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Google still censoring for some China customers (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Mar 2010 | 4:11 am Not Being Evil Has To Be More Than A Marketing Slogan.
I called that choice the “Evil Dial” – more evil, more money, and Facebook gets their cut because all of these guys plow that money back into Facebook advertising. Cutts’ issue is the apparent contradiction with an earlier post where I criticize Twitter for saying that they want to “be a force for good.” “Let others use Twitter to do good things. Twitter should stay goodness-neutral and self righteous free,” I say in that post. The reason these two posts don’t contradict each other is the last sentence of my Twitter post, where I say this: “Or alternatively try to be a force for good. But just do it, don’t talk about it.” But it’s a lot harder to actually be good than it is to simply say you are good. Like others, I am becoming increasingly skeptical of the original Don’t Be Evil company (the one Cutts works for, in fact). Their hypocrisy on China is stunning. It’s hard to argue with the evidence Danny Sullivan laid out. Whether Google is doing business with the Chinese government in 2006 or pulling out of the market in 2010 they make the same argument that good v. evil dictates their actions. Bullshit. I’ve thought long and hard about my position on this since the news about Google in China first broke in January. I didn’t want to spout off half cocked with an opinion that I’d later regret. And after long deliberation, I’ve come to that simple conclusion. Google’s position is bullshit. That’s why I wince when I see Twitter following that same path. Because Googlers really think that they are doing the right thing. It’s a self righteous groupthink that leads to situations like this. And on a mass scale it can be dangerous as hell. A lot of that same self righteousness pervades the ranks at Twitter today. It led them to, for example, remove news sites like this one from the suggested user list in 2009 when we didn’t fall into line editorially. As Twitter’s power grows, how will Twitter define good v. evil? Perhaps revolutionary actions in Iran are ok and supported, but in another country they aren’t? Will Twitter continue to pick and choose which politicians get on the suggested user list, or whatever future mechanism they have for helping out “good” politicians v. “evil” ones? Of course they will. Because they aren’t striving for neutrality, they’re striving to support their version of good. So back to Facebook. What I’m arguing for here is a straight up ban of misleading advertising that dupes consumers into buying stuff they don’t want to buy. They don’t have to create a frickin slogan, all they have to do is protect their users from bad people that want to steal their money. But at least we know where things stand with Facebook. There’s a straight up Evil Dial. I’ll take that over religious zealotry any day.      
Source: TechCrunch | 24 Mar 2010 | 4:09 am Viral Video: "Eat Pray Love" (Plus Elizabeth Gilbert's "Doomed" TED Speech) [BoomTown]
While the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s hit book “Eat Pray Love” has exactly zero rock-em-sock-em blockbustery feel, as all the others being released this summer do, its trailer is gaining in popularity online. The movie, which stars Julia Roberts, is about a woman in search of, well, herself, via copious travel. Here’s the video of the trailer, as well as a speech that Gilbert gave at TED in 2009, about creativity and genius and how the success of her book and, now, movie, might mean she is doomed:
Source: Gizmodo | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:40 am European privacy battle looms for Facebook, Google (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:39 am Fox Mobile Unveils Bitbop, A Video Subscription Service For Smartphones
As GigaOM called it, you can think of the new offering is a Hulu on-the-go. Bitbop users will be able to both stream and download movies or other video content on-demand from their mobile devices over Wi-Fi or 3G alike. An actual launch date hasn’t been announced yet, but according to the Bitbop placeholder website the service will be making its U.S. debut this Spring. Fox Mobile says the Bitbop service will work on “most advanced technology handsets” with “nearly every major telecommunication carrier”. In addition, the company said subscribers can expect to able to stream or download content from Fox but also a range of content partners. According to GigaOM, partners will include NBC Universal and Discovery, along with a number of unannounced content owners. Our smartphones are ready for mobile TV and video streaming on the go, and content providers are placing bets on us opening up our wallets for it. Million dollar question is: will the carriers’ networks be able to cope with the bandwidth requirements?      
Source: TechCrunch | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:35 am With Version 2, Lissn Quiets The Noise And Focuses On Individuals. But Is It Too Quiet?
Whereas the first version was based around specific conversations, Lissn 2.0 is entirely based around individuals. It doesn’t matter what they’re talking about, only who they are, and that you might be interested in having a conversation with them, or listening in on the one they’re having. In fact, the only pages that exist on the site now beyond the list of all users online and the list of your favorite users (“memory,” as it’s called), are individual user pages. From there, you have only three options: listen in (by watching), “say something,” or “ask a question.” Doing either of the latter two will place your text in a stream above the user’s avatar. From there, depending on how many people are in the room, it’s basically a massive IM conversation. Or, if you feel like starting your own conversation, you simply go to your page and say something in the text box along the bottom of the page. To me, there’s something compelling about Lissn because it’s now very, very simple — sort of like Twitter, back in its early stages. You really can only do a few things, again, like Twitter. However, I can’t help but wonder if Lissn is now too simple. Having conversations is nice, but what’s the benefit to having them on Lissn versus over IM with multiple people? Maybe something like great search functionality would entice me, but there is no search right now. But the team says it plans to iterate with this new version on a weekly basis, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s coming. Whereas rival LiveFyre is based around specific topics to have conversations about, Lissn offers no context for conversations, so it will likely be hard to jump into one. That said, if the service positions it sort of like a Formspring.me-type Q&A with a certain user, it could be kind of interesting.
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:33 am UK Space Agency Launchedkrou writes "Today saw the launch of the new UK Space Agency (UKSA), which will officially come into being on the 1st of April. Its stated goal is to lead to more coherency in space policy, and better decision making, by gradually assuming control over the various budgets and management functions of various government departments and science funding councils. Lord Drayson, the minister for science and innovation, said that 'People in the UK are not aware of just how good Britain is both at space research and in terms of our space industry; [a space agency] is going to make people more aware of that. But in practical terms, it's going to make the decision-making by government in all aspects of space policy much more joined up, better co-ordinated — a single point within government which has responsibility for making sure that we get everything in alignment such that the space research we do, the space industry that we're building, fulfils its true potential.' The government also announced that it is adding £24m to the £16m put up by business to create an International Space Innovation Centre at Harwell in Oxfordshire."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:28 am Ada Lovelace Day hero: Cindy Cohn Happy Ada Lovelace Day! Today is the day when bloggers around the world celebrate women in technology who have inspired them. My Ada Lovelace hero this year is Cindy Cohn, the Legal Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Cindy is a litigator, which means that she really, really understands how to construct an argument (and how to demolish someone else's argument). She was my co-worker at EFF for half a decade and remains a dear friend, and I can't count the number of times I've had my mind changed for the better by Cindy's principled, reasoned, civil libertarian stands on technology. I remember a lunch with Cindy, before I went to EFF, where we talked about DRM (I was for it -- Cindy is one of the people who helped me understand why DRM was a bad idea). I had what I thought of as a pretty reasonable position: creators could offer deals to the public and they'd be able to pick which deals were good ones and which were bad ones. Cindy took me through the illegitimacy of a vendor declaring that something that was a sale -- as defined in law -- was, in fact, a contract, where all the buyer's rights went away. I walked away from that lunch a changed man. Cindy argued the famous Bernstein case, where the principle that code is a form of expressive speech, protected by the First Amendment, was established in law. Specifically, Bernstein got rid of the NSA's ban on publishing, using and disseminating strong crypto (they said that any scrambling system that the cops couldn't descramble was a munition and had to be regulated accordingly). Today, every purchase you make online, every ATM you use, every private email you send or receive -- everything you do that has some element of privacy! -- is legal because of Cindy's ability to convey nuanced technical arguments to nontechnical lawmakers. I've been privileged in my life to know many astute technologists, policy people, and activists, but few who combine brilliance in all three realms the way Cindy does. She could go into private practice in a heartbeat and increase her salary by 5-10X, but for more than a decade, she's stayed at EFF, pulling long hours and working under tough conditions to make a difference in the world. Happy Ada Lovelace Day, Cindy!
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:27 am Ada Lovelace Day hero: Cindy CohnHappy Ada Lovelace Day! Today is the day when bloggers around the world celebrate women in technology who have inspired them. My Ada Lovelace hero this year is Cindy Cohn, the Legal Director of the Electronic...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:27 am Nintendo 3DS: New details leak in Japan
Nintendo’s announcement of its new portable 3D gamimg device 3DS was very brief, prompting us to speculate about possible features and implications for the way people will play games in the future. But today the Nikkei, Japan’s Wall Street Journal, is offering a bit more insight (and the Nikkei is usually a very reliable source). As a reminder, what we know so far is that the new hardware won’t require any glasses for users to see the 3D images, will be backwards compatible to DS and DSi games, make its debut between April 2010 and March 2011, and make its debut at the E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles in June. Here are all new details the Nikkei was able to dig up: - Nintendo says the 3DS will be the first device of its kind. - It will be sold, probably in Japan first, in the latter half of this year. - Nintendo considers giving the 3DS a 3D joystick, force feedback and an accelerometer. - The company already secured patents for several 3DS-related technologies last year. - Compared to its 2D-based predecessors, the new device will feature improved wireless communications speed and battery life. - The screen will be not be larger than four inches (the DSi XL’s screen is 4.2 inches). Another interesting thing to note is that Nintendo shares traded above 30,000 yen ($330) for the first time in over 11 months Wednesday (30,850 yen, which is 2,880 yen above Tuesday’s close). Investors have big expectations for 3D, it seems. Via The Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]
Source: CrunchGear | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:22 am HTC HD2 Gets Androidized, Named HTC EVO 4G - Techtree.com
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:15 am Ghost Stories: London stage show scared the hell out of meLast night, a gang of us went to see Andy Nyman's Ghost Stories, a horror stage-show on at the Hammersmith Lyric theatre in London. I know Andy through his work as a writer/director for Derren Brown's...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:13 am Ghost Stories: London stage show scared the hell out of meLast night, a gang of us went to see Andy Nyman's Ghost Stories, a horror stage-show on at the Hammersmith Lyric theatre in London. I know Andy through his work as a writer/director for Derren Brown's excellent shows, and the times I've met him, he's struck me as a sweet, laid-back guy, so even though I'd heard Ghost Stories was properly scary, I went in feeling pretty easy about the evening. That lasted until about the third second of the show. I don't want to give away any spoilers by telling you too much about the plot, but I can tell you this: Andy plays a parapsychologist giving a lecture to an audience about the absurdity of believing in ghost stories. His character is also sweet, though not very laid back, and the stories he recounts are, in fact, scary as fuck. Especially when combined with the most menacing sound-design I've ever had vibrate through my colon, and some extremely clever staging, and really excellent acting from the small cast. There were about eight of us last night -- including a couple of magicians, some game designers, and various kind of media creators -- and every one of us came out of there visibly shaken. When we got home, my wife made me get out of bed to make sure the doors were all locked (and I turned on the lights before I did). The show runs until April 17, and there's even a midnight show on Friday. I don't get out very often -- the exigencies of having a toddler at home -- and every time I do, I ask myself whether this is going to be worth the expense in babysitters and missed sleep (the kid gets up at 5AM every day). This one was absolutely worth it.
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:13 am Student programmers: Get paid to hack liberty-enhancing code with EFF this summer!The Electronic Frontier Foundation is looking for student programmers to do paid work on various liberty-enhancing technologies this summer, paid for by Google, through its excellent Summer of Code project...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:01 am Student programmers: Get paid to hack liberty-enhancing code with EFF this summer!
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is looking for student programmers to do paid work on various liberty-enhancing technologies this summer, paid for by Google, through its excellent Summer of Code project. This summer, there's funding for programmers to work on TOR (The Onion Router -- a system for evading censorwalls and enhancing online privacy by bouncing your traffic through several volunteers' computers), TOSBack (tracking changes to the terms of service of the Internet's most popular websites), OurVoteLive (tracking problems in elections with US polling places and voting machines) and Switzerland (a passive IP-layer network neutrality testing system).
Previous Summer of Code workers have had wonderful experiences working with EFF (as a former employee, I can testify to what a great workplace it is). Not only do you get to do paid, meaningful work, but you get to do it surrounded by some of the most astute, passionate and clever people in the technology world. For the right student, this is the chance of a lifetime. Work With EFF and TOR for Google's Summer of Code
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 24 Mar 2010 | 3:01 am Google to phase out China search partnerships
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 Environmental Leader | LA, DC, San Francisco Top Cities for Energy Star Buildings Environmental Leader With 293 Energy Star-labeled buildings in 2009, Los Angeles retains its ranking as the city with the most such buildings, according to new information from the Department of Energy (PDF). Energy Star buildings in Los Angeles topped 76 million square ... Schools get ENERGY STAR qualification US plans to test all Energy Star products EPA's green buildings list ranks DC area No. 2 in nation |
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By James Surowiecki, Contributor, New Yorker
Apple’s (AAPL) launch of the iPad next week is a gamble in more ways than one. To start with, it’s obviously a bet that there are millions of people looking for a new way to surf the Web, watch movies, and read magazines. But it’s also a more fundamental gamble; namely, that people will pay for quality.
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By Jeremy Schlosberg, Contributor, Fingertips Music
Quick question for you: do you make playlists?
Okay, kind of a stupid question. If you’re reading this, you’re probably more than a little interested in music, which means you have an iPod, which means yes, of course, you make playlists.
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By John Stokes, Contributor, Ars Technica
In January of 2009, shares of Palm (PALM) traded at a little over $3 as everyone awaited details of the once-mighty smartphone maker’s plans to save itself from certain death. In the wake of the Pre’s successful unveiling later that month at CES, Palm’s stock price more than doubled, and optimism about the Pre’s prospects eventually drove shares to a high of over $17 in October of last year. But as of this past Friday’s earnings report, sales are way below Palm’s and Wall Street’s expectations, the company has little cash left on hand, and shares of PALM have dropped all the way back down to $4.
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By Mrinal Desa, Contributor, Advertising Age
Aug. 29, 1999. I had just “gotten off the boat” at the San Francisco Airport to study business in the land of opportunities and choices. My first adventure to the grocery store highlighted it all.
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 Times LIVE | CTIA 2010: Samsung's Android based i9000 Revealed Techtree.com Until now, the best Samsung Android based handset money can buy was the i7500 Galaxy - which in itself is quite a capable phone. However, from a company that produced high-end devices like the i8510 and the Omnia HD, a phone that could rival the likes ... First Look: Samsung Galaxy S Android Phone with Smart Life Samsung Reveals Galaxy S Google Android Phone CTIA's 'other' Android superphone: Samsung Galaxy S |
By Steven Levy, Senior Writer, Wired
Everyone who jammed into the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on January 27, 2010, knew what they were there for: Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs’ introduction of a thin, always-on tablet device that would let people browse the Web, read books, send email, watch movies, and play games. It was also no surprise that the 1.5-pound iPad resembled an iPhone, right down to the single black button nestled below the bright 10-inch screen. But about an hour into the presentation, Apple showed something unexpected — something that not many people even noticed.
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One of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's founding principles was Mitch Kapor's aphorism, "Architecture is politics." The design of systems determines the kinds of politics that can take place in them, and designing a system is itself a political act. As part of EFF's ongoing 20th anniversary celebrations, it held a panel called "Architecture is policy" at Carnegie-Mellon, featuring Ed Felten, Dave Farber, Lorrie Cranor, John Buckman, and Cindy Cohn -- all heavy hitters in their own right, and dynamite together. This is one of the more thoughtful and thought-provoking hours you could spend today.
Video: EFF Panel on "Architecture Is Policy"
By Geoffrey A. Fowler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
On Tuesday, Hearst Corp. e-reading company Skiff announced that it signed a deal with Samsung’s mobile phone division to become its “preferred e-reading service partner.”
That means that future Samsung smart phones, like the Galaxy S it unveiled at CTIA Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday, will have built-in Skiff software that will enable them to view periodical and book content in a format designed for the phone’s 4-inch screen. Skiff and Samsung will work together to make the software feature nice graphics and automatic updates of content.
At CES in January, Skiff unveiled a slick e-reader optimized for presenting e-book versions of newspapers. That device is still supposed to come out before the end of the year.
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Turn up the mic, I can’t see
Is the Nintendo 3DS going to work? Are you kidding, of course it is!
Parametric Generators could power your watch with street noise
Insert smiley emoticons hands-free with Auto Smiley
Nintendo 3DS: Look who just innovated itself out of a paper bag!
Contest: Hardees/Carl’s Jr. and CrunchGear love you and want you to be happy
Outland Armour -- a replica armour company -- produced a set of steampunk Star Wars costumes that include this wonderful Steampunk Boba Fett and Princess Leia.
Cool Stuff: Steampunk Stormtrooper Helmet, Boba Fett, and Princess Leia
Outland Armour: Steampunk Star Wars (via Make)
Megan Jaegerman's brilliant news graphics (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The copyright industries wanted border-searches on anything digital you were carrying that could be used to infringe copyright, from your phone to your iPod to the laptop that had your confidential client documents, your personal email, your finances, pictures of your kids in the bath, etc. Various countries proposed loophole-riddled ways of exempting your personal goods from a search, mostly hinging on whether they're "non-commercial goods" of a "personal nature." Except that every time I cross the US or Canadian border, they tell me my laptop is "commercial goods" because I do business with it.
ACTA's De Minimis Provision: Countering the iPod Searching Border Guard Fears (Thanks, Michael!)
Boing Boing pal David Silverman, who shares the classic Simpsons sketch above, says, "23 years ago today on March 23rd, 1987, we had a meeting with Matt Groening. And then Wes Archer, Bill Kopp, and I started animating the very first Simpsons short for The Tracey Ullman Show, in a studio on 729 N. Seward Street. We all thought it was pretty funny." [And we do too, David.—XJ]
Source: Boing Boing | 23 Mar 2010 | 11:01 pm
The HP EliteBooks have always been, well, elite and the new 17-inch 8740w cements that claim even more. Graphic designers, CAD users, video dudes, HP made this one for professionals like you.
An array of Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs are available with the 1.73GHz 820QM as the top-tier option while either a 1GB Nvidia Quadro and ATI FirePro handles just about any graphics so-called professionals can throw at it. If that’s not enough power, buyers can opt for up to 16GB of RAM over the 2 or 4GB standard along with various 7200 RPM hard drives. (What, no SSD option, HP?)
The real treat, however, is the 1920 x 1080 HP DreamColor LED-backlit screen. Of course it comes at a price, however, and isn’t even standard on the decked-out $3,899 pre-built model. But that’s too be expected as DreamWorks helped design the screen back in 2008.
HP is staying ahead of the curve with the 8740w and included two USB 3.0 ports, along with standard issue eSATA, VGA, RJ45, Firewire, optional 2MP webcam. It also curiously has only a DisplayPort jack and no HDMI. There’s also a docking station available for those locked down to a desk occasionally and mobile broadband powered by Gobi for those who aren’t.
These models aren’t cheap but you probably gathered that already. Prices start out at $1,999 for a basic, but still capable, Core i5 model with pre-built solutions fetching as much as $3,899. The price can climb even higher once the right option boxes are selected.
You may want to keep that credit card in your wallet until we see some reviews comparing the HP 8740w verses Dell’s professional monster, the M6500. They seem close spec wise although for a pretty penny the Dell offers the Core i7 920XM Extreme CPU option. The Dell also has three hard drive bays vs the 8740w two with one shared with the optical drive. The HP is slightly cheaper and a tad smaller, but when you’re talking about buying a 17-inch powerhouse notebook that costs more than most used cars, what’s a couple of extra dollars and pounds for a better platform?
Earlier this month, Tumblr rolled out its first attempt at making money: a small ($9) fee to make your blog featured in a directory of blogs. Tomorrow, the service is officially rolling out its second revenue generator: premium themes.
The initial 13 themes being featured in this roll-out look pretty great. They come from 7 different designers and will range in price from $9 all the way up to $49. Tumblr declined to give the revenue split between the company and the designers but says that “most” of the money will go to the designers. The premium themes page is actually already live here.
This seems like a smart play for Tumblr. One thing that separates it from rivals such as Posterous is the attention to design. Tumblr already features over 350 free templates that any user can install with the click of a button. “There’s already been a ton of demand for this platform [premium designs] from our developer community, and we know it will add a spectacular collection of new themes and options for our bloggers,” says founder David Karp.
The roll out of this second premium feature is the latest in a huge amount of updates the service has unveiled in the past several weeks. Those include the ability to add static pages to Tumblr blogs, photo replies, video uploads, and even comments (sort of).
Tumblr is also just about to hit 4 million users.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Need a place to gossip about that shiny gadget you saw earlier? Just wanna have some off-topic conversations with fellow Gizmodo readers? Head to #whitenoise and comment, comment, comment. More »
We’ve covered Tsutenkaku, a Japanese robot that looks like a tower to promote tourism in the city of Osaka, just last week. Standing 170cm tall, his makers claim Tsutenkaku [JP] is the tallest robot in the world. And now he finally showed himself in the public, during a street festival that took place over the weekend in Osaka’s shopping district of Nipponbashi.
Verdict: Tsutenkaku is a very weird robot. I just wonder how the handful of companies from Osaka that made it think about Hajime, another tall robot from Japan that stands even 210cm tall.
Just look at the way he “talks” and moves in the (Japanese) video below:
Via Nico Nico Douga [JP/registration required]
AFP - Nintendo has unveiled plans to launch a handheld 3D video game console that does not require special glasses, seeking to harness surging interest in images that appear to jump out of the screen.
No, I’m not confused. This light is. Is it a microphone or a lamp? Well, quite clearly, it’s a lamp. But it does look like an SM58, kind of. I can see why you might have been confused. Or why you might have thought I was. But yeah, it’s a light. Of course I’m sure!
Available, like everything else worth having, at Supermarket.
[via 7gadgets]
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Web Browsers
Mozilla has put the brakes on developing a mobile version of its Firefox browser for Windows Mobile. Though Mozilla planned to deliver Fennec (Firefox mobile) to as many platforms as possible, one of its developers revealed today that the company has stopped working on Windows Mobile. Don’t hold your breath for a Windows Phone 7 Series version either.
According to Firefox developer Stuart Parmenter, Mozilla has temporarily abandoned Windows development because “Microsoft is staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5).” It didn’t make sense for the company to continue investing resources into a platform that is likely to be dwarfed by the fresher and more headline-grabbing version of the OS.
Meanwhile, Mozilla cannot develop for Windows Phone 7 because Microsoft has decided - for the moment at least - not to release a native development kit. Mozilla has already worked on Windows CE 6, which is the underlying platform for WinPhone7, and would prefer to develop apps in native code. As such, Mozilla has ended its Windows Mobile development until the situation changes. Developers will instead focus on getting a mobile Firefox ready for Android and Maemo.
Full Story » | Written by Andrew Kameka for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
When I’m working from home, I have a dual-monitor setup for my PC. Very useful on busy days or for keeping an eye on RSS feeds while watching a movie. On the road (or when my internet craps out, like this morning) I take my MacBook Pro, and while multiple desktops are handy, I sometimes wish I had a second screen for that thing, too. Yeah, it’d be pretty weird to set up a 13-inch LED-backlit secondary screen at a coffee shop — almost as weird as this thing — but anything to get the job done, right? Right.
Made by MEDL Technologies, it’s called simply “The Panel” and it’s exactly what it says it is: a secondary screen that uses USB as its display link. There are smaller solutions, of course, but this is the biggest standalone monitor I’ve seen that just runs off USB. It’s also battery-powered, and will run for five hours, which… is good, I guess, but it isn’t clear whether it’s charged by the USB or not. If not… why not?
It weighs just over 2 pounds, and at a 1280×800 resolution, it’s just big enough for HD stuff. One really handy use I can think of is if you have kids, you just hook this sucker up, put a few cartoons into a playlist, and put the screen facing away from you so the kids can watch while you work. Handy for airports and vacations.
Unfortunately it’s not a touchscreen. That would have been a really nice feature, but I guess we’ll have to wait for “The Touch Panel.”
[via Gadget Lab]
The United States government paid hacker Albert Gonzalez $75,000 a year to gather information on bank card thieves and report those findings to federal agents. But a $75,000 annual income wasn’t enough to satisfy Gonzalez, who was committing the very crime he was hired to help prevent.
Beginning in 2004, Gonzalez received money from the Secret Service to report information about credit card thieves he met online. But when Gonzalez wasn’t busy earning money for snitching on his peers, the Miami-based hacker was running his own card theft ring right under the government’s nose. Using sniffer malware and SQL injections, he stole credit card information from dozens of retailers in Florida, New Jersey, and New York. Gonzalez faces sentencing on three federal indictments for those crimes, including the TJX case where he stole 45.6 million credit and debit card numbers from retailers TJ Maxx and Marshalls.
According to an accomplice of Gonzalez who spoke to Wired, Gonzalez was a government informant who received $75,000 in annual cash payments from the Secret Service. (To keep that in context, Gonzalez once spent $75,000 on one birthday party according to a story published last August in the Miami Herald.) The Secret Service refuses to comment on the issue, but the $75,000 far outpaced the $18,000 a year that other hackers in non-Mafia cases received.
Gonzalez was forced to forfeit much of his assets, and will be sentenced this week. He could receive as many as 25 years. Let’s just hope the warden doesn’t grant him any computer privileges.
Read [WIRED]
Full Story » | Written by Andrew Kameka for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Bulova just announced the Precisionist “technology platform,” a quartz movement with sweep hand that was created alongside Bulova’s parent company, Citizen.
With Precisionist, Bulova has added a third prong to a standard two prong quartz crystal creating a torsional resonator. This innovation results in eight times the vibration frequency of a traditional quartz watch resulting in the most accurate watch with a continuously sweeping second hand. The aesthetic movement of the second hand becomes the symbol to the consumer of Bulova Precisionist and signals a watch with accuracy so exceptional, you can see it. The technology is accurate to 10 seconds per year as compared to most other quartz watches, which are accurate to fifteen seconds per month.
I’m trying to grab a photo, but it’s a pretty cool way to get a little more granularity out of a standard quartz movement.
IN PURSUIT OF THE ULTIMATE ACCURACY IN TIMEKEEPING, BULOVA INTRODUCES PRECISIONIST
New York, March 17, 2010 – Today at BaselWorld, the watch world and jewelry show, Bulova Corporation introduced its newest technology platform, Bulova Precisionist, the world’s most accurate watch with a continuous sweeping second hand. With the launch of Precisionist, Bulova blends technology, design and style; utilizing the sweeping second hand as a visual symbol for the movement’s extraordinary precision, a watch that is, in fact, designed to be noticed.
“Bulova is committed to upholding an extraordinary legacy of excellence in design, style and technology and is proud to introduce its newest technology platform, Precisionist,” stated Dennis W. Perry, Bulova Corporation President.” He continues, “The importance of accurate time measurement cannot be understated. In horseracing, a horse wins by the tip of a nose, in swimming, the slightest touch of a fingertip ahead of a competitor can earn a gold medal. In timekeeping, absolute accuracy has long been viewed as an important measure of the quality of a timepiece.”
Precision Is In The Details
Precisionist was developed by Bulova in cooperation with its parent company, the Citizen Watch Company, in response to Bulova-led research which paved the way for the development of a technology that supports the company’s goal of providing distinctive and beautifully designed watches.
With Precisionist, Bulova has added a third prong to a standard two prong quartz crystal creating a torsional resonator. This innovation results in eight times the vibration frequency of a traditional quartz watch resulting in the most accurate watch with a continuously sweeping second hand. The aesthetic movement of the second hand becomes the symbol to the consumer of Bulova Precisionist and signals a watch with accuracy so exceptional, you can see it. The technology is accurate to 10 seconds per year as compared to most other quartz watches, which are accurate to fifteen seconds per month.
A History of Innovation
Bulova has been an innovator in timekeeping since the company’s founding in 1875. The company strives to provide consumers with premier technology and design. In the 1950s, NASA turned to Bulova for its Accutron technology, then under development and not yet commercially available, to accomplish its progress toward the first lunar landing. In 1960, Bulova debuted Accutron commercially. It was the most spectacular breakthrough in timekeeping technology in 300 years and the most accurate technology then available.
- more -
As with the introduction of the ground-breaking Accutron technology 50 years ago, Bulova has continued to strive for perfection in accuracy combined with unique design. Fifty years later, the company continues its legacy with the introduction of Precisionist. Featured in a tightly focused and distinctively designed collection of watches, Bulova Precisionist is set to debut at BaselWorld in March 2010 and will be available at retail starting Fall 2010. The collection will retail at a suggested price range of $299 to just under $1,000.
Excuse our enthusiasm, but here’s the DSi XL unboxed for all and sundry. Enjoy!
There’s no shortage of creepy nerd-related stuff out there. I mean, while Japan’s notorious rape simulators are pretty much the pinnacle of gaming-related perversion, there’s still a lot of weird stuff out there. Remember this sleazy contest? Now, some enterprising person looked at the internet a little while ago and said to himself (surely himself), “Well now. We have gaming girls like the Frag Dolls, and we have desperate gamers with disposable incomes. And we have cam girls. How can I make these pieces fit together?” Simple. Make a site where desperate gamers pay to watch/play with gamer cam girls! It fits the timeless formula:
1. Put cute girls on internet-connected cameras
2. Profit
I’m not convinced this will be anything less than a complete boondoggle, of course. I mean, how can… where will they… how do they expect… oh, forget it. As Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz says in Inglourious Basterds, “What tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity.” Or maybe it’s just a way for some girls to put away a few bucks. GameCrush should be launching any second now, so go try it out. Only for the 360, at the moment – pity!
[via Crave]
iRobot, perhaps best known for having created the Roomba, turns 20 today. Let’s give them a virtual high five for helping so much in bringing roboticism into the home. Sure, in the end, it might be the death of us all, but in the mean time, it’s nice not having to vacuum so much, am I right?
 Reuters | Report: Nintendo 3DS Coming This Year With Force Feedback PC World Nintendo's upcoming revision to its DS handheld will have screens no larger than those in the DSi XL and feature a force-feedback system that vibrates at certain points during games, according to a report in Wednesday's Nikkei newspaper. ... Nintendo to add 3-D to DS First Look: Nintendo DSi XL Nintendo sees the future in its 3DS |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
FROM GAMERTELL - Nintendo has announced it is working on a DS with 3D capabilities that will also be backwards compatible with DS and DSi games
MORE »
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Wired News | Sprint Overdrive Turbocharges Wireless Internet Wired News Getting broadband used to mean snaking Ethernet cables through your house. Now you don't even need to be at home. Sprint's Overdrive delivers wireless internet with speed that's comparable to what you'd get from a cable modem, provided you're in the ... T-Mobile USA sets target for network rollout T-Mobile Details HSPA+ Expansion, Phone Plans T-Mobile introduces fast new broadband service |
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile, Trade Shows, CTIA
At CTIA today, Sprint started to show off it’s first 4G smartphone. The phone is called the HTC EVO 4G, and it looks as if the Nexus One has finally been replaced in terms of most impressive and lust-worthy Android smartphone. The shots here make it look like the HD2 running Android, though it does look to have much more.
The HTC EVO 4G is the first WiMAX-enabled phone on Sprint, and it runs on Android 2.1 using the new Sense UI seen in the Desire and Legend. It features a massive 4.3-inch TFT screen, which allows for it’s huge onscreen keyboard with added cursor buttons. The hardware also includes an 8 MP camera capable of 720p video that can be output using the built-in HDMI port. It also has a 1.3 MP front facing camera presumably for video conferencing or just easier, tiny vanity pictures/video, or for the built-in Qik streaming app. The EVO 4G also has 1GB of built-in storage that’ll allow for a lot of apps, and HD video when the included 8 GB microSD is full or not inserted.
The screen is the same pixel count (800 x 480) as the Nexus One, though the back of the EVO 4G has a stand to make viewing that HD video easier than holding it the entire time. It might be possible when in areas with the WiMAX 4G for the EVO 4G to connect to data and makes calls at the same time, which would be quite a relief and eliminate possibly the only downside it might have. As of now, all we know is that the HTC EVO 4G will be out this summer, no price, or possible additional surcharges for 4G. So, those thinking of buying a Nexus One when it comes to Sprint in the coming months may want to wait to see how the pricing on the EVO 4G compares, because the hardware already looks to give it an edge.
Read [Sprint]
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks
The first shot in the ereader price wars has been taken through Sony’s temporary battle against competitors. Sony has dropped the price on its Pocket Reader to $169 until April 4, which happens to be the day after the iPad first appears in store.
The Sony Pocket Reader normally costs $199, but competition from book-focused brands like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and the impending launch of the iPad, likely influenced this price cut. Sony says that it wants to “expand digital reading to a larger audience by offering consumers the most access, choice, and value,” but analysts suggest the full-color and range of features available in the $500 iPad may be more appealing. In order to compete, e-ink screens will have to provide an even larger discount.
Forrester analyst James McQuivey suggests that ereaders could fall to as little as $99. “When you are competing against multi-function devices, you have to have a clear signal as to why a single-purpose device is desirable. A price of $99 would be a very strong signal,” he said.
That would be hard to swallow since companies would lose money on the devices. With companies getting only a small cut of books - if at all - it wouldn’t make much economic sense to drop prices that low. Not that customers would complain about being able to get an ereader for half the price they currently pay.
Read [Wall Street Journal
Full Story » | Written by Andrew Kameka for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Back in December, Twitter noted a new feature it was testing out, Contributors. Basically, this allows multiple people to tweet from one account (with individual attribution below the tweet). Twitter noted that the feature wasn’t quite ready for prime time yet, but they started using it on their @twitter account. Today, the service has started rolling out to others.
The Salesforce account had the feature turned on about an hour ago. As you can see, they’re already using it.
Contributors is thought to be a part of Twitter’s plan to give premium features to businesses. Though they’re apparently not charging yet for it, one could envision when their business tools are ready to go, this would be wrapped into it.
New York based Hunch is on a bit of a roll. Users have now answered 50 millions questions on the service, which uses your answers to help give you recommendations for just about anything. Investors have taken note of their progress, and they recently closed a $12 million venture round from Khosla Ventures and previous investors.
I sat down with cofounder Caterina Fake last week to talk about Hunch and how it can help people make decisions about things. As people use the service over time Hunch is able to build out a very deep taste graph of what they like and dislike. It’s a sort of DNA of people’s taste preferences and a parallel to the social graph that they are building out on Facebook and elsewhere.
The lights are too bright and the sound echoes (we’re still working on our new studio), but Caterina gives deep insight into what Hunch is all about.
And we also talk about Yahoo. Caterina was an executive at Yahoo from 2005 – 2008 after her previous startup, Flickr, was acquired. Yahoo has an uphill battle, she says, and we spoke about their need for a product visionary:
The full transcript is below:
Mr. MICHAEL ARRINGTON: I’m here with Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Hunch. Hello.
Ms. CATERINA FAKE (Co-Founder, Hunch): Hello.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Thanks for coming in.
Ms. FAKE: Thank you.
Mr. ARRINGTON: You guys just raised a big round of financing a week ago from Khosla Ventures.
Ms. FAKE: Twelve million dollars.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah and we covered that, but I thought it was probably time to maybe talk to you a little bit more about Hunch and do a deeper dive than we have in the past with the company.
Ms. FAKE: Yes.
Mr. ARRINGTON: So, OK, first thing is, what is Hunch and why does it matter?
Ms. FAKE: So, the way Hunch works is Hunch learns about you. Hunch asks a bunch of questions which we call Teach Hunch about You. Those are questions about demographics, beliefs and values, your aesthetics, your political views, all those kinds of things and it’s meant to be fun. There’s a kind of a little module up in the corner of the front page if you go in and, you know, it’s everything from, do you live in the country or the city or the suburbs. Do you cut your sandwich down the middle or diagonal? You have you ever used a fake ID when you were underage? That kind of thing…
Mr. ARRINGTON: And that tells you Hunch…
Ms. FAKE: And it tells you all of these – all of these like really interesting things and it enables…
Mr. ARRINGTON: If I cut my sandwich down the middle or diagonally, let’s say kind of diagonally, what does that tell you?
Ms. FAKE: Yeah, there is this tremendous database that we have of all of these into like fascinating correlations and it turns out there’s certain things that are like the example that I just gave; if you have used a fake ID when you were an underage you’re significantly more likely to be an entrepreneur. It means that, you’re like kind of like more…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Does everyone use a fake ID? I use plenty(ph). Could you use…
Ms. FAKE: Well, like the Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs? And I used…
Mr. ARRINGTON: You used one?
Ms. FAKE: I used a fake ID when I was underage.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Is there a (unintelligible) in Canada?
Ms. FAKE: There – I’m not Canadian. I’m actually American.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Oh you just lived in Vancouver when you guys started?
Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: OK
Ms. FAKE: Yeah. So, you can learn all these really interesting things and, Hunch really is a way for us to give you the best recommendations possible. It’s a bit like Amazon or Netflix recommendations for everything and…
Mr. ARRINGTON: What is – that’s for? Movies? Restaurants? Vacations?
Ms. FAKE: It – I wouldn’t actually – no, I wouldn’t actually limit it to anything in particular. I mean, it should work for everything. It should work for, I need a hotel in Dallas. I need to find a philosopher. I need the New York Time’s bestseller to bring on vacation with me, we know everything. It should work for those things that especially are very taste-oriented and I think that the thing that really distinguishes Hunch from other efforts out there, there’s a lot of kind of products that are, attacking a kind of like a similar problem is that we are trying to create this taste graph for the whole web. We’re trying to learn the tastes of all of the people out there and…
Mr. ARRINGTON: That’s obviously a planned social graph, right?
Ms. FAKE: Which is a planned social graph, right? It’s analogous like the taste graph we’re saying is something that’s analogous to like the social graph. But from our perspective, the social graph is actually less informative and actually gives you less valuable information on you than what we’re calling the taste graph because you may – I may be in contact with my co-workers, who are kind of like male engineer types and, with my mom, I have a very close relationship with. But our tastes are very different, the things that we like, the sushi restaurants or (unintelligible) that we’d be interested in…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: Or the clothes that we would wear and so, what we’re – our assumption is that there’s people out there who share similar taste. They have a similar aesthetic to you or they have, say, you’re kind of looking for a blog or a news show, your political position or political stance would inform that choice as well. So, that’s really what…
Mr. ARRINGTON: And this actually works?
Ms. FAKE: And this actually works, yes.
Mr. ARRINGTON: You found statistically relevant results…
Ms. FAKE: Yes. And it’s a completely data-driven kind of like algorithmic side and so the way that Hunch evolved was we launched last – June of last year and I’d say that this first – the first part of this phase of the product’s development, we had a kind of a chicken and egg problem in order to make really good recommendations, in order to understand the taste graph. We had to gather all of these data. We had to have information. We had to get kind of a cold start problem. And so we’ve spent the past – how long has it been – seven or eight months now gathering information about people, learning about people and we have 1.5 million uniques(ph)…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yup.
Ms. FAKE: In the past couple of months, each month and…
Mr. ARRINGTON: So, 1.5 million people a month are coming to the site…
Ms. FAKE: Are coming to the site and…
Mr. ARRINGTON: And answering these questions…
Ms. FAKE: What we have – I mean, we do have 200,000 – I would say the best data that we gather from the 200,000 registered users who were – have been answering an average of 140 of these questions. So, we have over 50 million questions answered in our site.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Well…
Ms. FAKE: So, it’s an incredible amount of data. And now, I’d say we’re in the position where we can actually use this data. We can actually make assumptions. We can make – we can draw connections between people and products and services and all of those kinds of things.
Mr. ARRINGTON: How do you – well, actually, let’s take one step back and then talk like the company was different before you started because you’re a co-founder, and you actually joined little later and what…
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: How – what – did you…
Ms. FAKE: That’s right.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Move the direction and what was it before and why did it change?
Ms. FAKE: So what happened with – what happened with Hunch is it was – it was originally founded by Chris Dixon and Tom Pinckney and Matt Gattis. And they had come out of – their prior company was SiteAdvisor which they built in, I believe, 2005, 2006.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: And they were – they sold it to McAfee for $74 million. What they were doing was like kind of like security – a security site which analyzed, you can kind of guess by the name, it’s like SiteAdvisor tells you the kind of the relative safety of visiting various sites. And so their initial product, the thing that they were developing originally was it was a decision tree model. It was kind of based on expert systems where a series of questions were asked and you got an answer at the end. And so they started off – they kind of hoping to fund experiments that they try that did not succeed including, sort of like a thing called pure printer fixer(ph) or you had to go down this decision tree, like is it plugged in, it’s the toner in the cartridge. You know, they basically kind of take you down this path and observe a diagnostic tool. But they knew that there is something very interesting about destruction in this model learning things. And then there is this – there’s this other part of it where they, ask questions, some of which were amusing, some of which were kind of very serious. Those were the taste-oriented…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: Questions that I would say. And at some point, they had done – they have been doing this in an entirely automatic way.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: They have kind of like – for example they had sucked in the entire, products database of Amazon, for example. And it felt computational, it felt mechanical. It felt as if a computer had done it. And at some point they realized that the only way that this was going to work, that the only way the Hunch was going to work, was as if it were a user-generated content site and that there had to be human input.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: There had to be people contributing to it. And that was coincidentally the week that they figured that out. I was introduced to them by their venture partner, one of their investors is Bessemer. And so I kind of walked in just at the moment and they realized that this had to be man plus machine. It had to be human-added content as well as sort of very, (unintelligible) kind of computational algorithmic stuff on the back end. And so that of course, is my background and that’s kind of one of the strengths of my, part of development so…
Mr. ARRINGTON: All right. So looking forward, how do you know it’s working? Like what’s the feedback from the users that tells you…
Ms. FAKE: Yeah. I mean, we do…
Mr. ARRINGTON: We’re helping them.
Ms. FAKE: We we measure kind of internally as our success rate. So we give a recommendation and the user will say do you like this, yes or no. Well, no if they click through a to read more about it, if they’ll, go actually and go purchase the product. Those were – those are the strongest signals that we have. And, we were starting on – this is our so-called success rate has been increasing over time. When we launched it was, in the 70’s. You know, like 72 or 73 percent success rate.
Mr. ARRINGTON: And that’s based on the user does something with the recommendation.
Ms. FAKE: Yes, yes, like in a positive direction I guess. That means a positive kind of – in a way that’s increased of, you know, until like the 90’s now. And so we have a good 90 percent success rate. And so that’s how we measure our success so…
Mr. ARRINGTON: It’s interesting that you allow people – it’s so – your recommendations are based on the data that you get…
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: From people on building the – well, you’re calling the taste graph.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: But you allow anonymous users to go in and use the site without being logged in.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: And do you just give them that pretty good answers and why…
Ms. FAKE: Yeah. I mean, there’s a significant increase in our success rate obviously when people who log in when they answer questions when we get to know them over time. And I do think that, if we were to re-launch today one of the things we would very strongly consider is that it only be a logged in experience. I mean, I do think that when we launched it’s one of those things that you learn, and we’re – it’s a very new product we are inventing in as it kind of goes along and, this got – this to me, personally is of – is, kind of the most gratifying product to build as the one where you’re not really sure or like how to build and it’s not really clear how it’s going to turn out. You do a lot of experimentation. And I do think that one of the things that we would have considered from the outside is making it just logged in. I mean, I do think that, it very clearly improves to an incredible degree with our experience…
Mr. ARRINGTON: So why not change it now or just…
Ms. FAKE: Yeah, yeah. That’s one of the things that’s sort of under consideration.
Mr. ARRINGTON: OK.
Ms. FAKE: Well, we do have an amazing increase in the number of users that were coming in through SEO. And so it’s a trade-off. Because you are able to give people pretty good answers, pretty good recommendations without them having answered 140 questions as the average walked-in user has. But it’s not nearly as good.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Something I wanted to ask you. You were the co-founder of Flickr…
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: And – and we know how that turned out. And so many people love Flickr and you’re a bit of a celebrity founder now. You definitely entered that.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Is it easier to grow a startup as a celebrity founder or harder…
Ms. FAKE: You know, that’s an interesting question…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Or is it – the more tension there’s more expectations or…
Ms. FAKE: There’s more – there’s a lot of – I do – I do think that’s the case. There’s definitely more tension which is…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: Which can be good and bad. I do think that a lot – one of the things that you have to be on guard against is not taking risks because I think that you can, if you’ve…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: If you’ve had a big success previously, you can stop taking risks. You can…
Mr. ARRINGTON: In fact, psychologically, you’re…
Ms. FAKE: You’re kind of guard it against – you want to kind of – you keep what you’ve got, right?
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: You want it, and so it makes you less willing to take risks.
Mr. ARRINGTON: So how you do fight that?
Ms. FAKE: I mean, you just have to very deliberately do that. And I think in a lot of ways, you have to really kind of like focus in and kind of filter out the noise and all of the kind of attention that you could potentially get drunk on.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: Like people you know, if you kind of – it happens to – it happens to a lot of successful companies, Not just individuals or founders but companies themselves if you start believing in press releases. It’s a very dangerous situation that you want to get out of. And to me, I think it would’ve been – I’ve seen many – many second time, third time entrepreneur founders going down the same route that they had gone down before without a lot of variation.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: And that was something that I’m very much wanted to avoid and Hunch is obviously vastly different from Flickr. And I think part of that was informed by the time that I spent at Yahoo. When I was at Yahoo, the most interesting thing that was going on there was social search. At that time since I was there, 2005 through 2008, the most…
Mr. ARRINGTON: And you weren’t running Flickr. I mean, that was handed off, right? I mean, you were…
Ms. FAKE: Yes. What happened was that was when we came in, we came in – we made sure that Flickr which has a very good outcome, that Flickr stayed Flickr. We wanted to make sure that it did.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: It’s very common for a company to be acquired and to lose its heart and soul and to kind of get – get lost. And so, you know, we spent a lot of time protecting it, making sure that…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: You know, the heart of Flickr remained. And then once that, once I felt as if Flickr was on the right path, then I branched out. And the most interesting thing going on, as I was staying, was social search and, at that time, and this is no longer the case, unfortunately, but Yahoo is going up against Google in search. And so as a result – and they knew what their strong suits were.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: Yahoo knew that a strong suit was a social. They had logged in users. They knew a lot about their users. Their users were people that came back. They, used a lot of different products an average of like two and a half products, like whatever Yahoo Finance or, mail or IM or what-have-you. And you know, and as a result there is an incredible amount – amount of social information that could be used in search. And so that was a lot of the work that I was doing while I was there, I was working in social search. And then subsequent to that, I worked on the problem of actually developing product at Yahoo as well…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: Because they know where the problem was. You know, obviously coming from the startup going into a large organization like Yahoo is that often the obstacles there’s no innovation deficit in a company like Yahoo. There is an incredible amount of invention and creation, but often what happens is the organization gets in the way.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: And so then, subsequent to kind of working in social search I worked on – I worked on, how do you get products built.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: Within a big company like that so…
Mr. ARRINGTON: I’d love to talk to you a lot more about that, but since you brought up Yahoo I will go a little deeper into it. I thought I’m getting into too much of a sensitive area…
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: But when Yahoo changed CEO’s at the end of ’08…
Ms. FAKE: Right.
Mr. ARRINGTON: And they hired Bartz, Carol Bartz. A lot us were rooting for Yahoo to hire somebody who was product-focused, true product visionary. Microsoft had Bill Gates, Apple has Steve Jobs.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: There are other examples as well although not many.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah. But I agree with it, by the way, yes.
Mr. ARRINGTON: You agree that maybe…
Ms. FAKE: Yes. The product you’re in.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Somebody – and they didn’t. And they hired somebody who accomplished – accomplished executive…
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: But did – and then they subsequently have not hired a true product visionary that I can see even…
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Even under Carol. Do you agree with like – you sound like you’re very pleased…
Ms. FAKE: I agree, absolutely. And I do think that one of the things that they should have done exactly is bring in a product person. To some extent…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Weren’t some of those people already in the company?
Ms. FAKE: Interestingly, yes. I mean, some of those people were already in the company and interestingly, I actually…
Mr. ARRINGTON: But they’ve all left now, right?
Ms. FAKE: I actually think that Jerry Yang – Jerry Yang was one of the best product people.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: And I – during the time that I was at Yahoo, all of the best product decisions I think, that were made during the era…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: During the period when I was there were made by Jerry Yang and all of the things that he funded – he funded the Yahoo Developer Network and it was a great example. He funded Yahoo Answers. I mean, all of the successful products that immersed out of there and all of the great…
Mr. ARRINGTON: What do you mean by funded? That he green lighted it?
Ms. FAKE: He had to green light it. He has a discretion pedestal, thus a discretionary project where he can green light any project from the company…
Mr. ARRINGTON: OK.
Ms. FAKE: As a founder, you know, chief guy.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: And everything that he green lighted and funded were, very successful. So, in some ways it is interesting because during the brief, you interregnum, you know between Terry Semel and Carol Bartz, he was the CEO. But unfortunately during that time it wasn’t – the focus was not on building our products it was on fending off Steve Ballmer in Microsoft so…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Well, why can’t he be that person today? Is it – he’s damaged now? He’s…
Ms. FAKE: I don’t know, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t have enough view. I guess, good enough view into the workings of the company now under Carol Bartz right now.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Do you think Yahoo can – can, not will, but can re-emerge as…
Ms. FAKE: Re-emerge? It’ll be a long uphill battle.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yup.
Ms. FAKE: I mean, it’s – it’s – it’s sad to me because I think that Yahoo is in a not a very strong position as it was even when I started there in 2005. And I think the industry’s wish(ph) for it because I think a strong Yahoo is really good for the industry as a whole.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Some of your – I’ll call them competitors, they’re not really product competitors but guys like Aardvark and others been taken out and then acquired.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Have you guys had some acquisition pressure that you’ve…
Ms. FAKE: There has been – I mean, there have been kind of, you know, nibbles…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: You know, kind of around the edges but we are not really interested in, you know, doing in acquisitions.
Mr. ARRINGTON: You don’t want a $50 million exit?
Ms. FAKE: No.
Mr. ARRINGTON: You want what?
Ms. FAKE: Yeah. I mean, I guess – you know, I – both my co-founders…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Right.
Ms. FAKE: They sold SiteAdvisor to McAfee. I sold Flickr to Yahoo. You know, none of us are really interested in, you know, a kind of an acquisition. You know, we really want to have a company that we built and, you know, and swing for the fences and go ambitious. And I think that Hunch we picked a very good problem. I think that we picked a very ambitious area.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: And so I think that it the possibilities are tremendous for the company.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Do you think – I am speculating here but if – let’s say I am a regular Hunch user and – I mean, I use it twice a month, three or four times a month.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: What does this got? The 200,000 hardcore users, are they using a – you said they’ve answered 150 questions each.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: They are using it pretty regularly.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah, very regularly.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Once or twice a month it sounds like – yeah, OK.
Ms. FAKE: Very regularly, yeah, yeah, and more in.
Mr. ARRINGTON: After a year or so of using it you have my taste graph.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: You almost have my taste DNA.
Ms. FAKE: Yes.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Like you can almost describe me psychologically…
Ms. FAKE: Yes.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Demographically as a – you know, as a human being, right?
Ms. FAKE: Right. Yeah. And the other thing too is that…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Does that – that’s still scary.
Ms. FAKE: What – you know, one of the things that we are interested in is actually allowing you to take your taste profile elsewhere. So, you should be able to, for example, we are going to roll out some stuff where it will help you – it will help you pick out, you know, who to follow on Twitter. It will help you – you’ve…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Choose the movies that I want.
Ms. FAKE: Choose movies that you want to see. It will be able to – you know, imagine – imagine, you know, you could take your taste profile and you could apply it to eBay or Etsy. And you could take – you could take it…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: Kind of like anywhere with you.
Mr. ARRINGTON: I imagine advertisers will be eager to get their hands on the idea as well.
Ms. FAKE: Right, right. But we have no intention of actually giving it to anyone. It was – it would…
Mr. ARRINGTON: You want to sell it?
Ms. FAKE: It would be no. We wouldn’t be selling it…
Mr. ARRINGTON: But you – I mean, you will advertise in to this, right? I mean, that is the monetization model. It must be.
Ms. FAKE: The advertising?
Ms. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: The monetization model is basically it is the same as – it is the same as sort of kind of intent gathering mechanism like Google for example is, obviously if you are looking for a camera and we help you find a camera and then you click on the link to go buy a camera…
Mr. ARRINGTON: That’s where you monetize…
Ms. FAKE: That’s – that’s where all the monetization…
Mr. ARRINGTON: But not – let’s say a studio coming to you and saying I want to market Avatar…
Ms. FAKE: Yeah, yeah. No way.
Mr. ARRINGTON: To all the people you know are going to love it. Why not?
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: I actually you might enjoy being told about it.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah. Yeah. Well that would – you know, like to date, that has not been something that we’ve been saying…
Mr. ARRINGTON: I mean, that’s if – you know, you are (unintelligible) Blippy – I mean, Blippy it’s like…
Ms. FAKE: Sure, yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Where you – to post everything you buy.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah.
Mr. ARRINGTON: That I mean – that they’re blunt about the fact they were going to sell that profile…
Ms. FAKE: Yeah, yeah. Now I know. I know – what…
Ms. ARRINGTON: All day. It does not – we are thinking…
Ms. FAKE: When I’m planning on doing that. I mean, I like Blippy. I mean, Blippy is a really interesting company and I think that in many ways they are doing something very similar to what Hunch is doing and that they are creating a taste profile.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: They are approaching it from a completely different…
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: Direction and that they’re using your purchase history as a way of – you know, of basically creating a kind of taste profile.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: But I do think that this is going to be a kind of a trend. That the social graph, which everybody is very excited about right now will be in some ways replaced by the taste graph. And what Blippy is doing would be as also kind of creating a taste graph as well but from a different source.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Yeah.
Ms. FAKE: In your purchase history.
Mr. ARRINGTON: OK. So, no quick sale for you guys, that’s a promise.
Ms. FAKE: No quick sale.
Mr. ARRINGTON: We’re going to see how this plays out.
Ms. FAKE: No quick sale, yeah. That doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards.
Mr. ARRINGTON: Congratulations on the round. Thanks for taking the time with me.
Ms. FAKE: Yeah, of course. All right. Thank you.
A couple of years ago, it seems all anyone wanted was access to Qik, the mobile live-stream video service. At the time, Nokia’s N95 was one of the hot devices you needed to run it. Since then, while the service has been growing, it has lost some of its luster — perhaps because it couldn’t run on one of the hottest mobile devices out there, the iPhone, until very recently. But now it may be time for Qik to go back on the offensive.
Today, all anyone seems to be talking about is the new HTC EVO 4G, Sprint’s WiMax phone that runs Android which was just unveiled at CTIA. Not only will Qik work on the device, it will come built-in to each one.
This is potentially huge news for the service. With even the coolest services, it can be hard to convince users to download your app. But coming pre-installed is worth its weight in gold. And live video streaming seems like the perfect way to test out Sprint’s new 4G network, which is already deployed in a few cities, and will be in many more this year.
And it’s not just the network. This new device features an 8 megapixel autofocus camera capable of recording HD video. And yes, Qik is able to capture videos in HD with this device. And it even has a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera — something which plenty of vain Qik users will appreciate.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple has long described its Apple TV business as “a hobby” and dismissed speculation that it is considering an Apple-branded television. Indeed, during a February appearance at the annual Goldman Sachs (GS) tech conference in San Francisco COO Tim Cook reiterated that stance: “We have no interest in the TV market,” he said.
In a note to clients today, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster suggests that Apple (AAPL) reconsider its position on the television market. Home entertainment hardware is a $31.8 billion business, says Munster, and Apple could easily tap into it with a connected HDTV that offered immediate access to iTunes movies, TV shows, music and podcasts.
“Apple’s ability to deliver hardware, software and content that could replace an entire entertainment system with a single TV, puts Apple in a unique position for the emerging connected TV cycle,” Munster writes. “Apple already has several of the key ingredients for success in the connected TV market, many of which would differentiate Apple from current market players.”
Among those key ingredients:
This seems like a solid base upon which to build a connected TV business, particularly one designed to replace an entire entertainment system. Combine it with a reasonably priced iTunes TV subscription plan and you’d have a compelling offering indeed. But as I’ve noted here before, TV hardware is a tough business and the cable companies are wary of any offering that might threaten existing subscription fees.
Still, Munster is optimistic.
“Yes, TV hardware is a challenging, low-margin business if you don’t change the rules of the game; but we see potential for Apple to offer best-in-class hardware, software and content and charge a premium,” he says. “The bottom line, 32.4 million HDTVs sold in the U.S. a year is a real market, and if history repeats itself, Apple would find a way to compete in a commoditized market with a premium priced product.”
Munster notes that “An Apple Television would address more than just the HDTV market, as it would likely include audio and video features that could replace the TV itself, a Blu-ray player, a cable set-top-box, possibly a gaming system, an audio receiver made to combine these inputs and play music, plus the installation of these devices.”
Given Munster’s confidence in an Apple gambit in the television market, how long will it be before we see one? Two to four years, says the analyst–about the time we see an a-la-carte iTunes TV Pass.
Just got another care package from Nintendo, and it's a big one — literally. Nintendo sent us one of its new DSi XL units, and color me impressed. The screens look great, and games look like they should have been on a screen this size in the first place. I don't even need my reading glasses to play any more!
Click through for more shots and first impressions.
Android superfactory HTC’s latest smartphone is a 4G device designed just for Sprint. The phone called HTV Evo is a feature-packed gadget that will have the distinction of being the first phone offered for a 4G network in the U.S.
The Evo has a 4.3-inch touchscreen, two cameras, GPS navigation, HDMI output and mobile hotspot capability. It will run Google’s Android 2.1 operating system and HTC’s custom user interface called the Sense.
Sprint claims its 4G network can offer download speeds up to 10 times faster than current 3G networks, allowing the Evo to be blazing fast when its come to data access.
Over the last few years, Sprint has been building out its 4G network and the company’s 4G wireless services is available in 27 cities in the U.S., thought that doesn’t include most major hubs like San Francisco and New York. Sprint has said it will expand its 4G network in a big way this year.
Sprint and HTC haven’t announced pricing for the Evo but device is expected to launch this summer.
Like the Nexus One, another HTC designed phone for Google, the Evo will use a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. It will have a 8-megapixel auto-focus camera with HD-capable video camcorder and a forward-facing 1.3 megapixel camera. (See a list of detailed specifications on Sprint’s site.)
Evo’s mobile hotspot functionality will also allow up to eight Wi-Fi enabled devices to share the network. The phone will also support Adobe Flash and will have a “custom” web browser, says Sprint.
See Also:
We just got back from the Sprint EVO 4G announcement, where ol’ Yeller just happened to have a few devices on hand. I spent a few minutes getting to know the device (far less than I wanted to, trust me) — read on for my first impressions and a quick demo video.
Check out the video demo below!
Things on the Web used to be simple for bloggers and publishers. You published on a Website, and then syndicated it out to other channels via an RSS feed. But then realtime streams started taking over and RSS couldn’t keep up, even though technologies like PuSH are speeding it up. So publishers take their RSS feeds and publish the headlines and a link directly to Twitter with a service like Twitterfeed. But what about Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and all the other social streams coming down the pike?
There are so many ways to syndicate your feeds that it is becoming unmanageable. A new service called Dlvr.it is launching in open beta today to help publishers deliver their feeds anywhere they want. Dlvr.it is a new product from in-stream advertising startup Pheedo. Once you sign up, you select a feed as an input, and then you select where you want to deliver that feed as an output. Depending on the destination, the feed will appear differently (a headline with a short dlvr.it link for Twitter, a longer excerpt for Facebook). You can set it to deliver all headlines to Twitter, but only a certain subset to Tumblr.
The workflow is a little bit like Yahoo Pipes. You fill in the blanks, and can set the number of updates per channel, or can even trickle out stories throughout the day if they get published all at once. Or it can all be pushed out in realtime using the PuSH protocol. Dlvr.it has its own short URL and also supports bit.ly. It can add auto-hashtags to your Twitter feed based on pre-existing category tags.
Once you start syndicating through dlvr.it, you can monitor clicks, posts, retweets and other stats in a dashboard. Twitterfeed also offers analytics, but only for Twitter. Dlvr.it wants to keep adding services and open up an API to support more inputs than just RSS feeds. On the other hand, Twitterfeed is much simpler and already has a lot of momentum.
Dlvr.it is a free service. Check it out and tell us what you think in comments.
FROM GAMERTELL - Carrying the bad combination of too much debt and too little revenue, analysts are wondering ig it’s game over for Blockbuster…
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By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
By now, it’s well known that almost anyone you meet–from a potential employer to a prospective date–might be searching for information about you online. But would you feel strange knowing that your doctor was Googling you? The practice appears to be widespread, according to an essay in the latest edition of the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, and it raises some thorny ethical questions for doctors.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Last week, I went to my hair salon and paid half of what I usually spend because of a deal that I—and more than 2,000 other people—bought online two months earlier. When I bought the deal, I suggested it (via email) to two friends, who each bought it and I was rewarded with two $10 credits. I used those to buy a deal at a local restaurant that gave me $40 toward food and drink for just $20. And the cycle continues.
Welcome to the world of group buying, Internet style, where the power of the Web can be utilized to offer surprisingly large discounts to a sizable number of people for things they actually want to buy.
Many of the group-buying sites work by negotiating deals with local merchants and promising to deliver crowds in exchange for discounts. The sites differ from other buying sites in how they work and what they do to reward users who share deals.
Several of these group-buying sites are available nationwide, mostly in big cities. I focused on Groupon.com, which is available in 42 cities, and LivingSocial.com, which works in 13 cities. Both are popular in Washington, D.C., where I live, though others may be more well-known in your area. If group-buying sites aren’t popular near you yet, they may soon start working there thanks to business models that allow them to work in all sorts of locations.
Other sites offer similar or slightly different selling techniques. Woot.com, a pioneer of group buying on the Web, started in 2004 by specializing in flash sales, selling a different item each day for just 24 hours or until it sells out. The site evolved from a wholesale distribution company and is known for its focus on selling technology gadgets. Another site called Tippr.com works in Seattle (not D.C., where I live, so I can’t yet use it) and uses a patented technology that makes discounts bigger as more people join a deal. New York-based Gilt.com and Ideeli.com focus on selling high fashion items at less expensive prices and can offer deals that last longer than a day.
Here’s how sites like Groupon and LivingSocial work: They ask retailers in a city to offer steep discounts ranging from around 50% to 90% off on things that would appeal to locals. Examples include 79% off spa services, 54% off at paintball, 57% off at a restaurant with Malaysian cuisine and half off for doggie day care. The site lists one retailer a day and takes a portion of the revenue generated by a deal. (Groupon usually takes half while LivingSocial takes between 30% to 50% depending on the arrangement with the merchant.)
Some sites, like Groupon, will only make the deal official if a certain number of people purchase it, while LivingSocial and others offer the deal regardless of how many people buy it.
People can be notified of these deals by signing up for daily emails from the site or by checking social networks like Twitter and Facebook. They may then purchase deals by logging onto the group-buying site and printing vouchers from the site. With most sites, you’re buying a deal for at least half off the real cost (i.e. paying $20 for $40 at a restaurant).
Both Groupon and LivingSocial will work with iPhone apps. Once downloaded, users can enter their login credentials into these apps so they can access that account’s purchased deals, allowing them to show the coupon on the iPhone at the establishment to get the deal.
Each deal comes with restrictions. For example, most of them expire within about six months or so (the date is printed on the coupon voucher and saved in your online account so you don’t forget). Some deals restrict the number of coupons per person, like the way my salon’s deal restricted people from buying more than three coupons; if three were purchased, they all had to be used in the same visit.
Since these sites work best when many people use them, they use a rewards system to motivate people to tell their friends about the deals they’ve bought. If someone shares Groupon with a friend using a special referral Web link, that friend must sign up for the site within 72 hours of clicking on the link. Then, when that person makes a purchase, the original sharer gets a kickback of $10 in Groupon credit to use toward future deals. This won’t work if the invitee isn’t a first-time Groupon customer.
LivingSocial’s rewards system works a little differently. If you buy a deal and share it with friends using a special Web link, you can get the deal free of charge if three friends use that link to sign up for the site and buy the deal. Separate from that, LivingSocial encourages users to invite friends to simply sign up for the site. If the invitee signs up, he or she gets $5 toward deals. If he or she purchases a deal, the original inviter also gets $5 toward deals.
Both Groupon and LivingSocial put a lot of emphasis on choosing deals that will serve as city guides to the hip and fun activities going on around town. Groupon divides some of its 42 cities into areas: For example, Washington, D.C., is divided into The District, Northern Virginia and Montgomery County—three unique zones that locals will appreciate seeing listed separately.
Not every deal is successful on group-buying sites. Groupon’s idea of selling tours of Gary, Ind., shortly after Michael Jackson’s death didn’t convince enough buyers to want to visit the King of Pop’s hometown. LivingSocial admits that some of its deals were too specific to be popular, like a dog-training class that didn’t fetch enough buyers. The site’s CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy says there might not have been enough people with new dogs at the time of the deal.
If you haven’t tried one of the many group-buying Web sites and you live in an area where they’re available, you’ll want to check them out—or find someone who already uses them to invite you so you can both get rewarded.
Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.
Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com
With most group-buying Web sites, getting more people to buy into the deal gets you a better discount.
| Site Name | Number of Cities | Rewards for Sharing With Friends | Type of Deals | iPhone App |
| Groupon.com | 42 | $10 for you if new invitee joins and buys a deal | Hip city locales and activities | Yes |
| LivingSocial.com | 13 | Free deal if 3 friends buy it; $5 to invitees who sign up; $5 to you if they buy a deal | Hip city locales and activities | Yes |
| Tippr.com | 1 | Deal gets better as more people buy it | Hip city locales and activities | No |
| Woot.com | online | None | Technology gadgets | Yes |
| Gilt.com | online | $25 for each invitee who buys | High fashion | Yes |
| Ideeli.com | online | $25 for each invitee who buys | High fashion | No |
Twitter’s new hovercards are pretty useful. While they’ve been slowing rolling out for several weeks, everyone should see them now. They’re the overlays that come up when you hover over a Twitter username on Twitter.com. They’ve also exposed a rather interesting bug.
With Twitter’s Retweet functionality, when someone retweets a tweet, below that tweet is placed some text noting who retweeted that item (sorry, I know I just used “tweet” or “retweet” a dozen times there). That person’s name is a hyperlink to their Twitter account, so the hovercard function works for that name as well. But if you happen to be the person that retweeted the tweet, it says that “you” retweeted the item. And that “you” is still hyperlinked. But rather than “you” linking to your Twitter account, it actually links to @you.
And this guy does not like you.
@You, whose name is Wallace, hasn’t tweeted in almost a year. But his last tweet reads: “I kill people who nudge me“
Despite the no tweeting in a year, and only 62 tweets total, this guy has over 5,600 followers — likely thanks to this Twitter bug.
So no, @You isn’t retweeting everything in the Twittersphere. It’s just a bug that Twitter has somehow overlooked.
[thanks Owaeis]
 Telegraph.co.uk | Easter Egg Hunts Go High-Tech With Geocaching ABC News AP It will take more than a basket to gather the eggs at the Easter hunt in Boulder Junction, Wis. In this April 2009 photo released by Boulder Junction Chamber of Commerce, hunters search for geocaches to help them ... Newcastle ready to celebrate Easter Easter Egg Hunts Easter egg hunts |
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For laptop users, having dual screens on the road is almost impossible unless they are willing to lug one of Lenovo’s hefty notebooks around.
Now, a Hong Kong-based company MEDL technology is showing a 13-inch lightweight, portable LED display that can be used as a secondary monitor to add digital real estate.
The LED display, simply named “The Panel,” weighs about 2.2 lbs and connects to a PC or a Mac through a USB cable. The screen has a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and claims up to five hours of battery life.
The Panel is not limited for use just with laptops, says MEDL. It can connect to phones and gaming consoles such as the Xbox 360 or Sony PlayStation 3–anything that has a USB port.
MEDL is showing The Panel at the ongoing DEMO Spring conference.
As laptops become more popular among users than desktops, the idea of having dual displays for mobile devices is catching on. Last year, Lenovo introduced a $5000 dual-screen laptop that weighed about 11 lbs and combined a 17-inch display and a 11-inch screen in a single box.
MEDL’s LED screen could be an alternative to the Lenovo monster, though MEDL is yet to announce pricing or availability for the product.
Section: Communications, Accessories, Cellular Providers, Email / IM, Gadgets / Other, Household, Lifestyle
Pharmaceuticals have got to be wetting their pants over this one. Today, AT&T announced it will be providing the connectivity for medicine bottle tops, Vitality GlowCaps that will keep track of when the medicine was taken or not taken as the case may be. The connection will even allow the pill bottle to call in for a refill when it runs low.
AT&T continues to battle network issues in regions such as New York City and San Fransisco. As more and more US consumers adopt smartphone, more and more pressure is put on the data network. Will these pill bottles cause a network bottle neck?
On the flip side, doctors and those caring for patients will find this a huge boon. From AT&T’s website:
The AT&T-connected GlowCaps fit on standard prescription bottles and use light then sound reminders, which can be followed by a phone call or text message so people don’t miss a dose. Each time the pill bottle is opened adherence data is recorded and securely relayed to Vitality over the AT&T wireless network. This daily adherence information is used to compile periodic progress reports that are sent to patients, caregivers and doctors, and family members.
The cap includes a wireless plug in unit that flashes when you should take your pill as a reminder; the cap can even be schedule to place a pill-time reminder call every day. A weekly email report can be sent as well as monthly reports will be sent detailing pill activity. Previously, GlowCaps required a broadband connection for the home health gateway unit. The older generation relied on a user-supplied broadband gateway. AT&T looks to have removed that consumer adoption barrier.
Vitality GlowCaps from Vitality on Vimeo.
Product page: [Vitality] via [AT&T]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Just like we thought, Sprint has just announced what we were previously calling the HTC Supersonic. The official name however is EVO 4G, and it’s both supersonic and evolutionary. Really: This boy is stacked.
Underneath the 480 x 800 4.3-inch TFT LCD is a QSD8650 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, 1GB of storage, and 512MB of RAM. The rest is your standard superphone specs with an affair of 802.11b/g, HDMI-out, Sprint’s new Mi-Fi-like hotspot app and an 8GB microSD card along with the goods to run on Sprint’s 4G network. CDMA still handles the voice while a combo of EV-DO and WiMAX handles the data.
The EVO 4G should hit Sprint this summer and here’s hoping it’s priced reasonably well. This might just be the phone to beat in 2010. Then again, CTIA just started.
World’s First 3G/4G Android Phone, HTC EVOTM 4G, Coming this Summer Exclusively from Sprint HTC EVO 4G offers one of the most robust multimedia experiences on a wireless phone today; features Android(TM) 2.1, one of the industry’s largest touch-screen displays, 8.0 MP camera, HD video capture, HDMI output,Mobile Hotspot capability and HTC Sense(TM) Pre-registration begins today at www.sprint.com/evoLAS VEGAS, Mar 23, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Sprint (NYSE: S) and HTC Corporation today announced summer availability of the world’s first 3G/4G Android handset, HTC EVO 4G exclusively from Sprint. HTC EVO 4G delivers a multimedia experience at 4G speeds that is second to none, making it possible to download music, pictures, files, or videos in seconds – not minutes – and watch streaming video on the go with one of the largest pinch-to-zoom displays, at 4.3 inches, in the wireless industry.Sprint 4G offers a faster wireless experience than any other U.S. national wireless carrier, and Sprint is the only national carrier offering wireless 4G service today in 27 markets. Sprint 4G delivers download speeds up to 10 times faster than 3G1,giving HTC EVO 4G the fastest data speeds of any U.S. wireless device available today. “Sprint continues to lead the 4G revolution as we introduce HTC EVO 4G to give our customers an experience that is unlike anything available in wireless to date,” said Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO. “Not only is this feature-rich device incredible on our Sprint 3G network, but Sprint 4G speeds will take mobile multimedia, including live video streaming, gaming and picture downloads, to a whole new level.”
Customers will be able to purchase HTC EVO 4G through all Sprint channels and through national retail partners, RadioShack, Best Buy and Walmart, this summer. Pricing will be announced at a later date. Pre-registration begins today at www.sprint.com/evo.
A device beyond compare
HTC EVO 4G delivers a robust list of features, including a 1GHz Qualcomm(R) Snapdragon(TM) processor ensuring a smooth and quick user experience. With dual cameras – an 8.0 megapixel auto-focus camera with HD-capable video camcorder and a forward-facing 1.3 megapixel camera – HTC EVO 4G unleashes the ability to create, stream and watch video that far surpasses expectations of what is possible on a phone today.
With built-in mobile hotspot functionality, HTC EVO 4G allows up to eight Wi-Fi enabled devices to share the 4G experience. Users can easily share an Internet connection on the go with a laptop, camera, music player, game unit, video player, or any other Wi-Fi enabled device.
With integrated HD video capture and 4G speeds, HTC EVO 4G makes slow uploads and grainy video a thing of the past. Now, it is possible to post high-quality video to YouTube(TM) or Facebook, or share moments in real time over the Internet live, via Qik. After these videos have been captured, it is easy to share them on an HDTV via an HDMI cable (sold separately).
The custom Web browser is optimized for HTC EVO 4G’s large display and Sprint 4G speeds to deliver a full, no-compromise Internet experience. Adobe Flash technology ensures that rich Internet content, such as embedded video and animation, are displayed the way they are meant to be seen. Pinch-to-zoom and automatic text reflowing provide easy Web page views.
HTC EVO 4G features the newest version of the highly acclaimed HTC Sense user experience. Along with all of the HTC Sense features first introduced on HTC Hero, HTC EVO 4G adds a number of new features, including Friend Stream, which aggregates multiple social communication channels including Facebook and Twitter(TM) into one organized flow of updates; a “Leap” thumbnail view to easily switch between home screen “panels”; the ability to download new, interactive widgets; and a “polite” ringer, which quiets the ringing phone once lifted up.
“HTC and Sprint have a strong history of working together to bring consumers technologies and advancements that make their lives easier,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC. “We believe that the HTC EVO 4G represents the best of Sprint and the best of HTC working together to bring an unmatched device to the U.S. This combination of HTC and Sprint innovation will allow people to do even more while on the go, faster than ever on the Sprint 4G network.”
Experience Android at 4G
HTC EVO 4G, the world’s first 3G/4G Android handset, features the latest iteration of the increasingly popular Android platform. Leveraging the Android 2.1 platform, HTC EVO 4G can deliver a wide array of useful new features:
- Android 2.1 enables a new way to search with pictures instead of words. Google Goggles(TM) works with everything from books, DVDs and barcodes to landmarks, logos, artwork and even wine labels. A picture taken of the Golden Gate Bridge returns all of the information anyone would need to know about the structure. By just taking a picture of several restaurant options, HTC EVO 4G will provide restaurant reviews to ensure the best choice.
- Text messaging and email composition feature built-in voice-to-text technology. By simply pressing a microphone button on the screen, messages can be composed by just speaking, making keeping in touch faster and easier than ever.
- Through Android Market(TM), HTC EVO 4G users have access to thousands of useful applications, widgets and games to download and install on their phone, with many more to come.
In addition to today’s Android apps, the performance of which will be enhanced by 4G speed, application developers will be introducing new apps that take advantage of 4G power in new ways – games and communications tools and other apps that bring together video, presence and location simultaneously, and capabilities that haven’t yet been imagined. For example, an application developer might create an app that allows a customer to simultaneously watch a streaming sporting event while pulling down stats and conducting a video chat with a friend.
A Sprint 4G developer guide is available today from the Sprint ADP Web site http://developer.sprint.com. The Sprint 4G developer guide explains how to develop on an Android 2.1 handset and how to take advantage of 4G and unique hardware/software capabilities, including how to use a forward-facing camera in an app; how to use HDMI output; and how to build in network detection (3G, 4G or Wi-Fi) to optimize quality of data in an app. The Sprint 4G developer also will include sample apps and source code that highlight these features. It will supplement the Android 2.1 SDK. As a charter member of the Open Handset Alliance(TM), Sprint is actively engaged with the Android community. Sprint has employed an open Internet approach, and the Sprint Application Developer Program has been providing tools for third-party developers since Sprint first launched the Wireless Web on its phones in 2001.
“Sprint and HTC have come together to propel the Android platform into the 4G world with the introduction of HTC EVO 4G,” said Andy Rubin, vice president, mobile platforms at Google. “The Android platform was developed to give people unmatched mobile connectivity to the Internet. By combining this vision with the promise of Sprint’s first-to-market 4G technology, HTC EVO 4G makes accessing thousands of applications from Android Market, using Google(TM) services like Google Goggles, Google Earth(TM) and the all-new Gesture Search, or simply browsing the Web faster, easier and more enjoyable than ever before.”
 New York Times (blog) | 3 examples of why the iPhone needs background processing CNET PALM DESERT, Calif.--Apple is leaving behind clever mobile-app developers--and it's evident at the DemoSpring conference. Three interesting and potentially useful mobile apps were introduced here Tuesday on other platforms--Windows ... Opera asks Apple to approve iPhone browser Better Late Than Never. Justin.tv Comes To The iPhone. How to Get Kicked Out of the App Store |
The Transportation Security Administration, ominously known as the TSA, wants to be able to track your cellphone while you go through airport security. It wants to do so in order to better understand how airport security lines work in order to streamline the process. That’s the official reason. We could always jump to conclusions and assume the TSA just wants to know where you are so the government can control your every move. Not even I am that conspiratorial.
The device, which was developed by researchers at Purdue University (and has been on trial at Indianapolis International Airport), keeps track of cellphones’ unique serial number. Every phone out there has a unique number, so officials are able to record, to a pretty accurate degree, how look it took you to go through security. If the findings show that it takes, like, an hour to go from beginning to end, well, then maybe something needs to be fixed about that particular security area.
Not all phones are set to broadcast their serial number all day long, though, so the system is only able to keep tabs on around 10 percent of all passengers. Not everyone has a cellphone (I don’t, woo!), not everyone’s phone is turned on while they go through security, etc.
Again, the idea is to map the situation at the security line. All the information the system collects is deleted as quickly as possible. So they say, of course.
It’s sorta similar to the story, from a few days ago, that showed that the average person only travels within a six mile radius 93 percent of the time. I used to drive 10 miles to go to high school, so already I’m cooler than the study suggests. Well, was cooler.
FROM GAMERTELL - Gamertell walks you through the basics of using your Pokewalker for the first time. Learn how to transfer your pokemon to the Pokewalker, search for wild pokemon, search for items and then transfer it back to your DS.
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We’re live from Sprint’s press announcement at CTIA in Las Vegas, which is scheduled to begin in just a few minutes.
What ever might they be announcing? All signs are pointing at the HTC Supersonic, a brand new touchscreen smartphone packing a massive display and support for Sprint’s 4G WiMax network. Follow along with our live notes below, won’t you?
We literally just had our hands on with the just announced Samsung Galaxy S — and boy, was it a beauty.
Read on for our first impressions.
Update: Pictures now up; the video is processing as we speak. The player is embedded below – as soon as YouTube’s done processing it, it’ll go live.
Normally as quiet and retiring as a geek at the Homecoming dance, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been on an unusual e-mail spree in the weeks leading up to the iPad launch, according to multiple reports.
By our count, Jobs has sent at least four e-mails to eager Apple nerds asking about issues such as iPad tethering, future MacBook upgrades, open e-books and Picasa photo syncing.
On Tuesday morning, Cult of Mac posted an e-mail exchange between Jobs and an Apple customer inquiring about whether the iPad would support open (i.e., non-DRM) e-books. Like his past e-mails, Jobs’ reply was terse:
Yep.
Sent from my iPad
Jobs has been known to occasionally respond to e-mails from customers similar to the way a celebrity musician or movie star might write back to fan mail. Though extremely concise, his e-mails offer a tiny window into the workings of the famously secretive corporation.
This is also the first published e-mail from Jobs with the “Sent from my iPad” signature.
In another e-mail, Jobs also reportedly told an iPhone customer that the iPad could not be tethered to an iPhone for a 3G internet connection.
No.
Sent from my iPhone
And in another more amusing exchange posted last weekend, someone who likes both Google and Apple asks Jobs whether iTunes will sync with Google’s Picasa photo services, which includes face recognition, and the CEO uses the opportunity to diss his rival:
No, but iPhoto on the Mac has much better Faces and Places features.
Sent from my iPhone
Another e-mail, posted Monday by MacRumors, quotes Jobs telling an eager Apple customer “Not to worry” about the slower upgrade cycles for the MacBook Pro, even though Apple appears to be focusing most of its energy on the iPad. That would imply new MacBooks and MacBook Pros might soon be on the way.
And now the fun part. From this flurry of e-mails, we can extract a few key factoids about Jobs:
Meanwhile, we can also add two more bullet points to the list of things the iPad can’t do:
See Also:
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Section: Web, Websites, Google
Google Maps began an expirament to show hotel prices (of advertisers) in Google Maps when searching. One of the huge advantages of the web when booking hotels is to get an idea where the hotel is in relation to what you want to see. Many users flip between Google Maps and hotel sites while researching best deals. Now, Google Maps is looking to help users out by offering it all in one place.
From the Goole LetLong blog:
“With this feature, when you search for hotels on Google Maps you’ll be able to enter the dates you plan to stay and see real prices on selected listings. You can click on the price to see a list of advertisers who have provided pricing information for that hotel, indicated by the “Sponsored” text, and click through to reserve a room on the advertiser’s site.”
Google promises the ads won’t affect Google ranking of a hotel’s position (that will still be based on matching keywords and proximity to your search destination). The hotel’s price is supposed to have no effect on results as well.
The users is being rolled out to a select few users for evaluation. If successful, a larger rollout plan is possible.
Read: [Google Latlong blog]
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Finding a way to keep track of your keys, wallet or phone is one of those frustrating tasks of life for which there’s no dearth of as-seen-of-TV solutions.
Here’s another product but one that’s embraces the Web 2.0 era.
Tech company Phone Halo debuted a hardware dongle that promises to help you keep track of your stuff through Google maps on your phone.
A $70 “eraser-sized device” Phone Halo has Bluetooth and GPS capability and supports Blackberry, Android and the iPhone. The company showed the device at the ongoing DEMO Spring conference.
The Halo charges via USB and has a battery life of about a week, says the company.
But here’s the problem. The device has a range of only 30 feet or 10 meters so it’s best for use across a room or two. It won’t be handy if you forgot your phone outdoors or have already left the location. There’s an option to lock the phone remotely but with most major phone makers including Motorola with Moto Blur and Apple with Mobile Me offering locator services for your phone, Halo is not particularly useful.
Phone Halo says users can specify a radius so that if the object and the attached Halo hardware moves beyond it, the Halo dongle will beep to alert you. Or you can all the hardware by pressing a button so it beeps. Users can also open up the Halo phone app and see the last location of the object.
And since everything has to have a social component these days, the Phone Halo lets you post a Google map of where you Halo’d object last was seen on Facebook or Twitter.
It’s all rather gimmicky and pedestrian. There are plenty of key locator services out there starting at $30 and almost provide the same service. Except for the ability to post to twitter, there’s little that sets Phone Halo apart. But isn’t tweeting a big deal these days?
Check out the demo video to see Phone Halo at work
Photo: Phone Halo
Good news, everyone in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City and St. Louis! You’re getting Sprint’s 4G network by the end of 2010! With Sprint expected to debut their first 4G handset at CTIA this week, this news probably couldn’t be timed much better.
This brings the total number of cities getting WiMax in 2010 up to 15, with Boston, Denver, Kansas City, Houston, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C being announced as roll-out cities earlier this year.
Good news, everyone in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City and St. Louis! You’re getting Sprint’s 4G network by the end of 2010! With Sprint expected to debut their first 4G handset at CTIA this week, this news probably couldn’t be timed much better.
This brings the total number of cities getting WiMax in 2010 up to 15, with Boston, Denver, Kansas City, Houston, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C being announced as roll-out cities earlier this year.
Section: Audio, Portable Audio, Video, Portable Video, Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
Apple is now offering the uber-popular iPhone with and without contract. The good news ends there as the phone will still be locked to the AT&T network. The phones are available for a no-contract, unsubsidized price of $499 (iPhone 3G), $599 and $699 (iPhone 3GS).
What good is a locked, unsubsidized phone? Great question! Maybe it was a deal for all the folks that traveled to the US and took the phone back to their country as a souvenir. Now, many of those countries have iPhones, so that advantage is gone.
Currently, the no-contract phones can only be purchased in Apple retail stores. A quick look at the website shows you cannot purchase then online without a contract. It is not clear why the distinction is made between on and off line purchases.
If buying $500+ phones is your thing, today is your day. For the rest of us, this news is a bit of a sleeper.
Read: [Engadget]
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Look at you, Kyocera! After essentially shuttering your smartphone division for years, you’ve jumped back in with a bit of a splash.
Today at CTIA, the low-to-mid-range handset manufacturer announced the Zio, an Android-powered touchscreen phone. What makes the Zio special isn’t its specs — it’s the price it brings the specs in at. For somewhere between $169 and $220 (and that’s before contract!) Kyocera has managed to stuff a 3.2 megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 512 megs of on-board app storage space behind an oh-so-pixel-packed 800×480 screen.
This, folks, is why we love Android.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes me a Mac guy as opposed to a PC guy and it seems that the Register may have hit on some very good points. Tim Anderson, the Register writer, notes that Microsoft has lost its edge when it comes to industrial design and even in during its recent MIX conference, where it was supposed to be all about design and sex, they dropped more science than art. Once upon a time abstraction mattered. Now, in an era where most programmers wouldn’t touch machine code with a 10-foot pole and most users have never seen a command line, the science has to be hidden.
The thing I hear the most from anti-Apple folks is that Windows is “open.” By open, I assume they mean that you can tweak it and install anything you want on it and if you need to you can get into DOS. The fallacies of that argument aside, it’s a fairly interesting window on Windows: geeks like Windows because it gives them freedom… until they try Linux.
But geeks are few and far between these days. Once only geeks bought smartphones. Now everyone does. Once geeks bought gaming PCs. Now everyone does. Once geeks only cared about keyboards with macro keys and numpads. Now everyone does. Powerful computing has entered the mainstream and the old ways of interacting with data are growing too complex for a vast majority of the mainstream. Hence the popularity of the iPod and the iPhone – buy device, install iTunes, put music on it. Buy device, press a button, get an app. Buy device, see a picture of your dog, send that picture to your mom. All of those use cases could be completed using an WinMo or Symbian phone, but could you give either of those OSes to your Mom and ask her to email you a photo? Nope.
So Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft’s return to the art of the interface. Rather than talking about Exchange Servers and MVPs, they’re talking about gaming and experience. And how do you control experience? By locking things down, by releasing product slowly, by doing what Apple did with the iPhone. Anderson notes:
Here’s what Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said during the February press launch for Windows Phone 7: “We want to lead and take complete accountability for the end user experience … have more consistency in the hardware platform, more consistency in the user experience, but still enable [partner] innovation.”
‘Partnering innovation’ is generally a disaster for Microsoft.
Ballmer makes a nod towards it as a matter of good public relations, but by locking down both hardware and software, the company is trying to minimize the extent to which OEMs can spoil the design effort.
I think the key word here is “spoil.” Microsoft is building an image around WinPho that it didn’t have with WinMo. That image is one of a powerful artifact rather than a manufactured piece of technology. Think back on the old Clarke chestnut (“any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”) and tell me if the concept of lockdown – in WinPho and in OS X – doesn’t help a device become less a “device” and more a magical, seamless object.
We get both weird and wonderful submissions to our Gadget Lab tips hotline, all of which we enjoy. Then we get something like the Gluvi, and it makes me doubt not just the world of gadgets, but the future of humanity itself. The Gluvi is a small plastic bag into which you slip a remote control. It costs $10, and would seem to be an overpriced cover to protect the remote from spills. It isn’t. Instead, it is designed to protect you, the user, from dirty, unhygienic sticks of plastic.
It works like this: You are Howard Hughes, so scared of germs around you that you use tissues to pick up anything. Given your various paranoias, it is inexplicable that you visit a hotel, but you do so anyway. When you arrive, it strikes you that “most hotels do not require their maids to clean TV remotes” and that you could be exposed to “diseases found on hotel remotes such as the H1N1 virus, cold virus, herpes, hepititas [sic], etc.” (I swear I am not making this up).
But you came prepared. You pull out the prophylactic (or “Portable Sanitary Solution”) which is “easy to use, slip on and off” and cover the foul, disease-ridden device. But what of the Gluvi itself? Surely that, too, will get dirty as you travel? No matter. The website suggests you use solvents.
Unbelievably, it gets worse. What do you think this overpriced freezer-bag might be made of? If you guessed “easy grip, stylish yoga inspired reflexology material”, you would be, inevitably, correct.
And on: There are two models available. The Hotel Gluvi for travelers we already covered, and the Custom Gluvi, “designed to fit your home cable TV remotes” and protect the actual device from gunk. Yes, we finally get to the part where I make the joke about keeping the remote clean whilst watching “late night” movies. And to finish, there is actually a recommended by link on the store page. Who is this benevolent endorser? Amazingly, it’s the Working Mother blog.
Gluvi Remote Protector [Gluvi. Thanks, Andrea!]
Opera submitted its Mini browser for the iPhone to Apple for approval early Tuesday. The superfast browser doesn’t technically break any of Apple’s rules, but Opera is laying on the hype to make any refusal as high-profile as possible.
This sets the stage for a showdown, because Apple has refused Opera before. In 2008, the Cupertino company rejected the upstart Norwegian browser maker because Opera competes with Apple’s own browser, Safari.
Opera Mini, which we got some hands-on time with at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, this February, is merely an application for displaying web content that has been pre-rendered and compressed by Opera’s servers. To the user, it behaves like a regular browser — the text is selectable, for example — with one exception: speed. Opera Mini is so fast it makes Mobile Safari look like wheezing old man.
Having been rejected at least once before, Opera’s not pulling any punches this time. The company says that its new app is “100% compliant” with Apple’s App Store rules. And to make the approval or rejection process that much more public, Opera has put a timer on its website that ticks off the seconds since the app was submitted to Apple. You can even sign up to guess when it is approved and win an iPhone.
In theory, Opera Mini should be admitted through Apple’s velvet rope, but it’s hard to see a rival browser being admitted to the store, especially one that makes Safari look so bad. If Apple is willing to say no to Google Voice, then it’ll have no problem turning down Opera.
I hope Opera does make it in. For the kind of text and picture-heavy browsing I do on my iPod Touch, Opera would be ideal. Depending on how it turns out, the video above will be either a teaser, or something to taunt you with an app you’ll never use. And yes, I’m going to say it: Opera Mini on the iPhone could finally make Opera relevant again.
Opera Mini submitted to Apple’s App Store [Opera]
Opera Mini [Opera]
See Also:
Nokia’s new flagship, the Symbian-powered N8-00, has HD video recording, a 12-megapixel camera, and a 3.5-inch capacative touchscreen. What doesn’t it have? A US release date or price.
A Chinese site has all of the images if you want to check them out but this device is definitely on the Droid track and presumably the version of Symbian it’s running, Symbian 3, will be healthier than the previous incarnations. Here’s hoping.
via UnwiredReview
UPDATE: A source within Palm (who is known to us but wants to remain off the record) has contacted us to say that “there is no memo and no plans to adopt Android. We are very happy with and committed to webOS.”
An anonymously sourced, unconfirmed memo partially quoted on Slashdot purports to show that Palm is ready to ditch the failing WebOS — which powers its Pre smartphone — and instead become yet another Android handset maker. The full memo was promised to be posted on Wikileaks at midnight ET last night. It is still not there. Here is the purported “quote” from Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein:
While Palm is incredibly proud of our engineers who spent timeless work and effort to bring us this advanced operating system, consumers simply have not caught on. To provide a better future for ourselves and our customers, the only logical choice is to transition our hardware and software to the Android platform.
Despite the rather suspicious origins of this information, it does seem like one of the only ways out for Palm, which really did bet the farm on the WebOS. Back at CES 2009, the Pre was the star of the show, with almost unanimous praise from the tech press. It multi-tasks, it has the UI polish you’d expect from a bunch of ex-Apple engineers and it has some genuinely clever features: the windows-as-card-stacks metaphor, and the notification bar, for example. Everybody thought the Pre would save Palm.
But it failed to sell, to the extent that Palm has actually ceased production temporarily and is trying to help telcos shift inventory.
Could a move to Android keep Palm from closing down? Android is hot right now, and while the Motorola Droid and the Google Nexus are no iPhones is terms of sales, they’re getting a lot of press. Just like the Pre did, in fact.
It’d be a risky move. In swapping to Android, Palm would be throwing out the one unique thing that it has to sell. The WebOS is way more important than the Pre (or its little sister, the Pixi): those are just boxes. And if the iPhone has taught us anything, it’s that the box doesn’t matter: It’s all in the OS. Palm’s failure wasn’t in making a bad OS. It was poor marketing. That weird, giant woman on the TV ads? Confusing, if not scary. The iPhone ads, on the other hand, tell us exactly what the phone does, and no more.
Our advice? Stick with WebOS and just fix your ad campaign, showing people that you can use the phone as a five-device MiFi-style hot-spot or that you can use it to tether your iPad. Show the phone in action and people will buy it.
Or license that OS and go up against Android itself. Handset makers will be getting the jitters right now after Apple’s lawsuit against HTC. Offer them something free of patent infringements, something that is here today (unlike Windows Phone 7), and you might just turn Palm into the Microsoft of the cellphone world.
Rumor: Palm ditching webOS for Android? [Slashdot]
See Also:
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
Dave Phipps is like the Ben Heck of automobiles, only instead of putting the parts of old game consoles into newer, smaller boxes, Dave takes sweet-looking old cars and fills them with hi-tech electronics. This time he has wired his 1969 Pontiac GTO to be remote-controlled by his iPod Touch.
The video above, from Jalopnik, shows the system in action. Dave uses the “iTouch”, as he calls it, combined with the RedEye iPhone remote to roll the car’s windows up and down, fire up the ignition, pop the doors and trunk and even roll down the roof.
The RedEye, you may remember, is a box that receives its instructions from the iPhone or iPod over Wi-Fi and blasts them out to your home-theater components via infrared beams. Dave has used it to build a Wi-Fi network into his GTO which is hooked up to all the motors in the car. He even uses the macro function of the RedEye app. Wait ’til you see the “all down” function in the video. I guarantee you’ll crack a smile.
While this is undoubtedly an awesome mod, one of Dave’s previous versions sounds even better. He had a Bluetooth setup that did all the same things, only it was controlled by voice. That sounds suspiciously close to KITT from Knight Rider.
Electronics Whiz Controls ‘69 Pontiac GTO With iPod Touch [Jalopnik via Gadget Review]
Not wanting to be completely overshadowed by Apple’s recent release of Aperture 3, Adobe has just made the second beta for Lightroom 3 available for download. And while Lightroom 3 beta 2 might sound like a pedestrian point-upgrade, it actually packs in some major new features.
Photographers with video-shooting cameras can now store movies in the catalog alongside images. You can’t view them within Lightroom (clicking a file will launch it in your default video viewing application) but you can move them around, store them in smart collections and export them just like photos. One note: the weird AVCHD files from my Panasonic GF1 aren’t recognized.
Next up is tethering, which right now works with most newer Canon and Nikon DSLRs. Tethering is just what it sounds like: you hook the camera up via the USB cable and when you shoot, photos are pumped straight into Lightroom and displayed on screen.
The biggest change for processing images is the addition of luminance noise reduction. The first beta only corrected color-noise, which is the most annoying kind of digital noise: you’ll know it by the horrible multi-color speckles it adds to the shadows of high-ISO images. It did an amazing job, removing the speckles and leaving behind a very film-like “grain”. The new luminance option is nothing short of stunning.
On an ISO 6400 image (from a Nikon D700), the sliders remove all noise from the image with minimal loss of actual picture detail. Throw those controls all the way to the right and you’ll get some too-smooth artifacts, but with no effort you can get results that previously needed third-party software. The only real problem is that you have to choose between noise-free, or the rather good-looking grain if you use chroma-correction only.
Another huge addition is a proper point-curve in the curves section. What the hell is that? The “Tone Curve” is the small linear graph in the develop settings which you can drag around to tweak contrast settings. The new version adds a little button that lets you drag this curve wherever you want, just like Photoshop, instead of the limited adjustments before. This picture shows that powerful tools require some restraint from the user (see the photo above for proof).
There are more tweaks. The old, nasty vignette from LR2 is back (although you still keep the less ham-fisted new versions alongside). The slideshow module can now pre-render all images before starting a show, meaning it won’t choke midway through. Flickr export has more control over file-size. The print module gets some tweaks to the maximum print resolution and layout, and for those who insist on arrogantly plastering their name over their mediocre photographs, the watermark feature has a few surprises.
This beta is a big improvement on the last one, and is a lot faster overall. It feels like a finished product already, but Adobe says that there are a few new features still to come. Hopefully these will be along the lines of Aperture’s gimmicky but useful faces and places (facial recognition and GPS) functions, and perhaps a book-printing section (this is Adobe, after all). In all, though, I’d be happy with Lightroom 3 like this. Go download it today. It’s free.
Lightroom 3 Beta 2 [Adobe]
According to a leaked internal document, Apple will now sell you an off-contract iPhone. Previously, you were required to prove that you had an AT&T contract before purchase, or to sign up for one. The iPhones aren’t unlocked, though. They are still tied to AT&T. What this does mean is that you can buy an iPhone and use it without having to sell yourself to AT&T for two years, either by unlocking for use on another GSM carrier, or using it with an existing or pre-pay AT&T contract.
This takes us all the way back to the first days of the iPhone, when the only way to buy an iPhone was off-contract, and unsubsidized. It also gives us a reminder of the crazy prices people were paying back then. The off-contract iPhones will cost you $500 for the 8GB 3G, $600 for the 16GB 3GS and $700 for the 32GB 3GS.
This is unlikely to reawaken the gray export market, which saw US-sourced, contract-free jailbroken iPhones on sale as far away as China: Customers are limited to just one iPhone per day, or five if they do it the old fashioned way and buy the phone with a contract.
The offer hasn’t yet reached the online store, so you’ll need to take a trip to you local Apple Store to do the deal. And one more thing: Those iPhone prices make the iPad look pretty cheap, right?
Buy iPhones Without Contract Now: Official Apple Document Leaked [Gizmodo]
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