Earlier tonight, Xobni quietly released, at least to some users, a new version of its Outlook plug-in that brings Twitter streams into your email in an intelligent way. Instead of acting like any other Twitter client and showing you the full stream of everyone you follow, it shows you only the recent Tweets of the person whose email you are reading, whether or not you follow them on Twitter. (A Xobni blog post went up briefly about it and then was taken down, but not before I was able to grab this screenshot).
Instead of replicating Twitter outright, it shows you the Tweets in the context of an email to help you learn more about the person with whom you are communicating. This is consistent with the way Xobni brings up similar information about a contact from Facebook or LinkedIn or Skype. If you don’t know the person, it gives you some more context. If you do, it gives you something personal to talk about. → Read More
Fans of Daniel Johnston, rejoice! There is now a beautifully cell-shaded, tilt-controlled puzzle game just for you.
“Hi, How Are You?” features images and music from the man himself, enclosed in a iPhone app that proves to actually be an entertaining game. → Read More
Facebook has long relied on its own users to help translate the site into more than 65 different languages. Now, Facebook wants to unleash its army of volunteer translators on other sites and apps across the Web. Any site or app that use Facebook Connect can now tap into the Facebook community to get help translating their site into any language that Facebook Translations supports.
As Facebook strives to cement itself as the social glue of the Web, offering free translation tools gives developers yet one more reason to choose Facebook Connect over Google Friend Connect or other competing platforms. It gives them access to new markets extremely quickly. Facebook thinks its crowdsourced translation tools are so good that it’s patented them. → Read More
Apparently you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to help NASA. The space agency just posted a request for suggestions for future prize contests on their website, and anyone may submit an idea. → Read More
Anyone who has followed Apple news/rumors/patents over the past couple of years has probably noticed a certain trend emerging: Apple seems to be slowly shifting its entire line of products to touch-based computing. That is to say, it’s moving its products away from buttons and keys, towards manipulation through a touchscreen interface.
While obviously, MacBook trackpads have used some level of touch for a long time, this trend really started with the iPhone, which presented the first excellent use of multi-touch in a consumer device. From there, Apple slowly began adding multi-touch support to the aforementioned notebook trackpads, to the point where they all now feature it. And then of course, there’s the iPod touch, which is an iPod with multi-touch support. → Read More
Belkin announced two new iPod related products today, a adjustable arm strap, and a protective case. What makes these special? Both are branded with the Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure logo, and a portion of the sales go to the prevention of breast cancer. → Read More
The trickle of news about Microsoft’s Courier device continues, and this time there’s a bit more of a realistic walkthrough. The device is being shown to be much more of a next-generation notepad than all-purpose tablet, and that’s probably for the best; Microsoft overreaching with a device like this could result in a real crash and burn. I suppose the best way to picture the Courier is just as a web-connected organizer — you know, one of those leather-bound ones that business people used to have, and which the Courier seems clearly designed after.
Of course, with an internet connection and full-color touchscreen, much more is enabled and the device becomes much more complicated. Microsoft’s (and Pioneer’s) task has been to pare that down to a product, and it really looks like they’ve done it right. → Read More
Smartphones are great. Ubiquitous data access is great. Mobile computing is great. Unfortunately, each smartphone represents its own little walled garden of convenience. Apple’s iPhone is tied tightly with iTunes and various other Apple services. Android is tied tightly with Google services. Each manufacturer makes a modicum of effort to allow their smartphone to sync with someone else’s services, but as is too often the case, such integration is usually lacking some important functionality. After all, there’s little business incentive to allow your users to use someone else’s services, right? Enter Funambol, and their open source mobile cloud sync. → Read More
Oh, the Verizon Hub. You came to the market just a few years too late. There was a time when a VoIP device with instant messaging capabilities would have been welcomed into the kitchens everywhere but that time was 2006 and not 2009. Now, that market has primarily moved onto full featured smartphones and somewhat killing the need for a home base type device. And so the Hub is no more. Verizon has official canceled the product. → Read More
Sean Parker is no stranger to Internet success. He’s 28 years old and has already helped start four very well-known services on the web: Napster, Plaxo, Causes, and of course, Facebook. And now he’s taking his impressive resume to Yammer, where he is joining the enterprise microblogging service’s Board of Directors, we’ve learned.
Yammer, which won the top prize at last year’s TechCrunch50, recently rolled out a bunch of updates to its web version, as well as its Adobe Air-based desktop client. We use the service on a daily basis for work, and those of us with iPhones are all eagerly awaiting the release of the new version of the iPhone app with Push Notifications. → Read More
While I’m sure many of you hang onto Major Nelson’s every word, you might have missed these new holiday bundles that Microsoft is cooking up. There’s the Xbox 360 Elite Holiday Bundle, and the Xbox 360 Wireless Controller Game Pack. What do these bundles contain???? → Read More
MySpace has just announced that CTO and co-founder Aber Whitcomb will be leaving the company, to be replaced by MySpace Music’s current CTO Alex Maghen. The news doesn’t come as much of a surprise — we speculated that Whitcomb would be leaving as part of the core executive shakeup that swept through MySpace last April (if anything it’s surprising that Whitcomb stayed on this long). At this point the last remaining member of MySpace’s old guard is Tom Anderson, who remains onboard in a limited capacity.
Maghen will take on the core responsibilities for running MySpace’s platform and will report to COO Mike Jones. Before joining MySpace, Maghen has previously served as CTO of MTV Networks and CTO of Yahoo Entertainment. → Read More
The pico-projector market is a new one, and the products are still evolving. It really wasn’t very long ago that this product’s predecessor, the MPro 110, hit the market. It got pretty lame reviews (before which I prematurely called it awesome), but that isn’t really indicative of the worth of this kind of device. A projector you can keep in your pocket? Genius. Now they just need to get it right. The MPro 120 takes some major steps towards doing that, but that still doesn’t quite elevate it from niche product to must-buy. → Read More
Bored? Lazy? Trendy? All of the above? You can turn a run-of-the-mill Guitar Hero or Rock Band controller into a weapon used for checking, folding, calling, raising, lowering, and more – YES! You can play online poker with a guitar controller! Finally! → Read More
My favoritest guy who plays who I’ve met recently, Jack Conte, has put together a nice version of Single Ladies by Beyonce with Nataly Dawn. While he and Nataly don’t dress up in leotards and heels – they didn’t get a huge budget for this – they do involve a Polaroid camera and a bowl of Coco Puffs. Great fun all around. → Read More
Rockstar’s Beaterator comes out today (and so does Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days… you couldn’t find two more different publishers in Rockstar and Square Enix) for the PSP. We’ve highlighted it in the past because A) Timbaland is one of the better “big name” producers out there and B) I have spent more than a few hours in Ableton Live and the like. It’s familiar territory, in other words. → Read More
Here’s what you get when you take a BlackBerry and replace the screen with a trackpad – a nice remote control for an HTPC. It’s compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac and uses wireless RF signals to communicate with an included USB receiver. → Read More
The following guest post is written by Larry Chiang, a co-founder of Duck9 who also regularly blogs for BusinessWeek. Today he is reporting from the Finovate startup conference.
At the FinovateStartup conference in New York City today, it is clear that financial startups are pushing forward regardless of funding woes or a lackluster economy
Companies here at Finovate center around financial innovations. They track personal finance and are aggressively plodding forward because consumer adoption of the internet is rising. These companies did not just present ideas, they brought along established industry stalwarts to their demos. What’s more, many of these start-ups are already white labeling their product and integrating into established company sites (T-Mobile ads, Yahoo, Bank of America). The user interfaces are better than average, which is perhaps influenced by Finovate’s previous winner Mint.
Best in Show went to Kasasa, an Austin, Texas-based financial website that uses real-world rewards and charity donations to get people to open free deposit accounts. → Read More
Mårten Gustaf Mickos, former CEO of MySQL, is Benchmark Capital‘s newest Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR).
Mickos served as chief executive officer for the open source database company from January 2001 to February 2008, when Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL for $1 billion. Benchmark was a relatively early investor in the company; they participated in the $20 million Series B round together with Index Ventures back in 2003.
Mickos holds a M.Sc. in technical physics from Helsinki University of Technology and is also a board member of Mozilla Messaging and RightScale. → Read More
So this is apparently an electronic instrument, handmade in England, that has been in the works for 7 years. It seems to be a cross between a piano and a harp with a set of keys and a strip controller for handling pitch bending. It seems there’s also a built-in arranger as well as a drum machine. You can also pitch-bend the keys as you play. You can sign up for the release info at their website but until it’s out let’s just revel in its strangeness. More video after the jump. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
