Let the speculation begin! Our sources tell us what you know: that the new Kindle is thinner and has a nicer design and probably has a touchscreen but now everyone is chiming in with a little more value added rumor.
The LA Times, for example, thinks it will have a color screen. BLART! Color e-ink is still in its infancy and only one company really has a working example, shown here. Amazon needs to make this thing cheaper, not prohibitively expensive. → Read More
Just as expected, the T-Mobile Shadow (Shadow 2, technically, but they’re dropping the trailing number for the sake of branding and confusing the hell out of everyone) is hitting store shelves today – and it’s bringing a friend! Tagging along on the Shadow’s coattails is the Nokia 7510, which we actually expected to see last week. $200 bucks and a fresh contract will get you the Shadow in “White Mint” or “Black Burgundy”, while $49.99 after rebates works out to a Nokia 7510 in “Fatal Red”, “Emerald Green” or “Espresso Brown”. Specs after the jump. → Read More
The Boston Herald is reporting that, here in my home state of Massachusetts, “The cash-strapped and over-crowded prison system spent a mind-boggling $76,958” on 117 new flat-screen HDTVs. → Read More
Attention droids and droidettes: Opera has released a final version (as in non-beta, not the last version ever) of Opera Mini 4.2 for Android. It’s available now in the Android Market and includes the following changes from the last beta: Now you can upload and download files through Opera Mini and save pages for offline viewing Videos will be redirected to the system’s video player Double tap now works for zooming in and out Inline URL entry instead of using native input Fixed password text entry to hide characters Fixed problems with exiting application when back button was pressed Improved trackball speed All internal pages, like the start page, now have font size extra large for easier navigation Beta is so 2008, anyways… → Read More
Netbooks are the latest fad, but they do one thing very well: Portability. The above picture shows-off exactly why mobile professions are falling in love with the sub-notebooks. That’s a Dell Mini 9 chill’n in the camera case. Plus, Rob Galbraith found that the screen is actually a bit more professional than the MacBook Pro which makes it a great little mobile photography tool. Netbooks might be the SUVs of the modern computing age, but more people are quickly finding that the mini notebooks are great companions. → Read More
The advertising situation at the New York Times is not getting any better. Today, the company released its fourth quarter earnings. Total advertising revenues were down 13.1 percent in the quarter to $1.8 billion. Of that, its total Internet advertising revenues (from NYTimes.com, Boston.com, and About.com primarily) was only $$81.9 million, down 3.5 percent.
Internet advertising only accounts for 12 percent of the company’s annual revenues (for the year, it made $309 million from Internet advertising, up 9.3 percent). But as one of the largest media sites on the Web it is an important bellwether.
When the New York Times reported last November was the first time Internet advertising revenues declined (by 3.8 percent), I called it the canary in the coalmine. In December, things took a turn for the worse, with Internet advertising revenues dropping an even steeper 12.7 percent. → Read More
Just how rugged is the military-spec Motorola Tundra? Our buddies over at Phonescoop put it to the test during their full review – and by “put it to the test”, we mean throwing it across a driveway, kicking it into a wall, jamming it in the snow, running it over with a car, dropping a wrench on it, and blasting it with a blowtorch. Sure, it would’ve been great to see this thing pushed to the point of utter failure, but we’ll settle with the blowtorch. → Read More
Small external displays are becoming increasingly commonplace but the little displays are still special to us. They are so freking handy and this one from Buffalo is no different. The 7-inch display is powered by USB and features a decent 800×480 display resolution which should display Adium or Trillian buddy lists just fine. Even video would be fine. However, this external display is only PC compatible. No fun there for us Mac users. → Read More
Acer wants everyone to know that it is launching a smartphone at the Mobile World Congress cellphone extravaganza in Barcelona. The February 16th press event is also nearly one year after Acer scooped up the experienced smartphone maker, E-Ten. M’kay, now that we know Acer has a smartphone coming in a couple weeks, get ready for some *air quotes* leaked product shots to keep our attention. → Read More
The more of our lives that we put online, the less privacy we have. It is as simple as that. And this is a problem that will just get worse over time. You cannot be fully engaged on social networks, blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, FriendFeed, and all the rest without opening yourself up to phishers, scammers, and identity thieves. Something to think about since today is Data Privacy Day.
I spoke with Peter Cullen, Microsoft’s chief privacy strategist, about some of these issues. People are perhaps more freewheeling than they should be with their private information online, and corporations entrusted with our private data are not fully equipped to protect it. As Cullen put it:
Information is not just a currency of value, but a currency of crime.
The World Economic Forum, arguably the most prestigious gathering of the world’s political, business and intellectual leaders (plus, absurdly, me and Robert Scoble), has officially opened at the tiny ski resort town of Davos, Switzerland. 2,500 attendees from 96 countries have flocked to the event this year, about 500 more than last year. And a record 40 heads of state are present as well. At least one rock star isn’t here this year, though.
The theme of this year’s event is “Shaping the Post-Crisis World,” and many of the dozens of sessions over the next few days are laser focused on the worldwide economic collapse.
There is a clear consensus among attendees that the worst is yet to come, and that we are facing the worst economic outlook of the last few generations. Some of the CEOs I’ve talked with (and most of the big company CEOs are here) are flat out scared about what kind of economic shock will hit them next. Part of being here, clearly, is to be around like minded people that they can commiserate with. → Read More
CoverItLive, easily the most extensive tool one can use for liveblogging live events or other real-time stuff such as earnings calls, press conferences and the likes, has raised $1.2 million Canadian dollars (or approximately $1 million USD) more from its current investor and private equity fund Flagstone Capital and well-known investor and entrepreneur Paul Kedrosky.
CoverItLive has also quietly rolled out a money-making product dubbed CiL Enterprise that brings additional features to professional users, catering to publishers who cover live events with multiple writers in particular. The enterprise version is currently still free, but the company aims to start charging somewhere between $50/month to $500/month for CiL Enterprise within a couple of months, leaving an option for free usage in educational environments. → Read More
Bemba Media, a Dutch startup that introduced a nifty browser plug-in / bookmarklet that enabled users to quickly share and bookmark stuff from across the web and particularly social networking sites in a very straightforward way, is shutting down. The site will no longer accept new users as from today and completely fade out per February 8.
The Bemba Media Team made this tough decision because the amount of Bemba users is not growing fast enough to pay our expenses. We are especially sorry for those of you who have been using Bemba actively.
A small robot sold by Japanese toy giant Bandai is reportedly not the safest toy you would want to give to your kids. The company received complaints from a total of 85 parents in Nippon.
In 14 cases, kids appear to have been hurt because they got their fingers caught in the robot. Some Japanese media are reporting that a 3-year old boy lost the tip of his pinky..
Video after the jump. → Read More
Acer wants everyone to know that it is launching a smartphone at the Mobile World Congress cellphone extravaganza in Barcelona. The February 16th press event is also nearly one year after Acer scooped up the experienced smartphone maker, E-Ten. M’kay, now that we know Acer has a smartphone coming in a couple weeks, get ready for some *air quotes* leaked product shots to keep our attention. → Read More
Twitter is a great resource for information, useful links, breaking news and status messages from your friends or companies you’re interested in. But if you’re following a lot of streams, it’s not easy to weed out what’s important or relevant to you from the waterfall of short messages that you’re continuously being bombarded with.
Enter just-out-of-closed-beta Filttr, a new project from a department of web hosting company Racked Hosting, that aims to enhance your Twitter experience with a client that automatically filters content from your followers using an algorithm dubbed FLAI (Filttr Artificial Intelligence) and offers a slew of additional features which might also come in handy. → Read More
Last year in August, Sony promised Europeans will get the world’s first commercialized OLED TV, the XEL-1, “sometime next year”. Now the 11-inch screen is available in the UK, which is probably a good thing. But the problem is the price. → Read More
Yesterday as I was leaving the DLD Conference in Munich, Germany someone walked up to me and quite deliberately spat in my face. Before I even understood what was happening, he veered off into the crowd, just another dark head in a dark suit. People around me stared, then looked away and continued their conversation.
Generally at events people come up to me to talk about their startups. My reaction varies depending on how much sleep I’ve gotten and how many times I’ve been pitched in the previous hour. Sometimes I sit down and watch a demo. Sometimes I give them my card and ask them to contact me. Yesterday I was battling the flu, jetlag and little sleep, and had been battered for three days straight with product pitches from entrepreneurs desperate for press. The event was over and I was on my way back to my hotel. The last thing I wanted was another product pitch as I hurried to the car that would drive me to Davos for the next event. So when I saw this person approach me out of the corner of my eye, I turned away slightly and avoided eye contact. Sometimes that works. But in this case all it did was make me vulnerable to the last thing I expected.
In the past I’ve been grabbed, pulled, shoved and otherwise abused at events, but never spat on. I think this is where I’m going to draw a line. → Read More
The real movie based on Capcom’s never ending video game series Street Fighter (scheduled for release in the US February 27, 2009) gets another Japanese trailer that features several new scenes from the movie (video after the jump). → Read More
