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
Digg just can’t get a break. On the heels of news that the company had to lay off 37% of its staff and saw the departures of both its CRO and CFO, last night a report surfaced alleging that Digg was gaming its own system, ostensibly to favor certain partners. If true, this would have further undermined user trust in the site’s democratic voting system, and the evidence was convincing that something out of the ordinary was going on. Now Digg has just responded to this accusation with a blog post that boils down to, “Yes, we do have fake accounts voting up stories, but they’re for testing purposes”. Here’s a relevant excerpt:
Before doing that, I’m going to address a story submitted to Digg that called out activity of a number of our internal test accounts. As with many sites, we continuously run tests on the site to expose vulnerabilities in our own security. In this case, we did have a number of our internal test accounts Digging content from the Upcoming section of the site. → Read More
A few weeks ago we saw more than a few Medal of Honor-theme accessories. Now that we’re rapidly approaching the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops we can expect to see Black Ops accessories, too. First up: KontrolFreek’s Limited Edition FPS Freek Prestige. It’s basically a raised texture that you put on your PS3 or 360 control stick to give you a better handle of the situation. That, or you can use a mouse and keyboard like a grown-up. → Read More
Hot on the heels of their first mechanical-key keyboard, the Black Widow, Razer has announced an MMO-orientated model they call the Anansi, named after the spider god of many tricks. That seems appropriate given its intended use: quick access to a huge amount of macros. → Read More
Google TV is now out there in the wild. There’s no indication of how it’s selling just yet, but my hunch is that like early Android, it may be some time before sales really take off. That shouldn’t be too surprising considering that the platform is built on top of Android. But there aren’t a lot of apps and sites yet that are tailored for these new devices. They need more. And they know the way to get them. Free giveaways!
As they’ve announced on their Google TV blog today, the search giant is giving away 10,000 Google TV units to developers. Yes, 10,000. → Read More
Apple raised the bar on ultra-portable computers with the latest MacBook Air. There’s no questioning that. Steve Jobs & Co. took the already-thin MacBook Air and shrunk down both its physical size and price tag. Win win, right?
Well, yeah, but the MacBook Air isn’t for everyone. Good thing the PC world has been doing the ultra-portable thing just as long as Apple and offers some quality alternatives. Sure, there really isn’t one model that soundly beats the new MacBook Air in every category, but the same can be said about the Air versus the five computers listed after the jump. → Read More
When AOL bought us a month ago, we were promised a lot of things: autonomy, resources, inappropriately long corporate meetings, and fame. So far, AOL has come through on the first three. But fame, by which I mean homepage love on aol.com, had thus far eluded us. But today that changed. Boy did it ever.
Yesterday, we got word from our corporate overlords that they were likely to test a link to one of our stories on their homepage in the near future. Today, when scanning our referrer logs, we noticed something interesting. A massively huge tidal wave of traffic from aol.com. → Read More
The Android-powered CherryPad was supposed to amaze us all with its amazing features and low, low price of $188. That said, folks who ordered a CherryPad probably haven’t seen it yet even though news of the device first appeared in September and most CherryPads should have shipped already. One reader, WCS, wrote us saying that he expected his pad to ship on October 15. That date rolled by and on October 20 he received a “tracking number” that tracks no existing package in the UPS, Fedex, DHL, or USPS databases. And then he waited. And waited. And waited. He writes: The Cherrypal “Support” forum (if you can call it that: replies to questions are not permitted, except by the Administrator, and it appears to actually be a polling platform) is increasingly showing posts from people who have received neither their Cherrypad nor their tracking number. In response, the Administrator claims the delay was caused by a typhoon in the Philippines and that everything is fine and users in California and Italy have received their units. Oh, and the “forum” cleverly substitutes the word “issue” when one types “scam”. → Read More
Well, it was fun while it lasted. Just two hours ago, we declared the approval of iDOS (a DOS emulator for iOS) a Halloween Miracle. Really — it was on par with an appearance from the Great Pumpkin, or all of the candy corn in the world suddenly becoming edible. Cue the Sad Trombone: Apple just pulled it. → Read More
“Apple, Inc. (AAPL) in negotiations to acquire Spotify,” read the tip that came in yesterday via email from an anonymous source. Most tips are just outright false, but we dug into this one a little bit.
Here’s what we heard – Apple and Spotify are in on-again, off-again discussions about an acquisition, but at best it’s very early in the process. No firm price has been offered, no term sheet tabled. Still, it’s interesting that the two are talking.
But way more interesting is this – Last year, around the time that Apple acquired music service Lala, Google and Spotify were deep in acquisition discussions, says a source with knowledge of the negotiations. → Read More
Google announced today that it intends to give away $5 million dollars to organizations trying to find innovative ways to continue the practice of Journalism. Great. Anything that even vaguely creates more jobs for writers is okay in my book, especially when I look at my tally of how many times you guys say I should be fired.
Unfairly blamed for the decline of media by Rupert Murdoch and his ilk, perhaps the higher ups at Google feel bad about their status as scapegoat for the Internet’s effect on the news industry and that’s why they’re feeling so generous? → Read More
The music industry lawyers just put another notch on their wall. After ten years of existence, peer-to-peer music sharing service LimeWire is joining Napster, Kazaa, and all the rest. It will abide by a court-ordered injunction today and begin to disable the file-sharing and music-searching features of its P2P software. Years of legal battles and the prospects of paying astronomical fines finally did the service in. We are putting it in the deadpool.
The company, LimeCompany, will soldier on. Transitioning to a music store or legal streaming music service, however, will be tough. It fought a good fight, and lasted longer than most other P2P services. Partly that was because there was usually a bigger P2P sharing service freaking out the music industry. Once the lawyers got rid of those, they finally got around to LimeWire. → Read More
A guide for watch gifts this holiday season from a watch expert. Twelve categories and sixty watches for all budgets, with prices, and links to more information. It is the definitive place to start when interested in buying a new timepieces for yourself or others this year. → Read More
It’s October 26, so that means two things: one, Fable III has been released (to solid scores), and two, the zombified DLC for Red Dead Redemption, Undead Nightmare, has also been released. Here’s the launch trailer. → Read More
Greenpeace‘s latest Guide to Greener Electronics shows that great progress in greenification has been made by some companies, but that other companies are still lagging behind. Philips and HP are applauded for their efforts, while Microsoft and Toshiba have been called out for either backtracking on their promises or misleading the public “about its commitments” to making green products. → Read More
The US solar market took another step forward this week with the federal government’s approval of Solar Millennium’s plan to build a massive thermal power station in Blythe, California. Located between Phoenix and Los Angeles in the arid Palo Verde Valley, this thinly populated city will soon be home to the world’s largest solar project.
Solar Millennium, a German firm, plans to build four plants on the expansive property with a total capacity of 1,000 megawatts— which is roughly on par with the country’s current total solar capacity. With 1,000 MW at completion, the station would be able to power more than 300,000 homes. The hope, the company says, is to start supplying the grid with electricity by 2013.
Construction is set to start later this year. → Read More
To the moon, Alice! Romain Jerome, makers of the DNA series of fancy watches (you probably remember the Titantic DNA) has created a goofy-looking pen to commemorate Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing. Sadly, they missed the actual anniversary so they’re releasing it right now for all you space cadets out there. The pen is made of “moon dust” and silver along with tiny bits of the Apollo II, like a moon-dust poutine. The press release, apparently written by a very nervous robot, is all but unreadable and the pen is probably too expensive for mere earth men to afford. → Read More
