MySpace is mere hours away from their big redesign push (our early review is here). If you’ve got nothing to do until midnight California time, spend it perusing this document. It is, according to an anonymous source that claims to work at MySpace, an internal MySpace document showing traffic and engagement by age band.
And it’s on Google, publicly. → Read More
“People like stumbling videos more than webpages,” StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp tells us in explaining why the service has decided to revamp their video offering, which they’re doing tonight. While you’ve been able to stumble through videos for a couple of years now, they’re finally making the experience more social. And they’re adding two big names to the arsenal: TED and Hulu.
Previously, StumbleUpon was simply using trending data to find hot videos to take your through. But now they’ve integrated their social recommendation engine into the mix to make the entire experience more personalized. In other words, you’ll now be taken to videos liked by people you’re connected with on the service. → Read More
Among the many things about living in the year 2010 that blow my mind (robot vacuums, smartphones, Google Books), the fact that we are at the beginning of commercial space flight is, incredibly, not constantly on my mind. Yet advances are constantly being made, most visibly by Virgin Galactic, which just this last week inaugurated the commercial facility for vertically- and horizontally-launching aircraft. I mean spacecraft. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to saying that.
Spaceport America, in addition to having a snazzy logo, sports training facilities for Virgin Galactic pilots spacemen, a 10,000ft runway, and will serve as Virgin Galactic’s headquarters for the next two decades. Want to visit? Good luck with that — you should probably just watch this video. → Read More
Yahoo Mail just announced its first redesign in five years and it took the tech community 20 hours to notice. Meanwhile Aol Mail went down last week without making a sound. Imagine the echo chamber uproar if either had happened to Gmail. → Read More
Just when I think Microsoft has no more tricks up their sleeves, they pull something like this. I know some of you out there feel that the Kinect just isn’t made for the hardcore, what with the lack of buttons and launch titles being tiger simulators and all, but this trailer will prove you wrong. The Kinect is hardcore. Hardcore practical. → Read More
The time has come to fiddle around with all the options for your new Chevy Volt. Assuming you’ve got a spare $42K laying around. Yes, it’s not exactly the most affordable vehicle, nor is it, strictly speaking, an electric vehicle, but it is a practical, good-looking, and high-tech car, which is perhaps better.
At any rate, the official configurator is now live, and you can add and subtract trim as you please. → Read More
I don’t know what to say about this bizarro device. I mean… as a game platform it depends entirely on the games. As hardware it’s… difficult to say until you hold the thing. That trackpad in the middle is out of this world, though. With the dots? Sony is either out of its mind or doing something really interesting here. → Read More
If you haven’t tried out Blippy since the company rather infamously launched last year as the social network for sharing credit card purchases, you should go back and give it another look. Things are quite a bit different now. And a new partnership showcases that.
Blippy has partnered with Sephora to create a version of Blippy specifically tailored to the fragrance and beauty retailer’s brand. From here, Sephora shoppers can easily share purchases, see what others are buying, and talk about all this stuff. While you can still see some purchase prices, it’s less about that, and more about the social aspect of the shopping experience. For example, a user saw someone bought some DiorShow Mascara and asked, “Is it worth the higher price tag (as compared to a $5 mascara)?” A few minutes later, they got an answer (yes). → Read More
MySpace is preparing to roll out its long-awaited redesign, perhaps as early as tomorrow, at least for new users. It’s not going to be pretty. Well, actually, it is quite pretty—I’ve seen screenshots—but that still might not be enough to help stem the diminishing appeal of the social network. MySpace tried to brief us on the new design under embargo, which we don’t do, so we declined the briefing. Nevertheless, we keep getting snippets of information from various sources.
So let me describe it for you. The design will feature the new MySpace logo at the top, and center around discovering and sharing media—music, photos, and videos. When you log in, a big status bar will prompt you to “Share something!” That can be a status message, a link, a photo, or a video. → Read More
Part of the YCombinator class of 2006, Xobni only recently launched its first non-English language version in German after partnering with the German Linkedin, Xing. Yet, given the high number of French users, the company has decided to make France it’s 2nd international market and is rolling-out the French version of its product today. But still, don’t try spelling the French word for email inbox (boîte de réception) backwards – you’re likely to get a word way uglier than Xobni.
Xobni’s solution, which aims at facilitating search and management of contacts within Outlook and on the Blackberry, will definitely face a bit of competition in the French market – especially from Silentale’s personal CRM, which has also been called “the Dropbox of communications.” → Read More
The new Nook Color has been revealed, and it’s a 7″ Android tablet with a color LCD touchscreen. Talk about bringing a knife to a knife fight when someone else already brought a gun.
It was the wrong move for Barnes & Noble to change horses mid-race. The only thing e-readers (and this is supposed to be an e-reader, make no mistake) have as a defense against the tablet onslaught is their superior (and rapidly improving) e-ink displays. Amazon knows this, and they know that a huge proportion of their sales are black-and-white. The color stuff market is ceded to tablets — they can have it, too, because e-readers already own the book market. Barnes & Noble just got greedy. → Read More
http://player.ooyala.com/player.swf?embedCode=J2eTRzMToH-6f4N1BPgeGj9QliHLP4ZS&version=2 Here is some of the live dancing at the Nook Event today. Wild stuff. → Read More
Is Apple’s vanilla Bluetooth keyboard too minimal for your taste? Maybe this blinged-out one is more your speed. It comes with a bunch of stickers for assigning app shortcuts to this or that key — you know, in case you didn’t want to extend your finger to launch that app. → Read More
It’s said that you’re not supposed to wear white after Labor Day. Apple, it seems, is sticking with that rule. Yes, the elusive white iPhone has been delayed again.
As Apple representatives have told Reuters, the white version of the device is now not due until next spring. This is the third delay of the device, as it was at first pushed from launch day in June until the second half of July. Then it was pushed until “later this year” in late July. Now for the next question: will it actually beat the next version of the device itself to market? → Read More
Perhaps you missed Apple’s Back to the Mac event at their headquarters in Cupertino, CA last week. You know, the one where they showed off iLife ’11, a sneak peek at OS X Lion, and the new MacBook Air. You can watch the entire 90-minute presentation online for free now. But why do that when you can watch the entire thing in 104 seconds and get the key takeaways?
Okay, not really.
What you will get in the video below is a minute and a half of hilariously awesome superlatives. This is nothing new for Apple. And while this video and the ones that have come before it are cut to be funny, it also showcases something much more meaningful. → Read More
Talk about a misleading title in that video. It reminded me of the obscure comic series (Avengers Infinity) in which they fight a dude as big as a planet, and then a bunch of other dudes the same size come and grow together to form a huge handle the size of a solar system, and then a giant hand comes out of nowhere in order to drag the entire galaxy into a line with some others. So awesome.
In contrast, this is just a bag of coffee grounds being manipulated by a vacuum nozzle, but it’s still pretty cool. → Read More
