Let’s be clear: it was his prerogative to put his race in the advert. I’m just repeating what I heard. But let’s also be honest. Say you wanted soccer (football) lessons. Given two identical ads on Craigslist, would you go with a guy born and raised in Brazil or some local yokel? I realize this is a sticky issue for potential Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, but for us it’s less of a problem. The Brazil guy, am I right? Because he’s more likely to have been immersed in soccer culture from birth and to have played since childhood, developing skills people like me think only exist in Shaolin Soccer.
Thus, Mr. ByunTae’s reasoning in including his genetic makeup and upbringing in an ad for training someone at a video game. Because Korea is the be-all and end-all of Starcraft. → Read More
Did you know you can switch tabs in Firefox by making a twisting motion with your fingers on a multi-touch surface? I did. Turns out I’ve been doing it for months — I thought I was late to the party and was too ashamed to mention it to anybody for fear of an epic internet ribbing (“What, you just figured that out?”). But no, apparently it was top secret and highly experimental. That was in the beta, though; it looks like the official version has reduced it to a hack.
Fortunately, mastering this multi-touch-enabling technique will allow you to tweak your gestures, resulting in everlasting glory. → Read More
Allow me to admit something shocking right off the bat: I have not watched these ads. I am blogging in ignorance , because it seems pretty clear what’s going on here. As was the case with the Seinfeld ads, it seems that once again, Microsoft is barking too hard, and up the wrong tree at that.
Your browser is bad, it’s been bad for years. Sure, IE8 is way better than its predecessors, but that’s as close to polishing poop and calling it gold as anyone has ever come. But this isn’t the way to make people try it. → Read More
Oh boy. I’ve found a reason to charge my Pre back from the dead. ZodTTD, purveyor of iPhone emulators galore, has struck again by installing psx4all on his Palm Pre. Surprisingly enough, Zod says the Pre’s hardware runs the emulator way better than the iPhone 3GS. But it’s not all peaches and cream. → Read More
http://p.castfire.com/C2I9q/video/117263_2009-06-30-160346.flv The Pirate Bay: Holes in the sale? Our own Doug Aamoth and JG Mason from Gadgetell.com discuss the recent sale of The Pirate Bay. → Read More
This guest post is written by Mary Hodder, the founder Dabble. Prior to Dabble, Hodder consulted for a number of startups, did research at Technorati and wrote her masters thesis at Berkeley focusing on live web search looking at blog data.
Real time search is nothing new. It is a problem we’ve been working on for at least ten years, and we likely will still be trying to solve it ten years from now. It’s a really hard problem which we used to call “live web search,” which was coined by Allen Searls (Doc’s son) and refers to the web that is alive, with time as an element, in all factors including search.
The name change to “real time search” seems a way to refocus attention toward the issue of time as an important element of filters. We are still presented with the same set of problems we’ve had at least the past ten years. None of the companies that Erick Schonfeld pointed to the other day seem to be doing anything differently from the live web search / discovery companies that came before. The new ones all seem to be fumbling around at the beginning of the problem, and in fact seem to be doing “recent search,” not really real time search. While I’m sure they’ve worked really hard on their systems, they are no closer than the older live web search systems got with the problem. All the new ones give a reverse chron view, with most mixing Twitter with something: blog data, other microblog data, photos, creating some kind of top list of recent trends. Some have context, like a count of activity over a period of time, or how long a trend has gone on or a histogram (Crowdeye) which both Technorati and Sphere experimented with in the early years. Or they show how many links there are to something or the number of tweets. All seem susceptible to spam and other activities degrading to the user experience and none seem to really provide the context and quality filters that one would like to see if this were to really work. All seem to suffer from needing to learn the lessons we already learned in blog search and topic discovery. → Read More
I’m no marketing wizard, but Guitar Hero Smash Hits could have been called Guitar Hero: Songs From The First Guitar Hero Games Before The Drums and Microphone Existed But Now You Can Play the Good Songs from Those Games on the Drums and Sing Too. Again, I’m no marketing wizard. And Guitar Hero Smash Hits isn’t a bad game at all. It is what it is, though: a greatest hits game. If you’ve played all the Guitar Hero games before World Tour and you’re only interested in playing guitar, then you’ll find little of value here. But if you liked all of the early songs and have always wished you could play the drumming and singing parts, then Smash Hits is worth a closer look. → Read More
A few weeks ago, Google announced a new plug-in that would sync Google’s enterprise versions of Gmail, contacts, and calendar with Microsoft’s Outlook. This was a big deal because it not only made it simple for users seamlessly integrate both email applications but it also represented Google’s push to become a serious player in the enterprise apps space where Outlook is still overwhelmingly popular. Unfortunately, Google’s plug-in had some major faults. Most notably, the bug didn’t allow users find emails using Windows Desktop Search, essentially making the search feature useless. Today, Google announced that it fixed the problem. The Windows Desktop Search feature now works, so you have the option of searching within the native Outlook search or Windows Desktop Search to find information in Outlook. Google says they’ve also added the ability to access Windows Live Hotmail via the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector plug-in. Google has also launched a Google Apps resource site that is a centralized place for resources and info for businesses which are looking to switch from a Microsoft Exchange environment. The site includes information about Google Apps, FAQs, and customer feedback from those who have switched from Exchange to Google Apps. CrunchBase Information Microsoft Google Apps Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Here’s a quick tip for you Mac users who are going to be downloading Firefox 3.5 today. Give this optimized version, named Shiretoko, a try. It’s only for Intel Macs, but it’s supposed to speed up boot time and whatnot. I don’t know, I use it (along with this icon pack) and, all things being equal, I think it works just swell. So give it a shot! → Read More
Don’t want to waste $37 to see Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen at the movie theater? Most critics wouldn’t blame you although a lot of fans are enjoying the summer flick. But anyway, watch the video above and save yourself some cash. It tells the same story and has a proportionate amount of explosions. → Read More
Bet you didn’t see this one coming. Back in 2007 we wrote about a service called Dial Directions which lets you call a special phone number and verbally ask for directions, which are immediately sent to you via SMS. Today comes news that the company has been acquired by Sakhr Software, a development house specializing in Arabic natural language processing (NLP). And with their powers combined, they’re building a real-time voice translation service that will allow users to translate phrases from their mobile phones on the fly.
It’s a better fit than it sounds. Dial Directions has spent the last few years building mobile applications (it has an app for the iPhone on the App Store), and has also built out the technology required to efficently transfer voice input to servers, where it can then be processed (this server-side processing is also used by Google Voice Search and a number of other apps). Once it makes it to the cloud, this speech will be routed through Sakhr’s software, which is capable of translating English to Arabic and vice-versa. Translated audio and text are then sent back to the mobile phone, all within a matter of seconds. → Read More
Here’s a four-port USB hub from Elecom that comes with magnetic backing and hooks for easy mounting on most surfaces. It retails for $40. I want one. Don’t you? → Read More
Well, iPhone OS 3.1 Beta just went live on Apple’s developer center and, as usual, it’s a quest to figure out what has changed. Our lovely developer friends have already started tearing it apart in search of that hidden gem detailing the iPhone 4GFP (The FP stands for “Face punch”), and we’re keeping tabs on what they find. → Read More
The Fitness Fairy just dropped off the Perfect Pushup V2, from Perfect Fitness. So consider this a quick hands-on, not a full review. (Give me a few days for that.) My first thoughts, compared to the mobile unit I reviewed a few months ago: my God the handles are a lot more comfortable. → Read More
Old NES controller, meet iPhone. An enterprising individual over on the iPhonefr.com forums (careful, everything is in French!) has turned one of the most iconic controllers of all time into something that holds one of the most iconic electronic gadgets of the present day. → Read More
SkyGrid, the nifty, free financial news aggregator, is now publishing a stream of news on Twitter, letting users follow breaking business news headlines via the microblogging network.
The news aggregator, which only features media on publicly traded companies, not only has an comprehensive Twitter feed for news stories, but the site also has Twitter feeds that are broken down by sector. So users can follow SkyGridHealth or SkyGridEnergy for sector-related news. SkyGrid currently has separate Twitter feeds for 8 different industries. SkyGrid says that the Twitter feed may be especially useful to users who want to access SkyGrid on their mobile devices. → Read More
It looks like Apple has already started sending out the beta version and SDK for the next iteration of the iPhone OS, 3.1, to developers.
The iPhone 3.0 software was released just about two weeks ago, ahead of the iPhone 3GS launch. By most accounts it’s pretty stable, though some users have been having battery issues. That’s why it’s a bit odd that Apple would iterate up to version 3.1 already, instead of something like 3.0.1, which it tends to do for minor updates and bug fixes. Could we be seeing a larger update to the OS already?
I’m told that there’s nothing much of interest in the release notes to indicate anything major that is new or changed. → Read More
UK real estate startup Zoopla has confirmed that it is in advanced talks to purchase the PropertyFinder Group, which was put up for sale recently by joint owners REA Group and News International. My sources say the deal is all but done at a price of £1.5m. A potential management buyout appears to no longer be in the running. It’s a far cry from 2005 when News Corp and Australian property group REA bought Propertyfinder for £14 million. It was later joined by UKPropertyShop and HotProperty.co.uk for £5.6 million. REA alone has now written off around AUS$61 million. Zoopla commented on the record to TechCrunch Europe: “We can confirm that Zoopla.co.uk is currently looking at purchasing the PropertyFinder Group. We have a great deal of respect for the business and the brands that have been built within this group and will have further comments on our plans over the coming weeks.” Zoopla has been playing a canny hand, using user-generated data to provide accurate house price estimates and building a lot of data-driven services. It took a Series B funding round at the beginning of this year from Atlas Venture and Octopus Ventures. On June 26, REA Group and News International announced the “potential sale” of all or part of their jointly owned UK online business, which runs the Propertyfinder, Hotproperty and UK Propertyshop websites. Propertyfinder‘s CEO – Gillian Kent, the former MSN UK head who joined in January ‘08 – had previously been leading an attempt at a management buy-out from joint owners News International and REA Group, but I understand that deal is no longer on the table. REA is retrenching back to Australia while News Corp is going through something of an anti-online rampage right now. News Int also has a stake in the free property listings site Globrix. Propertyfinder is understood to have 2.3 million unique visitors and falls between FindAProperty and Primelocation according to comScore. CrunchBase Information Zoopla Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
It looks like Dell is expanding the Alienware brand. First there was the OptX AW2210 monitor and now the TactX Headset. Judging by the specs of 16 Hz – 16kHz and -38 dB, it’s your standard gaming headset. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a couple of cool features. → Read More
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