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Facebook Beats Google for First Time - FOXNews
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 17 Mar 2010 | 4:16 am Google partners call for clarity on China plans (Reuters)Reuters - Chinese firms selling advertising space on Google's search pages have demanded clarity about the search giant's plans in China, as speculation increases over Google's future in the world's largest Internet market.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 17 Mar 2010 | 4:03 am Home Taping is Killing Music: funny video about UK record industry's plan to legislate British Internet into oblivionPhil from Don't Disconnect Us sez, "Commissioned by UK ISP TalkTalk, we've been campaigning against the British Government's anti-filesharing proposals which form part of the Digital Economy Bill. In a nutshell the music industry has been lobbying the UK government saying that filesharing is killing the music industry. That's why we teamed up with Dan Bull, the musician behind Dear Lily and Dear Mandy, to create our very own music video. 'Home Taping is Killing Music' is a tongue-in-cheek video that features 80s legends Madonna, George Michael and Adam Ant (well, actually it's just a trio of look-alikes) lip-synching to the song Top of the Pops style." This is some extremely funny stuff -- especially by the time we get to the grand finale and all the other industries at risk ("Home sleeping is killing hotels"). Taking the apocalyptic claims of the record industry about the net at face value is so short-sighted and short-memoried. These Chicken Littles have been telling us that the sky is falling and that they must must must have business-friendly laws and enforcement or the world will end since 1908, when the piano roll was invented. Every time, it just turned out that some of the old guard were going to lose out, and a new guard, who saw how to make a living in the new world, were going to come along to take their place. Yet here we are in Britain, ready to establish a China-style Great Firewall to block sites the record industry doesn't like, ready to shut whole families off from the information society if one member is accused of copyright violations, ready to sacrifice national technological competitiveness to shore up the doddering relics who don't want to make way for the next generation of entrepreneurs and artists who thrive in a networked world. And the dumbest part is that there's no way it will actually reduce infringement: we're just going to further criminalize and alienate young fans and creators. It's not too late: write to your MP and ask for a full debate on the Digital Economy Bill. The British record industry admits that its legislation will only pass because Parliament isn't holding a debate on it. Demand that your elected representative do her job! Home Taping is Killing Music (Thanks, Phil!)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 17 Mar 2010 | 4:00 am What users want from Oracle's Java Community Process
Source: Gizmodo | 17 Mar 2010 | 3:48 am PayPal Wants To Go From 1000 To 2000 Employees In Asia – This Year
At PayPal’s new international headquarters in Suntec City, Singapore’s technology hub in the middle of the nation’s central business district, the company said that it plans to double the number of employees in Asia Pacific from 1,000 currently to more than 2,000 by the end of the year. The company plans to add more than 100 new jobs at its international headquarters in Singapore alone, as it represents all of the company’s business outside of the United States. New jobs will be located at all seven offices in the region including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan. For its Singapore business headquarters and development center, PayPal will be recruiting Singapore-based professionals with expertise in technology, product development, infrastructure design, risk and engineering. PayPal says it has processed more than $6 billion of total payment volume (at spot rate) in Asia Pacific in 2009, an increase of 38 percent from 2008. Since its establishment in the region in 2006, the company has struck dozens of partnerships with Asian companies including this morning’s announcements today with DBS, Singapore’s largest bank, and China UnionPay, China’s bankcard association. As part of PayPal’s plans to help grow the e-commerce ecosystem across Asia Pacific, the company also announced that the PayPal mobile payment software development kit (SDK) will be made available to developers in the region. That way, developers can add a checkout button to accept mobile payments without the need to collect financial information from customers with just a few lines of code. The mobile SDK, which will initially support iPhone app development, will be available in the second quarter of 2010 to developers in the region. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 17 Mar 2010 | 3:43 am .canon: Canon wants to establish its own top-level domain
Megalomania or genius marketing move? Canon seriously takes aim at becoming the world’s first company with its own generic top-level domain (gTLD), namely “.canon”. The new domain would join the likes of .com, .edu, .gov, .org, etc. (Wikipedia has the full list). The Japanese electronics giant announced [press release in English] its plan to acquire the rights for the domain from ICANN today. Canon says they “will make full use of the new domain name to increase the convenience and effectiveness of its online communications” and expects the new domain to be in place sometime after 2011. ICANN used to strictly control and restrict gTLDs until the organization decided to liberalize its policy in 2008. Basically anyone can apply for a gTLD – as long as they’re ready to spend a few hundred thousand dollars for registration and other procedures. Apparently not too big a problem for Canon, which generated revenues worth $35 billion in fiscal 2009.
Source: CrunchGear | 17 Mar 2010 | 3:41 am Google partners in China appeal for word on plans
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 The Hindu | Who else wants national broadband? BusinessWeek Let's say that the Federal Communications Commission's $15.5 billion broadband deployment plan helps produce the fastest nationwide broadband network in the world -- is there any guarantee that more people will use it? ... NBP: inside the FCC's spectrum revolution (and its problems) How the FCC's new national broadband plan is expected to affect consumers Tech-Savvy Supporters Key to Broadband Plan's Passage |
By Jolie O’Dell, Blogger
“Too many people, not enough tech.”
I tweeted that earlier today from Austin, Texas. Last year, I had a wonderful time meeting up with my friends at SXSWi.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Orin Kerr, Professor, George Washington School of Law
Last Thursday, the Eleventh Circuit handed down a Fourth Amendment case, Rehberg v. Paulk, that takes a very narrow view of how the Fourth Amendment applies to e-mail. The Eleventh Circuit held that constitutional protection in stored copies of e-mail held by third parties disappears as soon as any copy of the communication is delivered. Under this new decision, if the government wants get your e-mails, the Fourth Amendment lets the government go to your ISP, wait the seconds it normally takes for the e-mail to be delivered, and then run off copies of your messages.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Haomiao Huang, Contributor, Ars Technica
A future full of helpful robots, quietly going about their business and assisting humans in thousands of small ways, is one of technology’s most long-deferred promises. Only recently have robots started to achieve the kind of sophistication and ubiquity that computing’s pioneers originally envisioned. The military has hundreds of UAVs blanketing the skies above Iraq and Afghanistan, and Roombas are vacuuming living rooms across the country.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Yukari Iwatani Kane, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Law firm Bingham McCutchen said Tuesday that Daniel Cooperman, the former general counsel at Apple (AAPL) and Oracle (ORCL), will rejoin its Silicon Valley office and focus on “corporate and transactional matters.”
One of things that Mr. Cooperman says he intends to do: bring the firm up to speed.
In a phone interview, the 59-year-old attorney, who spent almost 11 years at Oracle and was at Apple between 2007 and 2009, provided a glimpse into the pressures of being a general counsel at major corporations. He said law firms in general don’t fully understand the speed, urgency and virtual nature of corporations’ operations.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Reuters - As if a Porsche isn't enough of a status symbol, the German luxury sports car company's subsidiary, Porsche Design, is marketing a mobile phone that's exclusive to Porsche owners.
Progress Wars (Thanks, Fipi!)
The Art of Manliness Dictionary of Manly 19th Century VernacularAnointing: A good beating. A case for the application of salve.
Blind Monkeys: An imaginary collection at the Zoological Gardens, which are supposed to receive care and attention from persons fitted by nature for such office and for little else. An idle and useless person is often told that he is only fit to lead the Blind Monkeys to evacuate. Another form this elegant conversation takes, is for one man to tell another that he knows of a suitable situation for him. "How much a week? and what to do?" are natural questions, and then comes the scathing and sarcastic reply, "Five bob a week at the doctor's-- you're to stand behind the door and make the patients sick. They won't want no physic when they sees your mug."
Cupboard Love. Pretended love to the cook, or any other person, for the sake of a meal. My guts cry cupboard; i.e. I am hungry.
Earth Bath. A grave.
Fimble-Famble. A lame, prevaricating excuse.
Gentleman of Four Outs. When a vulgar, blustering fellow asserts that he is a gentleman, the retort generally is, " Yes, a Gentleman Of Four Outs"--that is, without wit, without money, without credit, and without manners.
O'clock. "Like One O'clock," a favorite comparison with the lower orders, implying briskness; otherwise "like winkin'." "To know what's O'clock" is to be wide-awake, sharp, and experienced.
Rumbumptious. Haughty, pugilistic.
Snotter, or Wipe-hauler. A pickpocket whose chief fancy is for gentlemen's pocket-handkerchiefs.
Tune the Old Cow Died of. An epithet for any ill-played or discordant piece of music.
The folks at Shapeways surprised me in January with a 3D-printed version of the UK cover for my novel Makers, which had been designed by Shapeways community member Dmitry Kobzar. Mr Kobzar was good enough to release his 3D files under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial license.
Now Shapeways is selling 3D prints of the cover for your delectation in a variety of materials (just in case you don't have a 3D printer of your own with which to run off a copy!). For the record, I don't get any of the proceeds from it -- I just think it's way cool.
Cory Doctorow Makers cover 3D print
 The Guardian | Nexus One to Compete With iPhone Wall Street Journal Google Inc. has started selling a version of its Nexus One phone that runs on AT&T Inc.'s 3G network, putting it in direct competition with Apple Inc.'s iPhone. The original version of Google's phone, which was released in early January ... Google Nexus One Now Runs on ATandT 3G in US, Rogers in Canada Google's Nexus One Warms Up to AT&T 3G Nexus One is now ready for AT&T, Rogers Wireless 3G networks |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Peter Serafinowicz (Look Around You, The Peter Serafinowicz Show, and Paul McCartney in the upcoming Robert Zemeckis CGI remake of the Beatles' Yellow Submarine) directed this new music video for the British electropop band Hot Chip. Just went live a few minutes ago. Stay with it. Brilliant creepy hilarity. LAZERS.
(I hate linking to MySpace but they have an exclusive on the video for the first few days, and I can't embed stuff from their crap platform. Sorry. I hate linking to "The Sun," too, but their review is hilarious).
I really love the research that they're doing over at Yale's Haskins Laboratories: instead of studying speech perception and production in terms of faithfully replicating alllll of the sounds we make with our mouths, (like the minute clicks, pops, and hisses of consonants), the team is proposing that all we need to understand speech is to track and re-create a few select resonances of the vocal tract. I like to think of speech production in this context as a series of bottles with varying levels of water in them--the mouth is one bottle that changes pitch resonance when you move it to open it or close it, the nasal cavity another, and so on throughout the vocal tract. It ends up sounding like a bunch of complicated melodies that are then combined into a complex micro-tonal harmony, a.k.a., we're all better at perceiving and making music than we think we are!
The examples below break it down into isolated sine-wave patterns that you can combine yourself to build a sentence. What do you think? How easily can you hear words emerge?
Tone combinations
Play Tones 1 and 3 together | Play Tones 2 and 3 together
Thanks to Robert E. Remez, as well as Phillip Rubin and Jennifer Pardo at Haskins Labs for allowing me to embed their work here.
Coming up, I'll be writing about a cool ethnographic example of a language that actually uses something like this in practice!
We knew it would be coming around this time, but now T-Mobile has confirmed it: The HTC HD2 will be available on March 24th for $200—assuming you sign up for a two-year agreement, complete with a data plan. [T-Mobile via Laptop Mag] More »
Is this "help wanted" ad for an astronaut the most awesome job post ever, or sad reminder that even the incredibly far-freakin-out can become sort of mundane under the right context? (Thanks, Andrew Grant!)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AP - A jury has awarded communications company VirnetX Holding nearly $106 million after determining Microsoft violated two of its patents.
AP - The man who spearheaded the record-breaking deal in which Michael Jackson's estate will get up to $250 million in the next seven years said Tuesday that Sony Music Entertainment bought a treasure trove of new Jackson music, some of it recorded "quite recently," some in collaboration with other artists.
When it rains, its pours. We just found out yesterday that Android 2.1 hitting the Moto Droid sometime in March was a pretty sure thing, and now we’ve got an exact date. And the best news of all: It’s really, really soon.
Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>
When it rains, its pours. We just found out yesterday that Android 2.1 hitting the Moto Droid sometime in March was a pretty sure thing, and now we’ve got an exact date.
A handful of different screencaps like the one you see above just hit a bunch of Android fan blogs (We spotted these ones on Droid-Life and Android Central), implying one thing: this memo either just got pushed out to the Verizon retail outlets, or some fakester out there is putting waaaay too much effort into this. We’re guessing its the first one.
According to the memo, the first batch of Android 2.1 handsets will roll out beginning this Thursday. Given that it’s being rolled out gradually, don’t freak out if your friend’s Droid gets updated and yours doesn’t – it might take a day or two. Don’t worry, though; if Android 2.1 is half as slick on the Droid as it is on the Nexus One, the wait will be worth it.
Here's a wonderful gallery at Reckon of high-magnification images of the grooves on a vinyl record, captured with an electron microscope. (via Farai Chideya)
Sure, there’s something to be said for understatement, but I’m going to start mistaking these things for floor tiles. These new hard drives only come in one flavor: silver, 1TB, $199. They’re aimed at Mac owners, which explains the price. You can get a terabyte for a hundy if you look. Also: just wait a couple days, I’m working on a review of the My Passport Studio, and its little e-ink display is the business.
I’ve been waiting patiently for some time to replace my small 4-port gigabit switch and it paid off. This is one heck of a deal. You get both a Rosewill 10/100/1000Mbps switch and a gigabit networking card for only $30. No need to rush, the deal is good until the end of the month.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
We knew about the pricing, but until today, we weren’t sure exactly which day the HD2 was going to hit T-Mobile. So long, ignorance! March 24th it is!
There’s more stuff going down at an HD2 event as I write this, if I’m not mistaken, and we’ll have the whole business for you shortly.
There’s a lot of white space here, so I’m going to editorialize. I know that HD2 looks sexy, but is anyone really going to buy into this OS now? We’ve got WinPho7 just….. well, lots of months away, but still.
Oh, by the way, that Samsung we saw yesterday? So not real! They just rigged it up for the demo. Why? Why the hell would you do that?
 The Guardian | Your Next Facebook 'Friend' Could be a Federal Agent PC World Here's yet another reason to be careful of what you share on Facebook -- the Feds could be checking you out. An internal Justice Department document obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation reveals that US law enforcement agents have been logging ... Undercover Feds on Social Networking Sites Raise Questions Feds consider going undercover on social networks FBI Goes Undercover On Social Networks |
When bashing AT&T’s network, two cities usually come up above all others: New York City and San Francisco. AT&T has even acknowledged just how bad it is in those cities. But they’ve also said for a while that they’re working on making it better. And apparently now that work is far enough along that they’re emailing customers about it.
Over the past week, AT&T has been emailing its customers in San Francisco to let them know that the network is getting better. “We wanted you to be among the first to know! We recently enhanced the 3G network in the greater San Francisco area to provide better in-building 3G coverage, fewer dropped calls and a better overall wireless experience,” says the email.
It continues, “With better coverage on the nation’s fastest 3G network, there’s never been a better time to be an AT&T customer.” In other words, “things are getting better, please don’t leave.”
Hopefully, it’s a good sign if AT&T feels comfortable enough about its network to email its customers. Another good sign: AT&T did a great job this past week keeping its network stable during the SXSW festival (after failing badly last year). Still, AT&T has been saying for a while that they’re working on fixing the network in San Francisco, and on any given day it can be as bad as ever.
Below, find the full email being sent:
We wanted you to be among the first to know! We recently enhanced the 3G network in the greater San Francisco area to provide better in-building 3G coverage, fewer dropped calls and a better overall wireless experience.
The great news is coverage in Northern California will continue to improve as we expand capacity, optimize and add more sites in the coming months.
With better coverage on the nation’s fastest 3G network, there’s never been a better time to be an AT&T customer.
We thank you for your continued loyalty and look forward to sharing more good news soon.
FROM GAMERTELL - Sony has announced a Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker PSP Entertainment Pack that will be in stores by June 8, 2010 and cost $199.99. Some items included in the bundle include a green PSP-3000, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and a 2gb memory stick. MORE »
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
We’re not going to report every instance of a famous writer agreeing to distribute via e-book, but someone like Grisham is big enough to indicate a trend that others will follow. I’m not up to date on who is and who isn’t e-book-ready; there are contracts and stuff to be worked out for the majors and I’m guessing best sellers aren’t losing too much sleep over the alleged e-book revolution.
Grisham has spoken out against e-books before, or rather spoken skeptically of them; he is concerned that it will be difficult for smaller authors to get published, but I simply don’t agree with him there. Without the bulk of distribution and publishing houses looking to take a piece, book production can start off in a new direction and maybe even adopt an iTunes model.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Q&A format surrounding mobile, location based social networking continues here at SXSW Interactive 2010. Catching up with Naveen Selvadurai, co-founder of Foursquare, shed some light on their differentiators and general projections about the future of that channel.
Editor’s note: Big Data has been around for a long time between credit card transactions, phone call records and financial markets. Companies like AT&T, Visa, Bank of America, Ebay, Google, Amazon and more have massive databases they mine for competitive advantage. But lately, Big Data is finding its way to the smallest startups. The Web and cloud computing brings Big Data everywhere. But what exactly is pushing Big Data forward?
To answer that we brought in an expert, Bradford Cross. Bradford is the Co-Founder and Head of Research at FlightCaster. FlightCaster is backed by Y Combinator, Tandem Entrepreneurs and Sherpalo Ventures. The company analyzes large data sets to predict flight delays. Bradford is chair of the Dealing with Big Data track at Cloud Connect this week.
We are in a Renaissance for computer science, engineering, and learning from data right now. The scale of data and computations is an important issue, but the data age is less about the raw size of your data, and more about the cool stuff you can do with it. Now that there is so much data, it is time to unlock its value. Really neat things are happening already—like the way the people of the world can educate themselves on all manner of issues and topics, or the way data and computing serves as leverage in other scientific and technical endeavors. There will be lots of amazing stuff on the web, but innovation will come in other domains as well.
The recent big data trend is about the democratization of large data more than its growth. In articles like the Economist’s recent piece on the data deluge, we hear about big data everywhere. We hear about what big data and the cloud mean for the enterprise, but they have had big data for a long time. eBay manages petabytes in its Teradata and Greenplum data warehouses. Sophisticated startups extracting value from big data is also nothing new—it has been happening at least since the days of Yahoo! and Google, and they have done it without the data warehousing folks.
Now focused early stage startups can get up and running faster than ever. Less technical analysts at companies like Facebook and Twitter can access massive amounts of data easily. Even individuals can undertake cool projects with big data, such as Pete Skomoroch of Data Wrangling did with trending topics for Wikipedia.
We do not have to build all our own hardware and software infrastructure anymore.
Pioneers such as Amazon have given us the cloud, where we have the capability to run very large server clusters at a low startup cost. Pioneers like Google have paved the way for open source projects like Hadoop and HBase, that are backed by big company contributors like Facebook.
The combination has paved the way for a new class of data driven startup like Aardvark (just acquired by Google) and Factual, it has reduced both cost and time to market for these startups, as we showed with Flightcaster. And, it has allowed startups that were not necessarily data driven to become more analytical as they evolved, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and many others.
So we have big data, the cloud, and open source facilitating new data-driven startups. I like to break this trend down from the technical perspective into three chunks; storing data, processing data, and learning from data. I define “learning from data” to mean data mining, AI, machine learning, statistics, and so on.
The first time I heard the “Medium Data” idea was from Christophe Bisciglia and Todd Lipcon at Cloudera. I think the concept is great. Companies do not have to be at Google scale to have data issues. Scalability issues occur with less than a terabyte of data. If a company works with relational databases and SQL, they can drown in complex data transformations and calculations that do not fit naturally into sequences of set operations. In that sense, the “big data” mantra is misguided at times. For instance, a GigaOm article about big data in the cloud states:
What is becoming increasingly clear is that Big Data is the future of IT. To that end, tackling Big Data will determine the winners and losers in the next wave of cloud computing innovation.
The big issue is not that everyone will suddenly operate at petabyte scale; a lot of folks do not have that much data.
The more important topics are the specifics of the storage and processing infrastructure and what approaches best suit each problem. How much data do you have and what are you trying to do with it? Do you need to do offline batch processing of huge amounts of data to compute statistics? Do you need all your data available online to back queries from a web application or a service API?
Once your data and its processing are large enough to require distributing the data and the work among machines across network boundaries, things get a lot harder. You have to deal with distributed computing and make tradeoffs like a real computer scientist.
The cloud, and hosted services, present very interesting opportunities. One of the greatest is that people can leverage the a la carte economics of elastic computing to do things that were prohibitively expensive due to the requirements of building and maintaining their own hardware infrastructure. The interesting parts about the current cloud are its lack of entrance friction and elastic cost efficiency, the speed with which new entrants can set up, and the elastic capability to run 100 machine clusters for 1 hour if that is what is needed.
We started Flightcaster almost a year ago, and it is a good example of how startups can leverage cloud compute and storage resources, mix some open source like Hadoop with some data mining, and create interesting new technologies with relatively low capital upfront.
The cloud is not cheaper in general. Once people scale to a certain point, they move off the cloud onto dedicated hardware—not the other way around. That may change, and better hosted services may play a role in the transition, but that will take a while. In the meantime, the interesting part of the cloud is the use of elastic resources and the ability to get up and going quickly. The interesting part is the freedom it gives startups to try things they would never otherwise do.
Another notable thing about the cloud is the new architectures emerging as a result of economic and resource tradeoffs.
Storage of large amounts of data in the cloud is much cheaper with blobstores like Amazon S3 than it is to maintain an always-up cluster for a distributed datastore. If you do mostly offline batch processing and you do not need bulk storage to be online, then it is an attractive setup.
Taking another glimpse from the future of big data in the cloud.
A Big Data stack…will also need to emerge before cloud computing will be broadly embraced by the enterprise. In many ways, this cloud stack has already been implemented, albeit in primitive form, at large-scale Internet data centers, which quickly encountered the scaling limitations of traditional SQL databases as the volume of data exploded. Instead, high-performance, scalable/distributed, object-orientated data stores are being developed internally and implemented at scale…large web properties have been building their own so-called “NoSQL” databases, also known as distributed, non-relational database systems (DNRDBMS).
There are several misguided points here. First, there is not going to be a big data or cloud stack. Distributed systems are about making trade offs and a move toward problem-specific solutions rather than one-size-fits-all stacks. Second, enterprises already have their solution—expensive data warehousing and consulting support. Will open source projects like Hadoop supported by people like Cloudera take a chunk of the business? Sure. But as I mentioned earlier, the most interesting part about big data and the cloud is not cheaper alternatives for the enterprise, it is the opportunities it facilitates for data-driven startups.
There is a lot of talk about the NoSQL movement. The big idea here is that distributed systems are hard, require tradeoffs, and sometimes we are better off with data storage and processing that are specific to what we are doing with the data. Sometimes even with a small amount of data on a single node, there are better alternatives to SQL queries and relational databases—time series data has long been a good example.
There is a broad range of needs for processing large amounts of data. These range from simple needs like calculations for log analysis that just need to occur at scale, to middle of the road needs like BI, to complex needs like scalable modern machine learning and retrieval systems.
There are a different approaches one can use to service specific needs. Again, we see the pattern of moving away from one-size-fits-all stacks, and toward building for your needs. That said, there are very generic abstractions like Map-Reduce that work well for a lot of use cases. Distributed systems are hard to get right, so when something like Hadoop gets a lot of momentum, it retains that momentum until alternatives have the time to mature enough to solve the hard problems with fault tolerance, performance, and so forth. Not everyone is Leonardo da Vinci, so people should not attempt to create these systems on their own unless they really know what they are doing. In that sense, the cloud and big data are facilitators of open source.
An important aspect of processing at scale is abstraction. Writing complex or even simple computations in raw Map-Reduce is verbose for programmers and intimidating for others who might want to play with the data. Abstractions over Map-Reduce like Pig and Hive make simple things easy, and abstractions like Cascading make hard things possible. The Map-Reduce paradigm, and Hadoop in particular, have been a big success. That said, Map-Reduce is not the only important piece of compute infrastructure. Message queues serve as the backbone of a lot of compute architectures – implementations of AMQP, such as rabbitmq, are a prime example. You can accomplish a lot with producers, consumers, and a messaging system. Distributed storage and processing systems can also be very tricky to configure and deploy, requiring a pretty deep understanding of the system – hence the business case for folks like Cloudera.
Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist, recently said,
The sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians… The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it
Unfortunately for those of us working on these problems in real life, it is not so simple. The archetypal data-renaissance man is mathematician, statistician, computer scientist, machine learner, and engineer all rolled into one. There are opportunities where you can lack some of these skills and work with a team that supplements your weak points—a startup is not one of those.
Now that we can store so much data, it is attractive to do previously unimaginable things with it. We are sure to see cool applications in fields from the internet to biotechnology to nanotechnology and fundamental materials science research. Almost all advances in every field of science and technology are now heavily dependent upon data and computing. Machine learning is serving a fantastic role as a bridge between mathematical and statistical models and the worlds of AI, computer science, and software engineering. We are exploring applications in learning from text, social networks, data from scientific experiments, and any other data sources we can get our hands on.
The data renaissance does present some difficult issues. There are not many places one can recieve a good education on working on these problems at large scale. Scaling our modeling and optimization algorithms is hard. We need to figure out how to partition and parallelize, or sometimes trade speed and scale for approximately correct calculations. Another issue is that we are often using simplistic models, albeit with pretty good results in many cases. We would like to move toward a deeper approximation of real intelligence.
But the data renaissance is here. Be a part of it.
 Globe and Mail | Twitter's @anywhere: Not a Bang but a Whimper BusinessWeek Twitter founder Evan Williams was widely expected to announce an advertising platform at this year's South by Southwest festival and conference, but while he did make an announcement involving dozens of major media partners, ... Twitter launches @ anywhere to boost the interoperability of service Twitter to Be Available @Anywhere SXSW organizers concede keynote flubs with Twitter Q&A |
Le sigh.
Le sigh.
We actually already knew there was no copy/paste functionality in WP7S devices, but the announcement we were hoping for at MIX wasn’t “no copy/paste for real” but rather “here’s how we’ve obsoleted copy/paste.” Maybe they’ll add it later, but… really, now. Nothing at all? You guys are killing the dream.
Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks
It looks like those March 16 rumors were true, because Spring Design has announced that the Alex ereader is now available for pre-order. Of course, a quick visit to the website is still referring users to check back, but I am sure that will, or may have already changed.
In terms of price, those interested can expect to pay $399 and as of now it will be available online only. That said, the Alex ereader will also be in stores (Borders) sometime in June.
Feature wise the Alex will offer a 6-inch display as well as a smaller full color 3.5-inch display on bottom. The Alex will come with Wi-Fi, and a 3G model expected sometime in the future. Other features include a microSD card slot, USB 2.0 and support for EPUB, PFD, TXT and HTML. Additionally, the Alex will also ship with a set of headphones as well as a power cord and padded cover.
Via [CrunchGear]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Argentinian social gaming company MetroGames, has just raised $5 million in series A funding from game developer Playdom. According to a release, the investment will be used to expand MetroGames’ development of games and its social gaming platform. Playdom’s CEO, John Pleasants will join MetroGames’ board.
MetroGames has over 30 games on both Facebook and its own standalone social gaming site. In the release, Pleasants said that he believes that the company will become a “big player in the social gaming market.”
It’s no secret that Playdom is eying the Facebook gaming market that Zynga dominates. The social gaming company just bought Facebook game developer Offbeat Creations. In November, Playdom raised a massive $43 million at a $260 million valuation. As we reported at that time, Playdom’s presence on MySpace was strong. Their Mob Wars game has 14 million or so users there, and the company was likely pulling in $60 million or more in revenue at that time. According to our stats from November, Playdom had 28 million monthly game users with 60% of traffic is from MySpace v. 40% from Facebook.
The InFocus SP8602 is a big, bad home theater projector. It’s hanging from my ceiling, hooked up to a Harmon Kardon Blu-ray player and a TiVo HD. Needless to say, life is good at the Burns homestead. Click through for my initial impressions of this $5,000 1080p projector.
Pros
Cons
Stay tuned for the full review. Any suggestions for test material?
Yes indeed! The update, detailed here, is live live live! 24p, better audio bitrates, and a sandwich. Get your update on here. It’s actually been live for a while. But, you know, in case you were wondering.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 TG Daily | AMD, Intel Bringing More Cores to More Servers PC Magazine Tuesday's big chip news was the introduction of Intel's new six-core Xeon 5600 chip, along with new servers based on the chip from Dell, HP, and IBM. While this isn't very surprising--we've known details about this 32nm version of ... Intel Launches Six Core Server Processors IBM, Dell, HP adopt Intel 6-core chip for IT, games Intel Partners See 'Easy' Upgrade Path With Xeon 5600 Chips |
Since we’re your go-to source for complaining about DRM (now on CNN!), I figure we should mention the latest development regarding EA’s Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Dice, the game’s developer’s, have removed SecuROM DRM from both the retail version of the game as well as the digitally distributed one (i.e. Steam). Why a Steam game even needs SecuROM in the first place (it’s merely a disc check, so…) is a question I cannot answer. It’s probably like a contractual thing or something.
This comes by way of the game’s latest patch, which went live for the retail version—the Steam version is still on the way.
Other things of note? Not really, just the average bug-fixes and UI fine tuning.
In other news, yes, Inter beat Chelsea! That made my day, for real.
By Yukari Iwatani Kane, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
In a possible indication that Apple (AAPL) is experimenting with a new development area, the company appears to have hired wearable computing expert Richard DeVaul in January as a senior prototype scientist. A graduate of the MIT Media Lab, Mr. DeVaul is best known for inventing “memory glasses”–tiny computer displays mounted on eyeglasses that would subtly remind people of things they may have forgotten. He describes his expertise in his blog as “signal processing and real-time statistical classification techniques.”
Read the rest of this post on the original site
It took almost a year, but Xobni finally released its email app for the Blackberry. It works as a standalone app integrated with the email on your Blackberry, but similar to Xobni’s Outlook plugin, it ranks your contacts by importance and pulls in social data from Facebook, LinkedIn and other places.
Along with the Blackberry app, Xobni is introducing another product which may turn out to be more important in the long run. It is called Xobni One, and it syncs your Xobni contacts in Outlook with your contacts on your Blackberry, all in the cloud. As Xobni rolls out more apps in the future, Xobni One should be able to sync contacts across those as well (very Mesh-like).
Xobni One is a way to sync your desktop and mobile contacts. If you use Outlook on your desktop at work, but Gmail on your Blackberry, Xobni One reconciles the two. And when you leave your job, your contacts stay with you. Xobni One isn’t free. It costs $4 a month or $40 a year, bundled with the Blackberry app. Keeping your contacts in sync is expensive. Doesn’t it seem that Google or Microsoft will eventually just do this for free?
Good news for iPad peripheral peddlers: High demand for some Apple-designed accessories for the device appears to have exhausted early supplies. Originally offered with a ship date of April 3, official iPad cases purchased today, for example, won’t ship until mid-April (if you purchased one on March 12, you’re still likely to take delivery on April 3 according to my order status checks).
Keyboard docks ordered today won’t ship until late April (those ordered on April 12 are scheduled to arrive on April 19). And 10W USB power adapters, which let you charge your iPad via electrical outlet, won’t ship until May–nearly a month after the arrival of the iPad itself.
A case of first-come, first-served, I suppose. Still, this gives third-party accessory vendors a nice little sales window free of competition from Apple (AAPL)–assuming they’re ready to take advantage of it.
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
I really want a Palm Pre Plus, mostly due to the fact that I have had a review unit for a little while and have been digging it. But at the same time, and as much as I want one, I will not, repeat will not be paying $150 bucks for one. Given that I have been checking sites like Amazon, Wirefly and Verizon on an almost daily basis looking for price drops and waiting for the right time to buy.
That time is not quite there for me just yet, however in my check of the day for today I found that Verizon has lowered the price down to $79.99. Its getting closer and closer to free. Also, the Wirefly price has remained at $39.99 and Amazon is a little lower, down to $29.99.
These prices come just a few weeks since I last posted, and at that time the Pre Plus was $149.99 with Verizon, $39.99 with Wirefly and $49.99 with Amazon. One thing that I should mention is that the prices at Wirefly and Amazon seem to be the regular price. As for the Verizon price, that is a sale price, which means that after today it will be back up to $149.99. Moral of this story, if you want a Palm pre Plus, go with Verizon today, or better yet buy through Amazon or Wirefly. Me, I think I can hold out a little longer.
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
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Bluetooth headsets are great for keeping your eyes on the road while you’re driving — until you get a text message. “I wonder who that’s from? I’ll just take a peek!” you think, reaching for your phone… and BAM! Your car’s front end is now playing twister with another car’s rear end.
Bluetooth headset manufacturer BlueAnt is looking to cut down on the number of surprise trunk attacks with the introduction of their first Android App, which they’ll be announcing next week at CTIA.
Nobody’s spilled the beans on the app’s name to us just yet, so we’ll have to do with just calling it “the application”. When paired up with BlueAnt’s Q1 headset, the application will read off the text of incoming text messages. You get to know what people are saying, and you don’t even have to wreck your car or endanger others! Who would have thought?
Look for more news about the app (and a brand new BlueAnt headset) next week.
In the same way cellphone address books helped people stop memorizing phone numbers, the magic of auto-complete helped them stop memorizing email addresses. This feature, which is built into most email programs, lets users type as few as one or two letters before seeing and selecting from a list of addresses that may or may not be saved in the email program’s address book. Too bad auto-complete on your mobile device doesn’t work the same way.
On mobile devices, the suggested names in the “To” line only include those of contacts that are saved in a device’s digital address book. This leaves people stuck mid-thumb, trying to remember an email address, or worse, being forced to wait until they return to their desks to send a message.
This week, I tested an app that generates contact information for every person a user has ever communicated with in Microsoft Outlook—or if Outlook isn’t a factor, just with the device. I tested Xobni Mobile for BlackBerry, available as of March 16 at http://xobni.com/mobile. Xobni Mobile costs $10 as a stand-alone app from Xobni Corp. or $7 if it’s bought with Xobni One, the company’s new cloud-based storage service that costs $4 monthly. One year of Xobni Mobile with the Xobni One service costs $40.
I tested Xobni Mobile on my BlackBerry Curve 8900 and used the Xobni One service to connect with Outlook, which was running on my PC with Xobni’s desktop program installed. This app makes a big difference for people like me, who rarely sync their devices with their PCs, don’t primarily correspond with people in their corporate Exchange networks and don’t like taking the time to manually add names, email addresses and phone numbers into the Contacts section of the BlackBerry. This app also uses Xobni’s analytics feature to rank people, thus returning results sorted according to how much a user emails with someone.
Xobni Mobile could stand to do a better job of meshing with the BlackBerry’s operating system, especially considering that the company worked with Research in Motion (RIMM) to build a deeply integrated app. I’ll admit that it comes close—a finger swipe up on the email-compose screen opens the Xobni app. But as my high-school economics teacher always said, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. The process required to open the app, type the contact’s name, select the name from within the Xobni app and return to the compose screen can feel too long and a bit clumsy.
Another downside is that the Xobni Mobile app doesn’t yet integrate with text messaging or dialing numbers, so rather than pull up a phone number from within the device’s texting or dialing interface, users must open the app and select a contact before calling or texting. A Xobni representative said the company is working with RIM on deeper integration.
Xobni (“inbox” spelled backwards) started a couple years ago with its namesake product, a downloadable add-on for Outlook that analyzed and indexed all emails and ran in a side panel within the email program. Since its introduction, Xobni for Outlook has added enhancements, including the built-in ability to display an email contact’s Twitter and Facebook profiles. And some of these spill over into the mobile app.
The Xobni desktop program currently works only on PCs (not Macs) that have Outlook installed, and runs only on high-end BlackBerrys, including the Curve 8900, Tour, Storm, Bold and Bold 2. The Xobni Mobile app connected to Xobni for Outlook using Xobni One considerably soups up the experience, adding an average of 10-times more contacts than the BlackBerry alone. The top 6,000 contacts (according to the analysis of who you email the most) will be stored locally on the device, as well as each contact’s photo, which gets pulled in from Outlook, LinkedIn, Facebook or a Xobni account. Additional services connected to Xobni include Hoovers, Twitter and Salesforce.
People who don’t use Outlook and/or don’t want to pay for the Xobni One service can still use the app by itself with Web-based email programs running on the BlackBerry.
I found myself using Xobni on my BlackBerry a lot, despite its extra steps and slightly cumbersome interface. For instance, it gave me three different emails for my mom, rather than the one outdated email of hers that I long ago manually stored in my BlackBerry Contacts and hadn’t updated since. I also liked Xobni’s way of pulling photos for many contacts onto my device.
I didn’t see a noticeable change in my BlackBerry’s battery life while using the Xobni app, though its battery will be taxed when it grabs large bunches of contacts and photos from the server. By default, this only happens when the BlackBerry is charging.
The Xobni One service demonstrates the company’s move into the increasingly crowded realm of backup software programs. When the BlackBerry is charging, this service updates the PC’s Outlook program with any changes on your BlackBerry and sends new contact data added to Outlook to the BlackBerry. If I lost my BlackBerry tomorrow or changed jobs next week, I’d still be able to retrieve several years’ worth of Outlook contacts and their profiles on a new BlackBerry using my Xobni One log-in credentials. (These same credentials, an email and password, are required when installing the app on the BlackBerry.)
Xobni hasn’t announced any definite plans for integration with other mobile devices, but a representative said that the company is considering making iPhone and Android apps.
If you use a PC, Microsoft Outlook and a BlackBerry, Xobni offers a smart solution for automatically organizing all of your contacts into one place and allows for your contacts to be stored somewhere other than just in Outlook or just on your mobile device. If it was a little easier to access on the BlackBerry, I’d like it even more.
Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com
Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com
Can you blame ‘em? If you bought into a two-year contract a little more than two years ago, possibly because of shortcomings in the first iPhone (a perfectly reasonable decision), you would have been watching with jealous eye the introduction of the 3G, the 3GS, and the launch and growth of the App Store. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to change horses. BlackBerry makes some excellent handsets and has a unique value proposition, but if I’m honest, I think they’ve progressed even less in the last couple years than the iPhone has. That’s hard, people! And really, even if you love BlackBerry, if you want a versatile touchscreen phone, are you really going to go with a Storm?
This is according to a study by Crowd Science, in which it is also revealed that 32% of BB users would be cool with trading in for a Nexus One. Dangerous info all around, then. Of course, that also means that 60% of BB users want to stick with RIM, which is probably more than US Symbian users or feature-phone people aching to make the jump to something cooler. Only 9% of iPhone users said they’d switch to a Nexus One, though, so I don’t think Apple is sweating it.
[via Ars Technica]
 The Guardian (blog) | Internet Explorer 9: An Early Look PC Magazine We finally got to take an early version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 browser engine out for a spin. In early testing, IE9 impresses. by Michael Muchmore Speed and standards. Those two words sum up the goals of Microsoft's just-released Platform ... IE9 is here! ... Kinda-sorta Super Speed and Enhanced Internet Explorer 9 Internet Explorer 9, the HTML 5 browser: Better than half-way there |
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FROM APPLETELL - If St. Patty’s day for you means time to drink, then these applications can help you to enjoy the experience, play with your drinks and cope with the damage the morning after.
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 Siliconrepublic.com | Twitter's @anywhere could prove risky for users Computerworld Computerworld - Twitter's new @anywhere feature looks to be telling the social media world that you can run but you cannot hide from the spread of its tweets. This new framework, dubbed @anywhere, is designed to help companies more ... Twitter's @Anywhere ID registered in late '07 Twitter Announces @anywhere Twitter Flies the Coop |
Section: Computers, Networking, Gadgets / Other, Peripherals, Storage
The Pogoplug offers a convenient way to be able to backup your files and also have access to them from any Internet connection as well as share select files with others. I have been using one for a few weeks now, and have a review coming soon. But today, Pogoplug has rolled out a few new features, some of which will make gamers happy. Or more specifically, gamers who are using an Xbox 360 or PS3. In terms of the new feature, users of the previously mentioned consoles will be able to access, share, and stream their media directly to the game console.
“With game console support, Pogoplug owners can now easily access, share, and stream their media directly to their Xbox 360 or PS3 from any local or remotely located Pogoplug. Gamers can watch home movies from their Pogoplug connected external hard drive on their Xbox 360 or PS3, share slideshows or listen to their entire music library without ever putting down their game controller. The Xbox 360 or PS3 automatically sees the drives connected to the Pogoplug and the contents of other shared Pogoplugs.”
The other new feature is not limited to game consoles, instead its more backup oriented. It offers additional capabilities to the Active Copy feature and it will allow users to automatically copy files to a Pogoplug in another location.
“Active Copy enables users to backup folders on their computer to a Pogoplug connected drive. Whenever new files are added, or changes are made to an existing file within the Active Copy enabled folder, these files are automatically copied to a chosen destination folder. Now users can also use Active Copy to automatically backup key files from one Pogoplug to another off-site Pogoplug, for additional safety and redundancy.”
Product [Pogoplug]
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Are you ready for your Windows Mobile 6.5 update, Sprint HTC Touch Pro2 owners? You should be — given that every other carrier threw 6.5 on the Pro2 months ago, you’re probably champin’ at the bit by now.
We knew it was coming this month — we just didn’t know when. Thanks to your friendly neighborhood Sprint store spy, we’ve now got an exact date.
PPCGeeks forumgoer 99accordv6 just posted the screencap you see above. “A software update is available for the HTC Touch Pro 2 on 3/19/10.” Doesn’t leave much to the imagination, does it?
Along with all of the WinMo 6.5 goodies, the update should also bring a few tweaks to HTC’s Sense UI, a few bug fixes, and vaguely referenced “social networking integration.” Check back for more news come Friday.
[via PocketNow]
 Brisbane Times | Apple delays shipment of some iPad accessories CNET Apple has five accessories for the iPad: a keyboard dock, case, dock, 10W USB power adapter, and dock connector to VGA adapter. The ship date for the iPad keyboard dock, a device that combines a dock for charging your iPad with a ... Some Key iPad Accessories Won't Ship for a While Keyboard dock, other iPad accessories will be MIA on April 3 Apple iPad accessories delayed, and other Apple news |
Lots of scuttlebutt around Silicon Valley that new investment bank CODE Advisors is out pitching a MySpace spinoff to potential buyers and investors. Sources include people who’ve actually been pitched.
CODE Advisor partner Quincy Smith says “We have not been engaged by News Corp. or MySpace on a sale of the company.” MySpace also contacted us to deny the rumor – “The story is false.” – although we hadn’t actually gotten around to asking them yet. Word travels fast, it seems.
MySpace does confirm that they have an ongoing relationship with CODE Advisors to look for companies that they may want to buy, particularly in the music space (they’ve bought two music startups, iMeem and iLike, in the last year). CODE Advisors partner Fred Davis is leading that effort.
But any effort to spin off MySpace from News Corp. – something we’ve argued must be done for the company to have any chance to thrive – is being done unofficially. And perhaps without the knowledge of News Corp. execs.
Are MySpace execs testing the waters to see if there’s a way to spin themselves off of the politics-driven News Corp.? That’s being flatly denied. But it sure would makes a lot of sense. And, like we said, the pitches are happening, whether everyone denies it or not.
Today, during his keynote address at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek had a big revelation: “On certain days, we’re consuming more Internet capacity than Sweden has as a country.”
Ek made the statement when asked why Spotify chose to use a P2P model, rather than centrally store all of its music in one place and stream it from there. Ek noted that if they were to stream from one UK datacenter, they’d consume all the bandwidth. So instead, they leverage the power of the Internet to get their users to help them stream to other users.
Ek also said this was primarily the reason that Spotify is a native application, rather than a web app. P2P streaming is a bit more complicated than streaming from one source on the backend of things, obviously.
When asked why Apple (which of course, runs the largest music store in the world, iTunes) doesn’t use the P2P method, Ek said that was the “million dollar question.” He then speculated that they will move more towards Spotify in terms of being in the cloud (something we’ve written about a few times), and having a subscription model.
Ek noted that Spotify is now in six countries and has over 320,000 paid subscribers. That’s up from 260,000 the last time they mentioned it. Overall, they have some 7 million users now. And yes, that’s largely without the U.S. where the service only exists in a very limited closed beta as the company negotiates with the labels for music rights.
In its relentless push to turn YouTube into a profit center, Google is trying anything it can to pump more advertising into the billions of videos people watch on the site. Now it is automating the way that Flash overlay ads can be created and displayed on YouTube videos. Through the self-serve Display Ad Builder in Google AdWords, mom-and-pop businesses can now create Flash overlay ads as easily as they can create display banner ads and place them in YouTube videos.
Overlay ads have been around for a long time on YouTube and other video networks. YouTube constantly refines the types of overlay ads it shows, but many of the small businesses which typically advertise on Google AdWords don’t have the tools to create Flash overlay ads. Now Google is providing them with templates, much like it does already for banner ads.
As of last October, YouTube was showing ads on more than one billion videos a week, which was roughly one in seven videos. YouTube wants to open up all of its video inventory to advertisers large and small. Today’s release is the latest move in that direction.
At what point will there be too many ads and will consumers ever backlash? Already I find those persistent pop-ups and overlays to get in the way of the videos I am trying to watch, and I don’t find them particularly relevant. Flooding YouTube with even more of these ads may be good for its bottom line, but viewers are not going to like them.
Google has launched a version of its HTC designed Nexus One phone that will finally allow customers using the phone to access AT&T’s 3G network in the United States and Rogers Wireless in Canada.
The earlier Nexus One worked only with T-Mobile’s 3G network. Those with SIM cards from AT&T could make voice calls but were limited to the 2G or EDGE network on their Nexus One.
Google launched the Nexus One on January 5. The phone runs Android 2.1 and retails for $180 with a two-year T-Mobile contract. The unsubsidized version of the phone is available for $530. The Nexus One retails through Google’s online store only.
Google says it will now offer two versions of the smartphone. Both versions support four GSM radio frequencies -850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz. But the support for 3G bands will differ depending on the version selected.
When ordering phones, customers will be able to select from the version that supports 850 MHz, 1900 MHz, and 2100 MHz frequency bands for use on on AT&T in the U.S and Rogers Wireless in Canada. Or they can choose the version that supports 900 MHz, AWS, and 2100 MHz frequency bands can be used with T-Mobile in the U.S., says Google. The two versions will otherwise be identical in terms of their hardware specifications.
The availability of the Nexus One for AT&T 3G customers comes at a time when sales of the device have been slow. Google has sold about 135,000 HTC Nexus One phones in the 74 days since the device launched, a rate that’s about eight times lower than Motorola’s Droid and Apple’s original iPhone, says mobile analytics company Flurry.
See Also:
Photo: Google Nexus One (Jon Snyder/Wired.com)
FROM APPLETELL - In both appearance and extra features, Urbanears’ Plattan line are indeed heavy hitters. But despite excellent visual appeal, the Plattans were decidedly lacking in the audio department.
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I’m here at the last keynote of SXSW, where Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is being interviewed by Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk. Ek will likely be revealing some new announcements about Spotify during this interview. I’ll be live blogging my notes below.
Van Buskirk kicked off the keynote by asking how many people in the audience had used Spotify, leading a significant portion of the audience to raise their hands. This was surprising, because Spotify is only widely available in Europe (you need a beta invite to use it in the US). Ek then took some time to walk the audience through the streaming music service if they haven’t used it before (see our extensive past coverage if you need a refresher).
Q: What drove the initial decision to make this an application as opposed to something in the browser?
A: There are a few things that applications are better for. In our case, we think that applications are better for swift music playback. What we see is that people tend to spend a lot of time on Spotify because it’s so swift. They tend to replace their media player with Spotify, because they notice no difference between playing a song locally (some have even remarked that it’s faster than playing it through iTunes).
Q: Let’s talk about the licensing realities. Spotify is available in Europe. How will the model work in America?
A:There could be slight changes. A year and a half since launch more than 7 users, only in six countries. What we’re working on is the next gen of Spotify. We’ll never be content to just have an app. There are a lot of things we want to fix in Spotify. We tend not to take the ‘release early, often’ approach. What we’ve been working on for last 6-8 months is next gen of Spotify. How to make it more connected. Easier sharing and management of music. We’ve realized people spend a lot of time on Spotify and they tend to manage their music with Spotify.
Q: Which platforms/devices are most exciting?
A: Three years ago if you wanted to develop for mobile, had to support 3-5 major mobile os’s. Long lead times. That shut out all this innovation. More recently, application devs can get the application on phones. We look a lot at bundling with devices. Mostly not for revenue possibility but more for pre-installs. With exception of the iPhone today, most of the other handset manufacturers lack a good media player. Historically hard to get music to other phones if you had in iTunes.
Q: Let’s talk about the business side of bundling. If someone is paying for cell phone bill, they can check off something to get Spotify, seems like easier decision. How has that been going in Europe?
A: We have two mobile operators working with us many more to come. If you go into any Telius store in Sweden, you can go in and pick out a smart phone that comes preinstalled with Spotify. 3-6 months included. Incredible takeup with that. One of the key things Spotify is pushing is that people listen/share to more music than ever, more diverse artists. People will still buy music they love, but vast majority of music they just want access.
Q: We’ve heard services like Spotify people say “oh no we’re not going to buy music any more”. The idea of geting people to play a monthly fee, that seems promising. Why would someone buy something?
A: I think we’re going that route. But we find that music I really love, I tend to want to buy it. Not necessarily a plastic disk, but a special edition for an artist I really like, I’m more than happy to pay $100 for a box set with a t-shirt in it, liner notes. Another person may be willing to pay for a live edition with extended tracks. Or pay for a live concert experience. The reality of the music industry today is that there isn’t one biz model. It’s about figuring out how to use downloads, streaming, promotion, ticketing, all these things. I don’t think streaming music is stream.. with Spotify people label us ‘free’ music. But people pay, either with time (adverts, which are targeting), or actually paying for the service.
Q: Are you going to start filtering ads by mood (e.g. if you listen to down tempo music).
A: We want to figure out a lot of things based on how people listen to music. Can figure out mood, brand preferences. We see that from CTRs, if you listen to same music and are from the same place who tends to like a certain brand, there’s a high likihood you will too. Ad model is getting better every month. But this for me is not about free vs paid music, it’s about a model where there’s a free music element and a paid one.
A: Tech savviness at labels is increasing, now more people that love music and know the digital space are working with labels and artists.
Q: How do indy artists get music on Spotify? On ITunes you can submit paperwork. You’re different in that approach.
A: The way to get on Spotify today is we have a bunch of aggregators we work with. Main reason we’ve wanted to work with aggregators is that they tend to understand format/structure. We get quality control, picture, bio, etc.
Q: Are we done with DRM?
A: If you look at Spotify, it has DRM associated with it. We want to make it so that there isn’t really any announcement what’s DRM or not, we can protect and give users flexibility you want.
Q: Let’s talk about Spotify of the future. How do we get to point of ‘music like water’.
A: I see that’s sort of where we’re heading. The music industry needs that happen. I think music and tech are aligned for the first time. We’ve had a lot of proprietary standards, trying to figure out how to get music on a BlackBerry phone vs. getting it on iPhone vs set top box, radically different. We need to open platforms.
Q: With regard to Twitter/FB. Are you thinking of integrating sharing functionality into Spotify?
A: We’re looking at integrating some social aspects. I think genres are non-sane. What classifies rock, or neo-pop, etc. Spotify is quickly approaching 10 mil tracks. How do you manage that? Search is one solution, but isn’t optimal way of discovering new content. We won’t be another social network. We never believed in being our own social network, we’re working with existing social networks.
Q: With your playlists people have read/write access, can delete entire thing, what are you doing about that?
A: Looking from tech angle. We support version updates. One way to solve that is that you can step back in history and go back. What we don’t have is user privilege on playlists. We think Twitter/FB will figure out those privileges, and will use them.
A: I think the total rev matters more than actual conversion rate. But we do want to make sure there are a number people are paying for Spotify and that will grow. We’re making a lot of progress. We’re in six countries, now well in excess of 320,000 paid subscribers. Last time we mentioned a fig. it was 260,000. 100 million playlists. 7 million users. People spend a lot of time on playlists. 30% of all playlists are albums (albums stored in collection). People say album is dead. I don’t agree. I think there’s a lot to develop there.
Q: Let’s talk about P2P element.
A: It was a key decision, and one reason we’re a native app. Helps offload bandwidth. P2P actually helps Spotify and users, it will take tracks on your friends and coworkers on same local network and stream to them so it’s faster. “We’re consuming more capacity than Sweden has as a country”. If we had to stream all the data from our UK center, we’d consume all the bandwidth.
Q: Why isn’t Apple doing this?
A: That’s a million dollar question. I think they are. I’m just speculating on this. Apple is very interested, we’ve had iTunes store. They’re understanding this is more to subscription model. They understand it’s going more to a cloud based model. I don’t have any magical insight into Apple.
Q: Let’s look at Spotify on this phone. I wanted to show this cool device. Sony Ericson X10 mini. Out in US in next couple of months. It’s an Android phone. We’ve installed Spotify. Now demonstrating the app. Has a spotify widget.
A: Over the next couple of weeks a lot of features coming in to Spotify. I hope from them moving in a more steady direction. We are listening to what users are asking us to do.
Q: US Launch? Also China?
A: The most important thing for us when it comes to US launch is that we want to build the best possible product we can and get all ducks in a row, partnerships with next gen of Spotify. Sort out publishing which is a huge task. Here you have to strike deals with almost 5000 publishers. Big thing for us is working on next gen of Spotify and getting that out there.
Q: How many plays equals one dollar?
A: Depends on the type on contract with the publisher/record labels. We share the rev we bring in. You can’t really equate to ‘per play’ we look at all our ad rev. Creates a bucket. For instance how do you account for a purchase of a song. There is no easy answer to your question. Over time our ad revs are growing, number of downloads growing. Amount of rev we bring in is growing.
Q: How are it working to convince American label that not everyone needs to be a subscriber for it to work.
A: This is the world’s biggest music market. We have potential reach of 170 mil people in Europe. America has much more. People spend more money in America. The whole industry is looking more and more about new opportunities. At the same time CD sales have been in decline, nothing online has been able to counter balance that decline. I think people are looking at how we can support Spotify, how do we ensure that people don’t stop buying CDs.
If we were to take everything the rumormill said as gospel, we’d tell you that the Motorola Cliq XT launched in all of its Android glory on March 10th. Given that it’s now nearly a week later and the Cliq XT has yet to hit the shelves, we’d say that the rumormill is a dirty, dirty liar. Or, you know, something changed at the last minute.
Either way, now there’s a new, improved rumor to bank on! This rumor is stronger. This rumor is faster. Oh, and yeah, this rumor is most likely correct and includes updated pricing information.
Our friends over at TmoNews managed to dig up this T-Mobile intranet screencap which shows off just about everything any would-be Cliq XT owner wants to know. The price? $99 bucks on a 2-year contract, $199 if you opt for 1-year instead. The launch date? March 17th — otherwise referred to by the present time cool kids as “tomorrow”.
Come, friends! Circle ’round and let me tell you a tale of the finest fake in all the lands. Is your standard, completely not-shady iPhone too thick and legitimate for you? 12.3mm thick? That’s like a loaf of bread! What you need, friend, is the iPhone Air. Not only have they managed to completely rip off everything from the body design to the user interface (presumably poorly), but they’ve also stuffed it all into a package just 8.5mm thick!
Trademark infringement? Pah! This is China, friend! Plus, it’s got WiFi! And Edge! App Store? What’s an App Store? This has all the apps you’ll ever need. Like a random browser claiming to be Internet Explorer.
And how much will this plunge into crazytown set you back? For you, friend, just 880 Chinese Yuan — or roughly 117 dollars. Where are you going, friend? Friend?
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile
Is RIM losing the attraction it once held so proudly? Maybe, according to a study by Crowd Science that looked at mobile phone owners and asked what their next device will be. While customer preference before a purchase might be radically different from what they actually buy, the study is interesting in seeing how smartphone users view other brands and OSs.
“These results show that the restlessness of Blackberry users with their current brand hasn’t just been driven by the allure of iPhone,” said John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science. “Rather, Blackberry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems.”
The study was performed online only with people taking part who visit large websites. A total of 1,140 users were surveyed and 44% used a regular phone, not a smartphone. If my math is right, of the people surveyed, 171 of them used a BlackBerry and 69 of those said they’d leave the BlackBerry platform for an iPhone. The question becomes, RIMs had a few years to dream up something that draws users away from the iPhone - where is it?
Android is making gains as well. Awareness of the OS moved up and a third of the BlackBerry users would consider Android as their next platform. Like iPhone users, Android users are very loyal to the OS with over 90% of users commit to sticking with the OS.
Read [Crowd Science] via [ars technica]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Google has sold about 135,000 HTC Nexus One phones in the 74 days since the device launched, a rate that’s about eight times lower than Motorola’s Droid and Apple’s original iPhone, says mobile analytics company Flurry.
During the same amount of time, Verizon sold about 1.05 million Droids, while the original iPhone sold 1 million.
By comparison, the iPhone 3GS sold 1.6 million units in just one week.
Flurry chose to look at Nexus One’s popularity over 74 days because it took Apple’s original iPhone that many days to cross 1 million units in sales, says the company.
“The comparison is interesting because the iPhone and Nexus One each represent Apple and Google’s first fully branded handsets,” wrote Peter Farago, vice-president of marketing for Flurry in a blog post. “We add the Motorola Droid as a point of comparison, and because it’s the fastest selling Android phone to date.”
The numbers should come as no surprise to mobile phone enthusiasts and industry executives, though Google has never disclosed exactly how many Nexus Ones are in the hands of customers to date.
In January, Google introduced the Nexus One as the first Android device that would be sold by the search company itself, rather than a manufacturing or carrier partner. The device retails for $180 with a 2-year T-Mobile contract, while an unsubsidized version is available for $530. But consumers can only buy it through Google’s online store.
The Nexus One, however, debuted to a host of complaints from users unhappy with the poor customer support from Google, which offered no phone or in-store help. Last month, Google finally introduced a phone support line. The Nexus One has also faced device-related issues, such as its inability to effectively connect to T-Mobile’s 3G network and complaints about the touchscreen.
Google’s phone also lacks the “‘wow’ factor that is now expected with each new challenger to the iPhone,” said Farago earlier this year. In January, Flurry estimated that Google sold about 20,000 Nexus One in the first week, compared to 250,000 for the Motorola Droid and 1.6 million for the iPhone 3G.
Interestingly, sales of the Motorola Droid edged out the first generation iPhone in the first 74 days. Farago says when the iPhone first made its debut, consumers’ perception of a mobile computing device was different. Most smartphone users who had data plans used it just to check e-mail or occasionally surf the internet.
But the iPhone changed that. Third party applications and mobile browsers that could render web pages on the phone as attractively on the PC led to an explosion in the use of smartphones.
“Until the iPhone was introduced, most consumers, especially in the U.S. had thought of their phones as, well, just phones,” says Farago.
As one of the most anticipated Android phones, the Droid benefited from the increased consumer interest and demand for smartphones. Droid also launched on Verizon Wireless, whose subscriber base last year was higher compared to AT&T in 2007. Verizon backed the Droid launch with advertising support of at least $100 million.
Meanwhile, Nexus One’s sales indicate that Google may have made a mis-step in its decision to sell the device directly through its online store. Add to that the choice of T-Mobile as the launch partner and its not that difficult to understand why the Nexus One isn’t sweeping the popularity polls.
See Also:
There’s a lot of talk today about how the Nexus One’s initial roll-out has been a flop. And while the numbers aren’t official, things do look pretty grim for the first Android device Google is attempting to sell itself. But Google is wasting no time answering its critics — indirectly — with the launch of a version of the device that will work on AT&T’s 3G network.
To be clear, this isn’t Google teaming up with AT&T on the device. Instead, it’s simply a second version of the Nexus One that works with AT&T’s 3G frequency, which is different than that of T-Mobile’s (the current Nexus One U.S. carrier). The original Nexus One does actually already work on AT&T, but only for 2G connections, so this new version will obviously be significantly faster.
With the new 3G frequency, the new Nexus One will also work in Canada with Rogers Wireless. And, as Google notes, “And like the first version of the Nexus One, it can be used with most GSM operators globally.”
Certainly, giving consumers more choices is always a good thing, but it seems that Google’s attempt to sell the phone itself is really the problem here. While it makes sense that phones, like most other goods (digital cameras, for example), should be an easy sell online, there’s also some thought that the Nexus One isn’t selling well because customers are so used to walking into a store and playing with a phone for a bit before buying it. If that’s the case, the AT&T addition isn’t likely to help sales.
The right play here would be for Google to offer shoppers a full list of plan options for both T-Mobile and AT&T and let them decide which carrier to pick. Unfortunately, that won’t be happening here, because again, this new Nexus One is only being sold as an unlocked phone that can work on AT&T if you get a SIM card on your own (something which most consumers will never do in the U.S.).
Eventually, if Google can offer that list of options from all the carriers (including the CDMA ones like Verizon, which, yes, will require another version of the Nexus One), that could be enough to drive customers online to buy the phone (and has always been the Nexus One’s promise, in my opinion). This move today, won’t be. Also, with all the bitching about AT&T’s network by iPhone owners (though, again, it has been great at SXSW), why on Earth would anyone want to buy a smartphone to use on the network unless they absolutely had to (as they do with the iPhone)?
[photo: flickr/katybate]
A new challenger has appeared! The Nexus One may not have sold all that well, but it’s still the beastiest Android handset available on US carriers. Speaking of US carriers, add one more to the Nexus One’s supported list.
Since day 1, the T-Mobile version of the Nexus One has worked with AT&T — as long as you didn’t mind that it couldn’t hop on AT&T’s 3G network. Today, with fanfare limited to a post on Google’s Nexus One blog, Google has released a version of the handset jam-packed with AT&T 3G-friendly radio.
This was a bit out of the blue for everyone – we expected to see it eventually after the AT&T’d-out Nexus One cleared the FCC, but then Google made no mention of it whilst heralding that the Verizon Nexus One was “Coming Soon!”. It may be a surprise, but it’s a very much welcome surprise.
Alas, the handset is only being sold unlocked, sans contract. There’s currently no way to get it subsidized with an AT&T discount, implying that AT&T wasn’t interested in offering the phone officially. I wonder why.
[Thanks Martin]
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Google
The post title and above image pretty much sums it up, so in short, Google has just made a Nexus One available for AT&T as well as Rogers. And it is a Nexus One that will be compatible with those respective 3G networks. The handset is not being offered subsidized at all, so expect to pay the full $529. Of course the bright side of that price tag is not having a contract. Basically, just buy the phone and pop in your SIM card. Any takers?
Product [Google] Via [Engadget]
Keep reading to check out the full press release…
Nexus One now compatible with the AT&T 3G network and shipping to Canada
In early January, we announced the Nexus One, the first device sold through Google’s web store. The Nexus One is unlocked, which means you can use it with a SIM card from most GSM operators worldwide. Currently the device is compatible with most 3G networks, including T-Mobile in the US. However, there are some carriers that have different 3G frequencies, such as AT&T in the US and Rogers Wireless in Canada, so users with these SIM cards can only access 2G or EDGE networks on their Nexus One.
Starting today, an additional version of the Nexus One is available from the Google web store that is compatible with AT&T’s 3G network. This new model can be purchased as an unlocked device without a service plan. In addition to AT&T’s 3G network, this device will also run on Rogers Wireless in Canada. And like the first version of the Nexus One, it can be used with most GSM operators globally.
Additionally, Nexus One devices can now be shipped to Canada from Google’s web store, and will work with a SIM from Rogers Wireless. To find out which version you should purchase, based on your mobile service provider, please visit our Help Center.
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile
Yesterday, at MIX10, Microsoft unveiled much more about their Windows Phone 7, due to hit consumers hands by years end. Besides the bits about software and partners, the company went into exactly who the OS was designed for. The answer might surprise you.
For development purposes, the team created a married couple, Miles and Anna. The married 38 year-olds, are called “life maximizers” as they demand the most from their devices and are living life to the fullest. In fact, Anna just reduced her work hours so she could spend more time with the kids. The couple is keenly aware of the necessary balances in life, Miles keeps track of his work exchange email as well as friends on GMail. Miles may have a slight addiction to 3D games as well.
Not the younger demographic I expected with carry-over from other Microsoft brands like Xbox or Zune as the OS borrows heavily from both. Instead, Microsoft looks to be going the “devices for grown-ups” route. Competing against devices characterized as “toys” might be an angle the company takes.
What’s odd in this, is apparently I am a life-maximizer. As a 38 year-old, I am married with kids; keep track of a work Exchange account as well as GMail. My parents are not in Europe (though I’ve suggested they leave the continent and privately prayed for them to do so). I expect a lot from my devices, in fact my phone rarely leaves my side.
From when I wake and check in with my editor, texting with a daughter at the bus stop, then work using Google Voice as a work number. GPS navigation, reservations with Open Table and movie info and back to email check in and some gaming rounds out the day. If I do it right, my phone’s battery is smoking and expired at days end.
But Windows? I confess, I am not sure if I am willing to go back. The Samsung Blackjack was my first smartphone and Windows Mobile 5, then later an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6 did its best to keep up, but it wasn’t enough. Don’t even get me started on the stylus.
So far, the word from MIX10 is impressive. Windows Phone looks to have taken the best of their other brands and rolled them where Windows Mobile needed help the most. Is it enough or does it show it’s never too late in the mobile world?
Read: [Engadget]
Photo source: Engadget
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile
Microsoft has all but confirmed the bad, but not all that surprising news—the HTC HD2 will not be able to upgrade to Windows Phone 7 series. The news comes courtesy of Joe Belfiore who simply stated that the HD2 is “not compliant with the Windows Phone 7 Series hardware specifications.” Like I said, disappointing but not all that surprising, but more importantly is what if anything will this do to sales of the HD2 once it comes available on T-Mobile. Personally I can see some phone geeks pushing the HD2 aside, but for a regular consumer it may not make all that much of a difference, if they know at all. Still even with that the HD2 is a nice looking phone, and I would imagine that it will appeal to someone.
Via [Engadget]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
At the most recent Mobile World Congress, Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed that the company’s partners are now selling over 60,000 Android handsets on a daily basis. With that kind of growth rate, it’s no wonder that the size of the Android Market is quickly increasing in its slipstream.
While Google doesn’t publicly show how many applications there are in Android Market, a Google representative this morning informed me that the application store now serves approximately 30,000 free and paid apps in total.
The application store for Android devices supposedly hit the 10,000 apps milestone in September 2009 according to third-party developer AndroLib, who later also claimed that number doubled in just over 3 months.
Google at the time matched these claimed stats against its own count, and said there were in reality some 16,000 apps in Android Market in December 2009. Yesterday, I asked Google for an update to those internal stats after I noticed AndroLib currently pegs the number of apps at nearly 35,000, and this morning the company got back to me saying there are now officially 30,000 apps in the Android Market. In other words, Google says the number grew from 16k to 30k apps in exactly three months.
The company declines to detail what percentage of apps in Android Market are paid versus free, but for what it’s worth, AndroLib says the ratio is about 39% paid vs. 61% free of charge.
Just for comparison’ sake: Apple counted over 140,000 apps in the App Store in January 2010, so it’s safe to assume there should be about 5 times as many apps for the iPhone and iPod touch as there are for Android devices right about now.
Research agency research2guidance recently released a report forecasting that the total app download market could grow to a whopping $15 billion by 2013.
Alex, the Frankenstein’s Monster of e-readers which sews the head of the Kindle onto the tiny, mismatched body of an Android mini-tablet, is available for pre-order. The Alex Store, about to go live any second now, will take your $400 and deliver this monster to you “no later than mid-April.”
The long, tall Alex, whose dual-acreen design is similar to that of the Barnes and Noble Nook, uses the top screen for battery-friendly reading of books, and the bottom touch-screen is for watching videos, and browsing your books catalog and the web. This already expensive $400 version is Wi-Fi-only, with a 3G version in the works.
We have trouble seeing any kind of market for this. The plain e-reader will continue to succeed, a simple one-purpose device with almost complete independence of battery-life worries. It will eventually be cheap enough to pick up in the local drug store on impulse. The other, multimedia high-end is catered to by the iPad and other upcoming tablets. Who will buy this mongrel, the poor Alex with its lack of functionality, its short battery life (just six hours with the color screen in use) and its almost-iPad price-tag?
It is even an outsider in the Android world, the lack of a cellphone spec excluding it from the Android Marketplace, although I’m sure it’ll get hacked soon enough. On the plus side, it comes with headphones and a case in the box, it does have a cute name, and you can pretend you are reading in class when you’re actually watching YouTube.
Alex product page [Spring Design]
See Also:
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.Com
Flip-flops, the cheap, go-anywhere shoe that is waterproof, good for your feet (just like walking barefoot) and available anywhere. Heck, if you make your own from an old tire and seatbelt, it’ll be the last pair of shoes you ever need.
What flip-flops are not is micro-suede boutique footwear with built-in flashlights. Yes, you heard right. The upcoming Illum from Teva footwear is a plushie sandal with a built-in headlamp (detachable) that lights your way to the water for night-surfing (or for avoiding the broken bottles and beer-cans on the City beach). The fancy surf-wear comes in both synthetic and leather finishes (for $50 and $60), and the LED-powered lamps are waterproof.
The folks at Teva say the idea came from “one of our product guys who is an avid surfer.” Apparently, taking a drunken, midnight toilet-break is a lot easier if you can’t lose your flashlight. I’ll stick to my Havaianas. Available May.
Teva Illum Sandals: Headlights for Your Feet? [Feed the Habit]
The iPad may be gripping the moneyed world in a fever of technolust, but the other e-reader, the Kindle, is still better at many things. Take Ghana, West Africa, for example. If you are a school in a small village with satellite internet and solar power, what device would be best for you? The power-sucking, data-heavy iPad, or the Kindle, a reader that can be read in sunlight, has free internet access and lasts for weeks on a single charge?
This is the idea behind the Worldreader project, which has just put 20 Kindles into a school of 11 to 14-year-olds. I know what you’re thinking: What’s wrong with paper books? Why do they need this expensive, fancy gadgetry? Because paper books take a long time to replace. These schools are on a 5-year book-renewal cycle right now. A Kindle, although pricy to start, essentially gives access to thousands of free, public domain books.
The first day in class in the village of Ayenyah Ghana was a success. For the trial, six books were loaded onto the Kindles, including a collection of short stories called Folktales from Ghana. The most popular title? Curious George. It seems that everyone loves a cheeky monkey.
Ayenyah Ghana actually has its own IT guy, named Richard. When the Worldreader team leaves the village, they plan to leave a few Kindles behind to make a lending library. This alone is a great idea: the book you want will never be already out on loan.
We’re impressed by the way the developing world is skipping over what is, to us, legacy tech. Landlines and now paper books are expensive, infrastructure-heavy dinosaurs. Cellular masts are easier to deploy than cables, and sending bits over those networks is cheaper and faster than shipping dead trees. The Worldreader organization plans to sell sell subsidized-readers instead of just giving them away. This seems sustainable, and will probably lead to some entrepreneur setting up their own, for-pay lending library.
Ghana: First day in the classroom [Worldreader Blog. Thanks, Zev!]
Photo credit: Worldreader.org
Beick is a Dutch City Bike that is built to your very own specification. Or rather, you design it on the Beick site from modular parts and it is assembled to order. This combination of sub-assemblies keeps things cheap while giving you a custom ride.
All the bikes have aluminum frames, Shimano hub-gears and Vredstein tires. The seats, brakes, handlebars and even forks vary depending on your choices, and color schemes are achieved not by paint but by snap-on plastic components.
I had a play with the Flash design tool. Even though it’s in Dutch, you can follow along pretty easily. The super-simple bike above, lacking fenders, a chain guard and any other accessories (you can specify locks and baskets as well) comes to just €250, or around $340, and that includes a leather Brooks saddle. That’s pretty cheap.
You can go crazy too, with a horrible Union Jack design, for example, or an electric drive train, or pretty much anything you could put on a bike. The brains behind Beick is Angelo Jansen, and he teamed up with the head designer of Batavus bikes for the project, which has been two years in the making.
Cheap, custom bikes with good-quality components. That’s what the internet is all about.
Beick Configurator [Beick via Bicycle Design]
Before we tell you more about the shoebox-sized personal iPhone Theater, let me ask a few questions to gauge your suitability for such a project. Do you live alone, or better, with your mother? Did you stop painting RPG miniatures in your teens, or are you still doing it? Would a perfect night out for you would be a night in, with your dolls-houses, a roll of duct tape and that cute girl from down the street, the one who always laughs at you but you know she loves you anyway?
Of course, we tease. We are totally nerdy enough to love this downloadable, DIY mini-theater. For $12, you get a bunch of printable JPEG sections which you glue onto cardboard and arrange inside a shoe-box. These cover every part of the gaudy cinema experience, from the glowing neon corner-tower outside to the vomit-patterned carpets and seedy red-velvet seats inside. The iPhone slots in behind the screen and, while it won’t mimic the shafts of projector light pushing through the smokey air of the theaters of our childhood, it’ll give you some of the real movie-house atmosphere.
The kit takes around two hours to build and comes with a variety of textures and colors for walls and floors, which seems to faithfully mimic the range of hideous decor found in your average downtown flea-pit. One word of advice: don’t tip up the “empty” paper cups.
Personal Movie Theater [Personal Movie Theater. Thanks, Gary!]
People seemed to like the Ziploc-bag idea from yesterday’s post on essential iPad accessories, and it drew some tips for other products. The best wasn’t for the iPad but for the Kindle: The M-Edge Guardian Case.
The case is a semi-rigid diving suit for the newest six-inch Kindle. The two halves of the polycarbonate shell snap shut like a book and four latches clamp down, compressing a gasket to keep it watertight. The sections over the buttons are made of a soft plastic, so you can page forward and back and even shop at the Kindle Store whilst floating in a pool.
Yes, it’s pretty ugly, but it’ll keep your e-reader safe when you read in the bath. In fact, the Kindle is starting to look better than a paper book for reading in the damp and wet. Sure, you could put a paperback in a Ziploc bag, but how would you turn the pages?
The Guardian Case has one more trick. Thanks to the weight distribution, and several internal, air-filled buoyancy chambers, it floats upright in the water. That means hands-free reading. $80, available Spring 2010.
Guardian Case for Amazon Kindle [M-Edge. Thanks, Caitlin!]
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