One of those highly paid analyst types from Wedbush has gone on record saying that the only thing holding back a true-to-life Xbox 360 game download service, à la Steam, is hard drive capacity. Right now, you can buy a 120GB hard drive for $140 on Amazon, which is ridiculous given the low, low prices of standard hard drives these days. (A recent CrunchDeal spotted a 1TB hard drive for $77.) So if Microsoft is serious about launching such a service, it needs to do something about bringing large capacity hard drives at normal prices. There’s no reason that a 120GB hard disk drive should cost $140 in the year 2009. → Read More
Yesterday the WSJ reported of the Iranian government using deep packet inspection technology to censor and monitor Internet activity throughout the country. Deep packet inspection (DPI) is essentially a method through which network operators can delve into individual IP packets to develop an understanding of the type of content flowing through their networks. In the case of Iran, the technology was purportedly used to block certain types of content from being accessed within the country. Similar, less invasive tactics have also been employed in China. Though reports of this nature present DPI as an emerging technology facilitating the invasion of privacy, DPI has long been used in IT departments for a variety of purposes. Jay Botelho of WildPackets, a DPI technology provider with several enterprise clients, informed us of how the technology is utilized in the enterprise space. Botelho explained that DPI is most commonly used for network troubleshooting. For instance, if a network hold up occurs, DPI technology allows one to reduce congestion by prioritizing traffic or reallocating portions to other branches of the network. DPI is also widely used to protect corporate networks from viruses and spyware by identifying and filtering out packets with malicious content. More recently, IT departments have turned to the technology to obtain a more comprehensive view of network performance. WildPackets, along with competitors NetScout and Network Instruments, for instance, all offer suites that monitor and provide quick summary-level reports of applications running across a network. In sum, though deep packet inspection has recently been portrayed as an emerging technology utilized by government agencies, the technology has existed in the enterprise for several years. It is only now, with rich media flowing through the Web with incredible abundance and speed that governments are utilizing the technology to control the flow of content and slow the proliferation of ideas. As social media continues to abound, it is also conceivable that IT departments may further utilize DPI to squelch out social media before it renders them obsolete. → Read More
Because Mac users need hard drives more than Windows users. Seagate announced some brand spankin’ new external drives today that include the FreeAgent Go Drive for Mac w/ USB, FreeAgent Go Pro for Mac, a 2TB FreeAgent Desk for Mac and the FreeAgent Go Dock+. The dock is actually really cool. → Read More
In case you hadn’t heard, ViewSonic — fine purveyor of affordable LCD monitors — has crossed over into the all-in-one desktop market. The company’s new VPC100 is now shipping to US retailers with an MSRP of $599. → Read More
Ugh. Don’t you hate when you get yourself all psyched about a new product and then you use it and realize it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to? That was kind of my experience with Gokivo, the first turn-by-turn GPS app for the iPhone, released on the heels of the iPhone OS 3.0 launch. Unfortunately, despite having some cool features, Gokivo just didn’t work as a turn-by-turn GPS solution. Though it did occasionally get me from point A to point B, there were so many bumps on the road that I found it better to simply use printed Google Maps directions. → Read More
Today, Facebook is launching a new “Live Stream Box” feature which allows for Facebook Pages to offer their own live video and chat area. And Ustream will be the first to take advantage of it with Ustream on Facebook, a new service to provide live video support to select Facebook users.
This functionality is an extension of what Ustream and Facebook did with some Jonas Brothers concerts last month — events which drew huge numbers. How huge? This huge, according to Ustream:
So clearly, there’s a big demand for certain live events via Facebook, and Ustream is jumping on it, as Facebook’s preferred partner. → Read More
This was “breaking news” two hours ago, but now it’s just regular news. ZeniMax Media, which is the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, has bought id Software. → Read More
Got an old sack o’ crap laptop or desktop gathering dust? Sugar Labs has just made its OLPC-friendly “Sugar” operating system into a USB-bootable version called Sugar on a Stick. You’ll need a one-gigabyte thumb drive and about twenty minutes of spare time. → Read More
A few speed tests done on the new iPhone 3GS pitting it both against the old iPhone as well as its main rivals. So far, these have either been eyeball tests or page rendering/boot time tests that take a bunch of variables into account. Mobile analytics and advertising company Medialets has released numbers for a test that it considers to be the most direct line of comparison for the iPhone 3GS against the iPhone 3G, the Palm Pre and the Android G1. And once again, the 3GS blows everyone away.
In Medialets test, they are specifically testing WebKit JavaScript performance. This makes sense since all these devices have a WebKit-based browser. WebKit offers a JavaScript test suite, SunSpider, which is used to determine the results. And just to make clear how fast the iPhone 3GS’ JavaScript speed is, Medialets set a 2GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook as the baseline.
Compared to the MacBook, the iPhone 3G running the iPhone OS 2.2.1 software had JavaScript performance that was 96 times worse. Meanwhile, an iPhone 3G running the iPhone 3.0 software was on 36 times worse. A T-Mobile G1 running the new Android 1.5 “Cupcake” software was 67 times worse than the baseline. And the Palm Pre was 36 times worse, equalling the iPhone 3G running the 3.0 software. So how did the iPhone 3GS do? It’s performance was only 12 times worse that of the MacBook — three times better than the Pre.
That’s pretty incredible when you think about it. Sure, this is only a JavaScript test, and hardly indicative of everything you can do on the device, but JavaScript is an integral part of the web, and sites continue to use it more and more as websites get more robust. And the rate of improvement that the iPhone is seeing in performance in that regards means that soon we could see a mobile device that handles the web just as fast as an actual computer. → Read More
Oh, look, another limited edition Leica that none of you will ever be able to afford. (I’ll never afford one either, so don’t despair.) It’s the result of some sort of partnership between Leica and Hermès. (Fun fact: Hermès makes a cologne I use. I hope that gets picked up by Techmeme.) → Read More
Phase 4 has launched. Last week we told you about Facebook’s new “everyone button” that lets users who have chosen to keep their profiles at least partially private send the occasional status message or other content out to the public. That feature, which goes hand-in-hand with the recent search engine for public status messages, launched today to a small number of users.
Don’t be fooled by what appears to be a minor change in the user interface. This is another indication of Facebook’s extreme desire to get users to make as much of their data public as possible. Just like Twitter.
This new version of Publisher lets users add content such as photos, videos, and status updates on your home page and profile. Each piece of content can be shared with everyone, friends and networks, friends of friends and friends. Users can also customize the settings further.
You can now control who you want to inform of your Facebook friends when you add any kind of content to the site. This is actually a much welcomes feature—I think its helpful to be able to control who sees different types of content that you publish to the site. On the other hand, Facebook also lets you publish to “everyone,” which lets you make updates visible to anyone (including Google).
Here’s how it works: After writing a status, uploading a photo or creating other content from the Publisher, use the lock icon in the lower-right corner of the Publisher to access the drop-down menu. From there, you can then choose to make the post visible to everyone, friends and certain networks, friends of friends, and a custom list. → Read More
The killer features of FriendFeed continue. Today, the service has just added a way to share files on the service. So now it’s just as easy to share a PDF or text file as it is to share a picture. “You can attach (almost) any file to your FriendFeed posts via the web interface or by emailing file attachments to share@friendfeed.com,” FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor says.
And what’s really great about this is that using FriendFeed direct messaging aspect, you can easily transfer files to certain individuals, or groups of people at the same time. → Read More
It’s hard to believe that anything other than the Logitech MX Revolution could be comfortable in the hand. While I doubt that Belkin is going after that particular mouse they are touting a trio of mice that were designed to “place your hand in the optimum position for working in comfort.” → Read More
HTC may have won the morning, but SanDisk also dropped a bit of news that may interest you. Its got a 32GB SDHC cards, which is due for release this August, that is said to be the world’s fastest, with speeds topping out at 30MB/s. → Read More
LinkedIn had a management shakeup last December – CEO Dan Nye stepped down. Founding CEO Reid Hoffman stepped in again and former Yahoo exec Jeff Weiner joined the company as President.
The hiring of Weiner as President was clearly an interim move, and we predicted he’d move into the CEO role sometime this year: “The addition of Weiner is also quirky, and may explain the changes. Weiner was likely expecting a CEO role as his next job. He’s now second to Hoffman. Perhaps the company is using the interim period to see how he can handle himself leading the company. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Weiner take the CEO job at LinkedIn sometime in 2009, or else leave the company.” It turns out that is exactly what happened.
LinkedIn continues to roll. They are the fifth most valuable social network according to our recent model. The site attracts over 15 million monthly unique visitors (Comscore worldwide, April 2009), up from less than 7 million a year ago, and has 42 million registered profiles. They’ve been ebitda profitable since last year and say they plan to be cash flow positive this year. In February, Hoffman told me “We can go public any time we want to.”
And Weiner agrees, telling me today that their current plan to to build an independent public company, with three key revenue sources: premium subscriptions, corporate solutions and advertising. To date the company has raised over $100 million. The last round, a year ago, valued the company at just over $1 billion. → Read More
The influential Article 29 Working Party, an independent European advisory body on data protection and privacy to the EC, has argued that social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace need more regulation to ensure that personal data of their respective users is not put at risk. Even though the majority of sites that the report mentions are based in the United States, the group states their large presence in Europe means that they should be subject to European Union privacy and data protection legislation.
This isn’t exactly news, since the FT wrote about the report last week when it was still unpublished. It is now, and I’ve embedded it below. → Read More
I was out for my evening constitutional last night, enjoying the sight of “For Sale” signs on homes throughout my neighborhood, when I spied with my little eye something new and novel. I’ve seen URLs on For Sale signs a couple of times, and always thought that that was a fine way to attract eyeballs to your property. Let’s face it: trawling though MLS listings sucks, so going directly to a property’s URL is a time saver! What I saw last night, though, was even better: a URL specifically geared for mobile phones. “Mobile users, go to prtmobile.com/1908″. → Read More
I blogged Leopard, a robotic office chair, last November when it still was in prototype status. Now, more than half a year later, the chair finally went on sale in Japan. And it might find its way outside this country as well, as both Japanese companies involved in the development of the chair, office equipment maker Oki and furniture company Okamura, are active overseas. → Read More
Google is moving into the mobile ad market with AdSense for mobile apps. Over the past few months, Google has been testing both text and graphical ads with ten mobile app developers, including Shazam and Urbanspoon. Today it is opening the private beta to more developers who meet certain criteria.
These are contextual ads for iPhone and Android apps. To qualify for the public beta, the apps must be free and generate at least 100,000 pageviews per day. The program is only for iPhone or Android apps. Developers must be ready to go live with the ads in four weeks and participate for three months. → Read More
