Nanosensors are arrays of wires that can capture and detect a single molecule, which would made them excellent bomb sniffers. Nanosensors exist, technically, but they’re extremely difficult to manufacture and extremely delicate. However, thanks to a new technique created by HP, scientists have been able to make nanosensors as quickly but not quite as easily as they would make a standard circuit board. According to one of the researchers, Regina Ragan (formerly with HP and now a professor of chemical engineering at UC Irvine), at some concentrations of platinum, the metal seems to form clumps, leaving parts of the wire uncoated. After the researchers exposed the nanowires to plasma, the uncovered parts of the wires were etched away, leaving tightly spaced platinum nanoparticles each about eight nanometers across. The technique could be easy and inexpensive to scale up because it uses common commercial techniques for deposition and etching, and requires few steps, Ragan says. This is very similar to the techniques used to etch silicon chips and is much easier to use than the current methods which require multiple steps and are not foolproof. Pretty high tech, but it looks like we’re headed in the right direction. A New Way to Make Ultrasensitive Explosives Detectors [TechnologyReview] → Read More
It’s Chicago only right now, but a new car-sharing service is in the works. Similar to Zip-Car, I-GO allows you to pay a one-time $75 enrollment fee and then $6 an hour plus $.50 per mile for access. It’s non-profit, so you get that warm fuzzy feeling while burning fewer fossils because they use Honda Civics sedans, Honda Civic Hybrid sedans and Honda Elements. The service appears to have been around for quite a while, but it’s only recently blipped our radar. Has anyone tried it? How is it different from Zipcar? Product Page [I-GO via SomewhatFrank] → Read More
Here’s some serious W00Tness. Skype has launched its 2.1 Beta for PocketPC which includes: One click Skype access: A Skype icon on the device home screen allows users to view and call contacts easily. Multi-person chat: Users can have multi-person chat sessions using animated emoticons with colleagues, friends and family and when mobile users are offline, chat messages will automatically update the next time user logs in. Enhanced contact list: Users can now see their contacts avatars and mood messages. Profile personalization: Users have the ability to take a picture with the camera on their mobile device and immediately update their profile. Nothing earth-shattering, but you’ve got a bit of UI tweaking and some definite improvements on the contact list. Product Page [Skype] → Read More
Oh ho ho. Silly rabbits! Those kids at iBloggedThis posted a video of a Mac Mini puking up an XP disc. Next: a SPARC Station takes a dump on an Indigo box! A MacMini and a Windows XP DVD [iBloggedThis] → Read More
A few weeks after announcing the mini-mini-C300, Pantech visits Canada with the PN-3200. This clamshell phone is fairly basic – CDMA, GPS and Bluetooth – but it’s being launched with TELUS, Canada’s second-largest carrier. Pantech has consistently produced drool-worthy phones for Asia and Europe, so it should be great to see them sail over to these shores. This phone isn’t particularly beautiful, but it’s the thought that counts. → Read More
There’s something eye-catching about the brushed steel look of this Godot Aria M9500 4GB MP3 Player, which can store nearly a thousand songs in MP3, OGG or WMA format. Plus, it has an FM radio on board, audio bookmarking and a convenient line-in recording feature that lets you encode analog sources into MP3. Too bad its smallish 4 GB of storage is in hard disk form—we prefer the durability and smaller form factor of flash memory. Never mind that, though, we just like the way this thing looks. Available now, it’s priced around $151. Product Page [Godot, via Shiny Shiny] → Read More
We’re hearing a lot of talk about gigantic-screen TVs, some of them costing upwards of $50,000, but if you’re using a projector, you can have a humongous-sized screen at a tenth of that price. This 100-inch selectively-reflective Xscreen from Planar has a built-in optical filter, reflecting light from the projector while absorbing room light. Perhaps its most appealing attribute is its uncanny similarity to a 100-inch plasma display. The idea solves one of the few drawbacks to using a front projector: the room must be darkened in order to enjoy a bright and contrasty picture. Now all you have to do is hope no one notices that projector hanging from the ceiling or sitting on the shelf on the back wall. A slight drawback to this shrewd scheme is the Xscreen’s price, $4871, but that’s still considerably cheaper than that 100-inch plasma display. Plana’s TV-like 100-inch screen [AVing.net] → Read More
The wildly successful Yahoo! Answers is moving to take its global community of user shared knowledge to the next level with today’s release of an API for outside developers interested in accessing the huge Yahoo! Answers site. The company says there are now 30 million plus answers in the system, from amusing ones to useful ones. Answers has also got an intensely loyal userbase. Developers will be able to access YA data by user, search keyword, or category. The company says the API is almost identical to the interface used internally to create the recent Yahoo! Messenger/ Yahoo! Answers combo and the flash badge that Yahoo! offers. The Yahoo! Messenger plug-ins program has seen some amazing things developed. It will be very cool to see if developers can make good use of this newest API. See also our profile of Yedda, a similar service with a big 2.0 twist and today’s announcement of the new Facebook API. → Read More
The SwissMiniGun seems impossibly small, but it’s actually a precision-made pistol that shoots live ammunition. The 2.16-inch Colt Python replica shoots tiny bullets that are scarcely a third of an inch long at a muzzle speed that’s probably not going to kill you, but might put an eye out if you’re not careful. Made with the same technology used to create Swiss watches and jewelry, the SwissMiniGun is available in steel, and there’s even a highly detailed gold model with diamonds on the handle. The microgun’s Swiss makers aren’t talking price, at least not on their website. Product Page [SwissMiniGun, via Boing Boing] → Read More
We are in the final planning stages of the TechCrunch party at August Capital this Friday, August 18. There are over 700 confirmed attendees and the guest list is completely locked down. There is still one last way to attend, however. We’ve put two tickets to the event up on eBay, with no minimum price. If you’d really like to go, you can bid for them here. 100% of the proceeds for this auction will be donated to the Entrepreneurs Foundation, a non profit. The minimum auction time is 3 days, so this will not end until about 4 pm on Friday, just a couple of hours before the party. Good luck to bidders, and know that you are also supporting an exceptional charitable organization. I’ll post a complete upate on the party tomorrow. It’s going to be crazy. But hopefully not this crazy. Party Sponsors: → Read More
Social networking site Facebook opened up an application programming interface (API) today in a move that’s aimed to set it apart drastically from the far more hostile ecosystem of market leader MySpace. Originally exclusive to college students, Facebook opened up membership to users from select corporations in April. The company reportedly turned down a $750 million acquisition offer in March. If Facebook can succeed in doing with social networking what Salesforce.com is aiming to do with enterprise CRM and its AppExchange, it could really put meat on its bones and go up for sale as more than just a huge data set. The current version of the API does not support actions to be performed directly on the site but opens many possibilities to interact with user data off site and in desktop applications. At launch both commercial and noncommercial web applications are allowed to make up to 100,000 calls to the API in a 24 hour period. A limited third party API for Facebook was released by Andre Cohen in January. Apple has also provided a desktop widget to search Facebook profiles for almost a year. Sarah C.P. Williams wrote yesterday about a new Firefox plug-in from a company called StudioLD (warning, annoying Flash page) that changes the look and feel of Facebook. In other words, a clear demand from the developer community for access to Facebook data exists. The Facebook developers page highlights one application called Facebank that keeps track of debts and shared expenses among Facebook users. The Facebook Developers discussion board already has more than 500 members and we expect to start seeing Facebook mashups being developed quickly. A handful of projects based on the Facebook API have already been posted to the new Google Code depository. → Read More
On the same day that new Comscore numbers came out indicating new traffic highs for YouTube, the site went down for six hours this morning in the first unplanned outage since launching in February of 2005. Though users were told that new features were in the works, press inquiries have confirmed that it was actually a database failure that took the site down. Periodic planned downtimes at night, US time, are common but today marked the first major service failure for the site. The biggest question on the table has always been about YouTube’s business model; today’s outage makes you wonder whether the company will be able to scale. YouTube announced that it was serving more than 100 million videos per day as of last month. Update: YouTube’s problems today are now all over the web, getting loads of mainstream media coverage. Comscore is getting huge press today too, since the traffic report came out on the same as the failure. Freak PR windfall for both companies, unless YouTube continues to have service problems that is. → Read More
With all the buzz lately about exploding laptops and excruciatingly hot MacBooks, I suspect we’re going to start seeing a lot more products like this. The Lapinator is composed of the heat resistant 3M Thinsulate fiber and a comfy cross-linked molded foam bottom. Though it might not be too successful against the shrapnel of an exploding Dell battery, it looks like it should effectively deflect the heat issues of the current MacBooks. The 13″ Lapinator is available for $25, while the 18″ Lapinator Plus sells for $30. At any rate, its quite a good deal cheaper than the medical bills you might incur without one. Lapinator [Uncrate] → Read More
Google announced today that they have brought biometric and photo recognition company Neven Vision into the Google fold. Neven Vision has patents on technology ranging from photo analysis to face recognition in video files to several patents for facial capture for avatar animation. Sounds like a fascinating partnership. The company is heavily focused on mobile phones and also offers a product to deliver coupons to mobile devices, something I was hoping would be included with today’s Google Maps coupon announcement. Google was previously interested in aquiring photo recognition company Riya, but in the end did not. Riya has since expanded its focus beyond facial recognition. Google says that it will use the newly acquired technology to extract information from photos, though it says that facial recognition in particular may be available “some day.” Gigaom’s Lizz Gannes points out that the LAPD already uses Neven Vision’s technology to recognize gang members. Investors in the company include Anthem Venture Partners and Zone Ventures. The price of the acquisition was not disclosed. Interesting update: as of midnight PST almost all the links on the Neven Vision site are now bringing up Google 404s. → Read More
Digitimes is claiming the Microsoft HD DVD will be $200 by Christmas 2006. Microsoft hasn’t issued an official statement, and were quite silent about the pricing last week during the HD DVD demo. Digitimes also reports that the Taiwanese game industry as a whole—developers and game service providers—are saying this is a smart strategy to include the HD DVD separate instead of on-board like the Sony PS3. This will, in the manufacturers’ opinion, allow Microsoft to have much lower production costs and undercut Sony. We should have more official word on the HD DVD pricing as the holiday season gets closer. Taiwan game industry favors Microsoft’s adoption of external HD-DVD dives for Xbox 360 [DigiTimes via Gadgetell] → Read More
Apple has been stepping up its campaign to stomp down on other companies’ use of the word “Pod” in any of their products. Lately, they’ve sent a cease and desist to Mach5Products, which makes the “Profit Pod”, and to TightPods, who make slip-on covers to protect laptops and MP3 players. We can see why Apple’s doing this, as trademark dilution isn’t is a place no company wants to go. However, in Mach5Products’ case, the owners claim that they thought of the name back in 2001, before they heard of the name iPod. But will that make a difference? Probably not. Apple claims legal right to word ‘Pod’ [Financial Times] → Read More
Web traffic analyst firm Comscore has released their numbers for July and the most striking finding was that traffic to MySpace Video has doubled since June. Prime competitor YouTube saw a 20% increase according to Comscore, putting the site in the top 50 sites visited on the web. Still leading the online video pack? Yahoo! Video, with 21.1 million visitors, up 28-percent from June. Traffic numbers are a real stab in the dark, and the last time we reported on Comscore numbers it was regarding Del.icio.us. Comscore showed a decline in the site’s traffic, owner Yahoo! insisted that the data was incorrect and Hitwise backed up Yahoo! statements with numbers last week. What to make of it all? Well, throw in a giant grain of salt, but there are some tentative conclusions you could draw here. I think it’s an interesting quantification of the impact of MySpace’s video play, launched in January in competition with third party video services like YouTube. It also shows that those MySpace’s actions that have hurt the viral nature of third party services in the MySpace ecosystem have not stopped YouTube from seeing continued growth. You have to wonder about other companies launching today though, with MySpace being a less hospitable environment than it was when YouTube took off. Ultimately though, just as the much beloved Flickr is far smaller still that the legacy site Yahoo! Photos (which is almost 10 times larger), so too is Yahoo! Videos the silent leader at the top of the heap while everyone is talking about the spread of innovation amongst its smaller competitors. A related study by research firm InStat last week argued that they expect the market for online video to grow to ten times its current size over the next 5 years. Who will be the major players in that market? It may be tough for any particular feature set to overcome the momentum of the early movers. Will they be able to monetize their positions? The future of online video certainly looks like a fight. See also this morning’s post on the new partnership between three video startups, Eyespot, Blip.tv and Veoh. → Read More
If you’re looking for a high end PC-based Media Center, the Navio 902T2 has a 7-inch touch-screen LCD, 1TB of storage space, 2GB of RAM, a Pentium D950 Dual Core processor, and a DVD Burner for archiving all your shows. Add to that a Sigmacom X1 HDTV tuner and GeForce 7900GTX, it’ll serve up enough power for playing PC games as well as movies. Even with all these high-end parts, the $4,995 price seems a bit steep. The 7-inch LCD is a luxury item, which probably won’t get much use since you’ll use the actual TV to view the Media Center 2005 interface on, and the remote to control it—making the touch-screen a wasted feature. Product Page [Navio Media via Chip Chick] → Read More
Hitachi claims that it’s finally going to break the terabyte barrier on desktop hard drives later this year with the first 1TB hard drive. They’re already manufacturing 500GB drives, and Seagate is already making 750GB drives, so bumping it up to 1TB shouldn’t be that big of a problem. These drives will not only go inside your desktops, they’ll be included in TVs and TiVos, letting you record entire seasons of shows in HD quality. We’re always on the lookout for more storage here at CrunchGear, so let us know if you’ve seen any good deals on hard drives lately. The cheapest we’ve seen on Newegg is $139 for a 400GB Western Digital. Terabyte drive to debut later this year [CNET] → Read More
If anyone has any reason why a mouse should not be united with a Skype phone, speak now or forever hold your peace. Nobody? Good. Just like the USB Hub + Bluetooth Dongle and the Security Camera + Heater, this thing takes two things we like and combines it into one thing we love. The mouse works like a regular two-button, scroll-wheel mouse, but when you flip it over there’s a keypad and call/end buttons. There’s no screen, unfortunately, so you’ll have to cycle through your Skype contacts on your monitor instead. The only downside we can see to this is that the keyboard and mouse is probably the dirtiest part of your desk, so that would probably be a bad idea to put it up to your mouth. Just saying. 800dpi USB Skype phone mouse [AVING via Slashgear] → Read More
