Swann, maker of many many D-I-Y security products for the home and office, launched today the Digital Private Eye video camera and recorder. Running on a power cable or 9V battery (both included), the camera takes shots whenever the motion detector is tripped, recording up to 30,000 images to a 1GB SD card (not included). → Read More
CIO Magazine is apparently going through their assignment backlog and decided to put together a hefty tome on the differences between Windows, Linux, and OS X. Hmmmm… With gems like this: He prefers OS X’s security, reliability and simple user interface over that of XP. And though he still has high hopes for running a version of Linux that is reliable and full-featured, he hasn’t found an OS that’s up to the task. → Read More
The race is on for telecom companies to catch up to the cable companies. With Comcast already offering Broadband Internet, Digital Cable, and Digital Voice service for only $33 a piece all on one bill, companies like Verizon need to start raising the stakes if they want to stay afloat. Now Comcast is offering a cellphone service to their customers in limited areas. If you live in Boston, MA or Portland, OR, you’ll be able to sign up for Comcast’s new wireless phone service. For another $33 a month, Comcast will give you a paltry 200 minutes to work with and services like voicemail, caller ID, call forwarding, and navigation. It’ll be using Sprint’s network for the service, which is no Verizon network, but isn’t terrible. Comcast’s goal is to enable customers to keep all its services on one easy to track bill each month and to attract new subscribers. Other cities should start to see this offer where Comcast is available in Q1 of 2007. Comcast starts offering wireless phone service [Reuters] → Read More
BitTorrent announced today a deal inked with 20th Century Fox, G4, Kadokawa, Lionsgate, MTV Networks, Palm Pictures, Paramount and Starz Media to allow for video downloads from their catalogs of movies and TV shows. This follows last month’s news that CE manufacturers will start pre-installing the peers-to-peers software on wireless routers and media servers and a July announcement of a similar video deal with Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Egami Media, Hart Sharp, Koch Entertainment and The Orchard. → Read More
Looks like iHome went all nuts on us today. They’ve announced both the iHome iHC5 Bluetooth Clock Radio and the iHome iH21 Water-Resistant Streaming iPod Dock and Speakers. Aside from the latter having an insanely long name, these products are just some decent looking ways to get your groove on wirelessly and safely. The iHome iHC5 (pictured) allows you to stream audio via Bluetooth to its speakers from your computer or cellphone. Not too bad, plus, you can use the iHC5 as a speakerphone (albeit a huge one) on the side. If rocking out in the pool is your thing, then the iHome iH21 may be just the thing for you. Equipped with the ability to stream music from your home computer or iPod, this baby gives you sound in style and also has water resistant speakers, a remote control, and the satisfaction of knowing you drunkenly spilling booze on it is OK. iHome [Official Site via Gizmodo] iHome iH21 Water-Resistant Streaming iPod Dock and Speakers → Read More
Another day, another iPod case. However, this one’s from Otterbox, which specializes in cases to do more than just prevent some scratches. The new 2G iPod nano case features an airtight seal for keeping out all Mother Nature has to offer, including full water protection. And it’s rugged design protects your nano from falls and scratches. It’s not exactly slim, so if you’re looking to cut down on bulk, this isn’t for you. It is clear, though, so you’re not covering up what color you bought. (Good for showing off your (PRODUCT) RED model, letting the world know what a good soul you have. Or that you like the color red.) Plus, the company uses a thin protective membrane over the clickwheel that lets you control your tunes without cracking the case open. It’s on sale now for $39.95 and you can pick up an armband too while you’re at it for $14.95 and some waterproof headphones for $39.95. The OtterBox for iPod nano 2nd Generation [product site] → Read More
Guess what kiddies: we have ourselves yet another product with the letter “I” dropped to a lowercase in the product name. This time around, the culprit is Axion’s iPTV system. Consisting of a box and mobile monitor, this thing is very similar to Sony’s LocationFree jawn. A hardwired box hooks up to your broadband internet connection and streams television and programming to a little handheld device. According to this beautiful diagram pictured above, the iPTV wireless monitor has a 7-inch widescreen display – not too shabby. Controls are on the sides of the device and in case your Internet goes out, you can use the included SD card slot or USB port for viewing movies. Pretty sweet deal. No word yet on pricing, but don’t expect a bargain on this device. AxioTV via Engadget → Read More
Yesterday we compared a new service called BitWine to Google Answers. Apparently that was the last day we could make that comparison because at 10 p.m. last night, Google announced that they would be closing the service by the end of the week. So if you’ve got a pressing question, ask now or forever hold your peace. “Google is a company fueled by innovation, which to us means trying lots of new things all the time — and sometimes it means reconsidering our goals for a product,” wrote Andrew Fikes and Lexi Baugher, software engineers for Google, on their blog. “Later this week, we will stop accepting new questions in Google Answers, the very first project we worked on here. The project started with a rough idea from Larry Page, and a small 4-person team turned it into reality in less than 4 months. For two new grads, it was a crash course in building a scalable product, responding to customer requests, and discovering what questions are on people’s minds.” So far no word on how Yahoo Answers is doing in comparison but isn’t it possible that community asking services such as these will become extinct as people learn to better navigate the Web themselves? Update: Yahoo representatives contacted us today with data on just how Yahoo! Answers is doing. It seems that the service has 60 million users worldwide and 160 million answers. → Read More
This is totally mind-blowing. Some guys have developed a way to use the Nintendo DS as a MIDI controller wirelessly. DSMIDIWiFi uses the Nintendo DS’ touch screen as a controller and sends the signals wirelessly to a host program on your computer, like Garageband, Ableton Live, or whatever you use for creating music. The creators have written three different programs for your musical pleasure and they work as follows: DS MIDI Keyboard acts as a MIDI keyboard, including pitch wheel / MIDI control adjustment by sliding the stylus vertically/horizontally. Kaos DS is an XY controller similar to the Kaoss pad. You can use the stylus or your fingers to adjust MIDI controls. Pulse DS turns the DS into a MIDI synthesizer that uses the DS’s PSG (programmable sound generator) to produce Game-Boy-like sounds. Imagine being able to use a Nintendo DS like a Korg Kaoss pad. Ambient noise and fluid control all with your DS and a stylus. Amazing stuff. This is one of the best homebrew applications of the Nintendo DS that I’ve seen. Check out their page to stay up to date with development. DSMIDIWiFi [Official Site via Gizmag] → Read More
Remember back in the late 1980s, early 1990s when some company developed those rulers that would snap around your wrist? Well NEC apparently was a huge fan and this new concept cellphone they’ve developed is no exception. Dubbed the “tag”, these cellphones are made up of a shape-memorizing rubber that can be twisted and controlled to your liking. The picture shows three different colors that could be sold: orange, off-white, and black. Some people already coordinate their phones to their outfit, but with this the phone becomes part of your outfit. Stunning idea. Let’s hope NEC catches on and makes this a reality someday. NEC ‘tag’ concept phone: the future is bendy [Sci-Fi Blog] → Read More
Snapalarm Smoke Detector, Because Safety’s First, Or Something Drink-O-Matic Go Retro with Vinyl-Lookalike CD-Rs Case Mod: Peter Parker’s PC Lightsaber Maker Gets Sued For Selling Pirated Replicas → Read More
Last week I was in Manchester at NW StartUp 2.0, co-presenting with Ivan Pope from Snipperoo whose company I have been tracking for sometime now. Ivan spoke about how he sees widgets changing the way we interact with the web and about how his new company Snipperoo has developed a new universal tool for managing widgets. “Our aim is that the Snipperoo system works with all the web widgets in the world. So, rather than using a specific kind of widget, our aim is that you use our widget, which is universal, in order to choose which other widgets you use. You can use Snipperoo with any site that allows you to embed javascript.” Well widgets are certainly getting the web spotlight right now, today the Wall Street Journal (subscription only) has a story about the growing popularity of widgets …” and recently Niall Kennedy and Om Malik co-produced Widgets Live! In addition SplashCast also make some very smart and interesting predictions for the future of widgets in 2007. There was one prediction that certainly pleased Ivan. “A widget aggregator, such as Widgetbox or Snipperoo will be bought by a big media company like Yahoo! or Google” One thing to note, the idea of widgets is not new, they have simply been updated and re-marketed like so many other Web 2.0 ideas and technologies. For example during the Web 1.0 period, we had Microsoft’s desktop items using a precursor to RSS called CDF – Channel Definition Framework – to deliver information to small desktop applications. Even before that, Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 2001 talked about loosely coupled reusable software (intelligent agents) helping form part of the Semantic Web. Widgets today are not really intelligent because most of the information in widgets is delivered one-way down to us as plain text or pictures. What is really needed to make widgets more useful is bi-directional communication such as the SSE initiative (Simple Sharing Extensions) from Microsoft i.e I receive data within a widget which I or another machine can change before it is (re)acted upon. So widgets are another building block for the semantic web along with RDF, Microformats, Content Labels. etc. → Read More
This week, BBC News is running a series of stories on the Future Of TV – of course, YouTube, IPTV, mobile TV, BitTorrent and other forms of online TV figure a great deal in these articles; the UK is notoriously namechecked as the source of between 10 and 25% of all TV piracy. It’s fair to say that one of the consequences of Web 2.0 is the increased bias of binary content amongst traditionally XML media and marked-up text. Consequently, there’s be an increased demand for services that can understand the nature of binary content like photos, audio and video. London-based Nativ TV is seeking to provide under-the-hood solutions for the management of rich media. Nativ’s recently launched Mio solution provides video-based services with workflow tools for the ingest, validation, filtering, cataloging and manipulation of video content…the kind of capability that future YouTube’s, Revvers, broadcasters and content owners will need – to automate and manage large volumes of complex video content. Notably, Mio includes a set of APIs to aid integration into existing enterprise systems. Nativ founder Jon Folland has a respected track record in working with broadcasters like Channel4 and the BBC as well one of the first IPTV channels, MTV Live. Though Nativ appears to understand the video workflow needs of braodcasters with a perspective others may lack, the applicability of Mio to managing large volumes of user-generated content is unclear. Now what’d be really interesting is racing Mio against an equivalent Mechanical Turk powered workflow platform…Human vs. Cylon → Read More
Om Malik posted a rumor today regarding a new BitTorrent financing and possible ouster of CEO Bram Cohen. We did some independent digging and have come up with what I believe is accurate based on multiple sources and a leaked document: BitTorrent has raised a $25 million Series B round of financing from Accel Partners and previous investor Doll Capital Management, bringing the total capital raised to just under $34 million. And CEO Bram Cohen, who created the BitTorrent protocol, is definitely on his way out. The company has retained the well known headhunting firm Heidrick & Struggles to find a replacement as soon as possible. No word on what, if any, role Cohen will have going forward. More Upcoming BitTorrent News: The company is yet to launch a new service to sell licensed video content on its own retail site, and has signed licensing agreements with, among others, Warner Bros. and Paramount to sell movies and TV shows at prices starting at $1 each. The company will also announce deals to put the BitTorrent software on DVRs, cable boxes, and wireless routers, enabling BitTorrent users to download legal movies or TV shows to PCs and TVs. BitTorrent is making a real effort to stay legitimate and in favor with the RIAA and MPAA, which of course doesn’t sit well with the majority of the world’s 70 million BitTorrent users. Napster failed miserably when they tried to work with the RIAA. We’ll see how well BitTorrent does this time. Update: In a very tense conversation with Bram Cohen and BitTorrent’s Director of Communications, Lily Lin, today, the company made it clear that Bram is with the company for the long haul. They would not comment on the CEO search. → Read More
LeWeb 3 is nearly closed for registration but one company going is LouderVoice an Irish startup that has just launched its prototype alpha version today. “After a short delay, we had our prototype Alpha walkthrough today and it really is a humdinger. The current plan is to have the Beta of the prototype ready just before Le Web 3. If it is looking good and there is any interest, I may do a corridor demo or two.” Well I will be at Le Web 3 and will certainly try and catch Conor O’Neill to see the demo [info@loudervoice.com] If not the plan is to run a new event in Ireland in January next year to help get early venture Irish companies in touch with interested investors. The event is called Ireland Startup! and it forms part of a series of regional Startup! events. The date and format of the event are currently being finalised but the details will be published here shortly on TechCrunch . → Read More
A few weeks ago, Firefox contributors from around the world met at Mozilla headquarters in Mountain View, CA for the Firefox Summit 2006. Below is a link to the Agenda and Proposed Sessions. Sadly I couldn’t go but last week I met Ian Hayward of Glaxstar – UK developers of Firefox add-ons (Yahoo’s delicious add-on) and the organiser of the Firefox party, which I will be going to this Friday. Attending the party will be several of the Mozilla developer team, if you have any questions. Speaking briefly with Ian and others about the summit, it seems the key take-away were the number of concerns & challenges facing Mozilla as is starts the countdown to Firefox 3.0, the first being how to avoid becoming bloatware. “we need to shed some ten year old platform baggage while retaining our (large) lead in web compatibility.” Personally I prefer Firefox 2 to Internet Explorer 7, not just because of the faster rendering engine or the better standards support, not just because of the extensive 3rd party add-ons but simply because it looks and works the same on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux platforms, as do most of the add-ons. So my user experience is the same irrelevant of the underlying operating system. So when people talk about the possibility of a GoogleOS, for me Firefox is already the WebOS but I do agree that Mozilla needs to stay lean and mean, shed a few Netscape Gecko pounds and ensure that the additional “nice to have” functionality is delivered via the extensive add-on marketplace and/or greasemonkey scripts. The second challenge facing the Mozilla project is in the mobile space, especially given the new challenge following today’s announcement of Opera mobile/mini and the recent news from 3 of their x-series mobile broadband initiative. One proposal discussed was the development of a new version of HTTP to address solely the mobile community. “Another problem with the mobile Web is HTTP. We would like to start work on something similar to Waka as soon as possible.” Although there are other web protocols such as FTP, I suspect Sir Tim Berners-Lee will be hanging his head at this thought. I would not like to see a new protocol but better Mozilla support for the new W3C Mobile Web Best Practices Proposed Recommendation. The third issue raised concerning the Mozilla project is the continued release of Linux builds → Read More
TrekStor is a German company that is just starting to make inroads here in the States. They’re offering two models with a rubberized scroll wheel and an amazing look. These are hard drive based with 8GB or 12GB and actually look like contenders for the Coolest MP3 Player trophy that I saw at the sporting goods store last week. Availability and Price Slated to ship in December, the 8GB and 12GB will be available at Amazon.com, J&R Music and Computer World, and TheStorStore.com. The 15GB is expected to ship in late January 2007. All are backed by a one-year warranty. Pricing (MSRP) 8GB: $219.99 12GB: $239.99 15GB: $259.99 → Read More
With the news that Wayn.com has secured $11 million from British VC fund Esprit Capital Partners to fuel its expansion, it appears “location” is the new wave in social in networking. We’ve seen it invade the verticals of music (MySpace), eateries (Yelp) and shopping (Crowdstorm). Now, where you are and who you are is as important as what you like. They will also be looking at new revenue streams (ticketing surely, and beefing up the subscription model?), other markets, trip planning and rich media (YouTube meets TripAdvisor?) . WAYN allows users to create profiles, search for other travellers near them and make real-world friends, as well as informing family where they are. Membership has grown from 45,000 users in March 2005 to seven million today, and is increasing by up to 35,000 new members per day according to the company. Like a lot of Brit-start-ups the Eastern European aspect is never far off. Part of the funding will be used to expand its development team in Poland. Given that Brent Hoberman will join WAYN’s board as chairman in January 2007, a link with Lastminute.com seems logical (travel packages + friends, new and old?). Stuart Chapman, partner at Esprit Capital Partners, also joins the board. The funding also includes a group of angel investors including Adrian Critchlow and Andy Phillipps, co-founders of Active Hotels, David Soskin, chief executive, and Hugo Burge, vice chairman, of Cheapflights and Constant Tedder, co-founder and managing director of Jagex, which runs RuneScape, the online multiplayer game. Although Wayn’s membership cover 220 different countries, it is mostly known in the ‘gap year’ countries of UK, Australia and Europe and has little presence in the US. That should change with the new funding for marketing. And looking at Alexa it is the only UK-based social media travel site to come even close to TripAdvisor. Wayn has also had criticism because of the way it encourages people to add contacts from Hotmail, Gmail etc. although the company has said it is now easier to opt out of these. So if location is the new wave, where does that leave “location-oriented” started-ups like TrustedPlaces.com, TravelHiker.com and BuddyPing.com? It may mean that other startus in the space either attract new funding, or perhaps will change their business model to get some of the “WAYN-effect”. → Read More
Social Networks really came to the fore in 2006. Millions of people have created profiles and in many cases they have created multiple profiles on multiple social networks. I must admit I don’t use any of the consumer social networks, just LinkedIn if that counts and my own blog. But what comes next with social networking; more friends, more pageviews, more widgets? Well the answer may come from Bebo who today launched their new personal “home” page which I think would have been better off being called “My World”. This new home menu tab is a link to an aggregated landing page that shows you what new things your friends are doing in their profiles. Below is Jose’s page from Bebo and it shows his friends new friends, their new photos and the new bands they are listening too. In many ways this is a social discovery engine, as opposed to search, based on your friends attention metadata. i.e what they are listening too, looking at or learning about. By coincidence or not, over the weekend a story appeared on USA Today about social shopping and how people would like to see this as part of their social network. Imagine if Bebo enabled people to rate/recommend products or places within their own profile and that this information then appeared on their friends aggregated home page i.e social shopping meets social networking. Philip Wilkinson’s [CEO CrowdStorm] blogged about this over the weekend. What it goes to show is that shopping can, and indeed is, a social activity both on and offline, and that it can be one of the most powerful word of mouth marketing activities due to the “trust factor”. As the article says, a lot of the big social networks would benefit immensely from integrating a social shopping element and they will know that this is not an easy task to do organically. Thinking back to my old price comparison days, ask any of the big players what happened to their own efforts at creating a price comparison engine and then ask why they gave up and partnered with a specialised player… Either way we will see if the big social networks try and do this themselves or if they seek to acquire specialists like CrowdStorm, TrustedPlaces and/or other social recommendation sites. → Read More
Over the last couple years, the rise of remix culture has begun to penetrate hardware design and consumer electronics. The emergence of SQUID Labs, O’Reilly’s MAKE community, Neil Gershenfeld’s Fab, open source projects like the TuxPhone and Greenphone coupled with the decline of companies like Sony, have all contributed to new possibilities in opening the design and specification of devices to the consumer. Open source mobile handsets, in particular, offer the possibility of making an end-run around artificial barriers to innovation in the mobile industry. Scottish-French startup, Crowdspirit, is looking to capitalise on these unfolding trends and help consumers to ‘scratch their own itch’. The service lets members submit ideas and projects, collaboratively define specifications, invest real money if they wish, and finally purchase the product they desire. As the service isn’t yet open for registration, it’s unclear how sophisticated Crowdspirit’s collaborative tools are, nor how flexible and cost-effective the manufacturing or supply chain will be. Nevertheless, the concept is appealing and creates a valuable mediation between consumers and producers in a market where consumers have little influence and could potentially share in the co-creation of value. On the other hand, we could end up with a generation of Homer-centric products… I just hope they launch in time to make the rumoured iPod phone fulfil everyone’s projected desires → Read More
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