This clock looks like it’s from olden times but it isn’t. It’s from the modern age! You basically load this baby up with your own music or recordings and rock out all morning. It costs a mere $40.81 plus shipping and… who am I kidding? → Read More
The following is a short play describing Kerchoonz’s K-Box. It’s a device that turns any flat surface into a speaker. → Read More
Mark Logic, an IT company that creates software to host large amounts of content, has raised $12.5 million in Series D funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Tenaya Capital. This latest round brings Mark Logic’s total funding to $45.5 million. Founded in 2001, Mark Logic says it will use the funding to grow sales channels, expand to international markets and develop new verticals. Mark Logic’s software is an XML server that allows users to store content in a platform and serves as a platform for rich applications. CrunchBase Information Mark Logic Corporation Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
In case you needed any further convincing that kids these days have the coolest toys, please witness the remote controlled Warthog, Mongoose, and Flying Hornet from the Halo series. → Read More
It was just a matter of time, but frankly speaking, I am amazed at how fast Sharp makes its mini solar panel (67.5 x 41.0 x 0.8 mm) available to manufacturers worldwide [link in English]. After all, the company’s solar-powered cell phone that uses the so-called LR0GC02, isn’t even on sale yet (not even in Japan where sales start next month). → Read More
http://videomedia.ign.com/ev/ev.swf The future is coming and it’s only 498 years away. → Read More
This morning Facebook announced that it had accepted a $200 million investment at a $10 billion valuation from Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies. Over the last few weeks there have been reports of the company turning down investments at lower valuations, and debate over if the investors would get a coveted Facebook board seat (DST did not). Facebook is holding a teleconference to talk about the new investment. Below are our notes. → Read More
NEC has appeared to hit all the right notes with its VersaPro Ultralite VS netbook — high-resolution 1280×768 10.6-inch screen, 1.86GHz Atom Z540 CPU, just over an inch thick, and a seemingly-impossible weight of just a pound and a half. NEC unfortunately missed the “netbooks are supposed to be cheap” memo, as this little guy will be selling for over $1800. → Read More
Facebook is taking that rumored $200 million investment from Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment group. DST will take a 1.96 percent stake in the company, giving Facebook a $10 billion valuation. Facebook ultimately did not have to give up a board seat to DST in return for the cash. But DST is getting preferred shares for it’s $200 million.
When Microsoft bought preferred shares, it valued Facebook at $15 billion. Since then the market has come way down and various valuations for Facebook have been thrown out between $4 billion to $6 billion. And recently, Facebook turned down an investment valuing the company at $8 billion, with the stipulation that the investor get a board seat. During a conference call today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg he confirmed that other investors had approached Facebook, saying: “It was really at our option to find someone we wanted to work with on our terms.” No doubt, part of the appeal of taking the Russian money was to set the company’s new valuation at something easier to stomach than what the common stock was going for in private sales. Additionally, DST has the option to buy another $100 million worth of common stock from existing employees and investors. → Read More
The conversation I had with a female roommate this morning, upon receiving the press release for the Samsung Gloss: Me: Check this out! It’s called the Samsung Gloss. It’s a QWERTY flip phone built for the ladyfolk. Her: Misogynist! Me: It’s pink! It has flowers! It’s called “gloss”! Her: Still. Plus, why is it called “gloss”? If they’re going off the idea that it looks like make-up, lipgloss comes in a tube. That looks more like a compact. → Read More
Yesterday developer Rick Strom wrote a blog posted titled “The Incredible App Store Hype“, in which he detailed some of the revenue stats he was seeing from the iPhone applications that he had released (some of which rank on the App Store’s top apps lists), and what other developers could expect to make accordingly. His conclusion? That most of the 36,000 applications on the App Store aren’t selling at all – for many apps, most days go by without a single sale.
Surprised? You shouldn’t be.
As marketplaces go, the App Store has a very low barrier to entry that makes it easy for anyone to sell their wares, which means that it’s flooded with apps. There’s no way Apple could prominently present these 36,000 applications to users without overwhelming them, which means most apps fall into obscurity as soon as they’re submitted. If you can’t find a way to get the word out, nobody is going to find your app on their own. → Read More
Newegg’s got a pretty good deal on a 1TB Hitachi desktop hard drive at $75 with free shipping. The drive normally sells for $80 but you can get an extra $5 off by using coupon code EMCLSNT27 at checkout. → Read More
About a half hour ago, Amazon opened up a new feature on the Kindle: the ability to read your notes and highlights on the Web. Readers have always been able to make notes and highlight text on the Kindle itself. Now those annotations appear on your account at http://kindle.amazon.com. Once you sign in, you can see all your notes.
While this opens up all sorts of possibilities, Amazon is taking a very conservative approach. You can’t share your notes with others. You can’t even edit them in your browser. All you can do is read them. That makes the feature little more than a Web archive of your notes and highlighted text snippets. It is a convenient feature, but why not enable sharing? Why can’t I share an excerpt with my friends on Facebook or Twitter (with the beginning of a quote and a short link)? → Read More
Nokia’s very own central application marketplace, dubbed Ovi Store, today officially made its way to the public arena as we expected.
We’ve browsed the online store extensively and hand-picked 10 applications we think you should download and install first. Note that the available content you can download depends on which device you’re using, we’ve selected the option ‘any phone’ to increase the chances of these being available for you as well:
(after the jump) → Read More
There’s one big Web 2.0 question we’ll never know the answer to: Could YouTube have survived on its own?
There are a handful of industry-changing Web 2.0 names including MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But unlike those other Web 2.0 behemoths who have the luxury of waiting out revenue challenges as their user base surges and the economy recovers, YouTube’s runaway success meant extremely high bandwidth costs and legal worries early on. It’s one of the only companies in that list that should have sold early while the momentum was high.
Evidence: Nearly three years after the acquisition, the mighty Google still hasn’t figured out exactly how to monetize all those eyeballs either. Industry estimates say YouTube spends half a billion or more a year in bandwidth costs. That’s not to say it was a bad acquisition, particularly considering Google’s stock currency was tantamount to monopoly money back then. But you have to wonder, if YouTube were alive today, how much more would it have been forced to raise and at what terms?
You can get an inkling by looking at the fortunes of a handful of Chinese equivalents: YouKu, Tudou, and 56.com. → Read More
Good to see that, sometimes, even the biggest tech companies can come to their senses. Today Sony in Japan announced a new Vaio P model, the Vaio P50 [JP], which comes with Windows XP SP3 instead of the hopelessly wrong Vista Sony shipped their Ps with so far. → Read More
About a half hour ago, Amazon opened up a new feature on the Kindle: the ability to read your notes and highlights on the Web. Readers have always been able to make notes and highlight text on the Kindle itself. Now those annotations appear on your account at http://kindle.amazon.com. Once you sign in, you can see all your notes.
While this opens up all sorts of possibilities, Amazon is taking a very conservative approach. You can’t share your notes with others. You can’t even edit them in your browser. All you can do is read them. That makes the feature little more than a Web archive of your notes and highlighted text snippets. It is a convenient feature, but why not enable sharing? Why can’t I share an excerpt with my friends on Facebook or Twitter (with the beginning of a quote and a short link)? → Read More
