Matt was impressed by the Surface back at CES so I’m inclined to go along based on his judgement. The Sarcastic Gamer gets up close and personal with the Surface’s first game called Firefly. Check out the video and see what it’s all about. It looks really neat. → Read More
Power suit, power tie, American Express card, neck-mounted Bluetooth headset. That’s the ticket right there, folks. The RoadRunner Bluetooth headset with larynx microphone suppresses noise harder than a Fortune 500 company suppresses its cube-dwellers into a life of mundane paper shuffling and mandatory happy hours. Your voice is transmitted directly from your voice box so the headset is a great fit for convertibles and motorcycles. Good for nine hours of talk time and apparently has a less than one-percent error rate for voice dialing (however that’s been calculated). It’s around $80 US, shipping from the UK. RoadRunner Bluetooth Communicator [Pro-Idee UK] via Gadget Review → Read More
CAV has some video from the upcoming Ubisoft Lost game, which I suspect will be a stinker on the level of TMNT for the NES. However, they do offer up some plot details including a secret “Hot Coffee” cut scene involving Jack, Ben Linus, the Smoke Monster, and Charlotte. It gets weird but near the end but not nearly as freaky as the Desmond/Crazy Jungle Dinosaur love scene near the end. Check it out! Incidentally, wasn’t yesterday’s episode really good? They finally figured out that they can reveal information to us. We won’t tell anybody. Exclusive Lost movies [CAV] → Read More
[photopress:fbm.jpg,full,right] Facebook added a music service yesterday. Musicians can upload their songs, users can play them using the Facebook Music Player and later buy them using the provided iTunes link. It’s almost like Zuckerberg & Co. saw what a cluttered useless mess MySpace turned into and said, “Yeah, let’s emulate that.” Call me cynical, crazy, uninformed, whatever the case may be, but I’m thinking Facebook is getting close to jumping the shark. The site suffers from feature creep. All these stupid little features and insecure applications—I was changing Biggs’ mood left and right the other day. Me changing his mood. Real secure site.—make the site look more and more amateurish every day. I may have to ask Zuckerberg at SXSW why he’s riding his little site into the ground. Any other question ideas, leave a comment. Facebook boosts musicians [Hollywood Reporter] → Read More
[photopress:IMG00063.jpg,full,pp_image] I was at Best Buy last night looking for some cheap Xbox 360 titles and stumbled upon the pre-order for Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. I haven’t seen anything that tells me when it’s coming out and this tells us June. So mark your calendars, folks. (It’s too early to find an appropriate lyric to make this amusing for us all.) → Read More
After reading this article from The Register, it’s become blatantly apparent to me that leap year babies are A) mad as hell and B) not going to take it any more. I was born on the first day of February and would like to express my admiration for those of you out there who were born on a day in this great month so callously overlooked by many a web-based form. Case in point, the automated birthday greeting sent out by Toys ‘R Us mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe. The long-necked jerk won’t send any well-wishes to those of you born on February the 29th, a day he considers “invalid.” → Read More
Microsoft is lowering the price of Vista for all you good people out there. Ultimate drops to $219 from $299 and Home Premium drops to $129 from $159, leading analyst to gasp and gape in awe. Why is Microsoft doing this? Are they madmen, so drunk on their own power that they will turn down a twenty spot just because they can? No. Apparently Home Premium and Ultimate were “new products” for the company, meaning they’d never created a software product aimed at such a slim demographic. My own belief is that folks are simply upgrading PCs rather than buy boxed copies of Vista. With all the talk of incompatibility with old hardware, folks like my neighbor Carmine — a former Hell’s Angel and big fan of Unreal Tournament — don’t want to be bothered with dealing with patches and drivers. Anyway, if you’ve been putting it off, you’d better get cracking. I’m sure they’ll sell 100 million more copies on the news. Microsoft chops Vista retail prices [News.com] → Read More
Ah, the return of the MP3-playing watch. This time, without the ridiculous headphone cord running up your arm. The GoldLantern Bluex Bluetooth MP3 Watch comes with 1GB of storage and a pair of Bluetooth 2.0 headphones. The watch is good for 12 hours per charge of its lithium-ion battery and will play either MP3 or WMA files. I’m not much of a watch man myself, so I asked our resident watch fanatic John D. Biggs what he thought of this doodad. I’ll give you the first part of the quote and then you can finish it off in the comments section. → Read More
Courtesy of TechCrunch UK, starting from this week I’ll be giving you a run-down of what’s been happening in the UK, Ireland and – where possible – a little of what’s going on in the rest of the European startup scene. Hopefully you’ll find this useful. Last.fm, the UK startup CBS bought, said it was getting a lot of traffic from its widgets. On March 14 Ireland finally gets the iPhone about three months after the UK, courtesy of UK-based carrier O2, which has the exclusive contract. Meanwhile Ireland-based voice apps startup VoiceSage closed a €3m round. The UK’s Squa.re launched a so-so video portal, but at least it had great video of Keira Knightley. The etsy-like ShopWindoz launched a strike into the UK from its Berlin base. TwitPlus arrived as another file-sharing service for Twitter users. Hot startup Dopplr continued to add new features. Fav.or.it, the RSS reader with integrated commenting (a story TCUK broke), launched its beta to an invite-only crowd. Mobile outfit 3Bill acquired ProfileHeaven. Behavioural targeting company Phorm launched its service with a bunch of UK ISPs and publishers (this is quite a new field for the UK). The number of German start-ups tripled in 2007. UK startups tried to figure out if we had the equivalent of Bucks of Woodside, and fretted about the price of office space, their exit strategy and VCs leaving early stage. Ireland-based reviews aggregator LouderVoice prepped a new version. Badoo, the international social network, hit 13 million users. Kublax, which syncs bank accounts, utilities, and loyalty schemes, won funding, as did Bragster. Buzzspotr, which mashes Twitter users with Google maps, launched a beta. UK broadcasters leant on startups steaming video of their shows. We reviewed the Pixenate image editor, MyMapTracks, FreewireTV, Tipped and FreeAgentCentral. → Read More
The international CTIA WIRELESS 2008 trade show announced that Virgin founder and chairman Sir Richard Branson will deliver a keynote address on the show’s opening day, April 1 at 9:oo a.m. Keynote speeches will take place in the Barron Room at the Los Vegas Hilton. CTIA WIRELESS will take place April 1-3 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Conceived in 1970 by Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Group has gone on to grow very successful businesses in sectors ranging from mobile telephony to transportation, travel, financial services, leisure, music, holidays, publishing and retailing. Branson and Virgin have created more than 200 branded companies worldwide, employing approximately 50,000 people in 29 countries. “From mega brand to emerging brand, wireless is a key component of building, running and growing any business; today all brands are wireless,” said Robert Mesirow, CTIA vice president and show director. “CTIA has aggregated leaders from all wireless industry segments to convey their visions to our global audience. This year’s keynotes should not be missed.” Slated to speak on the first day of the show, Tuesday, April 1 at 9:00 a.m. are Lowell McAdam, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless and CTIA chairman; Sir Richard Branson, founder and chairman of Virgin Group; Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft; and Dan Hesse, president and CEO of Sprint Nextel. On Wednesday, April 2 at 9:00 a.m., Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone Group and Marco Boerries, president of Yahoo! Mobile will deliver keynote speeches. An Infrastructure Roundtable will conclude the session, discussing real-world plans and technology developments hastening the availability of 4G services for mobile subscribers. Panelists will include Simon Beresford-Wylie, CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks; Patricia Russo, CEO of Alcatel Lucent; Carl-Henric Svanberg, president and CEO of Ericsson; and Mike Zafirovski, CEO of Nortel. Additional information about the April 3 keynote session will be released shortly. To register for the conference, or to get more information on keynotes, see links below. Registration Keynotes → Read More
T-Mobile USA reported good numbers for the fourth-quarter of 2007. The company added 951,000 new customers and generated $4.4 billion in revenue. These numbers are up from 2006’s fourth-quarter, when T-Mobil USA added 901,000 customers and had $3.81 billion in revenue. By the end of 2007, T-Mobile was the fourth largest cell phone service provider in the United States with 28.7 million customers. “In 2007, we increased growth to more than 3.6 million net new customers,” said Robert Dotson, T-Mobile USA’s CEO and president, in a statement. “MyFaves was a major contributor with 5 million customers at year end using the service.” T-Mobile has introduced some innovative features and services, including Talk Forever Home Phone, which is being tested in Dallas and Seattle. It has also launched HotSpot@Home, a service that allows users to make unlimited nationwide Wi-Fi calls in their homes. → Read More
Unreasonable Stance: Why travel when you can just Google? Android amazes stuffy BBC: “I say, jolly good!” says reporter Garsh n’ Begorrah, my wee bairns! Ireland’s O2 gets the iPhone Great moments in trademark trolling Think you’re a big man? Prove it and get an EYEBALL TATTOO → Read More
Comments are the greasy oil that keeps the blog machine running. Here are three great (and 100% unedited) comments recently posted by your fellow readers. Neil on Han Solo Carbonite Desk: Exactly what it sounds like, as cool as it sounds I would imagine Jabba didn’t use Han in Carbonite as a desk because his hands were barely functional enough to grab Leias ass, much less hold a pencil. Samantha on What does Sprint’s new unlimited plan mean for MVNO Helio? If you are looking for an unlimited plan. I would not get any of the large providers until I check out http://www.heliounlimited.com. That is where you get a fair shake on what is truly unlimited versus just hype. If you look at the fine print of any large carrier plans they do not include everything that you would see in the Helio All In Unlimited plan which is just $99 right now. Big Dave on Help Key: How to download off Usenet like a champ Can we kick this Nicholas Deleon off the internets? This is the same guy who posted about oink then subsequently killed it. Seriously I think this might be a job for Anonymous! I know they are not my personal army but it think its time something is done. → Read More
MyBlogLog, a blogger social network acquired by Yahoo about a year ago, launched v.2 of their service tonight, with a significant new feature. You can see the MyBlogLog widget in the right sidebar of this site – it shows pictures and names of recent visitors. The new feature is an activity stream of recent activities by all users on various social networks – blog posts, new photos, bookmarks on Delicious, Facebook updates, Twitter updates, etc. The image shows the new profile page – mine is here, and I’ve added a summary widget below. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the startup feature du jour. Facebook first popularized the news feed in late 2006. Later others took the idea and opened it up, creating a news feed around activities on a variety of social networks. FriendFeed is the most popular, and recently raised a $5 million round of financing. Plaxo, Soup.io, Iminta, Spokeo, ProfileLinker, MyLifeBrand, Fuser, 30Boxes, Mugshot, Readr and Second Brain all have variations. Party planning site MyPunchbowl recently released its version. And now, Facebook is planning to open up their NewsFeed and allow users to add other services as well. Yeah, I know. That’s way too many similar services to test out. If you’re a casual observer and just want to try out one service, go with FriendFeed (my account is here). People are flocking there, and starting to use it as a hub to leave comments and other content. If you’re already a Plaxo user, their Pulse product is just as good. Facebook isn’t open enough yet to really be called a competitor. The new MyBlogLog features are a great addition to the product, but it’s not innovative enough to make a big impact. They do have a large community of loyal bloggers using their service, however (including me), and I’ll certainly keep an eye on the activity streams of the people I follow there. → Read More
http://www.viddler.com/player/b914691e/114.447/ First rumored in January, YouTube is definitely doing live video, and it’s happening this year. Sarah Meyers got the scoop (video above), transcript as follows care of NewTeeVee: Meyers: “When are you guys gonna do live video on YouTube?” Chen: “2008. We’ll do it this year. “Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do, we’ve never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually do it this year.” Now for the guessing game: which live video startup will fold first once YouTube dominates the market? YouTube will be last to market, but the same momentum that has seen YouTube dominate video will now be applied to live video. Like video, content creators want to be on the service that gives them the most exposure, no matter how good the alternatives area (after all, YouTube doesn’t offer the best quality video). YouTube already has the user base; live video streamers will flock to YouTube like a moth to a flame. CrunchBase Information YouTube Ustream blogTV Mogulus Justin.TV LiveUniverse Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
I just got word from MyKinda founder Lee Wilkins that he plans to shutdown the Eastern European blog network later today. The network launched just last September and was being bootstrapped. Earlier this week we reported that they were having significant financial difficulties, and had shut down all but two of their sites. Today, those last two will be shuttered as well. Wilkins says the shutdown is temporary to ensure that money due to writers doesn’t continue to add up. The sites will remain down until, he says, “we redefine a more profitable sustainable business model.” The company had total expenses of about €319,000, with no advertising revenue to offset it. Wilkins capitalized the company with €175,000, leaving €144,000 or so in unpaid debts. MyKinda joins the DeadPool for now. Hopefully we’ll see them relaunch down the road, and continue to cover tech and other news in Eastern Europe. → Read More
Google can be used for many things, the basis for an art exhibition isn’t one area that naturally comes to mind. A new art exhibition in Sydney asks Google who and what is “completely rooted” and displays the results. “Completely rooted” for those unfamiliar with the phrase is Australian slang for being in an unfortunate position, being tired (as in I’ve been running all day and I’m completely rooted) or may have sexual connotations. The formal meaning may refer to a belief structure (completely rooted in Christian tradition). The Sydney Morning Herald has the story: To find inspiration for their works, 12 artists typed the words “completely rooted” into a Google search engine. From page two of the results, each artist selected one site as their sole inspiration. This year’s phrase came to the gallery’s owner, Lew Palaitis, as he was drinking beer in Hardware’s storage room. “We’d been kicking around a lot of really stupid phrases and I was feeling a bit despondent,” he said. “I only suggested ‘completely rooted’ as a joke but then we realised it would actually be a really catchy tag.” The inspired art includes the severed head of Tom Cruise and a skywriter writing Jesus in the sky. I’m not sure whether Google will soon become a common tool for artists seeking inspiration, but it’s certainly a new use for everyone’s favorite search engine. Highlights from the exhibition can be viewed online here. → Read More
http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822/US/davezatz-20/8011/cf4a2375-8508-4cb4-a697-98a8f71c36fd&Operation=GetDisplayTemplate Amazon has quietly entered the video hosting and monetization game with Your Video Widget. Your Video Widget allows any registered Amazon Affiliate to upload a video and then select products that can be displayed as the video progresses (demo above). Video content can be anything from a product review through to a holiday video, but there are some restrictions; users can not include a URL in the video, or feature availability, price, or alternative ordering/shipping information for any product in the video itself, on top of the usual porn and piracy restrictions. Users can pick any products they would like to be displayed, with Amazon suggesting only that they work better if they have some context to the video, and that no two products can appear within 10 seconds of each other. Like all Amazon Affiliate related advertising, the ads served are paid as a percentage of generated sales, and are not offered on a CPC or CPM basis. Maximum file size is 100mb, length 10 minutes, and accepted formats are avi, flv, mov, mpg, wmv. Amazon Video Widgets do not come with a central portal where you are able to view videos YouTube style, so this product wont compete in that space. For those looking at new ways of monetizing their videos, be it either because they are unable to sign up to YouTube’s program, or are not getting good results from YouTube, Amazon Video Widgets provide another path to video monetization. (via Dave Zatz) CrunchBase Information Amazon YouTube Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
[photopress:newspace.jpg,full,center] Legos! We’re not sure why it’s acceptable — no, required — that we gadget blogs report on all things Lego, but we’re compelled to, and we’re more than happy. The Lego site Brickshelf has unearthed a couple badass forthcoming Space Lego sets that look really fun. One’s an old-school generic spaceship, something we haven’t seen much of lately, and the other is some sort of tentacled flying skull thing with a laser on its head. Where was this stuff when I was a kid? New Legos [Brickshelf, via Boing Boing] → Read More
Who owns your friends (or rather the list of who your friends are and how they are connected to you) has been a big source of debate in the social networking world. Control over that data is what makes social networks like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn so potentially valuable. Yet there has also been a movement afoot towards letting people take their friends with them, if you will, to other sites. In an interview with Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Web takes social networks to task for hoarding data. The interview, conducted by Paul Miller, focuses mostly on the Semantic Web, which to Berners-Lee is all about linked data. The interview is long and has everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about the Semantic Web (a set of evolving technologies to make the Web more readable by computers). But about 42 minutes into the interview (transcript here), is one of the most interesting parts. Berners-Lee says data on the Web is the new links, and Websites should stop keeping it to themselves: I think, it is a very grown-up thing to realize that you are not the only social networking site… otherwise it is like a website which doesn’t have any links out. In the Semantic Web similarly, if you don’t have any links out, well, that’s boring. In fact, a lot of the value of many websites is the links out. Now if you look at the social networking sites which, if you like, are traditional Web 2.0 social networking sites, they hoard this data. The business model appears to be, “We get the users to give us data and we reuse it to our benefit. We get the extra value.” So, first of all, are they going to let people use the data? I think, the push now, as we’ve seen during the last year, has been unbearable pressure from users to say, “Look, I have told you who my friends are. You are the third site I’ve told who my friends are. Now, I’m going to a travel site and now I’m going to a photo site and now I’m going to a t-shirt site. Hello? You guys should all know who my friends are.” . . . So, the users are saying, “Give me my data back. That’s my data.” Of course, social networks are already moving in this direction. Last month, everyone → Read More
