Like a shot in the eye from squirt gun filled with horseradish juice, here comes the Verizon Blitz. Gah! I’m guessing that early photos don’t do the device justice but, then again, it’s going to be offered as a pre-paid INpulse phone so maybe looks aren’t as important as features. And features, it does (sorta) have: VCAST, microSD expansion up to 4GB, stereo Bluetooth, VZ Navigator, and a 1.3-megapixel camera. The phone was originally floated as the UTStarcom TXT8010 back in April, so you may remember it if you’re into various FCC filings and other exciting endeavors like that. Price? Not sure yet. Availability? Wal-Mart on August 8th and Best Buy on September 28th. I’m guessing it’ll be priced at around $100 or so. That’s just me, though. → Read More
YAY! The long awaited, much promised, never delivered Delicious 2.0 will launch in the next few minutes, just like they promised again last week. The new Delicious is just like the old Delicious, except for the way it looks. They’re also promising that it will be “faster, easier to learn,” and “hopefully more desirable.” Speed: We’ve moved to a new infrastructure that makes every page faster. This new platform will enable us to keep up with traffic growth while ensuring Delicious is responsive and reliable. You may not have noticed, but the old backend was getting creaky under the load of five million users. Search: We’ve completely overhauled our search engine to make it faster and more powerful. Searches used to take ages to return results; now they’re very quick. The new search engine is also smarter, and more social: you can search within one of your tags, another public user’s bookmarks, or your social network. Now it’s easier to take advantage of the expertise and interests of your friends, not to mention the Delicious community at large. Design: Finally, we’ve updated the user interface to improve usability and add a few often-requested features (such as selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks). Our goal has been to keep the new design similar in spirit to the old one, so all of you veterans should be able to jump in without any confusion. At the same time, we’re hoping that newcomers to Delicious will find it easier to learn. Users will need to log into their accounts and get a new browser cookie. Honestly, I rarely visit Delicious any more, the Firefox plugin is so good that actually visiting the site isn’t necessary. So all I’m really hoping for here is a stable service. If there are glitches, I hope they fix them quickly. As I said in our previous posts, it’s too bad Delicious 2.0 couldn’t launch before founder Joshua Schachter left the company in frustration. I called Schachter to ask him what he has to say about the new launch. His response – “Good luck. I hope it goes well.” CrunchBase Information Yahoo! delicious Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
For several years, Sun CEO, Jonathan Schwartz has lobbied the SEC to allow disclosure of financial information through corporate blogs. In a landmark announcement, it seems that Mr. Schwartz may indeed get his wish, and with it, a historical decision that could break the age-old shackles that bound businesses to traditional media and distribution channels in order to satisfy full disclosure. In a speech yesterday, SEC special counsel Kim McManus outlined new guidance the SEC is about to give companies on when they can use their Websites, including blogs, to disclose material information. What this means is that we can now finally kill the press release, at least in its current form (more on that below). The IR Web Report explains, “UNDER certain circumstances, companies can rely on their websites and blogs to meet the public disclosure requirements under Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure), according to new guidance unanimously approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission today.” Chairman Christopher Cox opened up the discussion by recognizing that the Web has matured providing a big step forward for investors, “Ongoing technological advances in electronic communications have increased both the market’s and investors’ demand for more timely company disclosure and the ability for companies to capture, process and disseminate this information to market participants.” The SEC outlines boundaries for sharing information as well as holding companies and their employees liable for the information that they post on blogs and discussion forums. Regulation FD and Social Media The SEC is taking the right steps to embrace the new tools and services that reach people in addition to wire services. With the recognition of blogs as a viable form of disclosure, under certain circumstances of course, the SEC is officially recognizing Social Media and in a sense, socializing the rules associated with Reg FD. Perhaps, the most significant change stemming from the new SEC guidance is that Web-based disclosure does not have to appear in a format comparable to paper-based information, unless the Commission’s rules explicitly require it. This is music to my ears as it finally opens the door for the Social Media Release. For a few years, Todd Defren, Chris Heuer, and I have not only defended and charted the opportunity for Social Media Releases (SMRs), but also fielded emotionally-charged questions from the financial and IR communities asking about whether or not an SMR would ever meet disclosure requirements for Reg FD, → Read More
Welcome to the exciting world of inexpensive headphones! JVC has a new contender in the “Gumy Air” line (they spelled “Gummy” wrong, ROFL!) that promises to “set a new standard for comfort in the ear bud category” thanks to its silicon rubber air-cushioned ear doodads. The headphones cost about $15 and appear to be aimed at those of you who have third-generation iPod Nanos and Shuffles, as they’re all available in the same seven colors as the aforementioned music players. → Read More
I’m a big fan of negative gestures, something I’ve talked about over a long period of time. What I mean by that is the power that can be derived from not saying something, not liking something, not tipping a hat to something, etc. I’ve used (jokingly with a smidgen of truth) the John Dvorak test, where if John comes out strongly against something (blogging, podcasting, Twitter) it’s likely a buy signal. Factor in that John is a serial instigator whose editorial model is to stretch the truth to elucidate a more fundamental underlying truth. This also pays well historically for John. But nonetheless Dvorak is one of my most reliable negative signals. To reiterate for those who haven’t followed my theories on attention and gestures, negative nodes produce a much greater opportunity for ruling out memes and threads of discussion than most modern aggregators, which use last-in first-out UIs or explicit voting to push things up the priority list. Negative thought leaders wipe out large swaths of nonsense across many domains. Aggregating those negative gesturers would further improve efficiency, by triangulating various attitudes into a synthetic consensus. The Gillmor Gang is such a mechanism. These supernodes are fairly static in their evolution, as it takes time to acquire and maintain some sense of stability among these volatile creatures. Witness how difficult it is to keep Arrington amused long enough to get into an enterprise discussion, or Calacanis engaged enough to have him not retire from yet another sector of new media. The only option to increase the flow of negative nodes into the system is to move vertically, or deeper into the disciplines that underly the vendor and startup sports that attract most of the raw attention. It is here that the Open Web Foundation appears on the scene, a honeypot for attracting negative gesturers. The brainchild of David Recordon and emergent standards artists such as Chris Messina, the group seems to have a strategy of reusing lessons learned in the emergence of OpenID and OAuth as a series of best practices to inform a wider range of ad hoc open standards. In doing so, it has attracted the vitriol of Dare Obasanjo, the brilliant Microsoft engineer who has gone from being the most outspoken Redmond blogger to the most partisan one. Obasanjo retired from the blogosphere some months ago, seemingly frustrated with the Vallywaggish nature of the conversation at → Read More
I’ll be honest. I’ve never met anyone in real life who subscribes to DISH Network, but I’m fairly convinced that the company does exist and probably turns a profit. If you happen to be a DISH subscriber and you have one of the HD packages, then you, my friend, are in for what appears to be some sort of treat. Tomorrow, DISH will start rolling out a big, fat update to all of its MPEG-4 HD DVR boxes. The update will allow the boxes to display high definition content in glorious 1080p resolution. Says DISH, “By early August, all DISH Network customers with MPEG-4 HD DVR receivers will have the only set-top boxes in the nation enabled to display 1080p content, allowing them to maximize the full potential of their 1080p-compatible HDTV sets.” So if you’re really into HD, this might get you a little boner-y. The update is set to dovetail with DISH’s TurboHD service, which is an “all-HD suite of programming packages” and the recent launch of the company’s Echo XI satellite. DISH currently offers 114 national HD channels and plans to have 150 by year’s end. → Read More
So this guy, djmocap, has created a new interface for the Traktor DJ application. The video is only a proof of concept, so don’t expect how-to directions for a little while. The song totally reminds me of Ridge Racer 4. You know, that last good Ridge Racer, for the original PlayStation. → Read More
I think it’s safe to say that iPhone OS 2.0 is far from perfect and anyone saying otherwise must be on Apple’s payroll. Other than the horrendous battery life (on the iP3G), what else do we all hate about the OS? The inability to run background apps! Sure, Apple’s argument against a Windows Mobile-like task manager makes perfect sense, but the ability to run background apps is something we’ve all grown accustomed to and it would be the ‘killer app’ as they say around these parts, right? Read More Oh, and is anyone’s white iP3G starting to crack? → Read More
The demo for Madden 09 is now—or will be in the next few hours—available on Xbox Live. (PS3 owners: a demo is salted to appear on PSN around the same time.) Go crazy, football fans, playing the same game you’ve been playing for the past 20 years. That’s two NFL stories in as many days. Clearly something has gone wrong here. → Read More
By now you’ve probably heard and re-heard the rumor that Apple is considering dumping Intel’s chipset (not the processor, mind you) for its next line of laptops. Now there’s reasonable assertions out there that Apple may well go with an nVidia-developed chipset. That’s Ryan Shrout’s (of PC Perspective fame) prediction, and it’s not as far-fetched when you spend a minute thinking about it. Assuming Apple no longer wants to deal with Intel, it has two choices: it could go with a chipset developed by ATi (AMD), or one by nVidia. The problem with choosing an ATi chipset, says Shrout, is its lack of a “top-shelf chipset.” In less diplomatic terms, ATi’s chipsets stink on ice. NVidia, on the other hand, with its MCP79 line, has quite the opposite. In fact, an nVidia executive called out Intel, saying it would open a can of “whoop ass” re: its (Intel’s) shoddy chipset performance. (Why are nVidia execs are using mid-90s catch phrases to attack the competition?) Then there’s the obvious graphics performance improvements you can expect with the nVidia chipset. Anyone with a MacBook knows how lowly their gaming performance is, games like World of Warcraft notwithstanding. via AppleInsider → Read More
Remember the great Blu-ray versus HD DVD debate of 2008? When Blu-ray finally won, some claimed that it didn’t really matter, as streaming and/or downloadable online video would soon be the reining champion of the HD movie marketplace. Whatever your opinion, it appears that LG is attempting to head things off at the pass with the introduction of the LG BD300 Blu-ray player with built-in Netflix streaming. Excelsior! It’ll be available this fall, will play Blu-ray discs and up-convert standard DVDs to 1080p, and stream 12,000+ Netflix titles straight to the box via the magic of the interconnected network of computers (In-ter-net). → Read More
Kleiner Perkins is adding to its iFund portfolio of iPhone-focused startups. It’s latest investment is a series A round in stealth gaming company ngmoco. Kleiner partner Bing Gordon, formerly chief creative officer of Electronic Arts, will join the board (he is also on the board of Zynga, which KP also recently invested in through its regular fund). Ngmoco’s CEO is another EA refugee, Neil Young (not the aging rock star). Young oversaw the development of hit totles at EA such as Lord of the Rings, The Sims 2, and the about-to-be-released Spore. He left EA in June, and wants to both develop its own games and finance and produce games from other developers. He is applying the same studio model that’s worked so well for EA to a new class of mobile games for the iPhone and future devices that have similar characteristics. The iFund is a $100 million fund set aside to invest in startups targeting the iPhone as a platform. Other announced investments include mobile social networking service Pelago (which makes Whrrl) and iControl (which lets you control you home security through your home network and your iPhone). The size of the round was not disclosed. CrunchBase Information iFund ngmoco Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Intel’s Classmate PC, the company’s answer to the XO Laptop, will soon be in the hands of Portugal’s schoolchildren. Some 500,000 laptops will be given to the country’s six-to-10-year-olds as part of a government initiative to improve education. Laptops for educations? Sounds familiar. While the Classmate will no doubt help the youngsters, Portuguese teachers recognize that a laptop isn’t the be all, end all to improve education, saying that the laptops are part of a “holistic” approach to education. Who didn’t learn how to ford a river (and more!) by playing Oregon Trail in their school’s computer lab? At right is Portugal’s greatest export, Cristiano Ronaldo. → Read More
CG’s Doug writes: Remember the great Blu-ray versus HD DVD debate of 2008? When Blu-ray finally won, some claimed that it didn’t really matter, as streaming and/or downloadable online video would soon be the reining champion of the HD movie marketplace. Whatever your opinion, it appears that LG is attempting to head things off at the pass with the introduction of the LG BD300 Blu-ray player with built-in Netflix streaming. Excelsior! It’ll be available this fall, will play Blu-ray discs and up-convert standard DVDs to 1080p, and stream 12,000+ Netflix titles straight to the box via the magic of the interconnected network of computers (In-ter-net). Read more… → Read More
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