Time to let your geek flag fly, on the cheap! ShopEcko.com is offering a really great 50% off deal on it’s Star Wars line, with some stuff as cheap at $14.95. Shipping starts at $5.95, but if you go nuts and spend over $100 you’ll get it for free.
Now’s your chance to get that Boba Fett hoodie you’ve always wanted! → Read More
As we first reported the existence of a few days ago, Google’s Theme Gallery for Chrome has gone live. On the page, you can find 29 official themes that range from subtle (greyscale) to hideously ugly (legal pad).
Installing them couldn’t be simpler. Just pick the one you like and click on the “Apply theme” button. The theme will download and in the download manager at the bottom of the Chrome browser window, simply select “open.” After you have the new theme installed, you’ll see an option to return to the default theme. If you close that, you can revert in the Preferences area, under “Personal Stuff.” → Read More
I suppose that if you insist on being one of those people who carries your pet around in a backpack or purse, you might as well kill two birds with one stone (unless you’re a bird lover) and get a bag that holds your laptop too. → Read More
Slowly but surely, Google Maps is filling up with more and more places. If you do a search in a major city, you are likely to find landmarks, museums, famous stores and restaurants labeled right on the map even if you did not specifically search for them.
If you pull up a map of midtown Manhattan, for example, you’ll see museums like MOMA and the American Folk Art Museum, as well as tourist attractions like the “Tree at Rockefeller Center.” But some of the famous buildings are also marked, like the Sony Building, the Trump Tower, and the CBS building. Churches and chocolate stores show up as well. → Read More
There are a bunch of new shots of the upcoming ZuneHD out there all of a sudden, in advance of an official announcement expected later on. They show not only a Black ZuneHD (I kind of like the silver one but hey), but some interface tweaks that make it a very good-looking device indeed. The Zune interfaces, from the website to the player to the device, have always been sexy, but the devices always got the minimalist end of the stick. No longer! → Read More
Looks like Amazon just dropped the price of the Uncharted 160GB PS3 bundle, from $499 to $449. Of course, as per the rules and regulations of the Internet, we’re now required to speculate that this could maybe mean that Sony is looking to cut the price of the PS3 across the board. → Read More
Quick Version: Gateway’s new student-oriented NV series packs a lot of bang for the buck, although the machine is almost too heavy and bulky to function as a truly portable computer. If it’s going to spend most of its time on a desk, though, you get a fully-featured computer at roughly the price of an expensive netbook. → Read More
Net Applications has just released its latest report on browser usage, covering the months of June and July. The results show the impact of the launch of Firefox 3.5 on the browser market, as well as the steady decline of Internet Explorer 6 and 7 as they give way to IE8 and other browsers.
Firefox 3.5, which didn’t officially launch until June 30th, now claims 4.54% of the browser market, though most of these new users were likely previously on Firefox 3.0, which dropped from 20.03% in June to 16.21% in July. Internet Explorer 6 and 7 continue to see their user-bases fade (which is a decidedly good thing, especially in the case of IE6), and it seems that many (though not all) of these are heading to IE8. IE6 dropped from 30.15% in May to 27.21% in July, while IE7 saw a drop from 31.16% to 23.09% in the same time frame. IE8 has grown from 5.95% in May to 12.46% in July. → Read More
Sweden’s anti-piracy law, IPRED, seems to be working, insofar as various Internet traffic monitors have seen a significant downturn in piracy. The day after the law went into effect, Web traffic fell by some 30 percent, and now, several months later (the law went into effect on April 1), an ISP there says piracy-related traffic is still “free-falling.” → Read More
We’ve written about Foursquare a number of times. It’s a really nice tool for keeping track of where your friends are, while at the same time playing this oddly competitive social game. As a stand-alone app, it’s great. But the data it’s collecting may be just as interesting, and the service SocialGreat is one of the first to make use of it.
The idea behind SocialGreat is very simple: To show the most popular places in cities during set periods of time. As the tagline says, “Where’s the crowd?” But here’s why it’s better than a regular rating system: You vote with your feet. As in, if you go to a place, and check-in there, it gets a point on the leader board. → Read More
Japan sure has a penchant for extraordinary piggy banks. Tokyo-based toy maker Banpresto is now selling a quite unusual model, too. The Coin Penguin [JP] is a cute little, well, penguin, that can open its mouth, swallow coins and then reward the user by performing a quick dance. → Read More
OK. I’m happy to report that Round 2 of the Gadget Club Contest passed by without a hitch and now we’re on to Round 3. Before I show you the new entrants, however, let’s announce the Round 2 winner, shall we? → Read More
Searching for photos on the Web takes way too much time. There are simply too many photos to sort through and not enough good ones. Image search is a major priority for all the big search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing), and they’ve all been tweaking their image search to make it better. But for the longest time, Flickr (which is owned by Yahoo, but separate from Yahoo Image Search) has been my default image search engine because that is where I can usually find the best photos.
Flickr’s been coasting. Its image search hasn’t been updated in a while—until today. But once again it has turned up the awesome on image search. → Read More
With a name like the T.16000M, you kind of expect this joystick to sync with your cerebellum and control eight games at once. But no, it’s just Thrustmaster’s latest, which uses a magnetic sensor to provide extra precision in your controls — 16,000 analog states per axis, to be precise (many analog sticks use 256 or even 16). I’ve always thought of joysticks as being precise, even if I was never good with them, and this one appears to be the most precise non-military joystick out there right now.
I’ll be honest here: I don’t have a lot of experience with joysticks. I do have lots of experience with joypads, and I used to drive stick, so if you add them together it’s almost like I could have reviewed this thing years ago. So I’m not a specialist, but I do know what to expect from a controller. → Read More
Last March, two reporters for Current TV were caught and detained by the North Korean military after illegally crossing into the country from China as they reported on fleeing refugees. While some initial reports seemed optimistic that the pair — Chinese-American Laura Ling and Korean-American Euna Lee — would be released shortly in an act of good-will, that didn’t prove to be the case: both reporters were subsequently sentenced to twelve years in a North Korean labor camp for “hostile acts against the DPRK” and illegal entry into the country. Repeated calls by US officials to free the pair have seemed to fall on deaf ears.
But today, their story has a happy ending. Former President Bill Clinton has managed to convince North Korean President Kim Jong Il to pardon both reporters, only hours after arriving in North Korea during a surprise visit to the country. → Read More
When I walked in to SpinVox’s plush UK HQ this morning the tension in the building was obvious. Following a fortnight of controversy and allegations that the whole thing is powered not by technology but by a simple, massive, call center operation, this was the first ever live demo to the media of their famed voice to text platform. There were nervously exchanged glances and bad jokes from senior staff. But the guys managed to hold it together for long enough to usher us in to a conference room and ply us with pastries. We were not asked to sign an NDA, but we were asked not to record anything that happened in the room. Ironic, really – and the reason that some media declined the invitation.
CIO Rob Wheatley took us through a technical explanation that, while honest about the existence of human agents in the process, didn’t give away as many secrets as he made out, before leaping to what we all came for: the demo.
The big technical question surrounding SpinVox – the one they refuse to answer (as they did again today) – is what proportion of the messages they process are seen by a human being. Whatever the answer their backers are clearly convinced: today they raised another $25 million (£15 million) from existing investors.
So what happened in the demo, and what can we infer from it about those proportions? → Read More
The traditional Tarot deck has finally been updated with some new artwork, although the update didn’t quite make it past the mid-to-late 80′s. ThinkGeek is selling “8-Bit Tarot Cards” which look like a cross between the ancient mysteries and the also-ancient Nintendo Entertainment System. → Read More
So the rumors that Spotify is raising a new round of financing of around $50 million have been confirmed by TechCrunch. That gives it a valuation of $250 million. The money will come from Asian investor Li Ka-Shing and another venture firm, potentially Wellington. Our report from October that Spotify had raised €15.3 million from Northzone Ventures and Creandum at a €71.6 million pre-money valuation was close-sih. In fact it was €20 million, and – most interestingly – included investments from all the big music labels. That put the company at a €100 million valuation. Now, more rights holders are participating, pressured by lots of interest from other VCs. Spotify has 2 million UK users but in Sweden it’s rumoured to have at least 5 million 1 million, and a growing footprint in Germany. → Read More
But this summer update isn’t just all about software, Digeo also announced the Moxi Mate: An expensive second room media streaming device. → Read More
Delicious was once one of the hottest social sites on the Internet. That’s why Yahoo bought it in 2005. But it’s weird now to even think about it as a social site, I get more of the utilitarian vibe from it these days. People still use it, but it’s more of a repository. Or, to put it another way, it’s where links go to die.
Contrast that with services like Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed where people are sharing and re-sharing links all over the place, and having conversations about the content, making it feel alive. And that’s what Yahoo wants to tap into now, with another revamping of Delicious. And not surprisingly, this revamp is very Twitter-centric. → Read More
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