Picture 110, Rodney Alcala

Police in Huntington Beach, CA are asking for the public's help in trying to identify possible victims in photos belonging to convicted rapist and serial killer Rodney Alcala (the "Dating Game" killer). Above, photo #110, from a series of hundreds taken on of before July, 1979, many believed to have been shot by Mr. Alcala. The prints were found in his Seattle storage locker. Some have been ID'd since the scans were published online.

(Random case fact: he is reported to have studied film under and worked for Roman Polanski.)

Microsoft Announces Windows 7 SP1

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New AMD processor details leak

Oops! Looks like someone accident let some information out early. AMDs “Thuban” processors will be out next month, and there wasn’t a whole lot of information out there until recently. Turns out that somebody talked. Well, at least someone’s BIOS talked.

Gigabyte released a couple of BIOS updates recently, and Tech Connect spotted the news: The X6 1035T will have 6 cores, and be running at 2.6 GHz, and the X6 1055T is going to run at 2.8GHz. There was some news about the new Phenom II X6 as well; the 1075T will be clocked at 3.0 GHz, which is about 333 MHz slower then Intel’s new i7 980x. Bummer for AMD, but we’ll see who the real winner is when the pricing comes out; Intel’s new chip sells for $999 right now.

YouTube and Viacom Find Lots of Emails, But No Smoking Gun [MediaMemo]

The YouTube-Viacom documents released today are chock full of interesting morsels. Feel free to ignore most of them.

Because if you’re trying to handicap the way the copyright lawsuit pans out, today’s document dump won’t do much to help you. There are revelations here, but they’re of the minor and historical variety, and I’ll get to some of them later.

No smoking gun, though. Just a lot of chest-beating and desk-thumping as both sides talk past each other.

Still, it does make for fun reading, if you’re of a certain, troubled mindset. If you’re not, here’s a summary:

Viacom’s case: YouTube was full of content that wasn’t supposed to be there, and both YouTube and Google knew it.

Of course they knew it! Anyone who visited the site in 2005 and 2006 knew it. The problem was what to do about it.

And that’s the most interesting part of the emails and IM exchanges Viacom has dug up: They let you watch YouTube’s cofounders, and later Google executives, argue over the best way to keep the site growing like a weed while fending off the lawyers.

Actually, they knew the lawyers would show up eventually. “Ok man, save your meal money for some lawsuits! ;) no really, I guess we’ll just see what happens,” cofounder Chad Hurley tells partners Steve Chen and Jawed Karim via email in July 2005, as the three men decide to leave some copyrighted stuff on the site.

As as YouTube boomed, Google (GOOG) was trying to figure out how its lackluster Google Video site could compete. The big debate, according to former executive David Eun: “Whether we should relax enforcement of our copyright polìcies in an effort to stimulate traffic growth, despite the inevitable damage it would cause to relationships with content owners.”

Google’s eventual answer, of course, was to buy YouTube. But it went in with open eyes. A due diligence report estimated that just 10 percent of the “premium” stuff on the site was authorized.

Google’s case: Viacom — which talked about buying YouTube — was perfectly happy to use our site to market its movies and TV shows. Until it wasn’t.

Of course it was! In 2005 and 2006, all of the entertainment companies were desperately trying to get their clips in front of the site’s huge audience. Even more so at Viacom, whose youthful audience was spending lots of time on YouTube.

And the fact that Viacom (VIA) executives, who had lost MySpace to Rupert Murdoch (remember when MySpace was a world-beater?), were thinking about buying YouTube — in part so Murdoch wouldn’t get it — shouldn’t be surprising,  either.

Google makes a lot of the fact that Viacom “secretly” uploaded videos to YouTube, either via its employees or from marketing shops it hired. But I don’t get the impression that the “secret” uploads were supposed to dupe YouTube. I get the impression they were trying to dupe YouTube users into thinking the videos were edgy and cool.

“The goal is to make it look “hijacked”, an executive at Viacom’s Spike network tells the producers of a mixed martial arts show, describing a video he’s giving them so they can seed it on YouTube. The idea is to make the clip “look as though it was leaked out by production.”

Viacom’s embrace of YouTube does bolster Google’s case in one way. Google shows, fairly effectively, that Viacom’s lawyers have had a hard time figuring out which YouTube clips the company authorized. So if Viacom can’t figure out what’s supposed to be on the site, Google argues, how do you expect YouTube employees to know?

So. Strip out all of the depositions, documents and e-mails, and we’re back to where we started. This case will hinge on the way the court decides to interpret federal copyright law.

Viacom argues that YouTube is a video version of Napster or Grokster — designed to profit from  intellectual property that it knows is stolen. And Google argues that it’s doing exactly what the Digital Millennium Copyright Act tells it do — asking it users to behave, hoping they do, and taking down offending clips when their owners ask them to do that.

So pay attention to that ruling — it’s going to be really important. But unless you’re paid to keep an eye on digital media, you can ignore most of today’s paperwork.

Jamie Foxx to star in "Kane & Lynch" (Reuters)

Afghanistan: Taliban chops off nose, ears of 19-year-old girl for "shaming" her in-laws

Atia Awabi, a CNN International correspondent based in Kabul, says "If you are moved by [this] story you can help by donating to womenforafghanwomen.org." CNN interviewed this young woman in January, and ABC News followed recently.

Women for Afghan Women has posted an update on her story here (some people may find the full image of her brutally disfigured face disturbing).

Her husband "kept her in the stable with the animals until she was 12 (when she got her first menstrual period)." More:

Aisha has been recovering these past months from the unimaginable trauma she has suffered. She has brought criminal charges against her father for giving her away in the illegal practice of "baad." She would like to also bring charges against her husband, but since he is a Talib in Uruzgan, he is unreachable. Aisha has decided after weighing all the options before her that she would like to come to the United States for her surgery and post-operative care. Just as important as her surgery, will be the support system we organize for her recuperation. We are currently engaged in setting up that support system for Aisha.

The SayCool tablet mates a 7-inch multitouch display to Windows XP

There is a steady stream of tablet PCs flowing out of China recently. Most of them are just the same ol’ thing, but this SayCool tablet stood out from the rest with a 7-inch capacitive screen that’s apparently multitouch capable. Now, the tablet runs Windows XP, which isn’t nearly as touch friendly as Win7, but it certainly can be done with the right cocktail of software and hardware.

It remains to be seen, however, if the multitouch capabilities can be used within Windows itself or chained down to custom-built software. It’s entirely possible that pinch-to-zoom and the other gestured advertised will only work in a SayCool program and not in standard programs like Chrome, Firefox, or MS Word.

The rest of the tablet is pretty much standard: GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G. Chances are an Atom is at the core as well. But there might not even be any reason to bother yourself with the multitouch question as it may never hit US retailers.

Report: Google Bailing on China in Early April [Digital Daily]

April 10. That’s the day Google (GOOG) will reportedly begin its withdrawal from China. That’s the word from the Shanghai-based China Business News, which says the company will announce plans for its withdrawal on March 22 (here’s a lousy Google translation of the original article). “I have received information saying that Google will leave China on April 10,” an unidentified Google China employee told the publication. “But this information has not at present been confirmed by Google.”

Nor will it be at this point, I imagine. Anyway, I’ve asked the company for comment and will update here if I’m given one. In the meantime, best to view this report with a wary eye.

UPDATE: This just in from Google: “We can’t confirm any timeline and we will not be giving a running commenary of our plans.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Beijing to Google’s China Partners: Nice Site You Got There. Shame if Something Happened to It.
• China: We Are in Talks With Google. Also, We Are Not in Talks With Google.
• Chinese Scientists Recalibrate Google’s Evil Scale
• Chinese Schools Tied to Attacks on Google? Where’d You Read That, Mad Magazine?
• World War WAN: Google Hack Traced to Schools in China
• Nearly a Month After Debut, Google’s “New” Approach to China Still a Lot Like the Old One
• Google CEO: Ask Not What Google Can Do for China–Ask What China Can Do for Google
• China on “Google Farce”: Our Internet Is Open
• China to Google: No Worries, We Were Planning to Clone Those Android Phones Anyway
• U.S. State Department to Complain to China About Google Hack. Not That China’s Going to Listen.
• Microsoft: “Don’t Be Evil” Is Google’s Motto, Not Ours
• What’s the Chinese Word for Bing? Google Threatens to Leave China.

Facebook: The go-to place for public arguments

Section: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking, Websites

Chances are we’ve all witnessed it a few times before: people who take private arguments onto Facebook, making them public arguments.  It seems as if the website facilitates making even the pettiest of arguments into public arguments for all your friends to see.  It looks as if the phenomenon is becoming even more commonplace.

A recent New York Times article highlights a couple who take many of their arguments onto the social networking site, and the repercussions of such.  Bringing such arguments onto Facebook puts friends into strange positions, as I’m sure many of us are aware.  The question seems to be whether outsiders should become involved or not.  Sure, some people put those arguments online to get validation that they are right, but choosing sides, or telling someone they’re wrong can be difficult.  According to the NY Times article, such arguments can even cause some people to alienate their friends, or let friends believe couples shouldn’t be together if they argue in public so much.

Sometimes these arguments can be the only contact we have with certain people, which brings about some interesting dilemmas.  We still haven’t exactly decided on the proper etiquette for how to deal with arguments on Facebook or other social networks.  The article brings in experts to claim part of it is because of the “significant degradation of our regard for marriage” that we have as a society.  Not really being qualified to speak to such matters, I can say that perhaps etiquette should be established as to how to bring arguments into public, if they should even be public over Facebook.

Read [New York Times]

Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Michael Musto on the joys of urban cycling

[He] has been riding a bike in New York City for more than 25 years, long before it was fashionable or we had bike lanes and cycletracks. Musto has never had a driver's license, and he tells us the bicycle is an advantage in his profession. Although he's had his share of bikes stolen (he recommends buying a used, cheap bike), he has nothing but positivity and praise for the velocipede.

Streetfilms: Michael Musto, Il Ciclista Dolce (Streetsblog)


Source: Boing Boing | 18 Mar 2010 | 7:39 pm

Viacom, YouTube air dirty laundry in legal battle (AP)

AP - Viacom Inc. and Google Inc.'s YouTube site began airing each other's dirty laundry Thursday, providing a tantalizing peek at the wheeling and dealing that triggered a bitter battle over the copyright laws governing the Internet.

EULA for Chinese takeout food at Dubai hotel

Above, a "food indemnity form" for takeaway food at a hotel in Dubai. Tweeted by CNN International correspondent Atia Awabi, who is based in Afghanistan.


Source: Boing Boing | 18 Mar 2010 | 7:30 pm

Comcast to begin 100 mbps residential broadband this year

Kudos to Comcast for embracing the year 2009. The nation’s largest—and quite possibly worst—ISP has finally committed itself to deploying 100 mbps broadband beginning this year. That will make the FCC happy, what with the loft goals it set with its National Broadband Plan. It’s also good news for people who know their way around things like Usenet—taps nose like a spy. Will it be affordable, though?

The big rollout will happen within the next 12 to 18 months. Most, if not all, of Comcast’s customers will be able to sign up for the super-fast service. You can thank DOCSIS 3.0 for that.

Price may be an issue. Right now, Comcast offers 100 mbps down/15 mbps up service to business customers in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area for $369 per month. There’s no way you’re going to convince residential customers in this economy to shell out nearly $400 a month for Internet access, no matter how fast—that’s the price of two car payments. Now you’d have to figure that not even Comcast would be that silly to charge that kind of money for residential Internet access. I don’t know what’s involved with business-level Internet access at Comcast, but presumably it comes with free ostrich egg omelets once a week.

For comparison’s sake, I already have 100 mbps Internet access from Cablevision, an ISP in the New York area. For $100 per month I get 101 (!) mbps down/15 mbps up. I am, in fact, able to max out my connection when using Usenet (I have Newsdemon). But a fair warning to people who think the Internet is magically going to fly once they hop aboard the 100 mbps train: it won’t. Sites like YouTube are still dog-slow, Gmail isn’t any faster than it is using your regular broadband connection. In a sense, you’re faster than what these sites can handle. That will change over time, of course, but don’t think getting 100 mbps is going to change your life if all you do is check your Facebook and watch the occasional YouTube clip.

It’s sorta weird: sites won’t upgrade their capacity until there’s enough people with super-fast connections to make it worth their while, and it may not be worth it to the average person to upgrade, and perhaps pay $100 per month, until it’s worth their while.

Piezo Crystals Harness Sound To Generate Hydrogen

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rentokil's misleading marketing is "brilliant"

And bafflement resulted:

I asked Rentokil for more details on what vehicles they had studied, where, and how, what was counted, how the bugs were collected, and so on. ... [but] No buses were studied, and no trains were studied either. Brands2Life and Rentokil both declined to show me ... Wherever it came from, these numbers did not come from measurements and counts, they are actually based on a "theoretical model".

That was Ben Goldacre at Bad Science. But what does he know? Misleading claims, it turns out, have an undeservedly bad rap! Massaged facts and scare tactics are effective promotional tools, according to someone representing themselves as the chief of a PR company, RMS:

Love it, love it, love it. Three things.

1) The initial 'scare' press release - brilliant. Did exactly what it was intended to - got published everywhere, got people talking and raised Rentokil's profile while conveying the message of what it does - KILL BUGS.

2) Everyone who's has been offended by the massaging of facts in that initial story appears to be in the marketing profession - surely you should know better. Consumers - yes, those people Rentokil is seeking to attract - will now be aware of the name and what it does. They will not be indulging themselves in theoretical/philosophical talk about the actual figures - they will be scared witless about bugs and moved to pick up the phone to Rentokil. Surely, all you marketeers out there get this?

RMS, however, is ethicy. Its website says "No fluff. No lies. No empty promises." What part of "surely you should know better" does this company not understand? Perhaps the part that knows the Advertising Standards Authority also "gets this."

The comment prior, similarly laudatory of Rentokil's ingenious 'spin, apologize, grovel' marketing strategy, oddly is signed with the name of another RMS client.

For its part, Rentokil no longer appears interested in innovative viral marketing. Its own official blog oscillates between "routine" maintenance downtime and increasingly prostrate apologies, one of which flatly states that the press release was "wrong and misleading."

Tech Equipment Tax Deduction Tips (PC World)

Scientists vibrate quantum drum to superpositional beat

You’ve probably heard about some quantum this-and-that where it was implied that certain particles can be here and there, or moving and not moving, simultaneously. “Splendid,” you said, disparagingly, as you adjusted your monocle, “that also explains my quantum state of simultaneously reading and not caring.” Oh, sir! How droll that was! You slay me. But you spoke the truth: on a practical level, who cares about a muon or something not being pin-downable on a scale so small that we have to build monstrous facilities just to observe?

Well, some scientists felt the same way, so they decided to implement quantum weirdness on a scale visible to the human eye: a “quantum drum” that they supercooled and then somehow both vibrated and did not vibrate. So…what did it look like? I don’t know, they don’t really say! What the hell, right?

It turns out that even at a (technically) visible level, in this case about 30 micrometers, an object in a state of quantum suspension can’t really be observed, per se. I think the amount of light it would take for us to see it would totally mess up the experiment. So the researchers had to trust their instruments. I know – these scientists and their instruments. I got your instrument right here, nerd.

[via Reddit]

An Experiment: Putting The Audience On Stage (For Real) At TechCrunch Disrupt

There are good things about conferences and there are bad things about conferences. One of the bad things is how little the audience gets to participate directly in the content being created. Sometimes there’s a question and answer period at the end of a panel where people line up at a microphone to ask questions. But that’s usually it. Other than booing and applause, and of course the back channel on Twitter, there’s not much of a feedback loop.

That’s partially a good thing, of course. A room full of 2,000 people all shouting their opinions on a topic isn’t much of anything except chaos. But sometimes there are people in the audience who have a really interesting perspective on a topic, or even know more about the topic than the people on stage.

The idea of an unconference has evolved over the years with Foo Camp and BAR Camp (and others) where the audience and the speakers are one. Those types of events are really rewarding, but they don’t work on a large scale single track event. Again, it would just be chaos.

A couple of years ago Dave Winer had the idea of putting people from the audience, literally, on stage (there’s a link out there somewhere but I can’t find it). As far as I know no one has ever really experimented with this yet. But we’re going to try it out at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York on May 24-26.

We’re going to leave an empty seat on stage for many of the group panels at TechCrunch Disrupt and invite someone from the audience to come up and participate. I’m not sure how exactly we’re going to do this yet. We could just ask for a volunteer from the audience right before the panel, for example. But a better way might be to take volunteers for the panels early on in the event and pre-screen them for interestingness, passion for the topic, knowledge, etc.

I particularly like the idea of including audience members in the group of experts who judge and comment on new startups launching.

I’m guessing some of the smartest things on stage will be said by these audience members. And it will certainly freshen the format. And I really like the idea of a panel of top experts in a field along with someone who may not have the resume, but certainly has the knowledge and opinions, to be up there too.

We’ll expand the discussion of this on the Disrupt blog over the coming weeks, and announce firmer plans closer to the event.

Uh-ohs! Canon’s 5D update pulled from e-shelves

Well, looks like that Canon 5D mk II update that was released a couple days ago has itself a couple faults. Seems that if you set sound recording to manual while using a C* dial setting, then turn the camera off, it’ll render your camera unable to record audio at all. There are two solutions: don’t install the update until they fix it, or set sound recording to auto.

We hope you have found this information informative.

Notifo Is A Simple Mobile Notifications Platform For Anything

I’m hopelessly addicted to Push Notifications on the iPhone. Unfortunately, the system is flawed, in that the more notifications you get, the worse the experience is because it can be hard to manage them all. And one reason I always have the iPhone on me, even when taking around an Android phone, is that there’s no good way to get my notifications on another device. A new startup may offer a solution for both of those problems.

Notifo is a Y Combinator-backed company launching today. While it’s currently only available as an iPhone app, the plan is to eventually roll out to all the major mobile platforms, starting with Android and BlackBerry soon. And while the current app may seem pretty barebones, the power resides underneath; it’s a platform.

Notifo’s API makes it very, very simple for any site to insert a few lines of code in their site and offer Push Notifications very quickly. There is no approval process, you simply insert the code and you’re good to go; your site is now notification-ready.

What’s great about this solution is that it’s creating a way to get all the notifications in one place, rather than having to manage a dozen (or in my case, more) apps all with their own notifications. This way, when you load up the Notifo app, you get a stream of all the notifications you’ve chosen to subscribe to. You could get notifications about new TechCrunch posts, or even when someone responds to a comment you made on TechCrunch, for example.

The idea is similar to one of my favorite iPhone apps, Boxcar, but again, this is more about the underlying idea of notification syndication. Boxcar is more about setting up and managing notifications across a range of services they choose — and it’s iPhone-only. Notifo should let you fairly easily set up notifications for just about anything, on any device.

While they wait for others to adopt the idea (so far, Listia has), Notifo set up a few services so people can use it with the iPhone right now. For example, Push.ly allows you to get notifications for all Twitter mentions of your name. And there is a simple March Madness final score notifier that has been giving me updates all day as tournament games end, with their final scores. You can also set alerts for when individual stocks hit certain prices.

And the service also allows you to send yourself timed alerts, which are easily set up from the Notifo website.

Notifo is the work of Chad Etzel, a developer who was formerly doing some work for Twitter.

You can find the free app in the App Store here.

Party people, wave your wristbands in the air

This cool Instructable teaches you how to build your own persistance of vision wristband, one of those things that spell a word when you swing it in front of someone fast enough. The device uses a Lilypad Arduino board and about eight 8 LEDs.

You actually have to program the board to get things to show up, which requires a bit of patience. However, it’s quite a cute illusion and, with enough patience, you can make your wristband say anything, if you catch my meaning.

Plastic Jungle Raises $7.4 Million for Gift Card Marketplace

Plastic Jungle, a marketplace for gift cards, has secured $7.4 million in Series B funding, led by Redpoint Ventures with Shasta Ventures Bay Partners, First Round Capital and other investors participating. This brings the company’s total funding to $13.4 million.

Plastic Jungle lets you buy, sell and exchange gift cards online. Instead of receiving cash for your gift card, Plastic Jungle also lets you trade the value in for an Amazon gift card or give your money to charity. Users can receive cash for unwanted gift cards for up to 92% of the unused balance and buy gift cards at up to a 30% discount. The company says that it will use the funds to accelerate product development and work on other ways to create supply and demand for gift cards on the site.

While Plastic Jungle didn’t reveal revenue numbers, the company’s CEO Garry Briggs says that its revenue is eight times more that what it was a year ago. Briggs also said that “millions” of dollars have flown through the marketplace since the company’s launch two years ago. Plastic Jungle faces competition from CardPool and others.

Accusations Fly in Viacom, YouTube Copyright Fight - Wired News

Reuters

Accusations Fly in Viacom, YouTube Copyright Fight Wired News Google deliberately weakened its copyright compliance standards after it acquired YouTube in 2006 so it “would profit from illegal downloads,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin once said, according to a Friday filing by Viacom in its ... Google, Viacom Sling Mud in YouTube Court FightPC World Google executives called YouTube a 'pirate' siteSan Jose Mercury News Viacom, Google trade accusations over YouTubeLos Angeles Times BBC News (blog) -San Francisco Chronicle -Wall Street Journal all 821 news articles »

Apple set to release 27-inch LED display, 12-core Mac Pro

12 cores may sound impressive, but as rumored, it’s likely just two of the latest six-core i7s working in tandem. Actually, now that I think about it, that is pretty impressive. I can’t think of who would need such ridiculous power and multi-threading, but I know my friends in ultra-HD video and effects can’t get enough Hz. I don’t know if programs like After Effects and Final Cut are really using OpenCL much yet, but that could be a major boost as well. However, as Apple Insider notes, the 980X is not meant to be used in a dual configuration, which would necessitate two motherboards. But hey, who knows? Apple is loco. We know this.

And hey, as long as you’re spending six or seven grand on a desktop, why not buy an insanely expensive, LED-backlit monitor as well? Apple should be dropping the 27″ version of their acclaimed Cinema Display series. Personally I’m a fan of the nice Dells that turn 90 degrees for portrait viewing, but I’m not going to trash talk on a perfectly good display like the Cinema.

The 24″ LED-lit display is a whopping $900, so you can expect this one to be significantly more. If they’re revealed at an event or some such, however, we might see a price drop on the 24″ in order to make the 27″ a logical jump at $1000. We’ll find out soon.

[via Gizmodo]

How I Survived My SXSW Keynote Interview

Alt Text: 'Final Fantasy,' Then and Now

Details Emerge On Futurama's "Rebirth" (and Return)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More News about Omidyar’s Peer News

I’m at the NewsMorphosis Conference in Hawaii today locked in a day of debates about the state of news quality and how the hell we find a business model to keep paying for it. It’s a big issue locally– earlier this year three of Hawaii’s five largest TV news stations merged operations and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is  merging with the other daily paper the Honolulu Advertiser, resulting in plenty of layoffs and general civic concern.

So it’s fitting that the conference ended with a talk by John Temple, the editor of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s new Peer News site, a test case in how the future of local news could work. And thankfully, we finally got a few more details on the site and the approach.

Temple was clear to say “there is no silver bullet” when it comes to fixing the media business, but also sees a great deal of hope in the volatility– this from the guy who was head of the now shuttered Rocky Mountain News, a paper that’s already gone through what so many dailies are dreading.

“We’re not trying to reinvent a local newspaper and put it on the Web,” he said. Indeed, the mission of Peer News doesn’t even contain the words “news” or “media” or “paper.” It’s simply “to create a new civic square.” Core to the development of Peer were three questions:

-What is the role of a free press in a democracy?

-How would you best fulfill that on a local level using all the tools available today?

-How do you do that in a sustainable way?

On content, the most interesting thing Temple talked about was doing away with “articles” as we know them. He criticized the static, episodic nature by which journalists have traditional covered news, challenging readers to hunt through archives for the information they want. Instead, Peer’s “building block” will be a page that’s always updated almost like Wikipedia, or as he put it, “something closer to a living history on a topic that changes as it develops.” There will no longer be a sense of “missing” an article, because the “articles” will be living things. That also addresses the critique that local news swarms around one issue, then moves on. “We’re not going to be hot topic driven,” Temple says. Going back to those questions, Temple says the role of a free press is to inform citizens so they can make intelligent decisions. “Let’s stop making it so difficult,” he said.

The other hallmark of Peer’s approach is what has made blogs popular– a sense of community. But it’s certainly a different approach. For one thing, Peer won’t have “reporters” in the classical sense, it will have “hosts” who help facilitate this civic square answering questions for the community.  “In this era, the fact that newspapers still rewrite press releases is an embarrassment,” Temple said. “We’re not going to be stenographers. I think that’s a downfall of journalism.”

But for a site that intends to be very community oriented, there was one big shocker: Peer will not have comments. “(Comments) descend into racism, hate, ugliness and reflect badly on news organizations that have them,” said Temple. Why? Because people do not have to show their faces when they comment so there’s no sense of responsibility, he argued. “We think anonymity is a huge problem when it comes to comments,” he said.

Temple also emphasized that the coverage would not pull punches: “We’re going to call things like we see them. We think there’s real value in taking a stand.”

So what about that business model? As Temple noted, there aren’t that many business models out there to chose from. Unlike most media sites, this will be a member site that people “value and will pay for.” He added “advertising would not be a key focus for us.”

Peer should be launching early next quarter, so we’ll be able to see more of these ideas in action soon. But it’s clear that the site– or “news service” as it prefers to call itself– is taking a markedly different approach from old and what we consider “new” media right now.

And with the benefit of some of these details, it seems less out of step for Omidyar to be starting this company. EBay, after all, was one of the first sites to powerfully leverage community on the Web, pioneering a lot of the systems of trust and reputation we still use today.

(More on Temple’s blog here.)

A Major Blow to Bluefin Tuna

Entertainment industry sours on term "pirate" -- too sexy

This has all the dishonesty of calling everything you don't like "terrorism" (or as my friend Ian Brown says, it's like rebranding jaywalking as "road rape").

"Piracy" sounds too sexy, say rightsholders

(Image: Pirate Cory, taken by Gordon Doctorow, Hallowe'en 1974)

Google looking to expand into TV?

Section: Video, HDTV, Web, Google

It comes at no surprise now when Google looks into expanding to new, sometimes completely different markets The newest possible market the company seems to be looking at is TV.  As more TVs have Internet connectivity, Google is hoping to get into the game before it gets left behind.

This new possibility doesn’t just include Google.  Intel, Sony and Logitech are mentioned as partners in the venture.  The venture would see Google set-top boxes running a form of Android, powered by Intel’s Atom chips.  It would also include a version of Chrome for web browsing on your TV.  The idea is to put Google into the Internet TV space, putting it’s ads up there before it has to fight to get in.  There will be potential specially made Android Apps for TVs, which would bring the Internet to your TV.  Of course it will make getting web content, like shows on Hulu and videos on YouTube, to your TV easier.

Its rumored that the Google TV box is being tested on the Dish Network.  What remains to be seen is if many would want the full Internet on their TV.  Also, Google would be running up against the Boxee Box which seems like it has the whole Internet TV thing nailed down already It’s hard to say much about the whole idea without seeing anything straight from Google, but it might be harder to win over some people who are already set with Boxee, Pop Box, tv, or any other set top box that can access the Internet on the TV.

Read [New York Times]

Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

YouTube: Viacom secretly posted its videos even as they sued us for not taking down Viacom videos

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Given Viacom's own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out. The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube -- and every Web platform -- to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong.

(Image: Kara Swisher and Philippe Dauman, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Joi's photostream)

On the Call: Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein (AP)

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1st Trial Under California Spam Law Slams Spammer

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook Co-Founder Hughes Launches Philanthropic Venture Jumo [Voices]

By Geoffrey A. Fowler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook and director of online organizing for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, unveiled his new project on Thursday: a Web site for charitable organizations. The site is called Jumo, which means “together in concert” in Yoruba, a West African language.

“We are trying to re-imagine how individuals connect to organizations that are working the change the world on the Web,” said New York-based Hughes, who will be focusing his efforts on the project full time in addition to some light continuing duties at Facebook.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Review: Squishy 'Repo Men' Sticks Shiv in Organ-Extraction Action

YC-Funded Data Marketplace Is An Amazon For Structured Information

There has always been a vibrant ecosystem around financial data. Financial institutions, such as hedge funds and investment banks, pay thousands of dollars for quantitative tabular data (financial data in spreadsheets). But now, the web has provided a mechanism to distribute and publish large amounts of data, but much of this data is raw (meaning, it’s not built into a spreadsheet format) and hard to find in a Google search. An finding the data, and then putting the data into a format that is easy to digest can be a laborious task. Y Combinator’s Data Marketplace is hoping to change this by providing a platform where financial professionals can request data sets and then data aggregators/consultants can then find and format the appropriate data.

Founded by two former analysts at investment banks, Data Marketplace is essentially the middleman in helping financial organizations find quality data on the web. Users can submit requests to Data Marketplace, and the site will send those requests to its database of 200,000 data aggregators, programmers, and consultants who specialize in finding financial data and essentially transferring it into a readable format.

Providers then post data resources to Data Marketplace, provide descriptive metadata, and also set a price. The stored metadata is used to help consumers find relevant data through traditional search engines and when browsing Data Marketplace. Data can also be posted on the site without a request, that users can search for. For example, here’s a data set of a complete list of Wal-Mart Store Locations, which is priced at $30.

Prices range for data, and can be anywhere from $5 to several thousand dollars. Data Marketplace co-founder Matt Hodan tells me he spent $10,000 in on year on data at one of the financial organizations he worked for. Data Marketplace takes a 14% cut of each transaction on the site, from the provider. Data Marketplace handles all of the payment processing and allows users to directly purchase and download resources in an accessible format online.

Hodan says that current models for selling and distributing data online are inefficient and expensive for financial organizations. Users only pay for what they need as opposed to plans or buying bundles of information. And providers don’t have many platforms where they can sell their data in a marketplace.

Data Marketplace is similar in some ways to Factual, which is a Wikipedia-like site for open data, and InfoChimps, which takes a more collaborative approach to open data.

High-Tech Research Moving From US To China

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Will Soon Offer A Way For Users To Opt-Out Of Google Analytics Tracking

Some people don’t like the idea of Google having any data about them. Unfortunately, if you visit a site tracked by Google Analytics (and chances are you hit several each day), you have no choice. But soon, you might.

Google is testing a browser-based opt-out solution for Google Analytics, they briefly note today on the Google Analytics blog. Specifically, this would be a “global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics.” They note that engineers are finalizing and testing the funtionality.

How exactly this will work globally across all browsers remains to be seen. While Firefox and Chrome allow for easy use of plug-ins, Internet Exploerer and Safari are a bit more complicated. Still, if you’re a user who really cares about Google not tracking this information about you, it will probably be worth it to you to install this thing.

Of course, the other question is what this means for site owners. While it’s unlikely that a lot of users would install something like this, what if they did? That could drastically cripple the entire point of Google Analytics.

[image: Paramount Pictures]

[thanks Michael]

Red River Flooding Brings Nostalgia

A look at Windows Phone's 'smart links' - CNET

DailyTech

A look at Windows Phone's 'smart links' CNET LAS VEGAS--When it comes to copy and paste, Microsoft argues that there's a better way of doing things on the phone. Rather than include the feature in Windows Phone 7 Series devices (something many users say they want), Microsoft argues ... Unitasking in a sandbox: Windows Phone 7 Series' philosophyArs Technica Windows Phone 7 Lacks Flash SupportInformationWeek Windows Phone 7 Series gets Timotei rinseRegister NetworkWorld.com -DailyTech -PC Magazine all 951 news articles »

Google Slams Viacom For Secret YouTube Uploads

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Evolution of Fairness Driven by Culture, Not Genes

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Gadgetell review: Punch Plugs by Rockford Fosgate -Something actually different in headphones

Section: Audio, Accessories, Headphones, Portable Audio, Features, Originals

If you are like me, your eyes start to glaze over when people start talking about headphones.  There are too many in the marketplace and they seem to be all the same.  Punch Plugs will make you stop thinking that.  The folks at Rockford Fosgate sent me their new Punch Plugs, which just started shipping this month and there are not one, but two major breakthroughs with these.  And these two breakthroughs make these headphones to put on your list.

Cords

The Punch Plugs use a flat cord and it’s awesome.  The cord just lies flat, doesn’t tangle and looks pretty cool.  Unlike all my other headphones, the Punch Plug cord isn’t a snargly mess.  You’d pay $70+ more than the Punch Plugs to get Monster’s version of the flat cord.  Fosgate has this dialed and it is pure genius.

Sound

Companies are always sending headphones to bloggers.  This gave me the chance to put the Punch Plugs through a good test.  The result?  Punch Plugs blew them away.

From Bose to Radius to Apple, none could compare with the rich, full sound from the Punch Plugs.  I tested one in each ear and cycled through, keeping the winner in that ear and repeated on the other ear.  The Bose are my goto set and the Punch Plugs have me rethinking this.  They sound that good. 

Style

The earphones remind me of Monster’s Tour headphones.  They are quite stylish, work extremely well and cost just $99.  The Punch Plugs ship with 4 different ear tips so you can find the best fit.  I found the smallest ones to work best for me. 

Wind.  uh oh.

My first test was a brisk hike at the beach.  The wind was cranking and when walking into the wind, the noise overshadowed the music.  After some testing, I found the smallest ear tip made the wind noise less intrusive by a large degree, but it was still there.

I called into tech support and found I seem to be alone with this issue.  The tech did note they’d heard from some joggers that the Punch Plugs fit so well, there was some stethoscope-like feedback when running, but I’ve found that with most headphones. 

I had a friend try them in the wind as well and she had the same issue with wind noise.  I am not sure what to make of it.  The smallest ear tip reduced it a whole lot, but it was still there and is non-existent on my Bose.

Summary

Overall, the Punch Plugs are impressive.  The near perfect sound complete with a cord that doesn’t tangle you up is a great concept and at $99, many will find Nirvana with the Punch Plugs.  If listening to music on trains, the gym or inside is your thing, I can’t recommend them enough.  If the outdoors is your playground, it might take some experimentation to get a wind noise free sound.

Product page: [Rockford Fosgate]

Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Boeing Completes Design of Shipboard Superlaser

Accusations Fly in Viacom, YouTube Copyright Fight

ATS Corporation Schedules Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2009 Financial Results Conference Call and Announces Annual Meeting of Stockholders

Spring 2010 Xbox 360 update adds USB flash drive support

FROM GAMERTELL - A future Xbox 360 system update will allow users to save game data onto USB storage devices, as well as Memory Units and the hard drive. Each USB drive will be able to have 16gb of space dedicated to Xbox 360 data.
MORE »

Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Coming Soon, Smartphone-Based Banking

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Court Records Illuminate Viacom-YouTube Battle

First Look: Kindle for Mac - Wired News

Globe and Mail

First Look: Kindle for Mac Wired News Amazon has at last released Kindle for Mac, which means you can now read your Kindle books on most any device. It joins the iPhone, PC Blackberry and, of course, the Kindle itself. Like the PC version, Kindle for Mac is a bare-bones ... Amazon Quietly Releases Kindle eBook App For MacITProPortal Amazon Launches Kindle For MacInformationWeek Apple, Amazon in Last-Minute Wrangling Ahead of iPad's LaunchThe Mac Observer NorthJersey.com -Top Tech Reviews -CNET all 268 news articles »

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Court: Cyberbullying Threats Not Protected Speech

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Evernote improves note emailing functionality with new tag support

Section: Computers, Software / Applications, Web, Web Apps

Once again Evernote has added some additional, and useful functionality to their cloud-based note service. This time the extra feature comes into play with the existing ability to email your notes. And for those unfamiliar, each Evernote user has a secret email address that allows you to email a note into the service. You can find your secret Evernote email address under the Account Info section in the desktop versions of Evernote. Additionally that address is under Settings in Evernote Web. It should look something like this [username].12345@m.evernote.com.

Now with that out of the way, lets get back to the new tagging functionality. The emailing a note feature now has support for tags and the ability to place that email note into a specific notebook. Of course, there are some limits at this time, notably that you cannot create new notebooks. But that aside, you can email your note and have it tagged and added to the appropriate notebook by using nothing more than the subject line in your email.

To properly tag and route your notes, just use the # and @ symbols. The # symbol will allow you to tag your notes and the @ symbol is used for the notebook.

Using the subjeft from the Evernote blog post;

Subject: Trip to Florida @travel #expense report

This would place a note called “Trip to Florida” in your travel notebook and have it tagged with the keyword of “expense.

Of course the hard part here is remembering the names of your existing notebooks and tags. After all I use Evernote so I dont have to remember.

Read [Evernote Blog]

Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Man Accused Of Hacking Into Cars Over The Internet

Pay to Play: Some iPhone App Sites Demand Money for Reviews

If you can’t pitch the press, pay them. That’s the proposition some review sites have for publicity-starved iPhone developers.

Several websites dedicated to iPhone app reviews are requesting payments from developers in exchange for writeups of their apps, Wired.com has learned. Those payments are not always clearly disclosed to readers, and the practice hasn’t received much discussion outside of gaming blogs.

Soliciting money in exchange for a product review is not illegal, but the practice should raise questions about the credibility and independence of the review sites, critics say.

“They prey on people who need exposure,” said Oliver Cameron, developer of the popular iPhone app Postman, who has avoided pitching his apps to sites that request payment for reviews. “It strikes me as a paid ad, really. They never seem to actually ‘review’ it.”

The two sites that were most frequently mentioned by programmers who contacted Wired.com were TheiPhoneAppReview.com and AppCraver.com. Both sites appear in the top four Google search results for the search term “iPhone app review.”

With more than 150,000 apps in the iPhone App Store, rising above the crowd is a major challenge for developers. Getting a good review on the web can help drive sales and that, in turn, can raise an app’s profile within the App Store. While apps that earn their creators hundreds of thousands of dollars are rare, they do exist, and many developers seek publicity in hopes of achieving this dream.

Driven by that demand, app review websites are offering to “expedite” reviews — that is, bring apps to the front of the review queue — in exchange for a fee. But at least one site, ThePhoneAppReview.com, has gone even further, and threatened to shun products whose developers haven’t paid for reviews.

The iPhone App Review told independent developer Michael D’Ulisse it would not review his app Pocket Labeler at all unless he paid a fee of $25. The demand is at odds with the website’s About section, which implies that fees only apply to reviews that are expedited. D’Ulisse provided a copy of an e-mail from a site editor:

I would be interested in writing a review and having it on our website (www.theiphoneappreview.com). We do charge a $25 fee for reviews (this is used to compensate our authors), so the decision is yours. If you want a review written, but have no promo codes left, I can purchase the app and add the price of the app into your invoice. Let me know either way. Thanks!

–Sarah Parker
The iPhone App Review

D’Ulisse noted that on a separate occasion in November 2009, he received the same e-mail response from The iPhone App Review when he distributed press releases for his app 2,001 Easy Gifts.

“So you’ve got a reviewer, and she’s an editor at the site who wants to use my app personally but will not post a review on her site unless I give her $25,” D’Ulisse wrote. “What happened to journalistic integrity?”

The iPhone App Review’s editor-in-chief Shaun Campbell said he was unaware that his site’s writers were requesting payment in exchange for reviews. He explained that the reviewers work autonomously, so he is unsure of how they’re paid by app creators. As of this writing, The iPhone App Review’s About section remains unchanged, stating that fees only apply to expedited app reviews.

“I have never once sent a request for a fee to a developer to review their app,” Campbell told Wired.com. “That is not our policy, which is why that is not stated in the About.”

Campbell said that his site’s policy is to offer expedited service in exchange for a fee because with the gigantic number of apps in the App Store, it would be an “impossible task to review all the apps we receive, paid or unpaid.” He added that very few talented writers would be willing to review iPhone apps for free and that providing payment ensures quality work.

“The iPhone App Review is not a PR charity,” Campbell said. “We’re a business, and like in any business, there are costs that need to be recovered.”

Requiring payment for product reviews is not illegal, but the Federal Trade Commission has frowned on the practice. The commission believes a paid review can easily be the same as a paid advertisement, and consumers as a result may be misled into purchasing a product based on a falsely positive evaluation that was bought.

To address the issue, the FTC in October 2009 published revised guidelines governing endorsements for bloggers, requiring bloggers to provide disclosure whenever a review is written in exchange for money or gifts.

Rich Cleland of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said he could not comment on specific websites, because they must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. He said that in general, so long as payments are disclosed clearly and accurately, it is not considered misleading to the public.

“If a consumer knows that a producer pays for the review to appear, the consumer can make up their own mind to what extent that affects the credibility of the review,” Cleland told Wired.com in a phone interview. “From our perspective, the primary issue is not the payment but the disclosure of the payment.”

Still, paid reviews should raise questions about a publication’s credibility, he added.

“It’s reasonable to assume that a significant number of consumers wouldn’t give the same level of credibility to something they thought was a paid review versus something they thought was an independent review,” Cleland said.

Every time a review is written in exchange for pay, it should be explicitly disclosed on that review, Cleland said. Paid reviews on The iPhone App Review do not include such a disclosure in the text of the review.

AppCraver.com also seeks payment for expedited reviews. Lore Sjöberg, Wired.com’s Alt Text columnist, said he submitted his iPhone app The Cyborg Name Decoder to AppCraver.com for review, and in response the site offered to expedite a review of his app for $150. The letter included a promise to contact Sjöberg “prior to publishing a review that scores lower than 5/10.”

The e-mail also offered Sjöberg the opportunity to buy an advertisement on the site, along with the promise that every advertised app would also receive an editorial review.

AppCraver did not respond to Wired.com’s request for comment. However, it’s worth noting that AppCraver has, in some reviews, disclosed when reviews are “expedited,” providing a link to the site’s policy about paid expedited reviews, which states, “Simply put, an Expedited Review is one where the developer paid to move to the front of the line. Developers can NOT buy a good score.”

Not all iPhone app review sites require money or gifts in exchange for write-ups. The creators of app review sites 148Apps and Slide to Play authored a set of ethical standards called Organization for App Testing Standards, or OATS, that they hope other sites will commit and adhere to.

“Steve and I created OATS out of our concern for the lack of ethics when we started seeing more and more of these sites,” said Jeff Scott of 148Apps. “While we strive to stick to standard practices of editorial integrity, there are others that seem to operate under a very different set of morals,” said Scott.

Slide to Play’s Steve Palley said paid reviews are detrimental to the community of iPhone developers and customers.

“Paid reviews damage our entire ecosystem because they harm consumers, period, full stop,” Palley told Wired.com in an e-mail. “People who think they are reading objective reviews are going to be disappointed after taking paid ‘advice.’”

Added Palley, “We decided that we needed to do something to put a stop to it.”

The FTC’s Cleland said that if blogs are not clearly or honestly disclosing payments for reviews, consumers can file complaints to the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or by calling 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357).

Update: 2:30 p.m. PDT — Matt Marquez, a Mac Directory editor, has published a post about his experience applying for a job at TheiPhoneAppReview, in which Campbell said all writers were required to charge a fee to developers for reviews.

See Also:

• Apple Expels 1000 Apps From Store After Developer Scam
• iPhone Developer May Be Bribing Reviewers
• For the iPhone’s App Store, Quantity Really Does Matter
• With More Than Enough Apps, Apple Pushes for Quality
• The State of Mobile App Stores Summarized in Charts

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Pay or Fail: Some iPhone App Sites Demand Money for Reviews

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Confirmed: HTC will announce at least one device next week at CTIA

The stars are all starting to align around the launch of the HTC Supersonic happening at CTIA. If yesterday’s report from the Wall Street Journal wasn’t enough for you, check out this line pulled directly from CTIA press materials:

HTC will be showing a number of new and favorite HTC devices –including the recently debuted HTC HD2 on T-Mobile and an unnamed device that will be unveiled for the first time at CTIA.

HTC doesn’t really launch very many feature phones, and their last few phones have done nothing but set the bar higher – so chances are, this one will be something good. If it’s not the Supersonic, it’s the Incredible; either way, I think we’d be happy.

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Nexus One Heads to Sprint - PC World

The Guardian

Nexus One Heads to Sprint PC World Sprint says Google's Nexus One smartphone is headed to its network, but is mum on pricing and exactly when it will be available. Sprint becomes the fourth US carrier to offer the Android OS phone. Earlier this week AT&T announced it will also sell its ... Google's Nexus One Trademark Application RejectedTechtree.com Google Denied "Nexus One" TrademarkWashington Post Google Nexus One For Sprint Coming Soon, Carrier SaysChannelWeb InformationWeek -Computerworld -DVICE all 994 news articles »

Bad News: Android 2.1 update for the Motorola Droid has been delayed

Bad news, everyone!

Remember that Droid update that was supposed to hit today? The one that was supposed to bring Android 2.1 and all of its wonderful features? Yeah, erm, about that..

It’s been delayed.

Seemingly out of the blue, messages on the Verizon employee intranet changed from “Hurray! The update is coming on 3/18″ to big, red fonted messages of “OH GOD NEVERMIND WE’LL UPDATE YOU AS SOON AS POSSIBLE”.

So what happened? Last minute bugs? Distribution errors? Is Verizon toying with our emotions? We may never know for sure. The one thing we do know, straight from the horses mouth: “The 3/18 software update will not happen as planned. ”

Boy Genius got his mitts on the shot below, confirming the delay:

Review: BugMe for iPhone

I’m not a Getting Things Done kind of guy. I’ve never understood people who live and die by their Franklin Planners. I’ve never understood the huge proliferation of scheduling and reminder applications for the various computing platforms I’ve used over the years. I’ll reveal my secret at the end, but for now we’re going to take a look at BugMe, a reminder application now available for the iPhone.

BugMe is simple enough: it’s basically a note taking application. The iPhone version is all touch — no virtual keyboard. Draw, scribble, doodle, and handwrite notes on your iPhone. They get saved onto a virtual corkboard. You can drag individual notes around to manually arrange them, or you can shake your iPhone to have the re-arranged for you.

You can create notes on various colored papers, or you can use (or take) a photo to use as a background for your note. Obviously, you could just use a photo with no note on top of it as a visual reminder, if you want.

Notes can be assigned a due date, which will allow you to receive a reminder of the note when it is due. Notes only work on the iPhone, not iPod Touch or iPad, and since they rely on push notifications they only work when you have network access. From their iPhone product page:

We must stress that you’ll need to have internet access on your phone to make alarms work and that you should use these alarms as casual reminders – not for really-important-disaster-if-forgotten tasks! Unfortunately, alarms are not supported on the iPod Touch or iPad at this time.

One of the much-toted features of the BugMe iPhone app is the ability to send a note to your iPhone home screen. Indeed, at first blush this seems like a really nice idea: if the note is front and center on your phone, you’re much more likely to remember it! Unfortunately, the process for actually adding an item to your home screen is convoluted:

I don’t blame BugMe for this. They’re going the best they can within the confines of what Apple permits. It just doesn’t seem like such a great idea, to me, to be jump through this hoop in order to put an icon on my home screen to remind me to do something.

You can also push your notes out to Twitter, if you want the entirety of the Internet to remind you to do something.

At ninety nine cents, BugMe for iPhone isn’t going to break the bank, so if this is the only way you’re going to remember to buy flowers for your mom, you can get on with your life.

As for me, I simply add items to the regular iPhone calendar. It’s decidedly low-tech, doesn’t rely on additional applications, and works for me. The fewer apps I need to actually get on with my productivity, the better off I am, I think.

Don't Reset Facebook Password

Rumor: Palm release on AT&T delayed till the summer

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile

This latest bit on Palm is a bit of a rumor based on a rumor, but here goes. According to Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, the launch of Palm with AT&T has been delayed until sometime in June or July. Of course, the delay of the launch is based on a rumor that Palm is even coming to AT&T in the first place. Yup, although that is expected, it has never been officially announced.

“Beyond generally lacklustre handset sales in the current quarter, which are already reflected in our previous estimates, we have recently learned that AT&T has delayed the planned launch of the Pre and Pixi on its network from April to June/July,” Misek writes.

The reasons behind the delay. Well, those include the obvious in that the Pre and Pixi have not been doing as well as everyone expected hoped. Additionally, AT&T is also noted as having “cited a long list of technical issues with the Pre and Pixi.” And to add a little extra bad news to that, it was also noted that AT&T has decided to reduce the marketing budget for the webOS based devices when they do launch.

In the end, I think it will be good for Palm when the Pre and Pixi are available with AT&T, but I would also imagine that a budget cut in terms of marketing is not what Palm was hoping to hear.

Read [All Things Digital]

Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Copy and paste coming to Windows Phone 7 later down the road?

Microsoft has taken a very Apple-esque approach to the development and launch of Windows Phone 7. Now, before anyone tears into me in the comments with some crazy knee-jerk response, think about it for a second. Developed in the utmost of secrecy? Check. Closed-wall app store? Check. Minimalist user interface? Check. Apple also has a tendency to speak out against things that their product doesn’t do (Steve Jobs, January 16th 2008: “People don’t read anymore!” Steve Jobs, January 27th 2010: “Hey guys! Check out the iPad!”), all whilst secretly working on it behind closed doors.

If the latest rumor to come out of Internetsville rings true, it looks like Microsoft is taking the same approach with Copy and Paste in Windows Phone 7.

Microsoft already told us waaaay back in February that there would be no Copy/Paste in WP7 – but now that they’ve confirmed it, everyone’s flipping out. Every blogger within reach of their MacBook Pro shot off an e-mail to Microsoft asking for more details, and they essentially told everyone the same thing: No, we’re not working on copy and paste.

Well, at least one guy is saying that’s not the case. Long Zheng of istartsomething is saying that someone “close to the den” (i.e someone at Microsoft) has shared the low-down on copy/paste with him: Yes, it’s coming — they’re just not sure how to implement it yet.

Of course, rumors like this are bound to happen. Holographic sex robots are coming eventually – they’re just not sure how to make them yet. In this case, however, it seems likely that we’ll see it sooner than later; Microsoft has supported copy/paste in past releases, and much of their word-editing, enterprise-emailin’ userbase relies on it.

[Via Electronista]

Google, Intel, Sony to join forces on 'Google TV' - Times Online

Reuters

Google, Intel, Sony to join forces on 'Google TV' Times Online Google will attempt to change the way people use their television sets by developing a new platform to bring the best of the internet to TV screens, according to reports. The search giant is believed to be working with Sony and Intel to develop a ... Google TV Coming to Make Your TV a Larger ComputereWeek Google Working With Intel, Sony on TV Project: ReportWired News Google, Intel, Sony Plan Android TV PlatformInformationWeek PC World -Ars Technica -Computerworld all 436 news articles »

Verizon to launch the HTC Incredible within 2 weeks?

Oh, HTC Incredible, you just can’t stay off the Internet, can you? We’ve seen you in not one, but two series of spy shots, we’ve seen you leak out in alternative color schemes — hell, we’ve even spotted you roaming around Verizon’s inventory system. We sure are seeing a lot of you — and you know what? We don’t mind one bit.

According to the latest leak, we should be seeing a lot more of the HTC Incredible — as in, in the hands of the general public — within two weeks.

The word comes from DailyTech, who mentions nearly in passing that they’ve “confirmed that the HTC Incredible was supposed to begin to arrive at Verizon Wireless stores in two weeks”. It’s a fitting time, really; CTIA is just next week, so this could be Verizon going all-in on the blind to counter whatever the other carriers might have cooking up.

To recap, the Incredible is allegedly packing a 1 Ghz Snapdragon chip (clocked down to 768Mhz for the sake of battery life), an 8 megapixel , and 512 MB of RAM. HTC’s getting a bit experimental with this one, moving away from their generally flat and smooth surfaces to a hard-lined, blocky design on the battery cover. What say you, lovely reader?

Commodore name returns to the keyboard PC, but this is not a 64

Section: Computers

The Commodore name has made another return, and it has come in a somewhat similar form as an older Commodore 64. Of course, this latest version is more powerful, and also alot less interesting than its older countrepart. But maybe I am saying that because I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Commodore 64 as it was one of my favorite and first real computing machines as a kid. I can also say that this will most likely not keep anyone from buying or at least considering the Eee Keyboard either.

Anyway, the latest PC in the Commodore lineup is a full computer in a keyboard. Feature wise it is sporting an Intel Core 2 Duo or Core Quad processor, optical drive, built-in card reader and touchpad. Additionally it will come with a full range of ports including USB, ethernet, VGA, DVI and serial. Yup it is expected to have a serial port, do people still use those?

Anyway, as of now the Commodore is not yet available, nor is there an expected price. That said, it has a Commodore name, but its not quite the same. Maybe someone can build an keyboard style PC in the original 64. That I would buy.

Read [Commodore USA] Via [Engadget]

Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

UN Rejects Bans on Tuna, Polar Bear Trading

Get ready to lose your mind: Star Wars: Light Saber Duel iPhone App, now with Bluetooth

Oh man, strap yourself in for a complete mind-freak. THQ Wireless will release next month Star Wars: Light Saber Duel, an iPhone App that works with Bluetooth. You can see where this is going. Since it works with Bluetooth, you’ll be able to duel your other iPhone-owning friends. Adios, productivity.

You can almost picture all the videos that will be posted all over the Internet. It’s a real shame that this wasn’t released in time for SXSWi, because I think the whole conference would have stopped functioning. People at the digg party flailing about, people trying to Lightsaber duel the bouncer who wouldn’t let them into the Facebook party, and so on.

No idea how much the App will cost, but I imagine THQ Wireless could charge, like, $100 and people would still buy it in droves.

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Research finds Facebook is where the news is at

Section: Web, Websites, Google

If you’re bored online and want to find some interesting news happening around the world, would you check out Twitter, Facebook, or Google News?  If you have accounts and are accustomed to all three services, chances are you would probably pick Twitter.  Twitter allows users to post anything they want, and has been cited as breaking news every so often, but it turns out, people are more likely to head over to Facebook and Google News before Twitter to find news. 

Hitwise has conducted research on where people go to find breaking news and coming in at third place is Facebook, while Google News holds at a steady eleventh place, and Twitter at a modest thirty-ninth place. In addition, only 0.14% of Twitter’s traffic leads to news and media websites, while 3.64% of Facebook’s traffic goes to news and media sites, and Google

The same report shows that Twitter accounts for less than 0.14 percent of the traffic driven to news and media sites. By comparison, Facebook drives 3.64 percent and Google 1.27 percent of their traffic goes to such sites.  Even though Twitter is often touted as a major news source, most of the upstream traffic goes to Social Networking websites and Entertainment news.  Entertainment news definitely makes sense as many athletes and celebrities have Twitter accounts.  It is important to note that upstream visits from Twitter to news and media sites has increased by 54% over the last year. 

As Twitter becomes a reputable source and its popularity reaches the likes of Facebook and Google News, I imagine it will be up there with Facebook and Google News because it is definitely a great medium to break stories, especially by everyday people. 

Read [Venturebeat]

Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Giant Sequoia Tree Rings Show Longest Fire History

Prescribed Burns May Help Reduce Carbon Footprint

High-Speed Camera Scans Books in Seconds

Professor Ishikawa Komuro’s Tokyo lab is better known for robot hands that can dribble and catch balls and spin pencils between their fingers. Now, two researchers have taken this speedy sensing tech and applied it to the ripping of paper books.

Books are different from other kinds of media, like music and movies — it’s very hard to get them into a computer. There is no equivalent of CD or DVD rippers like iTunes or Handbrake. This not only makes piracy laborious, it also stops you from turning your own books into e-books.

This high-speed scanner changes that, at least if you have the room and tech skills to build one. By using a high-speed camera that shoots at 500 frames per second, lab workers Takashi Nakashima and Yoshihiro Watanabe can scan a 200-page book in under a minute. You just hold the book under the camera and flip through the pages as if shuffling a deck of cards. The camera records the images and uses processing power to turn the odd-shaped pictures into flat, rectangular pages on which regular OCR (optical character recognition) can be performed.

The technique is unlikely to be coming to the home anytime soon (although ripping a book by flipping it in front of your notebook’s webcam would be pretty awesome), but it could certainly speed up large scanning efforts like Google’s book project.

Superfast Scanner Lets You Digitize a Book By Rapidly Flipping Pages [IEEE Spectrum]

High-Speed Robot Hand Demonstrates Dexterity and Skillful Manipulation [Hizook]

See Also:

• DIY Book Scanners Turn Your Books Into Bytes
• 500 Pages–Per-Hour Book Scanner From Atiz Released
• Google Books Adds Workers’ Hands to Classics

High-Speed Camera Scans Books in Seconds

China will soon count more mobile Web users than there are people in the US

Amazon releases Kindle app for Mac OS X

Section: Computers, Software / Applications, Gadgets / Other, ebooks

Amazon has steadily been releasing apps for various platforms, and the latest is for the Mac. The app itself comes as a free download, of course using the Kindle store will cost a few bucks depending on the book you choose. As far as which Mac users will be able to take advantage, well, the Kindle for Mac software requires an Intel based Mac running OS X 10.5 or later. Otherwise the app comes sporting the same features that Kindle users have come to love and expect including Whispersync. And in the end, this makes just one more place that Kindle readers will be able to ‘pick up’ a book and enjoy it from where they left off.

Read [Amazon]

Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Google TV: Google, Sony, Intel Team-Up to Make Television

Your next TV could be a Google TV, made by Sony and powered by Intel chips. The three companies have teamed up to build what will be called the Google TV, essentially a big-screen living-room computer.

The TV project, according to the New York Times, is still under wraps, but that hasn’t stopped the details from leaking. The GTV will be based on the Android OS, and come in the form of both a set-top box and actual TV-sets. There will be regular television, of course, but also Hulu, YouTube and other web-video sources, as well as games and apps for social networking.

It makes so much sense we wonder why we didn’t see it coming. TV is one of the few advertising markets Google isn’t yet in, the company has an OS ready to go, and Google’s simple UI designs are perfect for couch-surfing. The Google TV will even have the Chrome browser built-in.

The reason for a partnership with Intel is pretty obvious — we expect the TV will use some form of Atom chip. But why would Sony get involved? According to the NYT, Sony sees it as a competitive advantage in a very difficult market. It’s right. Who wouldn’t buy a TV with Google inside?

The Google TV appears to be close. Developer tools are expected in the next two months, and Logitech has reportedly been approached to make peripherals such as speakers and a QWERTY-equipped remote. This could be huge, and a further blow to the PC industry. If you have the internet in your television, and a tablet appliance like the iPad to carry around, who needs a desktop or even a laptop computer?

Google and Partners Seek TV Foothold [NYT]

TV Photo: Sony

Photo illustration: Charlie Sorrel

First Look: Kindle for Mac

Windows Phone 7 Series Tablet Concept

Umang Dokey’s Windows 7 Phone Series tablet concept is rather enticing, and it even manages to feel genuinely like a Microsoft product, with its mixture of impossible sci-fi concepts (3D video conferencing) and gray office mundanity (a keyboard).

The (non-embeddable) video shows the slim device in action, though it’s all computer generated graphics, as the device doesn’t actually exist. The keyboard is also a fold-out stand, depending on how far you rotate it from its hole in the back (and if you do decide to go all QWERTY, the rest of the unit will surely just topple backwards). The two webcams sit far apart on either side of the 8-inch touch-screen, and when used to make 3D would probably give you the viewpoint of Admiral Ackbar. The Bezel is really too small to let you hold the device without covering the screen with a thumb, and around the back are a couple of recessed joysticks for gaming. It looks lovely, and would probably be awful to use.

But the biggest takeaway from the demo video is that Windows Mobile 7 (sorry, but the official name is too much of a mouthful: just look at that headline up there) is perfect for a touch-screen tablet, with all its floaty, scrolling UI elements. This is what Microsoft should be working on, not some awful Windows 7 tablet.

Tablet Concept [Umang Dokey via da Giz]

See Also:

• It's Not Easy to Make a Tablet, Stantum Slate PC Proves
• HP's Windows 7 Slate Strikes at the iPad

The new WinPho7 promo: Doot dee doot

From: The Windows Phone 7 Team
To: The Windows Phone 7 Advertising Gnomes

After months of deliberation, we hereby present the master plan for all modern mobile commercials.

To acquire:
Rights to Feist instrumental break
Cute woman with curly hair (personable)
Handsome, rugged man in vaguely military but alternative shirt
Record shop (build)
Shot-for-shot outdoor location list for all McDonald’s commercials

Plot:
1. Woman sends messages
2. Woman uses “Facebook” (a social networking site. This site is unavailable from internal Microsoft workstations. Use a “public access point” to view it. DO NOT CREATE AN ACCOUNT.)
3. Woman takes pictures
4. Woman checks maps
5. Man looks at woman in a way that suggests the desire for intercourse.

Repeat this commercial until next Super Bowl or until Apple changes their ad style, whichever comes first.

Facebook becoming hot gaming destination

FROM GAMERTELL - Social networking site Facebook has quickly emerged as a big gaming destination, with millions of players spending time feeding cows, taking out mafia hits and messaging friends to join in on the fun.
MORE »

Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Chaos Rings: Square Enix releases fantastic trailer for iPhone-exclusive RPG

Canon 5D MkII Update Breaks Audio Recording

Canon’s latest firmware update for the 5D MkII (v2.0.3) which was pushed out earlier this month promised all sorts of new video functions, from proper a 24p frame-rate to manual control for audio level. For some owners, though, it has broken their cameras.

Canon has issued a warning that some users are “experiencing issues” and that it is “are working on a new firmware update to address these phenomena”. What phenomena? No audio. Specifically, if you have the audio levels set to manual control, nothing will be recorded in any of your custom exposure modes If you happen to turn the camera off (and on again, obviously). Canon has pulled the firmware update until further notice.

Also mentioned at the 5D Mark II Team blog are a few unconfirmed issues, from the return of the infamous black spots, through “inconsistent stuttering and/or dropped frames on 24p” to “weird noises coming from the lens”.

There is a workaround for the confirmed audio problems (set levels to automatic), and the other problems are under investigation. This is exactly why I hold off camera firmware updates for at least a few weeks before applying them.

Canon Official Update Information [5D Mark II Team blog via Canon Rumors]

Important Update Information for Firmware Update Version 2.0.3 [Canon]

See Also:

• Canon 5D MkII Update Cures Black Spots
• Canon Firmware Update Adds Manual Control to 5D MkII Video …
• 5D MkII Update Adds 24p Video, Sound Levels
• Magic Lantern Firmware Supercharges Canon 5D MkII

AT&T Zero Charger Switches Itself Off

AT&T’s Zero Charger will save the world and help trees to grow. Just kidding, but that’s just what the promo shot of the new cellphone charger would have you believe. The charger is a significant announcement though, as it solves an environmental problem most people don’t know exists: Vampire draw.

Vampire draw is the trickle of power that a charger pulls when left in the wall, even if there is no device plugged in. While small, if you add up all the chargers in the world, the numbers quickly get big. AT&T’s new Zero Charger fixes this by switching itself off completely as soon as the phone is fully charged. This would be great for my dad who inexplicably leaves his cellphones plugged in all the time except when he leaves the house.

The Zero Charger is in fact a USB charger, so it’s good for iPods and other devices, too. It should really come with every one of AT&T’s cellphones, but it appears that you’ll have to buy one (big surprise. Thanks AT&T). Given that anyone savvy enough to buy the Zero Charger is also likely to already unplug their chargers, it seems more like a rather pointless PR exercise.

Save Your Planet AT&T ZERO Charger – Coming Soon! [AT&T via DVICE]

First Look: Kindle for Mac

Amazon has at last released Kindle for Mac, which means you can now read your Kindle books on most any device. It joins the iPhone, PC Blackberry and, of course, the Kindle itself.

Like the PC version, Kindle for Mac is a bare-bones reader. You turn pages with either the scroll-wheel of your mouse or the arrow keys, and it stays in sync with any other device authorized for the same account. You can view notes and bookmarks made on other devices, but you can’t create new ones (a limitation shared with the PC version).

It’s pretty bad. If you want to zoom the text, for example, the standard Mac shortcuts are Cmd + and Cmd -. They don’t work. Instead you have to open a special panel, which can leave a blank “cut-out” in the text after it has been closed.

It is a beta, but you only know that if you open up the “about” box. We guess it’s nice to have a way to read on a computer, and even better to have a local archive of your books, but I can’t help feeling that a company the size of Amazon could do better than this. Especially as it bought the quite excellent Stanza almost a year ago, which has a great Mac app, along with the iPhone version.

Amazon might be happy selling books, and not care about the devices they are read on. But if you carry on like this, Amazon, people will be pushed to buy their readers, and books, elsewhere.

Kindle for Mac [Amazon]

Press release [Business Wire]

See Also:

• Large-Screen Kindle Won’t Mean Squat if Apple Tablet Arrives
• Showdown: Kindle 2 vs. Sony Reader
• Kindle Goes International — With a Little Help From AT&T
• Amazon Brings Kindle to iPhone
• Kindle for PC Ships, Hints at Future Color Kindle