Photo on screen by Emrank We didn’t like the AT&T Quickfire when we first saw it, and we didn’t really like it once we’d given it a full review, either. Turns out, AT&T doesn’t like it too much, either. We’re not sure if some horrible flaw was discovered or if they’re just not selling well enough, but AT&T has killed the product indefinitely citing failure to meet “performance expectations”. With dealers being told to “quarantine all existing inventory” and customers requiring exchanges being offered alternative products, we’re guessing it’s the first one. Check out the full email sent to AT&T internalites after the jump. → Read More
This guest post is written by Kevin Marks, Developer Advocate for OpenSocial at Google. Over the last 20 years he has alternated between giant companies and founding startups – BBC, The UK MultiMedia Corporation, Apple QuickTime, Technorati and now Google. He is one of the driving forces behind microformats.org and advisor to the Open Rights Group. He wants you to remember that URLs are people too, and his URL is http://epeus.blogspot.com. In this Q&A-style post, Kevin delves into the standards that make up the emerging open social stack (OpenID, OAuth, Portable Contacts, and OpenSocial), looking at the infrastructure problems they address, and exploring some of the live implementations, including Plaxo and Google Friend Connect. Q: We keep hearing that “Google wants to make the web more social.” What does that mean? Everything on the web is more interesting when it takes place with friends. Today’s social networking sites, are the online contexts where you and your friends go to be social, and the time we spend on them shows the attraction. But the model of going to a single website to interact with other people is changing. In the future, we expect everything on the web will become more social, augmenting the many things you already do on the web. Whether you’re shopping, deciding what to read, or researching a topic, knowing what your friends, or family, or the people you respect think about that product, book, or source of information is a vital part of the web. I call this the “social cloud,” meaning that “social” will be integrated with the web so that you don’t think about it anymore. Charlene Li calls this same idea “social networks become like air.” The web itself is like this — following links seems like second nature to us because we know a URL can take us anywhere. Social isn’t there yet, but that’s the highest level goal of the OpenSocial project — to make interacting with people a natural part of how we use the web Q: What are the hurdles to the web becoming more social today? For every website to become social, each site needs to know something about you and who your friends are. How do they solve this now? By asking you to fill out a form and by spamming all your friends. For many people, that’s enough of a deterrent that they will simply leave the → Read More
When I was looking at traffic numbers for the top photo sites this weekend, another stat caught my eye. Online photo editing site Picnik is also quickly climbing the ranks of photo sites from seemingly nowhere.
In January, according to comScore, the site attracted 6.6 million unique visitors worldwide, a tenfold increase from the year before. On comScore’s list of the largest photo sites, Picnik ranks No. 14, above Shutterfly and AOL Pictures, and just below Snapfish. Unlike those services, however, Picnik is not really a place people store their photos. Rather, it is a place where they touch them up and manipulate them before they post them on MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Smugmug, or somewhere else.
Picnik is a powerful, cloud-based photo editor that is integrated directly into Flickr, SmugMug and other photo repositories. Competing online photo editors such as Fotoflexer and Photoshop.com (formerly and Photoshop Express) attract only a fraction as many users (1.4 million uniques for Fotoflexer and 760,000 for Photoshop.com. → Read More
This ain’t your daddy’s Casio. The Cachalot, the latest solar radio watch from Casio’s high-end brand, Oceanus, is inching into high end territory and I’m pleased to report that you get quite a bit of watch for the $1,200 ($900 retail, from what I’ve seen) or so you’ll spend on this beast.
First off, the Cachalot looks great. I’ve seen a few Casios in my day and they’ve finally nailed it on this version. The outer timing bezel clicks with a satisfying majesty and the face is readable – except in certain situations, which I’ll describe below. This model is also made of titanium making it the lightest man-watch I’ve seen in a while. It’s water resistant to 20 BAR and features 5 band radio auto-setting, solar powered batteries, world time settings, as well as a countdown timer and stopwatch. → Read More
Sega hasn’t given up yet on the arcade business but isn’t really investing a lot of resources into their gaming machines either. During the AOU, an arcade exhibition that took place in Tokyo last week, the company presented two new pieces of arcade game hardware that both are PC-based. Both RingEdge and RingWide use Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 2009 as the OS. → Read More
Last time HTC used Twitter to confirm something, it was to let everyone know that the HTC Touch HD wouldn’t be coming stateside. This time, they bring good news! → Read More
Welcome to the jungle!
Late last week, Capcom teased us all on Xbox Live that they would be announcing a new game on the 23rd, today, and they certainly didn’t disappoint. In a video only released to the Xbox Live community, RE5 producer Jun Takeuchi introduced the game with a subsequent Q&A with the game’s director Kenji Oguro. What happens in between can only be seen after the jump. → Read More
We love the iPhone’s ultra simple homescreen user interface – as long as we’re not trying to change anything. Once we get tired of the old arrangement of icons, moving them all around to match our new mood is like eating rice with a tool big enough for only one grain at a time. After about 5 grains, you decide you weren’t hungry in the first place. Want to organize 5 pages of apps alphabetically? Hah! See you next week. → Read More
The notoriously liberal, as if that’s a bad thing in and of itself, Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that that California law restricting the sale of so-called violent video games to minors violates “free speech guarantees.” The ruling upholds a lower courts finding and, naturally, has upset those who have made a career out of trumping up the video game violence debate. → Read More
@webmarketingguruUK What’s really going to shake things up for this new line of netbooks?
@sonymarcomdude Viral videos. Like dudes in pajamas like doing doing dude things.
@webmarketingguruUK like what → Read More
Back in December, the Kogan Agora was revealed and caused all kinds of excitement amongst mobile geeks. Not only was it going to be dirt cheap (around $250 bucks, unsubsidized), and not only was it being pushed out by what was about as close as you can get to a mom-and-pop electronics manufacturer, but it looked like they were going to beat just about everyone besides HTC to getting an Android product on the shelf. Then it got canned. → Read More
I found a new phone for my Mom. It’s the Nokia 7510, a basic flip phone with just enough features to be dangerous yet it’s basic enough for even my sainted mother to use to dial us on the daily. The 7510 is a phone for the ladies, plain and simple. That’s not to disparage the ladies – it’s just that I haven’t seen a simple, stylish phone that’s not too expensive yet still packs lots of features into a slim package. It’s clad in brushed steel and chrome and has removable front and back faceplates – it comes with brown, blue, and red in the box. I was particularly enamored of the front monochrome LCD that shows the current time along with pertinent notifications. → Read More
After getting everyone worked up at CES over its X320 netbook, MSI has let slip two additional models in the X-Slim series; both actual notebooks with Centrino 2 processors, too. The 15.6-inch X600 and the 13.4-inch X340 are expected to be formally announced at CeBIT in a little over a week and MSI has already revealed that the X340 will cost under $1,000. → Read More
Beejive has announced a $5 discount off its popular BeejiveIM for BlackBerry app (regularly $19.95) in an effort to thank its “loyal BlackBerry community.” The sale starts tonight at midnight and lasts until midnight (PST) on Sunday, March 1. → Read More
Now that the race to get electric cars on the road is over, it’s time for the two-wheel variety to get in the mix. KTM recently announced that the EV Enduro, a race ready dual sport that was first announced last October, would be rolling off the production line sometime next year. A protoype of the EV Enduro has been in testing since 2008. → Read More
Everyone’s favorite hacky-sack-with-a-screen, Chumby, will soon make the leap from your nightstand or desk to your TV or Blu-ray player. Future internet-connected TVs and Blu-ray players containing Broadcom chips from companies such as Samsung and Sharp will feature Chumby’s web-based widgets – there are currently over 1,000 – ranging from music and video streaming to news and weather to photos and social networking platforms. → Read More
I don’t care if the pins that hold the Danglet lanyard/wriststrap thing into the iPhone are made of friggin’ Adamantium – if you swing your GLASS SCREENED device worth hundreds of dollars around like the chumps in this video do, it’s going to get broken. And you probably deserve it, too. → Read More
Verizon Wireless launched its creatively named CDM8975 Push to Talk handset today. This new business-meets-multimedia walkie-talkie mobile phone was developed by Personal Communications Devices and comes dressed to impress, er, ready for the job site as it’s wrapped in an “industrial clamshell.” The CDM8975 will be available beginning March 9th, online and in good ol’ fashion meatspace, for $99.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and a new two-year customer agreement. Can’t you just feel the excitement building?! Specs after the jump… → Read More
It’s not too common nowadays for two computers sitting side-by-side to NOT be able to both access the internet, but on the off chance that such an occasion may arise, Brando’s got a (theoretically) no-fuss remedy in the form of a little USB dongle. → Read More
Panasonic has announced a new Toughbook today [JP], a special version of its W8 notebook, which is also on the sale in the US. The new Japanese premium edition has no release date for overseas markets yet, however. → Read More
