A few days ago, we noted that Diaspora was three weeks away from unveiling their open-source Facebook alternative. But a small update today clarifies one important point. On September 15, Diaspora will release the open source code for the project. But it won’t be until October that the first consumer-facing alpha is available.
This isn’t a major hiccup, it’s just an update to make sure people aren’t expecting to be able to use Diaspora on September 15. Instead, at that time, developers will have a chance to tinker around with what the team has come up with in these past several weeks — with the $200,000 they raised from 6,500 people through Kickstarter back in June. → Read More
Ready to kill your lunch break? Head over to the brand new NASA section on Flickr Commons where you’ll find 180 historic photographs. These pics range from pre-NASA days, to Goddard’s works, to NASA prototypes, and enough liftoff pics to fill a History Channel special. The best part you’ve probably never seen most of these as they’re right from NASA’s collection and thankfully each pic has a detailed description and a bunch of relivant info. Man I love the Internet. The one above is The Langely Aerodrome, “‘The Langley Aerodrome, brainchild of a group led by Samuel Langley. Shortly after this photo was taken, the December 8, 1903, manned tests of the Aerodrome ended abruptly in failure, as it fell into the Potomac River’. Photograph published in Winds of Change, 75th Anniversary NASA publication, page 6.” → Read More
I see a decision engine linked to an innovative ecommerce strategy. But at least one person in the office simply described it as “fabulous.” Either way, Send The Trend, a site that sells women’s accessories, launched moments ago and is worth taking a look at. In a nutshell, the site takes you through a very short survey of what kind of accessories you may want, and it then recommends five different accessories for you (bracelets, rings, scarves, etc.). You can then buy any of the items for $30.
“We simplify the discovery process of finding the season’s best accessories & serve you five customized options based on your style survey,” says the company. The survey takes all of 45 seconds. You are asked things like your favorite brands/retail stores (are you JCrew or H&M?), favorite celebrity look (Reese Witherspoon or Sarah Jessica Parker?), office v. casual, etc. And then you’re presented with the goods.
I selected a nice set of Lily Pink Earrings, which I think work perfectly with my jeans/tshirt office uniform. Want to avoid all that? You can, just use the search feature to find what you want. Everything is $30. → Read More
Twitter has just announced that it’s opening the Site Streams feature of its API up to developers. This is big news, as it allows mobile push services and web apps like Brizzly and Seesmic Web to immediately display new tweets, mentions and other data as soon as they come in, rather than having to deal with Twitter’s REST API rate limits. As MG put it, these streams are crack for real-time web junkies.
According to the Site Streams dev site, developers won’t be able to fully abandon the REST API yet, as Site Streams will be prone to disruption as Twitter works out the kinks. The feature will also only be limited to “a total of 100,000 simultaneous users during the beta period unless prior arrangements are made”, though it’s hard to think of any sites that large who don’t already have a relationship with Twitter. → Read More
In its quest to build the most powerful gaming platform on the web, Google has made another purchase today: game developer SocialDeck. Inside Social Games first reported the story. According to The Canadian Press, Google has confirmed the purchase.
With the massive number of gaming developers and publishers in the market, why did Google choose SocialDeck? It could be because of the startup’s mobile offerings. SocialDeck was founded in 2008 with the vision of enabling “anywhere, anytime, anyone” gaming. The company has launched several titles for the iPhone, Facebook, and BlackBerry using its social gaming platform technology, which enables simultaneous game play across multiple mobile devices and social networks. → Read More
Good news for Samsung; their new Galaxy phone has hit 1 million sold after just 45 days of being on the market. That’s a pretty impressive number for a phone that doesn’t come from Apple. Electronista reports that Samsung considers the phone to an instant success, and expects the Galaxy to continue to sell quickly. The 1 million number was a combined total between AT&T and T-Mobile, but doesn’t include any sales from Sprint, as their version won’t hit the market on the 31st. → Read More
Reasonably torn about this next story. There’s an honors class at the University of Florida this semester called “21st Century Skills in Starcraft.” Basically, you play the game for a bunch of weeks, and somewhere along the way you pick up “valuable 21st Century Skills through a hands-on approach.” Sure you do. → Read More
If you’ve ever tried to find a great intern or a great internship, it turns out to be a lot more work than it should be. Internships are an afterthought for most job boards, but increasingly companies are looking to try out their next hires before giving them a full salaried position. Urban Interns joins a growing list of internship-focused sites, allowing companies and interns to find each other.
The site launched in February, 2009, but now the two women founders, Cari Sommer and Lauren Porat, are taking their first angel round of $250,000. The site covers 9 markets, including New York City, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, with more cities and features coming soon. There are currently about 10,000 active users on the site, counting both employers and job seekers. Urban Interns also caters to companies with part-time jobs and freelance positions. → Read More
Clearwire launched their Rover – pay as you go internet service today, offering unlimited usage for $5 a day, $20 a week, or $50 for a month of 4G service. The Rover service is accessed via one of two ways, either from the Rover Solo; a single system dongle, or the Rover Puck which allows connectivity with up to eight devices at a time. The Rover Solo dongle sells for $99, and the Puck will cost you $149. Connectivity is provided via Clearwire’s previously existing 4G network (in most areas) but it’s still compatible with their 3G network as well. Download speeds will range from 3 to 6 mbps, with a maximum burst speed of 10mbps in the Puck device. You can pick up either device from Best Buy, your local Clearwire store, or online at the Rover website. Click through the jump to see the press release. → Read More
Lucasfilm, “Star Wars” creator George Lucas’ film production company, recently filed a $5 million trademark-infringement lawsuit against Jedi Mind, a company that markets itself as allowing people to control computers with their brain waves (yes, really).
The feud between the two companies began in May 2009, when Lucasfilm sent Jedi Mind a cease-and-desist letter requesting that the startup change its name and stop referencing the “Jedi Mind trick” when describing its products such as Master Mind and Jedi Mouse. → Read More
The eighth annual Ohio LinuxFest is September 10-12 in lovely Columbus, Ohio. As always, this is a free event chock full of interesting hands-on Linux and free software solutions. Register at the Supporter level for $65 and you’ll get lunch, one of the gorgeous t-shirts pictured here, and that warm fuzzy feeling that comes from supporting an event like this. → Read More
MySpace is launching Facebook sync today, allowing MySpace users to sync their status updates with their Facebook profile or Page. The social network launched a similar functionality for Twitter last year.
Once you’ve synced your Facebook account, you can update status on MySpace and it will automatically be shared with friends on Facebook. MySpace is touting this feature as a big win for the growing number of musicians who populate the social network to be able to easily share music and content with fans on both sites. → Read More
Intertrust Technologies Corporation, a company that develops and and licenses technologies and intellectual property for digital rights management (DRM), has moved to acquire the assets of media search service Seeqpod.
Intertrust, which holds over 150 patents and has offices in Silicon Valley, London and Beijing, announced this morning that it has purchased all software and patents developed by Seeqpod via Chapter 7 Bankruptcy proceeding. Intertrust – former by Sony and Philips in partnership with Stephens Bank – has however not acquired the domain names used by the company. → Read More
The 3DS is coming! The 3DS is coming! And you know what that means, right? Price cuts! On the current models! Yay! → Read More
A couple weeks ago, we noted the start of the “OAuthpocalypse” — that is, Twitter’s move to make all developers use OAuth rather than basic authentication for their third-party apps. Twitter expected some bumps as they were going to be continuously shutting stuff down and progressively limiting rates. That all ends tomorrow, as basic auth support will be officially killed off at 8 AM PT.
Originally, Twitter had said the death of auth would take place today, August 30th. But for whatever reason, they pushed it back until tomorrow (maybe they just didn’t realize August had 31 days). Twitter’s Douglas Bowman confirms this with a tweet today: “Basic Auth for Twitter is almost history. Rate limits are down to 15 requests/hour, and will be 0 by tomorrow.” → Read More
ATI, we hardly knew ye. Word on the street is that AMD, which bought ATI for a cool $5.4 billion some four years ago, will phase out the ATI name later this year. Apparently AMD’s research indicates that people prefer the AMD name to the ATI name, but that, above that, the name that really sells is Radeon. Goodbye ATI Radeon Pro, hello AMD Radeon Pro. → Read More
CAV Japan today announced [JP] iPod speakers designed like Hello Kitty, the dream cartoon cat of millions of teenage girls. The maker says the speaker dock comes with “Surface Mounting Technology” and “Lossless Energy Amplification Technology” for 360° sound, but the design is the main selling point in this case. → Read More
In just a few short hours I will be in a jet plane over the Atlantic Ocean con destino a Berlin. Yes: I’m going to IFA. And truth be told, one of the biggest things to come out of the show will be the Samsung tablet, the Galaxy Tab. Here’s what we know so far. → Read More
Apple has an event on the books for this coming Wednesday and it’s widely expected that Steve-O will announce new iDevices, specifically an iOS-version of the Apple TV and new iPods. Most of the pre-iTV news is purely speculative as we really don’t know much about it, although it should hit at a lower price point and a new cloud-based iTunes should debut alongside the device. Forget about the cable TV assault for a quick minute though. Let’s talk about these new iPods. If things go down as the leaks seem to say, you might actually want a dedicated PMP device again. The iPod is set to have a second coming. → Read More
