| Please add updates@feedmyinbox.com to your address book to make sure you receive these messages in the future. | |
| Microsoft publishes maximum Windows 7 netbooks specs
May 22, 2009 at 7:47 pm
|
|   One step forward, one step back: just as we were getting ready to celebrate Microsoft's decision to remove the three-app limit from Windows 7 Starter Edition, we're hearing that Redmond is still planning to impose strict limits on what types of machines get to run the stripped-down build. Just like today's max XP specs, things are pretty weak all around: Window 7 Starter machines will max out at 10.2-inch screens, 1GB of RAM, 250GB hard drives or 64GB SSDs, and single-core processors under 2GHz.  You didn't think Microsoft was going to ship Windows 7 with that same tired Vista-esque branding it's been using on the betas and RCs, did you? No way, man -- and if those crazy-cool wallpapers didn't prove it to you...  Apple may have a downer on netbooks, but that won't stop it releasing a 7-10in tablet in the coming months, one analyst has forecast. It's some way off, though. Piper...
|
| Boffins teach football bots how to fall
May 22, 2009 at 7:36 pm
|
|  Boffins are teaching football-playing robots how to fall properly. Traditional approaches to robotics have focused on keeping mechanical machines upright and balanced. But in the context of playing football on an uneven surface and with interaction with other robot players, that's an unrealistic goal. One step forward, one step back: just as we were getting ready to celebrate Microsoft's decision to remove the three-app limit from Windows 7 Starter Edition, we're hearing...  If you have a photographic memory, you may recall an article I wrote for TUAW about a year ago describing how to use AppleScript to make it easier to transcribe QuickTime movies and audio.  Boffins working with Alaskan fishermen have used CCTV to capture unique video of a sperm whale attempting to scoff cod off fishing gear. Such behaviour is referred to as "thieving" by the fishermen.  International brainboxes operating a fiendishly cunning probe contained in a small rotating shed on a pole situated in the arid high-altitude desert of Chile are in a...
|
| Brocade loses $63.1m on record revenues
May 22, 2009 at 7:31 pm
|
| Storage networking vendor Brocade announced record half billion dollar plus revenues for its second fiscal 2009 quarter but nonetheless made a $63.1m loss. Analyst revenue expectations were comfortably exceeded. Revenues were $506.3m, up 43 per cent on the year-ago quarter, which is very gratifying, and 17 per cent higher than the previous quarter, which - in the middle of the recession - is almost startling. It was the first full quarter combining results from Brocade and the acquired Foundry Network. The data storage revenues were 58 percent of the total,  In a series of emails responding to our post "Yahoo's Entire, Sorry Acquisition History," a former executive at the company says Yahoo made some smart acquisitions during its early days: ClassicGames, which cost $1M and became Yahoo! Games.  Scientists have displayed a screen that can be squashed, stretched and folded like rubber. Developed by Takao Someya, a Professor of Electronic Engineering, and his team from the University of Tokyo...
|
| Friday Favorite: Transcriva
May 22, 2009 at 7:30 pm
|
|  If you have a photographic memory, you may recall an article I wrote for TUAW about a year ago describing how to use AppleScript to make it easier to transcribe QuickTime movies and audio. In the comments for that piece, a program was pointed out to me (thanks imnotjesus) which has become a valuable tool in my toolbox...  In our discussions of radio apps for the iPhone we've briefly mentioned Stitcher, a great app for accessing a wide variety of audio programs on the go. In fact, Stitcher...  Welcome to another edition of Mac 101, TUAW's series for beginners. Today, we show you how to get more bang for your desktop real-estate buck with Finder icon labels. Have you ever wanted to know how large a picture on your Desktop was...  We showed Windows users how to move their My Documents folder (and discussed the benefits of doing so) years ago; if you're on a Mac and looking to do move your home folder, here's how.  FileMaker, Inc. provided one of the surprise announcements of the last couple of weeks with the introduction of Bento for iPhone and iPod touch. Designed a both a standalone database management application and companion app to the Mac version...
|
| Ex-BBC science man slams corp: 'Evangelical, shallow and sparse''
May 22, 2009 at 7:24 pm
|
| 
The BBC's environmental coverage has come under fire from a former science correspondent. Award-winning author and journalist David Whitehouse says the corporation risks public ridicule - or worse - with what he calls "an evangelical, inconsistent climate change reporting and its narrow, shallow and sparse reporting on other scientific issues." One step forward, one step back: just as we were getting ready to celebrate Microsoft's decision to remove the three-app limit from Windows 7 Starter Edition, we're hearing... If you have a photographic memory, you may recall an article I wrote for TUAW about a year ago describing how to use AppleScript to make it easier to transcribe QuickTime movies and audio.  Just in time for your weekend perusal, Palm Goon (which we half suspect might be a viral site from Palm itself) has uploaded three tours and a FAQ chock-full of new Pre / webOS screens and details...
|
| Microsoft to Give Its First JavaOne Keynote
May 22, 2009 at 7:10 pm
|
|  Here's a first: Microsoft will be giving a keynote address at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco next month. Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have come a long way since their bitter split over Java in the late 1990s, but until now, Microsoft has never been on the big stage at Sun's annual developer conference.  Cheap valuations and glimmers of economic recovery are tempting cash-rich technology companies to seek acquisitions, and the second half of 2009 could see some steady dealmaking.  Here's Google CEO Eric Schmidt's keynote address at Carnegie Mellon's 112th commencement ceremony, held yesterday. (Via @CarnegieMellon) Schmidt's talk to the audience...
|
| Palm Pre tasks, memos, browser on display, automatic backup confirmed
May 22, 2009 at 7:05 pm
|
| Just in time for your weekend perusal, Palm Goon (which we half suspect might be a viral site from Palm itself) has uploaded three tours and a FAQ chock-full of new Pre / webOS screens and details, chief among them being confirmation that the Pre does daily automatic backup.  On Wednesday I showed you kid-friendly search engine Quintura, and yesterday we looked at the kid-friendly Web browser KIDO'Z. Today it's time for the big gun: OpenDNS.  Mobile searchers have another resource at their fingertips, this time in the form of Yahoo's updated iPhone app, which now includes voice-recognition search capabilities. Boffins working with Alaskan fishermen have used CCTV to capture unique video of a sperm whale attempting to scoff cod off fishing gear. Such behaviour is referred to as "thieving" by the fishermen.
|
| Amazon cloud welcomes airplanes of data
May 22, 2009 at 7:03 pm
|
| Amazon's cloud is infinitely large. At least in theory. But bandwidth to the cloud is not. If you like, you could upload a full terabyte of data to that data center in the sky. But even over a T1 connection, it would take you a good 80 days. Amazon realizes that's a long time, so it's now giving you the option of sending your data through mail. Not email - mail mail. Apple may have a downer on netbooks, but that won't stop it releasing a 7-10in tablet in the coming months, one analyst has forecast. It's some way off, though. Piper...  I actually did get to fondle Amazon's (AMZN) newest Kindle DX at its unveiling earlier this month. And I confirm that it really isn't that big. But you can see where these guys are going with this.  Plastic Jungle, a marketplace for gift cards, has secured $4.8 million in Series A funding, led by Shasta Ventures with investments from Bay Partners, First Round Capital and Harrison Metal.
|
| Federal judge muzzles Craigslist-threatening AG
May 22, 2009 at 7:02 pm
|
| A federal judge has ruled South Carolina's attorney general must keep his mouth shut about threatening to prosecute Craigslist over ads for prostitution. US District Judge Weston Houck granted a temporary restraining order and preliminary judgment against Attorney General Henry McMaster on Friday to "refrain from initiating or pursuing any prosecution against craigslist or its officer" in regards to content posted on the site.  Craigslist is going head-to-head with the state of South Carolina in what can only be described as a bizarre legal battle. The online classifieds company is suing Attorney...  Craiglist dropped the erotic services section from its site a week ago, after public outrage at a medical student who used it to lure prositutes into hotels where he would rob and sometimes murder them.  South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster is the target of a federal lawsuit filed by Craigslist. The classified site wants a restraining order barring him from bringing charges over its adult listings.
|
| Huawei Moves up in Networking's Big Leagues
May 22, 2009 at 7:00 pm
|
| Huawei Technologies became the third-biggest seller of mobile infrastructure in the world in the first quarter, further expanding its worldwide role on the strength of sales both inside and outside its native China. The huge communications vendor displaced Alcatel-Lucent to take its place behind global leader Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks in quarterly revenue, according to market research company Dell'Oro Group... One step forward, one step back: just as we were getting ready to celebrate Microsoft's decision to remove the three-app limit from Windows 7 Starter Edition, we're hearing... If you have a photographic memory, you may recall an article I wrote for TUAW about a year ago describing how to use AppleScript to make it easier to transcribe QuickTime movies and audio.  Alcatel-Lucent gets into mobile ads with text alerts [WSJ] Hulu isn't close to launching in the UK [PaidContent] Google.org, Google's charitable arm, considered buying a newspaper, Schmidt confirms [FT.
|
| Google to Give Libraries Say on Prices for Scanned Books
May 22, 2009 at 7:00 pm
|
| The University of Michigan has become the first library to amend its book scanning deal with Google, following a proposed settlement that Google reached last year with authors and publishers that sued it. As part of the amended deal, other institutions can pay a subscription to access the University of Michigan's digitized books. Since Google will set those fees, the University of Michigan will be able to challenge the fee and the parties will settle any disagreements in arbitration.  Sometimes there are many ways to get from point A to point B, whether you are walking or driving. Until now, Google Maps' directions feature has given you the route they consider the best and allows you to drag and drop the route to change your path.  The hype around Twitter's utility as a real-time search tool has even rubbed off on Google, but there are signs that the startup's plans to turn search into a revenue stream could be more difficult to attain than first thought.  You might be a master of your feed reader and the nuances of RSS, but what if importing an OPML file is out of your friend's comfort range? Google Reader's Bundle feature makes sharing simple.  I'm still not exactly sure why Google (GOOG) has become the chief suspect in the "Who Killed Newspapers" investigation playing out before our very eyes. Because it's quite clear to me that the real baddie here is bespectacled...
|
| Microsoft My Phone, The Online Generation Gap, and Social Media Marketing on PC World Podcast Episode 30
May 22, 2009 at 6:53 pm
|
|  This week, PC World editors Robert Strohmeyer, Tim Moynihan, Anne McDonald, and Ginny Mies clear the air about the generation divide, take an early look at Microsoft My Phone, and talk tough about social media charlatans.
 Netvibes helps users organize their online activity by customizing a home page with RSS feeds, social networks, email, and more. The thing is, people use the web for different needs at different times - to use an obvious example...  Google Friend Connect is now integrated with one of Europe's fastest growing social networks, Netlog. Netlog, which has more than 45 million users worldwide, just implemented Google's alternative to Facebook Connect...  I thought the revelation that video gamers outnumbered cinema goers was old news, but maybe only partly so. According to a new NPD Group report, 53 percent of U.S. consumers have been to the movies in the last six months...  Hi5 is in the middle of a big transition. It's trying to be more of a "social entertainment site" and less of a social network. Part of that means more games for its gaming section - yesterday...
|
| Sprint: Palm Pre shortages are speculation but demand could exceed supply
May 22, 2009 at 6:43 pm
|
|   As the Palm Pre fiiiiiiiiinally nears launch, there has been plenty of talk with regards to supply and demand lately. Is the Pre going to be as popular as everyone thinks? Did production issues prevent Palm from having enough units ready for launch? Are Palm and Sprint shorting deliveries to help ensure a sellout? Here at BGR we've gotten some pretty firm intel regarding Best Buy's stock of Pre handsets at launch, but what about Sprint's stock? Can we expect similar shortages? The following is an official statement from Sprint:  Well what do we have here? Apparently Best Buy Reward Zone members will be getting a little extra treat courtesy of Best Buy Mobile. Between May 31st and June 6th, Reward Zone members can go to myrewardzone.  As if we didn't see this one coming, the Palm Pre has made its official debut on Best Buy's website. The handset is sporting a super-high $849 price tag which is apparently a deterrent.  Well, it certainly is not the BlackBerry Storm but the LG enV Touch must rank high up on the Verizon Wireless ladder as it is seemingly getting the same pre-order treatment.  Best Buy may not be launching the Pre exclusively, but it's probably the place to go if you're scouting one come June 6th. Why? Pretty simple, really -- you'll leave the joint with an extra Benjamin in your purse.
|
| One reason why StockTwits is growing: Those Twitter ads
May 22, 2009 at 6:27 pm
|
|   Twitter's management seems to have mixed feelings about advertising - but here's some anecdotal evidence that those text ads it has been running lately are worth something. StockTwits, a site for sharing stock-related tweets, saw a sharp uptick in users last month, around the same time that Twitter began running ads for it.  The underscore in his username should've made us wary. Space Shuttle astronaut Mike Massimino, known as @Astro_Mike on Twitter, drew a third of a million followers for what most presumed were Massimino's real-time tweets from space.  TwitPic has been one of the big success stories for a service built solely on top of Twitter. It boasts over a million users and gets around 2.5 million unique visitors a month to its site.  Twitter cofounder Biz Stone wants us to know that Twitter isn't as opposed to advertising as it sounded earlier this week. Enough to write an entire blog post explaining...  Sure you can already get your favorite tweets as t-shirts from TWItoShirt or Twitshirt, but until today, Twitter has remained thread-free of endorsing services that promote your tweets in wearable form.
|
| Trimble Nomad handheld gets Android 1.5 upgrade
May 22, 2009 at 6:25 pm
|
|  It's not exactly one of the first places you'd expect to see Cupcake popping up, but SDG Systems has now announced that the Android update (or a developer build of it, specifically) is now available on its Trimble Nomad rugged handheld. That device, in case you missed it, has primarily relied on Windows Mobile for an OS to date, and packs an 806 MHz Marvell PXA320 XScale processor, 128MB of RAM, up to 2GB of storage, CompactFlash and SD card slots for expansion, built-in GPS, and a hot swappable lithium-ion battery that supposedly lasts a whole day on a charge.  A full 15 months after Panasonic dropped jaws with its 32GB Class 6 SDHC card, the company is hitting us up with another world's first. Announced today over in Europe...  Sony's latest mainstream DSLRs cameras got the seal of officialness this past Saturday, and now the company's added some icing to the cake by releasing of plethora of pictures for its α230, α330, and α380.  Leccy Tech Swiss outfit Green GT whipped the dust sheets off its leccy racer at the recent Swiss Show of Renewable Energy and New Technologies. Called GreenGT, the FIA-specification...  Lithium-ion battery maker EnerDel Lithium Power Systems has struck a deal of intent with Fisker Automotive to provide batteries for its swanky hybrid-electric Karma vehicle, slated to be released next year.
|
| Make Professional Photo Books With AsukaBook Maker
May 22, 2009 at 6:24 pm
|
|  When professional photographers shoot a wedding or other events or projects, one of the products they offer their clients is a top quality photo book. And one of tools that some pros like to use for creating these coffee table-type books is AsukaBook Maker. AsukaBook Maker is a free layout program that generates an Acrobat PDF file. Its primary purpose is to help Asuka clients prepare the files needed to order books from Asuka, but you can also output the generated PDF to your desktop printer. One step forward, one step back: just as we were getting ready to celebrate Microsoft's decision to remove the three-app limit from Windows 7 Starter Edition, we're hearing... If you have a photographic memory, you may recall an article I wrote for TUAW about a year ago describing how to use AppleScript to make it easier to transcribe QuickTime movies and audio. Just in time for your weekend perusal, Palm Goon (which we half suspect might be a viral site from Palm itself) has uploaded three tours and a FAQ chock-full of new Pre / webOS screens and details...
|
| iPhone rumored to get wireless movie, TV downloads
May 22, 2009 at 6:15 pm
|
|   A new rumor, complete with supposed screenshots, maintains that Apple is on the verge of allowing movie and TV show downloads directly from an iPhone or iPod touch. According to the blogger reporting the purported find, a friend who downloaded the latest version of the iPhone app TwitterFon claims to have discovered three mobile ads from Apple that pointed to "iTunes Movies," "iTunes Movie Rentals" and "iTunes TV."  This week, we revisit some classics from your (and your grandfather's) childhood, iPhone browsing gets upgraded, and I play what it probably the best 3D multi-animal hunting game available for the iPhone.  She did it again! After having her phone's address book cracked a few years ago, Famous-for-being-famous heiress Paris Hilton lost her BlackBerry Thursday night at this week's Festival de Cannes film convention in the south of France.  The sharp-eyed writers at iPhone Buzz pointed out that the T-Mobile Austria site was showing a placeholder for a 32GB iPhone earlier today -- at least until someone at T-Mobile pulled the item.
|
| Google Maps Now Suggests Alternate Routes
May 22, 2009 at 6:09 pm
|
|  Sometimes there are many ways to get from point A to point B, whether you are walking or driving. Until now, Google Maps' directions feature has given you the route they consider the best and allows you to drag and drop the route to change your path. Today, Google Maps is adding functionality that suggests additional routes so that you can see all of them on the map for comparison. Just in time for your weekend perusal, Palm Goon (which we half suspect might be a viral site from Palm itself) has uploaded three tours and a FAQ chock-full of new Pre / webOS screens and details... The hype around Twitter's utility as a real-time search tool has even rubbed off on Google, but there are signs that the startup's plans to turn search into a revenue stream could be more difficult to attain than first thought. You might be a master of your feed reader and the nuances of RSS, but what if importing an OPML file is out of your friend's comfort range? Google Reader's Bundle feature makes sharing simple. I'm still not exactly sure why Google (GOOG) has become the chief suspect in the "Who Killed Newspapers" investigation playing out before our very eyes. Because it's quite clear to me that the real baddie here is bespectacled...
|
| Top 10 Skills to Master Your Grill
May 22, 2009 at 6:00 pm
|
|   There's something about grilling food outdoors that's both exhilarating and terrifying. It's great to commune with your food in such a straight-up way, but what if it goes wrong? We're here to help overcome your fear of the flame, or step up your grilling game, with these 10 techniques. Photo by adactio. Just in time for your weekend perusal, Palm Goon (which we half suspect might be a viral site from Palm itself) has uploaded three tours and a FAQ chock-full of new Pre / webOS screens and details...  Ah, a childhood favorite revisited. Years back, our hearts were taken by the one and only Robo Catcher, and now it seems the famed toy snatching game has seen a revamping that features JR Robotics' RB2000 as the main grabber.  We all know Macs pretty much created desktop publishing in 1985 with the original Mac and the Laserwriter Printer. Now it seems, Macs are preferred by some criminals doing desktop counterfeiting.
|
| Cryin': Aerosmith's Steven Tyler Fails To Sue Anonymous Bloggers
May 22, 2009 at 5:56 pm
|
|  Celebrities get impersonated on the web. They're famous - everyone is anonymous - it happens. Most celebrities just ignore it; but some get pissed off. Kanye West got mad as hell about Twitter users pretending to be him last week. This week it's Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler who is up in arms - to the point of actually taking anonymous bloggers to court.  Here's the latest action Apple Tablet looking even more real - More here and here. Tokyo park keeps teen vandals out using high-pitched noisemaker - Wow. And is this a... TwitPic has been one of the big success stories for a service built solely on top of Twitter. It boasts over a million users and gets around 2.5 million unique visitors a month to its site.  Content delivery network Limelight Networks (LLNW) has acquired Kiptronic, a small software company that targets ads to non-computer devices, including mobile phones, videogame consoles, and other gadgets.
|
| Palm Pre available at a single store in NYC on launch day? Unlikely.
May 22, 2009 at 1:26 pm
|
| 
The Pre launch continues to befuddle -- sure, we finally know that June 6 is when the magic happens, but the mechanics of actually snagging Palm's baby on that day are still pretty mysterious, and that's leaving a lot of room open for misinformation... Well what do we have here? Apparently Best Buy Reward Zone members will be getting a little extra treat courtesy of Best Buy Mobile. Between May 31st and June 6th, Reward Zone members can go to myrewardzone.  Following our scoop yesterday putting Rogers' outright pricing for the upcoming HTC Dream and Magic at $549.99, we've just received word that the price point has already been adjusted - for the worse.  One of Apple's authorized wireless carriers said this week that the high-end iPhone 3G has been end-of-lifed. Meanwhile, a new report appears to be backing rumors of several features due in next-gen models expected to arrive shortly.  Daring Fireball's John Gruber has a long post about what he expects to happen at Apple's (AAPL) worldwide developer's conference this June. It's worth reading if you have the time.  Everyone justifiably cheered when OpenTable (OPEN) went public yesterday. In a horrific economy, with wreckage as far as the eye can see, the debut of a real business with a 60% stock pop brought back memories of a happier era.
|
| Intel's Netbook Plans Pave the Way for Smartphone Aspirations
May 22, 2009 at 1:21 pm
|
|   In this anemic economy, selling tens of millions of any new product is a rare bright spot. But that's exactly what's happened in the case of netbooks, those small, light and relatively inexpensive notebook computers. Intel benefits greatly from this market, as its Atom line of CPUs powers roughly 90 percent of the devices in this class. The old "Intel Inside" tagline now includes netbooks along with desktops and laptops. Don't be surprised when it applies to smartphones as well.  We like a good netbook that's so small it doesn't have room for any pesky, legacy inputs keeping you tethered to the wall (and thus The Man) -- but we're not sure we'd consign VGA and Ethernet to to the Closet of Obsoletion just yet.  IBM is announcing today that it is stepping up its investment in Vietnam as part of a bid to improve the country's innovation and grab a foothold in an emerging territory for technology consumption.  Guard your retinas, fashionistas -- this one's bound to burn. Data Ltd has just loosed its latest ultra-rugged tablet PC, and it's quite clear that the gains in rigidity come at a severe cost to style.
|
| ProPublica Wants Newspapers to Steal Its Stories
May 22, 2009 at 1:10 pm
|
|   ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom with headquarters in Manhattan. ProPublica's newsroom employs 32 journalists and receives financing from the Sandler Foundation and other contributions. The organization's mission is to continue the tradition of investigative journalism at a time where a lot of newspaper organizations have had to cut back on their newsroom operations. The really interesting thing here, though, is that ProPublica is giving away all of its content to other newspapers and online publishers for free under a non-commercial, no-derivatives Creative Commons license.  Recently, the Wikimedia Foundation proposed that the copyright licensing terms on its wikis be changed to include a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license in addition to its longstanding GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).  Last night we reported that BillShrink, a scrappy startup that helps users lower common household bills, scored a major marketing deal: T-Mobile is promoting them in shops and via a national television commercial in a huge way.  One of the main themes of discussion here at the Web 3.0 Conference in New York City is how Web content is being digested. With the shift from destination sites to syndication through multiple channels...  When it comes to websites and applications that use geo-aware technologies, like GPS, to add location-based data to your experience, we've typically referred to them as location-based services (LBS).
|
| RidetheCity.com Gets An Update In Time for Biking Season
May 22, 2009 at 1:09 pm
|
|  RidetheCity.com is a service that maps the best bike routes in New York. You add a starting point and an end point and the service finds dedicated bike lanes, greenways, and other "safe" routes for you to take on your two-wheeler through the mean streets of the city. We've just been given permission to let you folks beat up their latest incarnation, RidetheCity 2.0 with a few interesting updates. Co-creator Jordan Anderson reports: In this anemic economy, selling tens of millions of any new product is a rare bright spot. But that's exactly what's happened in the case of netbooks, those small, light and relatively inexpensive notebook computers.  The Pre launch continues to befuddle -- sure, we finally know that June 6 is when the magic happens, but the mechanics of actually snagging Palm's baby on that day are still pretty mysterious... ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom with headquarters in Manhattan. ProPublica's newsroom employs 32 journalists and receives financing from the Sandler Foundation and other contributions.  Credits, Facebook's nascent virtual currency of sorts, is getting a simple change tonight. The company is marking down items in its gift store from 100 credits to 10 credits, and reducing users' corresponding number of credits.
|
| Facebook simplifies currency ahead of wider roll-out
May 22, 2009 at 1:00 pm
|
| Credits, Facebook's nascent virtual currency of sorts, is getting a simple change tonight. The company is marking down items in its gift store from 100 credits to 10 credits, and reducing users' corresponding number of credits. Facebook users who are worried about losing the last zero off their credit supplies can take comfort in the fact that they can still buy the same number of gifts as they had before. So if you had 200 credits, you'll have 20 credits now - but those 100-credit gifts are now 10 credits a pop. Prices, adjusted for the change, are the same $1 per 10 credits.  Several marketers pledge seven-figure spends with Google TV [PaidContent] What it's like to work for Twitter [PaidContent] Google wants to renew MySpace deal for $50 - $75 million per year...  Apple (AAPL) is reportedly working on a "media pad" tablet to fit between its iPod touch and MacBook devices. The idea is that it'd be better for surfing the Web, watching movies...  As companies implement virtual goods on applications in Facebook and other social networks, they need better tools for analyzing how people are buying and selling these goods and how to make more money.
|
| TimesReader 2.0's big goof: No Technology section
May 22, 2009 at 12:57 pm
|
|  The New York Times' latest attempt to deliver itself to your desktop in a functional, utilitarian format - and lock you in as a paying subscriber - is TimesReader 2.0, a tastefully minimalist application. TimesReader refreshes its pages' headlines and stories every five minutes. You can bump that up to one minute, or drop it back to an hourly update. TwitPic has been one of the big success stories for a service built solely on top of Twitter. It boasts over a million users and gets around 2.5 million unique visitors a month to its site. Craigslist is going head-to-head with the state of South Carolina in what can only be described as a bizarre legal battle. The online classifieds company is suing Attorney... In our discussions of radio apps for the iPhone we've briefly mentioned Stitcher, a great app for accessing a wide variety of audio programs on the go. In fact, Stitcher...
|
| The End of Newspapers, In Chart Form
May 22, 2009 at 12:53 pm
|
|  I'm still not exactly sure why Google (GOOG) has become the chief suspect in the "Who Killed Newspapers" investigation playing out before our very eyes. Because it's quite clear to me that the real baddie here is bespectacled, mild-mannered Craig Newmark, whose eponymous free service blew up the industry's most profitable line of business: Classified advertising.  I spend most of my workday typing and clicking into a browser window. I hate it. When I see the catchphrases "cloud" or "hosted" or "as a service," my brain rewites it as too damn slow. Mobile searchers have another resource at their fingertips, this time in the form of Yahoo's updated iPhone app, which now includes voice-recognition search capabilities.  Ask people what they like most about the Firefox browser and the answer is almost unanimous: The add-ons. Though blamed for slowing browser performance, the downloads allow users to customize the Firefox experience.
|
| New Aussie, Swiss Apple Store openings
May 22, 2009 at 12:49 pm
|
|  We've been inundated with emails today talking about the two international Apple Store openings. The first new store is in Zurich, Switzerland. Reader Greg sent us a link to his Flickr gallery with plenty of documentation of the new Bahnhofstrasse store. Here's a pic of part of the huge crowd just before the opening:  Yahoo CTO Ari Balough told the Reuters tech conference crowd this week that the company is looking at acquiring social media startups and smartphone application-makers.  While Sprint stores are gearing up for the day we've all been waiting for, Verizon Wireless will be busy appealing to a different crowd… Tweens. One of our Verizon...  Google CEO Eric Schmidt loves to talk up a potential partnership with Twitter. He did it again yesterday, reports the Telegraph: Speaking to reporters following the annual Google Zeitgeist conference...
|
| Fotolia Takes A Massive $50 To $100 Million Round From TA Associates
May 22, 2009 at 12:47 pm
|
|  Microstock photography site Fotolia has taken its first outside round of investment since it was founded in 2005 and it is a doozy...
 Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson has now gotten involved in two more file-sharing lawsuits, including the Jammie Thomas retrial in Minnesota. But it's in the other...  Long suffering Playboy shareholder may get an escape as Hugh Hefner's empire looks to be officially on the block. According to the New York Post, the company is now being shopped for $300 million...  Noted venture capitalist Tim Draper is teaming up with investors to fund a private exchange for institutional investors to trade shares of start-up companies, calling it a "springboard" to an IPO.  EnerNoc (ENOC.O), one of the growing number of companies focused on demand response - the management and redistribution of power based on real-time changes in demand - has landed a contract with PJM Interconnection...
|
| What to read on the GigaOM network
May 22, 2009 at 12:47 pm
|
| Amazon has a huge opportunity with the Palm Pre (jkOnTheRun) Microsoft's ads are winning over more consumers than Apple's (TheAppleBlog) Satellites and telcos want online authentication, too (NewTeeVee) UN climate talks: Cleantech IP battle of the year? (Earth2Tech) Passpack: online password manger with secure sharing (WebWorkerDaily) Apple may have a downer on netbooks, but that won't stop it releasing a 7-10in tablet in the coming months, one analyst has forecast. It's some way off, though. Piper... I actually did get to fondle Amazon's (AMZN) newest Kindle DX at its unveiling earlier this month. And I confirm that it really isn't that big. But you can see where these guys are going with this. Plastic Jungle, a marketplace for gift cards, has secured $4.8 million in Series A funding, led by Shasta Ventures with investments from Bay Partners, First Round Capital and Harrison Metal.
|
| Rogers to sell HTC Dream, Magic for $199.99 on contract
May 22, 2009 at 12:39 pm
|
|  Canadians have had to wait quite a while to get their first official taste of Android, and even longer to know how much it'd cost, but it looks like that last detail has now finally been cleared up. According to The Boy Genius Report, Rogers will be asking the ever popular $199.99 for both the HTC Dream and HTC Magic on a three-year contract when they launch on June 2nd, or a hefty $649.99 off-contract. As Boy Genius points out, that's actually $100 more than the previously rumored off-contract price, which briefly spurred talk of a too-good-to-be-true $149.99 on-contract price. Following our scoop yesterday putting Rogers' outright pricing for the upcoming HTC Dream and Magic at $549.99, we've just received word that the price point has already been adjusted - for the worse.  When Rogers Wireless announced it would be carrying both the HTC Dream (G1) and Magic this coming June, the company held back on pricing. Thanks to one of our ninjas however...  Andy Rubin, the co-founder of Google's mobile phone system Android, has emerged from relative silence with a CNET interview entitled "Android a ‘revolution,'" which reads like the speech of a victor.
|
| GameStop's big-profit items could also be big weakness
May 22, 2009 at 12:35 pm
|
|   GameStop continues to do well in the current economy, but what if the company's used game sales take a beating? Things start looking very rough, very quickly. As competitors move in and publishers transition to digital downloads, relying on used games for big profits becomes risky.  Hate to say it, but we're beyond the point of hope here. We just won't ever, ever see a real-deal invisibility cloak during our relatively brief stint on Earth. That said...  "At a time when capital is precious, big-ticket software purchases just don't make sense." Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff coughed up that oyster of a sound bite back in February...  Earlier this month we confirmed Motorola has a QWERTY slider, codenamed Morrison, headed to T-Mobile this October - now thanks to T-Mobile's Android roadmap we see that the Morrison will indeed be packing Android.
|
| Think the Recession is Bad? See Great Depression Photos on Flickr
May 22, 2009 at 12:35 pm
|
|   The Library of Congress' collection on FlickrFlickr reviews is getting a timely new addition today: photos from the Great Depression and World War II.
We've been inundated with emails today talking about the two international Apple Store openings. The first new store is in Zurich, Switzerland. Reader Greg sent us a link...  Collecta has recently come to our attention as a player in the real-time search arena. The site isn't currently available for users to run searches of their own; however...  Because most Pres caught outside Palm's near-clinical demo environments have been doing next to nothing so far, even the faintest hint of actual user interaction on video or in pictures is still interesting at this point.  When you delete a photo from a site such as FacebookFacebook reviews, Bebo or MySpaceMySpace reviews, is it really deleted immediately, or even at all? According to some interesting research conducted by Light Blue Touchpaper...
|
| Google Refreshes Logos, Gmail Gets Psychic
May 22, 2009 at 12:29 pm
|
|  Google introduced a refreshed look logo line for its services and a new Labs feature in Gmail that allows users to preview their inbox messages while the webmail service is loading. The new Google logos are being rolled out over the coming weeks and hope to improve consistency and freshen up the look of the company's services across its sites. While it might take a while until they appear on all Google sites, here's a preview of the new logos.  Gmail has always offered an odd mixture of lightning fast AJAX navigation and frustratingly slow load times, depending on what you're doing. The worst offender, by far...  Google's logo for several of its products has been tweaked. The existing Google logo remains the same but the look of the product names have changed. Maps, Docs, News and others will be in a blue lowercase font to the right of the Google logo...  Alex Chitu from the Google Operating System blog found an interesting reference to a "magic inbox" in Gmail's code this morning. In addition, there are also references to an "icebox-inbox" and the ability to sort mail by priority.
|
| Analyst forecasts Apple Kindle-killer for 2010
May 22, 2009 at 12:21 pm
|
| Apple may have a downer on netbooks, but that won't stop it releasing a 7-10in tablet in the coming months, one analyst has forecast. It's some way off, though. Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster is a long time Apple watcher well known among the firms fans for his product predictions. His latest, made in a research note sent out to investor clients and reported by the Times today, is a little more cautious than usual: Munster reckons the tablet won't appear until H1 2010. I actually did get to fondle Amazon's (AMZN) newest Kindle DX at its unveiling earlier this month. And I confirm that it really isn't that big. But you can see where these guys are going with this.  In a research note to clients, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster suggested that Apple is developing a 7-to-10-inch tablet priced at $500 to $700, perhaps ready for the public in 2010. Apple (AAPL) is reportedly working on a "media pad" tablet to fit between its iPod touch and MacBook devices. The idea is that it'd be better for surfing the Web, watching movies...
|
| Reports of Limited Palm Pre Stocks Keep Rolling In
May 22, 2009 at 12:17 pm
|
|  Remember yesterday's good news that the Palm Pre's $100 mail-in-rebate would be automatically deducted at Best Buy and Radio Shack stores? Well, now it's time for the bad news, because Best Buy is rumored to have only 4,250 units in stock for the Pre's June 6 launch, according to BGR. That's a big problem since Best Buy will sell the Pre at almost 1,000 of its Best Buy Mobile counters and specialty stores nationwide leaving an average of just four devices per store... Well what do we have here? Apparently Best Buy Reward Zone members will be getting a little extra treat courtesy of Best Buy Mobile. Between May 31st and June 6th, Reward Zone members can go to myrewardzone. I actually did get to fondle Amazon's (AMZN) newest Kindle DX at its unveiling earlier this month. And I confirm that it really isn't that big. But you can see where these guys are going with this.  If Barack Obama is the YouTube President, then Pope Benedict XVI might just be the social media pontiff. The Pope launched a YouTube channel last year, and now, he's getting onto Facebook, with the launch of his own application, called Pope2You.  Annoyingly, you won't be able to get a Palm Pre for the advertised $199 without redeeming a $100 mail-in rebate—something Sprint is depending on you not doing. Solution: get yours at Best Buy.  Palm's innovative Pre handset will launch on Sprint's Now Network on June 6. Pricing is competitive with the iPhone and Blackberry Storm, but the $100 mail-in rebate seems like an unnecessary hoop to make customers jump through.
|
| The Amazon Kindle You'll Never See
May 22, 2009 at 12:15 pm
|
| I actually did get to fondle Amazon's (AMZN) newest Kindle DX at its unveiling earlier this month. And I confirm that it really isn't that big. But you can see where these guys are going with this. Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | More Video Clips This video isnt't available in iPhone-friendly format. Apologies for the inconvenience. Apple may have a downer on netbooks, but that won't stop it releasing a 7-10in tablet in the coming months, one analyst has forecast. It's some way off, though. Piper... If Barack Obama is the YouTube President, then Pope Benedict XVI might just be the social media pontiff. The Pope launched a YouTube channel last year, and now, he's getting onto Facebook, with the launch of his own application, called Pope2You.
|
| AOL Keeps Hiring Impressive Editorial
May 22, 2009 at 12:12 pm
|
|   AOL wants its blog network MediaGlow to be a Hearst or Time Inc. for the 21st century, executives tell us. Now the Time Warner (TWX) online subsidiary is asking a former Condé Nast writer to help them get there. Continuing to bulk up on impressive editorial talent, AOL has hired former Portoflio.com media blogger Jeff Bercovici.  Talking about AOL with a top exec at one of the big media companies, we asked something like: "Aren't they just Gawker Media wrapped in costly corporate trappings?" And this exec basically said, "Woah, Gawker is nothing to sneeze at.  What a difference a month makes. In early April, we reported how Yahoo! (NSDQ: YHOO) Music had opened up its artist pages to third-party services from companies like Pandora, Last.  ComScore has published its monthly list of the top 25 ad networks. The biggest haven't changed much from last year: AOL's (TWX) Platform-A; Yahoo (YHOO); Google (GOOG); ValueClick (VCLK); and Specific Media.
|
| Chrome 2 browser runs Web 2.0 30 percent faster
May 22, 2009 at 12:09 pm
|
| I spend most of my workday typing and clicking into a browser window. I hate it. When I see the catchphrases "cloud" or "hosted" or "as a service," my brain rewites it as too damn slow. Google's Chrome browser soothes my pain a bit. The latest update has been renamed from Chrome to Chrome 2. I'm still not exactly sure why Google (GOOG) has become the chief suspect in the "Who Killed Newspapers" investigation playing out before our very eyes. Because it's quite clear to me that the real baddie here is bespectacled... Mobile searchers have another resource at their fingertips, this time in the form of Yahoo's updated iPhone app, which now includes voice-recognition search capabilities.
|
| Is Your Web Site Credible?
May 22, 2009 at 12:07 pm
|
|  In Lance Loveday's Just Behave column the other week on Designing For The Subconscious Mind, he described his experiences when showing two different web site pages to an audience a half second apart. He then asked the participants which web site they'd prefer to do business with. The "professional" and "credible" page won over the "small time" and "cheap."  Good news, people with Dads or Dad analogs! Show Pop you care with Shapeways custom cufflinks. Shapeways can offer two winning CrunchGear/TechCrunch readers each a pair of the custom 3D printed metal cufflinks as a Father's Day gift.  The version of Java that Apple currently includes with Mac OS X contains a critical security vulnerability that has gone unrepaired for months and may put Mac OS X users at risk, Mac security software developer Intego said Wednesday.
|
| Sharp's 20-inch AQUOS DX LCD HDTV has a built-in Blu-ray player, no 1080p panel
May 22, 2009 at 7:35 am
|
|  Cute Sharp, real cute. Brag about releasing the world's first 20-inch LCD HDTV with a built-in Blu-ray player, but don't even mention to consumers that they won't have the luxury of seeing their flicks in full resolution.  8 megapixels? Puh-leeze. While companies like Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG and Nokia continue work on 8 megapixel camera phones, Sharp is kicking things up a notch in the Asian region.  It's debatable whether anyone really needs a 10 megapixel cameraphone with a maximum ISO setting of 12800, but plenty of people (ourselves included) really want one, so we're coveting these new pics of Sharp's Aquos 933SH, which also sports a 3.  Is it a phone? Is it a camera? Does it really matter anymore? If neither the mirumo 934SH nor the Solar Hybrid 936SH are quite to your liking, feast your eyes on this other wonder from Sharp that's hitting SoftBank Mobile in Japan this summer...
|
| Paris loses her BlackBerry in Cannes hotel
May 22, 2009 at 7:20 am
|
| The cream of Hollywood is living in fear of crank phonecalls and other virtual assaults after Paris Hilton lost her BlackBerry while cavorting at the Cannes film festival in the early hours of this morning. The telephonically-challenged heiress was spotted looking distraught by the Daily Mail in the immediate aftermath of the blockbuster data breach.  We've been bumping into the new BlackBerry Storm 2 for quite a while now on the so-called "information superhighway," but we've finally had a chance to escalate those encounters and spend a few sweet moments with a live unit in the flesh.  You've spent your hard-earned cash on a brand new smartphone. Now it's time to put that money to work and turn your new acquisition into an entertainment powerhouse. The number of mobile entertainment apps out there is incomprehensibly large... In our discussions of radio apps for the iPhone we've briefly mentioned Stitcher, a great app for accessing a wide variety of audio programs on the go. In fact, Stitcher...
|
| Virgin space mothership test details posted online
May 22, 2009 at 7:18 am
|
| The firm building jet "motherships" and suborbital rocketplanes for Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space joyride operation has begun posting flight-test results online. The move is perhaps an acknowledgement that the SpaceShipTwo programme and Virgin Galactic can only survive by maintaining high public visibility and engagement. Cute Sharp, real cute. Brag about releasing the world's first 20-inch LCD HDTV with a built-in Blu-ray player, but don't even mention to consumers that they won't have the luxury of seeing their flicks in full resolution.  A 32GB iPhone category was recently added to a T-Mobile website – further fuelling speculation that an updated model is inbound. According to various online sources...  Dale Herigstad, Chief Creative Officer at design firm Schematic, spoke today at the XML Auckland conference. Herigstad worked with Steven Spielberg on the conceptual design for the film Minority Report...
|
| Microsoft set to reveal Windows 7 pricing mid-June
May 22, 2009 at 7:16 am
|
| Microsoft is expected to cough up Windows 7 price details next month. According to Windows tipster website TechArp.com, which has been bang on the money in the past with shipping dates for Microsoft products, Redmond will announce prices for its upcoming operating system in mid-June. Just last week a Dell product director told CNET that Windows 7 "licensing tiers at retail are more expensive than they were for Vista".  Microsoft will unveil pricing for Windows 7 in a few weeks, a Web site that has accurately predicted past company moves said today. TechARP.com, a Malaysian Web site that...  Microsoft snuggled a little closer to its US movies-on-demand buddy Netflix on Wednesday by rolling the firm's streaming content into Windows Media Center. Netflix subscribers...  Microsoft really, really wants to convince you that in the high stakes world of multiple displays, SideShow is the only way to go. To that end, the company has put together...  Microsoft (MSFT) is building Netflix (NFLX) instant streaming into its Windows Media Center software. You can already watch streaming Netflix movies on PCs. But this basically means it'll be easier to browse and watch them from six feet away...
|
| Government procurement now wrapped with training red tape
May 22, 2009 at 7:12 am
|
| The UK government will demand that IT services suppliers have a staff development plan, if they want a slice of its £14bn annual spending on IT services. Skills secretary John Denham said: "Wherever possible Government spending should not just provide good public services, it should also ensure young people are trained in the skills we need for the future." Cute Sharp, real cute. Brag about releasing the world's first 20-inch LCD HDTV with a built-in Blu-ray player, but don't even mention to consumers that they won't have the luxury of seeing their flicks in full resolution. A 32GB iPhone category was recently added to a T-Mobile website – further fuelling speculation that an updated model is inbound. According to various online sources...  The UK government is finalizing its approach to dealing with online copyright infringement. Internet disconnections have been publicly taken off the table, but UK creative...
|
| Minority Report Interfaces: Coming to a Screen Near You
May 22, 2009 at 7:10 am
|
| Dale Herigstad, Chief Creative Officer at design firm Schematic, spoke today at the XML Auckland conference. Herigstad worked with Steven Spielberg on the conceptual design for the film Minority Report, including designing the hologram screens on which Tom Cruise used his hands to navigate. The subject of Herigstad's presentation today was new forms of User Interfaces for Web, TV and other media...  File this one under saw-that-one-coming-last-century: Movie mogul Steven Spielberg says the future of gaming is — wait for it — virtual. As in "virtual reality," the...  Dell today announced the first ruggedised netbook the company has designed specifically with students in mind: the Latitude 2100. It's a 10.1in model with an Intel Atom N270 CPU and it can be configured with Windows XP...  Dell is now flogging a series of colorful netbooks aimed at the clumsy, snot-nosed germ-factories affectionately known as school children. The new Dell Latitude 2100 netbook...
|
| 32GB iPhone confirmed by T-Mobile?
May 22, 2009 at 7:08 am
|
| A 32GB iPhone category was recently added to a T-Mobile website – further fuelling speculation that an updated model is inbound. According to various online sources, T-Mobile Austria recently created a category for an "iPhone 32 GB" on its "Coming Soon" page. No further details were included and, sadly, a picture of the Apple smartphone wasn't there either.  We've always heard that most things come in packs of three, so just as soon as some other dodgy source affirms that Hulk Hogan will actually be replacing Steve Jobs in August, we'll be set.  Take it for what it's worth (which may be nothing, quite honestly), but a bona fide "iPhone 32GB" placeholder has appeared in the 'Coming Soon' section on T-Mobile Austria's website.  T-Mobile USA announced today a new campaign dedicated to helping people save money on their wireless service, and the carrier is not only using the lovely Catherine Zeta-Jones as the face of the campaign again...
|
| European Parliament Now Within Grasp of the Pirate Party
May 22, 2009 at 7:03 am
|
|  One of the consequences of the highly controversial Pirate Bay trial is a huge rise of support for Sweden's Pirate Party, which - according to the latest Demoskop poll - is now very close to getting at least one seat in the European Parliament. The Pirate Party, whose goal is to "fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected", has more than doubled its support with Swedish voters, rising from 3...  The Swedish government's official enforcement bureau told The Pirate Bay defendants that it wants nearly half of their total fine paid right away, and it will be freezing bank accounts until it gets the money.  BitTorrent, the popular and much-maligned P2P file-sharing protocol, has once again been identified as the biggest source of pirated content on the Internet, according to a report by content-tracking firm BayTSP...  AT&T just really doesn't want you to use Sling over 3G [MediaMemo] BlogHer lands $7 million funding [BoomTown] Steve Jobs can do whatever he wants to his 17,250...
|
| Hitachi's Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Wooo cellphone does 720p video recording
May 22, 2009 at 6:58 am
|
|  While it won't be the first handset to capture 720p video (hello, OmniaHD!), Hitachi's Mobile Hi-Vision Cam Woo is still apt to garner quite a bit of attention. As the leaked images hosted down below show, this clever flip phone packs 1,280 x 720 video recording, a 5 megapixel sensor, HDMI interface and a microSDHC slot for good measure. A generous tipster has informed us that said phone is slated to launch this coming Monday on KDDI, though we fully expect that envious North Americans won't ever get to toy with one on their home turf. For shame.  Mobile IM company eBuddy has signed an Asia-Pacific distribution deal with Korean cellphone maker LG. As part of the deal, LG will pre-install eBuddy's software onto at least 1.  As you might expect, Japanese carrier SoftBank's summer 2009 lineup contains the usual science-fiction array of ridiculously well-equipped handsets -- plus 3G photo frames...  If the earlier reports are accurate, Pentax's latest K series DSLR should be getting official real soon now, but there's still a few days left before that rumored May 21st launch date, and that means more leaks.
|
| Russians offer hackintosh netbook
May 22, 2009 at 6:53 am
|
|  Want an Asus Eee PC 1000H to run Mac OS X? New Russian hackintosh supplier RussianMac is now offering just that. It's not clear whether the Atom-based netbook - or, indeed, any of the other desktop and mobile systems RussianMac is offering - comes with the Apple operating system pre-installed or you have to do it yourself, from a legit, boxed copy of the OS, using a supplied utility.  Another day, another entrant in the mile-long list of Eee PC netbooks. This one, however, is a curious add. You see, the Eee PC 1000HV originally came to light way back in July of 2008, when no fewer than 23 Eee model names were casually leaked out. Guard your retinas, fashionistas -- this one's bound to burn. Data Ltd has just loosed its latest ultra-rugged tablet PC, and it's quite clear that the gains in rigidity come at a severe cost to style.  You have to admit: for all of the gaming woes that the Mac faithful has suffered, there's fortunately never been a shortage of great indie games for us to play. Aquaria made it to our platform...
| | | 
| |
No comments:
Post a Comment