This may be the greatest sentence ever written in the English language: “As IT industry analysts label 2010 the ‘Year of the Cloud,’ a new report by Greenpeace shows how the launch of quintessential cloud computing devices like the Apple iPad raises fresh questions about how the Internet is powered and whether the IT sector will continue to fuel climate change by increasing demand for dirty coal power.” Dirty Coal Power: on tour this summer (with special guest Limp Bizkit)! In other words, does the iPad hate freedom? Obviously. → Read More
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10544706&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1 Before each of this week’s rugged and waterproof cameras gets examined on terms of usability, image quality, and so on, I had to check whether their makers were pulling my leg about their rugged qualities. A quick trip to the park furnished a suitable environment to test this out, and here’s the video. → Read More
[UK] Business software specialist IRIS has invested in Edinburgh-based FreeAgent Central, the money management and accounting tool aimed at small businesses, in return for a minority stake.
As well as providing additional funding, IRIS will become the exclusive reseller for FreeAgent to the UK accountancy practice market, which will be re-badged under their own brand. FreeAgent will continue to target individual UK businesses, partnerships and sole traders as well as customers worldwide.
IRIS supplies software to over 60,000 business customers in the UK, which includes a major slice of the accountancy practice software market with over 14,000 practice customers, a 50% market share, says FreeAgent. → Read More
iBUYPOWER just announced the latest in their gaming notebook lineup, the Battalion CZ-11. The CZ-11 features a 15 inch screen, as well as the new Intel Core i7 processor. iBUYPOWER has also loaded the CZ-11 with 4GB of RAM, an ATI Radeon 5650, and a 500GB drive. Click through for the press release and more details. → Read More
Over the past few months, Automattic’s popular blog platform WordPress.com has taken an in-depth look at their blogging ecosystem, and realized that one of the major pain points for the 12.1 million users who self-host their WordPress blogs is security and restoration. WordPress.com backs up all of the blogs that it hosts, but those users who self-host their WordPress-powered blogs need to download outside plugins, such as this one, or use backup services like Mozy or Backupify to protect their data and content. Today Automattic is changing that with the launch of its own blog protection and restoration service for self-hosted blogs, called VaultPress.
Currently in private beta, VaultPress is a plugin users can download that acts as a backup service for your blog. Not only will the software help keep your blog up and running, but it will also soon monitor your site to alert you if their is suspicious activity or a hacking. Alternatively, VaultPress will eventually update your blog with security hot-fixes automatically. VaultPress will be a paid service and will probably be in the ballpark range of $15 to 20 per month, according to Automattic VP of User Growth Paul Kim. At first VaultPress will be extended on an invitation only basis and will eventually be open to the public in the near future. → Read More
The iPhone is great, but it’s small. The iPad is bigger; you can cradle it, like a lap harp. Behold, Air Harp!
If fart apps are what the iPhone is all about, Air Harp is what the iPad is all about. You can sit there, with the device in you lap, and simply strum. You get 2 octaves (15 strings) of tones in G Major. → Read More
Remember textbooks? Yeah. Forget about textbooks. Students at Seton Hill University are all getting iPads and access to all their textbooks on the iBook store. I’d say it’s one of the biggest changes in pedagogy since the move from the one-room schoolhouse.
TUAW has a tip from a Seton Hill student who sent in a memo that said: “Students will be able to download their textbooks to their iPads from the iBook Store. In addition, iPads can be used as phones and for air and file sharing, as well as note-taking.” Gone will be the days of lugging a huge calculus book from room to room and I can only imagine the mixture of joy and dread as textbook publishers realize the grey market for used textbooks is dead but, in its place, a new pirate market will appear overnight. → Read More
Hurray, it’s cat and mouse time again! iTunes 9.1 was just released, and it looks like Apple has taken yet another step (or two) in their endless fight against jailbreaking. Take this with a grain of salt for the time being, but we’re hearing a lot of early reports that jailbroken devices will not sync with this latest iTunes release. → Read More
The RCA Airnergy AirPower is curious little device. It is supposed to harvest WiFi signals and convert them into usable energy, which is then sent out over a USB cable to charge a gadget. Yeah, think of the possibilities. But while the technology really does exist and has been demonstrated, it seems a little to easy. Apparently RCA is serious about the product line and has ditched the name Airnergy in favor of AirPower and is now showing off a slightly more polished look than the ones seen at CES 2010. → Read More
More 3D broadcasts are sweeping across Europe. The next countries up are Belgium and Poland. They follow the UK and Germany—oh, and the U.S. → Read More
Earlier today, Adobe and Google announced a partnership that integrates Flash right into future builds of Chrome. At a time when Flash is under fire from both Apple and HTML5 advocates, this is a huge win for the technology. But one thing that wasn’t clear from Google’s post on the matter (and Adobe’s comment to us) is what this means for the upcoming Chrome OS. So I asked.
“We plan to bring these benefits to Chrome users across all platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Google Chrome OS,” a Google spokesperson tells me. In other words, yes, this deep Flash is coming to Chrome OS. → Read More
Imagine if you walked into a used car dealership and knew exactly how much the dealer was skimming off your purchase. I don’t want to draw a parallel between used car sales and the mobile ad marketplace, but it’s an industry, like many, that could use more transparency. Burstly, an ad manager service, wants to do just that.
The company, a reincarnation of .App/Ads, just raised $1.8 million in series A funding from GRP Partners (Mark Suster is a partner) and Rincon Ventures. That values the start-up in the eight-figure range, according to CEO and founder Evan Rifkin. Burstly emerges from closed beta today and offers a full service, open platform (an open SDK structure) to help iPod touch and iPhone app developers optimize their advertising revenue streams, use a variety of ad networks or exchanges, directly sell or buy ads from other developers, run in-app purchases, rotate different content into ad slots and more. In addition, Burstly can support any ad size on the iPad and video interstitials.
The company doesn’t expect to be profitable for more than a year, but it could be a game changer in mobile advertising. → Read More
Well, we can’t say we didn’t see this coming, but the official SanDisk Xbox 360 flash drive cost $40 — for 8GB. Yeah, that’s a little expensive considering 8GB can be had for less than half of that. Thankfully Microsoft actually did something pro-consumer for a change and is allowing any ol’ flash drive up to 32GB work the same way. → Read More
PQI was one of the first companies to out a USB 3.0 flash drive back in 2009 and it’s back again with a 2.5-inch USB 3.0 external hard drive. You should know the drill by now. Nearly all of these hard drives are the same. The H566 comes either in 320GB, 500GB, or 640GB flavors and utilizes USB 3.0 to transfer files at speeds that max out at 5.0Gbps while providing backwards compatibility with USB 2.0. The drive dons a rather sexy metallic silver casing and ships with data encryption tools for the aluminium hat-wearing folk. → Read More
There’s a lot of excitement about Twitter’s first conference, Chirp, which takes place next month in San Francisco. In fact, the tickets for the event, despite their $469 price, have been selling out quickly (they’ve been releasing them in waves). And today brings great news for those still clamoring to go: there is a new type of ticket, and they’re significantly cheaper.
Today, Twitter is putting on sale tickets for the second day of the conference for only $140 (yes, 140, like Twitter’s character limit). To be clear, this is just for the second day of the conference, but for those on a budget, it’s a much better deal to be able to take part in the event. The second day is the hack-a-thon event taking place at Fort Mason in the city. And it actually begins at 7 PM PT at the end of day one of the event, when Twitter buses people over from the Palace of Fine Arts, where the day one events (including the major keynotes from Twitter execs) take place. → Read More
Twitter has just rolled out a new homepage that’s a marked improvement over the current offering, and does a much better job at capturing what the service is all about. The new site features a ‘See who’s here’ section that introduces new Twitter users to some of the celebrities and brands they can find on the service. It also includes a new, constantly updated section for Top Tweets, which are algorithmically selected interesting tweets (Top Tweets also has its own Twitter account here).
Twitter’s homepage is important because it’s typically the first thing people see when they visit Twitter for the first time (once you’ve created an account and signed in, the service automatically directs you to your Twitter feed). Twitter last refreshed its homepage last summer, when it started featuring its search engine front and center (you can see a screenshot of the old page below). This introduced users to the site’s powerful real-time search, but it didn’t do a particularly good job explaining exactly what Twitter was. → Read More
Old news, but worth mentioning for a hot minute. You know that Major Nelson’s Xbox Live account was hacked at the weekend. Look, people are panicking in the streets! → Read More
There may be a simpler explanation behind the increased blockage of Google search results in mainland China today than a deliberate government crackdown. It seems that the Great Firewall of China which automatically filters out a long list of objectionable material on the Web from ever entering China is mistaking Google for Radio Free Asia, one of the sites blocked by China.
According to a Google spokesperson who just got back to me, this seems to be what is happening: → Read More
Panasonic may have a penchant for plasma TVs, but that doesn’t mean they’ll abandon the production of LCD TVs anytime soon. The company announced [JP] a total of six new LCDs today, all of which are part of the new VIERA D2 series. According to Panasonic, the main selling points of these models are the design and the LED backlights. → Read More
Startup Buddy Media, a company that provides social media management tools to brands, has raised $2 million in funding from previous investors including SoftBank Capital, Greycroft Partners, Ron Conway, and Bay Partners. Buddy Media previously raised $8 million in funding.
Buddy Media offers brand marketers and agencies and all-in-one social media management system to help create, manage and track social campaigns on Facebook and Twitter (the client will also offers functionality for MySpace and other social networks). With regard to Facebook, the platform lets agencies create, manage and track Facebook Fan pages to drive and increase user and brand engagement. Users don’t need to have any prior FBML knowledge to create pages on Facebook and can create sleek and interactive pages fairly easily. Buddy Media’s Twitter Management System, which we wrote about here, lets marketers measure and identify Twitter trending topics around a particular brand, related topics and competitors. You can also track performance and trends for a brand and entire industry across Twitter with easy to view data on followers, mentions, and re-Tweets. → Read More
