Here’s the live stream of our Cloud Computing Roundtable, which kicks off at 2:30 PST with product demos from a handful of early-stage cloud-focused start-ups, with commentary from a panel of experts. Shortly thereafter our roundtable discussion will bring together a dozen panelists from some of Silicon Valley’s most acclaimed companies who will discuss the future of cloud-based services. Thank you to Sun Microsystems for sponsoring the roundtable stream (powered by ustream and camera work by FutureWorks.)
Twitter Hash Tag: #tccloud
http://www.ustream.tv/flash/live/1/531724Live Videos by Ustream
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Wil Wheaton AKA the guy on Star Wars recorded himself reading from his own book and then recorded the Kindle 2 reading the same passage. The result, as you’ll hear on his blog, is inconclusive (what if TTS gets so good it will sound JUST LIKE WIL WHEATON? WHAT THEN?) but it kind of shows where everyone’s head is at in terms of the Authors Guild. → Read More
Need a handy dandy spot to store your notebook when using an external display? Yeah, of’course you do. This instructable guides you through the easy steps need to attach a wire mesh file holder to the back of an LCD monitor. Honestly though, just pop out holes that align to the monitors VESA mount on the file holder, screw to monitor, and cut out one side of the holder. That’s it, captain. → Read More
You remember those 1 million 5800 XpressMusic handsets that Nokia proudly announced they’d shipped back in January? Yeah, most of those are probably going to break. → Read More
When I was a kid one of my favorite parts of Disney World was Tomorrowland’s Carousel of Progress. It was steeped in 1950’s futurism: Why, of course! Every family will have their own electric paint mixer in the future! And I only wish I’d been old enough to see this gem before it was torn down and replaced with a souvenir stand: The Monsanto House of the Future, a house built entirely of plastic.
Disney likes to talk up inventions the house featured that wound up becoming commonplace, like the microwave oven. What it leaves out are all the ones that never did. You know, the type of things we saw on the Jetsons: flying cars, our food in pill form, robot butlers and maids. Sadly, as it turns out the “future” looked a lot like the past, just more streamlined. Had Tomorrowland stayed in tact, it would have looked more like the Tomorrow-that-never-happened-land.
I’ve been thinking about Tomorrowland for about three days. It started when I read Farhad Manjoo’s excellent piece on Slate about the “Jurassic Web.” He painted a picture of what the Web was like in 1996. It was mostly a place you went and then thought, “OK, I’m here. Now what?” He reminded us of the sheer wonder the first time you could search on Amazon by author or browse through Yahoo’s hand built “directory” of Web pages.
The note Manjoo struck at the end of the piece was pure Silicon Valley: If all this happened in just 13 years, what will the next decade of the Internet hold? Will we look back on YouTube, Facebook, Hulu and iTunes as primitive?
This is where Tomorrowland and the Jetsons come in.
No surprise here, but VIA’s issued a press release officially announcing that Samsung’s NC20, the 12-inch successor to the NC10 netbook, does indeed have a VIA Nano CPU – a fact that’s been known for quite some time now. Along with the news, we’ve got some official specs for the soon-to-be-released computer, although we still don’t have official pricing or launch dates. → Read More
The storage gods have smiled upon us, friends! Starting this March, Nintendo will sell a 2GB SD card for the Nintendo Wii. Yes, you could have purchased such a card, or bigger, from, say, every other company on Earth, but this one has the official Nintendo Seal of Quality. (Remember that?) As always, Japan gets first dibs. → Read More
We still think the Pearl Flip is the ugliest phone to ever rear its head from Waterloo – but it’s a butt-dial-free BlackBerry, and that’s worth something, we suppose. When the CDMA variant made its way to the FCC’s testing dungeons, they were able to look past the Pearl Flip’s unsightly hinge and remember that it’s what’s inside that counts – and what’s inside passed their tests without a hitch. → Read More
File this one in the “good ideas” folder (if you use the tickler system, file it in the “February” folder). Brando is selling a mini-USB cable with an inline SD card reader sitting smack-dab between point A and point B. It allows you to transfer files from an SD card while at the same time charging your cell phone or other portable device. → Read More
Epson today announced a new(ish) camera with a digital rangefinder [JP]. The very pretty R-D1xG, an update to the R-D1 (the first digital rangefinder camera ever made) and RD-1s, respectively, will ship in Japan on April 9 for $2,000. It’s unknown at this point when the camera will be released outside Japan. → Read More
Mufin, an automated music recommendation engine that actually works (most of the time), has released a new native media player in public beta. The player includes a powerful recommendation engine based on technology developed at the Fraunhofer Institute, allowing users to quickly generate playlists similar to any song they have in their library. The player is for Windows only at the moment, but Mac users can still try out the recommendation technology at Mufin.com, which launched to the public in November.
Mufin’s core technology is based on finding recommendations based on knowing a few songs that you like. Unlike Apple’s Genius feature, which creates recommendations based on aggregate data compiled from user listening habits, Mufin actually analyzes the sound file itself, ‘listening’ to 40 audio characteristics as it tries to recommend similar songs. In my testing the service has usually worked surprisingly well, though there are sometimes a few bizarre results. Oftentimes these apparent errors actually do share characteristics with the original song I used to gather recommendations, but they are very obscure and sometimes in a completely different genre (which is both the blessing and the curse of using such audio-based recommendation engines). → Read More
If you packed your picnic basket, loaded the family into the car, and hauled over to the Nokia flagship store yesterday as a result of our post yesterday on the Nokia 5800 going on sale, we officially apologize. Chances are, you were turned away. As of this morning, Nokia 5800s aren’t actually on the shelves; they have them in stock, mind you – they just can’t sell them yet. Update: Nokia has issued a press release indicating that the 5800 is indeed on the shelves and for sale now. We’re still looking into whether or not the North American 5800 has that nasty speaker issue. Full release after the jump. → Read More
Prime View International, maker of electrophoretic displays AKA epaper makes the screens for Amazon’s Kindle 2. That much we know. However, rumors that they are working on a larger-sized touchscreen makes us think they are now ramping up production of the “student’s Kindle” we talked about last year. This Kindle will have a larger screen and more research-oriented features – Wi-Fi, anyone? → Read More
We’ve been hit with numerous camera rumors this week (Nikon & Canon), primarily ’cause the photography gear show PMA starts next week, and now Sony is joining the rumor mill party. The CyberShot DSC-HX1 sounds like it will make at least a small splash at the show too, with a 1080p video recording mode and a massive 20x optical zoom at a pocket cam price point. → Read More
Gary Vaynerchuk is going after the Oprah set. The wine wholesaler who launched a career as a Web video celebrity talking about wine and marketing just launched Obsessed, a new video talk show hosted by Samantha Ettus. With Obsessed, Vaynerchuk hopes to move beyond niche programming on the Web to appeal to a mainstream audience.
The format of the show is an in-depth 30 to 40 minute interview with guests that appeal to 25 to 55-year-old women. The first interviews on the site right now are with food writer Mark Bittman and floral designer Preston Bailey. Future guests will include Today Show travel editor Peter Greenberg, TreeHugger founder Graham Hill, and BlogHer founder Liz Stone.
Ettus will host the show and be the main star, while Vaynerchuk will come on at the end for 3 minutes to talk about wine, which is his thing. He is the host of Wine Library TV and also serves up regular videos on gary vay•ner•chuk, mostly about marketing. “There is only so much content I can pump out,” Vaynerchuk say. “I need to own as many media properties as possible.” → Read More
Gary Vaynerchuk is going after the Oprah set. The wine wholesaler who launched a career as a Web video celebrity talking about wine and marketing just launched Obsessed, a new video talk show hosted by Samantha Ettus. With Obsessed, Vaynerchuk hopes to move beyond niche programming on the Web to appeal to a mainstream audience.
The format of the show is an in-depth 30 to 40 minute interview with guests that appeal to 25 to 55-year-old women. The first interviews on the site right now are with food writer Mark Bittman and floral designer Preston Bailey. Future guests will include Today Show travel editor Peter Greenberg, TreeHugger founder Graham Hill, and BlogHer founder Liz Stone.
Ettus will host the show and be the main star, while Vaynerchuk will come on at the end for 3 minutes to talk about wine, which is his thing. He is the host of Wine Library TV and also serves up regular videos on gary vay•ner•chuk, mostly about marketing. “There is only so much content I can pump out,” Vaynerchuk say. “I need to own as many media properties as possible.” → Read More
Somewhere out there there is someone lusting after the N85. For some reason the rest of the world loves these lumpen little phones. Perhaps the Nokia N-series calls up memories of the old phones that we once clung to in the dark ages of cellular communication. The Nokia is the ur-phone, the manufacturer of dreams, the Campbellian original Hero With a Thousand Faces. It can do anything, given enough care and attention.
We at CG love Nokia, we support them, but that love is scarcely returned when they release phones like the N85 onto an unsuspecting populace. → Read More
Happy Friday, deal hunters. You can pick up a Dell Mini 9 netbook for $199 today. Can’t you find a little extra room near your couch for an inexpensive netbook? Won’t you give the Mini 9 a decent home?! → Read More
Those of you that have been screaming that print is dead have another feather to put in your cap: venerable Computer Shopper Magazine will cease production of its printer version come April of this year. All future editions will be freely available online, supported by a variety of advertising and revenue streams. Computer Shopper’s plans for a free online edition are contrary to many other publications making the shift from print to digital. Ziff-Davis, for example, still charges a subscription for the online version of PC Magazine. It was three years ago this month that Computer Shopper was purchased from CNet by SX2 Media Labs, a privately held company formed by David Sills and Barry Schwimmer. In an email from Sills to Computer Shopper staff, it was revealed that the intent was always to go all-digital: → Read More
