A few things went unannounced during Nintendo’s GDC keynote this morning and the biggest news on the DSi front is the confirmation of 1000 free DSi points if you purchase the third generation DS within the first six months of launch. That’s quite a bit of free swag considering DSiWare games and apps will be divvied up into four price tiers: free, 200 points, 500 points and 800+ points. The DSi point to $ ratio is 100 to 1, so 1000 points is a considerable amount of free booty. So be sure to pick up your DSi between April 5th and October 5th if you want to cash in. → Read More
Today, WD announced that their entire My Book line of external hard drives has been bumped up to 2TB of storage. The line is vast and caters to young and old, PC or Mac. The revamped line of 2TB drives includes: My Book Studio Edition, My Book Mac Edition, My Book Home Edition and My Book Essential Edition. Prices range from $329.99 to $379.99. → Read More
rPath, a company that specializes in technology that simplifies the distribution and consumption of applications via virtual appliances is making some interesting moves in cloud computing. Basically, rPath helps business close the gap between applications and operations by ensuring the delivery of application deployment quickly and inexpensively. Now rPath is using this technology to help enterprises and organizations deploy their applications in the cloud. rPath’s technology allows applications to be deployed and managed in a variety of cloud environments, including Amazon’s EC2 servers. But rPath’s technology also works in private clouds. In fact, rPath is helping the U.S. Department of Energy manage and operate applications in a private cloud environment. rPath gives scientists working for the DOE a way of deploying applications as virtual machines in the cloud. As governments slowly heading towards putting data in the clouds, rPath is helping make sure that applications actually work in this environment rPath recognizes the significance of the cloud in the enterprise space and formed the “Cloud Computing Adoption Model” to provide businesses with a game plane for achieving long-term benefits from adopting a cloud computing infrastructure. The five levels of cloud computing adoption are shown and explained below: rPath is definitely doing some fascinating things for businesses looking to efficiently deploy applications in the cloud. And the company is committed to helping businesses understand the cloud and its implications. Here’s a nifty video rPath made to help people understand cloud computing: CrunchBase Information rPath Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Viral video tracking and measurement firm Visible Measures has closed a $10 million series C round of funding, led by Northgate Capital. Existing investors Mohr Davidow and General Catalyst also participated, bringing the total capital the company has raised since launch to $29 million. The last time it raised money was in January, 2008.
Visible Measures lets both ad agencies and big video publishing sites on the Web track viewership and engagement with videos across the Web. Ad agencies can measure the effectiveness of specific video ad campaigns, and publishers can see which of their videos are being played and passed around the most. → Read More
Like Portal, Fez will be forcing you to wrap your mind around a completely different way of navigating the world. I’m losing it just watching this trailer, and I’ve been following its development for some time now. Whatever system this ends up coming out on, that’s the one I’m going to buy. Hopefully it’s all three plus the PC. → Read More
Web chat service Meebo, always innovative with advertising, is trying out something fairly aggressive: full takeover ads that show a persistent advertisement in the background.
The company says that they already got 1% or higher click throughs on existing ads units on the site, which included rollovers at the bottom of the screen and another unit right in the middle. But the new units actually take over the entire background of the site, meaning users are literally slammed with the messaging. They are presented with an option of removing the add with a click.
And the users don’t seem to mind at all.
Founder/CEO Seth Sternberg wrote a blog post today on the new ads and asked for user feedback. Most of the 100+ comments to the post are very positive. Example comments: → Read More
MySpace has launched Web IM in the UK. Thus, users no longer need to download anything to use instant messaging to reach their MySpace friends. Previously the site pushed the installed Windows version of MySpaceIM but that looks highly likely to be completely supplanted by the Web version. Web IM now appears in the right corner of any MySpace page for the IM bar. It’s part if an overall push for web services for the site. Yesterday MySpace launched its official toolbar, giving users immediate access to their MySpace activity notifications regardless of what site they’re currently browsing on the web. The toolbar is available on Windows for Firefox and IE users, as well as on Mac for Firefox (there’s no Safari support yet). You can get it here. CrunchBase Information MySpace Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
In case you’re stuck at work or away from your precious Wii, Doug was kind of enough to take this quick video of today’s update to the Wii Menu System. Enjoy. → Read More
Douglas did a fine job detailing what OnLive is yesterday and today we’re bringing you a hands-on demo of the cloud gaming service from the GDC show floor. The chap who gave us the demo does a find job of explaining how OnLive works in case you missed yesterday’s post. Sit tight and watch Devin suck at GRID.
We questioned one of the OnLive developers about possible bandwidth issues because of the nature of this service, but he says that ISPs like Comcast are fully aware and on-board with what OnLive is doing. It worked well in this isolated situation but we’ll have to wait and see what happens when it hits the market and thousands of folks are hitting their servers at once. But so far, so good. → Read More
Punch-Out!!! was being demoed at the Nintendo booth, so we thought we’d take a crack at it. The controls are… well, they’re okay. The gameplay is almost identical to the NES game, except the NES game is a lot snappier. → Read More
Zimride – a startup with a tagline that reads “A Carpool Community” – sounds exactly like the sort of benevolent Web 2.0 service that will never make a cent. As it turns out, since launching in 2007 and winning fbFund last summer, the company has managed to carve out a nice niche for itself that saves its users money, helps the environment, and actually manages to generate revenue. And, unlike some of its carpooling competitors, it has also managed to avoid getting sued by Canada.
Zimride offers an application on Facebook Platform, inviting users on the same network to meet eachother and share a car trip. Users can also visit the service on its website at Zimride.com and find trusted users through Facebook Connect. After entering their current location and their destination, Zimride will generate a list of potential matches arranged by how far out of the way each one wants to travel. Users can also post a destination they’d like to travel to some time down the line, and receive alerts through Email when a match pops up. → Read More
Although the keynote wasn’t exactly a fountain of new releases, they did demo some new stuff for the DS/DSi, including a pretty fun-looking little minigame set that uses the camera. The user-facing camera is pretty terrible, of course, being VGA resolution and probably a pretty limited FPS as well, but it works tolerably well for stuff like this. I was surprised that it could detect my mouth opening and stuff — I don’t think I actually needed to make a kissy face, though. I nearly kissed the booth girl and Peter by accident. → Read More
My God. I have been driving forever in that damn 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid and are in desperate need to drown my road woes in a frothy brew with good company. The wife and I will be in some crap hole bar on the Vegas strip tonight; come and join us. I’ll tweet the actual location when we find the right place around 8:00 pm tonight. Just look for the slightly overweight nerd in a white shirt and a pregnant chick. You will not be able to miss us. → Read More
Sorry about the delay in announcing the winner for the Ipevo Skype phone, but I’ve been a little preoccupied with GDC today. So, without further ado, the CG staff would like to congratulate Robert Johnston. Watch your inbox, Robert. Thanks to everyone for entering and we’ll be sure to run more contests like this in the future. → Read More
My only recollection of Titan’s Fat Princess was the initial controversy over the games title and how it degrades those who are overweight and women and all that hoopla. All that aside, the game is incredibly fun to play and rather brutal considering it looks like a kid’s game. It reminds me of Team Fortress 2 and neither myself, Greg or Devin have successfully saved our Princesses. Fat Princess will be available for download from the PlayStation Store this coming Spring. Hit the jump for a few minutes of gameplay. → Read More
Home-Account, a recently launched mortgage finding and counseling service, has secured $1 million in seed and angel funding. The largest investor is Charles River Ventures, who gave the startup $300,000 through their QuickStart Seed Funding Program (the program usually only gives startups $250,000 but saw promise in Home-Account). Additional investors include many well-known Silicon Valley leaders: Marc Benioff, Ron Conway, Mark Pincus, Jeff Clavier, Arjun Gupta, and Gigi Brisson. → Read More
Guess what G1 users? T-Mobile has released its first Android app – My Account – to the Android Market. Now you have the ability to check pertinent account information right from the ‘droid in your hand. According to Android and Me, T-Mo’s free My Account app provides “current activity, bill summary, plan information, online payment, help guides, forums, battery info, storage info, and more.” While there’s nothing terribly groundbreaking here, it is nice to see a mobile carrier develop a native application for its own (current) flagship device instead of leaving it up to third party developers. Sure, all the info included in My Account is readily available on the Net, in store, or over the phone, but why not take advantage of Android while also making customers a drop happier in the process? Nice work, guys. → Read More
Anyone who went to SXSW last week and who uses/used an iPhone will know just how terrible AT&T’s service was. (I had a T-Mo BlackBerry, so I didn’t notice anything.) The New York Times even wrote about it! (Well, the Bits Blog.) If you’re so inclined, however, it looks like AT&T may be willing to give you a free month of service as recompense, but you’ll have to haggle. → Read More
Oh. My. God. Neflix on the PS3. Can it be real? Please let it be real! I need yet another way to see a dodgy stream of a dodgy movie. → Read More
