Gilt Launches Groupon Competitor ‘Gilt City’ In NYC

Gilt, the well-funded company that sells high-end luxury goods online at steep discounts in short-term “flash sales”, has its eyes set on a new target: Groupon. At least, it’s launching a new service that has a very similar model. In the last two days, Gilt has been sending some members invitations to ‘Gilt City‘, where they can get “exclusive local deals and offers up to 70% off.” The service is only available in New York City for now, but it’s clear that Gilt intends to expand it elsewhere. As with Gilt’s normal flash-sales, you’ll have to request an account to take part (it looks like existing accounts already work).

Like Groupon, Gilt City offers deals from local businesses (restaurants, beauty salons, etc.) and events. Deals are available in limited quantities and for a limited time. But the site differs in a few ways from Groupon: there doesn’t seem to be a minimum number of participants needed for a deal to become “activated”, and some stores are offering multiple deals. And unlike Groupon’s one-deal-per-day, Gilt only updates once a week for now.

Gilt is only the latest in a long, long string of Groupon-like sites to launch recently, but it’s in a better position than most. Gilt already has a strong brand presence, and it’s raised $48 million. But it’s typically focused on luxury goods whereas Groupon has a broader focus, so there’s likely room for the two to coexist.

Among the deals currently being offered are specials at a local salon, a trendy restaurant, and a show, all of which are high-end. However, there’s also a deal for the 16 Handles yogurt chain, which has a pretty broad appeal.

Thanks to Josh Goldman for the heads up.

Santa Clara County Police Now Looking Into the Lost iPhone Prototype

Lomography Diana F+ winner! Plus: consolation prize!

Congrats to Jay S., who will be shooting weird multi-exposure photos on a brand new Diana F+ in just a few short days. Thanks to everyone who entered!

If you didn’t win, that’s very sad, but we have a consolation prize for you. Use the coupon code CRUNCHGEAR at checkout to save 15% off whatever Lomo stuff looks cool to you. There’s some pretty cool stuff for under $50 there.

South Park's Matt & Trey receive death threats, RevolutionMuslim quotes Boing Boing

When Matt Stone and Trey Parker spoke to me for a Boing Boing Video interview last week about plans for their 200th episode, which would feature a cartoon version of the prophet Mohammed, I did not anticipate what would follow.

Comedy Central, as the duo predicted, bleeped out all references to the religious figure's name (while leaving in Jesus, Buddha, and the rest of their holy ilk), and censored a closing speech which did not reference the figure at all. But they apparently did so in response to death threats against Matt, Trey, and Comedy Central posted on a site called RevolutionMuslim.com. That site appears to be based in New York City, and is said to be run by a Jewish guy who converted to an extremist form of Islamic fundamentalism. A post on the site said Matt and Trey would likely "end up like" Theo van Gogh, the filmmaker who was murdered for making a film about the abuse of Muslim women.

The site embedded my interview with Matt and Trey in that post, and referenced portions of the interview in making the argument that the two should face death for this episode of South Park. Screengrab here (JPEG). Snip from that Revolutionmuslim.com post:

Here are the authors boasting of their insults and celebrating their complete disregard for what anyone considers sacred: Are you afraid that you would be bombed, she asks? Perhaps they are not, perhaps they should be, only time will tell.

I am saddened that these two artists have been so utterly abandoned by the network that distributes their work. I am saddened that the interview we published about that controversy was used by buliles to justify threats of violence. This is just nuts. Matt says:

In the 14 years we've been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn't stand behind.  We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode.  It wasn't some meta-joke on our part.  Comedy Central added the bleeps.  In fact, Kyle's customary final speech was about intimidation and fear.  It didn't mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too.  We'll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we'll see what happens to it.

Your Licks Can't Lick Carr's Mercury Guitar Amp

Your Licks Can't Lick Carr's Mercury Guitar Amp

Best Seating Arrangement For a Team of Developers?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Competition! Design the Haggis beast that roams Scotland

Another 15 percent said it is a Scottish musical instrument while 4 percent admitted to thinking it was a character from Harry Potter.

Humans and neanderthals: Getting it on, after all?

New genetic data suggests that, at at least two points in history, Homo sapiens were interbreeding with other species, most likely Homo neanderthalensis or heidelbergensis.

This is pretty damn interesting, because it's a reversal on previous research. A couple of years ago, I got a chance to see Svante Pääbo, an evolutionary anthropologist with the Max Planck Institute, and kind of a big deal in the world of ancient hominid genetics, talk about this very topic. He and his team studied bits and pieces of the neanderthal genome and came to the conclusion that hanky panky hadn't happened between that species and ours. And, because it was Svante Pääbo (again, kind of a big deal) everybody trusted his results. So much so, in fact, the the University of New Mexico researchers who did this new study were surprised that their data said differently.

This is a really fun moment in science, when accepted information gets legitimately challenged. And now the ball is back in Pääbo's court. Remember, his previous neanderthal analysis was based on bits and pieces of the genome. Recently, he wrapped up a rough draft sequence of the entire genome, and, as Nature points out, what he finds there will probably be the first test of this new theory. Of course, it's also possible that both groups are right, and it's really H. heidelbergensis who was knocking boots with ancient sapiens. We'll just have to wait and find out.

Nature News: Neanderthals may have interbred with humans

How Facebook is putting its users last - CNET

New York Times (blog)

How Facebook is putting its users last CNET It's almost become a joke: Facebook makes a change to its privacy settings that opts you in to a bunch of scary stuff, the entire Internet flips out about it, it rolls back the change, and then a few months or years later, ... Facebook's New Features and Your Privacy: Everything You Need To KnowPC World Google engineering gaggle flees FacebookRegister What new Facebook updates might mean for your privacyUSA Today Washington Post -PC Magazine -New York Times (blog) all 190 news articles »

Asus Eee Pad coming in July

We’re about to see another manufacturer throw their hat into the Tablet PC ring. ASUS is expected to show out their EeePad in June at Computex, with a July launch date. Of course, ASUS has a reputation for needing to push those launch dates out a little bit, so we’ll see if things go as planned.

After their market domination with the netbook PC, ASUS is looking to repeat that success by addressing the complaints that are cropping up with that other pad computer out there. ASUS has stated that they are planning on running Android, including a webcam, and a USB port. The only thing that worries me is the price, I think they’ll need to come in lower then the iPad if they want to compete. Current estimates put the EeePad at between $479 and $500. I’ll be honest, I’m a little more excited about this then I was about the iPad.

[via Gizmodo]

Reader Photos: Your Desk Celebrates Hubble's 20th Anniversary

Casual Friday: Gaming update for April 17 - 23, 2010

FROM GAMERTELL - Gamertell’s casual game update for April 17-23, 2010 includes Mystic Gallery (PC), Crime and Punishment: Who Framed Raskolnikov? (PC) and four other new, casual games.
MORE »

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

Brazil to start work on controversial dam in months: report

How Blippy users' credit cards got into Google - CNET

CBC.ca

How Blippy users' credit cards got into Google CNET After Blippy exposed credit card numbers in early February, Google's search crawlers failed to detect that it had scrubbed its site. A series of gaffes at Blippy, Google, and a Midwest bank exposed the credit card numbers of four ... Blippy says it has fixed glitch that exposed users' credit card numbersLos Angeles Times Social networking site spills credit card dataV3.co.uk Google Searches Expos Credit Card Numbers Of Blippy MembersChannelWeb InformationWeek -The Money Times -White Hat News all 98 news articles »

Time to Lawyer Up, iPhone Prototype Peddler [Digital Daily]

Who is liable in the iPhone prototype caper? We may soon find out.

The Santa Clara County district attorney’s office is investigating gadget site Gizmodo’s purchase of the device, according to a report by News.com. Sources tell News.com that the effort is being headed up by the office’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team.

According to those sources, investigators are looking at “whether sufficient evidence exists to file criminal charges,” though they did not say who is being targeted–the person who found Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone protoype or Gizmodo, which purchased the device for $5,000 and revealed it to the world, perhaps in violation of California’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act.

Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, says it hasn’t yet been contacted by law enforcement.

Soon you won’t even have to touch that touchscreen

Cypress’s newest TrueTouch touchscreen, conveniently smartphone-sized, detects hovering like a champ. About a quarter of an inch from the screen, a finger can be detected, and to some extent its distance can be determined. This could be the beginning of something very interesting.

The trouble is, of course, how to handle this new and foreign input? That’s what she said, by the way. But seriously. Hovering over things is a naturally passive behavior for us, since we’ve learned on our phones and other devices that it doesn’t really do anything. I don’t want to get into all the UI implications here, though I might at a future date, but if this technology is adopted (it’d be a strong point against the iPad in a competing tablet), it’ll be fun to see how it gets taken advantage of.

[via SlashGear]

EyeDriver Lets Drivers Steer Car With Their Eyes

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dodongo dislikes video game soap (not me though, I like it)

Oh, soap. You are made in so many shapes and colors. Even, though I never would have guessed it, Super Nintendo cartridge shape and color. I can’t tell you how many of these soaps I want to have, though I’d be hard pressed to choose between Triforce and Pac-Man when washing my hands. Plus, I still haven’t used up my Han Solo.

[via GameSetWatch (nice headline) and GearFuse]

Santa Clara County police now looking into the lost iPhone prototype

About eighteen seconds after word got out that a prototype of Apple’s next iPhone had been lost, found, and then subsequently sold to Gizmodo (for somewhere around $5,000), commenters and pundits everywhere started asking: is all this legal? There are a bunch of complicated laws involving the ownership and selling of lost goods — not to mention lost top-secret intellectual property — and this iPhone seemed to be sitting in a pretty nasty gray area.

Turns out, the people of the Internets aren’t the only ones interested — the Santa Clara County police are curious, as well.

The folks at CNET spoke to a source at the Santa Clara Police department, who said that a “computer crime task force led by the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office” is now investigating the matter.

It’s not at all clear who (if anyone) they’re aiming the law hammer at, be it the gent who found the prototype for turning around and selling it, or Gizmodo for buying it. Either way, things get even more complex when you bring in the First Amendment and freedom of the press; what if Giz won’t reveal who sold them the iPhone? Is that protecting a source, or some sort of crazy mixed up obstruction of justice?

Giz took things to a new level, for better or worse, in purchasing the prototype and publishing what they did — and if any legal action goes down as a result, it’ll undoubtedly set a precedent. With that said: In the long run, it’s just a phone. No one died, nothing too earth shattering was revealed from a trade secret standpoint was revealed (Gasp! New shape!), and Apple got their prototype back. Sure, it’ll make Apple’s June announcement ever so slightly less exciting — but is that worthy of a mark on someone’s criminal record?

Rivals moving to take on iPad (AFP)

AFP - US bookstore giant Barnes & Noble added Web surfing and games to its electronic reader Friday as rivals move to break the momentum of Apple's freshly launched iPad tablet computer.

Mopho.to Blends Location Based Check-Ins With Photo Sharing

Location based apps and services are all the rage now, with Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and Twitter leading the space. Startup ChoiceVendor has launched a location based iPhone app and service called MoPho.to that has a different twist. Instead of an emphasis on check-ins, MoPhoto is designed around the idea of capturing a photo. It’s “social photography” with geotagged photos enriched with metadata, comments, and likes. You can download the free app here.

Similar to Foursquare, Gowalla and others, MoPhoto is built around a free app and website. And the service currently allows you to tap into your social graph on Facebook. Here’s how it works. The app is essentially built around the camera, requiring you to first take a photo at an event or place (bar, restaurant, business, work etc). Once you take a photo, you can add a caption and you must pin the photo to a geographic place or event. Places are sources from GeoAPI (which was acquired by Twitter last year) and events are sourced from your Facebook events (although the app will eventually pull events from Last.fm and possibly Plancast). When you take a picture, you’ll be given a list of possible place or events near you according to your geolocation.

Once you publish your photo, the image, along with your location according to place or event, will be pushed to your friends who are also using the app, to Mophoto’s site and your Facebook friends, via Facebook Connect. Mophoto will soon add the ability to push to Twitter as well. On the app and site, you’re notified when your friend posts a photo and can easily see photos your friends are posting from places and events around you, giving you an opportunity to follow them in pictures. You can also comment on and “favorite” their photos.

While Gowalla allows you to publish photos with your location, Mophoto aims to differentiate itself by emphasizing the photo first, with the check-in as an afterthought. ChoiceVendor founder, Yan-David Erlich adds that eventually on the site, you’ll be able to search for a particular venue, business, or event, and see all the photos taken by Mophoto users at that events space.

The eventual aim is to create a visual timeline of events and local establishments. There are not current aims to monetize, but Erlich says that there is the possibility of monetizing data about venues.

The app essentially blends Foursquare with Facebook with TwitPic, creating a photo based social network of sorts. Of course, we still don’t know Facebook’s detailed plans for location, so that could become a competitor in addition to Twitter, Gowalla, Foursquare, Loopt and a plethora of others. Erlich, who is an entrepreneur-in-residence at Battery Ventures, and his co-founder are also soon launching ChoiceVendor’s other project, which is essentially a Yelp for the the B2B space.

Location Check-In Gowalla Tries to Set Itself Apart From Pack [Voices]

By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

There’s a lot of buzz right now about technology that lets you “check in” and share your location, but is location-sharing a new business category? The founders of one of the top start-ups built around the technology don’t think so.

“Location is going to become one of those things that is ubiquitous,” said Josh Williams, the CEO and co-founder of Gowalla, a service that allows users to share their location, pick up and drop virtual items in places and get real-world incentives from businesses they visit. Practical location-sharing developed only recently, with the inclusion of Global Positioning Systems–or GPS–in cellphones. It has driven a lot of innovation, and there has been a surge in companies entering the fray.

Already, microblogging service Twitter has given users the ability to attach information about location to their posts, and Facebook also has indicated that it will roll out such an option. So it seems that location is indeed going to become just another part of social networking.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Do boobies lead to earthquakes? Theory will be tested Monday

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupting their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes."

Those are the words of Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, an Iranian cleric. Figuring this was one religious claim that could be easily tested and proven true or false, a Purdue student named Jennifer McCreight launched a Facebook campaign called, appropriately, Boobquake. The goal: Get women to don immodest clothing in public and then see if earthquakes follow.

The event is officially scheduled for Monday, April 26, worldwide—although the BBC will be filming in Washington DC.

I suppose there are plenty of reasons to find fault with the stunt, but the one that stands out to me is that Boobquake isn't accurately testing Sedighi's theory. It's not immodest dress alone that leads to earthquakes, he says, but the adultery that spreads through society because of immodest dress. So, there's really two claims that have to be tested here: First, does immodest dress really lead to adultery? And, second, does adultery lead to earthquakes? Somehow, I'm guessing that Everybody Cheat on Your Significant Other Monday wouldn't go over quite as well as Boobquake.

Plus, as Vaughan Bell points out, we really need a control planet to make this legit.

Police Investigating iPhone Prototype Leak

Police are investigating the loss of what appears to be an iPhone prototype, purchased and originally published this week by the tech site Gizmodo.

A law enforcement official told CNET today that the incident could have violated criminal laws.

In an unprecedented security leak for the Cupertino-based corporation, one of its engineers reportedly took the prototype to a local bar in Redwood City and left it there. Gizmodo claims the two unnamed individuals who found the device attempted to return it to Apple before selling it to the publication for an alleged sum of $5,000.

It’s unclear whether the police are focusing on Gizmodo, the people who found and sold the prototype, or both. Apple has spoken to the local police about the incident, who are now trying to determine whether criminal charges should be filed. The Santa Clara County district attorney’s office is believed to be taking charge of the investigation.

After publishing the photos and videos, Apple contacted Gizmodo and asked if they could have their product back. Gizmodo complied.

Famously secretive, Apple has been known to go after rumor sites that published information on its upcoming products. In a previous lawsuit filed against Apple rumor blog Think Secret, Apple alleged that the website’s owner, Nick Ciarelli, was violating trade law by encouraging and inducing people to provide product information in breach of agreements. After a three-year court battle, Apple and Think Secret reached a settlement, and Ciarelli agreed to cease publication of his blog.

See Also:

• Apple Kills Think Secret: Publisher Nick Ciarelli Talks …
• Gizmodo Gets Hands On New 4G iPhone
• Gizmodo Dissects Unreleased Apple iPhone

Photo: Gizmodo

UPDATE 3-US to WellPoint: Stop dropping breast cancer patients

US Coast Guard suspends search for 11 rig workers

Hacking Big Brother With Help From Revlon

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cops reportedly investigating case of lost iPhone 4G (Ben Patterson)

Steer your car with your eyes? Sure, what’s the worst that could happen?

For some reason, I get the feeling that this eyeDriver technology will not be adopted widely, or at least not in consumer vehicles. I mean, with this thing on, being aware of pedestrians means driving through them. And what if a car pulls up next to you and you look over to see whether it’s turning? Crunch!

To be fair, this stuff really isn’t meant for commuters. I can think of applications for people without hands or arms, for instance, or for the military. One less guy driving means one more guy shooting.

And the research isn’t being done for Ford or something. It’s about AI and eye tracking more than anything. I’m guessing it’ll be snapped up by Lockheed Martin or something, and used by fighter pilots.

[via Reddit; images: Gero Breloer / AP, Thilo Kunz /AFP/Getty Images]

So Hot Right Now: Top 10 Gadgetell posts for the week of April 18, 2010

Section:

Haven’t caught all of the Gadgetell news this week?  Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles!

• Gadgetell Announcement: Slacker Radio Plus giveaway winners
  ” Last week, (courtesy of Slacker) we were able to run another contest and give away a handful of Slacker Radio Plus subscriptions. That giveaway/contest ended yesterday (Sunday April 18, 2010) and here are the winners. Below are the winners of the 1-year…” MORE »
• Microsoft Courier coming in 2011
  ” Apparently the New York Times in a loop with Microsoft. In an article discussing the various products that will respond to the iPad, said the following: Microsoft engineers have talked about getting the Courier out by early 2011, though no firm decision…” MORE »
• Nook, threatened by the iPad, plans many upgrades in the near future
  ” The iPad is all the rage right now and it is threatening many different devices in many markets. Specifically, it is threatening to destroy the eReader market after it just barely reached its prime this Christmas. Recent advancements by Amazon and Barnes & Noble have resulted…” MORE »
• Gadgetell Roundup: HTC Droid Incredible reviews
  ” It looks like the review embargo has been lifted, and that means this morning brings plenty of Droid Incredible reviews. So for anyone that had been unsure of how well the Droid Incredible would perform when it hit the real world, read on and see for…” MORE »
• HP Slate finally gets some un-scripted publicity
  ” It seems that the only thing in the news these days is tablets. This will be my fifth article in a row about them and I can still say I’m not tired of them. We’ve talked about the iPad…” MORE »
• Sprint introduces iPad case with 4G “built in”
  ” I bet Sprint has been feeling pretty left out of the whole iPhone fiasco that has been going on lately. Or any real smartphone fiasco for that matter. With no love from Apple or Google…” MORE »
• Sprint trumpeting 4G with HTC EVO event
  “Sprint began teasing us with the HTC EVO 4G back at CTIA and has decided to hold another event for the device that is expected this summer.  CEO Dan Hesse will be hosting the event…” MORE »
• 5-inch Dell Streak to hit T-Mobile
  ” Dell’s Streak series has been in the news quite a bit lately. Big reveal was last weeks photos of the 7 and 10-inch flavors of the Streak series to surface on the web. Today, it is a filling by…” MORE »
• Google, the next dominant power in computers
  ” The world of business in technology is a competitive one. It is always a race to see who can invent that innovative idea before the other. In the end, though, it almost always boils down to who has the most money.…” MORE »
• Boy Scouts merge into technology - add geocaching badge
  ” I was never a boyscout. I like being behind a keyboard too much. But now that the boy scouts have added the geocaching badge, they have made it possible for a geek to survive the scouts. In a world where technology…” MORE »

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

'Smears' Turn Milbloggers on Their Frontline Hero

Simpsons Arcade, The Onion, and the week's best free iPhone apps (Appolicious)

FACTBOX-UAL-Continental merger would create industry giant

Corsair(R) Announces Filing of S-1 Registration Statement

Emulation For Preservation of Digital Artifacts

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Corsair(R) Announces Filing of S-1 Registration Statement

Digital Literacy's New Moves: The View from a Youth Newsroom

Inspired by Boing Boing's strategy of "disemvoweling" hateful comments, we at Youth Radio (where I work) once considered a tactic called "in-consonance." The idea was to remove every consonant from abusive comments, as a way to call out their authors' apparent lack of control over their own waste. In the end, we decided against it. But we still don't always know what to do when the young people we've worked with for days, weeks, months on stories--some of them deeply personal, some exhaustively reported--get slammed in extreme ways, on some of our nation's biggest media outlets (e.g., NPR).

For young people whose personal identities, professional trajectories, and brains are still forming, the "digital afterlife" of their media productions can be especially intense and high-stakes. It used to be that public media's ultimate success was the so-called driveway moment--when a listener can't get out of the car before the story ends, even though he or she is already home. But now that engagement is the holy grail, for youth media producers, a whole new phase of activity starts when our work used to end--at the moment of broadcast or publication.

Based on what happens inside Youth Radio's newsroom (which just won an RFK journalism award for an investigative series on abuse in the U.S. Navy) and other youth media sites around the country, here are three things I see young people needing to establish, again and again, when they throw themselves and their stories into the digital mix.

1. Tellability: This is an idea drawn from anthropologist Amy Shuman's work, highlighting the need to establish your entitlement to your story, and your way of telling it. Like when Youth Radio's Denise Tejada produced a video about buying a house at age 20, and soon viewers were interrogating her about her legal status and weight. She had to find ways to bring the focus back to the story she wanted to tell, long after she thought that piece was done.

2. Credibility: A process of proving believability and truthfulness, not just to specialized niche communities, but in the service of a public good. Like when Rachel Krantz and Youth Radio's Investigative Unit backed up their reporting on a culture of abuse inside a U.S. Navy unit in the Persian Gulf by posting Freedom Of Information Act documents, which a reader then said looked fake. While literacy researchers worry about how young people will ever learn to judge other people's credibility (e.g., on sources like Wikipedia), I'm frankly more interested in what it takes for young people to establish their own credibility as reporters, researchers, witnesses, and storytellers themselves.

3. Embeddability: A process of linking one story to larger debates, issues, and movements for change. Like when passenger Karina Vargas had the wherewithal and guts to record a shooting at an Oakland, California subway station last year, and Youth Radio could then embed her on-the-fly video into a series of stories on racial profiling, police brutality, and public safety. It's about turning the technical act of cutting-and-pasting embed code into a social practice, a habit of always creating meaningful connections that amplify your point.

You might say media producers of any age have always had to prove themselves in these three ways. What's different, for me, is: it's never been easier for young people to make media with impact, it's never been harder for them to get their most challenging accounts to rise above floods of user-generated content, and it's never been more important for them to have access to the tools, networks, and experiences they need to formulate and spread something worthwhile to say.

For more on literacy's new media frontier, check out Drop That Knowledge: Youth Radio Stories.


Source: Boing Boing | 23 Apr 2010 | 3:47 pm

YouTube’s IPL Cricket Streams Near 50 Million Views, Blow Away Internal Expectations

Last January, news broke that YouTube had signed its first international sports streaming deal, gaining multi-year rights to broadcast the Indian Premiere League’s 45-day cricket tournament worldwide. We’re now closing in on the conclusion of the tournament — the finals begin on Sunday morning — and YouTube has shared some initial stats.

Right now, YouTube’s IPL channel has over 49.5 million views. That far exceeds the company’s internal expectations: we’re told that their stretch goal was to get 10 million views over the course of the tournament. Viewers from 200 countries have watched the streams. Unsurprisingly, India has the most views overall; coming in second is the United States — YouTube had expected that spot to go to the UK or Australia, where cricket gets far more attention.

When the IPL deal was first signed it granted YouTube live streaming rights for every country except for the United States, where matches have been posted fifteen minutes after they ended. However, YouTube is streaming both the semi-finals and finals live (we’re told YouTube’s biz dev people worked “around the clock” to make that happen). All of which means the final view tally is going to be way more than 10 million.

Hands-On: 'Left 4 Dead 2' Mutates With 'The Passing'

Microsoft Office 2010 arrives soon [updated post] (Christopher Null)

Confessions of a SysAdmin

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Review: GelaSkins for iPad

Short Version:

GelaSkins for iPad do everything they promise, and they do it well. For 30 bucks a pop, it’ll wrap your iPad up in a work of art — be it one of GelaSkin’s roughly 200 pre-designed pieces, or one of your own. It also does a fine job of protecting the back of the iPad from whatever grit and grime might be sitting between it and your desk.

Long Version:

I’ve got a problem. You see, I love to customize my stuff. I paint it. I shoot at it with lasers. I put stickers all over it. If something I own looks the same as one you could pick up at the store, it’s because I just bought it that day.

My problem: I get tired of customizations fast. As soon as the paint dries, I’m mad at myself for painting it pink instead of black. As soon as the lasers taper off, I’m wondering why the hell I just etched an obese cat riding a unicorn onto my $500 device. As soon as I work all the bubbles out from beneath a sticker, I’m trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to get rid of all the sticky residue once I peel it off.

Enter GelaSkins. These things are essentially big ol’ high-quality stickers, printed on a material that, through what I can only assume is the devil’s work, leaves no residue when peeled away.

GelaSkin’s got a catalog of around 200 pieces, ranging from the emo chicks to emo robots. If none of their offerings pop your kernel, they’ll also print up your own design at no extra cost. I went with Nanami Cowdroy’s Ink Pond.

This thing goes on like lotion, and comes off like a prom dress. I’ve put a whole lot of these sorts of things (mainly screen protectors) on devices. It’s generally an absurdly frustrating process; getting them to go on is one thing – but getting them to go on without looking like bubble-filled crap? That’s almost always a whole different story – but not with these.

GelaSkins have an odd grid of squares etched lightly into the back of the material — and whatever this does makes the entire application experience a breeze.

Peeling it off is even easier. It comes up without a struggle when you slip a fingernail underneath, but I’ve yet to see any stray, unwanted peeling after slipping it in and out of my bag a ton. (For reference, I’ve had another GelaSkin on my MacBook Pro for around 4 months now. No peeling there, either). I’ve applied and removed this skin a few times now, and it seems like it would maintain its stick for at least a dozen applications if you bought more than one and wanted to rotate.

The skin comes in two pieces: front and back. I probably won’t use the front piece after this review — there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, I just like the way the front of the iPad looks originally. For people who stick with this front sheet, GelaSkins provides an iPhone OS app with matching lockscreen/homescreen wallpapers to give it a really slick, unified look. As of the time of publishing, however, this app hasn’t been updated for the iPad – while you can use the iPhone version in the mean time, the images won’t be as high resolution as you might hope. Even the “full size” images on the Gelaskins site aren’t quite big enough.

The back piece.. that, I’ll be keeping on. It’s glorious. The art is wonderfully detailed, and the material wraps the back of my iPad from edge to edge.

It also provides just a liiiittle bit of protection without bulking things up. Will it protect it against 5 foot falls or douchebags with baseball bats? Of course not. But it will protect it from a much sneakier, much more nefarious villain: all the grit and grime sitting on coffee tables and office desks everywhere. The aluminum back of the iPad is surprisingly weak against these itty-bitty monsters, resulting in equally itty-bitty scratches all over your new toy. These do a pretty good job of keeping things in like-new condition without requiring a big, bulky case.

Product page: GelaSkins iPad collection

The Goods:

• Fantastic artwork, with great quality printing
• Easy to put on, easier to take off.
• It really doesn’t leave any residue

The Bads:

• The wallpaper’s Gelaskins provides — or the ones I checked, at least) aren’t up to the iPad resolution yet. You can still use them, they just won’t look as nice as they should.

The Neutral Stuff:

• No screen protection. The iPad’s screen is glass, so it’s not really necessary at all – but seeing how many people I see each day walking around with screen protector’s on their iPhones, it’s probably worth noting.

UPDATE 1-Pfizer wins Protonix patent case vs Teva

Filter: CSI's Virtual Video Conference Launched 4/8!

Filter: CSI's Virtual Video Conference Launched 4/8!

Facebook to Get More Social, McAfee Crashes PCs (PC World)

Lessons of the McAfee False Positive Fiasco - PC Magazine

TG Daily

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Palm Shake-Up Imminent, Rubinstein May Be Out

Palm right now is a disaster. Its sales are going nowhere, its market share is plummeting, and try as it might, it can’t even find a buyer. Industry sources tell us that a major restructuring and management shakeup is imminent and CEO Jon Rubinstein may be replaced.

This is still a rumor at this point, but it makes sense. Palm is suffering from a ton of unsold inventory, and it cannot keep up with Apple, Android, or Blackberry in the smartphone wars. Palm clearly needs to be bought at this point if it is going to survive, and Rubinstein may not be the right person to make that sale. Rubinstein came from Apple, where he was head of hardware. He was recruited by Palm’s biggest investor Elevation Partners. Rubinstein is great engineer, but not a great marketer. It appears he is having trouble selling Palm, even as a distressed asset.

The writing is on the wall. Palm’s executive talent is already beginning to walk out the door. Palm still has some valuable assets in terms of products, patents, intellectual property, and a recognizable brand. But Rubinstein may not be the best person to make a sale happen. He was brought in to take on Apple, after all. Not to sell damaged goods.

I’ve reached out to Palm for comment.

[crunchbase url="http://www.crunchbase.com/person/jon-rubinstein,http://www.crunchbase.com/company/palm" name="Jon Rubinstein,Palm"]

Public Policy Leaders Will Be Featured at The Cable Show 2010

Palm Shake-Up Imminent, Rubinstein May Be Out

Palm right now is a disaster. Its sales are going nowhere, its market share is plummeting, and try as it might, it can’t even find a buyer. Industry sources tell us that a major restructuring and management shakeup is imminent and CEO Jon Rubinstein may be replaced.

This is still a rumor at this point, but it makes sense. Palm is suffering from a ton of unsold inventory, and it cannot keep up with Apple, Android, or Blackberry in the smartphone wars. Palm clearly needs to be bought at this point if it is going to survive, and Rubinstein may not be the right person to make that sale. Rubinstein came from Apple, where he was head of hardware. He was recruited by Palm’s biggest investor Elevation Partners. Rubinstein is great engineer, but not a great marketer. It appears he is having trouble selling Palm, even as a distressed asset.

The writing is on the wall. Palm’s executive talent is already beginning to walk out the door. Palm still has some valuable assets in terms of products, patents, intellectual property, and a recognizable brand. But Rubinstein may not be the best person to make a sale happen. He was brought in to take on Apple, after all. Not to sell damaged goods.

I’ve reached out to Palm for comment.

Leonard Nimoy Retires From Star Trek

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Palm Post: Another Exec Set To Take Off

Palm has seen better days. Following the departure of senior vice president of software, Michael Abbott (who landed at Twitter), the company has been offering packages to try and keep other executives around. That may not be working so well. Caitlin Spaan, Palm’s vice president of carrier marketing will be leaving the company shortly as well, we’ve learned.

This was likely not an easy decision to make for Spaan, she’s been with the company for 14 years. In fact, she may have been the last of the old school team in place before Jeff Hawkins (Palm founder), Donna Dubinsky (former Palm CEO), and Ed Colligan (also former Palm CEO) left to form Handspring (which merged with Palm in 2003).

Following a very bad earnings report in March, word started circulating that Palm was looking for a buyer. Yesterday, Financial Times reported that CEO Jon Rubenstein is committed to Palm surviving as an independent company but admitted that they’re open to other ideas. Ideas, including, letting other manufacturers make phones with Palm’s webOS software, and yes, looking at takeover bids.

Earlier today, Reuters reported that Lenovo is now the leading candidate to take over Palm. But the bad news continues, the same report had HTC dropping out of the acquisition race after reviewing Palm’s numbers.

Update: And as we’ve just heard, the latest rumors have Rubenstein possibly being out as well.

Lost iPhone? Get Free Beer, Anyway - PC World

Coolest Gadget Reviews

Lost iPhone? Get Free Beer, Anyway PC World It hasn't exactly been Gray Powell's week. Losing an iPhone prototype in a bar, only to see it appear on Gizmodo, is enough to give you a pretty bad case of the Mondays. Someone out there thinks he could use a break, though -- specifically, ... Apple 4G Snafu: Forgetful Engineer Offered Trip By LufthansaChannelWeb Lufthansa offers iPhone 4G loser free beerRegister Airline Lufthansa offers Apple developer Gray Powell a free beerAfterdawn.com Times of India -News & Observer -TopNews United States all 63 news articles »

3-D video gaming aspires to become spectacle (AP)

AP - For movie goers, watching a 3-D film is a relatively easy experience. Audiences didn't need to do anything other than pay a few extra bucks and slip on a pair of special glasses to see 3-D versions of "Avatar" or "Alice in Wonderland." For gamers, however, enjoying a 3-D game requires a bigger investment on their part.

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Facebook’s Open Graph: It Depends On What The Meaning Of The Word “Open” Is

Grab the popcorn. There is a serious nerd fight brewing.

Following Facebook’s big Open Graph announcements at f8 a couple days ago, many of the leaders of the so-called “open web” are taking exception to Facebook’s use of the term “open” for its grandiose plans. While the Open Graph may be a lot of things, it is not open, is the feeling many of them have, as Erick laid out earlier.

Specifically, most of them are targeting the new Like button that is appearing everywhere on the web (including on TechCrunch). It’s an obvious target as it’s the most visible part (at least so far) of the Open Graph protocol. Investor/Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon is leading the effort for a new OpenLike button (though he wants someone else to be in charge). And Google’s Open Web Advocate, Chris Messina, has already ripped apart Facebook’s Like button in a blog post.

Anyone could have predicted these reactions immediately after Facebook’s announcements — in fact, I did (last paragraph). The fact of the matter is that Facebook is one of the most powerful forces on the web and they’re now using that position to introduce a new platform that will yes, help them. Shocking, really. A company that wants to do something that will benefit itself. But I do believe that Facebook, at least in part, believes this will also make the larger web better too. But that’s not going to be good enough for some, because it’s not fully open. Nevermind that plenty of these fully open solutions always being advocated never make it off the ground for one reason or another.

But what may be most interesting to me in all of this is that Facebook actually has one of these open web guys working there. In August of last year, Facebook hired Dave Recordon as a “Senior Open Programs Manager.” Recordon has long been a central figure in the open web discussion. For example, back in 2005 he helped create OpenID. So I asked Recordon what he thought about this latest melee, and specifically, Messina’s post.

In response, Recordon pointed me to this Google Group thread. Here, Recordon has a long response directly to a question Messina asked. I’ll paste both below.

Two days ago, Messina wrote:

In all seriousness — not trying to snark — just trying to understand what’s intended by “open” in the open graph protocol?  Thanks! Congrats on the launch.

Chris

Yesterday, Recordon answered:

I think open means a few things in this context:

First of all it is designed to increase openness between people based
on being able to connect with things all around the web. Within
Facebook this means that people can like any web page anywhere, not
just those on facebook.com.

Second, the Open Graph protocol increases the amount of semantic data
on the web in a manner that isn’t specific to Facebook or any single
social network. While we can all disagree about where the quotes and
angle-brackets should go, at the end of the day I think we all can
agree that this sort of metadata is good for the web.

Third, it was created and implemented by more than one company. We’re
now broadening that group of people (right here) and are interested in
evolving the spec in a meritocratic fashion.

Finally, it’s licensed from day one under the Open Web Foundation
Agreement (http://bit.ly/6zaAYh). As Jesse Stay wrote (http://bit.ly/
c0ROCw), this means that it, “is under a completely open license
agreement that other platform creators can adopt, use, and freely
distribute.”

That help?

–David

To that, Messina responded:

What other companies were involved in the creation of the OGP?

Where is the signed agreement? While I think it’s awesome that you’re using
the OWF agreement here, it seems like there actually needs to be a signed
agreement stored someone online by ALL the parties that affected by the
terms of the agreement.

Thanks. Eager to see the signed agreement!

At this point, Recordon noted that they should probably move the discussion to the Open Web Foundation mailing list. I assume anyone can sign up for that (wouldn’t be very “open,” if not), so look there for more juicy open web in-fighting.

Recordon has some good points there, but the one he doesn’t make (of course), is that Facebook has the right to do things beneficial for Facebook. The best argument you can make against this is that what’s beneficial to Facebook may not be most beneficial to us all. In a thorough breakdown of Open Graph at ReadWriteWeb, Alex Iskold (who is also active in the OpenLike community) makes a good case for this:

Technically speaking, what Facebook has done is elegant and correct. From markup, to plugins, to API, all of it is modern and awesome. The missing bit is that Facebook appears to be the only repository of data in this equation – and that makes the whole offering seriously closed. Publishers and users don’t have a choice as to where to store the data. It is going to Facebook and Facebook alone. Perhaps there is a way to rework the system in a way that fixes that.

Of course, then publishers don’t have to use Facebook’s Like button. But they will — I can think of nearly 500 million reasons why. Love it or hate it, that’s the way it is. It’s not good versus evil. It’s not black versus white. It’s a million shades of gray, as always.

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Big Zucker Likes No Privacy. [Voices]

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Today Facebook, Tomorrow the World

Samsung’s Bada-powered Wave coming in June, Not April

Is the world ready for yet another smartphone platform? Probably not – but it’s got until June to get prepped. According to Samsung, that’s when they’ll be launching the Wave, their first phone to be powered by Bada.

The good word comes after a handful of UK retailers started promising that Wave pre-orders would be filled in the next few weeks, implying that the handset would drop in April or May. Check out Samsung’s statement after the jump.

The comment from a Samsung Spokesperson, which was sent to TechRadar this morning: “The Samsung Wave is not currently available for sale in the UK, but we look forward to its launch in June 2010, at which time details of tariffs and stockists will be released by our operator partners.”

So what do you think? Are you dying to ride the Wave?

[Via SamsungHub]

Site's Users See Names, Credit Card Numbers Revealed Online [Voices]

By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Talk about oversharing.

The names, credit card numbers and purchases of users of Blippy.com, a site that allows people to share information about their purchases, are appearing in a Google (GOOG) search, VentureBeat reported Friday. On Blippy itself, transactions are reported by user and location only, but a specific type of search on Google reveals actual numbers within the text that appears below the search-result link. The news was spreading quickly on Twitter, with the tag #epicfail being attached to some related posts.

The problem raises questions not only for Blippy but for such sharing services in general. What began with the sharing of information among a relatively small circle of friends on sites such as Facebook and MySpace has grown into ever more public, more detailed releases of data–raising questions about privacy along the way.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

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Who’s on Crack in tech 4.23.10

Section: Audio, Video, Communications, Computers, Gadgets / Other, Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack

Welcome to this week’s episode in which we explore moves in the tech world that seem suspect in their motivation.  Some of these can only be fueled by Crack.  Here are this week’s nominees:

• Courier to hit shelves in 2011?
• BlackBerry’s ugliest baby
• Radio Shack too good for Palm?
• Swashbuckling adventure: Man and iPhone vs. World

Microsoft answer to iPad next year?

“Please hold for the next available Microsoft alternative, wait time is approximately 365 days.”  Awesome.  Gadgetell’s Hunter Clark brings us this gem from the New York Times, “Microsoft engineers have talked about getting the Courier out by early 2011, though no firm decision has been made to sell the product.”

So if they get it out by early 2011, they might no sell it?  Will they give it away for free?  Maybe he meant this is all speculation.  Hunter thinks the timing might be right: “if Microsoft can launch the Courier right when the iPad becomes old news, they might have a shot at taking the market by storm with this wild and whimsical device.”

Personally, I think Hunter is waay off.  I think Apple doesn’t intend to let the iPad become old news.  Just like the iPhone, I suspect we’ll see modifications that make folks return to the streets in the nighttime to line up to buy the next one.  And in typical Microsoft fashion, they’ll be releasing something made to compete with what Apple had out last year.  Fine, strike Microsoft, and replace with Windows Mobile?

That BlackBerry baby sure is ugly
Please tell us this is a joke.  Please?  Our own Editor, Robert Nelson brings us what could be the most painful phone to look at.  As with most babies, no one wants to tell the parents the kid is the Broomhilda of babies, Nelson skirts the issue, “no word on an actual release, but due to the CDMA nature, it can be expected to arrive with either Sprint or Verizon here in the US or Bell and Telus up in Canada.”

Here is the straight dope: BlackBerry has no alibi.  Maybe this clamshell has a nice personality?  Was the stick used to beat this made of Canadian hardwood?  I wouldn’t touch this phone with a ten foot stylus. 

Is BlackBerry really catering to the niche that relishes flip-floping their RAZR shut with that satisfactory *snap*?  “The Berry that Flips”?  Just nailed that business call?  Flip your phone shot, you hot dog!  These thing isn’t even real yet and already I hate it.

Radio Shack kicks Palm to the curb

Like yesterdays burnt out light bulbs and whatever else is in Radio Shacks trash, Palm devices (the Pre and Pixi) have been shown the door.  Exit, stage left.  Adios amigos.

Is it more than just clearing some room for more Android flavors?  More free phone fare?  Or is in eager, almost giddy anticipation of new Palm devices?  No, it’s none of those.  Maybe the Shack was tired of being called out by Jon Rubenstein for doing a crappy job pushing Palm phones over everything else.

Our Sue Walsh gives us the deets: “Sprint has announced that Radio Shack will soon discontinue sales of the Palm Pre and Pixi.  They’ll be replaced with two new devices. A Sprint spokesman says they are likely to be a BlackBerry and a messaging phone. The company isn’t worried-they say it’s all normal business procedure.”

Well I am worried.  Sprint was the go-to partner for Palm.  Now the go-to partner is saying, it’s not you, it’s me routine?  It’s the “I am just going out with BlackBerry as friends.”  I’ve heard it before and I don’t like where this is head.  Palm needs a new trick and fast.

And finally: one man, one iPhone, 7 days.

Favorite Who’s on Crack whipping boy Jake Gaecke wrote up a little piece I think should be mandatory reading for youngsters around the world.  In his post, we follow young Jake’s epic quest: to survive in the wildernerss of Orlando, Florida with only his wits and an iPhone.  Just peek at these moving selected quotes:

“it’s not the most tech friendly place.  I’ve come to expect every hotel and restaurant I’m at to have free WiFi available, but not Walt Disney World. “
” if my mom and sad think it’s useful, you might want to give it a try. ” (sic - that means he said “sad” when he meant “Dad” and I am an ass enough not to be kind and change it for him)
” The whole time I had no idea where I was, but I knew I was going the right way.”
“We’re both pretty addicted, but neither of us went through any withdrawals and the only Internet we had was on the iPhone”
“I was on my honeymoon”

See what I mean?  The epic struggle between the elements, cunning wildlife aiming to thwart Jake’s quest, his approved App Store coming through time and again to…hold up.  Did he say Walt Disney World?

Alright, so it was really: one man, one iPhone, 7 days, a Magic Kingdom, and a new wife our dear Jake was surviving.  Big congrats to Jake for getting hitched.  But, my friend, as married folks everywhere know, surviving what comes after the Magic Kingdom is the real test and there isn’t an app for that.  From all of us at Who’s on Crack, congrats again and best of luck!

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

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LOL! Some1s stealing ur car!: Viper SmartStart for iPhone gets push notifications

We’ve written about the Viper SmartStart system before. It’s the $30-per-year iPhone/BlackBerry app that, when paired with a $500 component in your car, ensures that you never have to worry about strenuous nonsense like turning a key to start your car or unlock your doors ever again.

Up until this point, its been a one way deal. You can tell your car to turn on and fire up the AC, or use your alarm to scare the hell out of people in parking lots miles away – but what if your car wanted to talk back to you?

Now it can!

Viper just pushed out an update for the iPhone build of SmartStart, with one big-button new feature: push notifications. Now everytime some jerk busts through your window (or a raccoon stands just a little too close), SmartStart can let you know that your alarm is blaring whether you’ve got the app open or not. It’ll also give you a heads up if a command didn’t execute successfully for some reason.

Pro Tip: If someone’s breaking into your car (and you’re sure it’s not just the aforementioned raccoon), call the cops. Abandoning your grocery cart to run outside and try and duke it out with some burglar is a good way to get your face stabbed.

[Via IntoMobile]

Apple channels Google, Microsoft to attract developers - CNET

CBS News

Apple channels Google, Microsoft to attract developers CNET I can't help but ask after reading Apple's attack on Adobe's Flash for being "closed and proprietary," while dressing itself up as the openness prom queen because of its support for HTML5, JavaScript, and other industry standards. ... Apple Makes Hardware Video Decoding Available to DevelopersPC World Adobe clutches chance to bury Steve Jobs 'hog' insultRegister It's About Time: Adobe Divests from iPhone OSBusinessWeek BBC News -eWeek -PC Magazine all 448 news articles »

Video: 99-Year-Old Enjoys Her New iPad

The latest YouTube star is Virginia Campbell, a 99-year-old Lake Oswego, Oregon resident who’s in love with her iPad.

Campbell suffers from glaucoma, which makes it difficult for her to read. Now, with the help of the iPad, she’s reading books and writing limericks.

“The thing that’s so neat is there’s nothing between you and the screen,” said Ginny Adelsheim, one of Campbell’s daughters, in an interview with Oregon Live. “You can enlarge the print, and it has a much brighter screen so you can read on it more easily than with a regular computer screen.”

What’s more, Campbell never owned a computer prior to the iPad, so it’s fascinating that she’s already become comfortable with the device.

The iPad also features a tool called VoiceOver, which reads any text out loud that you place your finger on. The feature works for reading e-books as well. The National Federation of the Blind has applauded Apple for including VoiceOver in the iPad.

Campbell’s incident highlights a lesser-seen facet of technology, in which data can be used to compensate for people’s handicaps. Wired.com last year reported on three blind photographers using technology to help them snap photos. The most interesting example was Alex Dejong, who uses assistive software on his Nokia N82 to translate sounds into visuals in his mind, as well as his iPhone to snap and edit photos.

See Also:

• Blind Photographers Use Gadgets to Realize Artistic Vision …
• Eye Spy: Filmmaker Plans to Install Camera in His Eye Socket …
• Apple’s iPad Will Read Books Out Loud, Support Free E-Books …

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Tell Me Again Why the iPhone Will Never Do Well in Japan? [Digital Daily]

And people said the iPhone would never be big in Japan…

According to a new survey from the MM Research Institute, Apple’s iconic handset has captured 72.2 percent of the Japanese smartphone market. Of the 2.3 million smartphones sold in Japan during the 12-month period ending March 31, 1.69 million were Apple (AAPL) iPhones.

Astonishing, though really, we should have seen this coming after SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son’s enthusiastic remarks about the device earlier this year.

“When we launched the iPhone [in the summer of 2008], some people said those phones were not suited for Japanese cellphone users,” he said during a February earnings call. “Those [skeptics] have been proven completely wrong….The iPhone is selling so well that we are really feeling the boost from it….[It was] the biggest contributor to third-quarter handset sales.”

Yeah, the Japanese sure do hate the iPhone…

[Image credits: iPhonAsia, MM Research Institute]

HTC tells Palm “It’s not me, it’s you”, backs away from acquisition

NOOOOOOOOOOO.

There I was, letting myself get excited about possibility of HTC acquiring Palm. I mean, can you imagine webOS on HTC-made hardware? I’d buy one for each hand. Alas, those hopes and dreams have been dashed.

According to Reuters, HTC took a look at Palm’s numbers and decided that it wasn’t such a good deal. Along with whatever bits of webOS they kept around, HTC’s purchase of Palm would have also earned them one of the biggest, most insurmountable patent catalogs in the industry, thereby securing themselves against future lawsuits from Apple or anyone else. For HTC to give that up because of the numbers doesn’t make the numbers sound too great.

Oh well – there’s always Lenovo.

Gadget Lab’s New Comment System

Comments are an integral part of new-media publishing. As bloggers and journalists, we’re conversation starters, not just reporters, and we judge our success in part on the volume and quality of the conversations that our stories kick off.

We know that the comment system on Wired.com leaves something to be desired. It’s too easy for spam to sneak in, trolls and fanboys can easily drown out intelligent conversation, and the system doesn’t make it easy to follow a thread of arguments and counterarguments.

So, starting today, we’re testing a new comment system on Gadget Lab that, we hope, will make the conversation easier and better.

It’s powered by Disqus. If you have a Disqus account, you can log in using that; it will also let you log in using your Facebook or Twitter profile, if you’d like.

The new comments give you a few benefits:

• Threaded commenting for posting replies to specific comments
• A “Like” button so you can vote up the comments you think are the best
• Facebook and Twitter integration for sharing your comments on your Facebook or Twitter account
• A “Flag” button for reporting spammy or abusive comments

Bear with us while we test this out. Some older comments have disappeared: This is a bug, not deliberate censorship. We’re working on it.

Also, the Disqus login is not synchronized with the Wired.com login yet, so you’ll have to log in to Gadget Lab separately from the rest of the site. This is something we hope to fix if we roll this system out to other blogs here. In the meantime, I hope the benefits of the new system outweigh that inconvenience.

Let us know what you think of the new system: Post your comments below. Or, if it’s just not working, send me e-mail at dtweney@wired.com.

See Also:

• Gadget Lab’s Comment Policy

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SIRIUS XM Radio to hit Android in May

Finally, SIRIUS XM says it will soon release a free Android app that will enable DROID and Nexus One owners – among others – to enjoy access to over 120 channels of sports, talk, entertainment, news, comedy and commercial-free music.

For now, you can only download apps for iPhone, iPod touch and BlackBerry smartphones.

The satellite radio broadcaster says it will release the Android app some time in May this year, and all users of the SIRIUS XM App will receive a 7-day free trial of the SIRIUS XM Premium Online service to boot.

Naturally, the app will be able to tap into channels over both cellular and WiFi networks.

The press release provides a laundry list of programming, but here are some of the goodies: MLB Network Radio, SIRIUS NFL Radio, NHL Home Ice, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, Oprah Radio aaaaand Playboy Radio.

During the 7-week trial of the premium service, users will also be able to listen to artist-branded music channels such as The Grateful Dead Channel, Eminem’s Shade 45, B.B. King’s Bluesville, Willie Nelson’s Willie’s Place and Elvis Radio.

Not included in the offering are Howard Stern, NFL and NASCAR programming.

The SIRIUS XM App for DROID and Nexus One will be available as a free download through the Android Market on the handset or by visiting this page.

Again, availability is scheduled for May, but you can already sign up to receive an email with a link to download the free app when it’s live.

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Who Will Buy Palm? If Not HTC, How About HP? [Digital Daily]

Well, this is a bit ironic, coming as it does on the heels of Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein’s “I believe Palm can survive as an independent company” proclamation Thursday: HTC has reportedly declined to bid on the company, which is said to be shopping itself around.

Evidently the Taiwanese hardware manufacturer took one look at Palm’s (PALM) books and decided an acquisition isn’t worth the trouble. “There just weren’t enough synergies to take the deal forward,” a source close to talks between the two companies told Reuters.

And so speculation about a potential acquirer is turning elsewhere. Lenovo seems to be the leading candidate at the moment. The company has big aspirations in China’s mobile market and a penchant for making big foreign acquisitions. It purchased IBM’s (IBM) ThinkPad business a few years back and tried to buy Packard Bell, so why not Palm?

Well, for one thing, Palm’s market share is too small to be of real benefit to Lenovo. For another, the company is already committed to Google’s (GOOG) Android for the OS to run on its soon-to-debut Lephone.

Finally, Palm’s asking price is said to be around $1.3 billion. Lenovo had about $2.4 billion in net cash reserves on hand the end of 2009. Would Lenovo really spend more than half of that on Palm, a company whose books frightened off HTC? As Larry Dignan writes at ZDNet, it’s hard to make the case that it should.

So if not Lenovo, then who?

How about Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)? With handheld sales that fell by more than half year-over-year in its first quarter, HP is surely looking for a way to revive them and capture a larger portion of the important mobile market. Acquiring Palm could be a good way to do it. Here’s why:

• Yes, HP is a Windows shop with, no doubt, big plans for Windows Phone 7, but that OS will likely figure in devices aimed at the enterprise market. With Palm’s assets, HP could target the consumer space as well.
• Palm’s webOS is scalable. HP could use it in other devices–tablets, for example–differentiating them from those of competitors using open-source operating systems like Android.
• In Palm, HP would gain a turnkey smartphone division–a venture with a slick smartphone OS, a deep mobile patent portfolio, a talented R&D team, the beginnings of an app ecosystem and established carrier relationships.
• Palm and HP both call Silicon Valley home, and former Palm exec Todd Bradley currently heads up HP’s Personal Systems Group. Obviously, there would still be integration risks, but there are clear synergies in culture and location that would at least temper them a bit.
• HP has some $14 billion in cash on hand, more than enough to cover Palm’s rumored $1.3 billion asking price with plenty left over.

That seems to me to be a pretty compelling case. Has it been made inside HP? I can’t say for sure, though we may find out in the weeks ahead.

Q&A: the Anti-iPhone [Voices]

By Jeremy Caplan, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

With little iPhone-like fanfare, a modest mobile device called the Peek has carved out a quiet tech niche. Launched 18 months ago, the Peek lacks the wizardry of the iPhone’s apps. It doesn’t even make calls. But like a bargain-lovers’ BlackBerry-lite, it sends and receives e-mail and text messages for just $15 a month, with no contract. The gadget itself goes for $20 at Target. Now the Peek is ready for act two, launching in India last month and preparing to debut in Europe.

As tech gadgets go the way of Swiss Army knives, building in ever-more features in ever-pricier configurations, Peek founder and CEO Amol Sarva has steered in the opposite direction. He spoke to Digits about avoiding tech elitism and marketing devices for the masses.

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Official: Target to Stock Kindle from Sunday

After speculation and rumor, Target has at last confirmed that it will sell Amazon’s Kindle in its bricks and mortar stores. It will cost the same $260 as Amazon would charge you, but you at least get to try before you buy, and you don’t have to wait for the mailman to show up.

And this is likely the whole point. The e-reader market has shifted from early adopters to the mainstream, and if you want to interest people like my mother in buying a brand-new kind of device, you’ll have to put it in their hands first. Us gadget freaks may be happy to pre-order $500 devices without even seeing them, but we’re the weirdos here.

The Kindle will be available in “select” Target stores from this Sunday. In reality, this means the flagship store in Minneapolis plus another 102 stores in South Florida. Putting the Kindle in real stores will also showcase it against the iPad (although not in the same store of course - iPad is currently in Best Buy only, which also sells the Nook), which is going to prove the main rival for the Kindle.

It’s an unusual move by Amazon, though, especially as it pioneered the idea of trustworthy online shopping. It’s also proof that the online retailer is willing to take a cut in profits to push its hardware, despite the availability of Kindle software on most modern platforms.

Target Stores to Sell Kindle [Businesswire]

See Also:

• Best Buy to Sell Nook, Target Bags Kindle?

Photo:Charlie Sorrel

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A Modest Proposal: Please Leave the Lost iPhone Dude Alone [BoomTown]

Last night, I tweeted: “Good god, pls stop egregiously using this poor lost iphone dude for cheap traffic…sadly, I have to link to explain: http://bit.ly/cK28zb.”

The link led to yet another post on the Web site Gizmodo, owned by Gawker Media, which bought a stolen prototype iPhone 4G from a still unnamed man who filched it after an Apple (AAPL) engineer left it in a Silicon Valley bar by accident.

This short post, one of many taking advantage of the engineer’s mistake, noted it was his birthday and included the obnoxious line: “Of all the days that you can lose Apple’s secret iPhone…”

Or, to put in a way the maturity-challenged crew at the gadget site might understand: So funny I forgot to laugh.

While people can debate about how Gizmodo behaved related to breaking of the story of the phone, there’s no good argument to be made for the site continuing to make hay from this unfortunate guy in the process.

As I also posted on Twitter: “I love how they act like they are on that poor dude’s side, as they flay him for public consumption. Fascinating if it were not so appalling.”

Daring Fireball blogger John Gruber pretty much summed it up best in a post yesterday when he wrote of Gizmodo’s hypocrisy:

“…Publishing the name, photographs, and personal information of the Apple engineer who lost the phone is irrelevant to the story. It was the dick move to end all dick moves. Gizmodo is, ostensibly, a gadget site. The interest of their readers in this saga regards the phone. Publishing his name did not clarify in the least bit how they obtained the phone. The people whose identities I’d like to know are those who obtained and then sold the phone, not the guy from Apple who lost it. There is no interest served by outing him other than taking sociopathic glee in making a public spectacle of someone who made a very serious but honest mistake.

This, I’m deeply offended by.”

Me too.

Of course, such a thing would not even register with Gizmodo, given that it is the same fact-challenged crepe hanger that was lowering Apple CEO Steve Jobs into the grave before he was, you know, dead.

So to expect it to stop the relentless focus on the engineer seems too much to ask, even if it is the decent thing to do given that this man might lose his job and has definitely lost his dignity.

In any case, of course, this debacle has morphed into fodder for late-night joking on television this week, as in the video below of David Letterman reading his “Top Ten List” on “The Late Show.”

Here’s one plus: At least Letterman is funny.

Nook Software Update Adds Web Browser, Chess

Barnes & Noble has updated the firmware of its Nook e-reader to v1.3. The update tweaks existing features and adds a few brand new ones.

The most exciting is the addition of a web browser, classified as “experimental”, just like the one on the Kindle. It uses the e-ink screen, not the touch-sensitive color one at the bottom, but it will let you choose bookmarks from the LCD, as well as using its virtual keyboard to enter urls.

There are also chess and sudoku games, which both seem perfect for a slow-updating grayscale display. The chess game offers a computer-controlled opponent with three skill levels. This is one of those things that seems obvious once you hear about it, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see chess on the Kindle in the future, if its non-Android OS is up to it.

There are also a few interface and menu tweaks, but the addition B&N seems most proud of might actually be the lamest, which is why I have shifted it to the end of this post. The Read in Store feature has been updated to let you read entire books when in an actual B&N store. You know, just like you can do with a real paper book. Why is this lame? From the blurb: “you’re free to read any parts of any available eBook for **up to an hour** per day!” [emphasis added, excited exclamation mark in original].

Yeah, one measly hour. What is the point of limiting reading time when the person in the store can just go and pick up the freaking paper book? This, rather than being a feature is just a way to piss off Nook buyers. Way to annoy your most loyal customers, B&N.

Despite this, the update looks to add a lot of extra stuff, and free. Your Nook should update itself over the next week when connected to Wi-Fi. If you’re desperate to grab it right now, you can use the “Check for new B&N content” command the under “My Library” section, or download it to your computer from the update page.

New to NOOK: Version 1.3 Available Now! [Barnes & Noble]

Support and download page [Barnes & Noble]

See Also:

• Barnes & Noble Nook
• Barnes & Noble Unveils Kindle-Killing, Dual-Screen 'Nook' E-Reader …
• Nook Torn Open, Hacked, Rooted
• Nook E-Reader Gets Hacked to Run Apps, Browser
• Barnes & Noble's Shiny, Sharing-Friendly 'Nook' eBook Reader …

Palm: new phones in pipeline; kinda pissed at shop owners

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile

Take that cell phone store employees!  You’ve been stupidly selling other phones instead of Palm’s Pre or Pixi (available in Plus sizes as well).  What is wrong with you?

That’s Jon Rubenstein’s take on Palms dismal performance.  But fear not, Palm is moving forward, as an independent company if it must.  However, Mr. Rubenstein did admit the company must look at takeover offers and consider every opportunity to license webOS to other makers for scale.

“If there’s an appropriate strategic relationship or business deal that makes sense to us then of course we would license webOS because obviously the more scale we get the more the benefit there is to us.”

Is there a company out there willing to pay for an OS (remember, Android is free) to put on some new hardware?  I am not sure Palm would find takers but it’s an interesting idea.  Maybe HTC?

HTC would be a longshot at this point as word comes this morning that HTC is out of the running for Palm’s Next Top Takeover Contender.  Lenovo now remains as the favorite.  But that isn’t stopping Palm from talking about a rosy future, chock full of sweet devices.

Mr. Rubenstein claimed Palm is working, ““fast and furious on new handsets”. “We do have a strong pipeline of products in the future.”  Near future?  Distant future?  We’re coming up on the one year anniversary of the launch of the original Palm Pre and that would make a great time to launch the next version device for webOS.  Will it happen?

Read: [FT]

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

Images of Suicidal Thoughts

iPad Camera Connection Kit Delivered, Un-Boxed

IPad owner Jerrod H finally received his iPad Camera Connection Kit and did what any self-respecting geek does with brand new kit: He posted un-boxing photos.

The kit is one of very few accessories which use the USB-ness of Apple’s Dock Connector to hook up to external hardware. In the box, as you can see from Jerrod’s snaps, you get a pair of dongles, one an SD-card reader and the other a USB-adapter for plugging cameras in direct. Once hooked up, the Photos app pops over to the “camera” tab and from there you choose which pictures, both RAW and JPEG, you want to import. The app will detect and ignore duplicates if you like, and you can also choose to have the app delete the images from your card after import. I’d advise against this – to avoid screwing up the card’s file-system, I always format the card in-camera.

From the shots, it also appears that you can pull movies into the iPad, and presumably play them back. The connection kit will be the first accessory I buy when I eventually get an iPad over here in Spain, and I will put the RAW tools to the test. I’m also interested to see some full-scale photo-editing apps on the big-screen iPad. If they’re anything like the excellent iPhone movie-editor ReelDirector, photographers are in for a treat.

iPad Camera Kit received and working [TwitPic/Jerrod H]

Picture 2 [TwitPic/Jerrod H]

Picture 3 [TwitPic/Jerrod H]

Asus Eee Pad announcement expected to take place Computex, come available in July

Section: Computers, Mobile Computers

Those waiting for the Eee Pad may like this latest bit of news. According to Asus CEO Jerry Shen, the Eee Pad will receive an official introduction during Computex which is scheduled to take place from June 1 through June 5 and will be available for purchase in Q3 of 2010. But to add a little more to that timeframe, according to component makers, it should be available sometime in late-July. The downer here is that the Tegra-based Eee Pad is expected to be priced somewhere in the $500 range. It was noted that it will come in at around $479 - $510, and that is “after telecom bundling.” That said, they are still expecting to ship 300,000 units in 2010.

Via [DigiTimes]

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

Do Facebook's Grand F8 Plans Raise Privacy Concerns? - ChannelWeb

Reuters

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New market study shows iPhone continues to be big in Japan

A lot has been written on how the iPhone performs in Japan, the world’s most advanced mobile nation, but the general consensus in this country now is that it sells very well (even though both Apple and provider SoftBank Mobile refuse to break down Japan-specific sales numbers). It’s rumored that the number of iPhones sold in Japan has passed 3 million.

There are reasons for this success (super-low pricing, aggressive marketing, Apple’s pre-iPhone brand popularity in Japan, clever product positioning by SoftBank, etc. etc.), but we’re talking about a country in which basically every cell phone is a smartphone, a country where you’d be hard-pressed to find a handset without a digital TV tuner or e-wallet function, for example.

And that means that the 4.9% share the iPhone now commands in the entire Japanese cell phone market, as reported [JP] by a Japanese research insitute today, is more than impressive (Sharp, with 26.2% market share, is the number one).

The MM Research Institute also says that among those phones that have a non-Japanese OS (i.e. Android, Palm OS or Blackberry), the iPhone even boasts 72.2% market share (see graphic above). In this (relatively small) segment, HTC is ranked second (11.1%), Toshiba is third (6.8%) and Blackberry / Sony Ericsson are both ranked fourth (4.3%).

We reported about another smartphone market study from a Japanese source back in December. All statistical and other issues aside, both reports indicate that the iPhone seems to do much better than many people believed when it launched in the world’s No. 7 mobile market in 2008.

Via Asiajin

IPad Desktop Runs Multiple Apps Together

Let’s be honest. When most people moan about the lack of multitasking on the iPhone or iPad, what they really want is multiple windows. IPhone OS4 won’t fix that, but Desktop, an appropriately named iPad app from Aqua Eagle, has a pretty good try.

The App is actually an application suite, offering a split screen interface that lets you choose any two of the included applications to run alongside each other. Here’s the list:

Web Browser
English Dictionary (powered by Wiktionary)
Calculator
Language Translator (46 languages)
Currency Converter (60+ currencies)
Maps
Email Composer
US Weather
Unit Converter
Device Stats (Memory and Disk)

It looks pretty handy, letting you compose an email while keeping a browser window open, for example, or quickly pop open a currency converter or translation widget when you need it. You can split the screen in portrait mode or landscape, and there is a text editor coming soon, which could actually be very useful.

For lightweight tasks, the $1 app looks ideal. But we do wonder whether any of these utilities will be as good as purpose-designed, standalone apps, especially as the whole bundle comes in at a rather worryingly small 1.6MB. What we do know is that this a smart use of the iPad’s extra screen-space, and replaces a few of the widgets that Apple decided to drop for the iPad, like the calculator.

Desktop [iTunes]

Earth Day Disc-Tractions: Celebrate Earth Day with two new Muppets DVDs

FROM GAMERTELL - Relive your childhood this Earth Day with two Jim Henson Muppet DVDs with environmental themes…
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Fujitsu Chief Says No Need for "Drastic Measures" [Voices]

By Juro Osawa and Daisuke Wakabayashi, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal

The new president of Fujitsu Ltd. said Thursday that the sprawling technology giant has no immediate plans to exit its major businesses or to reduce its head count, nor does it need a major overhaul.

Taking office amid the turmoil stemming from the departure last year of its former president, new president Masami Yamamoto said restructuring had run its course and the company has finished reorganizing its unprofitable businesses.

“I’m not saying restructuring is all over. But as for drastic measures, we’ve already done most of what we need to do,” said Mr. Yamamoto, who took over April 1, succeeding current chairman and interim president Michiyoshi Mazuka, and who comes from the company’s computer-server business.

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The BeetleCam: Remote Controlled Camera-Car Survives Lion Attack

There’s more than one way to shoot a cat, as Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas proved when they went on safari to Tanzania. Instead of loading up on giant lenses to project their eyes artificially into the middle of the animal action, the brothers chose to get their cameras up close to the African wildlife. But how to do this without a Siegfried and Roy style disaster? The BeetleCam.

The brothers wanted to shoot close up with wide-angle lenses, but waiting for animals to approach hidden cameras is slow, boring and requires luck. So instead they built a tough, off-road remote control buggy to carry a camera and couple of flashes to help fill the shadows of the harsh African sun.

If you are loading up a remote control buggy with a DSLR, a heavy lens and a couple of strobes, you can’t just pick something up from Walmart. Instead, the boys built their own, and from the start it was designed to last:

We [...] ordered the most powerful motors we could find and large off-road tires. BeetleCam had to be able to operate for long periods without being charged, so we stuffed the vehicle with the biggest batteries we could squeeze in.

Once built, the brothers figured out how to trigger the camera remotely using the same controller that drives the BeetleCam, and they loaded it up, covered it in protective camouflage gear to keep the dust out, and headed off to track down some big game.

The rig worked great. There were some surprises: Elephants, for instance, were “impossible to sneak up on” due to their super-sensitive hearing. Parking up in front and then waiting for the giants to walk by proved to be the solution.

Some things were less surprising. Lions attacked and mauled the BeetleCam, completely trashing the on-board Canon EOS 400D, although miraculously they managed to “retrieve an intact memory card from the mangled Canon 400D body”. They got the shot. Try that with film.

A quick MacGyvering later with string and wood and the BeetleCam was back in action, this time with the second (much more expensive) expensive body, an EOS 1D MkIII. The bigger camera managed to survive the rest of the trip.

The guys have gotten some fantastic shots, photos which would be impossible any other way, at least without putting themselves in the same lion-bait position as their poor 400D. And this project also points to the new ways we can take photos with digital, not least because you can destroy a camera without exposing the film inside, and that you’re not limited to just 36 shots.

In fact, a BeetleCam-Lite could make a great weekend project, using that cheap Walmart car we mentioned earlier and a cheap old compact rigged for remote-shooting. It might not survive the Veldt, but it would certainly be a lot of fun.

The Adventures of BeetleCam [Burrard-Lucas via Flickr]

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Apple Makes MagSafe MagSafer

Apple’s plastic MagSafe power adapter is certainly a big improvement on the old bullet-tipped model, but it is still prone to breakage. Exhibit A: My own power-adapter, which frayed internally and eventually stopped passing precious electrons to my MacBook a few weeks back.

Apple has hopefully fixed this with updated MagSafe tips for the 85 Watt adapters which come with the 15 and 17-inch MacBooks, and the 65 Watt versions for the 13-inch MacBook and MacBook Pro. The tip is aluminum and puts the plug in parallel with the cable instead of at right-angles, just like that of the MacBook Air, only with this new design the aluminum extends past the rectangular tip and into a cable-coddling tube. This tube alone should fix a major failing point of the adapters.

It’s just a shame (for me at least) that these didn’t come out a little earlier, so I didn’t have to drop my $80 on yet another piece of plastic junk. Than again, maybe Apple’s adapters just seem to fail more often because the computers themselves last so long?

Apple 85W MagSafe Power Adapter [Apple]

See Also:

• DIY Magsafe Connector for Any Notebook
• Lawyer Bait: Replug Invents MagSafe for Jackplugs
• Apple: Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply
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