Simply amazing. I had no idea that such a transportation vehicle existed for standard roads. But sure enough, Fagioli manufactures the beast and calls it a Self Propelled Modular Transporters (SPMTs). → Read More
It’s not a Windows 7 Party without some tunes, right? Thankfully Microsoft has created a set of commercials with catchy beats, nice visuals, and no stilted, low-paid actors apparently preparing to get it on in the worst Cinemax late night movie ever. Enduserblog has all of the videos for your perusal but I picked out a few more good ones after the jump. → Read More
Well, it looks like we won’t have the infamous “Laptop Burka” to kick around anymore. The owner of the company contacted us to let us know that they are pulling the plug, due to being “murdered” in the press. Their website is down as of this posting. → Read More
People always send in tips about Steve Jobs‘ Mercedes being spotted (usually parked at some weird angle or in the handicap spot) at Apple HQ in Cupertino, CA. But today we have an even better Apple parking lot tip.
Just look at the license plate of the car that was parked at Apple HQ this morning. For those non-religious readers, or those less versed in comedy, I’ll go ahead and spell it out for you. WWSJD stands for What Would Steve Jobs Do? — a take on the popular religious meme WWJD? which stands for What Would Jesus Do? → Read More
Lets say you’ve got way, way too much money. You’ve dumped it out of planes, shot it out of cannons, swam in it Scrooge McDuck style – but now you’re bored. What else is there to do? Well, if you also happen to have absolutely no sense of shame, you can drop some (read: $240,000) of that cash on a fully glitzed BlackBerry Curve 8900. First, they replaced the outer casing with solid 18-carat gold – then, because that wasn’t enough, they went ahead and decked it out with 4,459 brilliant cut diamonds. The company behind the bling, Alexander Amosu LTD., says that they’ll only be pushing out three of these – one of which has already been snatched up. Hey, mystery buyer – wanna hang out? [CIO via CrackBerry] → Read More
It’s Friday. You probably have loads of work but no motivation. I know that feeling. So why not fire up VLC and watch videos Matrix-style. → Read More
The Averatec N3400 is an ultraportable notebook with a 13-inch screen, “aluminum-clad” shell, external DVD burner, and 3.8-pound body weight. Priced at $799, it’s got a lot to offer. → Read More
Do you know who Lily Allen is? I sure as hell don’t, nor do I care to know who she is. I mean, I know who she is now: she’s some musician who is against piracy. Good for her, great. Years from now, Future People will erect a statue of her and put it in the middle of New York harbor in order to honor her bravery. It’s the least we can do, right? Yeah, well, it seems Lily Alen isn’t just brave, but she’s also monumentally hypocritical. Again, good for her, I don’t care. → Read More
Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Shelby Bonnie, the CEO of Whiskey Media. He co-founded CNET in 1993 and was the Chairman and CEO from 2000 to 2006. He served as Chairman of the IAB from 2001 to 2003.
OK, Advertising Week just ended… does anyone else feel like the online advertising industry is the orchestra, playing on while the Titanic is sinking?
We have a problem, folks. And I, for one, think we should start to fix it by killing off the CPM, once and for all.
I have been in the Internet media space for 16 years and will start by stating the obvious: The CPM has done more to stunt innovation and drag down quality products than any single thing on the Internet. Maybe it works in other mediums, but it sure as hell doesn’t work on the Internet. Having been both a small and big publisher (now small again), it’s been my experience that the collective focus on CPMs and counting eyeballs by marketers, agencies, and publishers has led to a whole mess of unintended consequences that have produced a series of “solutions” that work for none of those parties. And perhaps more importantly, it’s been terrible for users.
All campaigns start with the best of intentions: “let’s do something creative, engaging, and unique!” But unless someone really senior from the agency or client side intervenes, the road for a campaign always leads to the media buyer and the dreaded spreadsheet, where the two most important columns are impressions and cost. Ironically, there’s usually some good stuff in campaigns, but they are thrown in for free as “value adds.” At some point, publishers decide that if all clients care about is impressions, then OK, we’ll give them impressions. The output is an industry that overproduces shallow, superficial, commoditized impressions. Why do we have so many bad sites that republish the same junky content–content that’s often made by machines or $1-per-post contractors? Why do sites intentionally try to get us to turn lots of pages with tons of top 10 lists, photo galleries, or single-paragraph summaries of someone else’s story? → Read More
It’s mildly annoying when I’m searching for something specific and Google returns results that are led by a huge overview page like the ones found on Wikipedia. I usually just use the Cached option to locate the information that I’m looking for, since that highlights the keywords in the resulting page. But now Google has a better option.
A new feature in Google Search results lets you jump right to a specific area on a page. For example, if you’re looking for “good cholesterol level,” Google’s first result is a page entitled “What Your Cholesterol Levels Mean.” The good cholesterol level is a part of that, but further down the page. But now in Google’s results, you will find a “Jump to Your HDL (good) cholesterol level” directly underneath the main result. Clicking on it will take you right to that section on the page. → Read More
Yay! Drink the Apple Kool-aid for only $50! Check your local AT&T store for availability or buy it online now. [AT&T Facebook page via Gizmodo] → Read More
Before the Internet, when a gentleman wanted to polish the brass knobs of his dear mum’s armoire he would depend on his internal spank bank which, potentially, included nudes he had seen in postcards and museums as well as racy lines about breasts he may have read in the Bible. However, barring a visit to the local establishment of vice, there was little way to view two people giving it the old Charles and Diana, if you catch my meaning.
Thus they had to resort to horological erotic automata. These were watch movements featuring two or more figures giving each other a good, filling Hardee’s breakfast either on command or at a set time.
NSFW LINKS AND IMAGES! → Read More
Poor RIM. One or two analysts lower your stock rating from “buy” to “neutral” (or the equivalent), and then your stock drops some 16 percent. You know who to blame, too: it’s those busybodies at Apple and Palm, what with their iPhones and Palm Pres eating into your bottom line. (Never mind that your own “iPhone killer” was sorta meh.) What is RIM to do? → Read More
Well this is the dumbest story I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard a lot of them! Once upon a time, there was a fugitive in Lee County in Florida. His criminal background—his FourSquare achievements, if you will—included armed robbery and kidnapping. He’s thrown in jail in early September, but then breaks out using a fake ID. But then, only a little while later, he’s arrested again. Guess what did him in? → Read More
It is notoriously difficult for browser plugins to gain traction — getting users to download anything massively raises a service’s barrier to entry. But Shareaholic, a plugin that makes it easy to share content across a variety of social and bookmarking sites, has been doing quite well: the company has seen well over one million downloads since launching less than two years ago. Today Shareaholic has annouced that it closed a seed funding round that includes investors Edward Roberts (MIT Entrepreneurship Center, Sohu), Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot), Eric Dobkin (Goldman Sachs), Brian Balfour (Viximo), David Cancel (Compete), Andrew Payne (FanSnap), and Brian Shin (Visible Measures Corp.). The company declined to share the exact amount of the funding, but says that it was “a few hundred thousand” dollars. → Read More
It’s $29.99, it’s thin, and it can hold two credit cards. It’s the Case-Mate Barely There ID case. I’ve always wanted to stop carrying a wallet and I’m not sure this is quite the solution I’m looking for but it may work for those who just need one credit card and driver’s license at all times.
If only they added a big old money clip in there or maybe a special wallet just for special stuff? Sadly, you’ll never be able to be as bad ass as this with an iPhone in a plastic case. Two videos after the jump. → Read More
HTC’s first foray into a cheap budget-friendly Android smartphone comes in the form of the previously revealed Tattoo (what are you trying to say, HTC, all us poor folks have tattoos?). And just like a real tattoo, HTC wants your Tat to be personal and unique, so the phone comes with removable/swappable front and back covers to provide for that extra level of personalization (or chintzy-ness, depending on your taste). If it were up to us, the device would also come with a set of cute macho geeky Android-themed temporary tatts (picture the Android robot skateboarding, biting a rose, or flexing its guns, for example). You know. For the kids. Not us. Really. → Read More
Oh, Sony. You’re so close to being back, and then this happens. As you all know, the PSP Go comes out next week, and judging by all the random unboxings I’ve seen on various message boards—maybe our PSP Go got lost in the mail? Oh, well.—it looks like a fine, fine piece of hardware. The kicker, though, is: what happens to all those UMD games we’ve bought over the years? The original plan was to have some sort of trade-in or transfer program, whereby for every UMD you bought, you’d get a code to download the game. (Remember, there’s no UMD slot in the PSP Go, so all games have to be downloaded onto the device’s memory.) Turns out there’s a small glitch. → Read More
It looks like all of Greenpeace’s needling of Apple over the past few years has paid off, as the house that Jobs built is about to announce its successes in becoming a more green company. Think carbon emissions data,all that jazz. Even though Apple is trying plenty hard to assuage the Green Brigade, it thinks it’s being treated rather unfairly. → Read More
The big news yesterday was that Twitter raised another $100 million. Today, Twitter CEO Evan Williams confirms in a blog post that the company did indeed close a new round of funding. The new investors in the round are Insight Venture Partners and T. Rowe Price. Existing investors Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Benchmark Capital also put in more money.
Williams did not disclose the size of the round or the valuation, but as we first reported earlier this month the valuation is believed to be $1 billion. → Read More
