Highlights from steampunk bazaar at White Mischief

The steampunk maker bazaar at this weekend's White Mischief Great Exposition night at London's Scala boasted a raft of supremely talented vendors and exhibitors. In addition to the publishers of Steampunk Magazine, three of my favourites were:

Brute Force Studios who stole my heart with a brooch made from an ornate, silver-chased telegraph key (alas, not for sale, nor on the website!), and who make this amazing clockwork arm-piece.

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The Clockwork Quartet (who performed a number of improbable and wonderful acts through the evening), who were selling their Creative Commons-licensed single in a beautiful, embossed package that features a fold-out map. A fine artifact easily worth the £10 they were charging (and the music's rocking, too -- haunting and sweet). They were also selling delicious hand-made truffles (Earl Grey or paprika) at the absurdly low price of 50p (!).

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Herr Doktor, a model-maker and artist in real life, exhibited a fantastic range of steampunk gubbins. As a raygun collector, I was drawn to his firearms, which are not for sale (he only takes commissions -- something I made sure to point out to Alice, given that my birthday's a scant four months away!).

Source: Boing Boing | 29 Mar 2010 | 4:10 am

InfoWorld review: Flash Builder 4 lights up rich Internet app development (InfoWorld)

InfoWorld - Nearly a year has passed since Adobe made public the beta versions of Flash Builder 4, the next-gen Eclipse-based IDE for constructing data-driven apps on its open source Flex framework. Since then, few innovations have emerged, but don't be lured into thinking this toolset is more fizzle than flash. This package represents a sizable improvement over its predecessor, Flex Builder 3.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Mar 2010 | 4:00 am

Coffee-Cup Collar Expands Like B-Movie Special Effect

You may remember Scott Amron from his Brush & Rinse toothbrush, which channels a jet of rinsing water into your mouth. Or his Keybrid, a split-ring key with its own keyring built-in. Both of these concept designs made it to market, which sends a chill of fear through me as I consider that one day, I may actually see his new invention in the wild.

The Heatswell is an endothermic (heat-activated) coating for a paper coffee-cup. When that cup is filled with a tasty hot beverage, the band swells into a thick, insulating cloth-like material, offering both grip and heat-protection for your fingers. It’s thin, safe and cheaper than a cup and collar together. So what’s the problem? Take a look at the video. The Heatswell does indeed swell impressively, only it swells like a diseased tree-trunk blistering under napalm.

The end of the video has even more terrifying mutations, but once we get over the accelerated cancerous growths, we can see that this cup could actually end up in a Starbucks near you (and trust me, there is a Starbucks near you). Not only is it cheaper, and made from an FDA-approved material, but it cuts out a step of the coffee-serving process and offers the opportunity for branding – although I’m not sure which company would like to see its logo ballooning like a necrotic canker.

Scott is already sending out samples. I’m hoping to get one and combine it with one of those self-heating hand-warmers for my own invention: The Heat Engine, a perpetual machine which will power the world!

Heatswell [Amron Experimental. Thanks, Scott!]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 29 Mar 2010 | 3:59 am

Japan considers end to cellphone 'SIM lock'

Facebook prepares for another privacy row with its users - Register

Latest Gadgets (blog)

Facebook prepares for another privacy row with its users Register Facebook has once again decided to tweak its privacy policy, but this time the Mark Zuckerberg-run company has told its users to expect another overhaul ahead of making the changes - presumably in an effort ... Facebook Firms Up Plans To Incorporate Geo-Location FeaturesITProPortal Facebook set for more privacy policy changesTechworld.com New 'Place' Feature on FacebookE Canada Now New Media Age -ITP.net -ComputerWeekly.com all 26 news articles »

Lazyweb: streamline Flickr attribution

(<i>Image: <a href="$LINK_TO_FLICKR_PAGE">$TITLE</a>, a Creative Commons $LICENSE_NAME image from $FLICKR_USER_NAME's photostream</i>)

Update: Solved! -- thanks, Cory!


Source: Boing Boing | 29 Mar 2010 | 3:39 am

Lazyweb: streamline Flickr attribution

Flickr attributor bookmarklet

(Image: A Hoot, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (2.0) image from doug88888's photostream)

This is going to save me a buttload of typing. Thanks a million, Cory!


Source: Boing Boing | 29 Mar 2010 | 3:38 am

Flickr attributor bookmarklet

PS 3 Firmware 3.21 to Remove Other OS Support - Techtree.com

The Tech Herald

PS 3 Firmware 3.21 to Remove Other OS Support Techtree.com Over the weekend, Sony shared information about next PlayStation 3 system update 3.21 which is deemed to remove 'Install Other OS' support. The PS 3 gaming consoles other than PS 3 Slim had the Install Other OS feature that allowed installing Linux on ... Sony pulls 'Other OS' feature from PlayStation 3The Tech Herald PS3 cans LinuxComputerandvideogames.com Sony to lock out other operating systems in firmwareDestructoid SlashGear (blog) -Platform Nation -Spong all 45 news articles »

Dashboard App For iPad: Sneak Preview Video

The iPad is coming alright – shipping notices have started popping up this morning, although I’d wager you won’t see the first ones effectively arrive until the 3rd of April. At launch day, expect at least 100 apps straight out the gate, and likely double that.

We got a heads up from Carnegie Mellon student Rich Hong this morning: he built a widget dashboard app for the iPad, and it’s definitely worth checking out the sneak preview video.

Have you seen other previews of iPad apps that are worth checking out?
Link them up in comments.

Atom Processors Set New Record For Power-Efficient Sorting

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nokia Buys Up Mobile Web Browser Developer Novarra For An Undisclosed Sum - ITProPortal

The Hindu

Nokia Buys Up Mobile Web Browser Developer Novarra For An Undisclosed Sum ITProPortal Nokia is all set to up the ante in smartphone web browsing domains, as the Finnish mobile phone giant has purchased the Chicago-based mobile web browser outfit Novarra. The move apparently aims to step up Nokia's bid in the fiercely competitive mobile ... Nokia Joins Battle for Mobile Web with Novarra AcquisitionPC World Nokia Buys Novarra to Beef Up Mobile BrowsingPC Magazine Nokia buys mobile Web browser firmCNET eWeek -Emii.com -Register all 239 news articles »

'PicturesOnGold.com World's Cutest Baby-Photo Contest' Being Held on Locket Retailer's Facebook Page

New Lost Planet 2 demo screens - Computerandvideogames.com

MMOMFG (blog)

New Lost Planet 2 demo screens Computerandvideogames.com Lost Planet 2 is set to get a new demo this week but don't get too excited as it's only available right away for Capcom Unity members who've been lucky enough to score voucher codes. Still, it seems Capcom are in a celebratory mood, unleashing a whole ... 'Lost Planet 2' demo lands in AprilUSA Today New Lost Planet 2 Demo AnnouncedMygamer.com Lost Planet 2 "Turbulent Jungle" demo coming soon, screenshotsNeoseeker Virgin Media -Tom's Guide -Ve3d.com all 57 news articles »

UPDATE 1-Linn Energy buys certain Permian basin properties

Tagetik to Conquer the Adriatic Region

Startups Get Hit By Shrapnel In The Banking Bill [Voices]

By Fred Wilson, Blogger, A VC

There is a big banking reform bill working its way through the Senate right now. It is sponsored by Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. It has a long name I can’t remember, so I’ll call it the Dodd Banking Bill.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Wizable and Quaresso Sign OEM Agreement to Integrate Protect On Q With Wizable's ibox

New Oriental to Report Third Fiscal Quarter Financial Results on April 20, 2010

Sanmina-SCI's Manufacturing Campus in Chennai Formally Inaugurated

The Seven Needs of Real-Time Curators [Voices]

By Robert Scoble, Blogger, Scobleizer

I keep hearing people throw around the word “curation” at various conferences, most recently at SXSW. The thing is most of the time when I dig into what they are saying they usually have no clue about what curation really is or how it could be applied to the real-time world.

So, over the past few months I’ve been talking to tons of entrepreneurs about the tools that curators actually need and I’ve identified seven things.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Check the Hype — There’s No Such Thing As ‘Cyber’ [Voices]

By Ryan Singel, Staff Writer, Wired

How can you tell the difference between a real report about online vulnerabilities and someone who is trying to scare you about the security of the internet because they have an agenda, such as landing lucrative, secret contracts from the government?

Here’s a simple test: Count the number of times they use the adjective “cyber.” Nobody uses the word “cyber” anymore, except people trying to scare you and trying to make the internet seem scary or foreign. (Think, for instance, of the term “cyberbullying,” which is somehow much more crazy and new and in need of legislation than “online bullying.”)

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Tweet Fight!: Henry Blodget vs. Felix Salmon [Voices]

By Juli Weiner, Writer, Vanity Fair

The Business Insider C.E.O. Henry Blodget and Reuters finance blogger Felix Salmon are currently enmeshed in an epic Twitter fight about journalistic ethics. Sing, goddess, the anger of Felix Salmon, who pointed out that a Business Insider piece about A.I.G. was illustrated with an image of two attractive lady-brides kissing, because now bankers have less time to take vacations and go to weddings, obviously.

Blodget responded by implying that Salmon’s Twitter was silly and asserting that Salmon comes from a breed of “JOURNALISTS WHO THINK THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE TO CARE ABOUT WRITING STUFF PEOPLE WANT TO READ!”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Water Cooling Lets You Overclock Your Laptop Stand

D-Link Holds top Position in Global Market of Wireless LAN Stand-Alone Access Point Shipment and Placed In Magic Quandrant for Wireless LAN Infrastructure

Associated Content: Hey, We Were Here First! [Voices]

By Mathew Ingram, Senior Writer, GigaOm

Demand Media and AOL’s (AOL) Seed project have been getting lots of attention lately, in part because they’ve both become poster children (although Demand more so than Seed) for the idea of a digital “content factory” — a virtual sweatshop filled with people toiling at terminals for pennies a day, churning out stories about algorithmically determined topics. While Demand has been described as “fast food” content by TechCrunch, Seed got some press recently for a high-profile attempt at “crowdsourcing” content around SXSW by finding people to write about all 2,000 bands at the Austin conference.

Meanwhile, hardly anyone talks about Associated Content, which CEO Patrick Keane notes has been around longer and is arguably bigger than either of its newer competitors.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Please Enjoy "Sneaky Gays" From "Glee"–As BoomTown Sneaks Away for the Week [BoomTown]

In the interests of not keeling over from blogging exhaustion–one of my sons actually just called me a raccoon, due to the black circles under my eyes–BoomTown is taking a week off to, well, sleep.

While I am gone, the crack All Things Digital team will keep you up to speed on a wide range of tech news, all of which will be drowned out by the rollout on Saturday of the Apple (AAPL) iPad.

Oh, we’ll cover that too, of course.

In any case, as counter programming, please enjoy this very funny new video from “Glee,” one of many to get fans excited for the return of the television hit on April 13.

It is an event I am looking forward to as much as the iPad–so, maybe I will watch the new episodes on my new tablet to reach a state of glee.

This video features the sublime Jane Lynch, who plays nefarious cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, in one of her local TV “Sue’s Corner” rants–this time, against non-swishy gays. It’s aptly called: “Sneaky Gays.”

(Full disclosure: Lynch and I are friends, but I’d find her hysterical even if she were my sworn enemy.)

Here’s the video–I”ll be back post-Easter and post-iPad mania on April 5:

Calorie counting apps can fuel anorexia

Shutl, Skimlinks Tie for Winning Spot at Innovate!2010 London Pitch Slam

ZKB Goes Live With Misys Risk Vision 5.5 for Integrated Credit Risk Management and Limits Management

Douglas Adams lecture

Douglas Adams lecture

Her's an 80-minute Douglas Adams lecture entitled "Parrots, the universe and everything from the University of California in 2001.

Douglas Adams: Parrots, the universe and everything (Thanks, Arkizzle!)

App Store to get parental control rating system?

Portraits of attendees at London's steampunk White Mischief night

Photographer NK Guy was on-hand shooting portraits of the attendees, and he's already uploaded his best shots. The costumes were stupendous, and here's the proof.

White Mischief

Portraits of attendees at London's steampunk White Mischief night

English drunkards of the early 20th century

Bizarrely, Ancestry.co.uk asserts a copyright over these public domain images taken by the police over a hundred years ago.

Binge Britain 1904: The rogues' gallery that shows war on booze is nothing new

English drunkards of the early 20th century

US concerned by Australian Internet filter plan (AP)

Will Your Car Tell You To Put Down the Phone?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Battlefield Earth screenwriter apologises

Battlefield Earth screenwriter apologises

Then I got another batch of notes. I thought it was a joke. They changed the entire tone. I knew these notes would kill the movie. The notes wanted me to lose key scenes, add ridiculous scenes, take out some of the key characters. I asked Mike where they came from. He said, "From us." But when I pressed him, he said, "From John [Travolta]'s camp, but we agree with them."

I refused to incorporate the notes into the script and was fired.

I HAVE no idea why they wanted to go in this new direction, but here's what I heard from someone in John's camp: Out of all the books L. Ron wrote, this was the one the church founder wanted most to become a movie. He wrote extensive notes on how the movie should be made.

Many people called it a Scientology movie. It wasn't when I wrote it, and I don't feel it was in the final product. Yes, writers put their beliefs into a story. Sometimes it's subtle (I guess L. Ron had something against the color purple, I have no idea why), sometimes not so subtle (L. Ron hated psychiatry and psychologists, thus the reason, and I'm just guessing here, that the bad aliens were called "Psychlos").

The only time I saw the movie was at the premiere, which was one too many times.

UPDATE 1-Market Chatter -- Corporate finance press digest

UPDATE 1-Market Chatter -- Corporate finance press digest

Petroceltic raises $120.5 mln with share placing

Deals of the day -- mergers and acquisitions

Hynix sees robust DRAM market to continue in Q2

TABLE-Tri-Stage -2009/10 parent results

Kazakhstan Media Forum to Focus on Iran

UK government's smoke-filled room legislative process

And the losers? For those of us who believe that we cannot have a real democracy without electoral reform, the alarm bells are sounding far beyond Westminster. A possible casualty of the wash-up is the proposal to hold a referendum on the alternative vote - a system that allows the voters to list the candidates in order of preference, and reflects their choices much more fairly than first past the post. The amended constitutional renewal and governance bill, having received substantial support in both the Lords and the Commons, may yet be scuppered by the Conservatives in the smoke-filled room. Why the Tories favour a voting system that disadvantages them, especially in Scotland, is one of the abiding mysteries of politics. But they do. And AV is looking vulnerable.

Something that politicians tend to lose sight of is the old-fashioned notion that they are servants of the people. They enjoy their privileges but too easily forget that it isn't their parliament, it's ours. So we, their employers, have a right to know what they are up to, not only when jousting with each other in public, but in the deals that they make behind closed doors. We take for granted the presence of TV in the main debates and the select committees. We are sometimes appalled by what we see, but at least we see it. And we can draw our own conclusions from the empty benches which are such a conspicuous feature of the place, for most of the day, on the BBC's Parliament channel. In most of my time as an MP I rarely spoke to an audience of more than a dozen of the honourable members.

(Image: His Station and Four Aces, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge/Wikimedia)

UK government's smoke-filled room legislative process

Mystery rock found in back yard

Alan Graham says:

I was digging holes in the yard to plant bamboo when I hit something very hard and big. My two foot wide hole became four feet just to get it out. About the size of a basketball, but was almost impossible to lift. I sprayed it down with water and found some rust colors and assumed it had some iron in it. Magnet proved that assumption, but I was curious as to what type of rock this might be as it has all sorts of interesting markings as well.

BTW...I found another rock [shown above], I'm assuming a part of this one, next to it and included photos of it as well.

Deodorant ad from 1935 explains that you smell

9 out of 10 girls should make this 'Armhole Odor' test

Quora Has The Magic: BenchMark Invests at $86 Million Valuation

Quora, a new startup founded by ex-Facebook employees, has closed a first round of funding, and it’s a big one. Benchmark Capital has led the round and general partner Matt Cohler has taken a board seat at the company (Cohler is a former Facebook exec).

Both Quora and Benchmark have confirmed the funding, but they won’t comment on the size of the round or the valuation. Our source for the story says it was an $11 million round that valued the company at $86 million. Additional investors may join the round as well.

Elevation Partners was also rumored to have bid aggressively on the deal.

Quora first launched in private beta on January 4, 2010, just a few months ago. To get in you have to convince a current user to use one of their ten invitations on you. It’s one of the hottest private beta tickets in town. And for a question and answer site that’s saying something.

But there’s a magic to Quora that has captured Silicon Valley’s imagination. Something about the quality of the people and the content. Real discussions break out on Quora all the time. The signal to noise ratio is extremely high.

I sat down with Cofounders Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever, and new investor Matt Cohler, to talk with them about what makes Quora so special. My notes from the interview are below.

When will Quora launch publicly?

There’s not going to be a big sudden open. We’re going to gradually open things up over time. One thing we’re really focused on is just getting high quality content on the site, and there’s a tension between suddenly letting in everyone when we don’t have policies and procedures to manage them. We de want to get a lot of users, we just want to be ready for them.

Ready for them from a scaling standpoint or a community standpoint?

Community management product and policy standpoint.

What were some of the early product ideas that you had that you threw away? How did the process go from “we’re going to start a company” to what it is today?

We knew we wanted to do a question and answer system. We didn’t know exactly how the details were going to work. Over the first six months starting a year ago, we were still doing a lot of the details and figuring out how the product was going to work. From that point on, it was just executing on building the product.

With all the Q&A sites already out there it seems like this was a saturated market. Why go in this direction?

We didn’t actually say that this is a market that we want to be part of, and we weren’t actually focused on the other Q&A sites. The way we think about this is there’s actually a lot of information that’s still in people’s heads that’s not on the internet. And when you think about it you would say that probably 90% of the information that people have is still in their heads, not on the internet. So we’re trying to get that information out of people’s heads, so it’s not on sources that are hard to access on the internet, and get it into a really useful format to make a valuable database.

What makes Quora so special? Why are people raving about it?

I don’t think it’s any one thing, but it’s a bunch of little things. Part of it is the right audience. Instead of just Q&A, we think about this as blogging. Some people call it inverse blogging or reverse blogging. When you write a blog post, you write to your audience. When you write on TechCrunch, you know that these people are expecting techie news about startups.

When you come to a question page on Quora and it’s blank there are a bunch of people waiting for the answer. An expert will look at it and say “there’s an audience here and I know exactly what they want to hear. And I actually know about this stuff, or know enough to research and produce a really interesting piece of content, and it’s going to go to the perfectly targeted audience who opted in to hearing about this.”

When we worked on building the infrastructure for the product we also worked on building a website that works in realtime, so you can be up to date and it feels really alive.

People say they feel smarter after they use Quora.

Quora is an insiders’ forum for Silicon Valley right now. At some point, how does this not become Yahoo answers, which is just a little bit of everything but not really deep on anything?

Part of it is making it so you see the stuff that you care about but you don’t see the other stuff. I think a lot of services lately have done a better and better job of that. Users follow topics and people that they’re interested in and that information is highlighted for them.

Why did you decide to get outside funding? I imagine that you could have continued to fund this for the foreseeable future on your own.

We think this is a really challenging problem. When you think of all of the abstract knowledge that is in people’s heads and getting it into a useful format and getting it on the internet. We think it’s going to take a lot of work and it’s going to require a lot of really smart people, and this funding is going to let us do that. And this gets Benchmark involved. And it gets Matt involved.

We’re hiring engineers and designers, that’s another reason why we raised this money. To grow quickly and hire a lot of smart people, because we’re going to need them.

As the service grows how will you avoid “pulling a Twitter” and having massive downtime?

I’m pretty confident we can deal with the scaling challenges. Community management is a big thing and the information here is so rich. These are the things that smart people need to work on and figure out.

Matt, why is this an interesting investment for you?

Because the people are extraordinary. That and they’re going after a really big, interesting problem (getting the 90% of information that’s in people’s heads onto the web in a way that’s usable). It’s still in closed beta, but there’s already some evidence that that’s happening.

The real goal of Quora is to accumulate this valuable knowledge. It’s kind of like Wikipedia. This is the long tail of information.

On Wikipedia people fight over what the text is going to say and it gets boring. Here you have none of that. You have conversations.

I do think there’s a distinction between answers and discussion. The userbase seems to do a pretty good job of distinguishing between answers and questions and comments.

One thing we talk about with the product is continually improving, and having the pages on the site be a good resource. If there’s a ton of different anecdotal answers, then someone comes along and summarizes all of that.

New York wants a shuttle orbiter - Florida Today

New York Daily News

New York wants a shuttle orbiter Florida Today Red alert, Space Coast: New York is trying to swipe one of the space shuttles. Armed with impeccable tourism credentials, a gazillion residents and a lot of political clout, the Big Apple's recruiters are working the back halls of Washington hard to be ... Nebraskans trek to Florida to watch space shuttle launchLincoln Journal Star NASA's $9.4 Billion Mission to NowhereThe Cube LocalSen. Kirsten Gillibrand calls mission to land NASA shuttle at Intrepid ...New York Daily News Independent Online -Berkshire Eagle -Space Ref (press release) all 19 news articles »

Android Devices Crave Google's Attention - Wired News

Macworld UK

Android Devices Crave Google's Attention Wired News Android's smartphone army is at least 20 phones strong, plus a ragtag rear guard of e-book readers, tablets and set-top boxes. But those oddball devices bringing up the rear are running into an unexpected challenge: neglect by Google. ... Android Rises in Mobile Web Usage, iPhone Stagnates, DeclinesOS News Rumor: 'iAd' mobile ad platform is Apple's next big thingCNET Rumour: Apple 'iAd' mobile ad platform coming soon?Macworld UK Apple Insider -The Mac Observer -I4U all 55 news articles »

Android Devices Crave Google’s Attention

Android’s smartphone army is at least 20 phones strong, plus a ragtag rear guard of e-book readers, tablets and set-top boxes.

But those oddball devices bringing up the rear are running into an unexpected challenge: neglect by Google.

Android had been created by Google as an operating system for all mobile devices, not just smartphones. The Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of companies that support Android, includes gadget makers that are not just focused on making smartphones. Yet, the search giant has been treating other gadgets running Android as second-class citizens, denying them their own centralized app store and dragging its feet on putting in place a framework that would allow developers to easily create apps for these devices.

“Today Google is 100 percent focused on smartphones,” says Kevin Kitagawa, the director of strategic marketing for MIPS Technologies, whose processor architectures are used for home-entertainment and networking devices. “Their compatibility tests only allow certification for these type of devices but we hope soon that Google will extend its support to other Android devices.”

Though Android is free and open source, Google exercises control over what devices can access the Android Market’s applications and receive extensive developer support. And, currently, only smartphones running Android qualify.

That leaves other devices out in the cold. Take Spring Design’s Alex e-reader: The Alex runs Android and will start shipping next month, but the device hasn’t been certified by Google, and so it will have no access to the Android Market.

Spring CEO Priscilla Lu says she’s confident Google will certify the Alex once the e-reader has gone through a few changes. “We will get the certification as soon as the cellular connection is enabled,” says Lu. “The difficulty is in getting the cellular module approved by the FCC.”

“The Alex is really a smartphone with E Ink,” says Lu.

Not so fast.

Google requires “all hardware components have the same software APIs as defined in their SDK to be compatible,” says Kitagawa. “This provides consistency to third-party developers that access these components,” he says.

That means devices always need to have some key components, such as touchscreens with a specified minimum resolution, a certain number of navigation keys, Wi-Fi, camera and accelerometer. Devices such as the Alex e-reader or a digital picture frame don’t conform to these requirements.

“What Google has is a set of hardware requirements, down to the number of buttons and resolution of the screens,” says Al Sutton, who runs a company called FunkyAndroid that offers app stores for Android devices that are not supported by Google. “Anyone can put Android on their device but at this point, if it’s not a smartphone they can’t pass the certification test that will let them into the app store.

In late 2007, Google unveiled the Android as a Linux-based, free, open source operating system for mobile devices that can be adopted by any hardware manufacturer. The announcement opened the doors for many major electronics manufacturers that were looking to create new devices but wanted an operating system that would go beyond the traditional Linux or Windows. Among those are Dell, whose upcoming tablet, the Mini 5 will run Android.

Separately, Google announced Chrome OS, another Linux-based operating system targeted at netbooks, PCs and other devices. Both Android and Chrome OS would allow developers to create apps for the platform but Google has never made it clear what kind of devices should run which operating system, Chris Hazelton, research director, mobile and wireless with the 451 Group.

That means many consumer electronics makers rushed to put Android on their devices, largely because Android came out long before Chrome was even on the radar screen.

“At this point, I am not clear where Android ends and Chrome OS begins,” says Hazelton. “I hope Google is having conversations with device vendors and they are mapping out where each OS has the advantage and how they are going to build an ecosystem of developers to create apps for both.”

MIPS and other companies say Google is trying to do that, but its attention has been divided and progress has been slow. So far, Google has offered certification tests to ensure compatibility only for Android-based smartphones and Google’s Android Market app store remains limited to smartphones.

As a result, last year, a group of 40 companies, mostly manufacturers from Japan, created the Open Embedded Software Foundation. The Foundation aims to create standardized development platforms for Android in consumer devices beyond the mobile phone, which would allow for proliferation of apps for set-top boxes and TVs.

“You are going to to see applications that are really tailored for the living room,” says Kitagawa. “We are talking of apps that can be accessed through a remote control and optimized for large screens.”

A few app developers such as Home Jinni, an app for set-top boxes and TVs that run Android, are trying to pass Google’s compatibility tests, anyway. Home Jinni is a media-center software based on open standards that collects content from different sources such as the web and peer-to-peer networks and offers support for voice applications.

Shidan Gouran, CEO of Home Jinni, says though the Android Market in its current form doesn’t have a place for his app, he is confident Google won’t keep the doors shut on gadgets other than smartphones for too long.

For now, Gouran is inking deals individually with companies like MIPS to put the Home Jinni app on devices. Meanwhile, he’s also created a version of the Home Jinni app for the Android Market so it can reach more users.

“The Android app store is not there yet for apps created for TVs, but I am pretty confident Google wants a piece of that market so it will make a place for us soon,” says Gouran.

Google declined to comment for this story.

See Also:

• New Phones Still Sold With Old Versions of Android
• Android’s Rapid Growth Has Some Developers Worried
• Strapped to Android, HTC Takes a Dizzying Ride to the Top
• AT&T Plans 5 Android Smartphones in 2010
• Google, Dish Network Reportedly Test Android-Based Satellite TV

Photo: (Niall Kennedy/Flickr)

Gallery: Sexy, Strange New Timepieces Debut at Basel Watch Fair

Each year, the watch industry gathers in Basel to show off the latest models to a mix of retailers, media and moguls.

Think of it as the high-end European version of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Like CES, there are 100,000 people there, but the booths for brands like Rolex are three-story towers of polished wood and leather, and each meeting comes with an offer of an espresso and some chocolate. Plus, people are smoking — inside the convention hall.

The 2010 Basel Watch Fair offered up the usual mix of high-end luxury, technical prowess and the just plain weird. Of the hundreds of watches we saw at this year’s show, here are a few that caught our eye.

Above:

Bell & Ross showed off its Radar model, which uses three concentric circular dials to mark the hours, minutes and seconds.

Android Devices Crave Google's Attention

Finally, Wireless Headphones With Clean, Clear Audio

Saving Sony: CEO Howard Stringer Plans to Focus on 3-D TV

Personal Weather Stations Unleash Storms of Data

Personal Weather Stations Unleash Storms of Data

Saving Sony: CEO Howard Stringer Plans to Focus on 3-D TV

Android Devices Crave Google's Attention

March 29, 1927: Fastest Slug in the World

Gallery: Sexy, Strange New Timepieces Debut at Basel Watch Fair

Finally, Wireless Headphones With Clean, Clear Audio

Gallery: Sexy, Strange New Timepieces Debut at Basel Watch Fair

Navy's New Escape Trainer Helps Submariners Avoid a Watery Grave

No Flash On The iPad? No Problem. Brightcove Turns Videos Into HTML5.

The lack of Flash on the iPad is a sore point for many and often listed as one of its greatest potential weaknesses. Not allowing Flash on the iPhone is bad enough, but on the larger iPad with full-screen browsing, its absence will be much more noticeable. Or will it? Already the Web is adapting. Videos powered by Brightcove, for instance, will stream in an HTML5 video player when it detects an iPad. On the iPhone browser, the video thumbnail will open up the Quicktime player. It will also work on Android phones.

Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire is agnostic about the Flash Vs. HTML5 debate. “HTML5 is great,” he says. “It is an open standard, and firmly entrenched in the Apple device platform. Flash can’t reach those platforms for political and business reasons.” But HTML5 simply cannot do everything Flash can, especially when it comes to supporting advertising, audience measurement, customized players, and social sharing. So he decided to bring HTML5 video to parity with Flash for anyone who uses Brightcove. (Note that this is for videos playing in the browser. Brightcove already supports video playback in iPhone apps).

It will take until the end of the year to reach full parity with Flash, but that is his goal. At first, Brightcove videos will play back in a very basic HTML5 player when they detect an iPad. But over the next nine months or so, Brightcove will add the same audience measurement and advertising features available in its regular Flash player. Brightcove will still display the video in Flash when the viewing device supports it, but for the iPad, iPhone, and even Android phones, videos will play in HTML5 and most viewers probably won’t notice the difference.

Already today you can see who these videos work on the iPhone. For example, Brightcove turned on the capability for Techcrunch videos such as this one when viewed in an iPhone browser. When the iPad comes out, you will be able to watch our videos on there as well, along with videos on the sites of the New York Times and Time magazine, who also use Brightcove.

Making HTML5 playback available is just something all video platforms will eventually do. Ooyala is set to offer it for the iPad as well, and YouTube is moving in that direction as well.

"Install Other OS" Feature Removed From the PS3

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Who Will Win the Google Fiber Contest? - PC Magazine

Siliconrepublic.com

Who Will Win the Google Fiber Contest? PC Magazine We've previously reported on the hijinks and silliness that various cities have undertaken in an effort to win Google's eye – and the promise of the company's future high-speed, broadband connectivity. Well, Google has finally reached ... Google says people are falling over themselves for pilot broadbandInquirer Over 600 communities submit apps for Google broadbandAfterdawn.com Google Says 600 Communities Seek Broadband ProjectBusinessWeek The Associated Press -The Aurora Sentinel -KTVZ all 142 news articles »

Analysts Ask if the iPad Can Live Up to Its Hype - New York Times

Sydney Morning Herald

Analysts Ask if the iPad Can Live Up to Its Hype New York Times SAN FRANCISCO — When the Apple iPad goes on sale on Saturday, most of the major questions surrounding the device will have been answered, save for one: can it live up to the hype? Steven P. Jobs at the iPad's introduction. ... Business customers eager to try Apple iPadSan Francisco Chronicle Apple exhausts supply of iPads for pre-orderComputerworld Apple pushes back shipping of new iPad pre-ordersThe Associated Press CNET -ZDNet -Washington Post all 1,036 news articles »

New smartphone allows video conferencing - San Jose Mercury News

9 Computer Store (blog)

New smartphone allows video conferencing San Jose Mercury News Smartphones keep getting smarter and more useful. Now they're turning into mobile TV broadcasting stations. Sprint last week announced the HTC Evo 4G. It's the first phone to run on Sprint's next-generation 4G high-speed mobile broadband ... Google Android, HTC, Samsung, LG: The Best of CTIA 2010eWeek Hands-on: HTC EVO 4G at CTIA 2010PhoneReport CTIA Spring 2010 Wrap-Up: Lots of New Android OS SmartphonesBrighthand V3.co.uk -9 Computer Store (blog) -My Gadget News (blog) all 38 news articles »

Music video games primed for new dance revolution (Reuters)

DIY: 500 LED Extreme Flashlight

So you think you’ve got a bright flashlight. You got nothing! This guy built his own, with 500 LEDs (which consume a shockingly low 50 watts when it’s powered up. This guy is so good, he wasn’t just content to build the most ridiculously bright LED flashlight in the world, oh no. He also built a custom interface for it that allows him to make it flash, control the power levels, and even signal for help. So here’s to you, extreme flashlight guy. Sure, you did this a while ago, but it’s so cool it deserves a mention on a slow Sunday afternoon.

[via Hack N' Mod]

Is This a Preview of the iPad App Store? [MediaMemo]

Those of you who pre-ordered iPads should be getting them in less than a week. And this is purportedly what you’ll see when you visit the iPad App store. From MacStories:

Browsing the iPad App Store: A Video [By @viticci] from Federico Viticci on Vimeo.

If you’re impatient, here’s the summary of the 90-second video: It shows a bunch of iPad-specific apps.

Beyond that, there’s not much to say, other than the fact that Yahoo (YHOO) and Reuters appear to be the only two media companies who have a coveted spot in iTunes’ coveted “new and noteworthy” showcase. But given that we don’t know if this video is current (or even real), it’s hard to imbue any of this with much meaning.

I do have a request for iPad leakers, though: If any of you have access to a review copy, could you let us know which Web sites Apple has pre-bookmarked for reviews? Because that may tell us something.

Here’s why: A Web publisher tells me that Apple approached their company this winter and encouraged them to prep their site for the device. That is: Lots of HTML5, no Adobe (ADBE) Flash. In return, they’re supposed to get a boost from Apple via endorsements like pre-installed boomarks and the like. Thanks in advance for your help.

NSFW: The Madness of King Rupert – I Admit, I Was Wrong About Murdoch’s Mental State

Never let it be said that I don’t admit when I’m wrong.

I mean, granted, I don’t particularly like being wrong – and I especially don’t like being wrong in the full glare of the public spotlight. But on the vanishingly small number of occasions when – due to some inexplicable glitch in the universe – I happen to be wrong, never let it be said that I don’t admit it.

A case in point… I just stumbled across an excellent post by biographer TJ Stiles, calling me out over my claim that hardback books are a ‘cash cow’ for the publishing industry.”Let’s set the record straight,” said Mr Stiles, “publishers (and authors) make much more money from hardcovers, it’s true. That is one reason why they have always delayed the release of cheaper paperbacks. But to refer to anything in publishing as a ‘cash cow’ is to suggest a level of profitability that simply does not exist in this narrow-margin industry. ‘Life line’ would be a better cliché. Did publishers cut that life line when the paperback was invented? No. Why should they now for the e-book?”

…and you know what? He’s right. The phrase ‘cash cow’ was misleading – it has echoes of fat cat publishers making billions in profits when, in most cases nothing could be further from the truth. ‘Life line’ is a far better phrase. I was wrong and – see! – I have no problem admitting it.

Of course, that’s hardly the admission of the decade: in cases like that, admitting I was wrong doesn’t involve eating a whole lot of humble pie. A more accurate test would be if I were to make a stratospheric misjudgment about a major issue – a misjudgment that turned out to be so embarrassing that I’d rather bury my head in a box on ants than admit to my error. What would I do then?

On Friday I was given the opportunity to find out.

A few months ago, in this very column, I wrote about Rupert Murdoch and how he would never remove his newspapers’ content from Google’s index because he was too obsessed with eyeballs…

The numbers show that most searchers wouldn’t even notice if the Wall Street Journal and every other News Corp publication vanished from their results. What would definitely happen, though, is a huge drop in eyeballs and ad revenue for News Corp, which would certainly cost Murdoch far more than he could hope to recoup from a deal with Bing. Again, anyone familiar with the Sun (and its New York-based cousin, the Post) will know that Rupert will always put his hunger for eyeballs above his insistence that people pay for news – to the point where he is happy to slash cover prices to economically-suicidal levels to win readers.

My point was pretty unambiguous: unless Rupert Murdoch has lost his mind, his obsession with eyeballs meant he would never pull the plug on freely available online content. Rupert Murdoch hasn’t lost his mind, ergo his content would stay free. And then on Friday came this…

Times and Sunday Times websites to charge from June

And you know what, I’m not afraid to say it.

I was wrong.

Rupert Murdoch has lost his mind.

Please understand I don’t make that statement lightly. When it comes to Murdoch, I’ve always been of the Michael Wolff school – doubting the man’s Internet credentials (allegedly he still hasn’t ever used Google) but at the same time respecting his business sense and his willingness to defer to trusted advisors when it comes to his company’s digital strategy. But with this latest decision it’s clear that he has not so much lost his marbles as collected them together into a lead bag and thrown them into the sea.

Moving its content behind a pay-wall will be the death of the Times; one of the world’s most respected newspapers and a British national treasure. Even with a relatively modest subscription cost of £1 ($1.60) a day or £2 for the whole week, it has been shown time and time again that the hassle factor of making even a small payment to access a website will result in a hemorrhaging of readers. Unlike the Financial Times (no relation), only a small fraction of the Times’ online readership do so for business reasons – with most incorporating it into their general news diet. If it’s no longer free they’ll simply get their news elsewhere.

And then there’s the drop in Google juice: News International is yet to announce its search indexing policy for the new site but it’s safe to say that the pay-wall will mean the vast majority of the paper’s news archive vanishing from search engines.  Times Online currently attracts 20 million unique readers a month, most of whom will disappear overnight once the pay-wall is erected.

No matter which angle you look at Murdoch’s decision, it’s almost impossible to see it as anything other than a sign of madness. But of course that hasn’t stopped some from trying to spot some hint of method in it…

James Harding, editor of The Times, tried to put a brave face on his boss’ decision – much like a mid-ranking officer might try to justify to his men why Douglas Haig has ordered them to go over the top during the Battle of the Somme. According to the BBC, Harding “agreed that NI’s pay-wall strategy was a risk… but [argued that] it’s less of a risk than just throwing away our journalism and giving it away for free.”

Nice try James, but that doesn’t really wash. For a start, complaining that making newspaper content available for free online is somehow devaluing it is just plain stupid. For years newspapers have been giving their paper editions away for free – on airlines and in other high-traffic locations – on the basis that these “bulks” will increase circulation figures and will in turn drive more advertising. Once you factor in printing, distribution and returns, the cover price of a newspaper – and let’s remember that Murdoch is the king of slashing prices to drive competitors out of business – barely covers the medium on which it’s delivered.

Advertising has always been the real revenue driver in print, to the point where Murdoch was quite happy to give his “away for free” with the launch of a free London daily back in 2005 (it went out of business last year due to fierce competition from another free paper from rivals Associated Newspapers). The truth is that – as Jeff Jarvis writes in the Guardian – Murdoch simply hasn’t been able to figure out how to make online advertising work. And it’s that inability that has driven him to his current madness.

There’s a second problem with Harding’s argument: journalists and columnists actually are quite keen on having their product given away free. No matter whether we’re covering Iraq or fashion trends, we writers tend to be egotists at heart, which is one of the reasons we’re prepared to accept the reasonably shitty salaries offered by news organisations rather than going in to, say, PR. Our reward isn’t so much money as the knowledge that our work will be appreciated by a large audience. With print circulation plummeting (the Times has gone from nearly 700,000 daily readers to 500,000 in the past five years), journalists want to write for publications with large online audiences to ensure that their reporting is seen by the masses.

When Sirius hired Howard Stern they had to pay him a hugely inflated salary to reflect the fact that he’d be seeing a large and immediate drop in his listener numbers. Similarly, by hiding its journalism behind a pay-wall, News International will have to pay vastly inflated salaries to attract the best an brightest to its pages. And in an era where newspapers can barely afford to keep the talent they have, that’s just another nail in the coffin.

Really the only possible reasoning – outside of madness – that’s left for Murdoch’s behaviour is that he’s cleverer than all of us. Perhaps if we just watch quietly we’ll soon see the true genius behind his plan. After all, that’s what happened back in the 1980s and 90s when he launched Sky Television – a British-based satellite TV channel. Back then no one in the UK paid for television (we’d been brought up on free to air TV with little or no demand for cable) and there were no signs that they were ready to start – and yet in less than a decade Sky had become one of the country’s biggest broadcasters. The success of Sky was down to the content – Murdoch bought the rights to broadcast premium football (sorry, soccer) games, forcing millions of households to sign up to Sky if they wanted to follow their favourite teams. Perhaps that’s his plan with the Times as well – make the content of his new online editions so unbelievably compelling that subscribers will be forced to sign up in their droves?

Nope, that doesn’t wash either. With Sky, Murdoch was operating in a single market (the UK) with a product (pay per view TV) that had already been proven overseas. With Times Online, Murdoch is competing on a global stage and, unless the Times is about to switch its editorial page over to porn, there’s no example of anyone getting the paid news content model right for a consumer audience so far.

Especially not someone who is so afraid of the Internet that they haven’t even used Google.

Hubble Builds 3D Dark Matter Map

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

iFixit tears down the DSi XL

No Tegra chip for you! iFixit tore down the Nintendo DSi XL and found, not surprisingly, a bigger DSi. It’s running the DSi’s ARM processor and the motherboard is big enough to fit in the case, but that’s about it. Click through for more findings:

* Nintendo is again using a custom ARM CPU, manufactured in December
of 2009. This chip is marked identically to the DSi, and definitely
not the Tegra chip that had been rumored.

* The logic board grew proportionally to its casing. We’re sure
Nintendo’s engineers were happy with not having to pack as much
electronics as possible in a smaller design. In this instance,
Nintendo’s going against the normal trend in electronics

* Battery capacity is significantly greater than the DSi. The DSi
uses an 840 mAh battery compared to the DSi XL’s 1050 mAh battery.
Given the internal similarity of the XL to the original DSi, we assume
the extra juice helps power the larger-sized screens.

* The DSi XL weighs in at 314 grams, about 45% more than its smaller
DSi cousin (only 217 grams). A significant portion of the heft comes
from the larger screens, and 4 grams comes from the added battery
juice. The XL is really on the outer limits of what people consider to
be portable — especially for a hand-held game console.

* Nintendo redesigned the battery connector to eliminate a long ribbon
cable spanning the width of the old DSi.

* The lower display is held in place solely by the pressure of the
logic board secured over it — no screws!

Reeder 2.0: Finally, An Awesome iPhone Feed Reader Arrives

One of about a half dozen tabs that I always have open in my web browser on my desktop or laptop is Google Reader. Even though other sources such as Twitter and Facebook are now better at uncovering news more quickly, Reader remains a great catch-all backup plan for the content I read online. But I’m increasingly finding myself browsing for news on my iPhone. And sadly, all the Google Reader applications that have launched over the past few years have, in my opinion, sucked. And I’m hardly the only one who thinks that. But that changes, today.

An app called Reeder, by Silvio Rizzi, has always been a nice-looking app that syncs with Google Reader. Unfortunately, it has also been clunky, and slow, and lacking some features such as state-saving. But the latest version, 2.0, which just went live in the App Store last night, corrects all the issues I had with it. It’s wonderful. I have absolutely no doubt this will be one of my most-used apps now. In fact, I’m so sure of it, that I’ve already placed it on my the first page of apps on my iPhone screen.

So what makes it so good? Well, first of all, it’s simple. Rather than trying to cram is all of the clutter items that Google Reader itself now crams into its own site, Reeder focuses on three key areas: Unread items, Starred items, and All items. These are the three key areas across the bottom of the app. The only other icon down there (on the main screen) is a reload button to load in new feed items. Assuming you group your feeds into folders in Google Reader, navigation is Reeder focuses on that. So, for example, when I click into my “tech” folder, I see all the unread feed items that have appeared since the last time I opened Google Reader. I can sort these by individual feeds or by time in which the items came in.

Obviously, clicking on an individual story loads that item (including any images). And in the story-view mode you have a new set of options along the bottom that let you mark an item as unread, star it, or a button to load a range of great Reeder features. For example, on this overlay menu, you can make a Google Reader note about an item, you can share it with your Reader friends, you can save it to Instapaper, you can send it to Twitter, you can open it in Safari, you can mail it to someone, etc. There are a half dozen other features which you can customize in the app.

But maybe my favorite feature of Reeder is the Tweetie-like ability to swipe an individual feed item to do something. In Tweetie, when you swipe a tweet, a bunch of options are shown under that tweet. In Reeder, it’s a bit different. Swiping right toggles an item between read and unread status. Swiping left toggles between starred and unstarred status. It’s brilliant. (And yes, there is also a button to mark all as read.)

As you’d expect, Reeder gives you the ability to sync feed items locally so that you can read them when you don’t have an Internet connection, such as on a plane. Previously, as I mentioned, syncing was slow. With version 2.0, syncing speed screams. And, there is also an option to only cache images if you’re connected to WiFi, to keep things moving alone.

If you haven’t been using the iPhone for a long time, news of a great feed reader may sound lackluster to you. After all, it’s been almost two years since the launch of the App Store now, it may be hard to believe that no one has nailed a simple feed reader app yet. But that has been the case. A few are okay, like NetNewsWire and Byline, but none have been great on the level that Tweetie is great as an iPhone Twitter client. In fact, I’d say the best feed reader on the iPhone up until now has been the mobile web version of Google Reader itself. But that too is only good, not great.

With Reeder 2.0, I think we finally have a great iPhone feed reader. Its combination of speed, simplicity, and beauty make it a must-have app in my opinion. Now the only hard part will be waiting for a native iPad version to come out that supports things like dual-pane views to more easily go through feed items on the larger screen. But now I’m just being greedy. I’m just happy to finally have a solid feed reader on the iPhone.

You can find Reeder 2.0 in the App Store here. It’s $2.99.

Why not a third iPad App Store post?

[via Giz and 9to5mac]

Gamertell Review: Nintendo’s DSi XL handheld game system

FROM GAMERTELL - Aside from the larger dual screens, there are a few small physical tweaks that make this a little more than a simple scaled-up remake.
MORE »

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

Battlefield Earth Screenwriter Accepts Razzie

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple pushes back shipping of new iPad pre-orders (AP)

Do Car Safety Problems Come From Outer Space?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CubeSails to Drag Space Junk from Orbit

Viral Video: "Hell No, You Can't" (Except He Did) [BoomTown]

It’s hard to explain this riveting mash-up video, so you should just watch it.

In a nutshell: A mash-up of Will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” online video from the primaries and Republican Rep. John Boehner screaming on the floor of the House, referring to the Obama administration’s healthcare bill, “Hell no, you can’t!”

As it turned out: Yes, he did.

Here’s the video, which pretty much explains the state of political bipartisanship in the United States right now:

Best Way To Land Entry-Level Job?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The iPad: Granny's Computer? (PC World)

Appletell reviews the Heatshift Laptop Cooling Pad

FROM APPLETELL - Here’s the Heatshift cooling pad, which is filled with a mystery material that starts out firm but bendable, and gradually softens as it absorbs more and more heat from your laptop.
MORE »

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

BBC Activates DRM For Its iPlayer Content

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Technology Behind Formula 1 Racing

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook wants to make yet another privacy change, and you’re not gonna like it

Section: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking

  Facebook has announced a proposed change to its privacy policy that is bound to outrage many users of the popular social networking site. They want to provide send your name, photo, friends list, and any information you’ve made public to third party companies. Facebook’s deputy general says it may be necessary to do so in order to “make way for some exciting new products”. While they will allow users to opt out the policy will be enabled by default. They say providing this information will give users a “personalized” experience when visiting those third party sites. They want user feedback so be sure to give it here. 

I am not happy about this and will definitely be opting out. I just don’t understand why any website or company needs access to my friends list or how having it could help them personalize my experience. Facebook has learned from its mistakes and is letting users know ahead of time and giving them a chance to be heard, so be sure you let them know what you think!

Read [Facebook]

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

The Economics of Perfect Software

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hot gaming news for the week of 3-21-2010

Section:

No need to scour the interwebs for hot gaming news, Gamertell‘s already done that for you!  Here’s a look at this week’s top stories…

• How To: Use the Pokewalker
• Blockbuster Video may file for bankruptcy
• Ten games I most want to play on the iPad (Part 2)
• Out of the Box: Nintendo’s DSi XL
• Apple App Store Update for the week of March 15 through March 21 2010

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

iPad Launch Sellout Indicates Strong Business Demand (PC World)

Murdoch to Start Charging for Online Content

Sudan Has Ambitious Solar Energy Plans

BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 3-21-2010

Section:

We may not cover Apple 24x7… but we know someone who does!  Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…

• Appletell giveaway: Saddleback Leather laptop case [update]
• What you can expect from iPad digital magazines
• Appletell reviews the Samson G-Track USB microphone
• Steve Jobs himself reveals info on upcoming MacBook Pros, more
• Apple lets you buy apps for others with “Gift This App” feature

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

Skipper Wants to 'Fly' Boat Around the World in 40 Days

Fifth Warmest Winter On Record Worldwide

Reputation Is Dead: It’s Time To Overlook Our Indiscretions

Trying to control, or even manage, your online reputation is becoming increasingly difficult. And much like the fight by big labels against the illegal sharing of music, it will soon become pointless to even try. It’s time we all just give up on the small fights and become more accepting of the indiscretions of our fellow humans. Because the skeletons are coming out of the closet and onto the front porch.

We’ll look back on the good old days when your reputation was really only on the line with eBay via confirmed, actual transactions and LinkedIn, where you can simply reject anyone who leaves bad feedback on your professional life.

Today we have quick fire and semi or completely anonymous attacks on people, brands, businesses and just about everything else. And it is becoming increasingly findable on the search engines. Twitter, Yelp, Facebook, etc. are the new printing presses, and absolutely everyone, even the random wingnuts, have access.

That picture of you making out with two guys in college up on Facebook. Or perhaps doing a bong hit after winning a few Olympic gold medals. The random slam against your restaurant anonymously left by the owner of the competitor around the corner. The Twitter flame about how bad a driver you are, complete with a link to a picture of your license plate.

And it’s about to get a lot worse. Next week a startup is launching that’s effectively Yelp for people (look for our coverage in a few days). If someone has something good or bad to say about you, they’ll be able to do it anonymously and with very little potential legal or social fallout.

We’ve seen services like this in the past. Rapleaf and iKarma come to mind. But they were flawed – Rapleaf now collects and sells data about people, and iKarma seems to be little more than a realtor focused service. Another service, Gorb, has vanished completely.

But something tells me this new service, or some other one, might succeed where the others have failed. We’re primed and ready now and have lots of experience publishing all those random opinions about people and things on Twitter, Yelp and Facebook already. It’s time for a centralized, well organized place for anonymous mass defamation on the Internet. Scary? Yes. But it’s coming nonetheless.

This has been on my mind for a long while now. Our minds haven’t evolved much over the last few thousands of years, but the spread of quick fire opinions is now moving at the speed of light and forever findable on the Internet. We’re still wired to think of gossip as something that spreads quietly behind the scenes, and relatively slowly. But we’re already in a world where it’s all completely public, there are few repercussions to the person spreading it, and it is easily searchable. No wonder people freak out. We’re fish out of water.

Sure, we’ve evolved a legal infrastructure to deal with libel, slander and defamation. Those laws worked well in an era of the printing press, and sort of stretched to cover radio and television. But they are as ineffective against the Internet as copyright laws are in battling music piracy.

Other services like Reputation Defender have launched to try to help people manage their online reputations. It can be somewhat effective unless your name gets into the press, which doesn’t back away easily from the stuff they publish. It’s relatively easy to bully someone into taking down that Twitter rant, or even that Facebook photo, with an official looking email or letter threatening legal action.

But it’s much harder to get that stuff off of services that exist to publish that information. Businesses freak out over a bad Yelp review but can do little to stop it. Imagine how you’ll feel when the top result for your name is a site that includes “reviews” of you by anonymous people who know you.

Sure, lots of feedback will be positive. But piss someone off at work and you’ll have “Sketchy and unethical in the workplace” pop up about you. And it will be there forever. Heck, your great-great-grandchildren will be reading it long after you’re gone.

So What Happens Next?

We’re going to be forced to adjust as a society. I firmly believe that we will simply become much more accepting of indiscretions over time. Employers just won’t care that ridiculous drunk college pictures pop up about you when they do a HR background search on you.

Anyone who rises quickly in a corporate environment will have people complaining about you all the way up, and it will be easily findable via search. Basically, if someone doesn’t like you, even just for a moment, they’ll have the chance to hit you with an ambiguous but damaging anonymous statement. And it will be vague enough to stop any lawyer dead in her tracks from trying to get it removed, or from even learning the identity of the person who left the comment.

So what will matter? Hard proof of being a bad person. Criminal records. Non-anonymous and clear statements of wrong doing that need to be addressed. Perhaps a picture of you actually committing a violent felony. That kind of thing.

But the nonsense we’re all worried about today? I just don’t think it will carry the same weight in a few years. Because if there are pictures of the person hiring you smoking pot in college online, and there are pictures of every other candidate smoking pot in college online, it just won’t be a big deal any more.

And the kind of accusations that can kill a career today will likely be seen as a badge of honor, and a sign of an ambitious individual who has pissed off a few people along the way.

At least that’s what I hope will happen. Because there are a few pictures of me in high school and college that I’m tired of trying to keep off the Internet. Let’s just get it all out there sooner rather than later, and move on.

How to Build Engaging One-of-Kind Facebook Fan Pages

Don’t let anyone tell you it is easy to create a successfully engaging Facebook Fan Page. It is not.

It’s not an insurmountable task either. But it requires planning, time, some kind of HTML knowledge, design skill, and imagination. Originality doesn’t hurt either.

There are great tools and tips available that will help you create an outstanding page for your brand without an immense amount of time or capital invested. I’ve been working to improve our own Go2web20 fan page and I have some tips from my experience that I’m more than happy to share.

Let me start off by saying, Facebook itself is the only true obstacle in the whole page creation process. If they accepted all code formats, it would be much easier to create any page. It would open up the space to immeasurable possibilities and we would see a wider variety of amazing, unique pages. But unfortunately, this isn’t the case so you have to find ways to work with what you’ve got and then take it up from there.

Fan Page Profile Pictures

You might not know this but you can use a picture for your profile page as large as 200 x 600 pixels. The good thing about this is a larger picture offers better visibility of the campaign itself, which may include your company logo or a promotional banner of any kind. The downside to this eye-catching stunner is that it shifts the focus away from the rest of the page. This is why you need to plan your page first. Decide where you want the eyes of your visitors to go: on your image or on the rest of the page’s elements. You can play and preview your ideas, change them back and forth, and see what’s ultimately best for goals, your page, and its users.

Example:

Diverse Tabs

Facebook allows you to change the traditional boring tabs to be more exciting, original, and relevant.

If you want to change your page’s tabs, you will first need to add this FBML application to your page. Then, go to your page manager, find the FBML tab, and click ‘edit’. Within the box that opens, you will be able to change the tab name, and add HTML code. What I’d suggest that you do is to first create a main landing tab that will welcome visitors to your page.

Here’s what I did:

1. I gave the tab a name – Go2web20
2. Took a screenshot of my webpage and uploaded it to Flickr (optional)
3. Grabbed the screenshot picture code from Flickr and inserted it in the FBML body box (FYI: I slightly edited the code, changed link destination to lead to our site, instead of the Flickr page.)
4. I linked to my Website on this page since this is a big part of a fan page concept – to offer Facebook users access to my site in a new way.
5. Finally, I added the Facebook comments box to enable people to leave comments in regards our website. The fb comment code can be found at this wiki page in the examples section (thanks for the tip @eyalshahar). Again, all I did was to customize it slightly with the relevant information of our site. In my opinion a huge value add in terms of engaging my users and inviting conversations to happen here.

Page Dashboard:

Landing Page:

Now, since this is the tab you want new visitors to see and experience first, you need to set it this way on your admin page. Go to your page and click on ‘Edit Page’ > ‘Wall Settings’ > then on ‘Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else’ chose the tab which you want to present first when new users enter your Facebook page. People who are already fans of your page, will see the ‘wall’ first when they enter the page. The whole point of this landing page is that you make a informational welcoming page for new visitors that is interesting enough to be an incentive to fan this page. In a sea of fan pages this is important in terms of standing out and being innovative.

If you want you can also add even more FBML tabs, but keep in mind that overall, Facebook only allows you to display and offer up to six tabs maximum, including the first two that you can’t change. So make sure you chose your tabs wisely.

If you don’t want to mess around with FBML tabs, here are some alternatives (you can also add them as extras):

Twitter Tab – This application lets you bundle your ‘Twitter Updates Tab’ into your own profile or Fan page. The process is pretty easy: just add the application and follow the instructions.

This is the end result:

Flickr Tab – Same application but for Flickr photos. I found it more relevant to put this tab on my personal Facebook profile, but it is really depends on your brand’s goals and needs.

Example:

Foursquare Tab – I actually really like this tab, despite the fact, that I’m a Gowalla girl myself…

If you are creating a page for your company and want a Foursquare tab, here’s what you can do:

1. Create a venue for your brand/company/HQs on the Foursquare website (if you haven’t done this already)
2. Add this PlaceWidget application and follow the simple instructions.

And, that’s it. You now have a new tab on your page, Foursquare, and everyone can see how popular your spot is and read the tips visitors have left, furthering user engagement in a new way and offering visitors a chance to appear on your Facebook page and add their own tips.

Example:

Spotlight the People on your Team

If you go through all the trouble of creating your own brand page, make sure you spotlight your team’s players and say something about the people behind the curtain. It adds a personal touch to your page and builds a connection between fans and the people involved in the project. Again, with the help of the FBML tab, I’ve created a tab that tells more about my team at Go2web20 (it is was pretty easy since we’re just two people). But even if you have lots of people on your team, it is important to give some background about company management and staff accomplishments or to at least name one contact person that can be reached easily.

Example:

Participate on your stream – that’s the whole point

I have to admit that I’m not as active on my own Facebook fan page (insert shame here) as I should be. I blame both Facebook and myself. First, I take accountability for not checking the page as often as I should. But, I also blame Facebook for not providing the right tools to track comments and conversations on pages like the ones available for our own profiles. It is really up to you how often you check your fan page activity. But, don’t think you can now sit back and put your feet up. This is not one of those “build it and they will come” scenarios. Don’t take it for granted that you have a page available. No matter how great you’ve made it, if you aren’t active, it defeats the whole purpose of having one. A fan page requires maintenance. You have to be there for your page visitors. You have to talk with your fans. You have to answer questions, absorb feedback, and overall, make the conversation flow with consistent fresh content.

I really think Facebook never predicted the volume of pages people would create and the effect of these pages on businesses/brands. Obviously, Facebook isn’t currently providing the right type of support and tools for pages builders. Until Facebook reconciles these changes into their Facebook pages concept and tunes into the importance that pages have garnered over the last few months, we’ll end up with somewhat crappy looking pages that we’re creating with just about any and every tool we can muster up.