Kids are fat these days. Kids also like to play video games more than they like to play regular teams sports like basketball or football. Light bulb! By getting kids to play Dance Dance Revolution at schools across the country, physical education teachers are helping the younglings lose weight. More than 1,500 schools are poised to have installed the game before the end of the decade, which, combined with the elimination of junk food from school cafeterias, should lead to plenty of kids losing their paunch. Perhaps even better than that, educators and parents alike are seeing DDR act as bridge to more traditional physical activities. But for kids who were raised to be afraid of direct competition, i.e., “everyone’s a winner!,” the game is a welcome addition to their school day. Bye bye fat camp, hello dance mat? P.E. Classes Turn to Video Game That Works Legs [New York Times] → Read More
As you can see with the embedded Flash widget above, eBay is now letting users embed information about any listing or group of listings directly into a website. Their hope is to encourage bloggers and social network users who discuss famous listings to embed the information right into the page. The service will be available at togo.ebay.com this morning. There are three types of widgets. Example of all three can be seen on this test blog set up by eBay. The first, embedded above, shows information on a single listing. users can mouse over the seller to get additional information, or do a search with the results returned within the widget itself. Users can also clone the widget for their own site. There is no requirement that the person creating the widget be the seller of the item. The second type of widget shows up to ten separate items. The pictures rotate in a slide show, and when a viewer clicks on one, it replaces the slideshow with information about that item in the same format as the first widget. The third type of widget shows picture results based on a search query. Like the second widget, clicking on any picture shows information about that listing. These widgets are just for fun and to generate discussion around interesting auctions, not for revenue generation by publishers. Ebay provides affiliate tools at affiliates.ebay.com and the company says that they will evolve those tools separately over time to meet the requests of affiliates. See our recent post on AuctionAds (one of our current sponsors) for eBay listing widgets that pay out affiliate fees. Robert Scoble interviewed the team and got a demo: http://www.podtech.net/player/podtech-player.swf?bc=712e3ef9-14ea-459a-a3da-ffe71b6b33b4 → Read More
Vudu is a small company that is tackling an age-old problem: how to get movies onto your TV without stuttering, buffering, or forcing you to walk to the mailbox. The solution? P2P. The Vudu box will store the beginnings of movies you might enjoy watching and then methodically — and quickly — download bits of the movie from peers on the Vudu network. “But wait,” you say, “Don’t there need to be lots of peers on the…” Ssshhh! Don’t tell that to Vudu! Yes, there need to be lots of peers on the network, which is where I think this product will falter. I don’t want to be a spoilsport, but I could see Vudu becoming a patent farm and the technology ending up in Comcast boxes before I see a standalone business of delivering movies a la TiVo. → Read More
SplashCast, an embeddable Flash media player, is improving its product today. They are now allowing publishers to turn any RSS feed with a media enclosure, such as a podcast or videocast, into a channel on their player. Previously SplashCast only allowed RSS feeds from YouTube and Flickr. Now, any feed can be added. The best way to understand SplashCast is just to look at the player, which we’ve embedded below. Feeds are organized into channels, making it possible to show your favorite videos, podcasts, and photos from within one player updated through RSS. SplashCast will continuously update the shows on the channel as new content is added. Text based RSS feeds have had several multi-channel embeddable widget based platforms, including Grazr and SpringWidgets. Multi-channel video and audio RSS feeds are a smaller category, mostly consisting of widgets that play only your own content. Along with SplashCast, Cozmo.tv has been helping develop multi-channel video players updated via RSS, but only for social video sites YouTube and Blip.tv. VodPod has also released a new widget that plays RSS feeds of videos from social video sites. http://web.splashcast.net/go/so/3/p/JWLU4286CR → Read More
This has to be the strangest partnership I’ve ever read about. LG is so enamored by Cirque de Soleil that they’ve named the newest XCanvas model after those high-flying Canadians. The Quidam is meant to showcase the TV’s blend of art and technology says LG. The latest XCanvas TV comes in six varieties with a feature that adjusts picture brightness based on the amount of light in the surrounding area, just like my SK3. Wow!!! It also features an oval shaped stand and hidden speakers. The Quidam is available in 32-inch ($1,600) and 42-inch ($3,300) models. LG also boasts that the Quidam will be the bleeding edge in the LCD TV market. LG Introduces XCanvas ‘Quidam’ TV [Chosun Ilbo] → Read More
The picture after the jump isn’t CrunchGear’s holiday party. That was Sony’s idea of a good time for the launch of God Of War II. The body of a dead goat was packed with guts that guests were invited to enjoy. Seriously, what moron was in charge of this party? Playstation Magazine was set to run the entire spread until they finally came to their senses and realized what a bad idea it would be. A freshly killed goat with guts? Who the farfinoogin thinks of this stuff?! Click to see after the jump. Warning: Boobies. → Read More
As I was thinking about this week’s Help Key topic, I tried to remember a few things that really made me angry when I first started using computers and when I first started using a Mac. My biggest pet peeve? Dead DVDs and CDs that littered my home office like so many belly-up roaches. Optical disks are, at this point in the game, mostly being used to store media and, in a pinch, back-up data. Hopefully optical media will soon go the way of the Dodo, but until then here are a few tips for burning without getting burned. → Read More
Take The Grill on the Road X-Ray Business Cards BlinkyBugs: The Coolest DIY Project You’ll See Today Jellyfish Beer Bong Slouchpod Endorses Laziness: We Get Fatter → Read More
Yahoo announced today that it will acquire the 80% of advertising network RightMedia that it doesn’t already own for $680 million in cash and Yahoo stock. (Yahoo already owned 20 percent of the company, putting the total valuation at $850 million). Yahoo previously bought 20% of the company in a $45 million Series B round of funding announced in October 2006. The company has raised over $50 million to date. This move counters Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick earlier this month for $3.1 billion, and signals that Yahoo wants more weapons in its arsenal to fight the ongoing online advertising war beyond their new Panama release. RightMedia runs an advertising marketplace that allows for much more efficient advertsing pricing than older negotiated models (something still in the planning stages at DoubleClick). See our coverage of their RMX Direct product from August 2005. RightMedia also tends to work with large intermediate ad brokers and addresses the short tail of the ad market (as does DoubleClick), whereas Overture and Adsense are definitely long tail products with many smaller advertisers and publishers. → Read More
The timing couldn’t be much better for InterActiveCorp to launch Zwinktopia, a new virtual world for young teens. Other virtual worlds, such as Gaia, Habbo Hotel, Cyworld, Neopets, Club Penguin, Webkinz and others, are exploding in terms of unique monthly visitors and total time spent at the sites. Until today, IAC’s Zwinky was a site to make customized avatars, choosing from 10,000 different outfits, accesories and other items, and embed them onto other websites such as MySpace. Users could also become friends with other users and enage in basic social networking activities. See Stardoll as well in this space. Most of the functionality at Zwinky is accessed via a non-mandatory browser toolbar that users install. Zwinky says that they have 20 million active toolbars that were used in March 2007. Part of Zwinky’s business model is to collect search advertising revenues from toolbar usage. Today Zwinky will add a virtual world to the site called Zwinktopia – users can use their avatars to roam around the world, chat with other users and engage in activities to earn Zbucks, the virtual currency of Zwinktopia. Zbucks can be used to buy virtual clothing and other goods. Zwinky is part of the Fun Webs group at IAC, which includes Smiley Central, Cursor Mania and other sites and generates over $100 million in annual revenues. The Fun Webs group is part of the Consumer Applications and Portals group (iWon and Excite are within this group) and is led by Scott Garell. Zwinky alone has 4.7 million worldwide unique visitors in March (Comscore), far more than Second Life and the other competitors listed in the first paragraph above. If a reasonable number of them can be converted into exploring Zwinktopia, it will become the largest immersive world outside of the gaming sites like World of Warcraft. See Comscore comparision data below (U.S. only). See GigaOm’s recent article on Gaia, which is probably closest to Zwinktopia in functionality. Update: The company will be running the television ad promoting Zwinktopia embedded below on NBC on Monday. http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-4628271642650138617&hl=en → Read More
Some people need to get a new hobby, but then again, it saves me from sitting here for hours Googling for pictures “taken with an apple iphone.” The Mobile Guerilla did his homework and finally found some pics on Flickr that are supposedly taken with an iPhone. I call BS, but the pictures are no longer up, so these could be the real deal. Hit the jump for EXIF data for the above picture and another photo claiming to be taken with the iPhone. → Read More
Apple has addressed the Macbook and Macbook Pro notebook performance issues, but Apple says you don’t need to worry about exploding batteries. If you purchased either notebook or an extra battery between February 2007 and April 2007 then download the latest patch. How do I identify an affected battery? Affected batteries will have one or more of the following symptoms: * Battery is not recognized causing an “X” to appear in the battery icon in the Finder menu bar. * Battery will not charge when computer is plugged into AC power. * Battery exhibits low charge capacity/runtime when using a fully charged battery with a battery cycle count (as shown in System Profiler) of less than 300. * Battery pack is visibly deformed. Note: If your MacBook or MacBook Pro battery does not have any of the symptoms noted above, your battery does not need to be replaced. Apple will also be covering those notebooks that are out of warranty. Apple Support Page [via ] → Read More
The German WinMo fanboys are raising their steins following the announcement that O2 are shipping the first WinMo 6 smartphone, Xda Terra. Apparently the Xda “referenced” the HTC Herald in every way possible. Those unfamiliar with the Herald features needn’t worry because I’ve got you covered. The WinMo 6 smartphone sports quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE, W-Lan, Bluetooth 2.0, 2-megapixel camera and a slide-out keyboard. That is super fantastique! The Xda Terra is currently available for order from the O2 Germany site and prices start at €79.99 with a two year contract, which, I think, is worth it considering the phone is selling for €519.99 without a contract. Das is good jah? O2 Germany starts Selling and Shipping the first WM 6 Professional smartphone [The Unwired] → Read More
update: The video of this is now available. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales spoke at a education.au conference in Sydney, Australia last week. After his talk he took questions. As reported by the Brisbane Times, Andrew Hansen raised his hand as a member of the press and was selected to ask a question. What Wales didn’t know is that Hansen is part of the cast of a wildly popular public television show in Australia called The Chaser’s War on Everything, a weekly half hour satire/prank show. Hansen said “Ah, Jimmy, um, look I just have 10 questions,” and then fired off ten questions in a row, not waiting for answers (It’s normal at events like this for reporters to ask a follow up question at the same time as the initial question to save time). This is a regular prank by the cast of the show, called “Mr. Ten Questions.” His questions: First, how are you enjoying Australia? Second, how do our computers compare to the ones in America? Third, why does everyone in IT look so nerdy, yet you look like a daytime soap star? Fourth, Mac or PC – do you really give a shit? Fifth, there are 1.7 million articles on Wikipedia; how long did it take you to write them all? Sixth, Craig Reucassel’s a bit unhappy with the photo on his page. Could you upload a better one maybe for him? Seventh, my dog is getting some scabs under his chin. I don’t know if you can bring him in the number of a local vet? Eighth, Jessica Rowe and Peter Overton – will it last? Ninth, cracked pepper? Tenth, how do you feel about the fact that when I looked you up on Wikipedia this morning I changed your page to say that you were a teenage drug lord from Malaysia? To his credit Wales attempted to respond to four of the questions. → Read More
ATTN T-Mo Dash Owners: WinMo 6 is finally here! Oh and don’t worry because this isn’t a Beta version. It’s the real deal holyfield. According to the folks on Howard Forums they haven’t had any problems upgrading so feel free to download and see what all the hoopla is about. But be warned that you will need to download to your computer and upgrade via USB so be sure to back up everything or you will lose content. Anyways, have fun and let us know how it is. Download Now [via Howard Forums via Gadgets on the Go] → Read More
I’m not quite sure who Apple is going after here — skinny models? roughnecks? — but the NY Post just announced that they are installing a new store at 9th Avenue and 14th Street, way out in the Meatpacking District. It is an odd but fitting choice of location for a new 32,000 square foot Apple store. The Post is reporting that the store will take up three stories in an old warehouse and is just down the street from Chelsea Market. Clearly they’re going for a certain, more chi-chi demographic. Hit the jump for another map. → Read More
There’s a new Australia-based social network called FatSecret – it’s designed to help overweight people leverage a network of friends and online resources to lose weight. Like Traineo, which we wrote about last year, Fatsecret focuses on building a support network around you to monitor your progress. Users first state their current and goal weights, and are urged to report in daily with their updated weight. This data builds a graph that is included on their profile page showing progress over time. Each user is also provided with a blog/journal and can add other Fatsecret users as friends. Users are given information on various diets (Atkins, South Beach, etc.). Diets are commented and ranked by other users, creating a top list. There is also a recipe area with a detailed breakdown of the nutritional value of the recipe, along with user ratings and compliance with various diets. Users can upload their own recipes in a very structured way, and Fatsecret will calculate the nutritional value by analyzing the amount and types of ingredients. Fatsecret doesn’t currently have any way to encourage or track exercise, and this is a natural place for expansion. Overall the service is a great resource for people trying to lose weight. I believe Traineo’s method of getting four friends involved who will monitor your progress via email is a a really good idea. With Fatsecret, unless you make friends on the site or get your existing friends to also join and become members, it could quickly become a very lonely place. I would also like to see Fatsecret provide the weight graph as a widget, so users can add it to their website (see Skinnyr). CenterNetworks has a good overview of some of the other new weight loss focused websites. → Read More
Come on, guys! Free Zunes? For your moms? That’s like free ice cream for kittens! Please send in those entries or your moms will be very unhappy. We’re calling them all right now. Seriously… hear the ringing? Read on for how your mom can win. → Read More
There was a lot of controversy recently when Wikipedia announced that all outbound links from the online encyclopedia would include the nofollow tag. The nofollow tag on a link is said to prevent link spamming since some search engines (Google among them) do not count links containing the tag towards any weighing of the destination page. What this means is that a link from Wikipedia will no longer boost the position of a page in search results, the intention being that this will deter spammers from sneaking links onto Wikipedia. In Febuary of 2005 the Wikipedia community voted in favor (by a vote of 61% to 39%) of removing the nofollow tags, but this outcome was overruled by Jimbo Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, earlier this year. It seems that while the nofollow tag is added to the standard outbound links, it isn’t applied to inter-wiki links, including links to Wikia, Wikipedia’s for-profit spin off. For example, on the Wikipedia page for Wikia there are a number of links to Wikia pages which do not contain the nofollow tag: <a href="/wiki/Wookieepedia" title="Wookieepedia">Wookieepedia</a> <small>(<a href="http://www.wikia.com/wiki/c:Starwars:Main_Page" class="extiw" title="wikiasite:Starwars:Main_Page">home</a>)</small> The result: wikis included on the white list are granted outbound links that do not contain the “nofollow” tag. These sites benefit directly by receiving higher search engine placements, which is equivalent to additional traffic and authority. Many direct competitors to Wikia, such as Wetpaint, are not included in the white list as of today. The links to Wikia that don’t have the nofollow tag are created using a special Wikipedia tag wikiasite:. The tag for linking to Wikia pages isn’t mentioned in the help pages for Wikipedia, but there are many references to it throughout Wikipedia and the talk pages on various topics. It is a special type of link known as an Interwiki link, which means that you can use special shortcut tags when linking to other Wiki’s (such as Wikia). The question is, why wouldn’t the nofollow policy apply to inter-wiki links? Specifically since there is an apparent conflict of interest with Wikia, something that you would think that the Wikia team would want to avoid. The Wikipedia decision to include nofollow tags was not popular and many have pointed out that nofollow is not as effective in preventing link spam as was expected. Wikipedia now has very few outbound links that are honored by search engines, and all of these → Read More
Electrically Sensitive People Reach Out, Tell Us to Cut Back on the Wi-Fi, Cellphones DreamAuthentics’ Katana: The Desktop Arcade Machine You Always Wanted Tiger R-Zone: Worst Console Ever, or Just Misunderstood? Slouchpod Endorses Laziness: We Get Fatter Video: flickrblockrs Keep Your Identity Safe → Read More
