Noka is some sort of expensive chocolate brand that costs about $2,080 per pound, a considerable investment for something that your body will eventually process into solid waste. DallasFood, a local food blog, decided to take a closer look at the vaunted brand and discovered that a) they do no make or source their own cocoa and b) they’re probably not as good as they claim. Remember, however, that taste is a very subjective thing. If you put a hunk of chocolate in a fancy steel box and another piece of the same choco in a box labeled “Bird Poop and Incidental Chocolate,” your brain will automatically prefer the fancy brand. I know it’s a bit off topic, but I know you guys like chocolate, so head over and read the thread. Incidentally, this sort of chicanery happens in many high-end industries including watches, cigars and, of course, technology. If you knew who made your Sony plasma, you’d probably pee yourself. What’s Noka Worth? [DallasFood via BoingBoing] → Read More
<img src="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/"review" over the holiday as a way to astroturf the magic of Vista to the world at large. Now, however, they're saying that these were "review laptops" and that they want all of them back. Neener neener neener. Apparently — and I suppose we could check but who really cares? — Microsoft thought the "review process" would be a good way to seed some good will about Vista and they didn't really expect them back. Microsoft did a similar deal with the Zune, "giving" one away and asking for one back and they, by no stretch of the imagination, are the first or last company to give out tech to undeserving hacks. They just forgot that bloggers are usually whiny punks. → Read More
Who’s Got The Smallest? Argard’s M10 For Sure Plastic Strips Play Back Analog Recordings, Scare Gear Bloggers Luggage Tags for the Globe-Trotting Geek Presto EverSharp Have You Seen My Stapler (So I Can Club You With It)? → Read More
There are clearly too many social networks, and if you belong to one you likely belong to many. Boston based (soon to be relocated to San Francisco) ProfileLinker’s aim is to help you stay organized across those networks. Like Meebo did with instant messaging, ProfileLinker wants to aggregate your social networking experience. The target user is someone with a profile on at least two networks – MySpace and Facebook, for example. You tell ProfileLinker your site credentials and it pulls your bio, friends and other information from those sites and centralizes it. You then use ProfileLinker to manage your activity on those networks: aggregate and manage multiple social profiles; discover new social networks and communities of interest within social networks; and receive notification of messages and friend requests from multiple networks. The company is also launching a number of widgets that will pull data from all of your social networks and allow you to present it on another website. The first widget will be a “portable profile” with links to your various networks. This differs from PeopleAggregator (our coverage), which has actually created software for customers to create their own social networks. ProfileLinker is trying to aggregate your data from existing networks and make it more useful. To do this they’ll need to keep those networks happy, while taking some page views from them. They have one partnership sealed already, with Photobucket, and hope to do more. But for sites where they are unable to get a partnership they’ll have to gather information using the user’s credentials. There’s a risk that networks will simply cut them off. The company is currently closing an angel round of financing. They are in private beta – sign up on the home page for an invitation. Screen. shots of the current version are below. → Read More
Russia-based, DRM-free music download site AllOfMP3 made a brief statement today in response to the RIAA’s $1.65 trillion lawsuit, filed in New York against them. In effect, they told the RIAA to go pound sand: “AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York,” an unnamed “senior company official” stated. “This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the mean time, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws.” AllOfMP3 may not be around much longer, given that their own government has promised to find a way to shut them down, but they are certainly going out with a little panache. → Read More
I dugg up some information that HD-DVD encryption has been cracked. Not much is known but here are three links you’ll need to know if you want to try backing up HD-DVDs (how sweet, right?) Link 1: Doom 9 Forum Thread Link 2: Youtube video showing “proof” Link 3: The Program in .zip So if you have an HD-DVD drive in your computer, get on this and start making scene releases of HD-DVD movies! → Read More
Ever been in a meeting with a PR guy and you hate his guts so bad you wish you could just shoot him? Well now you can, but it won’t lethally injure him. The site OfficeGuns has been brought to our attention and it’s pretty much the greatest wealth of information available for those of you in an office. Learn the tricks of the trade, how to build weapons from basic supplies, and how to survive attacks from other cubicle-commandos. Seriously. These office supply weapons rule. My favorite is the Double Maul. Official Site [via Digg] → Read More
So it seems a lot of people got iTunes Music Store giftcards for the holidays. I’ll even bet my money that little Johnny down the street got that iPod he asked for too! So with all this hoopla of Apple-ness going around, iTunes sales skyrocketed and people logged on to iTMS to purchase songs. Visits were up a whopping 413% compared to last year’s Xmas. Anyone who wants to start beef with Apple’s numbers better step up to the plate and bring it!! iTunes visits surge 413% on Christmas Day → Read More
PayPerPost, the controversial startup that pays bloggers to write about advertisers’ products, will be in the news again tomorrow. They will be announcing the acquisition of blogging tools and services company Performancing (see our earlier coverage of Performancing). The main purpose of the acquisition appears to be for PayPerPost to get access to the 28,000 Performancing users, most of whom are bloggers and potential customers of PayPerPost. The popular Performancing Firefox blog editing plugin is not being acquired, and will be spun off into a new brand. Our previous coverage of PayPerPost is here. → Read More
was this quote from the mother of the 12 year-old girl who received the sullied Zune: What do you tell a 12-year-old child that you have five men having sex with each other? That’s not a conversation that I want to have. We feel that Mrs. Martin’s grammatically questionable phrase is a bit bigoted. It’s almost 2007, we’re supposed to be open-minded, enlightened, and accepting of all types of porn, gay included. If you haven’t seen Rock Hard Balboa yet, it’s worth downloading. So the question to you, our readers, is what do you say to a 12 year-old girl to explain five men having sex on a Zune? The funniest answer receives an exclusive Zune T-shirt. You can’t buy these, they’re out of print, and were only available at the Zune release party, so it might make something of a collector’s item. Come up with something clever (yet tasteful and SFW) and leave it in the comments of this story. The winner will be judged on New Year’s Day, and will be notified via email that he or she has won (so remember to leave your email in your comment, sparky). Good luck with your porn! → Read More
We’re trying really, really hard to determine if Talking Tape is cool as hell or scary as hell. You tell us. These pieces of plastic tape have audio messages along the lines of “happy birthday!” encoded on them using a technique similar to the pull-string dolls of your youth. It’s analog, an audio recording and playback system similar to the grooves in records, but the run perpendicular to the length of the tape; when you run your fingernail down the plastic band, or put it on a balloon to make the balloon talk (!?), the raised edges in the plastic vibrate through your chosen medium enough to express a week “congratulations!” Double-you tee eff. Cool or creepy? You decide. Sadly, you cannot record your own audio onto the tapes at this point, but if they figure out a way to do that, we’ll give it our thumbs up. Talking Tape [Grand Illusion] → Read More
Part of my anima revolves around me finding cool things immediately after they would have been useful. Like chipping teeth opening a beer only to be handed a bottle opener moments later, that sort of thing. So goes it with these cool geek-friendly luggage tags. Now that I’m through with my holiday travels, they show up in my inbox. But, in hopes that some of you might be on the eve of a trip, I’m informing you of their existence, so that you might more easily say to the hotties at the airport, “Hey! I’m a nerd!” Cicuit Board Luggage Tags [CyberGuys, via Chip Chick] → Read More
It’s a good thing this is a slow week, because I don’t think I’d be able to hang otherwise. I think I overdosed on tryptophan at some point Monday evening and my body has been reeling to reachieve equilibrium. In the meantime, I’m in slow motion along with the week. But that didn’t stop me from finding a winner for day three of our Holiday SPECTACULAR. He is the now the proud owner of both a pair of Ultimate Ears super.fi Studio 3 headphones and an ifrogz gift card worth $36. → Read More
<img class="right" src="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/horror when I saw this crazy knife sharpener on Uncrate. The utilizes a two-stage system with Sapphirite sharpening wheels to render your blades certifiably deadly and not suitable for children (or Blake). It's electric, so you don't have to flail your arms wildly during the sharpening process. And it can be yours for just $30. Presto EverSharp Electric Knife Sharpener [via Uncrate] → Read More
For years I’ve considered tattooing various lines of verse and prose all over my back. The problem is that I often change my mind on what lines I’d want to stick on my body (although the opening verse of “The Waste Land” and various lines from Blood Meridian have endured as ideas for sometime). Fortunately for people like me, a new type of ink will soon be introduced that is completely removable by conventional laser treatment. The developers say that the new ink will reduce tattoo removal costs to about $1,000 per tattoo and emphasize that the tat will be completely removed. It is also said that the company is working on an ink composed of biodegradable polymer beads that fade over the course of years. I guess now my excuses are lessened significantly and everyone will realize I’m just a wuss. Crap. New ink promises easy tattoo removal [SF Chronicle via medGadget] → Read More
No not Magic the card game…nerds. In case you were wondering about that Samsung Magic Station that Biggs told you about way back when in October here are some stats that are sure to entice and make you cry. The Magic Station has Intel’s Core 2 Quad CPU so you can kick everyone’s butt on WOW, watch some Pron and bid on that blow up Paris Hilton doll you didn’t get for Christmas. Ok so maybe all of that at once would make your brain fry but the Magic won’t skip a beat with its 1GB of DDR2 667 MHz memory, 320 GB SATA2 HD and Nvidia GeForce 7650 512MB graphics card! Launching in January, you better sell some of those Black Lotus cards because this will set you back about $2,365. Samsung Magic [Chosun Ilbo] → Read More
People moan and bitch about how the PS3 costs $600 and so on. Well if you were considering buying a Blu-Ray drive for your home theater, a PS3 may be your cheapest bet. As I strolled through a Best Buy today, I noticed it was selling internal Blu-Ray drives for a whopping $749 a pop. That’s some serious moola, even they let you burn to still-expensive Blu-Ray discs. So if you don’t care about games and want a Blu-Ray drive just for playing a movie, I’d say go with a Playstation 3 for now. Though if you’ve got money to burn from Xmas and want to go all out on your machine, expect to shell out about a grand for the drive, blank discs, and a few movies. Your call kiddies. → Read More
Samsung has just released the thinnest HSDPA slider ever! HSDPA?!? That’s right the Z720 or the Ultra Edition 13.8 is revved up by High-Speed Downlink Packet Access that allows for some wicked fast data transfers clocking in at 1.8 Mbps which is said to be 6 times faster than 3G UMTS. According Samsung the Z720 is set apart from the rest of the market because it will give users much greater quality for streaming video content and the ability to access more files than any other PDA. Now the nitty gritty, check all your favorite shows or pictures on a 2.1-inch QVGA screen via microSD slot or surf the net with its HTML and WAP 2.0 capabilities. An MP3 player supporting AAC/AAC+/e-AAC+/WMA. A nice 3 megapixel camera allows you to take all those upskirt shots around the office or take video of the office manager taking shots on her break and even has a second camera for teleconferencing which we’ll never see here and both Bluetooth and USB come standard. This thing is pretty kick-ass and I wouldn’t mind having one for myself and you won’t either once I give you a few more details. This will be the first mobile with pre-installed Google mobile search and Gmail. It even has its own icon on the menu screen. How badass is that? The Ultra Edition 13.8 also comes with Samsung’s uGo and uTrack. The interface on the uGo makes me want to wet myself because it uses all sorts of black magic to automatically adjusts itself depending on where you are by displaying a city landmark near you, adjusting picture to represent night or day and automatically adjusts the time ensure you’re not late for that meeting two time zones ahead. The uTrack is kinda cool…I guess. If you like upping your odds of tracking down your stolen mobile that is. It does this via a SMS message sent to a predetermined number to alert you of changes to the SIM card as well as location. But you have to be into that sort of thing. While it’s only available in Europe at the moment I do hope Samsung will bring a version of the this to the US because it would kick much ass. It’s just not fair!!! [Samsung] → Read More
TechCrunch is reporting on a service that might interest quite a few of you. Hey!Watch is a forthcoming service that gives users to intelligently convert media online. While we’ve discussed online video converters in the past, this is the first one I’ve seen that is developing a business model out of the practice. The service allows users to upload video from their hard drives or directly from URL. Also, true to 2.0 form, the service offers fluid RSS integration. Users can both upload via RSS and have have converted video output by RSS. It currently coverts to MPEG4 and DVD format. In addition to its standard features. Hey!Watch is providing developers tools in hopes of expanding the service more quickly once it launches. It should be go within the next few weeks. Hey!Watch Is A Seriously Cool Online Video Converter [TechCrunch] → Read More
Wired this morning released its annual vaporware list. It features several new entries from the likes of SED TVs, Will Wright, Skype and more. But, of course, what would a vaporware list be without the most vaporized product of all? That’s right, Duke Nukem Forever, the reigning king of vapor, returns for a record five total years in first place. Wired managed this comment from Scott Miller, CEO of 3D Realms, “Thanks to the overwhelming success of Prey (our latest IP, and another game that took 10 years to release), we have been afforded another five relaxing years on the making of DNF.” Perhaps we’ll see it sometime before my social security kicks in. Anyway, go check out the full list of products you might never see. Vaporware ’06: Return of the King [wired] → Read More
