A report in the Financial Times suggests that Net Neutrality may, once again, be on the docket. The FCC is looking to have everything wrapped up as early as its December 15 meeting. Whether or not that actual happens—there have been several false starts, of course—who knows? → Read More
Almighty Giz has two exciting maps that offer an alternative explanation for the decline in cable and satellite subscriptions in the past year. If you look at the maps, you’ll find that the areas that saw the biggest drops in subscriptions are also, generally, the areas hardest hit by foreclosures. The theory goes, these areas have been hard hit by the recession, and subsequent unemployment, so they’d be first to drop superfluous things like $100+ cable TV bills. → Read More
It is as they say: the best laid plans can often go awry. Even the most heavily tested builds of iOS — ones that many thousands of iOS developers Beta tested, and ones that had multiple last minute Gold Master revisions — can have surprise bugs lurking when things go live. Such is the case with iOS 4.2, which has at least one strange bug in its bed. Upon updating to the just released software, a solid number of users are reporting that their music library has gone missing. Fear not, music lovers! There’s an easy fix. → Read More
Acer is announcing a set of five touch devices under the Iconia line including Windows 7 touch tablets and laptops as well as an Android model. Our cousins at Engadget have a liveblog going on as we speak. Apparently there will also be a tablet “app store” available for those inclined to put all their eggs in one basket. → Read More
Jokes, all jokes. The Smartfish Whirl Mini incorporates the same sort of design found in the full size model announced at CES 2010. So yeah, there’s a pivot point to allow your wrist and arm to move in a more natural movement. This time around there’s it’s packaged in a slightly smaller form factor to better accommodate traveling and for those that like smaller mice. (like me) This model ships in early December for $49.95 and is available in six different color themes. → Read More
Blekko, the little search engine that could, has come off the success of hitting one million search queries day and 30,000 slashtags (human curated search topics like /colleges, /vegan, /SEO) created in it’s first week of existence.
Now it has taken a unique “if you can’t beat them, join ‘em” approach to the search market and partnered up with fellow market outlier DuckDuckGo, which like Blekko, is a search engine that prides itself on having more relevant results than Google with the added bonus of not keeping any of your personally identifiable info. → Read More
We’ve been tracking the progress of Diaspora, the open-source Facebook alternative, since before the project even started. That’s because the idea got so much buzz on the crowdsourced micro-funding site Kickstarter, that they were able to turn a goal of raising $10,000 in 39 days into $200,000 from 6,500 backers in the same timeframe. But with such high expectations, you have to deliver. And many expressed doubts that the small team of college students could do that.
After the money came in, the team sequestered themselves for the Summer to work on the project. Despite some hiccups, they were able to unveil the source of the project in September to mixed reviews. Meanwhile, a user-facing alpha launch was promised for October. That came and went, and they pushed the launch to Thanksgiving. Well, we’re two days away from turkey day, and Diaspora has delivered this time. → Read More
Given the underwhelming past few years in Flock‘s history and the seemingly lukewarm post-launch response to RockMelt, I’m not entirely convinced that anyone actually wants a bunch of social networking stuff tied into their browser. So far, the browsers that pull the bigger numbers are the ones that suck the least, not the ones with the most feature bloat. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Alas, you can’t have a trendy feature without every little guy taking a swing at it. Next up with the bat? SkyFire. → Read More
What we have here is Razer‘s official Tron mouse. It certainly looks like Tron. → Read More
It is isn’t often that a web service needs almost no instructions. Minus, part of the minimalist design trend inspired by apps like Glen Murphy’s DropMocks, allows you to drag and drop photos from your desktop into your browser in order to arrange into galleries, edit and share via URL. Yes that’s all it does — Single service web apps are so hot right now.
Founders Carl Hu and John Xie want to eventually expand into documents, music video, and other files, but as of yet the Boston based service is delightfully simple, like a no frills imgur. Start your sharing! → Read More
Yeah, sure, it will come out. Don’t worry. I know you guys are totally into the Notion Ink Adam tablet and I’m here to tell you that this thing won’t ship this year and when it does you won’t be happy with it. Barring all that, the company has just released a website so you can gaze longingly at the device for a few more precious hours. → Read More
Last night was interesting. I was sitting down to do some last-minute research for a post I was working on (this one) when news began to break that North Korea had just attacked South Korea. As usual, news was flowing through Twitter faster than any one source, but I needed a way to filter the noise. Oddly enough, the product I was writing about is perfect for that: Curated.by.
Using Curated.by’s extension, I began flagging tweets that I found to be most useful for the Korea situation. Then I checked the Curated.by site to see that someone else was already way ahead of me (in this case, co-founder Bastian Lehmann), so I started following his curation of the events. It was fascinating to watch a tool go from interesting to useful in seconds. → Read More
The Internet’s fav little media streamer just got a bunch of new notable features. Of course you already know what they are if you read the headline, but here it goes again: Facebook! AccuWeather! Deezer! and USB keyboard support meaning you can finally utilize a wireless keyboard feed through a wireless USB dongle to control your little streamer! All great selling points verse the similiarly priced Roku or Apple TV, but these features ride on the back of a major update for current owners. Nothing makes Jebus smile more than when companies update aging product lines with new features. Maybe baby squirrels… → Read More
A little over a year ago Zynga sued rival game startup Playdom for, among other things, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, breach of the duty of loyalty, tortious interference with contracts, tortious interference with existing and prospective economic advantage and unfair competition. The defendants included four ex-Zynga, then Playdom employees as well.
It’s been a fairly dramatic year of legal maneuvers. The day Zynga filed the lawsuit a judge issued a temporary restraining order against Playdom that prohibited Playdom from using any Zynga data. In March a different judge issued a preliminary injunction against Playdom that prohibited them from releasing a specific game (whatever game that was has been kept confidential). And then in August the big slap down against a former Zynga employee who had been found to have acted inappropriately. → Read More
If you’re a regular jailbreaker, you’ll be happy to know that iOS 4.2.1 is jailbroken already and that you can download the iOS version and roll your own install immediately. RedmondPie has a great how-to but it’s pretty simple. → Read More
While the deals are great, Black Friday crowds are the worst. You have to get up at the crack of dawn, suffer madness in parking lots, only to fight with other shoppers over a limited quantity of marked down items. Today, Milo is giving you a tool that could help you avoid Black Friday crowds by checking product-inventory before you head to the mall or shopping center.
On a designated Black Friday landing page, Milo will aggregate and track Black Friday
discounts at national merchants, so shoppers can know when sale items sell out and where they remain in-stock. And Milo promises that all of these inventory listings are updated in real-time. → Read More
This is a watch that I really never thought was going to be made. It started out as a concept watch called the “Galibier” based upon a concept car from Bugatti with the same name. Fabien Cacheux designed it to have a perlage decorated “drum case,” Bugatti logo, and an interesting strap system. Less than a year later, a more practical version of the piece is being made – but in very limited quantities and it will be called the “Cacheux Elephant Automatic.” → Read More
Free your hand and your mind will follow. Friends, that’s the message FreeOneHand iPad Holder And Stand is preaching and, personally, like what the Rock is cooking. Think of it! Never again will you suffer from dreaded “iPad Claw” or “Tablet Cramps.” You can sit quietly on the couch, staring into your iPad, one hand free to actuate various items in your vicinity and/or to stroke various “items” nearby while you tap, drag, and zoom various “images” on the iPad. → Read More
We’ve covered quite a few mobility robots from Japan in the past months, and now Sanwa Hitech [JP] is presenting yet another model. Their so-called Stavi (short for “Standing Vehicle”) is a successor to the RODEM, a robot that we covered in June this year. The Stavi can be used while standing, and it can also be accessed easily by persons sitting in wheel chairs (see the graphic below). → Read More
