http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/k5MjofnH2t0OwH5ypw&related=1 Great news. Great, great news. Rick Astley of Rickrolling fame is up for the “Best Act Ever” award at the MTV Europe Music Awards this year. He’ll be competing against U2, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Green Day, and Tokio Hotel. I think we can all agree that not one of those acts can hold a candle to Astley’s “Never… → Read More
Dipity, a timeline-based lifestreaming aggregator, has launched its 2.0 release to the public. The new release includes a variety of new social features that have turned Dipity into a viable alternative to FriendFeed and other lifestreaming services, as well as a replacement for standard RSS readers.
Dipity revolves around powerful timelines built in AJAX, which intuitively display content… → Read More
The vast majority of TV shows produced over the last few years have been filmed in high definition. Even if the channel didn’t have a HD station at the time, the show was still probably shot in HD. So where are all the Blu-ray releases of these shows? Think about it. The show was shot in HD, Blu-ray can hold a crap-ton of these episodes all on one disc and the Blu-ray format could use the… → Read More
Japan’s NICT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) is also present at CEATEC 2008 and two of their robots caught my eye, apparently integral elements of their “CareBots Project”. The one you see on the left in the picture above is called Infanoid and is a humanoid that is supposed to resemble a 3-4 year old child (seriously). Infanoid features a number… → Read More
So you could bid on this converted-to-electric Delorean like everyone else or you could use the Buy-It-Now option, which will get you – wait for it – a free Flux Capacitor. The current bidding is at around $16,000 and the Buy-It-Now price is set at $100,000. Keep in mind, though, that the Flux Capacitor allows you to time travel. The car itself is powered by 13 batteries running at 12-volts… → Read More
[svgallery name="tube"] Here are some initial shots of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic aka the Tube aka the first Symbian S60 touchscreen phone. The Tube is here, folks, and now it’s called the 5800 XpressMusic… clever marketing on Nokia’s part because they don’t want to draw direct comparisons to the iPhone and the XpressMusic line is quite popular in the low end, at least in the U.S. → Read More
It’s all rumor at this point, but the Pearl 8220 is said to be hitting T-Mobile stores on the 15th and the pricing is as follows: T-Mobile BlackBerry Pearl 8220 Pricing * New Activation 2 Year Contract $149.99 (after $50 MIR) * New Activation 1 Year Contract $199.99 (after $50 MIR) * Full Upgrade 2 Year Contract $167.99 (after $50 MIR) * Full Upgrade 1 Year Contract $217.99 (after $50 MIR) *… → Read More
This never-ending tango is finally over. Take-Two will be a lone wolf for the foreseeable future. “Take-Two’s Board of Directors and management have a clear mandate from stockholders to maximize value,” said Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of the Board of Take-Two. “We are strongly positioned creatively, financially and competitively to benefit from the opportunities we see in the fastest… → Read More
http://blip.tv/play/ih_Q1SuJ5FQ At the CEATEC 2008, Panasonic drew a huge crowd with its so-called EZ Touch Remote, a remote control that consists of two touchpads separated by a small keyboard. The device superimposes an almost screen-size image of itself on the TV. Users can choose and press buttons by keeping their eyes on the TV, following a “virtual thumb” on the screen. → Read More
As the video right up there shows, predictive search works just swell on the T-Mobile G1. As you enter your search term—here, Google uses safe searches like “flowers” and “sushi chicago” to demonstrate its inherent awesomeness—the search engine generates a list of possibly relavent terms. That way, all you have to do is enter the first few letters of a term—flo—and… → Read More
For startups without a warchest full of cash, times are about to get very tough. The latest to hit the deadpool is Eyespot, which announced its demise not with a press release, but with a Twitter from co-founder David Dudas stating simply:
Eyespot has shut down. Lots of great peeps available: engr, product mgmt, HR, content, bizdev, account mgmt. Let me know if u need anyone.
Eyespot raised … → Read More
http://blip.tv/play/ih_Q1DOJ5FQ At this year’s CEATEC, Little Seiko, the kindergarten girl robot, is the unbeatable fan favorite, but NTT Docomo‘s (Japan’s biggest telecommunications company) detachable handset is surely one of the top 5 products of the exhibition. A lot of attendees queued 35 minutes to try the Fujitsu cell phone out themselves, including me. And let me tell… → Read More
There’s a quick little piece on multitouch technology on Wired right now, and it questions the conventional wisdom that says multitouch technology will do to laptops what it’s done to cellphones. (That is, multitouch, as seen on the iPhone, is the hot, new input mechanism that everyone wants to date.) “Questions”? Yes, not everyone is so sure that multitouch will make any sort of… → Read More
The new 5800 doesn’t look much like a tube but it is quite svelte. It’s smaller than the iPhone and even most touchscreen phones we’ve seen in a while. It’s most like the Palm Treo Pro in terms of size but it’s quite light. → Read More
Dell’s running a 25% off deal for some of its monitors selling out of the small business unit. There’s a 20-inch for $186.75, a 24-inch for $314.25, and another 24-inch for $516.75 after using coupon code 1GV?QX5MT1Q?M4 at checkout. The eligible monitors are the 20-inch E207WFP, the 24-inch E248WFP, and the 24-inch UltraSharp 2408WFP. Not too shabby if you’re in the market for a new… → Read More
Nokia announced their Comes With Music program last month, a media download offering with backing from Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, EMI, and Universal Music Group. The system, along with the Nokia Music Store, has about 5 million tracks currently available and Nokia has announced the Music PC client for easy downloads. You can drag CDs into the application for immediate ripping. Comes With Music… → Read More
Acer has a little thing for Ferrari-branded PC items and its latest product should look great on poser’s desks everywhere. The 22-inch F-22Bid LCD monitor rocks a 22,000:1 contrast ratio with a brightness 300cd/m, a 2ms response time, all with a WSXGA resolution of 1,680 x 1,050. Now, if you really want to look like a tool and own one of these, Acer is only producing 500 units so you had… → Read More
At CEATEC 2008, Fujisoft for the first time presented their “Ulexit” video player for embedded devices. The company will use its technology for “Minna-no (everybody’s) Theater Wii”, a video-on-demand service for the Nintendo Wii. A Fujisoft representative told me the service goes online in December 2008 in Japan. Asked whether Everybody’s Theater Wii will ever… → Read More
Reuters is reporting that text messaging may have had something to do with a recent train crash in California that killed 25 and injured 135. Cell phone records show that the train’s conductor received a text message at 4:21:03 PM, followed by the crash at 4:22:23 PM. The idea is that he got the text message, looked down to read it, and missed the trackside signal. The commuter train then… → Read More
A new micromessaging client for the iPhone suggests we are in for another rapid development cycle in the enterprise social media space. LaTwit may be a silly name, but Tom Blankenship, the developer of the program, listened to Leo Laporte’s conversation with Identi.ca/Laconica author Evan Prodromou and saw an opportunity. Laconica servers including Prodromou’s Identi.ca and… → Read More
It’s the third of five days at CEATEC 2008, Asia’s biggest exhibition for consumer electronics (think Asia’s CES), and I must say it’s better than last year. Here are my impressions of the exhibition: 1) The level of internationalization at CEATEC stands at an estimated 5%. I am seriously wondering how foreign journalists are able to understand what is actually being… → Read More
Just as expected, Nokia today finally pulled back the curtains on the 5800 XpressMusic device. After nearly six months of rumors, leaks, and Dark Knight cameos, the pretty little touchscreen device once known only as the “Tube” has been made official. Coming sometime in Q4 2008, the 5800 will be the first handset to rock Nokia’s much anticipated S60 5th Edition platform and the… → Read More
Fossett’s belongings were found over the weekend and now the wreckage of his plane was just located. WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Rescue crews have found the wreckage of a small plane that appears to be the aircraft piloted by millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday. His plane has been missing for 13 months tomorrow and the world might… → Read More
The Apple MacBook Pro rumor mill keeps churning out tasty ‘real pics’ with another MacBook Pro photo and accompanying web advertisement. We have to be honest though, these look the most believable yet. The laptop in question sports an iPhone-ish top lid with the Pro’s trademark aluminum interior. There isn’t anything crazy and out of place like a touchscreen touchpad… → Read More
Who needs a Nintendo Wii when you’ve got an iPhone? The Social Gaming Network, which released a Wii-like golfing game for the iPhone two weeks ago, has now followed up with a bowling game. As with iGolf (which has already been downloaded more than 900,000 times), iBowl uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to detect a player’s swing. You can twist your wrist to give the ball spin or direct it to the… → Read More
The first Android-powered handset’s launch is coming soon, but some lucky folks already have their dirty mitts on the complete package. The picture set doesn’t reveal anything spectacular including a lame carrying, but if you’re the type that gets giddy with pre-release photos, there is enough here to get you through this morning. The rest of us can wait until October 22 for the… → Read More
Spotify, founded by the former Tradedoubler team, is understood to have raised €15.3m from Northzone Venture Partners at a monster €71.6m pre-money valuation. The service is still in private beta. Northzone themselves have declined to comment, but Creandum, another of Sweden’s top VCs, is also understood to have taken part in the funding round. Spotif have released no statement but they… → Read More
The liquidity drought for venture-backed startups, which was already declared to be a crisis in the second quarter when not a single VC-backed IPO went out, continued in the third quarter.
For the first three quarters of the year combined, IPOs brought in only $470 million and M&A activity totaled $11.3 billion, a steep decline from prior years (see chart). Don’t expect the situation to get… → Read More
Woot has a decent deal this morning. It’s not a scamper and find your wallet type-dealio, but if you’ve been looking for a great, inexpensive home theater projector, you might want to meander over and grab your credit card. Quick note though, this 720p Planar projector only has 900 lumens, so you better have a dark room as it isn’t bright enough to counter ambient light. → Read More
Plenty of people have downloaded Spore using BitTorrent, but EA doesn’t seem too concerned. Because on Earth 2, where EA is apparently based, people downloading torrents of the game doesn’t necessarily mean that the game is being downloaded. Nope, that makes no sense to us, either. Says an EA rep: Stepping aside from the whole issue of DRM, people need to recognize that every… → Read More
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Berlin, Germany
San Francisco
