Due to iPhone shortages, one unit will be shared amongst three users in rotating weekly blocks According to a survey conducted by WR Hambrecht & Co, many AT&T stores have no firm idea as to when the retardedly anticipated iPhone will arrive in stores. Some locations place it on June 15, others on June 22 and many haven’t the foggiest notion. In addition to the vague release date, the stores are also unsure as to how many units they’re going to have. The highest speculation was 40, but many were lower. Who knows what the future will hold for the iPhone? I for one don’t rightly care. Most AT&T stores expecting less than 40 iPhones at launch [AppleInsider] → Read More
This evening, I came home and loaded up Drudge Report. I found an interesting article on Google and how they’re about to challenge Microsoft even farther with offline web applications. Upon discovering the name Google Gears, I promptly typed “gears.google.com” into Firefox. Sure enough, a Mac OS X beta of Google Gears is available and of course, I downloaded it. So what is Google Gears? It’s an open-source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using JavaScript APIs. What that means is that you’ll be able to use Google’s Writely word processor offline and online, making it a direct competitor with Microsoft Office. This is huge stuff and Google is really going to stick it to Microsoft this year. Can Google overtake the biggest software company of the 1990s? Maybe. We’ll see soon enough. Google Gears [Google] → Read More
Try as they might, Microsoft, just can’t beat the hackers. They pulled ahead for about a week, but we are a persistent bunch. A lot like 3-year olds when you tell them they can’t (fill in the blank) and then they throw a temper tantrum. The latest firmware hack only applies to units with the TS-H943 DVD drive and claims to repel current and some future Xbox Live detection attempts. Take that Microsoft! Firmware Specs [via Xbox 360 Fanboy via Xbox Scene via Giz] → Read More
Frankly, I’m getting sick of all the new phone designs that are constantly being announced. I can’t handle it. I want all of them, but I don’t have the money or means to get my hands on the one’s that won’t ever show up on our shores. Samsung’s latest slider just might persuade me, but chances are it runs on WinMo and I just won’t go there. Nevertheless, the QWERTY slider comes packaged with a slew of enticing features such as WiFi, 2-megapixel camera, VGA camera, Bluetooth and a microSD slot. Most of the other features are ho-hum, but this sure looks better than the BlackJack that I loathe. Samsung i620 QWERTY Slider Smartphone [Unwired View] → Read More
Today QiGO announced a new marketing tool that could revolutionize the way companies market their new products. OK, that could be a load of crock, but it could happen. The ultra unique USB devices will automatically launch any internet content the marketers want you to see. On top of that, the key grips can be morphed into any logo. The possibilities are endless, you just need to use your imagination. For example, your favorite band could release these prior to a new CD launch with special backstage pictures, sample mp3′s or even ‘unplugged’ versions of your favorite hits. You can also have a batch made for all your crazy Vegas pictures and videos. Like I said, the possibilities are endless. You’ve got plenty of time to think about what you’ll throw on these keys because they won’t be available until the Fall. Press Release → Read More
Apple has announced that YouTube content will begin streaming to your Apple TV’s via a free software update in mid June. I just wet myself. LonelyGirl15 on my widescreen?! The Apple TV was also upgraded to a 160GB version for $399 that goes on sale tomorrow. I guess I’ll have to get an Apple TV now. Press Release → Read More
Back in the day, His Steveness mentioned that the iPhone wouldn’t have support for third-party apps. He said it was an issue of security and usability, but since the apps aped OS X’s built-in Widgets, which actively encourages third-party development, it seems like BS. At the D Conference earlier today, Steve changed his tune, saying later in the year Apple would probably open up the iphone to third party developers. This is fantastic news, as it takes the iPhone from being a pretty Blackberry with an iPod inside to another level, that of a true smartphone. Only now, after hearing the news, do I totally want an iPhone. Gimmit. Official: Third Party iPhone Apps Later This Year [The Gizzah] Photo stolen from courtesy of Greg Flurry. → Read More
Tommorrow, Google will be hosting a developer day for 5,000 developers worldwide. The bulk of developers will be gathering at the San Jose convention center for a keynote by Google’s VP of Engineering, Jeff Huber. At the conference Google will be outlining their developer strategy. But the big announcement will be Google Gears, an open source browser plugin that will enable developers to create offline web applications using JavaScript APIs. As a developer, you’ll be able to make an application with the assurance that it will work offline and online across browsers. The plugin is a 700K download for Firefox 1.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+ that installs three developer APIs. One API will handle the creation of data objects to store application information locally, another will be a SQLite relational database for searching the data, and the final part will enable asynchronous JavaScript so applications can sync data in the background without overburdening the browser. More info on the APIs are available at the gears website. The first demo of Gears will be for Google Reader, but more Google apps are expected to come. Reader will add a green download button to the user interface. When you click the button, Reader will download the last 2,000 messages to your computer, preparing your computer to work offline or under a spotty internet connection. Downloading will take place in the background, using the asynchronous JavaScript API. While offline you can read these articles and carry out your usual sharing and tagging. When you get back online, just click the button and Reader will sync your offline activity with their server. Right now the syncing is initiated manually, but it’s easy to see that it will become more seamless as the program develops. Gears could conceivably solve the large data overhead problems of Google’s AJAX applications, pushing updates to your desktop instead of slowing down your browser. Google is releasing opensource and early to developers to get some preliminary feedback. They are also collaborating with a host of other partners such as Opera, Mozilla, and Adobe, which will to integrate flash and Apollo into their system. Robert Scoble (coverage) and Artur Bergman (coverage) were also at the press event. → Read More
With the news of Microsoft Surface announced, we found detail behind how the technology might work. During the Popular Mechanics interview, Microsoft noted that the display uses a series of IR sensors to detect objects on the surface providing controls of objects. A recently published Microsoft patent application provides further insight (and images) on how these sensors work. → Read More
With the launch of every new search engine or cell phone, there is inevitably a torrent of exclamation mark-filled press releases and boasts proclaiming the new release to be REVOLUTIONARY!!! and LIFE-CHANGING!!! The truth, of course, is that they almost never are. Still, such pleas might have been at least a tad bit convincing only a few years ago, when certain aspects of the technology world, or at least the public (and media’s) understanding of it were still in their infancy. That is, back when we were young and innocent enough to believe that a few cool features and a lower price was all that was needed to take on the iPod. Today we know better. Here are the new rules of the technology industry. That is, the ineffable truth and gospel that will shape the tech world for the next decade and beyond. Companies that try to circument or ignore these rules will meet certain failure (or at least profit losses.) → Read More
OK, OK, this isn’t really a big shocker, but it’s worth a mention for those of you have not yet considered it. Although iTunes is now offering DRM-free music, that doesn’t mean you can go distributing it willy-nilly. You see, like previous iTunes tracks, the m4a file is embedded with your account information. TUAW’s Erica Sadun did writes: Try this yourself. 1. Launch Terminal. You’ll need to be comfortable at the command line to perform this check. 2. Navigate to one of your iTunes plus downloads. If you have a US iTunes account, you can download the iTunes plus “Ooh La” single of the week. 3. Use the UNIX “strings” command to look at the text in your data and grep to search for your name. e.g. strings 01\ Ooh\ La.m4a | grep name Alternatively, open all the strings in TextEdit: strings 01\ Ooh\ La.m4a | open -f. Bottom line: DRM-free doesn’t mean that Apple suddenly supports piracy. Like I said, no shocker, but keep it in mind before you start uploading albums like crazy. Don’t Torrent That Song… [TUAW] → Read More
We’re learning a few new things about the Foleo as we watch the webcast, and we’re relaying them here live. → Read More
Jason Calacanis, formerly of Weblogs, Inc. and more recently an Entrepreneur in Action at Sequoia Capital, will launch his newest startup, Mahalo, this afternoon at 3 PS PST. The site is password protected until then. Mahalo is a search engine, and will join Powerset as the more interesting new engines to launch in 2007. The service has features that are similar to the new Netscape news finder product that Calacanis launched last year at AOL: expert guides will determine the most relevant results. The main search results are provided by guides (Mahalo employees), who find relevant results for search terms. User submitted results are also included. The primary results for search terms are included at the top, in a “top seven” area. These are hand picked results from the guids that should all be good results for the query (see screen shot below of results for “Paris Hotels” – click for larger view). To the right of the results are “Guide Notes” which include additional information including relevant additional searches and “Fast Facts.” In the case of Paris Hotels, the “Fast Facts” include the country, language, currenty and telephone country code. Additional hand picked results appear below the Top Seven, and Google results round out the query. Also in the right sidebar is a place for users who’ve registered with the site to submit links relevant to the query. The more users who’ve submitted a unique link, the higher it appears on the list. Mahalo will be looking for fraud in this area – if a guide determines a link to be spammy, they will ban the link, the user and the user’s IP address “forever.” However, if a link gets enough votes and is determined to be relevant by the guides, it will move over into the main search results area. Each search page also has a discussion/forum area, where any registered user can add their thoughts to what’s included on the results page. Mahalo has 40 full time guides today and have created 4,000 results pages – each of which will serve approximately 12 various queries. Calacanis says that the guides are steadily improving results and adding more queries – they expect to have 10,000 by end of year, and 25,000 by end of 2008. They are really focusing on top search terms, which they obtain from a number of search engines and other sources, Calacanis says. If → Read More
As we expected earlier today, eBay has confirmed an all cash $75 million acquisition of social discovery service StumbleUpon. eBay says StumbleUpon fits will with their “goal of pioneering new communities based on commerce and sustained by trust” and helps them learn more about newly emerging community based businesses. Although you can imagine “StumbleUpon Shopping” coming soon, eBay is leaving the company alone and taking a wait-and-see approach. The corporation will remain completely intact, except for the addition of eBay’s Michael Buhr, who will serve as general manager for the product. Throughout 2007, StumbleUpon has seen tremendous growth. They currently have over 2.3 million registered users, serve 5 million daily recommendations, and are experiencing a 150% year over year growth rate. Here’s a quick look at their latest stats from comScore: More crunch: click here for the StumbleUpon fact sheet. CrunchBase Information StumbleUpon Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Over at BoingBoing, a concerned reader wrote it to let them know what Google Maps is spying into his living room. Recall that Street View feature I talked about earlier today? Great service, but it turns out you can zoom all the way into someone’s living room window. In this case, enough to make out this chick’s cat. So the big question becomes: where do you draw the line between convenience and privacy? Do you think it’s OK to have this woman’s home peaked into so that you can see what downtown San Francisco looks like? I think so. You can barely make out the cat and as long as the picture isn’t taken at nighttime when you’re partying naked with a handle of rum, then no harm done. Google Maps is spying on my cat, says freaked out BB reader [BoingBoing] → Read More
Palm’s taking the wraps off its Foleo, and we’ve got some pics. The “smartphone companion” is actually fairly dope, featuring not just Bluetooth but also WiFi. It’s not meant to fully replace a laptop, but if you’re like me, you find lugging your Powerbook around all the time to be burdensome. If I’m just going to be checking email and browsing porn, I don’t need the full OS it offers. I like what they’re doing here. At least it’s not a table. Hit the jump for some sweet, hot Foleo photos direct from Palm. → Read More
In the iPod age, headphones have become a fundamental part of lives of practically everyone. While many individuals are complacent living in lo-fi, unaware of the depths their music holds, some intuitive listeners yearn for something better. For those select few, it is often necessary to own two sets of headphones: a pair of earbuds and a pair of muffs, such as the HD650s. Released in 2004 the Sennheiser HD650 rig is a heavy favorite of audiophiles everywhere — and for good reason. The 650s combine unparalleled comfort with some of the lushest sound quality to be found on any setup. → Read More
Sony’s going to have to drop the PS3‘s price by $200 this summer if it wants to be a player in this generation. That’s what a Bank of America analyst says, and who am I to argue with BoA? I like how the analyst calls a $50 price drop “meaningless.” Even the rumored $100 price drop wouldn’t do the trick. The main culprit for Sony’s troubles? A gold star if you guessed the Nintendo Wii. → Read More
In the simplest terms the iLoad by Wingspan transfers your CDs onto your iPod without using a computer. No computer, no iTunes, nada, zippo, nothing. Potentially it’s a useful product that addresses a need of those who want an iPod and don’t want to use or aren’t comfortable using a computer. When you think of it, who won’t want to load their CDs directly onto their iPod, bypassing the computers? This obviously presumes you still own CDs. → Read More
On May 17 I shared my frustrations with constant downtime on group instant messaging service Twitter. The responses were interesting. Twitter users are passionate about the service and many see it as a mission critical application. A lot can change in the space of 2 weeks. Since writing that post Twitter’s uptime has improved remarkably. There are still downtime issues; Twitter was offline for over 5 hours Monday according to Pingdom; however these figures are deceptive as there is a noticeable improvement in quality when Twitter is up. Twitter has not been plagued by intermittent functionality failures such as API support issues that block third party tools such as Twitbin from connecting, as was the case two weeks ago. I asked Twitter’s Biz Stone what was going on behind the scenes at Twitter. Has Twitter become more stable following the issues earlier in the month? What has the Twitter team learned from the experience? Biz Stone: “We’ve worked to isolate various parts of our system to prevent one outage from taking out the entire network. Investigation into the causes of previous bouts of instability have taught us a great deal about our usage patterns and shown us a clearer path towards being prepared for future waves of growth and usage”. In what way has Twitter’s reliability improved? Biz Stone: “Our recent efforts towards scalability allow us to stay on our current growth curve, and even increase the rate as we add new ways to send and receive updates such as our recent Facebook application”. What next in terms of scalability? Biz Stone: “We’ll continue to isolate different aspects of the system and perform micro-optimizations of heavy-usage areas. We’re currently implementing additional internal tools which will enable us to do more meaningful research of usage patterns. Finally, we are adding more machines”. Let’s hope Twitter stays on the straight and narrow. More crunch: click here for the Twitter fact sheet. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
