| Please add updates@feedmyinbox.com to your address book to make sure you receive these messages in the future. | |
| Vancouver, BC Wants to be an Open City
May 16, 2009 at 10:16 pm
|
|   Vancouver, BC's city government posted an agenda for next week's council meeting that outlines its interest in adopting open data, open standards and open source software for all of its data and information resources. Vancouver hopes this new policy will help create new opportunities for its city, recently named "Best City Archive of the World". |
| ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 16 May 2009
May 16, 2009 at 9:38 pm
|
|  We've added a lot of great events to our guide this week. Check out what's coming up, below. In this feature on ReadWriteWeb, we provide a weekly roundup of upcoming social Web events. We'll publish it every weekend, as good a time as any to review your conference plans.
|
| Did The UK Press Con A 104-Year-Old Woman Into Joining Twitter For Digg Bait?
May 16, 2009 at 9:34 pm
|
|   There's a popular story on Digg right now about a 104-year-old British woman who uses Twitter. It's an obvious headline: "World's oldest Tweeter talks cuppas and casserole." It's Digg bait. But what's worse is that if you examine the story closely, it looks like the UK press may have gotten the poor old lady to sign up for Twitter just for their story! |
| Sony confirms new Alpha 230, 330 and 380 mainstream DSLRs
May 16, 2009 at 9:13 pm
|
|   Sony's been pretty generous with the Alpha leaks in the run up to this launch, but it looks like this new trio of DSLRs for "first time" SLR buyers, the Alpha 230, 330 and 380, is ready to go. The press release confirms all of what we already knew, along with bringing word that the cameras will support SD/SDHC cards in addition to Sony's still-kicking Memory Stick format... |
| Apple may (or may not) be mulling background apps for the iPhone
May 16, 2009 at 8:34 pm
|
|  Whether it be case materials and design, native iPhone app development, or video support on the iPod, Apple's not a company to apologize for drastically (and suddenly) changing course. Strategically that's to the company's benefit, since it keeps the competition guessing; for consumers, though, it's a nightmare trying to figure out whether the device you buy today will be dismissed as passé in a heavily-liveblogged Jobs or Schiller press conference the next week... |
| Why Social Media Revolts Take Place
May 16, 2009 at 8:04 pm
|
|   This week, we were witnesses to TwitterTwitter reviews's largest user revolt: #fixreplies. When options for @replies were taken away, we were reminded of the power of the users to group together using social media tools. Could #fixreplesgate have been avoided? Possibly, but almost every mainstream social site has experienced this type of uprising - just ask FacebookFacebook reviews, which has endured drama with its users multiple times... |
| Nimi Adds Visual Effects and Eye Candy to Windows
May 16, 2009 at 7:00 pm
|
|   Windows only: If you've waited out Vista and you're in no hurry to jump into testing Windows 7, Nimi is a fun little program for adding swanky visual effects to Windows XP. Borrowing heavily from the special effects found in the Mac OS X system and the Compiz effects in Linux, Nimi has a lot to add to your desktop... |
| Confirmed: enV3 to launch May 29th with Verizon Wireless for $129
May 16, 2009 at 6:51 pm
|
|   Our ninja came through for us again and we got our hands on the launch details for the highly anticipated enV3 for Verizon Wireless. The enV3 will feature a 2.6 inch internal display, 1.5 inch external display, QWERTY keyboard, 3 megapixel camera with flash and video recording capability, microSD expansion up to 16GB, Bluetooth, GPS, 2... |
| Casio EX-FS10 reviewed, slides 1000 fps capture into the back pocket of your mom jeans
May 16, 2009 at 6:32 pm
|
|  Casio's really blown out the feature list on the EX-FS10, and now PhotographyBLOG has taken the compact fashioncam through its paces. Sadly, like many modern compacts, straight up image quality is a bit scarce here, with obvious noise at ISO 200 and up, no optical image stabilization, and not even the silly 12 megapixel extravagance of its counterparts to blame it on -- the EX-FS10 shoots 9 megapixel stills... |
| Inside Job Brings Career Networking to Facebook
May 16, 2009 at 6:24 pm
|
|  Social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter are often the go-to applications for career networking, but now Facebook users can contact people who have interviewed, worked, or are currently employed at the places they want to work at next with a new app called Inside Job. Inside Job, developed by Arlington Soho, works on the premise that having a contact on the inside of a company will improve your chances of getting hired there. Here are its main features: |
| Store Fruits and Vegetables Properly to Minimize Waste
May 16, 2009 at 6:00 pm
|
|  If you've ever bought fruits and vegetables on a healthy whim, only to end up pitching them because they ended up looking quite busted in your fridge, this informative list is for you. Whether you're just picking up a few extra veggies at the market or you've got your hands full of some seasonal produce thanks to your community supported agriculture group, this list from Farm Fresh to You will ensure your food stays fresh until meal time... |
| Preparing for Cyberwar
May 16, 2009 at 5:30 pm
|
|   If there's a sudden cyberattack on the U.S. Navy, Jim Granger could be among the first to know since it's his job to keep watch. "We monitor the Navy's grid," says Granger, who is director of capabilities and readiness at the Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command in Norfolk, Va., home to the Naval Network Warfare Command. Granger works with a team of cyber-defense operations specialists in a security operations center, hunkered down behind computers to keep an eye on networks the Navy uses -- such as the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet -- both on land and at sea. |
| The Music Store Apple Forgot About
May 16, 2009 at 5:17 pm
|
|  Last January Apple released iLife ‘09, the latest addition to its highly regarded multimedia suite that ships with every new Mac...
|
| Preakness Online: The 5 Step Preakness Crash Course
May 16, 2009 at 5:16 pm
|
|  At home, at lunch, and on TwitterTwitter reviews, everyone seems to be talking about the Preakness, one of most prestigious thoroughbred horse races around. They're talking about the lone female horse in the race (Rachel Alexandra) or the underdog winner of the Kentucky Derby (Mine That Bird). Now you're even more confused than ever. |
| Repper Turns Your Photos into Abstract Patterns
May 16, 2009 at 5:00 pm
|
|  Repper is a fun and easy-to-use web site that turns photographs into abstract patterns, suitable for tiled-style wallpaper on your computer or web site. Repper uses a kaleidoscope-style mirror effect to take small portions of your picture and generate patterns from them. You can move the box around and also adjust the width and height of it to vary the effect. Repper also has a catalog of photos for you to tinker with, but you'll probably want to upload your own for some abstract art. Photos must be in JPEG format and less than 500k in size. Check out the video below to see Repper in action: |
| Breaking: Most Web Companies FAIL
May 16, 2009 at 4:52 pm
|
|  Blogger and social media specialist Meg Pickard posted an image to Flickr this week showing how many "Web 2.0″ era companies have failed to date. The image takes a popular representation of web company logos - widely shared in recent years - and crosses out all those that no longer exist. The not-so-shocking truth: the majority of people who strike out on new companies, who challenge the status quo and try to change things…FAIL. |
| PDF Flaw Patched -- But Does Anybody Know?
May 16, 2009 at 4:47 pm
|
|  Illustration: Lou BeachAs expected, Adobe patched a zero-day vulnerability in its popular Adobe Reader software last week, marking the second time in three months that it delivered an update on the same day Microsoft issued its monthly fixes. But while Microsoft's PowerPoint patch received lots of attention, the Adobe update should be at the top of people's to-do list, a security expert said today. |
| Keepin' it real fake, part CCIX: Fake BlackBerry Storm adds some gold trim, beats the Storm 2 to clickscreen-free living
May 16, 2009 at 4:37 pm
|
|  Well, no need to wait around for the Storm 2 to right all of the BlackBerry Storm's wrongs, the Cool9500 is here to make it all better. Namely, the Cool9500 brings the all-important gold trim, something we always felt was a major shortcoming of RIM's first stab at this form factor. There's also an all-important TV tuner -- another wild misstep in the original. Sure, we'll miss SurePress and the usable software, but we'd say Cool9500 really hit RIM where it hurts with this impressive followup. |
| Breaking: Six Apart Announces Wordpress Plugin
May 16, 2009 at 4:25 pm
|
|  San Francisco based social networking and blogging company Six Apart announced today at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic that it is introducing plugins that will work on rival Wordpress sites and other blogging platforms. This is big news and akin to Apple announcing that it will use a Windows operating system for its new computers... |
| Star Trek's New Views of Data
May 16, 2009 at 4:10 pm
|
|  In the newest Star Trek movie, the Romulan enemy Nero produces a mug shot of Spock in the hopes of finding him. But it's not just any mug shot. It's the 3-D floating hologram kind, thrown into the air like a ball before halting in mid-air before its onlookers. Certainly, it can be a little discomfiting to be faced by a floating head, but we don't live in star date 2233.04 where visual displays are so not like we know them today. |
| Fun for kids and adults: Pickin' Stix
May 16, 2009 at 4:09 pm
|
|   Pickin' Stix (click opens iTunes) took me back to my childhood in the early sixties, when I had a little cylinder filled with colorful plastic "Pickup Sticks". You'd toss 'em in a pile, and then try to pick them up without disturbing the other sticks. Not only was it a great way to stay engrossed for a while, but it was also teaching me and my friends manual dexterity, as well as how to use our depth and relational perception to figure out how to move a stick without moving any others. |
| Windows 7: Already Slipping in the Polls?
May 16, 2009 at 3:45 pm
|
|  Just over a week after Microsoft handed Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) to the public, the new operating system's market share gains have started to slow, according to data from Web metrics vendor Net Applications.
|
| Facebook Raises $150 Million To Buy Employee Stock
May 16, 2009 at 3:39 pm
|
|   Facebook is raising $150 million from new and current investors in order to buy employee stock, VentureBeat reports. According to the report: - Facebook will buy 15 million common shares at $10 each.
- Employees will be able to sell as much as 20% of their stock.
|
| Not A Typo: Six Apart Opens Up Suite Of Products For Rival WordPress
May 16, 2009 at 3:24 pm
|
|  Anil Dash, chief evangelist for blogging software platform Six Apart, announced today that blogging platform has launched a a plugin that provides WordPress users with access to a suite of Six Apart's add-on features for blogs. |
| Mac 101: Geodata copying in iPhoto
May 16, 2009 at 3:21 pm
|
|  The most recent update of iPhoto to version 8.0.2 included a couple of new features around the Faces functionality for identifying people in photos. Apple, however, was kind enough to throw in another feature; one which I was hoping would show up from the day iPhoto '09 was announced. It is now possible to copy geodata from one photo and paste it into another photo... |
| Week in Apple: Snow Leopard final push, Sling on iPhone, WWDC keynote, and more
May 16, 2009 at 3:03 pm
|
|  
Did you know that Apple released 10.5.7, T-Mobile is supporting iPhone users on its network, new Get a Mac ads were released, and the WWDC keynote date and speaker were announced this week? If not, you may want to check our weekly Apple roundup to get the scoop. |
| First Look at Wolfram Alpha's Impressive (and Fun) Knowledge Computation
May 16, 2009 at 3:00 pm
|
| How many football fields would fit between the Earth and the sun? What's the likelihood of getting 2 heads in 10 coin flips? One search engine calculates all that on the fly and more. Mathematician Stephen Wolfram's much-hyped "computational knowledge engine" Wolfram Alpha just went public, and it's got more than a few data nerds tickled absolutely pink (myself included). Walpha (as I affectionately call it) finds and visualizes real-world data points from natural language queries. |
| TwitterHIT: Turning Twitter into a Junk Traffic Exchange
May 16, 2009 at 2:54 pm
|
|  In an utterly predictable development, services are springing up to become the junk traffic exchanges of the Twitter era. Take, for instance, TwitterHIT, which has resulted in hundreds of Tweets today. Promising to "Boost your followers", TwitterHIT is a way to automatically follow masses of people on Twitter, with the hope that "20-30%" will follow you back... |
| Wolfram Alpha: A Test Run
May 16, 2009 at 2:54 pm
|
|  Wolfram Alpha is online for testing throughout the weekend, in anticipation of the online knowledge base officially going live on Monday. Although the launch team warned in the Wolfram Alpha Blog that the site may go down periodically throughout the weekend, anyone has a chance to check out how well it answers fact-based questions from its database of information organized by Wolfram Alpha staff. |
| Datel gets first stab at third party memory card for Xbox 360, supports microSD expansion
May 16, 2009 at 2:50 pm
|
|  After ages of monopolizing most of its add-on market for the 360, it looks like Microsoft is letting up a bit. Datel just came out with two new MAX Memory cards that are compatible with the console, in 2GB and 4GB capacities. |
| Facebook raises $150 million more to cash out employees
May 16, 2009 at 2:15 pm
|
|  Facebook has almost finished raising $150 million in capital, in an extraordinary move by the company to buy out shares of hundreds of regular employees. Hundreds of the Palo Alto, Calif.'s employees have now toiled at the company for more than two years now, and many have worked three to five years. |
| Prepare for Bountiful Harvests With Plangarden
May 16, 2009 at 2:11 pm
|
|  Ah, springtime. Time to go outside (otherwise known as 'The big room with the blue ceiling'), and begin digging in the dirt, removing some plants and adding others. But if you want a great way to delay the actual "going outside" part, you can spend much time happily laying out your future garden with Plangarden ($20/year, 45-day free trial). |
| TapTapDial makes phoning and driving safer
May 16, 2009 at 2:01 pm
|
|  Unless you have voice recognition and Bluetooth in your car, dialing any cellphone can be dangerous to your health. It's truly frightening to see great numbers of commuters fooling around with their phones while trying to drive. Driving is tough enough these days without the distractions; without any tactile feedback on the iPhone, it's especially challenging to operate while in motion. |
| Water Effectively by Calibrating Your Sprinklers
May 16, 2009 at 2:00 pm
|
|  Watering your lawn doesn't have to involve guessing at the amounts or hoping you've watered long enough. Calibrate your sprinklers to water your lawn more efficiently and cut down on waste. If you put together a DIY automated watering system last summer based on our guide, you're already well on your way to a green and healthy lawn... |
| Intel Could Face Civil Charges in Europe
May 16, 2009 at 1:30 pm
|
|  Intel's record $1.44 million fine for breaching competition laws will open the floodgates for civil actions, a competition lawyer has said.
|
| Tech week in review: virtualized weekend edition
May 16, 2009 at 1:04 pm
|
| 
Ars reviews the biggest stories of the past week, including Windows 7 XP Mode, Nigerian scam baiters, USB thumb drive performance, and more. |
| How To Install Windows 7 On Almost Any Netbook
May 16, 2009 at 1:00 pm
|
|   Windows 7 is free for now, and works extremely well on netbooks. That said, installing the OS on these tiny laptops—especially low-end models—can be daunting. Here's how to do it, the easy way: If the Release Candidate is any indication (and it should be), then Windows 7 will be a nice upgrade for any Windows user... |
| Keepin' it real fake, part CCVIII: Nokia E75 isn't a Nokia E75
May 16, 2009 at 12:59 pm
|
|  Usually we see these Nokia knockoffs as Noklas or Mokias, but don't be fooled: there's nothing genuine about this E75. One tug on the side should prove that for you seeing how it doesn't appear to have the real deal's hallmark feature, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Then again, it does have flashing red and blue lights along the bezel, so it's pretty much an even trade. |
| Samsung's Android i7500 receives FCC approval
May 16, 2009 at 9:08 am
|
|  It looks like Samsung's Android-powered i7500 has taken one small step in its long march towards an official US launch. The i7500, known to have support for T-Mobile's 1700MHz 3G band, has made its way though the FCC with tri-band UMTS/HSPA intact. T-Mobile customers may have a long wait for this hot new handset however, as rumors place its arrival in November - just in time for the holiday season. It may seem a bit crazy considering we've already eyed a few more upcoming Android handsets from Sammy but hey, T-Mobile customers, you've got plenty to be excited about in the coming months. |
| Samsung's New SmartPhone Makes a Great Impression
May 16, 2009 at 9:00 am
|
| The Samsung Impression has a fantastic display--the first commercially available AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screen. With a roomy full QWERTY keyboard, an intuitive touchscreen interface, and some advanced features, the Impression is one of the best midrange messaging phones we've seen. It has a few quirks, though, as it lacks voice dialing, a camera flash, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and is a bit pricy. Assistant Editor Ginny Mies takes a look. |
| Wanted: One Mobile Device, for a 24/7 Life
May 16, 2009 at 9:00 am
|
|   Mobile life seems to know no boundaries. Though the etiquette of turning the CrackBerry off during a date is as important as ever, various facets of our personal and work lives are rapidly merging and in many cases, overlapping. I'm an employee, a friend and a sibling; I play different roles in a 24/7 time frame... |
| Google Users Live By the Cloud, Die By the Cloud
May 16, 2009 at 8:30 am
|
| The Google outage confirms what everyone should already know: If it seems too good to be true, watch out! Google's failure is a lesson for everyone who is putting too many eggs in one basket, whether the basket is cloud computing or those who've ditched wired telephones for a wireless-only world. I hate to say anything good about Apple's MobileMe service, God knows it still has problems, but Apple's approach to cloudiness is sound. I call it "Partly Cloudy." |
| This Is Getting Ridiculous: Cat Amasses Half A Million Twitter Followers In 3 Months
May 16, 2009 at 7:55 am
|
|  Ok, I dig Twitter and I understand why celebrities - who continue to flock to the service as if their careers and social status depend on it - manage to attract massive amounts of users following their every 140-character move, but this is getting plain ludicrous. Meet @Sockington, a cat on Twitter that has succeeded in surpassing the 500,000 follower mark some time yesterday. |
| Stupid netbook tricks: DIY microwave shield testing
May 16, 2009 at 7:43 am
|
|  So, we're guessing that at some point in your life you've wondered whether or not your microwave oven has sufficient shielding. Well, we certainly haven't -- but maybe we're the fools for trusting the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. |
| Writer Agrees To Be Facebook Guinea Pig
May 16, 2009 at 7:00 am
|
| The last three months, I've been soliciting to raise funds to participate in the NYC Writer's Coalition "Write Your A** Off" Write-a-Thon. It's an annual event at which writers donate a full day to writing to raise money for free writing programs for the disadvantaged across New York City. I participated in it last year, and it was terrific. |
| David Geffen's Secret Plan To Buy The New York Times
May 16, 2009 at 6:25 am
|
|  David Geffen wants to own the New York Times because, well, because it would be cool to own the New York Times. But it's not for sale yet. So he has a plan. Wait until the Sulzbergers realize how far up the creek they are. Richard Perez Pena, New York Times: Despite falling short in two recent attempts to become a major player in The New York Times Company, David Geffen continues to be seriously interested in buying a sizable piece of the company or taking it over completely, according to people who are very familiar with his thinking, though he is wary of doing anything to antagonize the controlling Sulzberger family... |
| Google's Outage Caused 5% Internet Traffic Decline
May 16, 2009 at 6:04 am
|
|  What's bad for Google is now bad for the whole Internet. Information Week: The service disruption at Google on Thursday morning caused a 5% drop in Internet traffic, underscoring the extent to which Internet users and other Web sites depend on the company.Arbor Networks chief scientist Craig Labovitz observed in a blog post that failures happen. "[B]ut if you happen to be Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and your content constitutes up to 5% of all Internet traffic, people notice," he said. |
| DiskDigger Gets Better, But Stays Free
May 16, 2009 at 5:57 am
|
|  DiskDigger goes well beyond the usual undelete utility that's offered gratis as a leader product, though as of version 0.8 it does that. It will also dig "beneath the file system" (author Dmitry Brant's line, which I plan to borrow regularly in the future) to recover data on a sector-by-sector basis from hard drives, thumb drives, etc. (Think of sectors as little boxes containing data that are arranged in tracks/circles on your hard drive.) |
| Keepin' it real fake, part CCVII: NOKLA Batman Mobile phone gets all its signals crossed
May 16, 2009 at 4:27 am
|
|  Look, in real life, we all know that Batman's car is called the Batmobile, NOT the Batman Mobile, and to be perfectly honest, we don't know why it ever seemed like a good idea to name a phone after an auto anyway, but then again: it does look rather. |
| Longer Queries Driving Down Ad Impressions? How About Bankrupt Advertisers?
May 16, 2009 at 4:19 am
|
|  Comscore has a fascinating post today talking about the relative decline in paid search ad clicks when compared to search query volume in the U.S. Search queries are up 68% in the last year, but paid clicks are up only 18% in the same period. Comscore says the reason for the decline is that there are less search queries that show ads, and proposes that a reason for less ads is that searches are getting longer, up from an average of 2... | | | 
| |
No comments:
Post a Comment