It will cost $17.5 billion, be run by private companies and track every move we make on the internet, every call, text message and every transaction. Yes, this is the UK government proposal to manage and run a communications database that will make Chinese attempts to control and monitor its citizens look like “light touch” regulation. The only difference with one-party states like China (apart from the summary trial and execution) is that the government claims that it will not look at the content on our every electronic interaction, but merely at the points of entry. The “pings”, if you like. But of course, by building up a database about our every electronic movement, this will create enough “content” to create a pattern of recognition about our movements. → Read More
Why not? USB drives come in a variety of flavors and designs so it only makes sense that the world has kissing drives. There isn’t much to these half octopus/half hippo drives by AData. They come in a 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB flavors and could make a great valentines day gift if your lady friend is into this type of cuddle, geeky thing → Read More
A real pinball game? In your own home? Not since “My Two Dads” has such a wondrous idea been attempted! It was My Two Dads, right? They had a pinball machine, didn’t they? → Read More
Stock charts and data are the lifeblood of all investing sites, even in these slumping times. Most major media sites have investing sections powered by stock data that they license for a pretty penny. San Francisco startup Wikinvest is making inroads as a stock data provider for media Websites. Its embeddable, annotatable charts now grace the stock pages of USAToday. Beginning next week, they will also power the stock charts on Forbes.com, replacing its current stock data provider, INVESTools. (On USAToday, the Wikinvest charts are supplementing the main charts).
Each stock page on USAToday also includes community analysis and links to related concepts from Wikinvest as well. Wikinvest charts can be annotated with news stories and embedded elsewhere. For instance here is a chart from USAToday’s Google stock page: → Read More
Robert “I like yogurt” Scoble interviewed Steve Jobs’ yogurt purveyor, asking him if the wizened CEO had been in lately. The answer? Yes. So Steve is well enough to eat yogurt. Smack 32 cents onto Apple’s stock price.
This frenzied speculation about Jobs is quite sad indeed. As we all know, Jobs is the driving force behind Apple’s innovation but, last time I checked, Apple has 32,000 employees all dedicated to making the products we love. Just because he might not show up this year is no cause for alarm. Heck, based on this +5 Turkleneck of CEO Charisma Correlation Effect, you’d expect Windows 7 to suck with the figurehead Bill Gates out of the picture. Apparently it doesn’t because even I’m interested in Windows 7. → Read More
Syke Energy Drink is looking for viral ads and Paul Robertson has whipped up a doozy. See how many of your favorite old school video games you can find referenced in the video. It’s almost nostalgia overload — which can’t be a bad thing. → Read More
It seems that a random bug is affecting a bunch, if not all, 30GB Zunes. Real early this morning, a bunch of Zune 30s just stopped working. No official word from Redmond on this one yet but we might have a gadget Y2K going on here. → Read More
Deloitte recently released the results of its VC Indicator Survey (PDF), conducted among Israeli VCs this past month. The complied results are so pessimistic they paint a warm and fuzzy aura around Sequoia’s Doom & Gloom presentation.
Participated by approximately 80 Israeli venture capitalists, the survey predicts 2009 will be an extremely painful year for the Israeli startup industry in most every respect.
Here are some of the highlights: → Read More
Nokia, the world’s most ubiquitous cell phone company, is showing off the new 6208c phone in China, which sports a pen for easy input of Chinese characters. → Read More
Can you name Google’s top ten products? If you look at how Quantcast ranks Google’s subdomains, you can get a sense of which Google products are the most popular, since they each have their own subdomain. Google’s main search engine tops the list with an estimated 136.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. Then comes Google Maps (36 million), Image Search (31.7 million), and Gmail (10.5 million). Google Docs, Sites, and Knol are still too small to make the top-ten, but are all showing decent growth.
YouTube and Orkut are not included below because they are on their own domains, but YouTube would be second with 70 million unique visitors. Orkut is not popular in the U.S., so it would not be a factor in this particular list. And I took out sorry.google.com, the domain Google uses to try to catch bots and spyware. It would have ranked No. 8. → Read More
Angelsoft, a New York based company that develops a platform for connecting early-stage investors and entrepreneurs and managing investment deal flow, has released a significant update to its software and is finally opening up its network to VCs next to angel investors.
When the company released version 3.0 last September, the upgrade was centered more about making it easier for early-stage investors to sift through entrepreneur applications, search and rate them, etc.
The new version is called Angelsoft 3.4 and comes with 317 updates (release notes), most of them bug fixes, but also introduces a number of features including a nifty ‘Tripit’ style one that enables users to e-mail in deals to a default e-mail address. → Read More
I knew someone would eventually nail the perfect service for updating Twitter. That day has come, with the launch of Twoogie, where you can send and view tweets in true Doogie Howser, M.D. style on an IBM PS/2 screen.
Just add your username behind the URL to view your Twitter stream the old school way (e.g. TechCrunch). Note that for some reason – could be intentional – it doesn’t always work straight away. To update, you’ll need to log in with your Twitter credentials, so that’s entirely up to you. → Read More
YouTube is posting their year end review of the top videos, measured by ratings, favorites and number of comments.
Last year they posted just 10 videos. This year, 24. They’ll be posting one per hour all day today and then summarize them at midnight when everyone will presumably find them much funnier because they’ve been drinking for hours (hopefully not alone watching the Big Apple fall live on Hulu).
Make your guesses on which videos will be included. I’ve started things off with the one above, which I imagine is very likely to be included. → Read More
The ongoing litigation between Mob Wars creator David Maestri and SGN is over. On December 16 the two sides reached a settlement. The Mob Wars game goes to Maestri, but SGN will have rights to create similar style games itself. SGN also received an undisclosed financial settlement.
The history of this powerful little app is dramatic. It was first created by Maestri while still employed at SGN’s former iteration, FreeWebs, under the pseudonym Jason Gilbert. That alone is evidence that the game actually belonged to his employer. Maestri left SGN in February 2008, and SGN sued Maestri for control over the game. For more background, see here.
Mob Wars, which is a game that lets players act as criminals and rise through the mob ranks by committing crimes, fighting other players, etc., brings in a lot of money. Players use real currency to buy weapons and other virtual goods on the site. Some estimates suggest revenue may have peaked at $1 million/month, and there are nearly 2.5 million active users of the application on Facebook today.
It has also spawned a number of copycats, including Zynga’s Mafia Wars, with 2.7 million active users. → Read More
Tech-savvy British comedy The IT Crowd recently had a little parody of social networks on it and it’s pretty good times. I’ve always liked the show but I’m more impressed by the people who make it being tapped into actual net trends; you can see currently popular memes and artists on the show like a Guy Fawkes mask, Fair Use posters, Think Geek gadgets, and in this episode Jen is even using an Eee PC. I guarantee that’s the only notelet you’ll see on TV this year, everyone is still using 24-style Alienware 19″ megalaptops. → Read More
I have to say, at first I thought these things were for testing if your coffee is too weak. But no, apparently the greater scourge is coffee falsely advertised as decaffeinated. Is this really a major problem? I think you can generally tell decaf coffee because it just doesn’t taste as good.
The product photo is also a little misleading, since the instructions caution you to not allow the strips to come in contact with whatever you’re drinking. I guess the description should be more like “Decaf tester and coffee poison.” → Read More
We’ve got this from three independent sources close to Apple: expect a large screen iPod touch device to be released in the Fall of ’09, with a 7 or 9 inch screen. Prototypes have been seen and handled by one of our sources, and Apple is talking to OEMs in Asia now about mass production.
Apple has been experimenting internally with large form tablet devices for years, one source says, but there was concern that users wouldn’t like the device. The difference now is the iTunes app store, which has thousands of games and other applications that are perfect for a touch screen device with an accelerometer. Apple says more than 300 million applications have been downloaded since the App Store launched in July 2008. Combine the App Store, iTunes and a browser and you have one heck of a device. → Read More
Yes, you read the title correctly. Your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. Up for auction on eBay is a PS360: an Xbox 360 in a PS3 case. → Read More
Online holiday sales deflated 3 percent this year. ComScore estimates that holiday sales in the U.S. totaled $25.5 billion between November 1 and December 23, the last day orders could be delivered in time for Christmas. The comparable total in 2007 was $26.3 billion.
Sales were struggling to keep up with last year’s totals all holiday season. In the end, they fell short. (Hitwise comes to the same conclusion). → Read More
