A quick recap for those who haven’t been following the mobile browser scene for a while: Skyfire, currently available for Windows Mobile 5/6 and S60, is the only mobile browser supporting full Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Quicktime, and other processor intensive multimedia formats. It pulls this off where others fail through a bit of proxy voodoo; rather than forcing your handset to do all the legwork, a remote computer crunches as much as it can before sending it your way. Skyfire had remained in private beta until recently, just opening its doors last month. With the announcement that the beta was now public, a number of folks around the globe were disappointed to realize that it was only open to US residents. When we asked Skyfire for an international ETA, they responded that it would be coming “in weeks, not months.” While it’s still limited to North America, Skyfire announced this morning that they’ve expanded their turf to include Canada. Starting today, Leslie Nielsen and Celine Dion can enjoy Skyfire in all of its splendor. The rest of Canada can use it too, of course – but come on, share your health care system or something in return. If you’re north of the border and itchin’ to dig into some Hulu on the go, go grab Skyfire here. → Read More
On the game console superhighway, if there is such a thing, the Nintendo Wii just blasted past the Nintendo 64, stuck its left arm out the driver’s side window, and rigidly shot its index finger into the air to let the N64 know that the Wii, in fact, is now number one. Well, not number one, but it passed the Nintendo 64 in lifetime sales. To date, Nintendo has sold almost 35 million Wii consoles. The N64 sold almost 33 million. Here are the Nintendo consoles that are still in front of the Wii. SNES: 49 million NES: 61 million Game Boy Advance: 81 million Nintendo DS: 84 million Game Boy: 118 million Keep in mind that the Nintendo DS number can still grow. [GoNintendo via BGR] → Read More
A high-def picture is nothing without high-quality audio and a French TV station is the world’s first to broadcast a Dolby Digital Plus track over a terrestrial signal. The Dolby system is ideal for limited bandwidth applications like terrestrial broadcasts, as the original Dolby Digital bitstreams are maintained and can still be decoded. The French TV station, TNT, is broadcasting three digital TV stations, including one with the 5.1 audio track, within the 24Mbps limitations and without the efficient Dolby codec, this would not be possible. We just hope that we here in the States will hear the 5.1 audio Dolby tracks sometime soon. Think about it; how sweet would Lost and Monday Night Football be in true Dolby 5.1 surround sound? → Read More
http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtvmusic.com:108884 Weird Al Yankovic |MTV Music I can’t figure this out. This video, from MTV’s video site, has been bleeped by MTV in an effort to hide file sharing system names in Weird Al Yankovic “Don’t Download This Song.” The original lyrics: Once in a while maybe you will feel the urge To break international copyright law By downloading MP3s from file-sharing sites Like Morpheus or Grokster or Limewire or KaZaA UPDATE – Mike Weiss (Former CEO, Morpheus) says: When the video first was released by Weird Al, Morpheus sought permission from Sony Music to distribute the video as a promotion for Weird Al. Unfortunately Sony denied the request. There were no bleeps of the names of Morpheus or the others when the video was first released so it seems a bit odd that Weird Al would censor his own song over a year after release. Also Wilson Sonsini was the first law firm (along with the EEF) representing Morpheus, but Arrington was not on the case. MTV is not owned by the record labels so it also seems odd that MTV would censor the video. But what is interesting, after 7 years and the tens of millions of dollars spent on litigating Morpheus, Kazaa and Grokster to death (not to mention a very odd ruling by the US Supreme Ct), and Limewire’s legal process trailing by a few years–that someone someplace believes that by bleeping out these names will have any effect on the future of the music industry when all the litigation did not. Just weird…but lots of weird stuff goes on behind the scenes. Say it ain’t so, MTV! → Read More
The Bits blog is running a small profile of Opera right now. For the most part it’s fairly boring: Opera is a bit player (we know) that is making inroads in the mobile space with Opera Mini (again, we know). Here’s something you may not know: Apple is blocking Opera from releasing the iPhone version of Opera Mini. So claims Opera’s CEO, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner. While that in and of itself may be news to some of you—it’s news to me, that’s for sure—we already know where Apple’s coming from. Apple has a policy that says, briefly, it won’t allow any application on the App Store that competes with one of its products. Since there’s already Safari on the iPhone we won’t be seeing any other Web browser there, Opera or otherwise. Should we be mad at Apple? How much harm would it do to Apple’s bottom line to give people the choice of staying with Safari or giving Opera a shot? → Read More
The ever-sassy Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is pointing out that Apple is essentially lying like Satan lied to man about the cancer-causing potency of high-fructose corn syrup. In “Bean Counter,” for example, Apple suggests that Microsoft spends more on advertising than on “fixing Vista.” Adrian tells the honest truth: For each $1 of sales Apple spends: – 1.9 cents on Advertising – 3.3 cents on R&D For each $1 of sales Microsoft spends: – 2.6 cents on Advertising – 13.9 cents on R&D → Read More
Holy crap, you could drive a truck under that thing. That’s a nine cell battery for the MSI Wind netbook, which is available on Ebay’s UK site according to a post in the MsiWind.net forums. The item ships from China for a grand total of around £70 – roughly $115 in US dollars. Owners of this gigantic lump are reporting over 6.5 hours of battery life. When I tested the six-cell MSI Wind, I was able to get a little over five hours before having to recharge so I’d almost think you could squeeze 8+ hours out of a nine-cell battery with everything tweaked to maximize power consumption. [via Wired] → Read More
There is something sexy about the Marantz M-CR502 mini audio system. It could be the sleek, executive feel. Or that the amp outputs 25Wx4 channels or 50Wx2 channels with a THD of .10% and a frequency response of 5Hz-20kH. Or it could be that it supports CD playback even though I don’t know the last time I even held a music CD but also sports a USB port for MP3 playback. I’m thinking the sexiness comes from the 450€ ($570 USD) price as I would never spend that much coin on a mini-system but love the thought of doing so. → Read More
Given that we are now in a major economic down-cycle (to put it mildly), raising money for a startup is likely to get a lot harder. But the broad consensus I am picking up on is that private seed investors will become more important for early stage startups. Why? Because if your are an individual with a pot of cash, you are not going to look to the stock market to bring you high returns any more. So there is an argument to say that you could, instead, put it into a potentially high-growth tech startup. You just have to find that company. The other issue is that VC firms will be more interested in later stage companies, plus drive valuations lower, and cherry-picking the startups they want to work with. So Angels will be more important in this current market. To that end, I am starting a regular feature, called “Send me an Angel”. This will profile Angel investors in the tech space and ask them a set of questions about their approach to investing. I won’t be publishing their contact details as a rule, unless they are happy for this to happen. Why? Because these people are being generous enough to lay out for you their investment strategy. They don’t want to get spammed. However, I guess if you can find them the rest is up to you… Our first Angel is Michael Smith, founder of Firebox.com and CEO of MindCandy Official Bio: In his early twenties Michael co-founded the online retailer, firebox.com. The first product firebox designed was The Shot Glass Chess Set, an unusual fusion of chess and alcohol. The bizarre game became an instant best-seller and stimulated the rapid growth of the company. firebox.com recently featured in 13th place on the Sunday Times Fast Track list of fastest growing companies in Britain. Not content with this business success, Michael launched Mind Candy in 2003, a developer on online reality games. Their first project Perplex City began soon after. Perplex City was a hit right up to February 2007 when the lost ‘cube’ was finally found. Michael is now taking Mind Candy in a completely different direction in the form of monsters! The new groundbreaking website allows children to adopt a pet monster on-line and learn and interact with other Moshi Monster owners. 1. What range of investments will you make in a startup? £50-100K? £100-200K, → Read More
There is nothing like a downturn to force a company focus on the bottom line, even a company like Google whose bottom line is still growing at a healthy pace. Continuing its recent efforts to juice advertising revenues wherever it can, Google is changing the way ads are placed on its search results pages.
One of the two biggest determinants of where an ad ranks compared to other ads on the same results page is an ad’s “quality score” (the other is the amount an advertiser bids for a particular keyword). Google is making two tweaks to how the quality score is calculated that could have a major impact on which ads appear at the top of the page.
Lots of factors go into Google’s algorithm that determines the quality score for any given ad, but how many people actually click on the ad is one of the major ones. Ads that appear first, though, get a boost in click-through rates simply by being listed above all the other ads. Google is now taking into account the boost in click-through rates an ad gets by dint of its position, and backing that out from the quality score. That should result in a boost to overall quality scores. → Read More
http://www.g4tv.com/lv3/34590 The upcoming downloadable content (DLC) for Mercenaries 2 has two special characters that you’ll no doubt recognize. Yes, that’s Barack Obama and Sarah Palin running around the game’s battlefields with grenades, machine guns and rocket launchers. In some of the more violent moments, Obama throws a grenade into a tank, killing a man inside and Sarah Palin smashes a man’s face against a console. It’s borderline tasteless. The game currently has a 72 on Metacritic, so you’re not missing much if you skip out on the game. The update containing the characters is scheduled for an early November release. → Read More
Nintendo is looking to cash-in with early holiday sales by launching the DSi in Japan tomorrow, November 1, 2008. The tech giant still hasn’t announced a US release date but at least narrowed the launch down to the summer season. Japanese gamers can pick up their DSi tomorrow though for ¥18,900 ($192 USD). Supposable, Nintendo has shipped 200,000 gaming handhelds to Japanese markets and has plans to ship 100,000 more by November 4. Remember anxious US gamers, if you cure your itch and import one of these gaming systems before the US launch, the new DSi software is region locked so you will have to import the new games too; your standard DS games will work fine however. → Read More
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/video_player/view/default/swf.jhtml Apple, and a lot of you, have already voiced your thoughts on Cali’s Prop 8, and now Mr. Stephen Colbert sounds-off on the controversial subject. → Read More
Sharp Fulltouch SH 931SH (awesome 3.5-inch screen with half-XGA resolution) → Read More
Yoono, the slick browser plugin that serves as both a social network aggregator and media hub, has announced its impending support for Internet Explorer which will be available on November 7th. In conjunction with the the new version, Yoono is also announcing integration with both imeem and MySpace, as well as a powerful new widget that will help the plugin monetize.
Yoono has existed for a few years, but recently overhauled its browser plug last May. Since we last covered Yoono, it has become a featured Firefox 3 Recommended Download, and has grown to a total install base of around 1.8 million users (though only 500k of those are using the new version). → Read More
We don’t see it in our Gmail settings (yet), but Webmonkey reports that Gmail Labs has added a feature for sending text / SMS messages using the built-in Chat functionality.
Turning the option on in your Gmail account settings apparently enables you to send an SMS as soon as you start typing a phone number into Chat’s search box. We haven’t been able to try this out ourselves yet, but Google lists text messaging on its ‘What’s new‘ page (only for US phones, it seems).
Update: the Labs team found a glitch and is pushing the release back a bit (‘probably within two weeks’).
Update 2: make sure you read the open letter the Webmail team at AOL writes to Google. It’s supposed to be funny, I guess, but it’s really not and quite unprofessional to boot. → Read More
Any holiday is an excuse to be a little creative. Today, Halloween, is no exception.
Google, Yahoo, MSN and FriendFeed have special logos (who else?). Microsoft needs a little more inspiration in my opinion:
And Twitter went one step further, allowing users to add special Halloween themed Tweets using special character combinations. Just try >o< or `O` and see what happens. → Read More
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