Can you even imagine what it must have been like to be an early explorer? Like, you leave Spain or Portugal on some rickety boat, and arrive in the New World. Cool and all, but, outside of shooting everything in sight, how do you communicate with anybody? What, do you point to the sun and say “sol,” and expect the other guy to repeat “sol”? That can’t be an efficient way to learn a language, especially when it’s, you know, a very real clash of cultures. If only they had (drum roll, please) something like Jibbigo Speech Translator English Spanish, which automatically translates from Spanish into English, and vice-versa. → Read More
What recession? Startup Bling Nation just raised $20 million in Series B funding from Balderton Capital for a new cell phone payment system. This brings the startup’s total funding to $33 million since its launch in 2007.
Bling Nation’s ambitions are to establish a revolutionary and comprehensive payments system for physical goods. Here’s how it works. The company partners with local banks in super small communities in the U.S. (where the prominent bank isn’t Citibank or Bank of America). Banks will then offer the consumers who use their services a Bling Nation and “Bank” branded chip that can be stuck onto any cell phone device. The chip will allow any user to make a payment directly out of their checking account similar to a debit payment. → Read More
It isn’t the first, and I assume it’s not going to be the last either.
Apple and AT&T are facing a new putative class action from an iPhone user who alleges that the companies misrepresented the phone’s MMS (multimedia messaging service) capabilities.
Clyde Bernard Franklin filed the complaint (case 1:2009cv00704) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama on behalf of all Alabama residents last Wednesday. → Read More
As expected, regulatory body ICANN has approved plans to let web addresses be written in non-Latin characters in a move that it calls the “biggest technical change” to how the Internet works since its invention four decades ago.
The vote was announced at the last day of the non-profit group’s Seoul conference.
The proposal would mean that domain names could be written in the languages such as Greek, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi or Cyrillic and be understood natively by the machines that connect computers together over the web. → Read More
It seems VHS will never die, and this is generally welcome, as a lot of good movies aren’t still available on optical discs. In summer 2008, Panasonic released a VHS/Blu-ray combo, followed by Sharp’s Aquos BD-HDV22 that was pretty much the same thing. And today, over one year later, JVC anounced the DR-BH250 [JP], which is a VHS recorder, Blu-Ray Recorder and 250GB HDD rolled into one. → Read More
Japan went crazy over the iPhone when it made its debut in summer last year, but China as another big Asian market for Apple seems to react differently. The iPhone officially launched in China today, offered by China Unicom, one the country’s three big cell phone carriers. But our friends over at major Chinese news portal 163.com are reporting [Google machine translation] that not too many people were actually queuing up to get one, at least in Beijing. → Read More
Finnish startup Fruugo fascinates me to no end.
Founded in late 2006, the company set out to build a massive pan-European social e-commerce service, which it finally launched in closed beta at the beginning of this year. Their mission statement? To make Fruugo the equivalent of Google in search when it comes to social commerce on the Web.
The company reportedly raised dozens of millions of euros, at one point flirted with an employee headcount of 150 to 160 people (including contractors) and boasted a rock star board of directors that included people like former Nokia CEO and current Chairman of Shell Jorma Ollila as well as F-Secure Founder/Chairman Risto Siilasmaa. In 2008, they burned through about 14.5 million euros before they even put the closed beta product live and were ultimately forced to lay off almost half of its workforce as a result. → Read More
Maybe you’ll recall when I ripped apart the Bing jingle winner back in August. It was bad — real bad. But its creator, Jonathan Mann is a talented guy, and even made a jingle ripping me, which was both better than the Bing one, and funny. Sadly, Microsoft now controls his Bing jingle and is subjecting little children to it.
As you can see in the video below, Microsoft has forced a bunch of middle schoolers in Pennsylvania to learn and perform Mann’s Bing song. The horror. It’s hard to watch this without immediately thinking about parents who accept money to allow their child to be sponsored. Is this the future of branding? → Read More
Despite what he said back in August, Asus CEO Jerry Shen confirmed this week that they will in fact be releasing a smartbook product sometime during 1Q2010. → Read More
Scosche (makers of various home and vehicle accessories) just announced a product that I think I’m going to have to pick up. It’s a USB charger that works in the home and the car, you plug your device into the adapter and then into the wall mounted charger, or into your 12v cigarette lighter socket in your car, and voila! Instant power source. There’s three different levels of the product available, a plain socket adapter for $19.99, a house adapter that you can charge two devices with (and it has the 12v adapter as) well for $44.99. There’s also a 12v socket adapter with an iPod cable included for $24.99, if you need a cable to leave in your car. → Read More
Asustek will be launching an e-book reader in the near future that will combine wi-fi with WiMAX mobile technologies as soon as the end of 2009. Asustek will most likely release the reader under the extremely popular EEE name here in the U.S. Looks like the predictions back in August were right. → Read More
Tired of the hoodlums destroying your pumpkins? Looking for a little payback? Here’s a project that will allow you to get some vengeance. Plus, it’d be fun to shoot silly string at the older kids that show up on your front step this Halloween. → Read More
What was your favorite part of the 70s? If you said egg chairs, than stop and read the rest of this post. You won’t regret it. → Read More
Meet the arkeg. The ultimate combination of a MAME console, and a kegerator. Those lucky bast blokes at Wired managed to get they hands on one to review. It’s got some good and bad points, but you have to admit it’s cool no matter what. → Read More
The number of techniques for getting content from your PC to your TV is getting alarmingly high. It’s possible that it’s so simple at this point that anyone can put out a product and sell a few — so you can either get a basic one cheap now, or wait for the inevitable breakthrough product that will do something awesome but cost a bundle. The FlipShare ain’t that breakthrough, but it does look like a nice, simple way to watch your home videos on the TV. → Read More
The Foo Fighters will be streaming a concert live tomorrow night on Facebook, direct from the band’s Studio 606 headquarters in Los Angeles. You can RSVP to the event here, and stream it live here beginning at 7 PM PST tomorrow. As with Facebook’s other recent video streaming events, users will be invited to update their status messages with their thoughts about the concert, which will draw in even more fans as they see the updates in their news feeds. The live video will be powered by Livestream.
Live concert streams seem to be a growing trend for the web’s most popular content and social sites. Last week MySpace streamed their Secret Show Weezer concert in San Francisco. And earlier this week YouTube streamed a U2 concert from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA. → Read More
We recently wrote about Epix, the movie and entertainment streaming network that works across your TV, computer, and mobile phone. Jointly backed by Lionsgate, MGM and Paramount, Epix is launching its service today with 150 titles, with 3,000 more movies, concerts and shows to be added in the next year.
Epix says that eventually it will be able to provide access to over 15,000 titles, but as we wrote in our initial review of the service, that’s just a sliver of what’s out there, since it’s only the movies available through the studios that are backing the company. And, if you want this content in your living room, you’re going to need Verizon FIOS, which only some 2 million people have. → Read More
Skype app developer Netralia is bringing high-quality video recording through it’s app, VodBurner. VodBurner lets users create video podcasts directly from Skype calls using webcams, incorporating recording and post-production editing in a single software package.
The app, which is $9.95 per month per computer, is fairly simple. Once downloaded, it will let you record a video and audio conversation via Skype and will then let you edit the final file within its software. What’s interesting about the app is that it actually detects who is talking (using volume) and will record the video of that person during the time. If both people are talking, the app will record video on both individuals in the frame. You can also add graphics and sub-titles to the videos and publish the clips as ASF files suitable for uploading directly to YouTube and other video-hosting services. → Read More
This is just wrong. I’ll admit, I didn’t enjoy “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”. I thought the plot was weak and contrived, and I was slightly offended by the dumbing down of the film (robot urination and racial stereotypes? give me a break). I realize that the original “Transformers” wasn’t exactly the height of cinematic art, but it was better then the sequel. → Read More
