Gazopa, a search engine that uses features from an image to retrieve similar images, has been in private beta since it launched during TechCrunch50 last year. To recap, Gazopa lets users upload a picture, enter a URL of an image, create a drawing or right-click on an image anywhere on the web (via a plug-in) and retrieves similar images. A thumbnail of a video is enough to look for similar videos.
Results are mainly filtered through analyzing the color and shape of the object or person pictured. Upload a picture of a red car, for example, and Gazopa will find pictures of similar cars on the web – without you having to type any keywords (search via keywords is also possible though).
Since September 2008, more than 40,000 users have tested the service, which entered open beta today. And Hitachi America, the company behind Gazopa, has used customer feedback to improve the quality of search results, tweak the site’s design and add a number of features in the past year. → Read More
Browser maker Opera has released its latest ‘State of the Mobile Web’ report this morning, claiming that there was a huge surge in mobile web usage past September.
Last month, more than 35.6 million people used Opera Mini (which is now serving over 500 million pageviews per day on average on a wide range of mobile devices), up 11.5% compared to August 2009 and more than 150% compared to September 2008. The Norway software developer also claims more than 2 petabytes of data is now processed by its servers on a monthly basis. That’d be 2,000 terabytes. → Read More
We’ve spent the past several months closely tracking the progress of Chrome for Mac. Well over a year after its release for Windows, there hasn’t been so much as a beta version for Mac (or Linux, for that matter) yet. Even Google co-founder Sergey Brin expressed his displeasure with this last week. But Brin also noted that he was using the pre-beta version of Chrome for the Mac, but warned that it was unstable. After months of using Chromium builds (the open source browser that Chrome is based on), I decided to give the developer version of Chrome for Mac a try once again. The results have been very good.
While recent Chromium builds have been a little shaky with a mixture of UI failures, bugs, and a nasty habit of “Chromium Helper” (the name of separate tab processes in Chromium) eating up your CPU, Chrome itself feels much more stable. It would seem that at some point recently, Google flipped the switch to push Chromium 4.0 releases into the Chrome for Mac developer channel. These don’t come daily like the Chromium builds, but only seem to pop up as an upgrade option when a stable build is found on the Chromium path. For example, right now, Chrome for Mac is 4.0.223.11 whereas Chromium for Mac is currently 4.0.226.0. → Read More
Adeo Ressi’s Founder Institute is steadily expanding, with a new outpost opening up in Seattle. The startup incubator, which just completed its first successful “semester” in Silicon Valley, recently announced expansions to both Washington DC and San Diego, California.
The program was first announced in March 2009. It is a semester-based startup camp for very, very early-stage entrepreneurs and students who have basic ideas for potential startups but have not yet founded a company. 198 founders applied to the program. 79 were accepted, and 66 graduated. 31 companies have been incorporated by these founders so far, and a handful have actually launched (including Skimble and Molo Rewards). → Read More
Amazon has launched a hosted relational database service, Amazon RDS, as part of the suite available at AWS. The new service is a hosted MySQL database instance with the full capabilities and access rights as a normal self-hosted DB. As a hosted solution, the service has an ability to scale out across computational, memory and storage requirements while still being treated as a single db instance by the end user. Pricing stars at $0.11c per hour for the smallest scale specification, and is available now on the AWS site. → Read More
Well, you can stop trying now. You’re not going to win that costume party. I’m going to come to it in a monstrous Gomora costume as big as a tree, shooting smoke and lighting up my monster eyes. Unless you come dressed as Ultraman and vanquish me (unlikely) I’ll be taking home first prize. → Read More
With the DSi still fresh on the market (relatively so anyway), it seems strange that Nintendo would want to replace it so quickly. But hey, they did it with the GBA, so why not? Japanese paper Nikkei reports that Nintendo is planning a new plus-size version of the device, which is to sport a 4″ screen (or screens). Sounds good to me, although the DSi already enlarged and improved the DS Lite’s perfectly good screen. So a 4″ one would probably be more for the real hardcore kids. → Read More
Flip definitely created a market that no one knew existed, when the came out with their now famous line of portable camcorders (or pocketcams). There have been a few other brands, with a few different feature sets, and now Vivitar is going to throw their product into the lineup. → Read More
Want a Blu-ray player? Want a Netflix streamer? How about both for $100? Best Buy has you covered with the Insignia NS-BRDVD3. → Read More
Google Voice is a great way to manage phone hell by giving you a single phone number that automatically rings your mobile, home, work and other phones based on your choice of rules and settings (who’s calling, when, etc.). But people are still stuck with their legacy phone numbers, and moving completely away from them is difficult.
I solved the problem by simply porting my mobile number away from AT&T over to Google Voice, a feature that Google says will be launched more broadly eventually.
Others solve the problem via the Google Voice application on various phones. But even then, if someone calls your old mobile number and leaves a message, you have to deal with it separately.
Not any more. Tonight Google is launching a third option, a new feature that allows mobile users to move their voicemail away from their carrier and over to Google Voice. The benefits: your mobile voicemails go into your Google Voice inbox along with other voicemails and text messages, plus you can create custom greetings for callers and your voicemails are all automatically transcribed (sometimes hilariously). → Read More
Judging from this video, the Windows 7 launch in Japan was certainly more, shall we say, flamboyant then the launch here in the US. But the really amusing part is the fact that the host couldn’t get the touchscreen to work. → Read More
Netpulse, an interactive media platform for fitness equipment, has secured $3.1 million in Series A funding led by Javelin Venture Partners with DFJ Frontier participating. The company says it will use the investment to further development of its interactive entertainment platform, which is specifically designed for integration into fitness equipment and screens cardiovascular machines like treadmills and elliptical machines.
While many gyms and fitness equipment include screens to watch TV nowadays, Netpulse’s technology gives users access to live HD television, a touch screen, on-demand videos and music, and provides iPod/ iPhone connectivity, and personalized workout data. Netpulse’s screen has not yet been launched in fitness centers and will be rolled out various gyms later this year. → Read More
Of all the people on Earth, I’m probably at least in the top 100 of “most mice handled.” Not a particularly prestigious list to be on, but I’ll take what I can get. And I’m probably one of the biggest proponents of splurging on a good mouse. Mamba, G500, Mighty Mouse (if it’s any good)… just go for it, you use this thing for hours in a row and it might as well be the perfect fit. But like all things, there are exceptions. For instance, when a mouse costs over a grand. → Read More
Just a PSA, really: The newest iMacs are somewhat limited in their capability to be used as external monitors for your laptop. I’d consider the functionality to be a bonus to begin with, but if you were going to be relying on it, better make other plans. It seems that the DisplayPort on 27″ iMacs (there isn’t a video in on the 21.5″ ones) is a bit picky on what it takes an input from. Using various adapters, iFixit determined that at the moment, the only devices which can use the iMac as a secondary display are those equipped natively with a Mini DisplayPort. I won’t editorialize here other than to say what’d you expect? Apple was going to ignore the chance to sell another accessory? → Read More
A little birdie, also known as an e-mail, tells me that EA Sports will flip the switch on Dynamic Season Mode in NBA Live 10 tomorrow. Well, for the Xbox 360 version; PS3 owners will have to wait till Thursday. This, of course, coincides with the start of the new NBA season, to be won, according to that same NBA Live 10, by the Cavs. → Read More
When I first heard that Microsoft was going to be publicizing Windows 7 in the legendarily offensive “Family Guy,” I thought “Wow, either Microsoft is cooler than I thought or they’ve never actually seen the show.” Unsurprisingly, it seems to have been the latter. → Read More
Interesting note regarding DJ Hero, where “interesting” means “potentially bad news.” One of those fancy analyst types, someone at Cowen and Company, has slashed sales expectations by a little more than 50 percent. That’s nothing to brush aside if you’re Activision. → Read More
The Audit Bureau of Circulations has released the numbers for the top 25 daily newspapers in the U.S. based on their weekday circulation numbers. Not surprisingly, the numbers are bad — okay, awful. Exactly one of the top newspapers has shown growth when compared to where they were 6 months ago. That paper is The Wall Street Journal, which is now the number one paper in the country thanks to USA Today’s staggering loss of nearly 20% of its readership the past 6 months.
And it’s not like WSJ is growing like gangbusters, it grew 0.61% in the last six months. → Read More
Believe it or not, but FIFA 10 isn’t the only soccer game around. In fact, Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 just came out in Europe, and was the top selling game there last week. Not the top selling sports game, but the top selling game overall. Yeah, it’s big. → Read More
Note the “Western Eyes” Short Version Trust me. Paranormal Activity sucks. Go see Astro Boy if you have to see something this week or weekend. A Real Boy The original Astro Boy aka Tensuwan Atomu was created in 1952 by Osamu Tezuka as a reaction to post-war technological advances and the swift industrialization of the island nation (see also Godzilla). This is not really that original Astro Boy. The plot in this update is pretty wonky: there’s this boy named Toby and his dad, Dr. Tenma (the voice Nicolas Cage), a scientist for the Ministry of Science for Metro City, a city that floats over the barren wasteland that is now Earth. Robots help out the humans by washing stuff for them but humans are like “Robots aren’t people” and there’s essentially robo-apartheid. Tenma meets up with his buddy Dr. Elefun, some dude with red and blue space stones. The blue one is the good one and it contains boundless good energy. Elefun wants to use the blue one to clean up the Earth. Then there’s the red one, which is the evil stone. And the President wants them both to make weapons. Spoiler: The President is a douche. → Read More
