I’m not a tea drinker yet, but I’ve already started thinking about what method I’ll be using to create the stuff. I mean, you can go loose leaf, or glass infuser, or tea ball, regular bags, and probably a number of other ways as well. Look at this thing, for example. I guess it falls under the infuser category, or a cross with tea ball, but let’s just call it what it is: a shameless attempt to get young children hooked on tea.
Well, that’s probably putting it a bit strongly. It’s also for Beatles fans. → Read More
Battery-powered socks that help keep your feet warm? What may sound a bit like overkill at first does make sense when you think of motorcycle riders or people having to work outdoors for long hours during winter. Made by Tokyo-based Bionics Japan, the so-called Heat Sock EX [JP] heats your entire foot by incorporating conductive carbon fibers. → Read More
Hot Wheels is about to launch “Stealth Rides,” tiny, folding Hot Wheels cars that are – get this – remote controlled. The cars are about as big as standard hot wheels and fold into the shape of a thick credit card. The toys will debut at the Toy Fair in February and include Batman and Army models. Each come with a case that doubles as a remote control and they will cost $25 each. The case also charges the cars. → Read More
At this point in the game, you know as much about the Apple tablet as we do — squat. Sure, some esteemed tech pundits seem to have it all figured out, but they don’t. Hell, Apple might not even announce the iPad tomorrow. That’s what I’m praying for. But we’re curious, what’s your ideal Apple tablet look like? Mine would be an 11-inch slate that can dock on its side in an iMac-looking fashion so it could serve double-duty as a small desktop and allow for a more natural text input via a keyboard and mouse. An updated interface is a must, too. Sound off in the comments after the jump. You have to have something in mind. The Internet has been obsessively covering the damn thing for years. → Read More
Will nobody address the elephant in the room when it comes to this awesomely wonderful Pac-Man bookcase? The mouth wedge eats up (pun intended!) valuable shelf space. But what’s the designer to do? The bookcase could be a full yellow circle to represent Pac-Man’s mouth in the closed position but people would argue, “Hey, it just looks like a yellow circle. Then again if you made the mouth wedge, you’d give up precious shelf space.” → Read More
MSI has sold millions of their Wind series of netbooks. Let’s all give them a round of applause shall we? But what does this mean for you guys? Good things, as luck would have it. Instead of some useless, commemorative award, they roll out the U135 model. And unlike most “Yay us!” products, this one actually has some worthwhile upgrades under the hood. → Read More
McGraw-Hill. Ever heard of them? If you’ve picked up any textbook written in the last hundred years or so, chances are they published it. Well, their CEO just spilled the beans on Apple’s not-so-secret surprise on live TV. → Read More
Like bad beer, cracker jacks, and drunken fans getting hammered in the parking lot, smack-talking and sports-betting are staples of American sports. And that’s why Bema Studios created Smackdaddy, a free iPhone app [iTunes link] that allows you to both bet on games (currently just NFL, NHL and NBA) and tell your friends they smell. I got a chance to play with Smackdaddy this Sunday and loved it – it is easy to use, intuitive, and addictive. Of course, you pretty much have to be a sports fan to like it, so I’ll assume you know something about sports (as you should, lest you burn in hell) going forward. You can’t bet real money, and Bema Studios assures me that will always be the case (too bad). But you do bet “Smackers” – a fake in-game currency. You start with 10,000 and all of the best include the spread. That is one of Smackdaddy’s downfalls, which is that it is fairly limited at this point in terms of feature sets. Aside from only having one style of betting, it also only has 3 sports (that I can tell). Both of those will be improved upon in future releases, of course. → Read More
People at work know you even though they haven’t met you. “Oh, Carl? Yeah, the keyboard guy. Dude LOVES keyboards. Won’t shut up about them. I heard he’s crazy. Like, Judo crazy. Like, don’t say anything bad about keyboards or he’ll put you in some weird Judo hold.”
If that sounds like you, Carl, then get $14 ready. → Read More
Right now, there is $8 billion dollars sitting in an account ready to be used to be used for a high-speed passenger-train line in the States and the Central Japan Railway Co. is attempting to get its hands on some of it — along with a dozen other companies from around the globe. The plan is to start in Florida and expanded through out the southern-half of the country, eventually connecting Florida to Texas and California. But there are some hurdles first. After all, it’s the government handing out the cash. → Read More
When Loopt released its iPhone app alongside the App Store launch in 2008, it seemed to have everything going for it. Founder Sam Altman was given time on stage at WWDC to show off the app. It was featured prominently in the App Store for a while. And it was really one of the first hot location-based services. But then it cooled off, partially because the app needed to be open to update your location. And since the iPhone didn’t allow for third-party applications to run in the background, it was severely hamstrung. Meanwhile, a series of check-in based location apps that didn’t need to be open all the time came along and stole the location buzz. More importantly, they brought to light new business opportunities for local venues with the idea of location-based deals. Loopt’s new goal is to make a strong push for that.
As you can see in the deck we’ve obtained below, Loopt is working on yet another new product that is all about location-based deals. This deck is apparently making the rounds with a bunch of agencies and advertisers, as Loopt hopes to get them on board when they launch they app in a few months. The new app is called LooptCard. Clearly, from the deck it will run on the iPhone, but it should also work across all the major mobile platforms, we’re told. And these advertisers are being told that Loopt already has several retailers and venues on board with deals for when they launch. → Read More
Today, Yahoo posted its fourth quarter results, marking the end of CEO Carol Bartz’s first year with the company. Yahoo reports revenues of $1.732 billion for Q4 2009, decreasing 4% from Q4 2008 but up 10% since last quarter. Year over year, search is down 15% and display ads down 1%. However, the company has seen a rise in each of these metrics between Q3 and Q4 2009. Yahoo reported $119M in profit, and EPS of 15 cents per share. → Read More
We’re all with Coco here (and so is my Zune HD), so this shirt (and poster) instantly gets awesome points. Are you with Cocoa? (Note: If you’re not with Cocoa, then you might want to stay off the Internet tomorrow…) → Read More
Your Tuesday afternoon just got a super-shot of excitement, as Panasonic unveils four new digital cameras: the ZR3, TS2, ZS7, and ZS5! Take your pick of ultra-compact, mega-zoom, waterproof, or GPS. All four new models sport HD recording, face recognition, and Happy Mode, which “optimizes color, saturation and brightness to make both photo and video more vivid and true to the color the users remember when they took it”. → Read More
I have bad eyes. A lot of nerds do and I can unfortunately see myself needing something like this before I leave this earth. But I’ll be damned if I pay $149.95 for it at Hammacher Schlemmer. I’d rather learn braille. → Read More
To say there are no shortage of Apple Tablet rumors leading up to tomorrow’s event is perhaps the king of all understatements right now. But here’s maybe the best one yet. Apparently, Fox is in the process of cutting a deal with Apple to get the tablet on an upcoming episode of 24 this season.
That news comes from Rodney Charters, who is the director of photography on the show. He’s been tweeting about it pretty much all day, first saying it might be in episode 20 (episode 5 just aired this week), but then saying it might actually be more like episode 22. At one point, Charters notes that he’s “getting giddy with excitement” about the possibility. He’s not the only one. → Read More
With the events that took place in Iran last year, the Mumbai bombings and even the plane crash on the Hudson River, there’s no doubt of the power of citizen journalism in today’s media age. Whether it be through social media sites, such as Twitter or through news sites catered towards citizen journalism, the active voice of the eyewitness is now a significant part of any story taking place in the world. Citizen journalism platform AllVoices is seeing significant use traction and is giving its rivals ( many of which are similar sites started by traditional media companies, such as CNN’s iReport) a run for their money. AllVoices also recently closed a $3 million round of funding from VantagePoint Partners, bringing the startup’s total funding to $9 million.
AllVoices allows anyone to contribute blog posts, images, videos and other observations, on local and global news. The site’s proprietary technology (AllVoices has filed for three patents) will tag, rank and sort news based on a global, regional, country and city pages and will determine what is breaking news and popular (in terms of phases of a news cycle). The system will also filter for spam, police the site, fact check each user report for credibility and assign a credibility rating to each news report. The site also lets users file reports from their cell phone via MMS and SMS, which is helpful to users in countries where computer usage is low but mobile device usage is high. The end goal is to provide a 360 degree view of reported news that also has a multimedia view of what’s happening in the world. → Read More
I love CEO spats. A few days ago the MagicJack CEO, Dan Borislow (Shown above at his party at CES. Seriously. It was just like that.) was talking about his femtocell and was all like: I’m sure you’ve heard of netTALK, the new magicJack rival. Any opinions on the device? It’s a piece of sh*t. It has static. The call quality is pathetic. There’s no phone numbers available, and it’s run by a bunch of fly-by-nights with no assets. They’ll be bankrupt soon. We’re a real company with the best network and best software. BAM! TWO HITS! I HIT YOU, YOU HIT THE GROUND. → Read More
My buddy Lou tells this story: he was with his girlfriend at the time and he got a call from a couple they knew. They couple invited them over for “boardgames and wine” and Lou said “Sure.” Then his girlfriend told him that they were not going over for boardgames and wine because, in that couple’s special code, “boardgames and wine” as some sort of weird partner swapping game involving lots of booze.
Anyway, a professor at Queen’s University in Ontario, Roel Vertegaal, showed off a concept board game that uses OLEDs on each piece, allowing you to play games like Settlers of Catan and Candyland with interactive aspects built right into the pieces.
Click through for a video. → Read More
