Apple and EMI have devised another way to pry precious dollars from your wallet. It’s called iTunes Pass, and it’s available right now. With it, music fans will gain access to exclusive songs, remixes, etc. that are automatically downloaded to your account. First band up? Depeche Mode. → Read More
What happens when you make paid search ads both relevant and visual? Searchme, the search engine startup which presents results as a stack of full-page previews that you can flip through, is hoping to find out with the beta launch of AdView. Its first foray into advertising, AdView is SearchMe’s version of AdWords, except that instead of selling of paid text links it will be interspersing into its results clickable previews of entire Webpages, videos, or other visual advertising.
If you are an advertiser and want to try it out, SearchMe is giving a free trial to the first 500 companies or individuals that sign up here. That’s right, you get to run a free ad campaign on SearchMe for 30 days.
To see how this works, search for “Ralph Lauren” and if you flip through to the third result, it will be an ad that shows a landing page for its fall collection. In other words, the Website becomes the ad itself. This approach is similar to what StumbleUpon does, with ads placed in every 20 or so Stumbles. But the ad unit can also be a YouTube video which can be played without leaving SearchMe. For instance, check out the third result when you search for “Mac” (SearchMe inserted one of the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads for demonstration purposes). → Read More
I call poppycock, good sir.
SanDisk is claiming that their ImageMate memory card readers have wicked fast transfer speeds. → Read More
Currently, if you want a netbook, you’re going to get an Intel atom chipset. This is just understood. They are fast, have low heat and power consumption, and are the defacto standard. But AMD is looking to get in on some of that action, and they could be a serious threat to Intel. → Read More
Details and specs on the Sidekick 2009 are slowly emerging and today we’ve got some info on the camera. It’s getting a bump up to 3.2-megapixels for a max resolution of 2038×1536. Danger and Sharp (assuming they’ll manufacture the 2009) have finally included a flash. Direct uploading to MySpace, Photobucket (What about Flickr?) and YouTube have been enabled and video recording could is set for 15fps, but could be bumped up. Oh, there’s a new AF mechanism and geotagging is supported. In other words, the Sidekick’s camera has finally caught up to the rest of the pack. via hiptop3 → Read More
MacRumors has some info pointing to a 20- and 24-inch iMacs with NVIDIA graphics. While anyone with a printer could make these exciting marketing materials you see before you, another Swedish reseller had a weird page describing an unusual configuration as well, so there’s some hope that the update will come sooner or later. → Read More
The Milkman delivers! 1UP’s just-launched, comprehensive Resident Evil 5 section includes a note from the site’s editor, one James Mielke, that caught our eye: “In what is destined to be the first genuinely epic game of 2009, Resident Evil 5 is practically guaranteed to be the last of its kind, with the game’s producer, Jun Takeuchi, assuring us that a reboot is in order for the inevitable Resident Evil 6.” You hear that, Resident Evil 6 is inevitable. But is that a good thing, in and of itself? → Read More
Any time a company holds a sale for a limited time, you MUST buy something. And what’s more limited than four hours? Three hours, sure, but a three-hour sale would be insane. Insane! → Read More
Erik and Leigh are now the proud owners of Spotlight Flashlights. There’s more stuff lying around my office where that came from, so don’t get discouraged! → Read More
Plasma TVs are quickly becoming an extinct breed. There was once a time when plasma was the only large flat screen option available but not anymore. LCD has seemingly taken over most of plasma’s territory and currently there are only three plasma manufacturers still out there. It’s sad cause plasma TVs can and do produce a better picture than LCDs. (flame away in the comments, I ) The death of plasmas date back to when they first were produced. Why? Well, if you don’t mind the shameless plug, I go into in this Sound and Vision article that’s worth your time. → Read More
Maybe the little guy isn’t dead. Heh.
Straight from the Destination PlayStation conference comes word that Little Big Planet, Assassin’s Creed and a flavor of MotorStorm dubbed Arctic Edge (coming to the PS2 in the fall) are coming later this year for the PSP.
Two new bundles will hit with a lilac colored Hannah Montana edition that includes a dancing and rhythm game along with a 2GB MSPD, stickers and episodes of her TV show on UMD. AssCreed will get a “piano black” version and other unannounced content.
MTV’s Rock Band will also debut on the PSP with RB Unplugged where players can download content over Wi-Fi.
Square Enix will offer up DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY for the PSP and EA is bringing out Madden NFL 10 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10.
Hit the jump for all the news. → Read More
You don’t need that old SuperDrive, do you? Just pop it out of your MB or MBP and pop in this OptiBay hard drive for unibody laptops. You can use the system as a pair of separate drives or as a RAID drive. The upgrade uses SATA and comes in 250GB, 320GB, and 500GB versions. → Read More
The Goldilocks zone for netbook screen sizes might just be 11.6 inches. Those panels, which we’ll see later this year, will offer the portability that’s been the promise of netbooks all along while at the same time offering a usable resolution at 1366×768 instead of the short and stocky 1024×600 that’s plagued just about every netbook model available today. The slight increase in physical width, too, ought to provide for nicer keyboards. → Read More
Tencent, China’s largest Internet portal mostly known to us for its hugely popular instant messenger product QQ, published an updated report on the user numbers of its social networking service QZone last week. The report was only available in Chinese, but the folks over at Web2Asia were kind enough to translate it.
And if the self-reported numbers are not too much of an exaggeration, they’re nothing short of mind-blowing.
Even taken with a healthy grain of salt, the stats Tencent are presenting deserve a mention: the report claims more than 200 million people were using QZone as of January 31, 2009, surpassing international players like Facebook (which recently announced 175 million registered users) and MySpace. → Read More
Another day, another lawsuit. This time, a Texas company called Wall Wireless has accused several companies, including Nintendo, Sony and Nokia, of infringing on one of its patents pertaining to wireless communication. None of the accused companies have responded to the complaint just yet. → Read More
The REDFLY Mobile Companion embiggens even the smallest of compatible Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs. In light of this, the Memphis police department just threw down for 12,000 of the devices and deployed them in their cruisers, saying, “The REDFLYs save hardware costs while increasing productivity and also improving the quality and accuracy of the officers’ field reports.” → Read More
It makes no sense to have a bulky microSD card reader for the tiny flash media cards. The best solution is still proabably a docking SD card that slips into a notebooks SD card reader but this reader by Elecom isn’t that bad either. → Read More
