And so it begins. The European Commission this morning launched a consultation on key questions regarding the contentious issues of net neutrality and the open Internet.
The consultation covers such issues as whether ISPs should be allowed to adopt traffic management practices, prioritizing one kind of Internet traffic over another. This has become an issue with the onset of broadband and Internet services which require more bandwidth, such as VoIP or online TV. Essentially, the EC wants to find out whether these practices would create any problems (economical, technical or otherwise) and have ‘unfair effects’ for users. → Read More
RoboCup 2010, a six-day event in Singapore during which robot geeks from around the world let their robots play soccer against each other, ended last week with a German triumph. In the final game, the Darmstadt Dribblers from the Technische Universität in Darmstadt beat the FUmanoids, a team of robots developed at Freie Universität in Berlin 7:1. → Read More
While it isn’t the update you’ve all been waiting for (ie Android 2.1), Sony have just released (over the air) the first upgrade to their premium Xperia X10 device. → Read More
Right off the heels of announcing an expansion of its Kindle Digital Text Platform to authors and publishers around the world, Amazon announced back in January that it would introduce a new 70 percent royalty option in the program that will allow them to to earn a larger share of revenue from each Kindle book they sell.
Well, it’s the middle of the year, and it has now landed.
For the record: the new royalty option comes will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option but rather complement it. → Read More
Ah, the luxury phone market. A market I’ll never really relate to; while I get my thrills from finding things at the cheapest possible price, there are people out there that yearn to pay as much as they can for their goods.
Are you of that type? Are you craving something that exudes class, status, and elitism? Do you want something more than a normal iPhone 4 can give? → Read More
Did you pre-order an Incredible with the dream of owning the hottest piece of hardware, if only for a short while? Are you now bitter that — with the delays on your pre-order, and the impossibly short product lifecycles of Android phones — you will never taste that joy? Do you want to swap your HTC Droid Incredible pre-order over for a Motorola Droid X pre-order? Well read on, my friend! → Read More
Tell me “I told you so” in six months, but Bloomberg’s exciting news that two dudes said something about the iPhone coming to Verizon is false until we see hardware and there has been no hardware.
Apple picked GSM because it is an international standard. CDMA, the system used by Verizon and Sprint, is about as international as American beer – both are considered weak and both are reviled. Picking AT&T in this case was the only way Apple could reach a mass audience quickly without having two separate phone SKUs on the books – one for us and one for the rest of the world. AT&T has also been a good partner in terms of odd pricing systems including a la carte data. From a business perspective, it made sense. → Read More
We’ve all come across our share of amusing Captchas that make no sense. And existing Captcha technologies, such as Google’s reCAPTCHA are not immune to security attacks. NuCaptcha is launching today with the hopes of disrupting the existing Captcha space. The platform uses video to determine if people are really human, not machines.
As you may know, Captchas are those security questions you find on Web sites that require you to decipher and type words or numbers and detects whether the user is a human or a spambot. Most Captchas you see are transcription, text-based Captchas. But NuCaptcha says that as computer hacks and spam bots become more commonplace, companies have made captchas more difficult to read and non user-friendly. → Read More
Tradeshift, which has been described as the “Skype for invoicing”, has announced a raft of new partners in the SaaS accounting space, along with plans to open up its API to enable more third-parties to tie into its free invoicing system.
The launch partners who have had access to a beta version of Tradeshift’s API include: ERPLY (free ERP system), E-conomics (a SaaS accounting solution provider), Workbook (a specialized platform for the media business), Office123 (an open-source ERP system), Continia (bank payments systems), Winfinans (Windows-based desktop accounting), and Ibistic (the leading e-invoicing workflow system in Scandinavia).
This, says the company, in which early Skype investor Morten Lund is an adviser, puts it on track to bring “directly integrated electronic invoicing” to more than 100,000 small European businesses over the next 6 months. → Read More
Amazon.com, or rather its Internet Movie Database (IMDb) subsidiary, is launching an Android app, enabling users to get movies information, trailers and showtimes from their Android devices and shop for DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
Functionality includes voice search, sharing, option menus and more. Here’s the listing on AndroLib (the app was named IMDb Movies & TV). → Read More
eBay and RIM this morning jointly announced that the free eBay Application for BlackBerry smartphones is now available through BlackBerry App World in six more countries: Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.
The application is also now officially available to BlackBerry smartphone users in North-America after a beta preview period. → Read More
Yahoo this morning announced that it will start offering customer care services for future Arabic-language versions of its products, plus support in eight more languages: Spanish, German, French, Italian, Turkish, Polish, Romanian, and Russian.
The Internet company’s new support services will be operated by IBM out of its service delivery center in Cairo, Egypt. → Read More
Apple recently posted job openings for not one, not two but eight Antenna Engineers, according to its website. Some of those engineers would be working on the antenna system architecture of the iPhone and iPad, according to the job postings, in order to “optimize the radiation performance for wireless portable devices”.
Still according to the postings, candidates will be expected to “performance radiation performance measurements (SIC), create test plans, execute them, publish test reports, provide feedback to the other design engineers, and lead some of the manufacturing of antenna”. You’d need 10+ years of experience and possess “strong problem solving skills and strong working knowledge of radiation performance” if you want the job. → Read More
Video: Virtual Reality hair cut simulator “Air-Hair” Pivot Power: The fantastic electrical outlet that changes shape to save space Strobe Pro for iPhone 4: Prepare your glowsticks! Hands-on with the U-Boat’s U-1001 diver’s watch “For Those Who See” uses smoke rings to make a lo-fi 3D display → Read More
This won’t be news to all you cool kids out there, but I hadn’t seen it yet and it popped up in my Twitter stream this morning (you’d be amazed what else goes on down there, but I’ll spare you … for now). Swedish recording artist Robyn (Carlsson) has launched a wicked interactive 3D video, complete with Twitter integration, for her delightfully titled new track, ‘Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do’, and you should totally check it out.
Unless you’re epileptic.
To do so, simply head to Robyn.com/killingme. Written completely in code, the video/website features words from the electro track at first, and after a while starts pulling in random messages posted on Twitter. → Read More
DriveGain, a new startup that opens its doors today, aims to help users learn to drive more efficiently and, in doing so, save on their fuel consumption.
It’s founded by Simon East, an ex-Psion exec and former VP, Technology of Symbian who subsequently founded Cognima (ShoZu), and Dr. Phil Dixon, who has a background in racing car simulations and was a recent Vehicle Performance Engineer with the Renault Formula 1 team.
DriveGain’s first offering is an iPhone app of the same name that, unlike the plethora of sat-nav apps available for Apple’s smartphone, doesn’t bark out turn-by-turn directions but gives a range of visual and audio feedback on what changes are required by the driver to burn less fuel. → Read More
Since the launch of the original iPhone, there’s been a nice market for screen protectors. Well, at least until Apple started banning them from stores. But what about protectors that go around the edge of your phone? Well, thanks to the iPhone 4, there may be a market for that as well.
The iPhone 4 hasn’t even been out a week and already awrapforthat.com has popped up to make vinyl skins that wrap around the perimeter of the device. Why would anyone want that? Because of the iPhone 4 antenna issues — the so-called “Death Grip” problem. → Read More
I’m not sure who was expecting a price drop in the PS3 — Sony were the ones leading the console revamp charge with the sexy, sales-driving PS3 Slim. I give Sony a lot of flak here on CG, but $300 is simply a great price for the system; if all my money wasn’t already earmarked for coal and candles for my work environment, I might even buy one. But the president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, felt like driving the point home in an IGN interview. → Read More
So we know that IOS4 will be coming to older phones, but of course certain features like iMovie are planned for just the iPhone 4, and not previous models. Well, it turns out that you can run iMovie on older phones, they just have to be jailbroken. I’m not going to go into the technical details, you can get those from the video – so enjoy! [via Lifehacker] → Read More
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=12881541&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1 This is pretty cool, although I think calling it a “display” is stretching the definition a bit. It can display patterns and some basic shapes (I saw a heart in there somewhere) but somehow I get the feeling this isn’t the kind of technology you end up having in the living room. Still very, very cool to watch. A little creative lighting could even give it color. More info about the installation at the UdK-Berlin site (it was created by one Daniel Shulz for Berlin’s DMY Design Festival). He ought to collaborate with Obscura Digital. [via NotCot] → Read More
