Apple has been fighting for a permanent injunction against Psystar, preventing the company from selling Hackintoshen and their Rebel EFI software. The company has been accused of “trafficking in circumvention devices.” → Read More
As part of its push to go more social, Google has been attempting to unify its various account profiles into one Google Profile. And now it’s more useful. Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick has just tweeted out that Google Profiles can now be used as OpenIDs.
What this means is that you can sign into any site that accepts OpenID simply by using your Google Profile domain. Luckily, a few months ago Google started allowing these profiles to have vanity URLs, like /mgsiegler, instead of the previous /32090329039402903. Chris Messina, a huge proponent of the open web movement, has just sent out a picture of what signing in with OpenID via your Google Profile looks like (below). → Read More
Remember the iTwinge, that crazy slide-on plastic sheath for the iPhone that would give you a physical keyboard by overlaying real buttons on top of the virtual ones? The 4iThumbs keypad is just like that, except it’s clear, rather than opaque black. Oh, and it requires you to stick a bunch of adhesive crap all over your iPhone. Good idea? Bad idea? I’ll leave that call up to you – I’m too distracted by their waaaay cheesy commercial (starring not-Justin-Long and not-John-Hodgeman) to think about it. Word? Word. One more video after the jump. [Via EngadgetMobile] → Read More
TouchMyApps has the hot tip on those 4,000 iPhone stolen in Antwerp. The iPhones are now being fobbed off in Russia and salespeople are a little wary of getting their gear confiscated and or shut down. → Read More
This week, people are hungry for three things: turkey, stuffing, and holiday sales. It’s a bit unlikely that EA Mobile can deliver either of the first two, but they’ve come through on that last one. From today through 11/29, EA Mobile is dropping the price on around 15 of the iPhone games, with discounts coming in at around 30-50% off. This’ll probably be the cheapest way to pick up the iPhone version of Rock Band for a few weeks at least – so if there’s interest there, strike while the iron is hot. Update: We just got word that Gameloft is also doing a T-day sale. Check out the sales list after the jump. → Read More
Earlier this summer I traveled to Redmond to talk realtime and the cloud with senior Microsoft executives. In this conversation with Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, I tried to delve into what “we inelegantly call Three Screens and A Cloud” from Bach’s vantage point atop Xbox, Zune, Windows Mobile, Media Server, and related hardware. The subtext: Microsoft’s nextgen realtime strategy at the cusp of consumer and enterprise.
ROBBIE BACH: For us, the cloud does a number of things. First of all, it enables us to create community. Right? I mean, the biggest thing — people ask why is Xbox Live successful. Why do we have 20 million members on Xbox Live? And a good percentage of those people who pay us real money for a subscription every year. And some of it is about multi-player gaming, I will grant you. But a significant portion of it is about those people saying, “Hey, this is where I meet my friends. This is where we do things together.”
And if you don’t have a cloud set of services behind that, that gets actually quite hard. How do we do the types of things we’re doing now where you and your friends will be able to watch a movie together and not be in the same room? That requires a set of cloud-based services behind it to enable that to happen in a rich and effective way. And, oh, by the way, talk and see each other at the same time. That’s a pretty interesting experience and a pretty interesting trick. And that all happens through the work that we’re able to do on Xbox Live.
So to me, the biggest thing that the cloud does in the immediate term is it gives us a social environment. It gives us the ability for people to do things together.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu289G4bqCA&hl=en_US&fs=1&] → Read More
Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, is now part of spiffy Web site Kvittar—“does not matter” in Swedish, according to the Google. It’s a site that purports to do away with paper receipts. You need to sign up with a credit card. → Read More
And… it’s… outta here. TiVo is down to less than three million subscribers and they sold about 500 DVRs a day last quarter, giving it 8% of the 38 million US DVR market. That’s not much.
TVByTheNumbers has the numbers. They’re down 314,000 subscribers to 2.76 million and lost 146,000 last quarter. Rough stuff. → Read More
One of the most popular paid photo apps for the iPhone, Snapture (iTunes link) just got a few upgrades. The new features include the ability to share photos on either Twitter or Facebook, a new tap-to-focus capability, and different color modes (black & white, sepia, negative). Posting to Facebook or Twitter should be standard for any photo app. It instantly makes the photo app social.
The Snapture app, which costs $1.99, shows you the picture you just took in a small picture-in-picture window so that you don’t have to go to the camera roll to see if it’s any good. It also offers multi-shot mode and pinch-to-zoom. And you can share by email as well. → Read More
Tokyo-based (and globalized) bearing supplier NSK has announced [JP] the development of an autonomous mobile robot that one day will be able to assist people in wheel chairs. The main selling point of the so-called “Human Assist Guidance Robot” is that it can detect obstacles and guide users through them. And uneven surfaces or slopes aren’t a problem either. → Read More
Skip the Black Friday crowds and head over to Amazon for a sweet price on a LG Blu-ray player. But just like most other Black Friday deals, this model is stripped down and isn’t for everyone. → Read More
Does your Xbox 360 look out of place on your equipment rack? Does it just look too juvenile with the concaved case? Are you a boring old fart that still want the the Xbox 360 but need it to look more like a VCR than a gaming system? If so, the Xbox 360 Elegant Edition is for you. → Read More
I wanted to offer HourTime listeners a bit of a head start but there’s a secret contest going on inside my latest podcast with Ariel Adams. Feel free to fast forward to about 20 minutes in to figure out what’s going on but rest assured you can win the Right Track from Swatch, Swatch’s latest automatic chrono running a beautiful Lemania-inspired automatic chrono movement. → Read More
I’m a big fan of people who do fun stuff with computers and so I am a big fan of this. These guys programmed 20 computers to play one note over and over. The resulting cacophony turns out to be a beep-boop version of the Tetris theme. → Read More
For most of us, the term ‘smartbook’ (a device that’s somewhere in between a smartphone and a netbook) is nothing but the latest tech buzzword du jour. For German company Smartbook, however, it’s apparently a chance to score some free publicity by vigilantly defending a multinational trademark and threatening to sue everyone who dares use it in conversations.
Let me kick off by saying that Smartbook AG does indeed own a trademark on the word smartbook in most of Western Europe, Australia, Singapore, South Korea and a couple of other countries. The company sells laptops that are named Smartbook, so I guess the company is well within its rights to try and protect their trademark in any way it deems appropriate. → Read More
Japanese stationery maker King Jim announced the Pomera DM20 [JP] today, an ultra-compact handheld device that’s based on a “less is more” concept. The so-called digital notebook, which is unfortunately Japan-only at this point, is only made for one purpose: It lets you make notes. No email, no web access, no gaming, nothing but writing texts or quickly jotting down your shopping list. → Read More
Online advertising revenues in the U.S. seem to be stabilizing. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers released third-quarter figures showing that online advertising in the U.S. approached $5.5 billion, up 1.7 percent from the second quarter of 2009, but still down 5.4 percent from the same quarter a year ago (which is in line with the losses during the first half of the year). As you can see in the chart, there was a big drop-off after the fourth quarter of last year, and the first three quarters of this year have been flat.
On a global basis, we might already be seeing a recovery, at least for search advertising. The online advertising revenues of the four largest Web advertising companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL) increased 1.2 percent in the fourth quarter. Google accounted for all the growth, however, so we are still waiting for display advertising to find its footing. → Read More
Want to know what people are thankful for this Thanksgiving? You can be sure many will be Tweeting about it. Tomorrow if you search #thanksgiving or #thankful on Twitter search, you will get a good sense of what thanks people are sharing on Twitter.
Or you can go to TurkeyTwitter, a site thrown together by Joshua Premuda which gathers all Tweets with the hashtags #thanksgiving or #turkeytwitter. (I think he should add #thankful as well). → Read More
Infamous USB gadget maker Thanko can’t be stopped, it seems. They gave us USB-powered shavers, USB-powered neckties and even USB-powered boob warmers. And today the Tokyo-based company started listing the USB eye warmer [JP] in their online store. As you might expect, it warms your eyes. → Read More
Ustream has just launched a version of its Ustream Viewer for Android Market, giving users the ability to access any Ustream footage while they’re on the go, free of charge. You’ll be able to use the app for streaming video both over Wi-Fi and 3G.
This is actually Ustream’s second application for Android. The first is its Broadcaster app, which allows you to stream video footage live from your phone to the web. The app launching today is for viewing only, but it will let you watch any Ustream feed – be it a red carpet premiere or footage of someone’s puppies – while you’re on the go. → Read More
