has almost half a pound (197 grams) of saturated fat, over 1 lb of total fat, and 18 times the USRDA of sodium (8,990 mg).Tower of Meat
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Most of your friendly neighborhood CrunchGear writers have played Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for at least a little bit. We have different opinions about the game, but I think we all like it to a degree. I bought it for two reason: the Eurogamer review was glowing, and I wanted to support Modern Warfare 2’s most direct competitor. Genres grow stale when one game/publisher so utterly dominates it, so $50 EA’s way hopefully will go toward keeping the FPS genre as fresh as it can be. I mean, there’s but so many ways you can make “put-cursor-over-man’s-face-and-left-click” before you’re like, “Man, I’m bored, let’s go bowling.”
Like I said, I bought the game primarily to support Modern Warfare 2’s most direct competitor; I don’t want to live in a world where the only successful FPS in one that includes laughably over-the-top dialogue and such grasping at straws as No Russian. It was a protest purchase if nothing else. Yes, I’m that crazy. Long-time readers know this by now.
As it turns out, though, whoa! The game isn’t half-bad at all. I’ve only played about an hour or so of the single-player campaign—the PC multi-player servers were all messed up last night, so I couldn’t jump in—but I already like it more than Modern Warfare 2’s. The weird thing is, the single-player mode is, well, not an afterthought, but certainly not the game’s main draw. So if I’m this satisfied with the single-player, imagine how I’ll feel when I actually jump into multi-player! The game also looks better than Activision’s, almost as good as Crysis, I’d say. (Note: Edge magazine has a big preview of Crysis 2 in this month’s issue, and I do believe we’ll get to play that game in a month or so, so hooray for us!)
Matt Burns, on the other hand, is still a Modern Warfare 2 mark. “Blah blah, this and that, yada yada, nonsense.” He actually said that! He also said, “So far Modern Warfare 2’s single-player is better than Battlefield’s.” Matt also likes the Detroit Lions, so I wouldn’t trust what he says.
Greg Kumparak, of MobileCrunch fame, said he’s “not hooked, but also really tired of single player FPS.” This is true. After this game, I cannot see myself purchasing another FPS for a long while, unless Valve surprises us with Half-Life 2: Episode Three. I wouldn’t hold my breathe over that one, though.
There wasn’t really a point to this post, no. Just a sorta, “hey, we all like Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to a degree, maybe you will, too.” If you have the big bucks, the game also works with Nvidia’s 3D vision.
The game I’m about to sink the next big amount of time into? Napoleon: Total War. He’s easily the greatest person in the history of history.
FROM GAMERTELL - Read Gamertell’s review to find out why older anime fans and very young viewers will find reason to watch Ponyo on home video…
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Section: Computers, Netbooks, Software / Applications, Web, Web Apps
Some may be sitting back and waiting for Google Chrome OS, but that is not to say we do not currently have a nice alternative already available with Jolicloud. Now, thanks to a recent post over on the official Jolicloud Blog that good alternative is about to get even better. As for the announcement, the final version of the “Robby” release will become available later this month.
In terms of what we can expect to see in this final release version,
- Switching web app platform from Prism to Google Chrome
- Keeping our commitment to Firefox
- A new desktop mode: use Jolicloud with your nettop and a larger screen (seen above)
- An improved Jolicloud Express
- Now compatible with 100% of Intel based netbooks
And for those that may not be as familiar with Jolicloud, what I can say is that it is a nice alternative operating system for netbooks. Jolicloud is both fast and easy to use and I can say that I have been a happy user for a while now. In fact Jolicloud is currently the main and only operating system that I have installed on my Eee PC. Bottom line, if you are looking for something speedy, quick and easy for your netbook you may want to check this one out. As with most Linux distros you can choose to install it to your hard drive or give it a test run using a live CD or USB flash drive.
Read [Jolicloud Blog]
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You know how TweetMeme started out trying to be the Techmeme of Twitter before it ventured off plastering its ReTweet buttons on every blog on the Web? Well now there’s a site that just launched today that wants to be the TweetMeme of Google Buzz called ReBuzzThis.
It is not much to look at right now—five lame links as of this writing. But the site wants to encourage blogs and other sites to add its ReBuzz buttons to posts and articles. The posts that get ReBuzzed the most shoot up the homepage just like on TweetMeme with ReTweets. Except that TweetMeme tries to count all retweets, not just those done through its buttons. ReBuzzThis seems to only count Rebuzzes done through its site and buttons, so it is not really capturing the most Buzzed about articles and posts.
But it may be onto something. One of the top feature requests on Google Buzz is a Rebuzz button. So we may see an official version of ReBuzzThis come out on Google Buzz itself.
 TrustedReviews | A closer look at Windows Phone 7 Series CNET As I noted last night, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Series is a clean break with the past, from the look and feel of the product down to the way software makers will write programs for the device. Microsoft confirmed on Thursday that the ... Windows Phone 7: New, Useful and Very Likable Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 smart phones won't be reverse compatible New Windows phones won't run current apps |
There’s a new Modern Warfare 2 map pack coming this Spring, kids. The map pack, possible dubbed Stimulus Package, comes with five maps, with two of them being classic COD4 maps. Curious what they’re going to look like? You better hurry up and click through for the video preview hosted be Vimeo. Activision already pulled the YouTube version.
By Tiernan Ray, Blogger, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
Apple (AAPL), which had a market cap of several billion a decade ago, is today flirting with $200 billion, fifth in line among U.S. publicly-listed stocks behind Wal-Mart Stores (WMT), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A), Microsoft (MSFT) and Exxon Mobil (XOM). Apple stock is up $8.63, or 4 percent, at $219.30, giving it a market cap of $198.88 billion. Wal-Mart today has a market cap of roughly $206 billion.
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AP - The much-anticipated iPad tablet computer from Apple Inc. will start hitting U.S. store shelves on April 3, slightly later than originally planned.
Craft has instructions for making your own retro shoes from an old tire and a pair of jeans. While I don’t think these will hold up to the heavy duty running I do (at least two miles a year), they might be a fun weekend project for those so inclined.
The question, however is whether you can find unburnt tires in your corner of the apocalyptic hellscape that you would need to live in in order to decide to make your own shoes.
A few years ago a friend of mine brought me to a little town in Mexico to see the Tarahumara race. The Tarahumara are an indigenous people who live in a massive canyon and run incredible distances in sandals, called huaraches, made from old car tires. When I tried to wear a pair of these homemade huaraches, the straps chaffed the top of my feet and pulled at my leg hairs as I walked. It was terrible. But I still wanted to wear shoes made from old car tires and other upcycled materials. So I decided to make a homemade running shoe, similar to the type of shoes Bill Bowerman made for Steve Prefontaine — the original Nikes.
Playing with apps on an Android phone is fun. Building your own apps, even more so. But what about using the phone to operate a moving, talking bot? Tim Heath and Ryan Hickman have done exactly that.
The bot they recently finished building — Truckbot — is still relatively simple. It’s got an HTC G1 phone for a brain, riding on top of a chassis with some wheels and treads. All it can do is roll around on a tabletop, turn and head off in a specified direction. When I visit the workshop where they’re building it, Heath and Hickman show how it can use the phone’s compass to make itself point to the south. But the duo have much more ambitious plans in mind.
“I knew I could build this thing. I just needed a phone,” explains Heath, a Python web engineer. He posted on various e-mail lists looking for one, including that of Hacker Dojo, a Mountain View, California, hackerspace. Hickman, who works for Google’s Doubleclick division, but has no connections to the Android people, saw Heath’s pleas.
They got together and started building. The first bot they built was made out of plastic. They just finished constructing their second bot, called Truckbot, which is lighter and cardboard-based.
They could have purchased the pricey $175 Oomlout kit, which includes wheels, motors and an Arduino-based brain. Hickman and Heath opted for making their own chassis. Here’s a full list of parts they used:
Total: $30 (plus shipping). To be fair, Heath and Hickman had access to a local workshop, the Tech Shop in Menlo Park, California, which helped tremendously in terms of having the tools to build some parts, like laser-cutting the cardboard chassis.
Their bot is more impressive for its potential than what it currently does. “Unlike most people out there,” says Hickman, as he types commands on the screen of his laptop, “we don’t want to use the phone as a remote control. Rather, it becomes the brain of the operation.”
This means they could utilize every hardware and software component of an Android phone, programming the bot to avoid obstacles, recognize faces and voices, pinpoint its location and go places. An Arduino board, which basically serves as a software-hardware link, is not smart enough to handle that, but an Android phone can.
For example, Arduino can detect when the bot bumps into something, but has to rely on the phone to decide on what to do next. As we’re wrapping up, the bot turns towards me and says, “Hello, Miran. Wired is awesome.”
Thanks, Truckbot! I like you too.
Wanna try building your own Android bot? Here is their five-step process:
To get it to work, you also need to do the following with the OS:
* For the commercial version of Android, an additional BlueTooth module is required.
If you get stuck, go to Heath and Hickman’s bot development blog for more tips. Enjoy experimenting, and let us know how it goes.
See Also:
Photos: Miran Pavic / Wired.com
Section: Communications, Smartphones, Computers, Software / Applications
Yesterday, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft addressed students at the University of Washington. Ballmer revealed the new direction for Microsoft as a whole, confiding that 70% of employees were currently engaged in work that is cloud-related. In one years time, Ballmer expects that number to to jump to 90%.
“We’re all in,” he says. “This is the bet for our company.” -Steve Ballmer
The cloud, of course, is the term used when data is stored online, not locally. Google has been prodding businesses and users to move their data to Google’s cloud through services like Gmail and Google apps that store content online which is accessible by a host of devices. Microsoft has reluctantly followed, dealing with how the move changes their entire business plan. Microsoft is re-engineering for the future and adjusting their business plan accordingly.
The cloud was part of just about everything Ballmer spoke about. From Windows Mobile, an older OS based on voice to Windows Phone based on cloud communications. From Office docs that were once stored locally to new versions coming in June that will free the data and make online sharing a priority.
Ballmer also let an interesting quip fly: “the cloud wants smarter devices.” Does that mean we’ll see more powerful mobile computers and software from Microsoft to compliment that? Or does it refer to Windows Phone and more powerful chips?
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Most social media campaigns stink on ice. I think the one exception to that ironclad fact was the recent I’m With Coco meme, which I’m not even sure you could call a social media campaign. This one, though, this one totally is. It’s called “Queremos
a Selecção de Bigode no Mundial!” It’s a growing movement to get the entire Portuguese national soccer team to grow mustaches for the World Cup. I’ve taken to calling the movement the Portuguese Mustache Federation, which, conveniently enough, doubles as a fantastic indie rock band name.
The movement began on Facebook with the founding of the group. Right now (as of 2:30pm EST), the group has 1,788 members. Portugal’s population is only around 10 million, so this group represents a huge portion of the Portuguese people.
The goal is simple: every single player on the team, from captain Cristiano Ronaldo right down to old man Nuno Gomes, is requested to grow a mustache, or bigode in Portuguese, for good luck during the big tournament. Let’s face it: the Portuguese team only barely qualified for the World Cup, and I can’t think of the last Portuguese player to rock a ’stache. Not even the manager, Carlos Queiroz, is man enough to let the whiskers fly.
Soccer is more known for people with dodgy haircuts rather than dodgy facial hair. Off the top of my head, crazy hair includes Carlos Valderrama, David Luiz, Florent Malouda, and Ronaldo. Why, Ronaldo, why?
All these people need now is a fun Twitter hash-tag (QSBM? PortStache?) and they’re golden.
 PC World | Ballmer Hints at More Xbox Form Factors PC Magazine On Thursday, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer spoke at the University of Washington supposedly on the topic of cloud computing. But the conversation also wandered into other topics, one that might include the future of the Xbox. ... Microsoft to maintain China operations, report says Microsoft "betting the company" on cloud computing Microsoft to stay its China course despite Google spat |
William Shatner will shill almost anything, and we love him for it. Now he is putting his promotional talents to work for Myouterspace.com, a social network for sci-fi geeks, gamers, animators, writers, and actors. In other words, people who couldn’t get into MySpace.
Actually, the site seems less like a social network than a way to crowdsource sci-fi movie and game projects. Depending on your specialty (animation, acting, writing, music) you register on one of six “planets.” Projects are designated as different “starships,” which recruit talent from the different planets. Shatner promises to monitor the progress of each crew, although it is not clear what that means or how they will be rewarded. If you are not groaning already at the stretched metaphors, Shatner explains how the whole thing works in this video which I nominate for the sorriest special effects anywhere.
Watching the video, in which Shatner is trapped in a dorky spaceship on a barren moon, I can’t help but think that inside he is screaming, “Khaaaaan!!”
(As part of his research for a book he's writing on microfinance, Bob Harris took a trip through the Peruvian Andes, including Cusco, Lake Titicaca, Machu Picchu, where he studied the architecture, refused to try corn-and-human-saliva beer, imbibed in coca tea ("maybe the best damn thing I ever drank"), and visited with people who live on floating islands made out of reeds. His photos and comments are fascinating. -- Mark)
We begin in transit, killing time in the Lima airport. I hope you'll enjoy the titanic clashes of cultures...
The culture shock of being faced with difficult, obscure translations...
... later on, inscrutable symbols beyond an outsider's comprehension...
... and the occasional midnight bathroom scorpion:
Our arachnid friend was in the town of Ollantaytambo. In the loo of a sweet little guest house. Right by the toilet, middle of the night, exactly like in my nightmares when I was little. The joys of travel.
I probably should have asked for a non-scorpion room.
Anyway, let's get some standard tourism out of the way. Here's a sight famiiar to anyone who has ever visited the travel section of a bookstore:
This young lady is one of many who eke out a living in tourist areas by posing for pictures for one nuevo sol (about 35 cents USD). You're surely seen guidebooks with a similar image on the cover.
I wonder how many guidebooks and magazines actually pay their subjects more than $0.35 for the profitable use of their image? (Come to think of it, what should I have paid for this free online use? I honestly have no idea. My bargaining skills in Quechua being non-existent, I gave her considerably more than her usual rate. I hope it was enough. But I also hope I didn't accidentally incentivize a job that doesn't develop other skills that would help her improve her life. I mention this because seeking a solution to such questions is what my next book is largely about.)
Speaking of Quechua -- in which "Rimaykullayki" means "hello" -- it's the living language of the Incas, still spoken (with major regional variations) by about 7 million people throughout formerly Inca lands from southern Colombia to northern Argentina. In Peru, it has official status, so some Andean street signs are multilingual -- here's "Avenue of the Sun" in Spanish and Quechua:
Of course, it's not just the languages -- you see Spanish sitting physically on top of Inca pretty much everywhere you look.
Historians currently peg the beginning of Inca civilization's greatest expansion roughly around 1493 -- just months after a Spanish sailor named Roderigo de Triana first sighted the New World from a ship called La Pinta.
(As a side note, Roderigo dutifully shouted the news to his captain, Christopher Columbus, who promptly claimed that he didn't see anything. This may have been because the expedition's financiers had promised a huge reward to the first person to see land. Sure enough, a little while later, Columbus announced that he himself finally saw land, and he was given the reward. Roderigo soon converted to Islam, moved to Africa, and disappeared from our elementary school history books. Columbus went on to become substantially less nice to the people he was about to meet.)
After Columbus came firearms, armor, smallpox, and eventually Francisco Pizarro, who executed the last Inca emperor in 1533. When the conquistadors reached Cusco, the grand Inca capital, they made a point of de-Inca-fying everything, plopping their Spanish stuff right on top.
The results are abundantly visible all over the place:
The Spanish building at top center was for many years the local Archbishop's palace -- constructed directly atop the walls of the palace of the Inca emperor.
Down the street, here's what was once the site of the Temple of the Sun, one of the holiest spots in the Inca Empire -- until the Spanish razed the original edifice and built the Church of Santo Domingo atop its foundations:
The surviving Inca stonework here has to be seen to be believed. For example, major earthquakes in 1650 and 1950 severely damaged the Spanish structure, but the Inca bits remained almost perfectly intact. These windows, for example, still line up perfectly, even after the whole building around them fell twice:
Back at the old archbishop's place, here's the famous 12-sided stone, only the most rococo of thousands of massive, ludicrously shaped rocks that jigsaw together so well that you generally can't even slip an index card between them:
The Incas moved and shaped these stones, most of which are bigger than you are, and then built hundreds of such walls -- all of course with no power tools, no known use of the wheel, no draft animal bigger than a llama, and no written language beyond intricately knotted cords.
How huge did Inca stonework get? Here's Sacsayhuaman, a fortification in which some stones are up to 20 feet high and may weigh nearly 200 tons:
Sacsayhuaman was intended to protect Cusco. Right up until the Spanish cornered the defenders inside, slaughtered them, and then began quarrying the non-huge rocks for imperial construction projects.
After executing the Inca leaders, selling the survivors on Christianity involved a different form of building on existing foundations. Take a look this small slice of the main cathedral in Cusco:
In Inca mythology, the most powerful earth deity, Pachamama, was frequently represented by a triangular shape symbolizing the mountains. Coincidentally enough, on the local Catholic god guy... a big triangle for a halo. (Pachamama, being an earth mother, also led to representations of Mary wearing garb so voluminous as to become triangular herself.) Mary and Joseph, meanwhile, have big spiky sunburst halos -- which just coincidentally resemble Inti, the Inca sun god.
There's tons of this sort of syncretism all over the place. Here's the Last Supper as portrayed inside the cathedral (cribbed from the web, since photographs are forbidden):
In Cusco, the Last Supper seems to have included potatoes (unknown outside the New World before Columbus), a homebrew corn-based beer called chicha to drink (see below) and local chinchilla instead of lamb as the main dish.
Let's take a minute to digress on local beverages. Chicha is a local corn-based homebrew beer as ubiquitous as it is kinda gross -- the fermentation is accelerated by enzymes in the maker's saliva:
That colorful plastic on a stick is the local signal that the occupants inside -- puh-tooey! -- have just brewed up a fresh batch of corn-and-spit beer. Mmm-mm.
Nasty as it sounds, it's also cheap as... well, corn and spit. So for poor folks with no better way to enlarge their livers, its a cheap buzz, and for the homeowners, it's an easy profit.
In some neighborhoods around quitting time, there can be almost as many chicha flags as there are buildings:
Since I'm not doing one of those Man Eats World-style cable shows, I didn't try chicha myself. Sorry to disappoint. Just, well, eww.
Besides, I was too busy getting buzzed on the coca tea:
Just take loose coca leaves, add boiling water, let steep, add sugar, and drink. Maybe the best damn thing I ever drank.
It tastes sort of like sweet spinach, but with the stimulant kick of good coffee and an analgesic effect I'd place somewhere between naproxen and vicodin. (I have a bad back, so I feel confident in my ability to scale analgesics.) One pot, and pretty soon my head felt better, my feet felt better... hell, my childhood felt better.
Seriously, it's fantastic medicine for that altitude and climate. Too bad putting a handful of those leaves in my pocket could get me arrested back home, thanks to the War On Some Drugs.
Anyway, back to the cathedral. Let's step back into the square for a wider look. Check out the flags:
On the right, the national flag of Peru. On the left... a rainbow flag, remarkably like pride flag used by the North American gay community since the 1970s.
Here, it's not a gay thing. It's simply the Cusco city flag, said to be inspired by banners flown by Incas fighting the Spanish. There's spotty evidence for the claim, and Cusco only adopted the flag in 1978 -- the very same year Gilbert Barker designed the gay pride flag in San Francisco. Still, in Cusco, rainbow = Inca, flag-wise.
Does this lead to confusion? Oh dear god yes. In moments of broad comedy that sound more like an episode of Family Guy than real life, I've been told that American tourists are sometimes shocked on arrival to discover that the entire city of Cusco is so totally Out. Others pose happily in front of the flag, demonstrating solidarity with a culture they are misunderstanding completely.
The city of Cusco periodically discusses just changing the whole thing.
Moving on...
It's all well to criticize the Spanish destruction of the Inca empire, but let's also disabuse ourselves of any assumption that the Incas were morally superior. After all, they probably didn't get to be the most powerful empire in the hemisphere by asking nicely.
Let's move a few hundred miles south, to Lake Titicaca near the Bolivian border, and meet the Uros people, who were at one time oppressed and even enslaved by the Incas.
Lake Titicaca is at about 12,500 feet -- about 2.4 miles up in the air. By comparison, Denver is at 5280 feet, altitude sickness starts affecting sensitive people at just 8000 feet, and the MacBook I'm using is only rated by Apple to function up to 10,000 feet. (Above that, the thin air can supposedly cause a dynamic imbalance in the spinning hard drive.) Lake Titicaca is, in a word, somewhat high.
As a result, it's one of the most vividly colorful places on earth. You're missing almost two and a half miles of air that normally stand between you and the sun god, plus you're near the equator, so Inti is bashing you pretty straight on. So the blue is BLUE. The green is GREEN. My camera couldn't possibly do it justice. The colors are so bright they almost vibrate:
And on this beautiful lake -- several kilometers out, just, like, floating out there -- live several hundred members of the Uros, a people whose culture predates the Incas.
Roughly half a millennium ago, the Uros were under such frequent and violent assault that many finally fled onto the lake itself, building floating pontoon islands out of the lake's abundant totora reeds.
Centuries later, many of the Uros are still there. Floating on their reed islands.
They're still raising their kids in reed huts, paddling reed boats, and constantly weaving and re-weaving the whole kaboodle, since water and weather are constantly eroding most of their world.
There are anywhere from about 45 to 60 of these islands at any time, generally housing from 2-5 families each, depending on population and who is getting along with whom. (A bad family spat, for example, may lead to the construction of a new island.) The island in the above picture was abandoned shortly before I arrived; the elderly couple who had previously lived in the house on the right had recently passed away.
The islands are squishy to walk on, something like trying to stride across a mattress. If you stomped, you could put your foot right through the matting. So you walk carefully.
Say hello to Olympia. She and her husband were born on one of these pontoons, are raising their children out here, and will probably live much of the rest of their lives in the same small hut:
Olympia invited me into her home and showed me around. (She surely does this with travelers almost every day.) The whole hut is probably about the size of your living room.
Here's where they cook, just outside:
These are their three daughters:
It may not be clear in the photos, but everyone looks kinda sunburned. A scientific survey completed in 2006 determined that this general region receives the highest jolt of UV radiation of any continuously inhabited place on earth. And nobody here can afford frequent sunscreen.
I brought (as any traveler should) pencils and paper as gifts for the kids, since school supplies are way expensive for these folks; their only income is from selling crafts and trading fresh fish, handicrafts, and other goods with non-lake-dwellers. Speaking of crafts, that handwoven mat that Olympia is sitting with, above -- that's currently sitting on my couch here in L.A., awaiting a frame. It's gorgeous, it tells the story of the Uros, and it was the biggest thing she had for sale. I will treasure it.
The fishing is done primarily with what the Uros call "plastic boats," since they're not made of reeds:
But they still make traditional reed boats like the one below, which took five men two months of labor to build, and lasts only two years before the lake water eventually reclaims it:
These boats are more for making a few bucks by taking visitors like me out for a lap. Fair enough. Cesar here manned the oar and was kind enough to share a few more details of life here:
He's 25 and commutes by boat to the lakeshore city of Puno for school, medical care, and other things most first worlders take for granted. He's also not actually a full-blooded descendent of the Uros -- nobody here is. Over the centuries, the Uros eventually intermarried with neighboring Aymara-speaking peoples, and the Uros's language disappeared long ago. Uros traditions continue, although it's all getting harder to maintain as the living standard on the shore continues to lure people away.
The government is now heavily subsidizing the Uros, partly for humane reasons, and partly because they're increasingly a tourist attraction. As my own presence here confirms. This is strange to contemplate. Another generation or two (if not already or very soon), and people may only live here to attract visitors, reducing an entire centuries-old culture to little more than a publicity stunt.
I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to have all of your traditions and culture, handed down for hundreds of years, collapse into a tourist trap that rapidly -- to grow up while that's going on, and then wonder who your children will even be. I'm trying, and failing, to imagine that.
I hope that buying the beautiful weaving from Olympia will help her family and support her work, and not encourage her to continue an unnecessarily hard way of life they will someday maintain only for show.
Moving on.
Further into the lake (and with a beautiful view of the Bolivian Andes), is the island of Taquile:
Thanks to physical isolation, Taquile has yet another distinct culture. Possessions are generally collectivized -- even the sheep feeding on the Inca-era terraces:
Family lineage is identified by color-coded clothing:
Conflicts on the island are resolved every Sunday in lengthy group discussions in the main square:
Too bad Copenhagen couldn't be organized this smoothly. I can think of some people who could seriously learn from Taquile.
Heading back to dry land, however, things got less inspiring for a while.
The nearest airport is in Juliaca, a city just slightly larger than Akron, Ohio. Not the most enticing place I've been. To give you an idea, this Peru tourism website, whose whole point is to make things sound as appealing as possible, has this to say about Juliaca:
very unattractive... [it] competes with Chimbote on the northern coast for the title of the most unpleasant city in Peru. Most of the buildings in the city are very ugly... the bitter cold winds make being out at night almost unbearable..."
As a bonus, cars, 3-wheel cabs, motorcycles, pedicabs, bicycles, and pedestrians compete in a downtown oddly bereft of traffic lights, so everyone just sort of shoves their noses in and pushes. I've been in third world traffic from Cairo to Bali to Kuala Lumpur, and this was as hostile as anything I've ever seen. Before becoming congealed in traffic, my taxi driver almost ran over a dog, a teenage school girl, and an elderly woman, all within a two minute period -- accelerating, honking, daring them not to dive out of the street. This seemed to be the etiquette; other drivers did the same. When I asked him to please slow down and not risk hitting people, the driver pulled the car over and began yelling abusively.
Hokay.
According to the locals I spoke with, much of the economy is built around contraband of many varieties -- Peru and Bolivia maintain no border controls on Lake Titicaca, creating an enormous smuggling route for anyone trying to get stolen or illegal goods from the rest of South America into Peru for sale or export. And Juliaca is the hub.
For what it's worth, the lone cop I saw looked like a total prop:
Yes, the cop stayed in a little box on the sidewalk, blowing a whistle and waving at traffic that barely paid the slightest mind. Yes, the box was provided by Inca Kola. And yes, a man is about to urinate on the wall.
It's not really a law-and-order place, I guess.
On Christmas Eve of last year, someone threw a tear gas grenade into a nightclub here, where 1200 people were dancing in a room built for half that many. In the confined space, five people were asphyxiated and 10 were severely injured in the rush to flee. The police never found out who did it, but it's believed to have been a prank by some teenagers. For fun.
Outside, neighbors who lived near the nightclub took advantage of the situation and tried to set fire to the building, the better to rob the panicked, fleeing survivors.
Afterward, seven people were arrested for trying to steal valuables from the dead bodies.
Tough town, this Juliaca.
A couple of years ago, a poor man was discovered stealing cooking fuel here. A mob tied him to a lamppost with wire and burned him alive.
A couple of months before that, the mayor of an outlying village was accused of corruption, and the entire town beat him to death.
That said, they do have a giant slide:
So there's that.
Let's get back on the road, shall we?
Here's the Altiplano, Peru's answer to the South African highveldt -- a high plain often seemingly as flat as a putting green for as far as the eye can see:
Occasionally you hit a speed bump at a toll station. These are accompanied by the following warning:
The sign is meant to communicate that the large bump may destroy your suspension if you don't slow down. My crappy Spanish, however, always interpreted the sign more literally -- as Spring Break.
Cool! Turns out it's Spring Break in Peru every 50 miles or so.
Moving on.
This is the central wall of the Temple of Wiracocha, a pre-Inca ruin 80 feet high and 100 yards long. Prior to the Spaniards doing to the Incas roughly what Juliaca does to propane thieves, this central wall supported a church the size of an entire football field, surely one of the largest structures on the continent when the Spanish arrived:
The sheep is a comparatively recent addition.
Further north, we pass Cusco and enter the Sacred Valley, a vast fertile swath along the Urubamba river that was to the Incas what California's Central Valley is to modern supermarkets.
It's gorgeous. Depending on your altitude, the Sacred Valley can look like anything from the most fertile bits of Appalachia...
... to a drive through the back roads of Utah:
Next stop, Moray, site of what may have been a massive Inca crop laboratory, 14 stories deep and 150 yards across:
The theory goes that all those concentric circles create different microclimates, with the center several degrees warmer than the outermost rings. Many scientists now believe that in addition to using the center for various religious rites and sacrifices, the Incas also used the entire area as a microcosm for the terraced hillsides throughout the valley -- and a laboratory for determining which grains would grow best at which altitude and direction of exposure to the sun.
I would not have thought that an Inca crop lab would be so cool. But then, I'd have also said the same about this Peruvian salt mine:
Normally, somebody says "Peruvian salt mine," I'm not thinking, wow, cool. But this was:
About 600 years ago, the Incas discovered a natural spring that provided a constant trickle of extremely salty water. With some careful terracing, they created this massive field of 3000 evaporation pools. The trace mineral content varies from pool to pool, with distinct applications in agriculture, animal husbandry, and human consumption.
If you own one of the plots, you get to the actual salt by just walking out onto the terraces and harvesting it. This feels a lot like walking on snow when it's 80 degrees outside:
The only similar experience I'd had was crunching around the Gilmore Girls set during a Christmas episode being shot in Burbank in October. But if I'd lost my footing there, I wouldn't have gone careening down the side of a mountain.
Moving on.
Nearby, here's Ollyantaytambo, site of an Inca fortress the Spanish never conquered:
At its feet, the town of Ollyantaytambo is among the best-preserved Inca villages in Peru:
Many of the residents of Ollyantaytambo speak Quechua, retain some elements of traditional dress and custom, and live in Inca-built dwellings along Inca-built streets, eating potatoes and corn grown from hybrids and techniques pioneered by the Incas. It's pretty damn Inca here.
If you're planning a visit, the Casa Del Scorpion guest house is just out of camera range here to the left.
Watching the train to Machu Picchu chug past these half-millennium-old terraces was oddly jarring -- like watching two widely-spaced centuries overlap right before your eyes:
Speaking of Machu Picchu... let's go.
(Warning: my words are going to completely fail. So will my camera. Most of these pictures will look just like every other picture of Machu Picchu. Some things -- Iguazu Falls, the pyramids of Giza or Teotihuacan, the Grand Canyon, etc. -- are just they're too big and wonderful to encapsulate in a snapshot.)
8000 feet in the air, in the saddle between two bullet-shaped mountains far enough into the Peruvian jungle that neither cars nor planes can take you to the spot...
... there's a 550-year-old ruin larger than Times Square. Constructed entirely of rocks that seem to have no earthly business being there.
Archaeologists aren't even sure what it was for. Possibly a retreat for the emperor Pachacutec. Whatever it was, the Spanish never plundered it -- heck, they never even found it -- so the whole thing is unusually pristine.
The place is often overrun by tourists, but if you look closely, you'll see that I lucked out and almost had the whole deal to myself. It was a random Thursday at the beginning of the wet season. Must be a good time to visit.
The view above is taken from a small building theorized to be a sort of observation post, now known as the Caretaker's Hut. Here's a look back up from what would be street level, were the town still active:
To give you a sense of scale, each one of those terraces is about 5 feet high. So climbing up to the hut from here is like taking the stairs on a 20-story building.
Here's the most sacred spot in the place, a stone called Intihuatana ("hitching post of the sun"):
Despite its simple appearance, it's oriented to point directly at the sun on the winter solstice, with the travel of its shadows subsequently providing an excellent guide to the seasons. This stone and the temple around it may have been the center of all Inca social and political planning.
And here are what seem to be the primary caretakers, keeping the grass neat with their grazing:
They also line up single file to use the stairs, which was more civilized than any human act I saw in the entire city of Juliaca.
A lot of tourists don't want to visit during the wet season, but if you like dramatic shifts in mood, it's the way to go:
And when the mist clears, rainbows appear in the valley below:
500 feet over the rainbow would be a good place to end this entry... except there's one thing even more beautiful that I want to show you.
It's the real reason I went, the main thing I was visiting in Cusco, and the actual subject of this chapter of my book on microfinance. (The rest is just window dressing, really.)
Here's the loveliest place I visited in Peru:
Arariwa may not look gorgeous, but it's a microfinance institution that brings financial resources to the working poor throughout the region -- craftspeople not unlike Olympia, say. Plus farmers and tradespeople and small businesspeople of every kind.
Microfinance is changing millions of lives -- so much so that its biggest pioneer, Muhammad Yunus, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Unfortunately, it's not yet very well known in America. So for my next book, I'm taking all the money I made swanking around doing luxury travel reviews last year and putting it to good use -- funneling every dime into backing a bunch of loans* (1036 as of today; eventually I hope to do many thousands) in more than 40 developing countries. I'm using Kiva.org as my primary investment platform so far, but I'll be checking out include Babyloan.org, MYC4.com, and MicroPlace.com, among others. (They're all a little different, but generally in the same ballpark.)
And I'll be spending much of 2010 following the results in a half-dozen interesting places, then writing about what I see, learn, and occasionally fall off of or getting bitten by on the way.
That's the next book. Peru was just my first stop.
About 35 of my Kiva loans are to borrowers hooked up via Arariwa ("guardian of the harvest" in Quechua), and while I was in Cusco, I met some of the good folks at Arariwa who get the money to the people who need it, teach them how to handle it, offer health and reproductive information, and devote their lives to equipping the poor to, basically, not be poor anymore.
Want to know what was really gorgeous in Peru? People like Clotilde here, the head of education (and caretaker of a gazillion other things) for Arariwa, and one of the sweetest people I've ever met:
Clotilde here kindly opened her office, offered her time and support, arranged for me to visit with a few borrowers, and put up with my crappy Spanish. You just can't ask for more than that.
(Also, a grateful shout-out to Kiva Fellow Sheethal Shobowale for introducing me to Clotilde, shepherding me around more than once, and frequently making my Spanish comprehensible to others. This was all above and beyond. It was a privilege.)
I'd just like anyone reading this to get the feel for how real and cool and normal and important this stuff is. And in a way, how totally ordinary. Clotilde is an exceptional person -- but I also think everyone reading this is in their own way, too. (Yes, I get how sappy and contradictory that sounds. Deal with it.)
And that's it from Peru. Next stop will probably be India and Bangladesh in a few months. Will send more from there.
Thanks for reading! May your chicha be fresh, your island well-thatched, and your loo scorpions slow-moving.
*Sticklers may want me to clarify that a "Kiva loan" is typically the refinancing of an existing loan already made by the local lending institution. To which I say, whoopty. It's still helping to get food on the table where it's needed.
Who’s going to clean up at the Oscars on Sunday? If you’re the kind of person who is frantic with anticipation…you’re probably not reading this.
But you may still end up watching the awards or find yourself in conversation with someone who cares about them. Or just making small talk, or whatever.
So here are a couple of data points you can bruit about, if you’d like. They come via Nielsen, which is trying to measure online “buzz” about the films and actors up for awards.
What is “buzz”? In this case, Nielsen is monitoring user-generated chatter about the Oscars over the last month. Whether it’s Twitter, blog comments, discussion boards, etc. Note that Nielsen is just reporting on volume here, not sentiment. So it’s possible that many of the people talking about “Avatar” hate it.
But they are talking about it, more than anything else (see chart below; click to enlarge).
Go ahead and draw your own conclusions. Mine: Not at all interesting that “Avatar” is generating chatter since it’s the most popular–or at least the highest-grossing–movie of all time. But barely anyone has seen “The Hurt Locker”–at least compared with, say, “The Blind Side.” So that’s interesting. Right?
And here’s Nielsen’s assessment of the Best Actor and Best Actress categories:
Again, many more people saw George Clooney saunter in and out of airports than saw Jeff Bridges getting drunk, so that means…I don’t know. Maybe they’re talking about Jeff Bridges because all the Oscar TV shows and articles are predicting a win for Jeff Bridges. That would make sense, right?
Meanwhile, an update on the three million New York-area TV watchers who may not be able to watch the Oscars on ABC if Disney (DIS) and Cablevision (CVC) can’t work out their spat: There is no update.
At the moment the two companies are still sending out press releases that are supposed to be incendiary. But they are, in fact, very dull.
For the past several weeks, there have been quite a few whispers around the web about a new service called Burbn. Besides having a great name, the service is apparently in a very hot space right now: location-based services. I say “apparently,” because the service is still very much a stealth project. But it’s not so stealth that they can’t get a seed round of funding.
Burbn has just closed a $500,000 seed round, we’re hearing. According to sources, both Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz participated in the round. From what we can tell, right now, Burbn is just a one-man shop: Kevin Systrom, a former Googler. With the funding, you can probably expect that to change soon.
So aside from potentially being the location space, what is Burbn? Well, the current splash page where you can sign up to get for information, tells us a little bit more: “Burbn is a new way to communicate + share in the real world.” While that may sound like Google Buzz or a handful of other services, the key to that is “in the real world,” again, this reeks of location.
We’ve also heard that the site currently being tested is a mobile web app that uses HTML5 to work in both iPhone and Android browsers. Monitor their Twitter feed for more.
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Hmm, Nascar… it’s a bit too Southern for my latte-drinking, North-eastern tendencies, but if Yamauchi deems it worthy of Gran Turismo! So behold, the latest trailer of the game.
Gran Turismo 5 is currently scheduled to come out in the year 2027 sometime this year.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple on Friday announced the official release date of its iPad — April 3 — but the company also raised more questions. Specifically, Apple’s press statement suggests the iPad won’t ship with all the apps that came with the iPhone. What will happen to them?
Apple’s press release states the iPad includes “12 new innovative apps designed especially for the iPad.” That number presumably refers to the brand new Videos app and the redesigned iPod, Maps, Photos, Mail, Safari, App Store, iTunes, YouTube, Contacts, Calendar and Notes apps that were present on demo units of the iPad in January. (For a clearer look at the iPad’s Home screen, see Apple’s press image below.)
But if you recall, the iPhone ships with some apps that appear to be left out from the iPad: Stocks, Calculator, Clock, Weather and Voice Memos. What gives?
Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment, but I’m willing to guess Apple will just stick those apps in the App Store for a free download, and they’ll be the same apps as they were on the iPhone. After all, it’s unlikely there’s much to do with those particular apps to make them visually special for the iPad.
There have been some other theories tossed around recently as well. Blogger Kevin Fox speculates that Apple might reintroduce the missing apps as widgets through Dashboard. If you’re a Mac user, you should be familiar with Dashboard widgets. They constantly run in the background and can be accessed by pressing a quick hot key (F12). Fox points out that the missing apps were all originally Dashboard widgets, with the exception of Voice Memos, and perhaps an iPad version of Dashboard will function as a more sophisticated method of multitasking for the iPad. (Contrary to popular belief, the iPhone can multitask, but it’s limited to running a select few apps made by Apple in the background, such as the iPod player and the phone.)
In any case, until April, the missing apps are a head scratcher. We’ll find out soon enough.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Image courtesy of Apple
Late last year, Ustream and qik launched iPhone applications that let you stream videos from the iPhone to the web and allow others to watch them as they’re being recorded. And now there is an iPhone app called TwitCasting Live (iTunes link), which offers the same basic functionality, but is – as the name suggests – much more deeply integrated into Twitter.
The free app is essentially a live streaming app and Twitter client rolled into one. TwitCasting Live splits the iPhone screen in half, allowing you to view your Twitter timeline, update your status, access the web etc. on the bottom half, while recording (broadcasting) video on the top.
Read the rest on MobileCrunch >>
We’re still trying our darnedest to not feed the hype machine surrounding Project Pink, considering that all signs are indicating that neither phone is anything to get worked up about.
With that said, a couple of new shots of the Turtle (the stout, portrait sliding QWERTY handset) and the Pure (the horizontal QWERTY handset pictured above) have just leaked out, along with some information about its impending launch on Verizon.
According to the tipster who leaked the shots below to Engadget, Verizon is tentatively scheduled to launch one or both of these phones come April 20th. There are also whispers of a Vodafone release, though no date for that was given.
Last but not least, the tipster verified that the Project Pink phones will be aimed at a teen/young adult audience. In other words, it’s Microsoft’s best attempt to bring something to fruition after the purchase of Danger, all talent losses aside.
Section: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking
During World War II, US citizens were encouraged not to talk about locations or plans of our military for fear the enemy would hear. Much later, Geraldo Rivera would be chastised for drawing a map of where he was embedded with troops in Iraq. Today, an Isreali raid was called off when leaders were alerted to a Facebook update, which revealed the location.
“On Wednesday we clean up Qatanah, and on Thursday, god willing, we come home,” the soldier wrote.
Qutanah is a village in the West Bank and the raid was intended to find suspected militants. Facebook friends reported the questionable post to the military. Their plan potentially uncovered, the planners scrapped the mission.
The soldier has since been relieved of combat duty and will serve 10 days in prison. We suspect he was probably un-friended by a lot of folks too. How do you come back from that, an “I am sorry” post? Or simply kill the account and start over?
The issue highlights the inherent potential danger of social media and the military. The US has recently made changes that grant full access to sites such as Facebook so families can stay in touch. Previously, many sites were blocked for fear of just this type of mistake made that could put more soldiers in harms way.
“Service members and DoD employees are welcome and encouraged to use new media to communicate with family and friends — at home stations or deployed — but it’s important to do it safely. Keep in mind that everyone has a responsibility to protect themselves and their information online, and existing regulations on ethics, operational security, and privacy still apply. Be sure never to post any information that could be considered classified, sensitive, or that might put military members or families in danger.” - new Pentagon policy.
Read: [New York Times]
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Late last year, Ustream and qik launched iPhone applications that let you stream videos from the iPhone to the web and allow others to watch them as they’re being recorded. And now there is an iPhone app called TwitCasting Live (iTunes link), which offers the same basic functionality, but is – as the name suggests – much more deeply integrated into Twitter.
The free app is essentially a live streaming app and Twitter client rolled into one. TwitCasting Live splits the iPhone screen in half, allowing you to view your Twitter timeline, update your status, access the web etc. on the bottom half, while recording (broadcasting) video on the top.
When the recording begins, you can automatically tweet out a specific URL for the broadcast (“I’m live on Twitcasting!”) to your followers who just need to hit the link to watch the live stream on the web or even on their iPhones (iPhone users won’t hear sound though). The app comes in especially handy during events, for example. After the broadcast, you can choose to save and archive the recording on the TwitCasting website.
TwitCasting Live works with both the iPhone 3G and 3GS, under Wi-Fi or 3G. Results were OK during tests with my 3G under a Japanese 3G network (I live in Japan), but naturally performance is best when using the app with Wi-Fi and a 3GS.
Tokyo-based Twitcasting provider sidefeed claims video latency is as low as 0.3-2.0 seconds in most countries, adding 750 concurrent viewers are the maximum the app can handle at the moment (although this number will be boosted to “a couple of thousands of viewers” next week).
Launched in Japan first, the English version made its formal debut during a demo event from TechCrunch Japan last week. Sidefeed says they have accommodated over 50,000 live broadcasts (80% over 3G) in the first four weeks and that they’re currently thinking about an Android port.
Based in Detroit, Michigan, LOVELAND is all about creative new concepts in micro payments for micro ownership and use of land. It is building frameworks for many people to invest and participate in the creation of something where nothing was before, and to interact with places both in person and online in various unique ways.The Loveland Project (MakeLoveland)
"Inchvesting in Detroit: A Virtual Reality" (NPR)
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Mar 2010 | 2:16 pm
Following his exit from NBC’s The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien was bored. So bored, that he decided to join Twitter. Within a couple weeks, he has already amassed a huge following of over a half million people — especially impressive in the post-suggested user list era. Despite a half million people following him, he was not following anyone back. Until today.
As Conan has just tweeted out, he has decided to follow someone finally. A random person. As he notes, “I’ve decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.“
Killen, from Michigan, has exactly 1,300 followers as of the writing of this post (just a few minutes after Conan’s tweet). You can expect that to skyrocket very quickly. As Killen notes, “Having a lame ass day, Russell Bigos is an idiot. And Conan O’Brien is THE SHIT.”
Update: In just a few minutes, Killen has doubled her Twitter followers to now exactly 2,600.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 Reuters | Siberian Methane Could Fast-Track Global Warming Atlantic Online Unexpectedly huge quantities of Siberian methane are being released into the atmosphere, according to a new study. The resulting feedback loop could dramatically outpace the climate models that scientists and policy makers have been using as they ... Methane frozen beneath Arctic seabed destabilising, scientists warn Massive methane release sparks global warming fears Methane Bubbles in Arctic Seas Stir Global Warming Fears |
Affiliate fees are all over the web and often we don’t even know that we are clicking on affiliate links when we click through to make purchases at our favorite online retailers. On average, affiliate fees can range from 3 to 10 percent of the price of a product. Browsarity is hoping to put money collected from affiliate programs to philanthropic use, and keep a portion for itself in the process. The Y Combinator-incubated company has launched a Firefox plug-in that will rewrite any unclaimed links to a participating online retailer with an affiliate link, and donate any fees collected towards the charity of your choice.
Once downloaded, Browsarity will automatically scan any links to determine if there is an affiliate program and link associated with the retailer and will underline the link in red. So if you search to buy an iPhone on Google or read a blog post with a link to a book on Amazon, Browsarity will underline the affiliate links for retailers which could result in fees that go to charity. If you purchase the item through the affiliate link, the fees will be deposited into a PayPal account operated by Browsarity. Most of the fees in that account will be donated to a charity of your choice. Browsarity will take a 10 percent cut of each affiliate fee, so 90 percent is donated to the charity.
Currently Browsarity offers nine different charities to choose from, including The Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and the Black Eyed Peas’ charity PeaPod. The startup says it has partnerships with at least ten “big-name” e-retailers to collect affiliate fees for charity.
There is also a viral component to the service. You can send your friends and family links to install copies of Browsarity pre-set for a certain charity, and the system will keep track of how much money has been generated for that charity as a result of your efforts. In an effort to preserve users’ privacy, Browsarity doesn’t track individual purchases.
While only available for Firefox at the moment, Browsarity will be launching plug-ins and extensions for Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer in the coming weeks. The startup faces competition from Browse For A Cause, which has a similar model.
FROM GAMERTELL - Gamertell learns more about the ‘s new HitMaster audio monitor which is being marketed as an accessory to music games including Guitar Hero and Rock band…
MORE »
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A few weeks ago, we noted that the Denver, CO-based design company Aten Design Group was holding a funeral for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), the much-hated browser. The funeral took place last night. It wasn’t without controversy as there were protestors, and even a bouquet of flowers sent by Microsoft. But overall, it looks like it was a classy ceremony.
The blog Nonprofits and Web 2.0 was on hand and has posted several videos (a few of which I’ll embed below). There’s also a huge set of pictures in this Flickr album. As we noted originally, despite the funeral, IE6 is likely to live on for a few years as many sites are likely to still support it for the foreseeable future (though YouTube turns off support next week). And don’t forget all those pour souls in corporate jobs who are forced to use the browser because their IT departments won’t allow them to upgrade.
Microsoft itself is trying to get users to upgrade from IE6 (to their updated IE8), and the flowers that they sent to the funeral speak to that. The card sent with the flowers read: “Thanks for the good times, IE6. See you all @ MIX, where we’ll show a little piece of IE heaven. The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft“
[photos: flickr/atendesigngroup]
San Francisco based Posterous, a fast growing publishing platform, has taken a $4.4 million investment from Redpoint Ventures. Partner Satish Dharmaraj, who is also an individual investor in Posterous, led the round and joins the company’s board of directors (and he maintains his personal blog at Posterous here).
Posterous, founded in 2008 by Sachin Agarwal, Garry Tan and Brett Gibson, is a Y Combinator company that began as a way for users to very easily post pictures online. Its appeal lies in its simplicity – users can just email a photo to post@posterous.com and an account is immediately created for them. But today people are using Posterous for videos and text blogs as well. Users can change the CSS and even use their own domain names – see Guy Kawasaki’s HolKaw blog, for example, which is run by Posterous.
The company does have revenue, such as this early deal with Coca Cola for a branded site, but has stood firm in keeping the “nickel and dime” consumer fees out of the product. There are no restrictions on usage, storage, CSS customization or using your own domain, says the company.
Later this year Posterous will launch a pro version of the service for bigger brands, and allow things like Javascript and site monetization for a fee, they say.
All that simplicity and freeness has resulted in a lot of growth for the company. They have 12 million unique monthly visitors, they say, and 25 million page views. And they grew 30% per month in 2009, all with just 4 employees (they are up to 6 now).
Posterous regularly releases new products, such as Post.ly a month ago. Post.ly lets users easily share media on their Twitter account.
CEO Sachin Agarwal says that they want to continue to add new products that make it dead simple to post and share content online: “Our goal is to become synonymous with “posting” just like Google is synonymous with “search”. Doesn’t matter if it’s for twitter or a blog, private or public, group or individual. if you need it online, you go to Posterous.”
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile, Computers, Desktops, Security, Software / Applications, Gadgets / Other, Gaming, Console, Games, Mobile, Portable, Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack
Welcome to another week gone that you are not getting back. No matter how much we loathe the week, it’s in the books and no amount of illegal narcotics is going to change that fact. For these nominees, who I suspect are on crack, this week hasn’t been kind. Let’s get to it:
Microsoft loses the keys; the F1 key
Sony Walkman Phone imminent
BlackBerry mixing up a new batch of phones?
Google v. Apple; what this is really about.
It’s a common phrase in my house. I can’t ever find the keys to my car and the fact that my keys are now keyless only seems to exacerbate the issue as I don’t have to know where they are on me, just if they are near me. Thanks Toyota.
Microsoft seems to have lost the F1 key. See it on your keyboard? It sits there all smug, feeling good about being named numero uno. Oh God, don’t touch it! No seriously, don’t touch it. Our Sue Walsh reports, “Microsoft is warning XP users not to press the F1 key if a website prompts them to. The company urges them to ignore the warning saying it could be an exploit using a newly discovered vulnerability in VBScript.”
Fantastic. We are trained to download junk when prompted, to hit “OK” 8 million times to set up our Outlook server and now we can’t hit F1. What is next, F2? They wouldn’t dare.
I’ve been poking fun at Sony’s antiquated Walkman brand ever since I lifted a pen here at Gadgetell. The seeming idiocy of continuing to use a brand that died with portable CD players made me think less of Sony. Now it seems they’ve figured this out (or have just been punking Ericsson all these years) and according to rumors, will announce a Playstation Phone or a PSPhone. (pronounced Pee-sphone).
From our hot little sister site who wears her skirts too short: Gamertell, “The Wall Street Journal reports that Sony will release a new smartphone in 2010 that will rival the iPhone. The phone is said to be made by Sony Ericsson. It will be capable of downloading and playing PlayStation games.”
More and more we hear how 9/10 apps on iPhones are games. Is a game-centered phone so out of focus for Sony? It looks like a real possibility as it looks to fight back advances made by Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch (the funnest iPod ever according to their marketing).
Could a PSPhone find a home in more than gamers hands? Could casual gamers pick this up with the stigma of being a gamer (if such a things exists, easy Gamertell)? Could Sony really hold itself back from slapping the Walkman brand on it somewhere?
Oh boy. Blackberry has made it’s fortunes as a great email device. When candy bar QWERTY phones ruled the landscape, BlackBerry had a monopoly. With the iPhone, Palm Pre, Droid, Nexus One all vying for our attention, BlackBerry looks like the freak in the back dressed as Barney the Dinosaur.
The solution: whip up some hip devices the kids out there will love. Only their next purported version, the Slider, looks like it won’t get any dances at the Middle School Spring Dance. Oddly shaped, chunky, possibly a hair lip, BlackBerry appears to have been listening a bit too much to Mom, “it doesn’t matter what you look like, it’s whats inside that counts.” Sure Mom. And girls make fun of me cause they are in love with me, right? Look how that worked out.
How about a new form factor: the pirate eye-patch phone. The Aye-Phone?
I normally don’t review stories I’ve written about, but this one is big. This one could change the mobile landscape. I’ll let me from a couple of days ago tell the story: “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.”
Let’s put this into perspective. You and I make stuff and we’re good friends. I am on your board of directors, you grab some of my cool map stuff for your little thing and we get along. Then, I decide my side gig is going to be a conflict of interest, so we build a fence - I can’t see you, you can’t see me. I resign from your board. Then you buy a map company and it kinda bums me out, you liked my map stuff yesterday. I build a phone store and only sell my phone. You have built lots of stores, so I figure, “what do you care?”
But you do care. I’ve been hanging out with Heather Trixie Cunningham (HTC for short) quite a little bit. I saw you spying on us a the movies, perv. And so, in a jealous rage, you lawyer up and sue Heather (aka HTC). She’s my girl, so I’ve got to say something like, “I am totally with this chick.”
So where does that leave us? We’re not going to work this out. Lawyers are going to run the show, getting rich off both of us and someone is going to have to change some code. There will be late nights for programmers. There will be no, “if the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit” fun phrases to come out of this.
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Can’t get enough of the ultra gorgeous, uni-body HTC Legend? Neither can we. That’s why we’re glad (and a bit jealous) that our buddy Chris Davies over at SlashGear got his mitts all over a near-retail version of the device, and proceeded to give it a proper unboxing.
We say “near-retail” version because there seems to be a few things missing; while the device itself seems primped and polished, the box is missing any sort of graphical wrapping, and the microSD card that should ship with the device wasn’t included. Things might change a bit before the Legend hits retail in April — but if you’ve got a Legendary itch that needs to be scratched, the video after the jump ought to help.
Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.
[UPDATE: Google confirmed the deal in a blog post, which you can read below, as well as in interviews BoomTown did today with execs at DocVerse and Google.]
Continuing its acquisition spree, Google has snapped up DocVerse, a start-up that allows users of Microsoft Office documents to collaborate in real-time on the Web, said several sources.
Sources said the price was in the $25 to $30 million range.
Founded by two ex-Microsoft (MSFT) execs in 2008, Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui, San Francisco-based DocVerse has raised only $1.3 million in venture funding from Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal and Naval Ravikant.
It’s yet another shot across Microsoft’s software bow by Google (GOOG), along with a range of other digital arenas such as cloud computing and mapping.
Google has been pushing its own cloud-based Google Docs, but it struggles against the Office juggernaut. Thus, a link with Office via DocVerse is a smart move.
Jonathan Rochelle, group product manager on the Google Apps team said that while some perceive the search giant as trying to compete directly with Office (a claim I openly scoffed at during the interview), Google did hear from customers that it wanted cloud-based functionality with Office.
“We heard from customers that there is a great need for help in the cloud,” he said. “This acquisition helps users move over the to cloud and expands our product.”
DocVerse CEO Sinha said his small company–under 20 employees, who will be moving down to the Googleplex HQ in Mountain View, Calif., immediately–had been talking to Google for a while.
“We were gaining traction in the product in large enterprises…so, it made sense, because we have a vision of a world of Web-based collaboration,” he said.
While Sinha said he admired what Microsoft had done with Office, he noted there is a need for more, and a hook-up with the powerful Google will help DocVerse do that sooner.
“Microsoft is doing a lot of great things for its customers who use its stack of software,” he said. “But we see a whole other world interested in the Web-based approach that is not being served very well right now.”
For its part, Microsoft has committed itself to moving its hugely popular productivity suite–which includes Word, PowerPoint and Excel–into the cloud, in order to protect its software hegemony.
Why? Simultaneous group-editing and collaboration online is clearly the future of Office.
In fact, yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a significant statement related to cloud computing in a speech, noting, “This is the bet for the company. For the cloud, we’re all in.”
In an interesting side note, this is the third company that Harrison Metal has invested in that has been acquired by Google over the last several months. Other sales have included AdMob for $750 million and Aardvark for $50 million.
There had been a post in TechCrunch back in December that the deal was nearly done, but it was apparently not completed until now.
Here is the blog post on the deal from Google:
Google Docs welcomes DocVerse
Friday, March 05, 2010 at 10:48 AM
The future of productivity applications is in the cloud. We’ve always believed the web is the best platform for creating and sharing information, and Google Docs has already helped millions of people become more productive. But we recognize that many people are still accustomed to desktop software. So as we continue to improve Google Docs and Google Sites as rich collaboration tools, we’re also making it easier for people to transition to the cloud, and interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office.
For example, we recently made it possible to use Google Docs to store and share any type of file that you have on your computer, not just the ones you create online. Today we’re excited to announce another step towards seamless interoperability: we have acquired DocVerse.DocVerse is a small, nimble team of talented developers who share our vision, and they’ve enabled true collaboration right within Microsoft Office. With DocVerse, people can begin to experience some of the benefits of web-based collaboration using the traditional Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint desktop applications.
A huge “welcome” to the DocVerse team and their customers! Current DocVerse users can keep using the product as usual, though we’ve suspended new sign-ups until we’re ready to share what’s next. Stay tuned!
Posted by Jonathan Rochelle, Group Product Manager, Google Apps team
By Brian Solis, Principal, Futureworks
The Altimeter Group is no stranger to disruption. The incredibly savvy and influential team lead by Charlene Li is redefining the role and purpose of industry analysts by placing research into action–essentially bringing trends from the edge to the center to help businesses employ the technologies and strategies that will help them compete for the future, today.
Industry analysts, at least in the case of the Altimeter Group, are ultimately becoming market catalysts.
With today’s news, this is of course, only fortified.
The Altimeter Group released a new report on social customer relationship management, and while analysts release reports all the time, this is different. The report is free to read and share under creative commons, and this is a big disruptor, one that reflects the socialization of information and the spirit of social media. By giving away insight, Altimeter ignites change and thus brings its report to life.
As such, the Altimeter Group is demonstrating how new models are needed to thrive in the social economy and concurrently putting into practice the ingredients of an effective social CRM framework.
The New Rules of Relationship Management
The essence of the new report by Altimeter’s R “Ray” Wang and Jeremiah Owyang is putting the customer first. While that seems like a simple principle, it’s easier said then done. The case the duo make is rooted, of course, in social media and the self-actualization of personal influence.
As the report notes in the beginning:
“Rapid adoption of social networking enables users to connect with individuals and communities who share mutual interests, increasingly leaving organizations out of the conversation.
Simply hiring more people to keep up with social marketing, sales, and support will not be sufficient, as consumers and their new channels will always outnumber employees. As a result, companies need an organized approach using enterprise software that connects business units to the social web–giving them the opportunity to respond in near-real time, and in a coordinated fashion.”
And indeed, they’re right.
Social media didn’t invent conversations, it simply amplified and connected them to audiences and the actions that are triggered as a result. With the right tools, and more important, mindset and resolve, we can now uncover these incredibly valuable, insightful and prominent conversations where and when they happen. Listening is only the beginning however. As in anything, we need a little less conversation and a little more action.
As the report notes, social CRM does not replace existing CRM efforts, it complements them with an outbound extension to connect with the very social beacons that shape and steer perception–those previously untouched with inbound-only infrastructures. Essentially the “s” in sCRM should be viewed as a verb…as in socialize. Actions speak louder than words and thus, sCRM transforms words and intent into action.
As the “godfather of CRM,” Paul Greenberg, notes, “We’ve moved from the transaction to the interaction with customers, though we haven’t eliminated the transaction–or the data associated with it….Social CRM focuses on engaging the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. Social CRM is the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.”
The Socialization of an Entire Organization
The social customer is only one part of the equation. As any listening program will reveal, conversations map specifically to departments within an organization and as such, all units affected by outside activity will socialize over time. This is why I believe that over time, we should focus less on the “C” of sCRM and focus our attention, energy and ingenuity on the aspects of SRM–social relationship management.
The social Web is distributing influence beyond the customer landscape, allocating authority among stakeholders, prospects, advocates, decision-makers, and peers. SRM recognizes that whether someone recommended a product, purchased a product, or simply recognized it publicly, in the end, each makes an impact on behavior at varying levels. Therefore customers are now merely part of a larger equation that also balances vendors, experts, partners, and other authorities. In the realm of SRM, influence is distributed and it is recognizes wherever and however it takes shape.
“SRM is a doctrine aligned with a humanized business strategy and supporting technology infrastructure and platform. SRM recognizes that all people, no matter what system they use, are equal. It represents a wider scope of active listening and participation across the full spectrum of influence mapped to specific department representatives within the organization using various lenses for which to identify individuals where and how they interact.”
But we must begin somewhere and for many businesses, the evolution from CRM to sCRM is in fact, revolutionary.
After months of study and interviews with over 100 organizations, Altimeter Group identified 18 use cases for Social CRM to help businesses assess, adapt, and create new programs and processes to socialize their brands.
As the report notes, social CRM programs start at the departmental level, but require corporate support to transform fiefdoms into united efforts. The challenge lies in mobilizing and organizing resources around distributed conversations and building the connectors that link CRM systems to social networks. And, organizations must set priorities based on market demand and technology maturity.
Customers have already migrated toward new channels and in the process, companies that are not in pursuit are quickly falling behind. Relationships between organizations and customers might be better defined simply as “relations” as the existing framework was traditionally optimized around the organization and not the customer.
“Traditional CRM projects have failed to grasp the complexities of the customer-company relationship. Though these CRM programs started out with the goal of providing a single customer view and 1:1 relationship management, early efforts quickly refocused on automation of front-office tasks and improving management visibility across marketing, sales, service and support. Because these programs have often failed to support the front-office worker’s needs to manage relationships, internal adoption halted as users grew to resent, and in some cases revolt, against CRM.”
To begin at the beginning, businesses must deploy social CRM for business value and not get caught up in the hype of Twitter and Facebook. We have to go where our customers seek, discover, and share information. Alitimeter suggests focusing on bite-sized entry points as today’s tight budgets, limited resources, and little time will ensure that companies get the most bang for the buck initially. (Click graph below to enlarge.)
In the report, each one of the 18 use cases brings definable metrics that should be incorporated in each Social CRM program.
- Begin with the end in mind
- Metrics should be aligned with an organization’s entry points
- Quantify the baseline and determine the effort
- Adjust ROI targets to align resources with efforts to move the needle
- The goal–drive business value
The 18 recommended use cases are organized in seven categories and in order of operations. As observed, most organizations start their initiatives by building out the “5 M’s” and deploying a customer insight program that matures with experience and earned intelligence. I previously discussed the maturation of social media infrastructure in business usually evolves in at least 10 stages. (Click table below to enlarge.)
Social Customer Insights form the Foundation for All Social CRM Use Cases–Everything begins with listening
1. Social Customers Insights
Social Marketing Seeks to Achieve Customer Advocacy
2. Social Marketing Insights
3. Rapid Social Marketing Response
4. Social Campaign Tracking
5. Social Event Management
Social Sales Enables Seamless Lead Opportunities
6. Social Sales Insights
7. Rapid Social Sales Response
8. Proactive Social Lead Generation
Social Support and Service Drives Sustainable Customer Satisfaction
9. Social Support Insights
10. Rapid Social Responses
11. Peer-2-Peer (P2P) Unpaid Armies
Social Innovation Streamlines Complex Ideation
12. Innovation Insights
13. Crowd-sourced R&D
Collaboration Reduced Organizational Friction and Stimulates Ecosystem
14. Collaboration Insights
15. Enterprise Collaboration
16. Extended Collaboration
Seamless Customer Experience Sustains Advocacy Programs
17. Seamless Customer Experience
18. VIP Experience
The Customer (R)evolution
The methodologies, systems, and people that entwine CRM are unquestionably forcing a historical (r)evolution from the outside in. As customers earn prominence online and ultimately in the marketplaces they define, CRM is far more consequential to the prosperity and relevance of businesses, than perhaps ever before.
This is about earning a prestigious position in the hearts, minds, and ultimately, decisions of customers, prospects and those who affect their actions, today and tomorrow. Essentially, with the socialization of media and the redistribution of authority and influence, we are competing for the future simply by listening, responding, learning and adapting.
Social customers are disrupting the balance of power and actively exerting their new found eminence within every social network and community that thrives off of shared experiences. The socialization of CRM is effectively measured by the dedication of resources and resolution the organization commits not just to social media, but to all existing channels where customers, influencers and prospects seek help.
Divided we share…united we change.
In one of the more interesting battlefields of the multifront war between Google and Microsoft, Bing Maps today added what it calls its “largest imagery update to date, adding 6.7 million square kilometers of new imagery.”
That includes the Russian Federation, Australia, Mexico and most places in the United States where there is existing black-and-white imagery, as well as bird’s-eye imagery for Sweden.
The ongoing innovations to online mapping by both Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) have been a boon to consumers, who are getting increasingly cool and substantive looks at our world.
In February, Microsoft debuted a series of eye-candy features in its ongoing one-upmanship with Google with a new series of enhancements to its spatial search offerings.
Coolest new ones from Microsoft: Indoor panoramas to move mapping inside and real-time video overlays to maps.
Google Maps is also not resting, adding a series of features over the last months from Google Goggles (which takes pictures of an object or location and then identifies it via search) to spoken, turn-by-turn directions on its Android-powered smartphones.
I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s next from these archrivals.
Here’s Microsoft’s blog on the improvements:
March 05, 2010, 09:00 AM by Chris Pendleton
Last month we pushed out our largest amount of new imagery EVER in terms of square kilometers. This month, we’re blowing THAT record out of the water. You thought 1 million+ sq. km. was large? How about 6.7 million square kilometers! It’s pretty much unfathomable. The big winners? Aerial: The Russian Federation, Australia, Mexico and most places in the US where we had black and white imagery. Bird’s Eye: Sweden. Deets:
Aerial
Australia 524,645 sq. km.
Botswana 61,433 sq. km.
Estonia 618 sq. km.
Hungary 3,369 sq. km.
Mexico 236,624 sq. km.
Morocco 13,303 sq. km.
Namibia 72,162 sq. km.
New Zealand 14,987 sq. km.
Poland 6,254 sq. km.
Romania 3,695 sq. km.
Russian Federation 553,244 sq. km.
South Africa 123,138 sq. km.
Turkey 16,148 sq. km.
United Kingdom 15,221 sq. km.
United States 4,961,758 sq. km.Oblique (Bird’s Eye)
Austria 238 sq. km.
Belgium 898 sq. km.
Denmark 718 sq. km.
Finland 1,634 sq. km.
France 2,001 sq. km.
Greece 931 sq. km.
Ireland 1,340 sq. km.
Netherlands 1,709 sq. km.
Norway 2,425 sq. km.
Portugal 2,184 sq. km.
Romania 1,534 sq. km.
Spain 5,143 sq. km.
Sweden 6,747 sq. km.
Switzerland 424 sq. km.
United Kingdom 13,094 sq. km.
United States 56,007 sq. km.Check out the Bing Maps World Tour for visuals. Also, Johannes has a sweet application for viewing imagery based on shape files. Niiiice.
CP – Follow me on Twitter @ChrisPendleton
The wording in the headline may not be, you know, exactly what HTC said – but it might as well be.
After the folks over at Crave UK woke up to a broken screen — which they swear isn’t their fault, as the device had just been sitting on a desk charging — full of inky purple rage on their Nexus One , they shot a call over to HTC support. After investigating the device, HTC sent back a response: they were stumped.
Probed for more information, HTC’s support guy allegedly told them “Putting a phone in a tight pair of jeans and sitting down would usually cause that kind of damage,” and that “People sometimes forget that they don’t go in pockets.”
I somehow have a hard time believing that HTC’s official stance on pockets is that they’re bad news – instead, this sort of seems like something a support guy made up off the cuff for the sake of having something to blame. As someone who worked tech support for a few years and has blamed many a weird problem on the technical equivalents of pixies and boogie men, I salute you for your ingenuity, Mr. HTC Support Guy.
When Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the iPad on Jan. 27, he said it would be “available” in 60 days, implying an on-sale date of March 25. By announcing a pre-sale date of March 12, as it did this morning, the company has technically fulfilled that promise–yet it is not delivering the device to customers until April 3, about a week later.
If the ship date was to be April 3, why didn’t Jobs say so at the January event?
Obviously, it’s impossible to say. Though it’s certainly interesting that Jobs couldn’t offer a hard ship date for a major product that was just two months out.
Does this mean Apple (AAPL) may have run into a bit of an iPad manufacturing hiccup after all? I suppose it’s possible. Cannaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, who first reported alleged production issues with the iPad, certainly thinks so.
“In our previous note we discussed that the upcoming iPad launch may be somewhat limited as a manufacturing bottleneck has impacted production,” Misek wrote in a research note to clients this morning. “We also suggested that there is a possibility that the launch will be delayed by a month due to a limited number of units available.”
Updating his assessment, the analyst notes, “According to today’s announcement, iPad is delayed by a week in the U.S. and by a month for some international markets. We believe the delay was caused by an unspecified production problem at the iPad’s manufacturer as we indicated earlier this week.”
Or perhaps this is simply about Apple’s level of visibility into its supply chain. After all, you’d think if there really had been production issues with the device, we would have been looking at delays of far longer than just a few days.
Either way, it’s really not of consequence to the company in any material sense. At $218.50, Apple shares are up nearly four percent on news of the April ship date. Obviously, Wall Street doesn’t care whether the iPad is late or not. And in the end, does it really even matter?
UPDATE: John Gruber has some interesting thoughts on all this over at Daring Fireball.
 PC World | Leaked Photos Show Microsoft 'Pink' Phones InformationWeek Pure and Turtle appear to run Windows CE while emphasizing social networking and other Web 2.0 functions. By Paul McDougall Before Microsoft announced its intention to debut a mobile environment called Windows Phone 7 later this year, the company was ... Microsoft 'Pink' Phone Photos and Details Leaked Microsoft May Launch Project Pink Smartphones in the Spring, Say Reports Images, Info of Microsoft's Secret 'Project Pink' Phones Leaked |
Smule’s Jeff Smith is one of the app revolution’s success stories. His start-up has generated some of the biggest hits at Apple’s iTunes app store, from novelty items like Sonic Lighter to more ambitious stuff like Leaf trombone.
The biggest hit so far: An ambitious novelty called “I Am T-Pain,” which allows users to record songs using the rapper’s sort-of-trademark “autotune” voice processor. If you don’t know what that means, best to check it out here. (Or check out the demo clips of T-Pain and other Smule apps at the bottom of this post.)
All this success has translated into real money–more than four million paid downloads, at something like $2.50 a pop. And this has allowed Smule to quickly raise $13.5 million in venture money from the likes of Shasta Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners.
I assumed that some of that money would be earmarked for moving apps to other mobile operating systems, particularly Google’s (GOOG) Android OS. Nope, says Smith–he’s working exclusively through Apple (AAPL).
Smith is part of a small but vocal chorus of app developers who say they don’t want to move to Android, even though it is growing quickly. His complaints: He doesn’t like the way the store merchandises its wares, and he doesn’t want to have to create different apps for each handset Android supports.
In fairness, Apple has its share of vocal app developer critics as well, and that group got louder this month during the iPorn imbroglio.
And if you wanted to be overly cynical, you could point out that Smule has been a featured Apple partner for some time. Smule’s products have gotten stage time during Apple product announcements and have been highlighted in the company’s press releases.
But Smith isn’t betting the future on Apple, either. His business plan involves generating revenue from other places besides the iTunes app store. I’ll let him explain in this interview, which we taped during Billboard’s Music & Money event yesterday.
Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.
Yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went all misty in a speech at the University of Washington, declaring in his strongest statement that cloud computing was mission critical for the software giant.
“This is the bet for the company,” Ballmer said. “For the cloud, we’re all in.”
And that’s also pretty much all the language you’ve been hearing from Google of late.
In a press event in Silicon Valley in December, in fact, Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra, when talking about mobile search, noted that the future of computing depends on one thing.
The “missing ingredient,” he said, is the cloud.
(Here is his slide showing that.)
Google CEO Eric Schmidt said much the same at the Mobile World Congress in Spain last month.
And as recently as yesterday, in fact, one of the company’s execs–Europe head John Herlihy–said the desktop computer was finished because of the combination of smartphones and the cloud.
Microsoft’s Ballmer could not agree more. “We must move at ‘cloud speed,’ especially in our consumer offerings,” he wrote in a letter to employees yesterday, “All of our products make the cloud better, and the cloud makes our products better.”
While it’s doubtless that Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) will take the battle to the clouds, it is nice that they are both on the same marketing page for now.
And until we are all floating in the atmosphere, here’s a video of the ethereal Joni Mitchell singing “Both Sides Now” in a live performance in 1970.
Clouds apparently got in her way and–unlike Google and Microsoft–she really doesn’t know clouds at all.
Enjoy the terrific video anyway:
This blind camera will snap a picture for you, capturing a moment in time. It does this with no lens, no sensor and no viewfinder. In fact, the black box consists of little more than a red button and a screen.
Point it where you like, press the “shutter” and the time of your exposure is captured. The box, named Buttons, gets to work trawling the web for a photo taken at the exact moment you pressed your button and when it finds one (minutes or hours later, depending on when somebody else uploads their snap) it will display it on the box’s screen.
The guts of Buttons is a SonyEricsson K750i running custom software. This is what records the time and communicates with a server called Blinks. This server runs a PHP script that searches Flickr for pictures matching your data. The big red button is from an old Agfamatic 901 camera, one of those little flat 110 pocket-cams.
Buttons is a project by artist Sascha Pohflepp, not an actual product. I’d love to see this hacked into an actual trick camera, though: You could hand it to a friend who thought they were snapping pictures all day long, only when they got home, they’d have a bunch of strangers’ pictures from around the world. It reminds me of the days when prints would get mixed up at the lab: I’m still scarred by those photos I got of my geography teacher’s erotic cosplay.
Button, A Blind Camera [Blinks and Buttons via Make]
We’ve done a pretty good job of avoiding Chatroulette talk here. But this is worth breaking our unofficial ban: Jon Stewart’s take on the voyeur site–and, of course, the media’s obsession with it.
(This, by the way, is a good time to point out that the media love stories like Chatroulette, because they require nothing more than visiting a Web site. Bear this in mind when you see the next story about Twitter, Facebook, or whatever.)
Warning: Stewart’s clip, like Chatroulette, may not be safe for work, depending on the kind of place you work. But given that media grandees like Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric found it fit to participate, you should probably be okay. And you should definitely watch it, somewhere.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c |
| Tech-Talch – Chatroulette | |
| www.thedailyshow.com | |
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This monstrosity is the Casio G-Shock MAN BOX, and it is the ugliest watch you will see. Ever.
The plastic timepiece, possibly conceived after a Casio designer accidentally drank a box of crayons and then vomited, is shock resistant, waterproof to 20 meters (65-feet) and anti-magnetic (?). That line-up of ruggedized features means that when you inevitably try to smash this thing to tiny, single-colored pieces, you will fail. In fact, if someone buys this for you as a gift, the two year battery life dictates the minimum period you will have to wear the MAN BOX before being able to legitimately toss it away.
There are other functions built-in, too, from the time (apparently), some alarms and a stopwatch. These will remain unused, however, as the face is so frickin’ cluttered that it is impossible to make out anything other than the eye-searing colors.
Amusingly, Casio seems equally embarrassed by the design. When I tried to drag the product shot to my desktop for this post, I found that it had been covered up by a transparent 1×1 pixel gif. Oh, and that MAN BOX name? It’s not what you think: There is actually a little plastic, identically-colored man in the box with the watch. The insults continue with the price, which is an equally eye-popping ¥19,000, or $210.
Finally, the inevitable, and tortuous, pun, trading on the product description (”embody the fusion of art and technology”), the name (”MAN BOX”) and the hideous splashing colors. To sum up, “art”, “MAN BOX”, colors: It really is a load of old Pollocks.
G-SHOCK MAN BOX [Casio via Akihabara News]
Sanyo has added a new electric bike to its Eneloop line-up, and it comes with the brand-new Eco Charge Mode. We first saw the Eneloop bike when we took it for a spin around the car-park at CES in Las Vegas (before being kicked out by a security guard). That bike would charge only on downhill sections and when decelerating, or braking.
The Eco Charge Mode lets the rider charge the battery as he rides on flat roads. The trick is all in the torque-sensing crank, which knows how hard the rider is pedaling. Previously, this was used to decide how much power-assistance was needed. Now it also decides when the hub can be switched into generator mode without making it harder for the rider to pedal.
We expect that it works well. One of the signatures of the Eneloop bike we tried was the very natural way the motor kicked in. With this new eco mode, the bike can run for up to 55Km (34-miles) on a single charge. It also lets you switch off the “power” (or hill-climbing) mode when the battery is dead and recharge it with your legs. Riding on the flat for 1Km will give enough juice to use the power mode for 300-meters.
The new Eneloop will be on sale in Japan from April 21st, for ¥157,290, or $1,760, and will probably make it into US stores as a replacement for the current model.
SANYO Releases New Eneloop bike Electric Hybrid Bicycle [Sanyo]
See Also:
Apple announced Friday that the first iPads will be available on April 3 and that the long-awaited device will be available for pre-order on March 12. The launch is for the Wi-Fi-only version, with the 3G-enabled device on sale later in the month.
The late-April release of the 3G version will also coincide with rollout of both models in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K., Apple said.
Apple thoughtfully picked a Saturday for the debut, so fewer early adopters will have to make up lame excuses for not showing up to work and will not have to conceal their true appearances if they are near the front of the line.
See Also:
We last encountered a speaker from Thodio back in January 2008, with the scarily Furby-alike iBox. Thodio is still making that teak double-speaker unit with a bass tube, but now it has been joined by a rather more macho model: the A-Box, a speaker which uses an old ammo-box as its case.
There are two models, both in 1mm steel-plate. One has glass-fiber speaker cones, the other kevlar, and both weigh in at just under 7KG (15-pounds). The more expensive unit has lights behind the speakers which glow a red to warn when they are being overdriven and distorted. Both A-Boxes have a battery statue light inside the bass-tube which changes color as the power runs down.
It’s pretty cool-looking, but it also looks very home-made, the kind of thing you’d come up with if you were building speakers on the cheap and just needed a box to put them in. They are not cheap, however. The littler brother is €350 ($475) and the flashier kevlar-coned model is €475 ($645).
A-Box [Thodio]
Apple filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against HTC this week in an indirect attack against Google’s Android platform.
That got us to wondering: If Apple wins this lawsuit, just what would a Google phone, such as the HTC-built Nexus One, look like?
Realistically, Apple and HTC are going to reach a settlement outside of court, and the impacts on actual hardware are unpredictable. But we thought that rather than barrage you with boring patents to explain the suit, we’d illustrate the suit’s potential implications by describing a Google phone in the hypothetical situation where Apple won — a phone stripped of every feature that Apple’s patents lay claim to.
The patents listed in Apple’s complaints are related to touchscreens, multitouch gestures, graphical user interfaces, signal processing and other technologies Apple pioneered for the iPhone. Here’s a hint: If Apple had its way, a Google phone wouldn’t be pretty.
(A hat tip to Engadget’s Nilay Patel, a former attorney, for his fantastic work rounding up and explaining the patents to help guide our analysis.)
Out of the 20 patents in question, there are a few that stand out as the most noteworthy: Patents related to the way icons automatically rearrange themselves, scrolling behavior, the “unlock” mechanism, how phones sleep and multitasking.
The patent titled “Time-based, non-constant translation of user interface objects between states” describes the way a row of icons automatically rearrange when icons are added or removed. When you delete an icon, for example, Apple’s iPhone springboard automatically shifts icons to fill an empty spot to keep rows in order.
How a Google phone would look without it
Without this ability, an Android phone’s main screen would revert to the behavior of traditional PC desktops. On your Windows or Mac desktop, when you delete an icon, it leaves an empty space; you must either manually move your icons or choose a command to fill in any gaps between icons. So an Android phone’s screen would look like a cluttered mess with gaps in between icons after you deleted apps. You’d either have to manually drag and rearrange your apps or a tap a button to automatically sort the screen.
The “Unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image” (.pdf) patent attempts to grant Apple the exclusive rights to using gestures for moving an unlock image to perform an unlock. (With the iPhone, for example, you swipe the “Slide to unlock” tab to access the Home screen.) Given the broadness of the patent, this could apply to any manner of touching buttons or making swiping gestures on a touchscreen to perform an unlock.
How a Google phone would look without it
Google would be forced to work around the gestural unlock mechanism. Manufacturers would have to add an extra physical button to unlock the phone, or you’d have to press a combination of physical buttons to perform the unlock, as you do with many older candy-bar phones. Or perhaps to unlock the phone you would shake it, or, even sillier, speak a unique phrase into the microphone. Worst and least likely, Google could do away with the locked screen altogether and go straight to your menu, giving thieves easy access to your apps and personal data.
The patent titled “Touch screen device, method and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics” relates to scroll behavior on a touchscreen. If you start scrolling in a certain direction it locks you in that direction to spare you any wobbly chaos. And if you swipe at an angle you can pan freely.
How a Google phone would look without it
Google could either allow scrolling to be a bumpy mess, or it could again revert to the old PC desktop metaphor in which windows can be navigated with arrows (as illustrated above). Or it could require every manufacturer making an Android phone to add a scroll wheel, like the one on the Nexus One.
The patent “Method and apparatus for distributing events in an operating system” relates to notifications changing behavior of apps, such as in the event of a power failure.
How a Google phone would look without it
An Android phone currently notifies you when your battery is running low, and then it shuts off the GPS to conserve power. So say goodbye to that.
The patent “Message protocol for controlling a user interface from an inactive program” addresses the act of a foreground application remaining active while an application running in the background is also processing. So yes, multitasking. Many believe the iPhone doesn’t have multitasking capability, but technically it does run some of Apple’s built-in apps in the background, such as the phone and the iPod.
How a Google phone would look without it
If you’re typing an e-mail on a Google phone and you get a phone call, the phone app would immediately close the e-mail, or the call would go straight to your voicemail box. Listening to your Android phone and want to browse the web? Tough beans: You can only do one at a time. It’ll be a familiar feeling with videogame consoles, which only let you run one game at a time.
The patent “Conserving power by reducing voltage supplied to an instruction-processing portion of a process” is filled with a flurry of technical jargon, but it most likely refers to a process of reducing power consumption, or minimizing power leakage, when a device is put to sleep.
How a Google phone would look without it
Manufacturers would have to draw up alternative methods to conserve battery life in sleep mode (which they most likely already have done). Or they could foolishly let the processor run at full power even when the phone is “asleep,” which would get phones pretty hot in your pocket. And if all else failed, manufacturers could ship phones with a battery extender to keep the phone up and running, like the modest example we’ve fashioned above.
Put it all together and what do we get? Something like the admittedly hyperbolic mock-up above. Picture an HTC Google phone whose desktop shows a grid of icons with gaps. Arrows on the screen help you navigate your windows. A physical unlock button on the phone gets you past the lock screen. Battery life could potentially be poor in sleep mode, which could be addressed with a free battery extender — or even better, a hand-crank charger — as shown in the illustration above.
Illustration: Dennis Crothers/Wired.com
Agile web solutions has posted some screenshots of the iPad version of its excellent password manager, 1Password. The Mac and iPhone application stores passwords, logins and credit card information and allows you to sync between devices. Sure, the Mac has its own Keychain Access app, but 1Password is so much easier to use.
It is also pretty, as you can see here. Agile has completely redesigned the app for the iPad, instead of making it just a bigger version of the iPhone app. The mockup app has popovers, an alphabet scroller for fast list navigation and a whole lot of iPad goodness. If this is a taste of what the best iPhone and Mac developers are going to do with the iPad, I don’t think we’ll have any worries about it not being a “real” computer.
The screenshots here are not from a functioning application, but they do show one problem with developing for the iPad. You need to design two versions of your app, one for portrait and one for landscape mode. That’s a lot of extra work, although don’t expect to see this level of polish in your average fart-n-boobs apps.
We can’t wait to see what others will do. C’mon Adobe. Put Lightroom on the iPad already!
1Password and iPad, Part 1 [Switchers Blog]
We’re still holding out for the deluge of hardware/software accessories that will use the iPhone’s dock, but for now it seems like the only widgets out there are IR universal remotes. The last one we saw was the L5 iPhone Remote, but the problem with that was an ugly interface and the lack of pre-programmed codes: you have to tech the device by pointing your other remotes at it.
The FLPR looks a lot better, although it is also $30 more, at $80. For this you get a pre-programmed database of 14,000 codes, the ability to learn any that aren’t already there, plus a macro function. This will let you press one button and have, say, the TV, home theater and DVD-player all switch on and go to the right settings.
What isn’t any better is the interface, an ill-conceived and ugly mess. Contoured “buttons” sit atop hideous “skinned” backgrounds and closely mimic the already bad design of your physical remotes. This is surely an area where touch-screens could shine. Imagine something as simple as the new Windows Phone 7 interface, just plain squares with symbols. And where are our multi-touch, swiping gestures to skip and flip around music and movies?
The FLPR is available now, and the fugly iPhone app is a free download in the US. If you lose it, check down the back of the sofa, just as you normally do.
FLPR [New Potato Tech. Thanks, Sarah and Eliot!]
FLPR app [iTunes]
Adobe this morning announced that third-party developers now have access to the Photoshop.com Mobile for Android 1.1 editor, allowing them to make it a part of their applications.
The news comes four months after the company released Photoshop.com Mobile for Android, enabling users to easily edit and share their photos. That app got an upgrade, too.
Amusingly, Adobe also takes a bit of a swing at Apple for not being able to provide such tools to iPhone app developers. Said Doug Mack, vice president and general manager of Digital Imaging and Rich Media Solutions at Adobe:
“Unlike iPhone, the Android platform allows us to make the Photoshop.com editor broadly available to developers so they can provide it within any application they are working on. Photoshop functionality can then easily be accessed from an online auction, real estate or social media application so users can quickly fix photos and make them look their best, before being showcased.”
The updated version of Photoshop.com Mobile for Android 1.1 brings effects like Vibrant (to boost photo colors) and Pop, which brings a ‘pop art’ style to images. The Soft Black and White, and Warm Vintage tools can be used to add a classic and aged effect to photos. Other new effects include Vignette Blur, White Glow and Rainbow.
Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile for Android 1.1 is available as a free download in all countries with Android Market in English only. Search the Android Market for “photoshop.com” to find it.
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