Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin. Comfort is overrated anyway. And robot spiders are underrepresented on this (otherwise excellent) website. That’s why I decided to put two, two, TWO SPIDER ROBOT VIDEOS in one post. We’re falling behind other blogs in spiderbot video density. Click on through and be squicked/entertained. → Read More
An enraged reader, Josh Vickers, writes in today to complain about Slacker’s premium online radio service. Like Pandora, Slacker streams music to users for free. And like Pandora, Slacker limits the number of times you can skip songs each hour, and has advertising.
Both services allow users to remove those limitations if they pay a yearly fee. Slacker charges $48/year. Pandora charges $36/year for their Pandora One service.
The frustration from users isn’t that Slacker charges more. It’s how they market the premium product. Pandora straight up says they’ll charge you $36 to upgrade. No misleading marketing statements. You pay $36 and you get Pandora One for a year.
But Slacker tricks you. They give you a seven day free trial and say it’s $3.99 a month after that. But you get billed for the whole year – $48 – after that seven day period is over. And if you don’t want want to pay for that year, you have to cancel during the seven day period. → Read More
I have to say, this is a — excuse me — a damn fine looking all-in-one PC. Why, if it weren’t for the somewhat out-of-place strip of leather, I might just nab one of these Wind Top AE2010 things right now. Actually, I have no use for all-in-ones, but for the budget-and-design-conscious PC user, this thing looks like the holy grail. Even the specs are nice. → Read More
Earlier today, Nokia announced that it was launching Nokia Money, a new payment service powered by Obopay that allows users to send money to friends, merchants, and service companies simply by using their phone numbers. The service will be showcased in early September at the Nokia World conference, with plans to roll it out to select markets in 2010.
As we wrote when news broke of Obopay’s $70 million funding round (of which Nokia was a major participant in), one of the biggest markets for this technology is in regions like India, where many people have phones with pre-paid SIM cards but don’t have bank accounts. And judging by Nokia’s press release, which emphasizes that there are “4 billion mobile phone users and only 1.6 billion bank accounts”, the company seems to agree. → Read More
I love my home state for a number of reasons, but this is just one more reason why Oregon kicks ass. Portland, OR-based clothier Nau’s billfold wallet is perfect for any world traveler. It has a SIM card dedicated slot built right in! And it’s made from 100 percent recycled polyester. → Read More
And here I thought that these drones were born to kill. In fact, they’re being put to good use, and such as the ones they’ve got cruising in the ocean, or these, which they’ve deployed to help combat wildfires. The drones can go into dangerously smoky areas and use IR cameras to point out hot spots for firefighters — man and machine working alongside one another like brothers. Heartwarming!
My mind, of course, immediately jumps to the fact that those “hot spots” could just as easily be warm, fleeing humans after the Robocalypse, but for the moment that’s not a danger. For the moment. → Read More
I was just a moment ago writing on how the first generation of pico projectors was pretty much… bad. And while successive versions aren’t likely to drastically increase the brightness, they can improve on battery life, image quality, and build quality. The MPro120, which replaces the ambitious but unsatisfying (not to mention ugly) MPro110, does just that. → Read More
We’re excited about pico projectors here at CG, but the first wave of them has been somewhat underwhelming. Optoma, 3M and Dell have the right idea, but image quality just isn’t up to par yet (the new 3M one might change that). On the other hand, mini-projectors are a perfectly good option if you’ve got a decent surface to project on. Peter liked the Joybee, and this new one from Viewsonic looks like a competitor, though it isn’t quite as small.
The idea, I think, is “portable” but not “pocketable.” Where are you going to go, after all, that you need a projector but can’t take a backpack? → Read More
We just received an anonymous tip containing some supposed pictures of the interface for Apple’s forthcoming tablet computer. Are they real? Who knows. There are some peculiarities, like the keyboard jumping all over the place on the screen. And the menu system looks a little un-Apple for what is clearly a movie trailer section. Also, why is the play/pause area so transparent? I think I prefer this video still.
But again, who knows. Says our tipster, “this is very early stuff, and it is all about what Steve wants”. (At least, if these are indeed fake, the creators had the good humor to have a couple of the screenshots focus on the upcoming movie All About Steve). More importantly, is this what you want? → Read More
If you’ve never experienced the original Serious Sam…you disappoint me. I had more fun playing Serious Sam with my roommate (hi Pat) in college than in almost any other game I can think of — with the possible exception of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Fighting hundreds of enemies at once, bosses hundreds of feet tall, going for items you know are a trap — Serious Sam is a classic of the first order. And now they’re putting it on XBLA with a sweet graphical upgrade. I didn’t enjoy the second Serious Sam nearly as much as the first, but it’s plain fact that the graphics are way better.
Although I’ll always enjoy the original original, newer gamers might find this “HD” version more palatable. And if you’re not convinced, watch this absurd commercial they’ve put together. → Read More
In what looks to be an effort to be the one overall ad network that rules them all, Google sent out an email to AdSense publishers today letting them know that they would soon be opening up their accounts to allow for third-party ad networks to display ads as well. The catch is that it will only be open to third party ad networks that Google deems worthy of certification.
Right now, if you run AdSense on your site, you are seeing ads come in from advertisers who bid on certain keywords using Google’s AdWords product. But with the new more open system, if there is a better offer from one of these Google-certified third-party networks, Google says it will run those ads instead. You’ll be able to partially control these third party ad networks from within AdSense. For example, if you don’t like a certain network, you can block it. Or you can black all third-party ad networks entirely — obviously, Google would be just fine with that. → Read More
Facebook is the biggest social network in the world, so it may come as a surprise to some that up until early 2008, it didn’t offer any localized versions of the site at all. The company managed to jumpstart its international presence with an application fittingly called Translations, which took the time-consuming and costly task of translating the site and crowd-sourced it, asking the network’s millions of users to lend a hand. The process proved to be very efficient: Facebook launched a Spanish site in Feburary 2008, only a few weeks after unveiling the app, and by June it had support for 16 more languages. It’s now up to over 60, including right-to-left reading languages like Hebrew. And now, Facebook is trying to patent the process that helped turn it into an international goliath.
Facebook filed the patent application with the US Patent & Trademark Office in December 2008, but it only recently made its way online. The application is currently going through the office’s examination process, and you can be sure that plenty of sites are hoping it doesn’t go through. → Read More
Qualcomm (they probably made the chipset you’re using in your phone) is working on bringing a new type of product to the US, the FLO TV. Roughly the size of an iPhone, the FLO TV is intended to allow you to watch digital TV broadcasts on the go. → Read More
MadCatz is making a whole bunch of, well, let’s just say “stuff” and leave it at that, for Modern Warfare 2. I’m one of the few people on Earth who doesn’t really like the whole modern warfare gimmick, so excuse my blasé attitude → Read More
Those of you still on The Twitter, despite Devin’s recent treatise, may want to add @RockstarGames to your list of followers. It was there that the company announced the release date of the PSP version of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Look for it on October 20 of this year. → Read More
England has been rocked by yet another episode of soccer hooliganism, but no matter: MCV has confirmed the Xbox 360 price cut will be announced tomorrow. Note the wording: the price cut itself won’t happen tomorrow, just that Microsoft will announce what’s what. → Read More
Last night, I wrote about the largely unstated but well known rule-of-thumb for Twitter: That people with more followers than the number of people they are following tend to be better people to follow. Such a ratio cannot exist on Facebook because unlike Twitter, it has a symmetric social graph — if you friend someone, they have to accept your friend request or else there is absolutely no connection (not including Fan pages). This puts additional pressure on you to accept all friend requests. It can be a burden.
And I think Facebook realizes that, which is why we’re getting a post today on its blog basically explaining that it’s okay not to accept all requests.
Specifically, the post notes that if you click the button to ignore a friend request, the person who requested you will not be notified about it. Likewise, if you accept someone as a friend, but then later un-friend them, they will not be notified (though they will no longer be able to see your information, nor will you be able to see their’s). And if you don’t want to accept them, but don’t want them to be able to attempt to friend you again, Facebook recommends simply leaving their request pending in your queue. → Read More
Here are some of the topics from today’s podcast… Should The Pirate Bay go away? Steve Jobs focuses on the Apple Tablet Nokia announces Booklet 3G netbook with 12-hour battery PS3 Slim hits shelves, Xbox 360 price cuts No Linux on PS3 Slim Xbox 360 has a 54% failure rate? LISTEN: Show Link | RSS Feed | iTunes Link → Read More
