With the economy as turbulent as it is, most people are trying to save a few bucks whatever way they can. CabEasy, a 1-man startup that launched earlier this month, is looking to help people save some cash on their Taxi rides. The site allows people to post a public listing of their upcoming taxi travel plans, and pair up with someone else who is traveling a similar route to split the ride.
The concept is very similar to Hitchsters, a startup that helps pair up travelers so that they can share a limo on the way to the airport for a fraction of the cost they would normally pay. Hitchsters has plans to expand beyond airport travelers (including events like ball games), but at this point these options aren’t available. And, unlike CabEasy, Hitchsters only offers support for a few cities. → Read More
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2345579&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1 This video demonstrates some techniques UW and Adobe are working on for deep analysis, object recognition, and embedding of metadata within video. It looks really interesting, and although at the moment it all looks a bit academic and probably requires a ton of processing time, but remember, that’s how Photosynth started and now it’s totally usable and has a growing community. [via Reddit] → Read More
[image credit: Farriella for the NY Daily News] I was hoping we’d make it through this Black Friday without one of these incidents, but unfortunately it’s happened again: If you haven’t heard already, a worker at a Long Island Wal-Mart was crushed underneath the feet of hundreds of shoppers while trying to hold back the crowd. Shopping events are notoriously dangerous in this way, but I’d hoped people would have learned by now to be more careful, or at least help the poor man up. Instead, they thronged over and around him and he was pronounced dead at the hospital this morning. Shocking. Our condolences to the man’s family and friends. → Read More
Although I like to flatter myself that my personal blog has the top Google result for “nes mp3 themes” and related searches, it’s folks like VGMusic and OC Remix that have the selection and newer tracks that gamers crave (if they crave game themes at all). Case in point: Capcom didn’t come to me when they wanted to freely distribute the soundtrack for the new (and from what I hear, awesome) Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix. There are a lot of tracks (torrent here) and they’re pretty much what you expect. Crazy-ass fan-made video game music. My only question is, how can something be Super, Turbo, and a Remix at the same time? That way lies madness. [sprite rip from here, and yes a 200kb image was absolutely necessary for this post] → Read More
I’ve been cruising around my neighborhood in the updated Street View today and have already found a few interesting items. For instance, as you see above, the stretch of northbound I-5 above Eastlake is now a terrifying corridor of colorful static. I haven’t driven that stretch in a few weeks so I guess it’s possible, but I should have noticed it when I was out there at the Lo-Fi last Saturday. What other glitches mar the face of the Emerald City? → Read More
Image credit: Moddage Images of Jasper, the new (manufactured Oct 23) Xbox 360 mobo, show some neat features that haven’t been announced or confirmed by Microsoft. Among them are the run of the mill 150W power supply (lower power consumption means lower power bills for you, natch), a GPU with a smaller footprint, and 256MB of internal storage via a flash chip. → Read More
The Reg has an uncharacteristically long article up today concerning the history of snipers and their equipment. The tools of the trade have been changing since the first long-range rifles were truly deployed in WWII, and sniping has increased in effectiveness and importance as technology has made weapons more lethal and reduced the size of engagement parties. Counter-Strike and Call of Duty players will be familiar with the models mentioned (The Arctic Warfare Magnum or “AWP” from CS for instance), but there’s interesting context and other considerations as well — business concerns, technical problems with caliber, etc. DARPA has its fingers in this pie, of course, and are researching “smart” but still traditionally fired projectiles which could increase the range of a rifle to far beyond the generally agreed-upon maximum of about 1500 meters. Finally, the finned bullets of Sci-Fi book covers will come to pass! → Read More
The holiday season is officially in full swing, and Santa is prepping for his big night by offering phone calls to anyone who may need a little extra motivation to stay good through the end of the year (or who would just love to hear from the big man himself). To request a call, visit ChristmasDialer.com, where you’ll be able to choose from three possible voice greetings that can be directed towards any phone number.
The first call is free, while subsequent requests cost around a dollar each (depending on how many you buy at a time). Paid calls can also be made to international numbers, and can be scheduled to go out at a specified time. The site is based on the technology behind PrankDialer, and could probably be recreated fairly easily using Twilio, an API for phones that we covered last week. → Read More
Google has rolled out an update to Google Maps, and has expanded Street View to include many new locations including my home town of Seattle! That makes it exciting to me, and obviously it’s exciting for everyone else on the internet because now there are miles and miles of new streets to investigate for hilarity, strange occurrences, and of course yourself. I’ve already scoured half of my routine locations looking for that familiar face, but no dice. The new interface works okay; you drop “Peg-man” wherever you want to be and it puts you directly into street view. You can drag him and it provides a preview and droppable areas. Problem is, if you scroll away in the little corner map, there’s no way to grab Peg-man again; you have to scroll back and pick him up or expand the map again. I expect we’ll be seeing a few tweaks in the coming weeks. Update: Oops, Seattle was added a couple weeks ago. Well, if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s new to you! → Read More
Target sure loves CrunchGear and we love them for throwing down two Peek e-mail devices (review) for us to giveaway. Now don’t go scoffing about just because it’s not some hotsy-totsy-hotdoggin-showboatin gadget. Not everyone has access to e-mail on their phone and chances are you know some of them. Here’s your chance to hook them up for the upcoming holidays or feel free to treat yourself. How can you win? → Read More
Microsoft lined up some great deals for Live Cashback users today. But users are reporting that the site has been down much of the morning, and more than half of my attempts to connect are timing out. Given the high volume of ecommerce sales that take place today, that’s not good.
It’s also not so great for Microsoft’s expanding cloud computing efforts. If Microsoft can’t keep their own sites live on heavy traffic days, they can’t expect other companies to have faith in them as a platform either.
Live Cashback first launched in May 2008 to give users a refund on purchases. → Read More
The fancy LED Apple display is shipping now. Right now it only works when connected to a MacBook or MacBook Pro or MacBook Air as a result of it using the new mini DisplayPort interface. Ars has one of those “unboxing” deals that the kids love so much these days, alongside its first impressions of the device. Apple wants $899 for the display, which is just shy of Absolutely Insane for a 24-inch monitor. via Cult of Mac → Read More
As promised, Newegg.com has pulled out many of the stops to deliver unto you several Black Friday deals. No, I take that back. They’re not just deals, but ULTRA-SECRET deals. So ultra-secret, in fact, that I’m posting them here for y’all to see. Highlights include: • 4GB (2x2GB) of Corsair DDR 2 800 RAM for $49.9919.99 with rebate! That’s hot. • 19-inch Asus widescreen LCD for $129.99 • 1TB Western Digital 1TB hard drive for $94.99 • Some professional gaming keyboard for $39.99 Also, and completely unrelated to anything tech, Allposters.com has 20 percent off everything (with free shipping, too) this weekend. I’m thinking of getting this British Empire map because, well, For England. → Read More
Carl Icahn bought up another 6.8 million shares of Yahoo earlier this week, bringing his total holdings to 75.6 million shares (just north of 5 percent). He paid just under $10 a share, or about a third of what he paid last May when he started building the bulk of his position.
Of course, now he controls three seats on Yahoo’s board, including the one he occupies. So he is personally involved in the search for a new CEO to replace Jerry Yang, and he knows the stock will probably react favorably to the announcement of any new leadership. Why not buy now before the news when the stock is hitting rock bottom? He is obviously in the stock for the long haul now. → Read More
I’ve been using an Android G1 phone for more than a month now on a daily basis, but I still haven’t given up my iPhone. The more I use them both, the more that I realize my iPhone is a Mac and my Android is a PC. That is not necessarily a bad thing—except for when my Android crashes (which is a lot). Okay, it does not actually crash so much as it freezes up, forcing me to wait until it figures things out. Which it usually does. Except that one time when I plugged it into the wrong mini-USB charger and it gave me the screen of death: a white danger triangle with a cell phone flat on its back next to it. (Sorry for the fuzzy picture, I took it with my iPhone). Whose fault was that crash? I’m sure it was mine. But believe me, I’m equally careless with my iPhone. It’s just a lot more stable. That’s kind of what you’d expect since Apple goes to such lengths to control every aspect of the device, including the kinds of apps that can run on it. Android apps also have to go through a vetting process, but it does not seem to be as strict as Apple’s. Read more… → Read More
Princeton Japan has a NAS for you torrent freaks. The DN-503AH-PDC (wow) ships with 5TB storage capacity that support RAID 0/1/5/6 configurations. All the standard NAS features are present, including 10/1000 Ethernet and hot-swappable HDDs. The NAS has a December Japanese launch slated but hopefully U.S. downloaders will get a chance to fill it as well. → Read More
A fan of extremely simple, straight-forward web services? Then you probably know about funny pet-projects like DownForEveryoneOrJustMe or IsTwitterDown (variations apply). Here’s another one for your bookmarking pleasure that won’t make you go back to the website every time:
NotifyMeWhenItsUp lets you enter any website or service and sends you an e-mail notification when it’s back up (and only when it was effectively down). Simple, clean, obvious, free, and as far as I can tell it works like a charm too.
Update: I just got an e-mail a couple of minutes after publishing from one Milov Patel claiming that the service is a complete rip-off of a website called DingIt’sUp.com that was scheduled for launch tomorrow (placeholder for now). The screenshots sure look alike, but I have no way of knowing who stole from whom, or if this is merely a coincidence.
Either way, up to you to check up and compare both services tomorrow if you’re interested.
Update 2: all is well on the playground now, Sahil and Milov are on good terms again. Good. → Read More
Right on time for Thanksgiving day, µTorrent – client of choice for many BitTorrent users – has released a Mac version in beta, after a rudimentary alpha release was leaked a couple of months ago (on a BitTorrent tracker, at that). The lightweight µTorrent client for Windows was first publicly released in September 2005, and was acquired by BitTorrent in 2006, who continued development on the application and promised to release a Mac version. It has now arrived, but as Torrentfreak points out, the Mac release only runs on Leopard/Intel Macs at the moment and may still contain serious bugs. UPDATE Nicholas here, CG’s resident pirate. Yeah, this beta, while neat and everything, isn’t usable on private BitTorrent trackers yet like What.cd and HDBits. So unless you’re one of those people who think BitTorrent = The Pirate Bay this release is fairly limited. Given the pedigree of the µTorrent name, however, private sites are likely to approve its use within a reasonable amount of time. (Unlike Transmission, the Mac’s traditional lightweight BitTorrent client, which has a history of misreporting stats and being generally unreliable; it’s garbage, so instead use Vuze even though it requires a terabyte of RAM to work properly.) I’ll let y’all know when I start seeing µTorrent for Mac usable on “real” BiTorrent sites. Thank you, and may God bless America. Read more… → Read More
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