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
There’s a brand new tech awards in town called the Bully Award (no, it’s not for rewarding the big angry kid at school) and it’s being put together by the people behind a new European tech event organiser, White Bull Summits. Although you could be forgiven for commenting that there are plenty of tech events in Europe already, the Bully Awards are out to find Europe’s leading TMT companies. They sound a bit like the Red Herring 100 Europe, but at least they’ll have more credibility than that “title” which retains a rump of events while feeding off the long dead carcass of its editorial brand. Note that until the fall of 2009, White Bull founder Farley Duvall led all EMEA operations for Red Herring Magazine, so they’ve clearly lost one of their best people to a new and more agile startup. Bully White Bull then, huh.
Some sixty European companies are finalists in these awards. The advisors (one of whom is Robin Wauters of TechCrunch) picked a list which contains 10 Dutch companies, nine German and nine UK companies. The remaining European countries and companies represented include: Austria (1), Belgium (1), Denmark (3), Estonia (2), Finland (5), France (3), Israel (2), Lithuania (1), Luxembourg (1), Norway (1), Spain (5), Sweden (1), and Switzerland (6). So what are the Dutch putting in their water? → 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
Google is a big proponent of HTML5, especially for video and rich graphics in the browser. To show off what HTML5 can do, Google Chrome teamed up with the Arcade Fire and director Chris Milk to create a custom interactive video for their song, “We Used To Wait.” The experience is called The Wilderness Downtown and is best viewed in Chrome or other HTML5-compliant browser.
You start by typing in the address of the house you grew up in, then it loads a video of a guy in a hoodie running through the streets. Different windows pop open on your screen, some with graphics, some with videos. Google Maps and Street View images of your old neighborhood are incorporated into the video. All the video is in HTML5, different windows open up triggered by the music, and you even see a fly-over of your neighborhood based on Google Maps’ routing API. → Read More
Google is partnering with U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation (USBCDC), a division of U.S. Bank; to create an $86 million Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) fund. According to a release issued today, the funding will be used towards the construction and operation of 480 affordable rental housing units for low income families and senior citizens in seven communities throughout the West and Midwest.
It’s unusual for a technology company to get involved with these types of loans; banks and insurance companies usually help fund these credits. While the money doesn’t cover the total cost of these developments, these tax credits help them complete a project. → Read More
Media and communications fund Syncom Venture Partners annonuced a series A investment of $3 million in ShowUHow, a San Diego based business that could make the traditional instruction manual obsolete.
ShowUHow provides official online video instruction guides, web-based sales and customer support tools. ShowUHow’s clients make and sell products that are advertised as “some assembly required,” or that general consumers may find complex, initially. → Read More
Internet telephony and chat service provider Skype is officially launching Skype Connect 1.0 (formerly Skype for SIP), to the public (you can see the release here). The service has been in beta since last year.
Skype Connect allows a business’ employees to make domestic and international calls using regular office telephones (PBX systems) instead of using a computer and a headset for VoIP calls. Users can receive and manage inbound calls from Skype users to SIP-enabled PBX systems, enabling them to offer click-to-call functionality on websites. → Read More
Looks like RIM has dodged a bullet in India, at least for the time being. The BlackBerry maker has provided the Indian government with “proposals for local security agencies to monitor BlackBerry service” so that, when necessary, the Indian government can tap into BlackBerry users’ email. And while that may not sound too positive a development, it was either that or risk an outright ban. → Read More
By now, we’ve learned the Japanese have found a number of creative ways to use the iPad. And today we can show you a new one: the iPad as the basis of a sophisticated, yet low-cost point of sale cash register system. Dubbed FLAVIUS [JP], the system is actually being used by several business across Japan already. → Read More
The news page on Digg, and particularly the Technology category, is currently plastered with links to discussions and images posted on rival Reddit instead. That’ll bring Reddit some traffic this morning, but more importantly it’s a bit of an embarrassing situation for Digg.
The Next Web speculates that Reddit is ‘gaming’ Digg, but there seems to be something else at play here, namely Digg users actively displaying their discontent with the recently launched new version of the site by using it to promote links to its competitor. → Read More
Between online video, DVRs, and on-demand cable the amount of time people spend watching live TV (you know, with all of those commercials that advertisers spend $70 billion a year on) is shrinking fast. Only 52 percent of American’s viewing time is spent on live TV compared to online and time-shifting alternatives, according to a new survey of 1,000 American consumers by market research firm Morpace. And that percentage decreases the younger the audience, with the key 18-to-34-year-old demographic watching live TV only 41 percent of the time, versus 64 percent of the time for those 55 and older.
The alternatives to live TV are growing and basic cable is under assault, but no one single competing technology is taking over. People watch DVDs 14 percent of the time, online (including streaming video from services like Netflix) 13 percent of the time, saved programs on their DVRs 12 percent, and on-demand cable 6 percent. The survey breaks down online viewing into video from online sources like YouTube (9 percent) and streaming video from services like Netflix and Hulu (4 percent). For 18-to-34-year-olds, online video makes up 16 percent of their viewing time, and streaming video makes up another 7 percent. → Read More
Cubic Telecom, the TechCrunch40 company behind the traveler-friendly SIM card MAXroam, has partnered with popular European airline Ryanair to slash roaming costs for travelers. Cubic Telecom’s MAXroam allows users to use their unlocked cell phones in over 180 countries, saving around 60-80% on roaming charges.
Starting today, Ryanair will slash mobile phone roaming charges by up to 70% via a 3 year exclusive partnership with MAXroam. Passengers need to purchase a MAXroam SIM card, which will provides one fixed roaming rate across 43 European countries. → Read More
BizArk, a Chinese e-commerce company specialized in international trading solutions, has now made its debut and announced that it has secured ‘tens of millions of dollars’ in financing from IDG Ventures (up to $40 million according to several reports).
The press release announcing the investment is one of the strangest I’ve ever read. → Read More
