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Gizmodo

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  Facebook 3.0 for iPhone Adds Events and Photo Albums, But No Push (Yet) [IPhone Apps]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 8:00pm EDT by matt buchanan

  Here's what Facebook for iPhone 3.0 looks like—pretty nice. Besides the new giant button home screen, you'll be able to actually RSVP to events and create new photo albums. No push yet, but here's the full list:

  1. The "new" News Feed
  2. Like
  3. Events (including the ability to RSVP)
  4. Notes
  5. Pages
  6. Create new photo albums
  7. Upload photos to any album
  8. Zoom into photos
  9. Easier photo tagging
  10. Profile Pictures albums
  11. A new home screen for easy access to all your stuff, search, and notifications
  12. Add your favorite profiles and pages to the home screen
  13. Better Notifications (they link to the comments so you can reply)
  14. Quickly call or text people right from the Friends page
  15. Messages you are typing will be restored if you quit or are interrupted by a phone call

  I'm sure Jesus will love being able to finally zoom in on photos. It's coming "soon," but no exact date yet. Later this summer, 3.1 will finally bring push notifications. [Facebook via Inside Facebook]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  The First Integrated Circuit Chip: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary [Retromodo]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 7:30pm EDT by Dan Nosowitz

  The Computer History Museum is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit, pictured above, with a multimedia exhibit called "The Silicon Engine" to explain why many claim the IC as one of mankind's greatest and most important inventions ever.

  Using oral histories from those who experienced the creation and development of the integrated circuit, the Computer History Museum compiled a documentary on this invention that irrefutably changed the world. The year-long exhibit will feature examples of early transistors, the vacuum tubes they replaced, and early integrated circuits, as well as explaining who was behind the inventions, especially the so-called "Traitorous Eight" engineers that largely developed the IC back in 1959.

  After departing from the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, engineer Jean Hoerni and the rest of the "Traitorous Eight" moved to Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. There, Hoerni developed the planar process which would become the foundation for the integrated circuit. The planar process involves using an oxide layer to protect the joining of the p-n semiconductors on a silicon chip, named because of the flat surface in which it results. The planar process is more electrically efficient than the then-common method of stripping the oxide layer for fear of contamination, but more importantly, the design allowed for a complete circuit to be built on a silicon chip.

  Later in 1959, fellow "Traitorous Eight" member Robert Noyce demonstrated that the combination of the oxide coating and the flat surface allowed for a complete integrated electrical circuit, with diodes, transistors, resistors and capacitors, to be built within a planar chip. Simultaneously, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments independently developed a similar idea based on the planar process, though his was based on a germanium chip, rather than Noyce's silicon. This new integrated circuit, called the "monolithic integratic chip," is the basis for pretty much everything we love today, including computers, radio, television, audio equipment, cars and anything else that uses a microchip.

  It's no exaggeration to call the IC an invention that profoundly changed the world. Microchip technology has exploded since its invention 50 years ago, and few (if any) other inventions have become so essential worldwide in such a short amount of time. The technology is kind of tough to wrap your mind around, but the Computer History Museum's exhibit sounds like an illuminating look at how Silicon Valley and our favorite hobby began. [Computer History Museum]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Ceiling Porn Is Probably Not What You Think It Is [Image Cache]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 7:00pm EDT by Dan Nosowitz

  We tend to take ceilings for granted, unless there's water coming through them thanks to a careless upstairs neighbor. Deputy Dog collected ten insane architectural feats of ceiling-craft to show off the most underrated wall in the house. [Deputy Dog]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  With a Name Like 'Luminotherapy' It Hardly Sounds Seedy at All [Furniture]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 6:30pm EDT by Mark Wilson

  Philippe Boulet's "luminotherapy" bed is supposed to help you sleep. But since when does light shining in someone's face help them sleep?

  Loaded with a variety of multicolored LEDs, you can change the hue of the luminotherapy bed with the touch of a remote. The resulting colors, such as pink, blue and green will make your lover glow with all the vibrancy of a Star Trek Original Series alien babe. Well, that, or they'll give you night terrors of being stuck on a Cylon base ship (before they got all lovey hippie on the humans) or a painfully hipster sushi joint. [phillipe boulet via Unplggd]

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

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  Iran's Mobile SMS Up & Running; Will Twitter Start to Lose the Green Hues?

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 6:08pm EDT

  According to a report today from the BBC, Iranians are able to text message one another for the first time since the day before the presidential elections.

  SMS service, which political dissidents had used to spread messages and organize protests, has been restricted since June 11, causing many Iranians to use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social sites to broadcast and communicate.

  Sponsor
  

  The BBC report stated that, according to Iranian news outlets, SMS capabilities are now unblocked but that users are experiencing massive technical problems. Some messages as old as three weeks were just now being received, and some messages were delivered multiple times.

  Iran's broken digital communication infrastructure caused many Iranians to turn to services such as Twitter, using proxies to work around government restrictions for web use. Twitter became so integral to Iranians' communication, particularly with the wider global community, that the U.S. State Department asked Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance which would have occurred in the immediate aftermath of the election and resultant protests. Other services rushed to add Persian translation features.

  Hopefully, the unblocking of text messaging in Iran is a sign that communication channels are returning to normal. So, does this mean that everyone's new favorite color, "Solidarity Green," will begin to fade away from social web avatars sometime soon? Once the country and its government emerge from crisis mode, what news will come from Iran, and what will the Internet have to say about it?

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

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  Self-Portrait Machine Forces Your Hands Into Drawing a Pretty Picture [Robots]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 6:00pm EDT by Adam Frucci

  No artistic ability? Let a friendly robot force your hands into drawing a realistic self-portrait of yourself.

  Jen Hui Lia's Self-Portrait Machine takes your picture and then guides your hands into drawing your own portrait. You slip your wrists and index fingers into the straps, hold a pen and the machine does the rest.

  It's sort of gimmicky now, sure, but imagine the next generation of this thing: instead of a picture as the source, it uses your brainwaves to put down whatever you're picturing in your head on paper. Who needs talent? [We Make Money Not Art]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Apple's Future iPhone Patents Show Fingerprint ID For Different Gestures, Plus More [Patent]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 5:54pm EDT by Jason Chen

  MacRumors found three interesting patents that point to various new interaction techniques. The most interesting is the fingerprint ID directly on the screen so that the iPhone can see which finger you're using and accept gestures appropriately.

  The fingerprint ID also, of course, can theoretically act as a security device so that only you can activate your phone. There's also haptic (physical) feedback when you're hitting things, as well as using the touchscreen as an RFID reader. None of the three are really mindblowing in themselves, on the surface, but if implemented intelligently might make for a big step forward in the iPhone product line. [Macrumors via Boy Genius]

  
  
  

  
  

  

Webware.com

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  Sites that help you lodge complaints

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 5:49pm EDT by Don Reisinger

  Whether you want to target politicians, your employers, or companies that have done you wrong, there are a variety of sites across the Web that will help you voice your complaints. But beware that not all of them will actually solve those problems.

  Lodge your complaints

  Anonymous Employee Those having trouble at the office should try out Anonymous Employee. The service allows you to create a user name and password without requiring an e-mail address. After that, you can input the name of your employer, the person you want to contact, and the issue you want to make them aware of. Anonymous Employee automatically sends the message to the recipient without identifying you.

  Unfortunately, Anonymous Employee was buggy and at times, it took too long to send a message. That said, I was impressed by the number of options it offered, including complaints about age discrimination, harassment, or wrongful termination. Once it fixes those bugs, Anonymous Employee will be an even more compelling service.

  

  Anonymous Employee keeps you private when you make issues public.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  Better Business Bureau The Better Business Bureau site is one of the best places to lodge complaints. Right from the home page, you can access the organization's complaint tool, which allows you to take issue with your vehicle, your cell phone carrier, a product or service outside of those two categories, or a charity. After inputting information about yourself, you can describe your issue on the site. It's then filed with the Better Business Bureau and investigated.

  

  The Better Business Bureau wants to know the nature of your complaint.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  CongressMerge If you're unhappy with what's going on in your state, CongressMerge can help you out. The site provides you with a search field to find all of your elected representatives. Once you find the politician you want to contact, it gives you a listing of all their phone numbers, a map to their office, and even their fax number so you can be sure to get in touch with them. You can also check out your elected representatives' voting records on the site. It's a great way to find all the means of communication you need to have your voice heard in the political process.

  

  CongressMerge helps you contact your representative.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a great place to have your displeasure heard. The site's Action Center lists all the issues the organization has identified. You can sift through those issues, find those that matter most to you, and send an e-mail to the appropriate recipients expressing your displeasure with the rest of the EFF community. It's a great way to stage an online protest.

  

  The Electronic Frontier Foundation wants you to get motivated.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission also lets you submit complaints. You can file complaints about suspect business practices, identity theft, or "episodes of violence." According to the organization's site, it will investigate any complaints that it deems is part of a pattern, but it won't solve individual disputes.

  Regardless, the site's complaint service is fantastic. In just a few seconds, you'll be able to describe your gripe after following the step-by-step complaint tool. After you're finished, it gives you the chance to review your complaint and submit it for review. Whether or not anything will come of it is anyone's guess, but at least you know your government might be doing something behind the scenes to stop poor business practices.

  

  The Federal Trade Commission walks you through your issues.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  Project Vote Smart Project Vote Smart is a great way to research the political process. You can search for politicians, see how they vote, and determine if you're happy with the way they are representing you.

  If you're not happy with their job performance, Project Vote Smart provides you with all the contact information you'll need to express your displeasure. From the address of all their offices to phone numbers and key staff contact information, Project Vote Smart has it all. You'll be happy with what it offers.

  

  Project Vote Smart tells you how politicians vote, then helps you contact them.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  Ripoff Report Ripoff Report provides an outlet for consumers who have been negatively affected by companies to issue complaints. As of this writing, Ripoff Report has more than 460,000 reports filed on the site.

  When you're wronged by an organization, you need only to file a report on the site describing the injustice. It then enters the public forum, so other users can comment, add their own horror stories, and help you get the word out about your complaint. The beauty of Ripoff Report is that it also gives companies the opportunity to rebut any issues raised by customers. It's a really nice give-and-take that's worth checking out.

  

  Ripoff Report gives you and your complainee the chance to share their opinion.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  My top 3

  1. Ripoff Report: It's nice to keep your complaint public.

  2. Anonymous Employee: It's a great way to address real issues without worrying of termination.

  3. Electronic Frontier Foundation: There's strength in numbers--and the EFF knows that.

  
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  Google App Engine misfires

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 5:40pm EDT by Tom Krazit

  

  Technical difficulties forced Google's Web application hosting infrastructure off the air for about four hours Thursday morning.

  Customers who run their Web applications on Google App Engine were forced idle Thursday by a series of issues involving "elevated Datastore latency and error-rates, as well as elevated serving error-rates," according to a Google employee posting in the Google App Engine Downtime Notify group spotted by TechCrunch. A Google representative acknowledged the downtime and apologized for the outage.

  "Today at 8 am PT datastore access for App Engine applications was affected due to a cluster-wide issue. The team identified and fixed the underlying problem that caused the outage and service has now been restored to all applications. We apologize for the inconvenience and encourage anyone having technical difficulty to visit the System Status Dashboard or the Downtime Notify Group, which are both linked from the Google App Engine Community site."

  Google's cloud-computing service allows Web developers who can't afford to host their own applications a place to get their work online. Amazon Web Services does something similar.

  

Gizmodo

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  LG Making iPhone Competitor, Android Phone and Prada III [Lg]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 5:30pm EDT by Jason Chen

  It would be amazing if LG could make an iPhone competitor, an Android device and a Prada III that's one single device, but somehow I don't think that's what LG's president means.

  In an interview for a Korean news agency, Ahn Seung-kwon says (besides the details above) that LG will make another luxury phone (unrelated to the Prada) that will be similar to Nokia's crazy overpriced Vertu. He also said that they aim to be the number two cellphone maker in the world by 2012. The current #2? Samsung. So it's like Predator vs. Aliens, except instead of Predator and Aliens, you have a bunch of Koreans. [Unwired View via Boy Genius]

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

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  How FriendFeed Could Become the Ultimate Social Media Tracking Service

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 5:25pm EDT

  FriendFeed, the multi-network activity aggregator co-founded by GMail creator Paul Buchheit, announced today that it has entered the crowded field of real time search. FriendFeed was already the best way to learn what early adopter social media users were saying about any topic across blogs, Twitter, delicious and other diverse social media sites. If FriendFeed wants to step it up to the next level and challenge business-class conversation trackers, we believe there are four steps the company needs to take.

  We think that would make a whole lot of sense. In fact we think that if real time search were turned into a business tool it could challenge social media monitoring services like Radian6, Scout Labs and Sysomos. Here's what we think needs to happen in order for that to become a possibility.

  Sponsor
  

  We already use FriendFeed to keep track of who quietly touches out blog posts out around the web. For example, our recent post Google Updates Blog Search - Where's The Innovation hasn't gotten any comments yet - but FriendFeed shows us that leading marketing blogger Andy Beal shared it with his network on Google Reader. That's good to know.

  We think FriendFeed could offer some of the most sophisticated social media conversation tracking on the web, if it just took a few steps in particular.

  Broaden the Index Beyond Opt-In

  Right now FriendFeed tracks what users say and do across more than 40 different social media sites and any RSS feeds (like blog feeds) that users input as part of their profiles. It's a great way to track people and topics on networks you yourself don't participate on.

  Because FriendFeed is such a high-profile startup, many people have set up accounts just to try it and have their activities pulled into the site automatically even though they no longer use FriendFeed itself. That adds to the richness of the site's search function.

  If FriendFeed wants to offer full-service conversation tracking, though, it is going to need to go beyond the early-adopter crowd that has opted in to having their activities imported into the site. FriendFeed is going to need to proactively discover and import feeds from users of Twitter, Delicious, SlideShare, BrightKite,etc. and bloggers who have not set up FriendFeed accounts. This will increase the usefulness of the site's search function by orders of magnitude.

  That's no small task! Many startups have tried to do social-media-wide search in the past but few can achieve the scale and speed needed to pull it off well. Two things make us think FriendFeed can do it. First, who better than the creator of Gmail to achieve new hights in rapid, scalable information delivery? Buchheit isn't the only former Googler on the team, either. Second, FriendFeed has been engineered from the start to import massive amounts of data. A number of the streams FriendFeed pulls in aren't even from RSS feeds as you'd expect, the company's co-founders told ReadWriteWeb in an early interview that they have built to import from a wide variety of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) beyond RSS.

  Spam Control

  Right now there's a fair amount of spam on FriendFeed and we imagine it's only going to get worse. There's also a lot of people who use the service as their RSS reader - so blog posts and search results show up in your search results even though no one has touched them.

  This wouldn't be a difficult problem to solve. FriendFeed is just a few steps away already from allowing searchers to query all sources except for manually imported RSS feeds except when a feed item has one or more comment or "like" added by a user.

  Apply Business Savvy

  There are all kinds of ways that FriendFeed could become more business savvy. One way we would suggest is through making more use of LinkedIn.

  FriendFeed users were able to associate their LinkedIn profiles with their FriendFeed accounts since the start of the service and job changes used to be displayed right along with Tweets and other online activity. It was great. Unfortunately, LinkedIn knows what a pot of gold it sits on and took the noxious step of cutting off these kinds of importing functions by obscuring the HTML on its profile pages. FriendFeed was scraping those pages for changes and it was a great service for everyone. It was pure folly by LinkedIn, it wasn't specifically targeting FriendFeed, but as a result FriendFeed users no longer see when their friends change jobs and click through to LinkedIn to learn more.

  Fortunately FriendFeed hasn't removed LinkedIn as a field that can be viewed for users, it just doesn't update anymore. When you see that someone has said something in your search stream you can many times click through to their LinkedIn profile to see what they do for a living and what their job title is. FriendFeed could display job titles by default on a business version of FriendFeed if LinkedIn was more agreeable, or FriendFeed could look to the much friendlier and social media savvy Google Profiles instead.

  Knowing the job titles of people who have bookmarked your web page in Delicious or shared it in Google Reader would be really valuable.

  Some other business oriented rules, like alerts when certain discussion thresholds are past, would go a long way too.

  Bring Back Aggregate Analysis

  When FriendFeed launched it offered some great data visualization showing which other users you "liked" content from the most and who "liked" your content the most. It showed which services most of your content came in through in a pie chart.

  Unfortunately in a recent redesign aimed to make the service more mainstream-user friendly those visualizations were eliminated.

  Bring that and more back and you've got a viable competitor for services that businesses pay hundreds or thousands of dollars a year for. Add some sentiment analysis, made easier by FriendFeed's "like" feedback function, and you've really got a desirable product.

  Will FriendFeed take these steps though? That depends on whether it continues its Quixotic quest to capture more everyday consumer users for a cross-network, real-time conversation aggregator (!) or whether it finds audiences that appreciate its value and start building out features that they will pay for.

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

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  Land Rover S1 Phone Tested By Elephants: It Really Is The Strongest Phone [Cellphones]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 5:00pm EDT by Jason Chen

  This is why the Sonim/Land Rover S1 phone is the toughest phone yet: it can stand an elephant stomp, being run over an actual Land Rover and being tossed out of a second floor window. Plus...

  ...it was dunked in mud, put inside a 300 degree oven, and soaked in beer. What finally did it in is being crushed by a three ton forklift, which is pretty above and beyond the duty of any phone we'd normally use.

  As for the specs, it has 1500 hours of battery (standby or talk, we're not sure) and a 2-megapixel camera. And, most notably, it has an "extra loud" ringtone so you can hear it under elephants. [Telegraph via Slashdot]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Magnetic Big Wheel or Ring of Death? [Cars]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 4:30pm EDT by Mark Wilson

  Car designer Harsha Vardhan has a different vision of tomorrow. While his vehicle calls for an electric engine, just like we see in cars now like the Prius or Volt, that engine drives magnetic fields, not wheels.

  (The magnetic fields, of course, do eventually drive the wheels forward when the energy is transferred from over superconducting fluid that touches the rims.)

  The result is, theoretically, a very smooth and quiet ride with a low environmental impact. We just like the design for its neat, rear-entry cockpit and all of the potential we see in jousting of the future. [ecofriend]

  
  
  

  
  

  

Uncrate

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  Timbuk2 Dolores Chiller

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 4:08pm EDT

  Not all messenger bags are for business. The Timbuk2 Dolores Chiller ($110) is a portable cooler disguised as a messenger, offering a fully insulated interior, a metal bottle opener on...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.

ReadWriteWeb

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  eMusic Users Revolt Over Latest Changes

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 4:06pm EDT

  Since yesterday, eMusic, one of the world's largest subscription-based music retailers, features music from Sony's catalog in its store. Most users on eMusic subscribe to the service because of the eclectic selection of independent music it offers, and very few users were excited to hear that eMusic was going to make major changes to its service, including raising the price per song just in order to give its users access to mainstream music that they were not very likely to be interested in. While eMusic did a fine job at communicating the basic changes to the service, it didn't reveal the full extent of the changes until yesterday, and its users are anything but happy about them.

  Sponsor
  

  Higher Price, More Restrictions, Unhappy Customers

  Until yesterday, for example, users could just re-download songs they purchased from the service (quite useful when your hard drive or MP3 player dies on you). Now, however, most likely in order to combat fraud, eMusic has put some restrictions on the number of downloads it permits per song.

  

  Also, while even long tracks (often in the classical or electronic music section) used to cost just one credit (users get a certain amount of credits per month, depending on their subscription plan), a lot of albums now cost 12 credits even when they only feature four or five tracks. The 12 credit idea was actually sold as a positive by eMusic, as it would allow users to download any album without having to pay more than 12 credits. That's great for albums with lots of short tracks, but now, for a lot of users, this actually brings down the value of their subscriptions and raises prices significantly.

  There is also some inconsistency here, as some albums don't yet feature the 12-credit price. According to eMusic, only about 50% of all albums have transitioned to album pricing so far.

  Some songs are now also only available when users purchase a complete album, whereas before, any songs could be downloaded individually.

  The Good

  Of course, there are also some positive aspects to the new eMusic. A new feature, for example, now shows users which tracks from an album they have downloaded before and allows them to complete this album.

  EMusic also still offers all of its tracks as DRM-free MP3s, and some albums are now a real bargain, as you can often get albums with far more than 12 tracks for only 12 credits, and while taste is obviously debatable, we have to admit that there is also some interesting music in Sony's catalog.

  Is the Customer Still King at EMusic?

  Where eMusic failed though, even though we have to acknowledge that it tried to communicate with its customers, is in preparing its users for these changes by being completely transparent about the updates. It's no secret that most users don't like change, and while there is a lot of talk on the eMusic forums about unsubscribing from the service, we will have to see how eMusic's subscriber stats develop in the next few months. While some of eMusic's loyal subscribers might indeed leave, having the Sony catalog in its repertoire might actually attract quite a few new users as well.

  Discuss

  
  

  

Uncrate

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  Stealth MacBook Pro

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 4:02pm EDT

  It's great that Apple has moved almost all their laptops over to the über-solid Unibody aluminum format, but not so great for those that liked the understated black models of...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Gizmodo

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  Robo-Geisha Invade Theaters With Chainsaws, Butt Blades and Fried Shrimp [Nsfw]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 4:00pm EDT by Mark Wilson

  If fembots were viciously cultured Japanese escorts instead of just ditsy blondes, Austin Powers would not have lived to make The Love Guru. (Tagged NSFW for crude violence and PG13 T&A)

  This preview for Robo Geisha captures a world in which geisha are robotic assassins, super villains shoot rockets from wheelchairs, giant robots make buildings bleed and assassins sometimes sustain inconvenient anal injuries by way of panty katana. The film is expected to hit (Japan's?) theaters this fall.

  If anyone has any more information on this must-see, Oscar-sure film, please share it in the comments. [Robo-Geisha via CrunchGear]

  
  
  

  
  

  

Uncrate

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  300: The Complete Experience

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 3:57pm EDT

  Watch the Spartans battle in the highest quality possible with 300: The Complete Experience ($28). This packed Blu-ray set includes a digital copy of the film, a 40-page book including...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Gizmodo

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  Windows 7 Home Premium Will Have a Family Pack [Windows 7]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 3:30pm EDT by Jason Chen

  Kristian Kenney finds this M&M buried inside the horrible trail mix that is the Windows 7 Home Premium End User License Agreement: there's going to be a Family Pack.

  That's it. There's going to be a family pack for three users. Nobody knows what the pricing will be, but Apple's Leopard family pack pricing is $199 for five users, and Snow Leopard is $49. Only three (Mom, Dad and Junior) can use Windows 7, so theoretically it should be lower than $199. But when you look at the pricing for a standalone one-user copy of Home Premium, it's $120 for an upgrade and $200 for a full version. So somewhere between $120 and $199 for an upgrade Family Pack, and somewhere between $200 and infinity for a retail Family Pack. [Kristian Kenney via ZDNet]

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

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  Google Updates Blog Search - Where's the Innovation?

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 3:24pm EDT

  Google just announced a number of changes to its blog search engine, Google Blog Search, but none of them will knock your socks off. RSS feeds for search queries were added, something that no self-respecting search engine of dynamic content would be without. Hot search queries and recent posts from popular blogs round out the slight redesign of the Blog Search home page.

  While many different Google projects push the envelope with features and interface innovation - users are excited just to see Blog Search make catch-up moves, since it's a sign that the product is still breathing at all. No news about much needed spam control, no response to Twitter stealing many blogs' thunder, no personalization, no visualization, no semantics, no mobile play - nothing. It's really disappointing. Google Blog Search remains the best option if you're looking for fast results, but other options are better if you have any needs other than speed.

  Sponsor
  

  Six months ago we published an article titled The State of Blog Search, 2009. Here's what we wrote then about Google Blog Search:
  

  
  Google Blog Search is the fastest in the industry but has gone almost untouched since the day it launched, except for a recent dabble with meme-tracking on the front page. Google Blog Search spam control is not good and recently the search engine started bringing back search results from places like blog sidebars. [Update: that appears to have been fixed now.] It thinks that content is new, too, every time a new blog post (the content we really care about) is published. It's painful to look at Google Blog Search results pages, but if you've got a need for speed or want to make use of the relative heft of the Google search input box for things like complex queries - then it's a good option.

  Day in and day out, we use Ask.com's blog search instead. It's nothing earth-shattering, but there's a whole lot less spam.

  Is blogging such old news that only Twitter search is interesting to innovators anymore? When it comes to more thought-out, long-form, researched, discussed news and opinion, blogs still matter. We wish Google felt the same way. The web is a really exciting place these days - why isn't Google Blog Search?

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

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  Urination Is Where We Draw the Line on Home Beauty Products [Wellness]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 3:00pm EDT by Mark Wilson

  You know what they say: Nothing takes the callouses off like fastening plastic bags filled with urine around your feet.

  The Foot Pee! Pack, essentially two ziplock bags intended for your feet, supports an age-old philosophy that one's pee can have benefits to their skin. Now I'm no expert, but I've been accidentally urinating on stuff for years now, and I can't say that my crotch, toes, knees, backyard bushes or bathroom walls look any younger because of it. [Toyko Times via Tokyo Mango]

  Also note the products tagline: "Easy & Surprise"

  
  
  

  
  

  

Webware.com

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  Microsoft: Bing needs to improve when news breaks

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 2:34pm EDT by Tom Krazit

  One of the biggest news stories in years caught Microsoft's Bing a little off guard.

  The flood of traffic on the Internet following reports that Michael Jackson had been rushed to a Los Angeles hospital last Thursday, where he later died, has been well documented: Google at first thought the surge was an attack on its servers. Microsoft released statistics Thursday indicating it, too, witnessed a surge in traffic related to Jackson, but admitted that Bing News could have done a much better job delivering relevant stories during the two or so frantic hours in which searches went through the roof.

  "By most reports, Bing did not deliver the best experience for our customers soon after TMZ posted the news on their blog," wrote Jacquelyn Krones, senior product planner for Bing News. "As Search Engine Journal pointed out, we had the story but it was hidden at the bottom of the main page and even deeper in our xRank result." Bing's xRank is supposed to track the most popular people surfacing on the Internet on a given day: Karl Malden currently ranks highest in xRank.

  Microsoft has a switch it calls "news go big" that it can throw in the event of a huge breaking news story like Jackson's death. Usually, images are the first thing Bing searchers see when searching for a celebrity such as Jackson, but Microsoft can change the placement of those results in the rare event of a breaking news story that generates "unusual activity."

  Apparently, the company feels it could have done that more quickly in the minutes following TMZ's report. "...In the case of breaking news such as this, we will focus on ensuring that the whole experience quickly accommodates the surge in customers' interest," Krones wrote.

  

  Michael Jackson-related searches took off following reports that he had been rushed to the hospital last week.

  (Credit: Microsoft)

Gizmodo

• 

  Heinz Beanzawave USB Desktop Microwave In Action [Microwave]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 2:30pm EDT by Jason Chen

  We already knew Heinz was developing a USB-powered and possibly portable mini microwave, but now we actually get to see how it works. You guessed it, just like a microwave.

  It's supposedly going to be battery-powered upon release, letting you take it outdoors for a quick bean injection no matter where you are. And having a microwave on your desk? That's living, my friends. [TechEBlog]

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

• 

  Rupert Murdoch: Facebook is Just a Directory

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 2:19pm EDT

  Rupert Murdoch, the 78-year-old CEO and chairman of News Corp., just gave a revealing interview to The Street's Dan Freed. In this interview, Murdoch argues that the latest head-count reduction at MySpace was necessary because the number of employees at the company had grown out of control. In addition, he also told Freed that he wants the site to be very different from Facebook, which, in his eyes, is nothing more than a directory, while MySpace is a place "to find common interests, share music, that sort of thing."

  Sponsor
  

  In the same interview, Murdoch also says that he has no idea how to monetize Twitter and that nobody has actually figured out how to monetize "the Web today to any extent other than search." Micro-payments, in the eyes of Murdoch, are also not a good alternative to advertising revenue, though he still thinks that subscription models for his papers along the lines of what the Wall Street Journal currently does might be a solution for monetizing news content.

  Facebook: Just a Directory

  With regards to Facebook, we can't help but think that Murdoch must be willfully oblivious to the fact that the service's users are abandoning the company in favor of Facebook. Just a simple look at the current traffic stats for both services tells a very clear story about the abysmal state MySpace is finding itself in today. While Facebook is growing rapidly, MySpace's traffic is, at best, staying flat. And to think of Facebook as nothing more than a directory just ignores the reality of how users are using the site and what Facebook's management team envisions the service to be.

  Maybe before Facebook turned into the platform it is today, that statement could have held true, but today, to imply that users on Facebook don't go to the service to find others with common interests is simply wrong.

  Micro-payments: Not a Solution

  We have to agree with Murdoch, though, that micro-payments are probably not a viable solution for monetizing news content on the web -- though we would argue that some people have managed to make a living off the Internet from doing things other than just monetizing search.

  So far, users have also resisted subscription models for online newspapers. The only exception here is the Wall Street Journal, which is really a special case, and only time will tell if readers are willing to buy online subscriptions to their favorite papers.

  Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

• 

  Gadget Deals Of The Day [Dealzmodo]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 2:00pm EDT by Don Nguyen

  We've got some stunning deals on laptops and TVs today. If you're enjoying Wimbledon (it's been on 24-7 at my house), there's a free subscription to Tennis Magazine for ya'. Have a happy and safe Independence Day!

  
  
  Computing and Peripherals:
  • 16" HP G60t for $479.99 plus free shipping (normally $579.99).
  • 15.6" Lenovo IdeaPad Y550 Laptop for $494.10 plus free shipping (normally $699 - use coupon code USPNOTEBOOKS).
  • 15.4" Dell Inspiron 15 Laptop for $399.99 (normally $519).
  • Dell Vostro 1520 Laptop for $599 plus free shipping (normally $1021).
  • EVGA X58 SLI LE Intel Core i7-920 Quad-Core Barebones Desktop Kit (6GB RAM/1TB HDD) for $699.99 (normally $849.99 - use this rebate form).
  • Inspiron 530s Desktop with 20" Flat Panel for $564 plus free shipping (normally $704).
  • 24" Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP Widescreen LCD Monitor for $395.10 (normally $549.99 - use code 22X6DLMFK6K92G).
  • 23" ASUS VH236H Widescreen LCD Monitor for $159.99 plus free shipping (normally $196).
  • 22" Samsung 2243SWX Widescreen LCD Monitor for $134.99 plus free shipping (normally $186).
  • 20" Samsung 2033SW Widescreen LCD Monitor for $103.50 (normally $129.00).
  • Linksys WRT120N Wireless N Home Router for $54.99 plus free shipping (normally $65).
  • Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 3000 for $14 plus free shipping (normally $23).
  • Bose Companion 2 2ch Multimedia Speaker System for $69.83 (normally $99.99).
  • Fantom G-Force II 1TB External Hard Drive f0r $89.99 plus free shipping (normally $111.98).

  Gaming:
  • Sony PS3 (80GB) for $360 plus free shipping (normally $400 - use coupon code EMCLVLN52).
  • Fallout 3 Game (PC) for $24.99 digital download (normally $39.99).
  • UFC 2009 Undisputed Game (Xbox 360) for $39.99 plus free shipping (normally $52.99 - use coupon code EMCLVLN54).
  • Dark Sector (PS3) for $9.99 plus free shipping (normally $16.85).
  • Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood (Xbox 360) for $49.99 plus free shipping (normally $55.00).
  • Rise of the Argonauts (XBox 360) for $14.90 (normally $27.00).

  Home Entertainment:
  • Samsung LN52B750 52" 1080p 240Hz LCD TV Plus Sony BDP-S360 Blu-ray Player for $2,047 plus free shipping (normally $2258).
  • 47" Westinghouse LVM-47W1 1080p LCD TV for $599 (normally $1548).
  • 42" LG 42PQ30 Plasma 720p HDTV for $619.00 plus free shipping (normally $699.99).
  • 40" Sony Bravia KDL40V5100 1080p 120Hz LCD TV for $899.99 (normally $999.99 - use coupon code SONYLCD1).
  • 37" Samsung LN37B530 Widescreen 1080p LCD TV for $722 plus free shipping (normally $828).
  • JVC LT-32P300 32" 1080p LCD HDTV with iPod Docking Station for $579.99 plus free shipping (normally $690).
  • Cirago 1TB Multimedia Center for $200 plus free shipping (normally $239 - use this rebate form).
  • Onkyo TX-SR876 7.1ch 140W/ch Receiver for $999.99 plus free shipping (normally $1594 - use coupon code RECEIVER717).
  • V for Vendetta (Blu-ray) for $11.49 (normally $14.98).

  Personal Portables and Peripherals:
  • 3.5" TomTom ONE S GPS Navigation for $78 plus free shipping (normally $100 - use this rebate form).
  • Magellan Maestro 4350 GPS for $159.99 plus free shipping (normally $186.12 - valid today only).

  Miscellaneous
  • $200 Cash Back When you Sign Up for a AT&T Uverse Bundle (normally $100 cash back).

  Hobomodo:
  • Chiquita Bites Single Pack for $0 (use this coupon).
  • Subscription to Golf Digest for $0 (use this form).
  • 1 yr subscription to Car and Driver Magazine for $0 (use this form).
  • 1 yr subscription to Tennis Magazine for $0 (use this form).
  • Sample of Dove Shampoo for $0 (use this form).
  • 7.11 oz. Slurpee at 7-Eleven for $0 (valid on 7/11).

  If a deal looks too good to be true, investigate the store and see if it's a good, reputable place to buy. Safe shopping!

  [Thanks TechDealDigger, Fat Wallet, GamerHotline, SlickDeals, Cheap College Gamers, CheapStingyBargains and TechBargains.]

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Altrove Lighting: How Spiderwebs Might Look in 2020 [Design]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 1:30pm EDT by Mark Wilson

  Altrove is a new lighting product that uses "transparent wires" (which we think means fishing line, not fiber optics) to create a geometric yet ethereal mesh of light on your wall or ceiling. [Artemide via MocoLoco]

  
  
  

  
  

  

Webware.com

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  Google finally sued by makers of Finally Fast

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 1:29pm EDT by Tom Krazit

  Google has been sued again by a company mad over the use of its trademarks as keywords, but this one comes with a twist.

  

  Ascentive, the company behind those incessant "Finally Fast!" PC support ads, became the latest Google advertiser to sue the company for allowing advertisers to purchase ads using trademarks they do not own as search keywords. It will have to get in line behind Firepond, Rescuecom and several other companies challenging Google's policy, recently expanded to allow some companies to use trademarks they don't own in the text of their ads.

  Ascentive takes its suit a step farther, however, also claiming that Google has unfairly removed some of Ascentive's Web sites from its search index. Ascentive's Finallyfast.com Web site and related software are designed to examine your computer for registry errors and spyware that are ostensibly slowing its performance, and the company has battled with StopBadware.org this year over whether its products should be considered a scam for its dire warnings about benign security threats on your computer that lead to an upsell pitch for Ascentive's services.

  According to Ascentive, Google dropped it from search results following two warnings from StopBadware.org about its products. Still, even after StopBadware.org removed their warnings about Ascentive's products following some changes, a search for "finally fast" on Google does not return any Ascentive Web site. That search does, however, return a result for a company called "Finallyfast.us" which appears to offer a very similar product but does not appear to have any relationship with Ascentive.

  Google declined to comment "on the individual reasons pages may be removed." Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University who tracks legal issues involving Internet law, doesn't think Ascentive's claims regarding the search results will get very far, according to his blog. "Indeed, as exciting as it would be to see some meaty discussion on the topic of Google's liability (or lack thereof) for deciding who gets into its search index, I'm guessing Google will beat this prong of the complaint quickly and completely," he wrote.

  As far as the trademark part of the suit, Google had this to say:

  "It's completely normal for a supermarket to stock different brands of cereal on the same shelf or for a magazine to run Ford ads opposite of an article about Toyota, so it doesn't make sense to limit competition online by restricting the number of choices available to users. Just as it's reasonable to expect a range of brands on any shelf in a grocery store, providing users on Google with more than one option when they search for a brand name or other trademark helps them to find the best product at the lowest price."

  

ReadWriteWeb

• 

  Study says Patents Hurt Innovation

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 1:00pm EDT

  According to a study published in The Columbia Science and Technology Law Review, patents may be harming our ability to innovate. Patents and the Regress of Useful Arts, written by Bill Tomlinson of UC Irvine and Andrew Torrance of University of Kansas School of Law, tested the hypothesis with a game called PatentSim. The game is an online simulation of a pure patent system, a patent-free commons system, and a mixed system. Within each environment, first year university students were asked to license, assign, infringe, and enforce patents. The study found that while a mixed patent environment and pure patent environment did not offer substantially different results, students in a commons system generated significantly higher rates of innovation, productivity and social utility. Essentially, the study supports what Lawrence Lessig and free culture advocates have been saying for years: a society free from intellectual property monopolies is a society that is better off.

  Sponsor
  

  In the study, Torrance and Tomlinson explain how patents have been wrongly justified as a way to encourage invention. The justification has been that by excluding others from duplicating an invention or process, the patent owner is more likely to spend time, energy and resources on their product. However, past studies have proved otherwise. Data collected from PatentSim further substantiates these findings.

  PatentSim was presented as a game in which the goal is to make as much money as possible. In each environment, subjects combined objects in a "Creation Box" to simulate an invention. Whenever a subject created an invention and clicked on the "Make" button, money would appear in their virtual bank. In the pure patent and mixed patent environments, subjects could also click on a "Patent" button to increase their profit. Each patent was priced at $20 and each use of a lawyer also cost $20. At the end of the study, students had produced significantly more inventions and profit in the commons environment when they were not being penalized for patent infringement or were busy enforcing their patents.

  

  The study suggests that innovation not only thrives in a competitive environment, but that more profit can be generated by inventors in a commons system. Because PatentSim is just a simulation, readers need to take findings with a grain of salt. While the rate of inventions would likely increase without patents, it's tough to tell if inventors would really see unlimited profit potential in an environment free of patents. After all, how many different zipper pulls does the market demand?

  Nevertheless, in some cases, the demand for a product or process is all too evident. Imagine the competitive market for hearing aids and prosthetics, or the success rate of farmers who are free to use the best possible processes. And honestly, does HIV really care if it's being treated by Glaxo, Pfizer or a tested generic knockoff?

  This study is important in that it might spur policy makers to question how we look at innovation. Are inventions just disparate exclusively-owned products, or should we be sharing them out of necessity to solve our bigger-picture problems?

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

• 

  Sixty Videos to Explain Sixty Symbols of Physics and Astronomy [Science]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 1:00pm EDT by Jesus Diaz

  Do you know what the hell is the Schwarzschild radius? I didn't have a clue, but now I know that if you compress Earth to an 8mm radius ball, you will get a black hole. My fascination didn't stop there.

  I've spent all morning mesmerized by these videos—created by a bunch of extremely smart people at the University of Nottingham—which explain the most common symbols in physics and astronomy so any moron like me can understand them. And if you like physics and astronomy, you should probably do exactly the same. [Sixty Symbols]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Apple Pulls iPhone App That Allowed for Child Pornography Uploads [IPhone]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 12:30pm EDT by Jesus Diaz

  Apple has pulled BeautyMeter—the iPhone/iPod touch app that allowed users to upload naked pictures of themselves for others to rate—after a 15-yo girl published this picture showing her bare breasts and pubic hair.

  Charlie Sorrel at Wired argues correctly that Apple will be damned with 17+ apps no matter what:

  The problems for Apple are clear. By setting itself up as a guardian of the store, Apple can't win. Any time a controversial application is approved, or non-allowed elements are snuck into an application post-approval, Apple is blamed. If these apps are pulled ahead of time, Apple is called out as an evil censor.

  However, that doesn't mean Apple should ban the 17+ app sex-related category to avoid conflicts. There are plenty of adult-oriented applications that won't allow for this kind of dynamic content. But then again, the fact is that any application that allows you to upload pictures and share them could be used to do exactly the same. So where should Apple stop, then? Should they ban any app that can be used to publish pictures or videos? Shouldn't the developers—and the users—be responsible about this and not Apple.

  The problem for Apple is probably not a legal one, but one of public perception, with people and mainstream assuming that—just because it runs on the iPhone—it is Apple's app. I'm afraid that, if they want to keep the market fully open, they would have to find the public image battle instead of just pulling the applications that allow for this kind of behavior. [GadgetLab]

  
  
  

  
  

  

Uncrate

• 

  Nike Air Zoom Hayward + 3

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 12:18pm EDT

  Based on a sketch from Steve Prefontaine's notebook, this running shoe combines throwback styling and the latest Nike tech for impressive results. The Nike Air Zoom Hayward + 3 ($82)...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Gizmodo

• 

  Sputnik Solar Lamp Brings Free Light to Your Yard [Lights]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 12:00pm EDT by Adam Frucci

  This solar lamp from IDEA is inspired by Sputnik, requires 2-5 hours of sunlight for 8 hours of operation and costs a mere $16. [IDEA via Engadget]

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

• 

  Social IDs Go Shopping: Kmart and Sears Implement OpenID

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 11:59am EDT

  Users on Kmart's and Sears' web properties can now use their OpenID credentials to sign up and log in to these sites. MyKmart.com and MySears.com, which are both owned by the Sears Holding Company, implemented technology from Viewpoint and JanRain to allow users to use their login credentials from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Windows Live, as well as from any other OpenID provider. This marks one of the first times that such a large, mainstream online retailer has adopted OpenID.

  Sponsor
  

  As Sears points out in its press release, it simply makes good business sense for the company to allow its users to use their social IDs to log in to its properties. After all, not having to sign up for yet another new account on yet another site greatly reduces the likelihood that a potential customer would just abandon the process and head to a competitor's site.

  

  At least for the MyKmart site, though, we can also see why the company would want to make the sign-up process easy. In the last hour, only one review was posted on MyKmart and just about a dozen people signed up for access to the site. In contrast, MySears seems to attract more users and the site already has a far more active user community than MyKmart.

  Good UI

  Overall, we really like Sears' implementation of this technology. While OpenID faced some serious usability issues in its early days, Sears and its technology partners have made the process extremely easy and straightforward.

  We are glad to see that a large mainstream company like Sears is putting its weight behind OpenID and we hope that more companies will follow suit in the near future. After all, this only makes things easier for both the company and its users, and as users get more familiar with this idea, they will probably begin to resist signing up for sites that don't let them use their already established credentials to sign in to a new service.

  Discuss

  
  

  

Uncrate

• 

  Harley-Davidson Iron 883

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 11:43am EDT

  Blacked-out from fender to fender, the 2009 Harley-Davidson Iron 883 ($7,900) is an affordable, no-frills chopper that's begging to be customized. The latest Harley Dark Custom motocycle, the Iron 883...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Gizmodo

• 

  RIPT FUSION Shirt Transforms Man Into Meathead, Instantly [Fashion]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 11:30am EDT by Mark Wilson

  Dilemma: You want to look sexy but not too sexy—and certainly not all the time. You're busy and have errands to run, and you can't have post office employees rubbing up in your junk like pups in heat.

  So do what we do: Don't workout. Eat terribly. And only copulate with partners who promise to either ignore Cheetos-induced stretch marks or allow you to wear your RIPT FUSION t-shirt in a jacuzzi.

  What's a RIPT FUSION shirt? Well it's "a classic men's undershirt injected with steroids," of course. For just $58, it'll add pecs and abs all while sucking in the flabby parts. But even more critical to society, it'll put geeks on the same playing field as jocks, the lazy on the same playing field as the obnoxiously active.

  Even if the Ript Fusion is too gimmicky to make you look good, it could eventually make muscles look bad. And in the long run, that's really just as beneficial. [RIPT via Super Punch]

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Photoshop Contest: Design a New iTunes Icon [Photoshop Contest]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 11:10am EDT by matt buchanan

  The iTunes icon is old and busted. I mean, didn't iPods kill CDs or something? And like, 7 million of the 8 million things iTunes does have nothing to do with tunes. So let's make a new icon!

  Send your best design of a new icon that really represents iTunes to me at contests@gizmodo.com with "iTunes icon" in the subject line by next Tuesday morning. Save your entries as JPGs, PNGs or GIFs and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. On Tuesday, I'll pick the three best/most awful entries as our winners and post the rest of the best in the Gallery of Champions. Get cracking, in case something comes along and slays the iPod.

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

• 

  A Growing Acceptance of Social Networking in the Workplace

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 10:54am EDT

  A June survey released by Facetime, makers of a gateway appliance for managing Web 2.0 applications, revealed the growing popularity of social networking applications in the workplace. Out of 1199 survey respondents, all IT professionals, there were more who felt that social networks played an important role in the business world than those who didn't. What's more, it appears that the IT folks are now seemingly okay with providing access to these networks behind the firewall - even for those who don't approve of their use!

  Sponsor
  

  Getting Comfortable with Web 2.0

  There appears to be a growing acceptance of social networks in the business world, and not just the kind of networks dubbed "Enterprise 2.0." In the recent survey, Facetime found that 46% of IT professionals viewed some social networking applications as having business value and 31% even went so far as to say that social networking is critical to business. However, that 31% believed they need to be secured and controlled. Specifically, the IT respondents identified LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter as the networks they deemed permissible for work use.

  Not only are the IT folks growing more tolerant of these networks in the workplace, they also admit to using them themselves. 39% of the IT pros reported logging into social networking sites at least once per day with only 13% saying they never use Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

  Still, not all social networking is seen as business-related. For example, virtual worlds such as Second Life were seen by 73% as having no business value. That's somewhat ironic since back in the day, Second Life was supposedly going to revolutionize the business world with its ability to host virtual meetings and the like. Plus, setting up an in-world company presence used to be the status quo for major corporations.

  On the Flip Side...

  Of course, there continues to be a big group of IT folks out there who are not comfortable with the rise of these Web 2.0 applications. However, this time around, they're not the larger of the two groups. As of last month, 43% of the IT respondents said they felt social networking has no measurable business benefit and should only be allowed if it can be secured and controlled.

  Oddly enough, 85% of the survey respondents believed their users were using social networking applications at work. That seems to imply that even though 43% may scoff at these apps, they haven't actually gone so far as to make them inaccessible on their network.

  That theory seems to prove true since less than 10% of the respondents thought social networking should be banned from the workplace. In other words, personal opinions aside, there's a growing tolerance of these applications now. A few years ago that number (the 10%) would have definitely been higher. Back then, social networking was more often viewed as a time-wasting and unproductive activity. Maybe not everyone's personal sentiments have changed, but something else has... perhaps a general sense that you just can't outright ban these apps anymore? My, how times have changed.

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

• 

  NZXT Sentry 2 Touchscreen Fan Belongs In KITT's Dashboard [Accessories]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 10:50am EDT by Jesus Diaz

  This is the NZXT Sentry 2 fan controller. It installs into any 5.25-inch bay, and you can use its touch screen interface to set the speed of up to five fans. Note: Leather pants are not included. [NZXT via BBG]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Verizon Does an About Face, Offers BlackBerry Tour to Existing Customers [Verizon]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 10:30am EDT by Adam Frucci

  Behold, the power of bad press! Verizon is now set to offer pre-orders of the upcoming BlackBerry Tour to existing customers in the very near future.

  While yesterday had Verizon reps telling us that the Tour would only be available to new customers or Verizon customers at the end of their contracts, the site has since been updated:
  

  Existing customers will be able to upgrade or purchase the BlackBerry Tour on this site very soon. Please check back with us tomorrow.

  There we go, that makes a lot more sense. [Verizon via Boy Genius Report]

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Microsoft Chooses Zune's Ad Agency to Promote Zune Phone "Pink" [Microsoft]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 10:10am EDT by John Herrman

  Advertising firm McCann Erickson has won a lucrative advertising contract with Microsoft, beating out CrispiBLAH BLAH BLAH the point is, people—Zune advertising people—are now talking on record about Microsoft's "Pink" project, and gearing up to promote it.

  From Adweek:
  

  The Office shift follows a pitch for a new Microsoft mobile offering won by McCann's T.A.G. unit, said sources. JWT, McCann and fellow roster shop Crispin, Porter + Bogusky competed for that assignment, for which the client used the code-name Pink.

  It's a nice confirmation of previous rumors that Microsoft was shopping the project around, and that's about the end of the new information. But a quick trip to the McCann T.A.G. site reveals a portfolio that contains three videos for the Zune, including two ads and a trade reel. Zune? Pink? Zunephone! Pinkphone! Pink Zune! Pink Zune phone! And so on.

  Now, these ads are nestled among a fair number of Xbox promotional materials, so it's clear that this is one of Microsoft's go-to teams for advertising in general. But hell, since we still haven't seen any kind of confirmation that the Pink phone's alleged specs and Windows Mobile 7 rumors are real, that Pink is a hardware device, or that the project even still exists, we'll take what we can get. [Adweek via Slashgear]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Explained: Fireworks vs Firecrackers vs Sparklers [Science]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 9:50am EDT by Mark Wilson

  While prepping for our nation's independence, we came across this excellent explanation as to how most basic fireworks function. The clip takes about a minute of your time and will imbue you with impressive knowledge for this July 4th. [HowStuffWorks]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  The Aliens of the Star Iota Horologii Are Just Watching Captain Kangaroo Now [Space]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 9:30am EDT by Adam Frucci

  When our broadcasts leave Earth, they slowly travel into space. There is, however, a sizable delay between what we watch and what distant aliens watch. This convenient chart shows us what TV various stars are receiving today. [AbstruseGoose via TDW]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Enigma Battleship Is Probably the Best Drinking Game Ever [Games]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 9:10am EDT by Jesus Diaz

  The Enigma Battleship Drinking Game—a classic Battleship game that makes you drink a shot of your favorite alcohol every time you take a hit—is the last thing I need now, while I'm back visiting friends in Madrid.

  And still, I want it so badly. It was designed by the genius of Mauricio (Tony) Harion, from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. A place that I hope to visit soon, just to play it this game with this man, who I'm sure will be a future Nobel Prize. Hasbro, come on, get your act together and license this ASAP. And with ASAP I mean right now. [Coroflot]

  

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

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  Faviki's Social Bookmarking Tool Makes Semantic Tagging Even Easier

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 9:04am EDT

  When we first looked at Faviki, a social bookmarking application which made its debut last year, we were intrigued by their idea of "semantic tagging." What makes Faviki different from its competitors, services like del.icio.us, Diigo, and the now-defunct Ma.gnolia, is the way the service suggests tags to its users. The suggestions don't come from the community of Faviki users and their tagging history - they come from structured info extracted from the Wikipedia database.

  Today, Faviki is releasing an upgrade to their service which will give you even better control over the tagging process, making bookmarking even easier than before. They're also announcing support for OpenID.

  Sponsor
  

  A Better Tagging Interface

  The biggest upgrade today is Faviki's enhanced tagging interface. In the past, Faviki struggled with some of the tag suggestions pulled out of Wikipedia because they were too long and too hard to enter for practical use. Plus, users wanted to use tags of their own creation, not the tag suggestions.

  For example, if someone is tagging an article about the soccer player "Filippo Inzaghi," they may want to tag it by the player's nickname "Pippo." Before, this was not possible. But now, if Faviki doesn't understand a tag, it will pull in possible matches and ask you "What exactly do you mean by ______?" After you pick your selection, Faviki will remember your choice.

  

  This is an important change for the service because it means users can tag web pages any which way they want, but they're still linked to the structured data on the back-end. That way, when someone searches through Faviki's community tags, all the web pages for that particular item or concept will appear, even if people tagged them using their own personal keywords.

  Beyond Wikipedia

  Another change in Faviki's service is the ability to define new tags. Prior to today, the service was limited to searching Wikipedia for tag suggestions, but now it has the whole web at its fingertips. If a tag is entered which doesn't match anything from Wikipedia, Faviki will search Google for relevant URLs and then ask if the links presented represent the same tag. As multiple users go through this process, Faviki learns what URLs best represent that concept and adds the new tags created by the users to its database.

  

  API, OpenID, and More

  Faviki has also just launched a Save/Edit API that provides a way to save and edit bookmarks from other applications. In addition, they've introduced support for OpenID. Other new features arriving today include a smarter autocomplete list, the ability to convert tags, spam control, the ability to export/backup your bookmarks, and a new tag description tooltip.

  The only issue we have with Faviki is the same one we had before: there's still no import function available. That means you'll have to leave your extensive bookmark collection behind if you want to use this service. We suppose that it could be difficult to properly tag and match all of our old bookmarks, but without this feature, Faviki doesn't have the best shot at attracting the heaviest users of social bookmarking services.

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

• 

  What Is This? [Image Cache]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 8:50am EDT by Jesus Diaz

  I thought this was some kind of bird hunting device sitting on top of a massive forest. In reality it may be your next vacation destination. And you will need the largest thermal airship to get it up there.

  This is a canopy raft, an enormous set of nets held together with inflatable tubes that act as an structural frame. It can be placed on top of forests so people can camp, accessing the ground below using a hole and ropes. Apparently, the are so light that the trees don't get harmed at all.

  

  To place them on top of the trees they need a ship capable of handling such a large volume. In this case, they use the AS-300, the world's largest thermal airship. [Gilles Ebersolt via Deputy Dog]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Here Are Some Cute Ducks Trying to Use an Escalator [Escalators]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 8:30am EDT by Jesus Diaz

  Ducks, don't try to use escalators, ok? And humans, follow the same advice. Except you, you sexy spinning escalator girl you. You can use the escalator at any time. [Dark Roasted Blend—Thanks Daffy]

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  iPhone Patents Promise to Automate Our Relationships at Last [Apple]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 8:10am EDT by Mark Wilson

  Unwired View uncovered three new iPhone patents that promise to turn everything from calling grandma on her birthday to turning off your phone in a movie theater into gloriously mindless activities.

  
  Scheduled Communications
  "A communications device may be programmed to initiate a communications operation when a particular condition is met. The user may set any suitable condition, including for example a date and time, location, event, received or sent communications operation..."
  In other words, automatically email grandma on her birthday, or automatically send your wife a text message when you land in another state "I'm sorry honey, I'm seeing someone else...please pack up my clothing neatly and ship it to me."

  
  Intelligent and Customizable Communication
  "The communications system can provide intelligent communications between devices, in which the system can identify appropriate communication modes for incoming communications requests based on a user's preferences and availability. The communications system can determine whether a user is participating in an activity. In response to determining that a user is participating in an activity, the communications system can automatically identify one or more preferred communication modes that are available to the user."
  In other words, if I'm at the gym (tracked by my location) or running from the cops (tracked by the jostling of my iPhone since my GPS is off), my family and friends can see that I'd prefer text messages instead of calls.

  
  Life Event Based Modes
  "One or more event-based modes of operation may be automatically or selectively applied to the device when a new life event is detected...The event-based modes of operation may be used to restrict access to certain applications or functionalities on the device, enforce or restrict certain user interface or other types of settings, and add or remove or rearrange the priority of device assets. The new life events associated with event-based modes of operation may be of various types, including location-based events, environment-based events, calendar-based events, news-based events, and usage-based events."
  In other words, if you walk into a movie theater, your phone could automatically deactivate the ringer and text message notifications, plus it might turn off all push notifications to save some battery life while you weren't actively using your iPhone. Combined with a patent above, potential callers could even see that since you were at a movie, maybe they should delay the call, wait for you in the theater's alley and then threaten you, at knife-point, that you never should have taken out a loan you couldn't pay back just to buy a stupid iPhone.

  I'll take it all, Apple. Thanks. [Unwired View]

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Hello I'm a Pear, Hello I'm an Apple [Design]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 7:50am EDT by Jesus Diaz

  Do the Pear Post-Its require a Registry to work and get viruses? Are the Apple Post-Its snotty and obnoxious? I don't know, I don't care. They are both pretty and will match your monitor nicely. [D-Bros via Mocoloco]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Psystar Emerges From Bankruptcy With New Product, Same Insane Resolve [Psystar]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 7:30am EDT by John Herrman

  In what is probably the most surprising non-celebrity-death story in weeks, recently bankrupt Psystar—surly maker of all things hackintosh—is now claiming to be ready for a comeback, with a new product in tow. This makes very little sense.

  A superquick recap: Psystar releases the OpenMac, a $400 desktop Mac clone; people debate if this is possible, technically or legally, and if Psystar is a scam; the hackintoshes turn out to be real; they ship; Apple gets upset; Psystar grandstands; Apple continues to be upset; Psystar gets murdered. To death.

  That was the story a few weeks ago, at least. Now Psystar is basically acting like nothing happened, releasing a fresh bootloader, a new computer—the $1500, i7-based Open(7) desktop—and revisiting their old, defiant tone in an email newsletter:
  

  As you all may already be aware in late May, Psystar filed for bankruptcy protection. Although this was critical to our continued daily operations, we are now ready to emerge and again battle Goliath.

  The whole thing is reproduced below, and definitely worth reading.

  Psystar's been subject to all manner or canonization, criticism, popular support and backlash, but now I don't know what to think. On the one hand, all their talk about monopolies, freedom and victimization always stuck me as a little hollow. (David and Goliath? So you're going to kill Apple?) On the other, it now appears as though the guys who run Psystar are either clinically insane, extremely persistent, unusually ballsy or just poorly advised to an extreme. Or all of the above. As Mark said on the story, "they wont stop unless Apple cuts off their hands. And even then, who knows." That spirit alone has got to be worth something, right? [TUAW via Neowin via Slashgear]

  

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Man Stuff - The Best of Uncrate [Roundups]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 7:00am EDT by Mark Wilson

  A three-wheeled scooter, a bike with a trunk, and the ultimate all-in-one piece of man furniture - release your inner child Jacko-style with the week's best from Uncrate.

  This week at Uncrate: We belly up to the bar with a Newcastle DraughtKeg, cook up some round chunks of goodness in the Meatball Grill Basket, and add a little funk to our barren walls with Frames Wallpaper. We also take a ride on the Piaggio MP3 500 Scooter, get wrapped up in American Apparel Bedding, and hit it long with the Nike SQ Dymo STR8-FIT Driver. Finally, we carry our haul home aboard the Madsen Bucket Cargo Bike, kick it in the Nike Air Zoom Hayward + 3, and feast our senses on the greatness of The Man Wall.

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Cheap, Thin Laptops Suffering From Cheapness, Thinness [Notebooks]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 6:17am EDT by John Herrman

  The new litter of thin, cheap laptops, as we've seen from Lenovo and Dell, is inherently charming, making the experience of using a cheap, portable laptop bearable for people put off by netbook tininess. There's just one problem.

  CNET caught up with Doug Freedman, an analyst for AmTech who has been speaking to device manufacturers:
  

  Early production units being built in plastic, with the bottom case being plastic, are cracking...So, to get that really thin form factor that they're after, they're probably going to have to go with a metal case.

  The obvious issue here is that they can't go with a metal case, or else they'll almost certainly cease to be "budget" laptops. As Mark noted in his review, the MSI X340—on the high end of this particular category already—suffered from an alarming flimsiness. Switching the case to aluminum would solve this problem; it would also push the laptop's price even closer to the MacBook Air, effectively eliminating its entire reason for existence.

  To be fair, most of the laptops announced in the category haven't even started shipping yet, and problems like this could conceivably be conquered with some clever industrial design wizardry. Sometimes, though, there's a reason a particular product niche—especially an obvious one like this—hasn't been cracked before. [CNET]

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

• 

  Israel 2.0

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 5:45am EDT

  During the 1990s and early 2000s, Israelis were considered gurus in technology, research, and innovation. While the dot-com boom infused the offices of San Francisco with color, creativity, hope, and foosball tables, Israelis were hard at work in a fairly strict environment creating and developing digital infrastructure, inventing new approaches to network security, and leading the field in hardware-oriented projects.

  There was a myth that Israelis were not very good at creating consumer-facing products. Notwithstanding their creation of ICQ, Israelis were known as engineers and researchers who did well within the confines of a lab but not so well when reaching out to end consumers. Over the last couple of years, though, the high-tech industry in Israel has gone through dramatic changes.

  Sponsor
  

  Previously, many Israeli startups had hired or outsourced their marketing efforts to the US or Europe, while keeping the R&D departments in Israel. However following the dot-com bust of 2000, and given the recent economic downturn, companies in Israel can no longer rely on off-shore offices and expensive staff. Moreover, more and more local companies are feeling confident and even excelling in handling their own marketing, sales, business development, media outreach, and content.

  The stars of the Israeli tech scene were once companies like Comverse and Amdocs. Now, we're seeing an influx of great Web 2.0 media and social startups, such as:

  • FoxyTunes, the Firefox plugin that allows users to control iTunes directly from their browser, and which was acquired by Yahoo for a reported $30 million;
  • MyHeritage , the world's largest family network, which has already documented over 330 million family members and is reportedly bringing in some of the highest revenue of any Israeli Web startup;
  • Kaltura, an open-source platform for the creation and consumption of rich-media Web applications, whose clients include Wikipedia, Universal Studios, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi.

  So, what's in store for Israel's startup world?

  Israel succeeds by blending the old with the new. The country will continue to exploit its innate talent for research and development and continue to make inroads with social media applications, all the while sticking to intensive, customer-driven products.

  A few Israeli newborns to keep your eyes on:

  • SimilarWeb, an intelligent add-on that sits in your browser and provides easy access to websites with similar content;
  • Boxee, a cross-platform freeware media center with social networking features and a 10-foot user interface design for the living-room TV;
  • CamSpace, a new interface for computer games that uses innovative computer vision technology that allows everyone with a webcam to play games Wii-style;
  • Vetrina's, a virtual window-shopping platform that transforms the online shopping experience.

  The glue holding this generation of Israeli startups together is that while the companies are now all consumer- and media-related, they have a more technological edge than can be found in companies elsewhere. You can take the engineers out of the lab, but you can't take the lab out of the engineers.

  Guest author Ayelet Noff is one of Israel's most renowned bloggers. She is also the founder and CEO of Blonde 2.0, a full consultancy firm whose mission is to help brands understand how to use social media tools (social networks, the blogosphere, and social software) effectively in order to carry their messages across the globe.

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

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  Cool Time Lapse Video of Atlantis Getting Mounted On Its 747 Mothership [Space]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 5:05am EDT by Jesus Diaz

  newVideoPlayer("/shuttleferry_gizmodo.flv", 640, 500,""); We have seen the shuttle on an spectacular shot on top of its 747 mothership and a video of their almost impossible take off, but we have never seen a time lapse video on how everything gets ready.

  Someone from NASA has sent us this unique video of shuttle Atlantis: A time lapse of the shuttle getting ready to be mounted on its 747 mothership at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, just before returning to Florida. I just can't believe how complex and laborious something that is conceptually so simple could be.

  It's just sad that many people take for granted the hard and complex work that the boys and girls at NASA do to keep the much-needed space exploration going on with a meager budget.

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Sonos Remote Goes Touchscreen; New System Bundle On Its Way [Sonos]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 4:50am EDT by John Herrman

  It's fair to say that everyone would've loved it if the last remote for the Sonos wireless media systems, the $400 C100, had a touchscreen. It didn't. Years later, the CR200 does, but it might be a bit late.

  Oddly enough, this is Sonos' fault in every possible way. We don't have any specs, price or features, but given how close to perfect the free iPhone app for Sonos is, this wireless controller may have a hard time competing as an add-on product, especially if it's priced above the $229 baseline iPod Touch. In bundles, I suppose it'll do fine.

  Speaking of which! Automated Home says the CR200 will be part of a spruced up Sonos system bundle:
  

  The BU150 now changes to the BU250 which includes the CR200. There also is a slight colour change with the zoneplayers hardware to match the new controller but there are no technical changes & will still be named the ZP120 & ZP90

  If that means anything to you, you probably know that this is a good thing. If not, then it's time to read up. [Automated Home via Engadget]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  ASUS Eee Keyboard Blithely Glides Past June Release, Now Scheduled For August [Asus]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 4:10am EDT by John Herrman

  ASUS's touchscreen PC-in-a-keyboard was expected to land in June, according to rumors direct statements from company executives. That didn't happen! Prices and specs are presumably unchanged, but the new release date is somewhere in August. [Techdigest via Slashgear]

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

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  Changing Horses Midstream: The Next Big Sound Susses Out Early-Stage Changes

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 1:44am EDT

  When the young (and we mean young) team for music-focused startup The Next Big Sound was accepted for the TechStars acceleration program, they had a good product.

  But just one week into the tech/business mentorship process, they realized they had a few ideas that were much better. The founders were nervous about presenting an entirely different product to their advisors, but they learned a valuable lesson about making big changes early in the startup game. Watch this video interview with co-founder David Hoffman and see how changing horses midstream might not be such a bad thing, after all.

  Sponsor
  

  One of the team's lead mentors, Lijit Networks VP of Business Development Micah Baldwin, said, "This team never took so much ownership in the idea that they were unwilling to throw it out and start with a new idea. What they were doing uncovered a greater need in the industry, and now they're working to cater to that need."

  Clearly, the Next Big Sound team has impressed the TechStars crew. But how does this lesson apply to startups in a more universal sense?

  "There's obviously a mechanical answer," said Baldwin. "Through the funding process, through interaction with advisors, through vetting, if you start to hear a common thread, you should probably reassess. But the strongest startup founders are in a constant state of evaluation. Early on, you can make large changes. As time goes on, those changes become more slight."

  For any startup team, particularly those with less experience, "taking a left at Albuquerque," as Baldwin phrased it, requires nerves of steel and a great deal of confidence. But the ideas that result from a major, well-thought-out change are often better and more viable than the originals could have been.

  The point to which Hoffman alludes throughout our interview is that great startup successes come down to having a great team supported by great advisors. The product, at least in this story, is best when highly malleable.

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

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  Remainders - Things We Didn't Post [Remainders]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 12:15am EDT by Wilson Rothman

  ...When It's Not OK To Steal From a Church...Apple May Say Buh-Bye to Nvidia...Best Buy Shoppers Admit This Smartphone Thing Is Soooo Confusing...Exactly Who Is America's Fastest Typist?...

  
  Some a-holes stole 31 monitors from a driveway as they were being transported from a hospital to a church, which was to ship them to hospitals in Cameroon, Africa. After a bit of community outreach, all but two monitors mysteriously reappeared with a note: "Sorry for the trouble hope you forgive us hope those kids in Africa enjoy." What exactly does this teach our children? No friggin' clue. [Switched]

  
  Best Buy commissioned a poll, and released the "findings" to Dealerscope: Even though only one-fifth of people in their 20s and 30s currently have a smartphone, a "sizable segment" plan to buy one in the next year. However, forces that hold them back include "price, dislike of shopping, and confusion about the technology." Obvious? Sure. Vague? Absolutely. Helpful? That's a negative. [Dealerscope]

  Apparently Nvidia thinks it's got a permanent thing with Apple, but Apple's all like, "No way, I can totally see other GPU manufacturers, and what's all that about you overheating, huh?" As exciting as I tried to make it there, you can see this is not only boring news, but when it comes to sticking with Nvidia or ATI as a brand, well, know what? It just doesn't matter. [Electronista]

  
  We don't typically run promos for contests unless they're really up our alley—and certainly not if it's just some crass promotional play like this—but something about the "America's Fastest Typist" contest notice made me think: How fast is America's fastest typist? We all use keyboards everyday, nonstop, right? This entire generation could have been Mavis Beacon all-stars 20 years ago, but someone out there is better than all of us. I will follow up, because although I absolutely don't want to know who the Tiger Woods of typing is, I do want to know how fast he/she can type. [KeyRight]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Alton Brown Would Not Approve of the Bandai Gyoza Maker [Food Gadgets]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 11:45pm EDT by Dan Nosowitz

  Though it looks a lot like a larger version of those little cigarette rollers, this gadget is actually used to form perfect stuffed Japanese gyozas. We like it, but Alton Brown would never approve of such a single-function device.

  Gyozas, like empanadas, dumplings, or knishes, consist of a stuffing (usually ground meat and spices) wrapped in a thin piece of dough (a "gyoza skin" here in the States) that is then deep-fried, pan-fried, or steamed. They can be a little tricky, because if they're not sealed airtight they can explode in mid-fry, spraying burning hot oil and gyoza insides everywhere. This gadget looks to automate the process for a perfect seal.

  It may not be the most versatile of kitchen gadgets, but if you're doing a huge batch of gyozas and are some kind of wuss who fears horrible oil burns, we could see it being pretty handy. It's Japan-only for now, but we're sure an import kitchen supply store would have this or a similar device. [Akihabara News]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Dell Forced to Honor Accidental $15 Monitor Listing [Sales]

  Posted: July 2nd, 2009, 11:00pm EDT by Dan Nosowitz

  Dell Taiwan accidentally priced one 19-inch monitor, normally costing around $150, at only $15, and received a whopping 140,000 orders within the 8 hours it was live. Now, the Taiwanese government is forcing them to honor the sales.

  This kind of thing isn't too uncommon, and normally a company like Dell would either honor the price (if relatively few orders were placed) or offer some kind of discount, so as not to, you know, go out of business. But the Taiwanese government is now saying Dell must honor all 140,000 orders or face prosecution for violation of fair trade laws (and no, we have no idea what fair trade has to do with this situation).

  Dell has apologized and says it will compensate buyers for the mistake, but they probably mean some sort of discount instead of a loss of millions of dollars. [Channel Register via The Raw Feed]

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

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  Where's My Bus? D.C. Gov't Says There's an App for That

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 9:45pm EDT

  During the city of Washington, D.C.'s crowdsourced Apps for Democracy 2 project, one of the top requested apps was a GPS notification system for public transportation.

  For those of you who've not had the pleasure of residing in our nation's capital and the outlying cities and suburbs of Virginia and Maryland, public transpo is a large part of commuter culture. So, based on the Apps for Democracy feedback, the D.C. Department of Transportation got together with the Office of Planning and the office of the city's CTO to develop Where's My Bus? It's a mobile application (that works on the web, as well) for getting users real-time GPS information on buses along the five-route D.C. Circulator system.

  Sponsor
  

  By way of background information, Apps for Democracy is a result of the D.C. government's having a boatload of civic and municipal information in their Data Catalog, which is basically an API for the entire city. The information it contains - everything from police feeds and building permits to poverty indicators and test scores, some of it available in real-time or with geographic indicators - had the potential to be highly useful for the citizens, visitors, businesses and government agencies.

  So the city launched a contest for developers to use the data to solve some of the city's problems, allotting $50,000 in prize money. The first year's results included 47 mobile, Facebook, and web apps with an estimated value of more than $2.6 million. Smart town.

  Here's more on this year's contest, dubbed the Community Edition:
  

  In the first phase of the project, problems and issues were identified through a crowdsourced, open gov-type site, and developers were challenged accordingly in a second phase. App submissions for this year's projects end at 11:30 tonight. We wish we'd heard about it earlier, because this sounds like the kind of thing every city could undertake with great results. It might even scale for a state or national level contest.

  Anyhow, the Where's My Bus app was developed by government offices to respond to citizens' stated need for real-time public transportation information. The app data is also being made available to the public to encourage private developers to improve on the model and release their own, even better apps.

  According to an email we received from the app developers, "Harriet Tregoning, director of the DC Office of Planning, and Gabe Klein, director of the DC Department of Transportation see it, giving people up-to-the-minute information on where their next bus is, in the palm of their hands, has the potential to transform the experience of using public transit."

  Here are a few screenshots of the dead simple app in action:

  

  

  

  Kudos to the city for initiating Apps for Democracy and for taking the first step to modernizing and mobilizing public transportation. We can't wait to see how private developers will expand on this application.

  Discuss

  
  

  
• 

  Wikimedia Foundation Gets $300K for Wikimedia Commons

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 8:58pm EDT

  The Ford Foundation has just granted $300,000 to the Wikimedia Foundation to support Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia's repository for free, sharable multimedia files.

  The grant will fund a study of barriers to entry for users and contributors new to Wikimedia Commons. The project team will also identify best practices from similar media-sharing sites. The team will design and implement a simpler workflow for uploading, licensing, and describing media.

  Sponsor
  

  "We are thrilled that the Ford Foundation is supporting this project," said Wikimedia Executive Director Sue Gardner in a statement issued today by the Wikimedia Foundation.

  "We want to make uploading files to Commons as easy as possible so that people everywhere can join us in helping Commons grow. The bigger Commons is, the more people it will serve."

  According to the Ford Foundation website, the funds are granted to select organizations that support emerging leaders, research and dialog, and life-changing or life-improving innovations. Typically, fewer than 3 percent of grant applicants are selected for funding, and purely scientific projects are not typically considered for these grants.

  Ford Foundation representative Jenny Toomey said in the Wikimedia statement, "The global community that is building Wikimedia Commons is setting the standard for the way that video and images are uploaded and shared through the Web.

  "The whole process is simplified, promotes collaboration, and is driven by consensus among the community. Ultimately, this approach and others like it can help ensure that the Internet remains a rich and open space for learning, expression, and participation."

  The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization which operates Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia. Wikipedia contains more than 12 million articles in 265 languages contributed by a community of more than 100,000 volunteers.

  Discuss

  
  

  
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  Google Apps Go Social With Improved Contacts & A New API

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 8:15pm EDT

  With some core changes to contacts, Google Apps has dipped a toe in to the enterprise social networking waters. As of today, Apps contacts exhibits shades of Facebook and Twitter by allowing you to find and interact with all the user profiles in your Apps suite.

  According to Google, these adjustments where made at the behest of enterprise Apps users. It has also made a user profiles API available to Premier Edition customers, one that allows IT to retrieve and manipulate data about all the people using Apps in a company.

  Sponsor
  

  How the New Contacts Work Previously, contacts within Google Apps functioned just like email: only people you'd previously communicated with or added intentionally appeared. But now, a search will provide profiles from your company's entire address book, acting very similar to the way enterprise social networking platforms treat user profiles.

  

  For those who've ponied up for the Premier Edition of Google Apps, a new API will let you call up data pertaining to all the user profiles in your company Apps suite. That's on top of the shared contacts API released in December of 2008.

  More Facebook Than Gmail By letting users search and interact with user profiles regardless of whether they are "contacts" or not, Google Apps has become slightly more like a corporate social network. While it still deigns to use terminology like "address book" instead of a friend and/or subscriber list, it's no longer tied to behaving like email.

  Not to say that this is revolutionary for Apps. On the contrary, enterprise users of the suite would naturally demand full access to profiles, since there's no logical reason why you shouldn't have at least theoretical access to the contact information of everyone in your company using the platform.

  Discuss

  
  

  

Webware.com

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  Google Toolbar for IE speaks your language

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 7:51pm EDT by Seth Rosenblatt

  Updated July 2 at 10:30 a.m. PDT: The full list of supported languages has been added to the bottom of the story.

  Toolbars have long been an effective way for software publishers to add several features to a browser at once, and the Google Toolbar has long been among the most popular of these. Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer introduces revamped translation tools, giving users one-click powers of conversion over many languages.

  

  Google Toolbar for IE now offers one-click page translation.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

  The toolbar now detects your default language setting and using the Translate button will attempt to convert the page to it. Clicking a link will automatically translate the new page, as long as its part of the same domain as the original. Forty-one languages are supported so far, from Spanish, French, Italian, and German to Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Hindi, Ukranian, and Vietnamese.

  Not all words on a page will be translated, but from my tests that seems limited only to text that's been embedded in logos and other art. If you need a lot of on-the-fly translation, this could be a major time saver. The feature has not been extended to Google Toolbar for Firefox, although Google said on its blog post announcing the feature that it hopes to implement it soon.

  The new feature supports Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

  
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  Bing brings out the tweets

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 6:26pm EDT by Tom Krazit

  

  Twitter messages from prominent writers like All Things D's Kara Swisher are now in Bing search results.

  (Credit: Bing)

  Microsoft is trying to get a leg up in the real-time search wars by adding Twitter messages to search results.

  Bing will now surface results for certain celebrities (leading to the odd pairing of search guru Danny Sullivan and American Idol host Ryan Seacrest in the same sentence) when users search on their names and "twitter," the company announced Wednesday afternoon. It's not indexing all of Twitter, instead picking "a few thousand people to start" and using Twitter's public API to display those results in a special box among the other search results, such as stories that a person might have written about Twitter.

  Amid all the nauseating Twitter adoration of late lies a real trend within the search community: the desire to display search results that contain items from real-time communication services. Right now, this is done haphazardly by the Big Three, although smaller companies are trying to offer this service for those who just can't wait.

  Both Google and Yahoo, for example, will return the main Twitter page and a single tweet as the top two search results for "Ryan Seacrest Twitter." They don't call out multiple tweets within a single defined box, as Bing will now do with the new feature.

  Bing's Twitter feature is rolling out slowly over the day on Wednesday.

  
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  Google Search optimized for a mess of phones

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 5:16pm EDT by Jessica Dolcourt

  (Credit: Google)

  Last December we showed you how Google refined its search results for iPhone and Android. The change loaded pages faster and fit the results to the screen width for searches generated from Google.com (plus for the specialized Google widget on Android and the search box on Safari.)

  On Wednesday, Google began supporting these optimized results for feature phones--essentially handsets that are not smartphones or PDAs--in 38 languages and in more than 60 countries. The project to revamp search results builds on a March 2009 initiative that included iPhone and Android phones in about 20 countries. After that, it expanded to feature phones in the U.S. and Japan.

  The optimized result is a listings page very similar to what you would see on your desktop, that is populated with image, blog, video, news, and product entries that are relevant to your search, often as the first result. An image showing the local weather forecast is one common example; a thumbnail of a Google map or movie showtimes are two others.

  The language support includes English (U.S. and U.K.), Spanish, Japanese, Polish, French, Dutch, Korean, Turkish, Italian, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), Thai, German, Russian, Tagalog, Swedish, Vietnamese, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Finnish, Indonesian, Croatian, Catalan, Danish, Czech, Lithuanian, Latvian, Greek, Slovak, Ukrainian, Romanian, Norwegian, Serbian, and Hindi.

  You can read the Google Mobile blog for more details.

  

ReadWriteWeb

• 

  Facebook Wants You to Be Less Private - But Why?

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 4:56pm EDT

  Facebook held a conference call today about changes being made to the website's privacy features but we were left feeling a little confused. A long list of settings are being collapsed into a much more manageable privacy interface and users who want to keep sharing messages only with friends and family they have approved will be able to continue doing so. But it is pretty clear that Facebook would like you to share a lot more information publicly than you are right now, with the whole wide open internet.

  Why? I asked the company if they really were trying to nudge users into being more public on Facebook and if outside developers would then get access to more user data. Two out of three of the Facebook staff members on the call have now confirmed that yes, they are aiming for users to be more public. Leah Pearlman is a Facebook Product Manager and author of the forthcoming book Facebook for Dummies but her explanation for why the company wants more public sharing to happen was pretty hard to believe.

  Sponsor
  

  We pointed out that the new Facebook publishing interface has "everyone" as the privacy setting at the top of the list and the most realistic option, sharing specific things with specific people in appropriate context, is at the very bottom under "custom." (Most users of any system stay away from custom settings.)

  Pearlman said that yes, Facebook does want people to share more information publicly than they are today. Her explanation? She said that it's hard for people to tell the difference between users with similar names when looking for their friends. More publicly shared information would make your friends with common names easier to identify.

  That's not a credible reason to change the fundamentally private nature of Facebook that millions of people have long considered the best reason to use the site.

  So why does Facebook want you to share more information publicly? Here are some other explanations we've heard so far.

  Greater Control

  Other Facebook execs say these new privacy changes are all about increasing a user's control over their privacy - letting them be "as public or as private as they want to be." Why then is the least controlled privacy setting at the top of the list and the most controlled version buried?

  

  Furthermore, in our testing so far - the new privacy controls are actually quite a challenge to control. Changed defaults don't stick and we shared several messages further than we intended to.

  We do believe the arguement that more control over privacy will help people feel comfortable sharing more information on the site, but we're not sure this really is more control. If Facebook really wanted to give users more control over their privacy when posting messages, it would prompt you each time you share something like this:

  Who is this message for? 1. One or more of your lists [select], 2. all your friends, 3. your friends and their friends or 4. everyone.

  That list of options goes from most controlled to least controlled, from the most familiar option to the least familiar. That's not what Facebook is doing, though. The company has an agenda to get people to share more publicly than we are today.

  "More control" was Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly's explanation, when Pearlman said what she did about duplicate names. So Perlman and Director of Communications Brandee Barker (see quote below) acknowledge that the company is trying to move users in a more open public direction, but the Chief Privacy Officer makes an obtuse arguement that it's all about user control. That doesn't inspire confidence in the company's official privacy policies.

  Traffic and Advertising

  It's possible that Facebook wants to increase publicly visible real estate (your conversations with friends) so that it can bring in search traffic and sell ads. The company said today though that even "everyone" public messages will not be indexed by Google yet. ("We're talking about it," they said, "but not at this time.")

  Facebook also said there would be no increase in the amount of information given to advertisers.

  Facebook Director of Communications Brandee Barker told us this in response to our "why" question:
  

  Sharing is at the core of our product. Finding people you know, learning about people you don't know, searching for what people are saying about topics that interest you can generally only happen when people are open and choose to share. By recommending more open defaults, more people will be able to connect on the site. [emphasis added by us]

  Is that really true? Facebook is about learning about people you don't know and searching for what people are saying about topics that interest you? Far more often, we've heard the saying "Facebook is about people you know, Twitter is about people you want to know and MySpace is about people you used to know." (Or that you don't want to know! We don't make 'em up folks, we just repeat the jokes.) The point is, turning Facebook into a place where people meet new people and learn new things about a topic actually represents a radical change in the Facebook user experience. Facebook has always been about connecting with the people you already know.

  To Be a Twitter Killer

  Finally we get to the explanation that I've been most hesitant to accept but is looking more credible all the time. Facebook may be nudging people towards more public sharing because it is afraid of Twitter stealing its crown.

  Twitter is the apple of the media's eye, it's the Western connection to uprising in Iran and it's more fun to talk about than Facebook. It's more interesting for geeks because the data is open.

  But Facebook is so much bigger than Twitter! One report, admittedly six months ago, estimated that at current growth rates it would take 36 years for Twitter to pass Facebook in number of users and said that right now Facebook grows a Twitter's-worth of users every eight days!

  More importantly, Facebook is not Twitter and Facebook's users most likely don't want it to be. Twitter is confusing, spam ridden and seems pointless to many, many people.

  But if Facebook is to become more like Twitter, it's going to need to adopt a radically different stance with regard to outside developers getting access to user data. That part of my question in today's call didn't get answered. It is a very exciting idea and if anyone could pull off both privacy and data availability, we'd have thought it could be Facebook. Time will tell.

  Perhaps there's some other explanation. Making Facebook like Twitter doesn't sound like the best idea in the world, but it's just about the only credible explanation we can think of for the increasingly clear push towards more public sharing on the site. Privacy settings have been confusing and today's move to simplify them is great. But Facebook is a small-group method of communication for the vast majority of its users and emphasizing list-specific messaging instead of "everyone" would be a more honest way to give users more control over their privacy.

  Discuss

  
  

  

Webware.com

• 

  Yahoo's Delicious proves Chrome extensions real

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 4:17pm EDT by Stephen Shankland

  

  Yahoo has released a test version of a Delicious social bookmarking extension for Chrome, one of the strongest indications so far that the technology foundation is coming to fruition in Google's browser.

  Extensions still must be specifically enabled through a command-line switch on the developer version of Chrome, and Google recently broke extensions compatibility through an update, so the technology clearly is immature. But Google is steadily addressing the concern that its browser lacks one of Firefox's notable features--called add-ons in the Mozilla browser.

  "Delicious extension (alpha version) for Google Chrome is now available," said Amit Papnai of the Delicious team in a mailing list posting Tuesday. "This is a light version of the extension and allows you to sign in and post bookmarks to your Delicious account."

  

  The Delicious extension for Chrome shows the logo in the address bar. Clicking it pops up a dialog box as a new miniature Web page.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

  Extensions can be powerful tools to customize a browser's interface or add significant features. In an effort to ease programming difficulties, Chrome's extensions technology uses the same interface techniques as Web pages, a method Mozilla as adopted for its Jetpack Firefox extensions project at Mozilla Labs.

  Delicious lets people store, tag, describe, and share bookmarks, and the add-on simplifies use of the service directly through the browser.

  In addition, Nick Baum released a Chrome-based Twitter extension called Chritter on Tuesday.

  I found both the Delicious and Chritter extensions easy to download and install, though Chritter isn't terribly useful at this stage because it only flashes recent tweets in a status bar. Update 2:57 p.m. PDT: Google has added a rough but workable interface for managing Chrome extensions, including uninstalling them, by typing "chrome://extensions/" into the address bar.

  Extensions compatibility can be tough to maintain, as the release of Firefox 3.5 Tuesday illustrated.

  "We're working on pushing out a new Gears version that supports Firefox 3.5," Google programmer Aaron Boodman said Monday on a mailing list for Gears, a Firefox add-on that among other things can enable offline access to the Gmail Web application. "We typically wait until the official 'gold' release of Firefox is pushed, because otherwise, we keep having to do new builds every time a new release candidate is pushed."

  One of Firefox's most popular add-ons is AdBlock Plus, which suppresses online advertisements. With Google's business dependent on advertising, skeptics have said they don't expect Chrome ever to support that technology.

  However, in a December design document about Chrome extensions, Boodman highlighted AdBlock Plus as an example of an extensions use that Google would like to support. And discussion of ad blocking in Chrome has surfaced on the Chrome extensions mailing list.

  

Uncrate

• 

  Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 3:48pm EDT

  Bring that authentic smokehouse flavor home with the Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker ($275-$380). Available in huge (22.5-inch) or luggably-large (18.5-inch) sizes, these understated cookers are made from porcelain-enameled premium-grade steel,...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.
• 

  Bushnell Golf FXi Weather Forecaster

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 2:19pm EDT

  Know the weather at your favorite course days before your tee time with the Bushnell Golf FXi Weather Forecaster ($125). This nifty gadget uses a wireless USB dongle attached to...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.
• 

  The Hill-Side Ties

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 2:13pm EDT

  Add some edge to your work wardrobe with The Hill-Side Ties ($80-$87). Made in New York City, these slim, stylish ties are available in selvedge cotton and hemp indigo denim,...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Webware.com

• 

  Opera widgets for the math and science whiz

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 1:21pm EDT by Don Reisinger

  I really like Opera (Windows | Mac) widgets. They all offer something unique. But I especially like the browser's science and math widgets.

  If you're someone who just can't get enough of planets, you love building mathematical graphs, or you enjoy science, these widgets are for you.

  Science widgets

  Astronomy Picture of the Day Each day, when you load Astronomy Picture of the Day, it displays a picture it gets from NASA. When you click on that image, it gives you an in-depth description of what's being depicted and why it's important. I found it to be extremely informative. Practically anyone who likes astronomy should be pleased with Astronomy Picture of the Day.

  

  Astronomy Picture of the Day gives you some beautiful images.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  Chinese Abacus If you want to get some addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division work done, look no further than than the Chinese Abacus widget. Much like the real thing, you can move the blocks up and down to keep count. The abacus will show a tally at the bottom to help you.

  Before you start using it, beware that the Chinese Abacus widget requires some knowledge of the abacus to get it to work. Once you get the hang of it, you'll find that it makes performing basic math functions quite simple.

  

  The Chinese Abacus widget is a really cool app.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  Functions 3D Functions 3D isn't for the novice mathematician. The widget lets you create a 3D structure based on a mathematical equation that you devise.

  Once you set the X, Y, and Z boundaries, you'll create an equation to develop the figure you want to depict. You can create simple archways or complex statues by changing the equation to fit your needs. Functions 3D is one of the more powerful Opera widgets I've ever used. It's also one of the most difficult to understand.

  

  Functions 3D helps you create 3D models with your equations.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  Math Workpad Math Workpad is a neat utility that not only lets you evaluate mathematical expressions, it also provides you with a vector graph to see the result of an equation.

  Once you load Math Workpad, you can start defining different functions or letters. You can then use those functions and letters to create a mathematical equation that the widget will solve for you. I found that all of the equations I created were solved quickly and accurately. It's perfect for students in math classes or the geek who wants to create some vector 3D graphs with their mathematical prowess.

  

  Create and solve your own equations with Math Workpad.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  PlanetWerks 2 PlanetWerks 2 is a great way to learn a little something about the solar system. When you download the widget, it displays the sun and all the planets orbiting it. You can zoom in on different planets and adjust your tilt to see better. If you want to learn about individual planets in the solar system, you need only to click on one of the celestial bodies, and the widget will provide information, including the object's size relative to Earth, how long its orbit is, and more.

  

  PlanetWerks 2 teaches you about the solar system.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  Scientific Calculator The Scientific Calculator widget is a must-have for any science or math whiz. The app provides a slew of functions to satisfy your mathematical needs. It even has seven programmable memory buttons. I used it to perform some basic operations and was impressed. It completed equations in just a few seconds. It was like having a real calculator with me.

  

  Scientific Calculator is like the real thing.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  Unit Converter Unit Converter is a handy widget to have when you want to quickly switch between different units. True to the science theme, the app includes unit conversions for velocity, volume, pressure, and the basics, like area and temperature. It's a simple widget that you won't always use, but you'll be happy you have it, when you want to convert some scientific measurements.

  

  Unit Converter gives you all the conversions you need.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

  My top 3

  1. Chinese Abacus: The Chinese Abacus widget is designed well, and it's ideal for quickly solving mathematical equations.

  2. Scientific Calculator: It's like having the real thing in front of you.

  3. PlanetWerks 2: Who doesn't want to learn about the solar system?

  
• 

  Bing's first month produces small share gain

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 1:10pm EDT by Tom Krazit

  

  Bing picked up half a percentage point of market share in June.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

  Bing took a baby step up the search engine ladder in its first month on the Internet.

  Microsoft's share of the search market increased from 7.81 percent prior to the launch of Bing to 8.23 percent for the month of June, according to data from Statcounter picked up by Reuters. Bing got a noticeable bounce during the first few weeks of June, but settled back after the novelty wore off.

  Google's share dropped ever so slightly, from a dominant 78.72 percent of the search market in May to a perilously shaky 78.48 percent of the market in June, a drop attributed by more than a few news outlets to Bing's success but one unlikely to cause too much concern in Mountain View. Statcounter was a lone voice suggesting that Bing surpassed Yahoo during its first week of existence, but now reports that Yahoo actually gained share during June in maintaining its second-place position, up from 10.99 percent in May to 11.04 percent in June.

  The changes may look small, but all Microsoft ever wanted out of the Bing relaunch was a few percentage points' worth of extra market share, according to executives. One month does not a comeback make, however, and tweaks to both Google and Yahoo's core search products are expected over the rest of the year.

  

Uncrate

• 

  EZ Grill

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 10:47am EDT

  Instant BBQ. The EZ Grill, available in regular size ($5; 1.81 lbs) and party size ($10; 3.31 lbs), is a portable, disposable grill that lights with one match and cooks...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.
• 

  The Man Wall

  Posted: June 30th, 2009, 1:26pm EDT

  Bring the sports bar experience home with The Man Wall ($14,900). This all-in-one chunk of awesomeness features room for four TVs — one 52" and two 26" units are included...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.
• 

  Yamaha NeoHD

  Posted: June 30th, 2009, 1:21pm EDT

  It might not be the all-in-one home theater box of your dreams, but the new Yamaha NeoHD ($600-$800) is certainly a step in the right direction. This streamlined receiver features...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.
• 

  Tag Heuer Monaco LS

  Posted: June 30th, 2009, 1:16pm EDT

  Tag's legendary Monaco series is back and looking better than ever. The new Tag Heuer Monaco LS Chronograph Calibre 12 ($TBA) is a modern masterpiece, featuring a high-tech face with...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.
• 

  Nike SQ Dymo STR8-FIT Driver

  Posted: June 30th, 2009, 10:54am EDT

  No matter if you're pushing, slicing, fading, hooking, pulling, or drawing, this driver will have your shot fixed in no time. The Nike SQ Dymo STR8-FIT Driver ($300), available in...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.
• 

  Klein Leather Tool Bag

  Posted: June 29th, 2009, 3:12pm EDT

  Since 1857, Klein Tools has been making American gems like this Klein Leather Tool Bag ($170). Made entirely of thick, tanned leather, this rugged, pocketless bag sports a large compartment...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.
• 

  Madsen Bucket Cargo Bike

  Posted: June 29th, 2009, 1:58pm EDT

  Carry groceries, goodies, or drunken buddies on the Madsen Bucket Cargo Bike ($1300). This 8-speed hauler features SRAM X5 trigger shifters, Promax disc brakes, a hi-ten steel frame, a 40-gallon...
  
  Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Lifehacker: Highlights

• 

  This Week's Most Popular Posts

  Posted: June 26th, 2009, 6:00pm EDT by Kevin Purdy

  We gaze forward to the next Firefox's features, talk traffic ticket facts and myths, and suggest a few ways to use all those analog sets sidelined by DTV.

  • Top 10 Firefox 3.5 Features
    Firefox 3.5 is a pretty substantial update to the popular open-source browser, and it's just around the corner. See what features, fixes, and clever new tools are worth getting excited about in the next big release.
  • Debunking Traffic Ticket Myths
    Virginia traffic attorney Andrew Flusche can't explain everything you need to do to get out of any traffic ticket, but he does want to shoot down some myths your lead-footed friends might try and convince you of.
  • The Halo 3 HUD Desktop
    Reader rykennedyan's desktop is an impressive recreation of a first-person view from the popular Halo FPS shooter-with system stats and information completely blended into the desktop.
  • Repurpose Your Analog Television
    You don't need to run out and buy a new TV because of the DTV switchover. If you did anyways, Make Magazine has put together quite a guide to giving old TVs new life.
  • DIY Inverted Bookshelf
    Instead of storing your books upright on top of the shelf, the inverted bookshelf holds all of your books in place using elastic webbing so you can hang them below the shelf-all the while allowing you to still take them out and put them back on as needed.
  • Tweak Your Way to a Better Finder
    It's disappointing that Snow Leopard doesn't promise many major new Finder features, but with the right tweaks and plug-ins, you can make browsing files on your Mac significantly better.
  • Rain Gutters as Cable Management Tools
    We're all about creative cable management here at Lifehacker, so we were instantly drawn to reader Seandavid010's rain-gutter cable management setup.
  • Build Your Own Pizza Oven
    Lots of people can say "Yeah I like pizza!" but Lifehacker reader Kevin Lester can say, "I like pizza enough to build an awesome pizza oven to make sure it'd be done just right."
  • iPhone 3.0 Jailbreak Available via PwnageTool, QuickPwn to Follow
    The iPhone Dev Team has already released the iPhone 3.0-jailbreaking Pwnage Tool for Mac OS X (just two days after the iPhone 3.0 release), with QuickPwn for Windows and OS X soon to follow. There are a few catches, though.
  • Microsoft's Browser Comparison Chart Offends Anyone Who's Ever Used Another Browser
    Internet Explorer 8 is by far the best browser Microsoft's ever released, but most of our readers are happily using a better alternative like Firefox or Chrome. Microsoft's not happy about this, so they've created an absurd piece of propaganda to win you back.

A List Apart

• 

  Visual Decision Making

  Posted: June 23rd, 2009, 5:00am EDT

  If it takes only 50 milliseconds for users to form an aesthetic opinion of your site’s credibility and trustworthiness, are designers who create visually compelling sites simply wasting time and treasure on graphic indulgences? Patrick Lynch doesn't think so.
• 

  Introduction to RDFa

  Posted: June 23rd, 2009, 5:00am EDT

  In part one of a two-part primer on RDFa, learn how semantic features normally confined to the head of an HTML document can be used to add semantic richness to the elements of the body. Mark Birbeck shows us how.

Lifehacker: Highlights

• 

  This Week's Most Popular Posts

  Posted: June 19th, 2009, 7:00pm EDT by Adam Pash

  We highlight our favorite free, everyday-use Mac apps, round up some killer Firefox add-on packs, optimize our HDTVs, and take a first-hand look at the best features in the new iPhone 3.0 software update.

  • Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Mac Downloads
    We've featured countless apps or all sorts over the years, but if you just want a quick look at the best free downloads for your Mac, this post's for you.
  • Lifehacker's Firefox Add-On Packs
    It used to be a pain to hunt down your favorite extensions every time you reinstall Firefox. Mozilla's recently launched Collections make it easy, so we've assembled a few easy-to-install collections of our favorite Firefox helpers.
  • Optimize Your New HDTV
    Whether you purchased your HDTV yesterday or last year, there's a big chance you just plugged it in and fired it up. Tweak your HDTV for better viewing quality.
  • Hands On with iPhone 3.0's Best New Features
    The iPhone 3.0 software update hit servers a few hours ago, and we spent our afternoon playing with every new feature we could find. Step inside for a look at our favorite new iPhone 3.0 features.
  • Turn Old CDs Into a DIY iPod Dock
    Got a pile of old, scratched-up coasters that you don't really need anymore? You can repurpose them into a dock for your iPod, iPhone, or other audio player.
  • Google Wave Questions and Answers
    After whinging loudly about not having access to the Google Wave preview, Santa GOOG dropped me an invite. Last night I held a Wave Q&A on Twitter; here are the results, complete with screenshots.
  • Mac4Lin Gives Linux Desktops the Complete Mac Look
    Linux: Mac4Lin, a package of skins, wallpapers, icons, and interface refinements that brings a completist Mac look to Linux with an automated installation, has reached the 1.0 stage with an impressive array of features.
  • Hands On with Mac OS X Snow Leopard (Developer Preview)
    The upgrade to Mac OS X Snow Leopard will cost $29 for current Leopard users and won't include many new features-so will it be worth the trouble?
  • The Starlight Desktop
    Reader rykennedyan's desktop combines a beautiful wallpaper with a full set of launchers and tools integrated into a taskbar at the bottom of the screen.
  • Top 10 How-to Cooking Videos
    Cooking isn't a skill you can pick up through reading alone. Watch chefs, enthusiastic home cooks, and even a surprise celebrity guest demonstrate cooking skills everyone can use in this roundup of 10 great instructional cooking videos.

• 

  This Week's Most Popular Posts

  Posted: June 12th, 2009, 6:00pm EDT by Adam Pash

  The future of technology blows our minds, we outfit our kitchens with the essentials, browsers battle it out for speed supremacy, and we highlight our favorite Google Wave features.

  • Upcoming Tech That Will Rock Your World
    Major announcements from Google, Microsoft, and Apple in the last few weeks have techies flipping out about the awesomeness coming to our browsers, pockets, and desktops in the very near future.
  • Best and Worst Fast Food: McDonald's Edition
    No matter how well you plan, every day can't be an ultra-healthy, bring-your-own-lunch-to-work day. But just because you're eating at a fast food place doesn't mean all bets are off.
  • Five Must-Have Tools for Any Kitchen
    From cookies to Parmesan cheese, a wealth of store-brand alternatives are available at your grocery store. How can you tell when reaching down one shelf might be worth it?
  • Lifehacker Speed Tests: Safari 4, Chrome 2, and More
    Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer all reached new final versions of recently, while Firefox and Opera pushed their own web browsers into almost-there betas.
  • The Google Wave Highlight Reel
    We haven't been invited to try out Google Wave (yet? pretty please Mister Google?), but based on the 80-minute demonstration video, we're jazzed about it.
  • Five Best Alternative File Copiers
    If you do any serious file copying on a Windows system, you'll quickly discover that there are substantial limitations to the default file copier. Ease your file copying frustrations with these five alternative copiers.
  • Top 10 Wallpaper Tools & Tweaks
    A good wallpaper provides a pleasant backdrop to productivity. A great wallpaper changes your whole computer experience. See some of the best image sources, software, and usability tweaks we've come across and rolled up for your downloading pleasure.
  • Ditch Crunches for Push Ups and Save Your Back
    A thousand crunches a day is the path to washboard abs right? More like the path to debilitating back pain.
  • Best and Worst Fast Food: Wendy's Edition
    Earlier this week we shared the healthiest and unhealthiest food at McDonald's with you. Our team of fast food testers has recovered, and now it's time to focus our lens on Wendy's-our readers' favorite place to hit the value menu.
  • Load Your Wii Games from a Hard Disk, Part II
    Last week we shared a great hack to let you back up and play your Wii games from an external hard drive. That hack has been made easier by eliminating the need for a Wii downgrade.

A List Apart

• 

  Managing Werewolves

  Posted: June 9th, 2009, 5:00am EDT

  While you’re always optimistic when leading a team, you know that not everyone’s got your back. Liars and poor communicators can wipe out good work faster than a 404 error. Learn how to think critically about verbal and non-verbal behavior and to separate office politics from truth, so you don’t let the Werewolves win.
• 

  Indexing the Web—It’s Not Just Google’s Business

  Posted: June 9th, 2009, 5:00am EDT

  Interface responsiveness is one of many details web developers must consider in their quest to deliver a good user experience. An application that responds quickly enhances the user’s sense of control. In working to maximize application speed, though, one often-overlooked element can affect performance more than almost anything else: database design.

ReadWriteWeb

• 

  Weekly Wrapup: Google Wave Hands-On, Microsoft Bing Goes Live, Real-Time Cellphone Data, And More...

  Posted: June 6th, 2009, 8:00am EDT

  In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week, we have one of the very first hands-on reviews of Google Wave, we check out the new Microsoft Bing search engine, analyze another new Google product called Squared, look at what applications will be built on top of real-time cellphone data, take a nosey at the latest eBook trends, and much more. We also update you with the latest from our new channel ReadWriteStart, dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

  Sponsor
  

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  You can subscribe to the Weekly Wrapup by RSS or by email (form below).

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  Introducing the ReadWriteWeb Guide to Online Community Management

  Our First Premium Report for Businesses

  Recently we released our first premium report: The ReadWriteWeb Guide to Online Community Management. It's been in the works for more than four months and we believe it's unlike anything else you've seen. Businesses seeking to engage with online communities on their own websites or all around the social web will find the guide invaluable in getting up to speed on the state of the art and making sure their employees have the foundation they need to be effective.

  The end product is in two parts. Part one is a 75 page collection of case studies, advice and discussion concerning the most important issues in online community. Part two is a companion online aggregator that delivers the most-discussed articles each day written by experts on community management from around the web. The Guide is available for purchase at a price of $299. (You won't be charged until you complete a few simple steps on that page.) You can download a free sample section of the report here.

  Web Products

  Google Wave: Our First Hands-On Impressions

  When Google Wave made its public debut last week, it created quite a stir, but without being able to get a hands-on look at the product, it was quite hard to really grasp the implications of what Google was trying to do. This week, we got access to Wave, and after testing it for a while, we can confidently say that Google is indeed on to something. The developer sandbox version we have access to is still a bit rough around the edges, and quite a few functions are still unavailable.

  

  Bing Goes Live - Is it More Than Just Hot Air?

  Microsoft's new search engine Bing unexpectedly went live at the start of this week, including a re-direct from http://www.live.com - previously Microsoft's 'personalized start page' destination. So search has usurped a Netvibes-like start page as Microsoft's default homepage for its web services.

  In last week's launch announcement, Bing was being bandied about as Microsoft's latest attempt to steal market share away from Google. In particular, according to Microsoft, Bing will focus on four verticals: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition, and finding a local business. We took the new search engine for a test run.

  

  See also: Microsoft's Bing is Now Mobile, Too and How to Add Twitter Search to Bing

  Google Squared Goes Live: Who Knew Structured Data Could Be So Unhelpful?

  Three weeks ago Google demonstrated a new product in Labs called Google Squared; it's a search engine that creates structured data from big piles of information and lets users compare various things by their attributes. There have been suggestions that Google Squared will crush Wolfram Alpha. Well, Google Squared went live this week and while it's a great idea, in reality the service doesn't look very useful. It doesn't look like it's going to crush anyone. The user interface is inflexible, the data is odd looking and it's hard to imagine using Squared regularly. It's a great idea but we'll see where it goes.

  Ficly: AOL's Fiction Community Gets a New Face

  Need to get the creative juices flowing? Put down the peyote and pick up your laptop. Ficly is a collaborative writing community where members can buck their writer's block and contribute to shared works of fiction. Armed with 1,024 characters, Ficly users issue story challenges, start new story stubs and add sequels and prequels to existing stories. It's a grade school English exercise without the bullies.

  OhPan's Recommendation System for News Comes to iPhone

  Ohpan, the scrolling news ticker web site we covered a few months prior, recently released an iPhone application which uses their same recommendation engine technology to deliver you the best content. As with their main web site, the iPhone app lets you rate the content you see to allow Ohpan to learn your preferences. However, the app also takes advantage of the iPhone platform to offer localized content as well as some other unique features.

  Atlassian Announces Confluence 3.0 & Plugin Exchange, Acquires GreenHopper

  Leading enterprise software provider Atlassian announced this week the launch of Confluence 3.0, an upgrade to the wiki platform that we named one of the top 10 enterprise products of 2008. The new release significantly enhances the social networking side of Confluence, adding activity streams and Twitter-like status updates. Atlassian has simultaneously debuted the Plugin Exchange, allowing users to download, rate, and review hundreds of 3rd party plugins, including the popular GreenHopper plugin for JIRA that it just acquired. All three announcements are part of the lineup for the company's sold-out user conference, the Atlassian Summit.

  SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

  A Word from Our Sponsors

  We'd like to thank ReadWriteWeb's sponsors, without whom we couldn't bring you all these stories every week!

  • Mashery is the leading provider of API management services.
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  • Mollom, stop comment spam and build your community.
  • Semantic Technology Conference, the future of the Web, IT, search, business.
  • Crowd Science gives you detailed visitor demographics.
  • hakia is a semantic search engine.
  • Rackspace provides dedicated server hosting.
  • Socialtext brings you 5 Best Practices for Enterprise Collaboration Success
  • Aplus provides web hosting services for small business hosting needs.
  • MediaTemple provides hosting for RWW.
  • SixApart provides our publishing software MT4.

  
  ReadWriteStart

  Our new channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

  Building an Advisory Board

  This is one post/chapter in a serialized book called Startup 101. For the introduction and table of contents, please click here.

  This is part of your pre-financing team-building. The term "Board" may be confusing here. This is not a Board Of Directors: that is the subject of a later chapter. Nor is it a couple of your buddies. Nor is it someone who gives you one specific bit of advice. Also, don't look at this as a brand-building exercise by throwing big names on your website. Look for people who really complement your skills, really believe in what you are doing, and, as a by-product, open doors and bring some credibility.

  SEE MORE STARTUPS COVERAGE IN OUR READWRITESTART CHANNEL

  Web Trends

  US CIO Kundra Calls for Web 2.0 Co-Creation of Knowledge With Citizens

  The US Government's Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, called this week for a radical new approach to government information technology, focusing on utilization of consumer-type Web 2.0 tools that can "tap into the vast amounts of knowledge...in communities across the country."

  "We've got to recognize that we can't treat the American people as subjects but as a co-creator of ideas," Kundra was quoted as saying by Government Computer News writer Wyatt Kash. "We need to tap into the vast amounts of knowledge...in communities across the country. The federal government doesn't have a monopoly on the best ideas." That's exciting, if it's more than just words.

  The Emerging World of Real-Time Cellphone Data

  At ReadWriteWeb we've been following with interest the projects of the MIT SENSEeable City Lab, which is producing some excellent analysis and visualizations of cellphone data in urban centers. MIT refers to this data as "digital footprints," because it essentially tracks the movement and sometimes actions of people in an environment. Our most recent post looked at what cellphone data revealed about who attended the Obama Inauguration in January.

  Recently we spoke to Andrea Vaccari, a research associate at the lab. He gave us a fascinating glimpse into the coming world of practical apps built on top of digital footprints.

  Report: EReader and EBook Market Ready for Growth

  According to a new report from Forrester, the eBook and eReader market has now hit a point where it is ready to break out of its niche and become a mainstream phenomenon. In the report, Forrester's Sarah Rotman Epps argues that while early readers like the Rocket eBook in 1998 and the Sony Librié in 2004 failed to garner a large enough audience, today's consumers have embraced mobile, on-the-go media consumption thanks to the prevalence of MP3 players and handheld video games. Thanks to this, consumers are now also more likely to buy electronic goods than ever before.

  See also: Is Google Getting Ready to Enter the eBook Market?

  Ten Years After Napster, Musicians Are Still Getting Screwed

  Ten years ago yesterday, Napster revolutionized commercial music by - we're all grownups; let's call a spade a spade - democratizing piracy. Without doubt, consumers in 1999 needed better access to music. They needed the opportunity to preview full tracks, to pick and choose songs from an album, and to have instant gratification through online downloads. And ten years later, consumers still have all those lovely perks. Napster ate it (thanks, Metallica!), but Kazaa sprang from its ashes. Then there was Limewire and its cadre. Due props to Apple for monetizing the system as it stood when the iTunes store came on the scene, but users are now ridiculously entitled about what kinds of readily available (a.k.a. easily stolen) files they are willing to pay for and their justifications for stealing media. Yet musicians, as much as they've tried to adapt, are still getting screwed by the Internet and their fans.

  SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

  That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

• 

  E3 2009 Roundup: Revenge of the Motion Controllers [E3 2009]

  Posted: June 6th, 2009, 8:00am EDT by matt buchanan

  E3 was positively epic this year—it's like we got brand new consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, but with the same boxes we have in our living room right now. Here's all our coverage in one handy spot:

  Nintendo:
  • Nintendo E3 Keynote
  • Wii Vitality Sensors Turns Wii into Definitive Nursing Home Console
  •Nintendo Wii MotionPlus Hands On: One Year, Three Games Later
  • Why the Original Wiimote Didn't Have MotionPlus
  • Nintendo: We Could Be Stuck With the Wii for 8 More Years
  • Power Up Charging Stand Recharges the Wii Punch-Out Board
  • Mad Catz Wiimote Feels Like the Real Thing for $10 Less
  • Nyko Zoom Case: 'Cause You Don't Care If Your DSi Is Actually Portable
  • Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata Says He Wouldn't Use a Mac or iPhone if Apple Was a Competitor
  • Old Feuds Reunite Between Nintendo and Sega
  • The Difference Between Sony and Nintendo at E3
  •5 Things That Should've Been at E3 But Weren't

  Microsoft:
  • Microsoft E3 Keynote
  • Testing Project Natal: We Touched the Intangible
  • Xbox 360 Project Natal Full Body Motion Control One Ups the Wii
  • Project Natal Won E3, and Maybe the Motion Control Wars
  •Microsoft: Project Natal Is "The Endgame"
  • Project Natal on Video
  • Download Xbox Live Full Retail Games on Demand
  • Microsoft Says Xbox 360 Is "Less Than Halfway Done
  • Where Is Xbox Live Anywhere?
  • Facebook and Twitter on Xbox 360
  • Netflix Lets You Add to Queue, Zune Video Marketplace Gets 1080p Instant Streaming
  • Xbox Live Spillover: New Avatars, Where's Hulu and Why I Hope You Have Fast Internet
  • Halo 3 ODST Collector's Edition Controller Won't Fit in Convenant Hands
  • The Xbox Needs Apps
  • 5 Things That Should've Been at E3 But Weren't

  Sony:
  • Sony's E3 Keynote
  • PS3 Motion Controller May Be the Best Game Motion Capture Yet
  • Hands On: Is The PSP Go! Too Small?
  • Sony to Offer New Digital Copies Of Your Old UMD Games
  • Everything You Need to Know About the PSP Go!
  • Sony: Dual Shock Still Defacto, Motion Control Secondary
  • Sony PlayStation Motion Controller Video: How It Works
  • The Difference Between Sony and Nintendo at E3
  • 5 Things That Should've Been at E3 But Weren't

  Aaaand that's it. Hope you liked our coverage of E3 as much as we liked covering it!

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Pre Touchstone Charger's Got Special Powers Too [Palm Pre]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 10:30pm EDT by matt buchanan

  The Pre cuts cheese, but does it stick to anything? Its Touchstone charger does. [BBG]

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Downtown SF Apple Store Gets PWNed, Unintentionally Advertises Competitor's Product [Apple]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 10:00pm EDT by Andi Wang

  An advertisement banner for doubleTwist—a software application that lets users access their iTunes library on any device—has shown up on a display window directly next to the San Francisco Apple store's main entrance.

  If you're wondering how Apple allowed this to happen, the window technically belongs to BART—a Bay Area's transit system—and because the advertiser, DVD Jon, had purchased that specific ad space directly from BART, it's perfectly legal and there's not much that can be done about the "Cure for iPhone Envy" product placement. I'm curious to see what kind of marketing magic, if any, Apple's going to create in retaliation. [TechCrunch]
  

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Desk Lamp Created Out of Junky Rotary Phone [Lamps]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 9:30pm EDT by Andi Wang

  Although it's cute and clever, imagine the mayhem this table desk telephone lamp will cause. We'll start hearing reports about grandpas with singed ear hairs and dumfounded children who can't get their telephones to turn on. [Junktion via DesignBoom]

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Remainders - Things We Didn't Post [Remainders]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 9:00pm EDT by Wilson Rothman

  Here's the stuff that we didn't post today. (Until now, obviously.)

  • The one-of-a-kind Mechanical Memory Key was one of the best looking gadgets we stumbled across today, but it's a total tease. Even though it was made from the parts of six different pocket watches, the clockwork doesn't turn. I want my reproductions of Victorian-era thumbdrives to be authentic, damnit. Until those gears turn, no dice! [Geeky Gadgets]

  • Yet another way to spy on your neighbor is Brando's sound-activated electric-socket-mounted hidden camcorder. As you can see above, though, the problem is, nobody I know has electric sockets that look like that. Brando, we love you, but you gotta get out more. Need a US version, baby. [CrunchGear]

  • Microsoft Bing overtook Yahoo!, ranking as the #2 search engine this week. I'm not saying Bing is bad in any way—it's actually fun—but not only are Live Search and MSN forwarding to Bing, giving it a big boost, but it's still a novelty. I'll bet Crystal Pepsi gave Coke a run for its money the week it was introduced. That doesn't mean people still buy cases of it. (Can you even still buy Crystal Pepsi? Dumb idea—the flavor's in the caramel coloring.) [Washington Post]

  • Who doesn't love robot pick-up lines like "Your lips say 0 but your eyes say 1" or "Hey, baby, ever do it AIBO style?" (More at #robotpickuplines on Twitter.) I'll tell you who doesn't—we don't! We've already explained to you again and again why robots are dangerous. Why are you trying to incite them? Oooooh, I get it. You're trying to get in bed with them, Baltar-style, so that they save you when they kill everyone else. Well, then you're on our list, too, you long-haired, sad-eyed, multiple-doctorate-holding freak. [TechCrunch]

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

• 

  Blip.tv's Mike Hudak on the Evolution and Equalization of Web Video and Television

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 8:55pm EDT

  Blip.tv's CEO, Mike Hudack, chatted with us this afternoon about how online video and television are evolving and informing one another. Revenue models, show length and format, distribution, and consumption are all called into question as the web targets increasingly narrow and engaged niche audiences.

  As startups such as Blip.tv continue to grow and partner with old-guard media companies for television distribution, what will happen to the major networks, whose current model creates a scarcity of opportunity for revenue while requiring a "least objectionable programming" approach to content? Will network TV survive? Watch and find out what Hudack thinks.

  Sponsor
  

  Web 2.0 Fridays being what they are, the Blip.tv team geared up for beer and Rock Band about 5 minutes after the interview finished. More announcements about "super-secret" developments now in the works (Hudack's terminology) are to be released in the weeks to come.

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

• 

  Sling Back Universal Wire Retractor Helps You Go Wire-Less [Retractors]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 8:30pm EDT by Andi Wang

  If your room is as messy as mine and these cable holders and midget wires aren't helping reduce the clutter of tangled wires, maybe it's time to try the $10 Sling Back universal wire retractor.

  The Sling Back is apparently "cake" to use: Simply open the magnetic case, snap in the wire—which includes any sort of cord that is up to 1/8'' in diameter—and tug on it to make your cable instantly retract. Currently, the gadget will be available next week in just one color (orange) and size, so I think I'm going to wait for one that's even smaller because although it's retractable, try imagining 10 of these lined up by your laptop on your desk. [Quirky]
  

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Elderly Woman Rams Cellphone Store, Palm Pre Connection Questionable [Palm Pre]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 8:27pm EDT by Jason Chen

  Although the NBC Chicago News credits the elderly woman for being slightly too eager to get the Palm Pre, there doesn't seem to be any actual evidence that she actually wants a Pre. Nice try Chicago. [NBC Chicago via Palmpre.org]

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  BlackBerry Facebook 1.6 Is More Like Real Facebook [BlackBerry]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 8:25pm EDT by matt buchanan

  Facebook for BlackBerry 1.6 is more in line with the iPhone app or, um, the website than the previous version of the app with a more newsfeed-y homepage and a slideshow format for photos, among another new features. You can grab it now: [BlackBerry]

  
  
  

  
  

  

Webware.com

• 

  A more streamlined Facebook for BlackBerry

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 8:00pm EDT by Jessica Dolcourt

  

  Warning: This is not its actual size.

  (Credit: RIM/BlackBerry)

  It's only been about a month and a half since RIM released the last update to Facebook for Blackberry (and then a fix to that update just after that), and BlackBerry's maker has already come out with a more streamlined version of the popular social networking app it codeveloped with Facebook's help.

  Facebook for BlackBerry 1.6 folds its status feed content, originally in its own screen, right onto the home page. The result is immediate access to view your friends' status update, and a slightly quicker way to update your own status message. The same goes for poking a friend or commenting on their photos.

  

  Use the pearl to scroll through friends' photos.

  (Credit: RIM/BlackBerry)

  In addition, the app update removes some of the hassle in the previous version of getting to your pal's Wall. Instead of having to switch to the mobile site to view it in its glory, a click to your buddy's profile picture shows you their wall within the application itself. Facebook for BlackBerry 1.6 also shows photo albums in a modified slideshow ticker format. In the past, you needed to click on each thumbnail to see the image; now you can scroll.

  The final change is added support for Thai, Indonesian, and Portuguese (European) languages.

  Get Facebook for BlackBerry 1.6 for free on your BlackBerry--running version 4.2 of the operating system or higher--by pointing the mobile or desktop browser to www.blackberry.com/facebook.

  

Gizmodo

• 

  Obama's BlackBerry: No Wonder He Couldn't Let Go [Humor]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 8:00pm EDT by Wilson Rothman

  Kasper Hauser, the brilliant minds behind the SkyMaul parody, have tackled another delicate tech subject: President Obama's beloved BlackBerry. When you see the First Dude staring at his handheld and snickering, this is what's going on.

  The book Obama's BlackBerry is on sale now, $11 at Amazon, and is consistently hilarious, as you can see from the (authorized) excerpts below. [Kasper Hauser]

  
  

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Who Is That Guy Again? [Apple]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 7:40pm EDT by Jesus Diaz

  No, that one in the middle is Herman Munster. And that one on the right is Yul Brynner. No, not Miss Marple either. Wait, is that Janeane Garofalo? Whatever. I mean the bald guy who is not Telly Savalas.

  Yes, that's Mr. Jonathan Ive—who I hope the Queen soon bestows with the title of Sir. Sir Jon Ive Von Vader Von Ham of Shin Duke Sir or whatever those Brits call it. Him and the Pet Shop Boys. For now, however, he has received another honorary title for his outstanding design work: Doctor of Fine Arts for the Rhode Island School of Design, one of the best in the world. Congratulations, Mr.—I mean Dr.—Ive.

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Palm Pre Designers Speak Up On Apps, Pre Hardware, and the Importance of an "Organic" Feel [Palm]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 7:20pm EDT by Dan Nosowitz

  Palm designer Michelle Koh and CEO Jonathan Rubinstein have recently begun speaking about the design process of the Pre, and they've got some pretty interesting insights. These aren't PR people spouting catchphrases—these are the folks who create.

  Michelle Koh's interview is particularly interesting; we love how she clearly admires the iPhone, and doesn't feel the need to trash it. She makes it clear that one of the most important parts of the design process was really adoring the product they were creating, and she does think the Pre is great, but that doesn't mean she needs to engage in competitive smack talk. Check out the interviews (Michelle Koh is here, and the design team is here) for a wider view of the Pre and how it came to be. [via Engadget]

  
  
  

  
  

  

Webware.com

• 

  Weekend project: Scan your books into Google

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 7:07pm EDT by Josh Lowensohn

  

  The official Google Books blog has a fun post on how to scan your books into the service's "My Books" feature by using a USB barcode scanner. The My Books section of Google Books is similar to the popular Mac application Delicious Library in letting you keep a list of all your titles in a digital card catalog that can be shared with others. Of course you can do this without the USB barcode scanner simply by searching for the book, but Google's Matt Cutts makes it look like fun:

  
  

  As Cutts mentions in the video, one of the benefits of building up your Google Books library is that you can limit in-text searches to just the titles you own. Not mentioned, however, is that it's a great way to build up a personal effects value estimate for insurance purposes.

  Having recently given away an entire bookshelf while doing some spring cleaning, using a system like this would have made it easier to keep track of all of the things I've read throughout my life. This is something that the Kindle and other e-book readers can provide for future generations of readers without as much elbow grease.

  If you don't feel like giving all that personal information to Google you can also use some other Web services to do this, including Shelfari, GoodReads, and Library Thing. However Google's big ISBN entry screen is the most barcode-friendly of the bunch.

  
• 

  Bing off to solid start, but not that good

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 7:05pm EDT by Tom Krazit

  

  People are searching with Microsoft's Bing, but perhaps not as much as one company thinks.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Ina Fried/CNET)

  Ah, statistics.

  Microsoft's new Bing search engine has received positive reviews in its first week on the planet, but did that early buzz translate into traffic? A report from Statcounter picked up by TechCrunch suggested that Bing's debut was successful enough to eclipse Yahoo Search during its first week, but subsequent analysis from Search Engine Land as well as data from CNET's network of sites suggests otherwise.

  Statcounter, a Web traffic tracking company, reported that as of Thursday, June 4, Bing accounted for 16.28 percent of the U.S. search market, surpassing Yahoo's 10.22 percent just days after going live on Monday. Worldwide, Bing's advantage was said to be slimmer (5.62 percent to Yahoo's 5.13 percent), but that was enough for Statcounter to proclaim "Bing overtakes Yahoo!"

  However, it's not quite that simple. Statcounter's data is "based on aggregate data collected by Statcounter on a sample exceeding 4 billion page views per month collected from across the Statcounter network of more than 3 million Web sites. Stats are updated and made available every 4 hours, however are subject to quality assurance testing and revision for 7 days from publication," according to the company.

  Therefore, it will be interesting to see if those numbers change next week. Search Engine Land checked in with Comscore, Nielsen, and Hitwise, and found that over the past week in the U.S., Yahoo Search did about three times more traffic than Bing, roughly the same level where it was the week before when Microsoft-branded search consisted of Live Search and MSN Search.

  Nielsen figures show that there was indeed a surge in interest among U.S. Web surfers related to Bing on June 1, the first day it went live. But that's not all that surprising given natural curiosity surrounding something new and shiny, and Bing's surge appeared to neatly replace the corresponding drop-off in traffic to Live Search and MSN Search.

  CNET data suggests a similar story. For the first four days that Bing was live, the new search engine accounted for 2.2 percent of all session starts across the various CNET sites, including News, Reviews, Download, CNET TV, and CNET Shopper. Yahoo searches accounted for a little more than twice as many session starts, or 4.5 percent. Google, of course, was responsible for the rest. Bing did better than Yahoo on some sites, but worse on others.

  Measuring Internet market share is notoriously tricky, and five different companies could very well reach five different conclusions. But even Microsoft has said that its basic goal for Bing over the next year is to pick up 2 percentage points of share, which unless Yahoo goes completely dark will still leave it solidly in third place behind Google and Yahoo.

  

Gizmodo

• 

  Kuro Makes the Nintendo Wii So Much Classier [Image Cache]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 7:00pm EDT by matt buchanan

  This makes you want to buy a black Wii, even if you already have a white one, right? Right?? [Tiny Cartridge]

  
  
  

  
  

  

Lifehacker: Highlights

• 

  This Week's Most Popular Posts

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 7:00pm EDT by Adam Pash

  We show off our favorite Windows must-haves, pit Windows 7 against Mac OS X Leopard, and take a look at five of the best netbooks on the market.

  • Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Windows Downloads
    We feature downloads of all kinds every day at Lifehacker. Today, however, we're bundling all the best free downloads for new computer owners, re-installers, would-be geeks, or anyone who wants to save time installing the best stuff out there.
  • Windows 7 Versus Mac OS X Leopard: The Feature-by-Feature Showdown
    Now that we know Windows 7 will go on sale October 22nd and the feature-complete release candidate is available as a free download, it's time to put it through its paces: as compared to the current state of the Mac.
  • Five Best Netbooks
    If you're thinking about picking up an ultra-portable laptop, this week's Hive Five is a great spot to start your comparison shopping. These are the netbooks are those most loved by Lifehacker readers.
  • Top 10 Magnet Hacks
    They were the coolest part of elementary school science, and they're still one of the neatest way to stick things together and stir up a little homespun magic.
  • Bing Goes Live-Here's What You Can Do With It
    Bing, Microsoft's newest take on web search, is open to everyone this morning. What makes it different from its really, really well-known competition, and what unique features does it offer?
  • Clean Your Laptop to Keep It Running Smooth and Cool
    Taking time out to evacuate your PC's dust bunnies is a must for keeping your computer running in tip-top shape. If you're not the desktop sort, DIY site Instructables details how to banish dust from your laptop.
  • Use Caps Lock for Hand-Friendly Text Navigation
    After we showed you how to disable the Caps Lock key, reader Philipp wrote in with his unbelievably geeky use for the otherwise pointless key-by using it to help navigate while editing text.
  • The Serene Workspace
    Today's featured workspace has quite a spread of features: triple monitors, a wall mounted HDTV, ample desk space, and soothing lighting to boot.
  • Build a $14 Video Camera Stabilizer
    Professional video stabilizers are prohibitively expensive. You won't get $10,000 worth of stabilization out of a $14 DIY model, but you will get radically smoother video for a tiny fraction of the price.
  • Google Squared Goes Live, Formats Your Searches Into a Spreadsheet
    Google Labs today released Google Squared, which, according to the search giant, "constructs a table of facts about any search category you specify"-though some searches produce distinctly better results than others.

Gizmodo

• 

  iPhone Owners Suckered Into Brand Awareness Through Controllable Digital Posters [IPhone]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 6:40pm EDT by Sean Fallon

  Knowing that iPhone owners like myself are drawn towards any opportunity to leverage the technology, CBS Outdoor has partnered with Clusta to develop advertising signage that interacts with our phones via Wi-Fi or 3G.

  When connected, users can manipulate the content on the screen with their phone. Pinching, swiping and poking until we are fully satisfied (and are no doubt drawn to owning the upcoming lumberjack lineup of Chuck Taylor shoes). Sigh, and I'll probably do it too because I just can't turn down a good gimmick. [Campaign]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata Says He Wouldn't Use a Mac or iPhone if Apple Was a Competitor [Nintendo]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 6:20pm EDT by matt buchanan

  In the same interview he said the Wii could live for eight more years, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata remarked that if Apple and Nintendo "were in direct competition, I would not use a Mac in my presentations."

  When Dean Takahashi asked about the potential threat of free games, Iwata responded, "Because of this?" as he pulled out his iPhone.

  Talking about the overlap between it and the DSi, he said, "The features of the iPhone and the DSi may overlap. But if we look at our differences, the areas of overlap are small. If, in the future, this overlap becomes bigger to the extent we should call it direct competition, I have to be more careful. I can't bring out the iPhone during an interview anymore. Today, I don't worry about it."

  Man that's hardcore, like Bill Gates banning iPods from his house.

  So if he couldn't use a Mac or Windows PC, what kind of computer would he use then? Linux? [VentureBeat]

  
  
  

  
  

  

Webware.com

• 

  Customize PDFs online with these tools

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 6:13pm EDT by Don Reisinger

  Portable Document Formats (PDFs) are one of those file formats that can cause quite a headache. Sometimes, you want to convert them to a Word file. Other times, you want to convert the Word file to a PDF. But doing so isn't always easy.

  Luckily for you, there are a variety of online tools that can modify PDF files quickly and easily. Here are some of my favorites that work right in your browser:

  Create Adobe PDF Online does a number of things well. It can convert a variety of file formats to PDF including applications and Web pages. It can also combine multiple PDFs into a single file. When you choose to convert a file, you have the option of getting it e-mailed to you in an attachment, or simply have it load up in your browser. In either case, it takes a couple of minutes for it to deliver the finished product, making it a little slower than some of the other tools in this roundup. If you can wait though, it works quite well.

  

  Webware -- in PDF -- thanks to Create Adobe PDF Online.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
  

  Document Converter eXPress from Neevia is a feature-packed app that lets you convert files from any number of formats into a PDF. You can choose from image files like JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and BMP. You're also able to roll back the file's compatibility to be able to work with previous versions of Adobe Acrobat, dating back to version 3.0. There's also a tool to add encryption and a watermark.

  

  Document eXPress lets you go back in time with Acrobat.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
  

  Loop PDF is one of the simplest PDF conversion tools in this roundup. You have to create an account to use it, but after you do, the free tool lets you add PDFs from your computer or URLs, and combine them into a single document. You can also convert other file types into PDFs. Loop PDF easily converted files in just a few seconds for me.

  

  Loop PDF makes it quick and easy to upload files.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
  

  PDF Hammer lets you edit PDF files right in your browser. Once you pick the file you want to edit, you can upload it to PDF Hammer. The tool then allows you to perform your edits and save the revised file back on your computer. You can also merge multiple PDF files into one, add a password to the file, and update its metadata. See our write-up of PDF Hammer.

  

  PDF Hammer gives you all the directions you need to get the job done.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
  

  PDF-o-matic PDF-o-matic converts a Web page to PDF. It's not the prettiest site in this roundup, but it makes it dead simple to convert entire Web pages into PDFs. Simply input the URL of the site you want to convert in the box placed prominently in the middle of the page and PDF-o-matic will do the rest. It's quick and easy.

  

  PDF-o-matic turns CBSNews.com into a PDF.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
  

  PDF Online is actually three tools in one. It converts Word documents to PDF, PDF files to Word documents, or Web sites to PDF. When you pick which operation you want to perform, it takes just a couple minutes to get the right file format. Once you choose the file you want to convert, you'll need to assign it a name and provide your e-mail address. It then uploads your file and sends you the finished product as an attachment in an e-mail. In my experience, it took no more than a minute to get the file back.

  

  PDF Online sends you an e-mail with your attachment.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
  

  PDF to Word does what you might expect: it converts PDF files to Microsoft Word and rich text formatted documents. It's a simple tool that is one of the more convenient resources in this roundup. Simply find the PDF file you want to upload, pick .Doc or .Rtf, and input your e-mail address. In just a few minutes, you'll receive an e-mail from the service with your new file.

  

  PDF to Word gives you step-by-step instructions.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
  

  Zamzar makes it easy to upload files and have them converted to a variety of file types, including PDF, Ogg, and many more. Whether it's a file or a Web site, Zamzar can convert anything you want into practically every file type under the sun. And since it's free, it's even more attractive. I would have liked its load times to be a little faster, but with so many supported file types, it's not such a big deal.

  

  Ogg in Zamzar? You better believe it.

  (Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
  

  My top 3

  If you want to convert PDF files as soon as possible, make sure you use these sites first.

  1. Create Adobe PDF Online: There's something to be said for trusting a reputable company.

  2. Zamzar: With all those file formats, how can you go wrong?

  3. Loop PDF: Speed and a great design make Loop PDF a winner.

  

ReadWriteWeb

• 

  How Twitter's Staff Uses Twitter (And Why It Could Cause Problems)

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 6:12pm EDT

  Twitter has captured peoples' imaginations like nothing else on the web in years. It's growing fast, gets talked about all the time in other media, has fostered a huge developer community and gets used in more ways than anyone could have thought possible. It's a great tool for journalists, for students, for knitters, for marketers and for people in many other walks of life.

  What if the people working at Twitter Inc. aren't using the service the way many of its power users are, though? We've examined the posting and following habits of people on the company's staff and found that Twitter team members don't follow very many other people, they aren't following many of the top developers in their own community and they don't even Tweet very much. This could be cause for concern among power users who depend on the service as it exists now, much less for those hoping it will be developed for even more powerful use cases.

  Sponsor
  

  Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey, said this week that he hopes the service will someday be just like electricity, something everyone uses but few feel the need to talk about. To follow that analogy, if you were someone who used a heavy duty washer and dryer in your home and found out that the electric company didn't employ people who regularly used any appliances bigger than a toaster - wouldn't you be a little concerned about the long term viability of your power supply?

  Here are a few data points we've picked out, followed by a response we got from Twitter CEO, Evan Williams, when we asked about these issues.

  Twitter's employees don't twitter very much. Looking over recent messages posted by the 49 people at Twitter Inc., you'll see that the group as a whole averages about 100 to 150 messages per day, or 2 to 3 per person per day. That is very casual use. It's ok to use Twitter mostly for listening, of course, and there are lots of people for whom 2 to 3 tweets per day feels like a lot. There are many, many people for whom 2 or 3 posts per day indicate health issues or alien abduction though (they usually tweet far more than that) and shouldn't those people be concerned that no one at the company can relate to their experiences and needs? To be fair, some Twitter team members may never tweet while others tweet all day long and will stick up for the rest of us that do too. On average though, Twitter use at Twitter HQ doesn't look like our experience with Twitter.

  

  Twitter employees don't follow very many other people. Twitter staff members tend to have a huge number of followers, but they don't follow many people themselves. When we checked a few weeks ago only 2 out of 49 Twitter team members were following more than 500 people and no one was over 1k. That has since changed a little, it appears there are four staff people following 500 users and CEO @Ev is now following 1002.

  That's very unusual behavior on Twitter. Most people on staff are being followed by more than 1,000 people, many by tens or hundreds of thousands. To see how unusual that is - there are a total of 300 Twitter users who list themselves as living in California and who have more than 5,000 followers. 80% of those people are following 1k or more in return.

  There are approximately 20 people on Twitter who identify themselves as fans of knitting and who have more than 1k followers. Every one of those extra-popular knitters are following more than 500 people themselves.

  That means that while about 8% of Twitter staff (a popular group) are following 500 or more Twitter users, 100% of the popular knitters on Twitter are following 500 or more people. What's up with that? (Stats compiled with the use of Tweepz, a great Twitter search engine.)

  See also: the people most followed by Twitter staff.

  

  Twitter staff members aren't following top Twitter developers in the community. The Twitter API was the crown jewel of the company in the early pre-Oprah/Ashton days. Are the developers building on top of that API a valued part of the Twitter community though? We expected to see Twitter staff following some of those developers, but the numbers indicate that they are not.

  We made a list of 8 of the top 3rd party Twitter development projects around the web (through our own perception of market leadership and a trip to delicious.com/popular/twitter) and then we found out who worked on those projects by searching the Twitter directory Twellow. We then cross referenced the list of people followed by Twitter staff members with the developer names for companies including Tweetdeck, Tweetmeme, Tweetie, Tweetgrid, Tweetstats, Seesmic, Tipjoy and Stocktwits.

  The conclusion? 8 out of 49 people at Twitter are following someone associated with Tipjoy. It's notable that Twitter and Tipjoy share common investors. 4 out of 49 people at Twitter follow Loic Le Meur of Seesmic, but he's a Silicon Valley celeb. 4 out of 49 people at Twitter follow people working on Tweetie, the most popular Twitter app on the iPhone. One person follows members of the Tweetdeck crew, by far the most popular desktop app for using Twitter. One person! (That's Doug Williams who does.)

  None of the other leading Twitter developers we looked at were followed by more than one or two Twitter team members. That sounds to us like Twitter isn't engaged in "that special Twitter way" with its own outside developers.

  Evan Williams directed us to the @TwitterAPI account regarding this issue (and thanked us for pointing out that he wasn't following the Tweetie team yet) but @TwitterAPI is following almost no one - it's just a customer service line for developers, arguably not an active participant in the developer community.

  Why Does This Matter?

  Is it important that Twitter staff doesn't include power users as we understand the term? Dave Winer once explained quite simply why the question of how Twitter is going to make money is important, a related question:
  

  "it could turn out, when Twitter reveals its business model, that it's something we don't like. We won't know where we, the users, fit in -- until they tell us how they're going to make money. And when they tell us, we may not like it."

  So too, if Twitter staff has a different understanding of its own technology, it's liable to make decisions that negatively impact those of us who have radically different understandings. Twitter staff appears to use the service to communicate with their friends, with people they already know. That's just a part of it for many of the rest of us; people also use it for serious business, for research, for alerting the public at large about important news - for all kinds of different things.

  A difference in understanding between Twitter staff and power users may have been a big part of the recent blow-up over changes made to the public @ replies (a major issue!). Twitter's particular vision for what many of us hope will be a long-term wide-open platform could have big consequences for things like bulk data analysis and historical archiving. Things could get real messy.

  Think of the analogy above again: let's say you use large quantities of electricity, in unusual but important ways. A power company that understands and supports that when it comes down to the smallest details is important. Twitter as power is not an unreasonable analogy - it's a technology enabling a big new form of communication. A Twitter decision that gets @ replies or searches wrong for big users would be comparable to a WordPress (or Blogger.com) that gets decisions wrong concerning support for trackbacks or ping server relationships.

  What Does Twitter HQ Have to Say About This?

  We emailed Twitter about these discrepancies between the way they use the service and the way that many power users do and CEO, Evan Williams, was very gracious in responding. We'll post his reply below for readers to consider for themselves.

  "Hi, Marshall.

  You bring up some interesting questions.

  As you know, there are lots of different ways to use Twitter. Many people fall into the trap that you should follow all or most people back out of a sense of politeness or so-called engagement with the community. But the fact is, having more followers does not give you more time in the day (as much as I'd like to sell that). At a certain point, you're not actually reading any more tweets by following more people -- you're just dipping into the stream somewhat randomly and missing a whole lot of what people say.

  That's fine, but I believe people will generally get more value out of Twitter by dropping the symmetrical relationship expectation and simply curating their following list based on the information and people they want to tune in to.

  I follow almost 1,000 accounts. Among these, yes, there are celebrities (because I'm interested in how they're using Twitter as well as what some of them have to say). There are Twitter developers. (You mentioned a few I don't follow -- there are several that I do.) I try to follow all Twitter employees, some potential employees, industry leaders, friends, family, and other people I care about, people (or organizations) who make me smarter, or people who make me laugh. It's hard to know if this is the *right* set of accounts to follow. And I'm constantly curating my list. (In fact, I'm now following @atebits since you pointed it out. Account discovery is something we need to work a lot on.)

  1,000 feels to me currently to be about the right number -- but I still miss a lot. And other people (like Biz and other folks in the company) are comfortable with a much smaller number because they don't want to miss as much.

  Also, keep in mind that a following list does not reveal, necessarily, what one is paying attention to. Hundreds of people give me feedback by mentioning @ev -- which I check many times a day. I also have saved searches for "twitter" and other related terms.

  On the topic of developers, Biz and I aren't a fair gauge on whether the company is paying attention to them. We find them incredibly important, but we aren't able to pay enough attention to them, so we've hired people to do so full time. You'll find the @twitterapi account replying to developers all day long, for instance. And that's just one of our communication avenues.

  I hope this addresses your questions.

  Ev.

  That's a good response, but it sure seems to be based on a different understanding of Twitter than many power users and early adopters would offer. The idea that not following people is the best way to avoid missing things is very counter to the approach that other people take. That's what groups are for, something hugely valuable that 3rd party desktop clients offer and the Twitter web interface does not. Ev and Biz Stone don't appear to use desktop clients, though. Will they continue to offer the kind of technical support that desktop app power-users need? How about even better technical support to foster even more innovation? Those are the kinds of questions that arise when this service provider appears to be using its own service in a manner so different from the way that journalists, marketers, professional networkers and other power users use it.

  You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Sean Ammirati, Doug Coleman, Jolie O'Dell, Dana Oshiro, Steven Walling and Lidija Davis.

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

• 

  Want to Make Supercross Boring? Swap Out Dirt Bikes for Segways [Segways]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 6:00pm EDT by Adam Frucci

  What happens when you take a Segway to a supercross track? You make motocross far less exciting.

  In this video, AMA Supercross champion James Stewart rides a Segway around the supercross track at his house. It seems super easy, at least until you see a non-supercross champ try it and fail miserably. But still, this is why the only sport that's done on Segways is Segway Polo. [James Stewart]
  
  
  

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

• 

  Drinking The Kool-Aid on Liquid Planner's New Project Portals

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 5:30pm EDT

  Liquid Planner, the online project manager we first profiled last year while it was in beta, has just released a new feature called Project Portals.

  Similar to the project edition recently released by PBworks, these Portals allows for secure access to selected projects for clients and stakeholders. In addition to viewing progress on an undertaking, portal members can comment and collaborate on a project.

  Sponsor
  

  What Project Portals brings to Liquid Planner is the ability for more centralized organization and for others to get a view in to a group's work. They aren't set up by default, and the process to add them is a tad complex to do on a whim. But even so, giving clients a window in to the project completion estimates that Liquid Planner automatically generates might just be worth it.

  The core functionality of Liquid Planner, offered on a hosted subscription basis, is real-time collaborative task management and project scheduling. Work can easily be viewed, scheduled, and updated through an interface broadly divided in to a folder-based view and a timeline visualization.

  With a decent user experience and a breadth of features comparable to Basecamp, you might consider it a respectable alternative for project managers.
  

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

• 

  Project Natal Won E3, and Maybe the Motion Control Wars [Editorial]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 5:20pm EDT by Mark Wilson

  Wii MotionPlus will make the Wii better. Sony's very impressive motion control demo will be better than Wii MotionPlus. But Microsoft stole E3 and may have already won the motion control wars with the announcement of Project Natal.

  Keep in mind, the name "Natal"—referring to a city in Brazil—doesn't really do the platform's infancy any justice. It should really be called "Project Prenatal," as the peripheral's dev kits just shipped to the first set of developers this week.

  But after testing the system and getting a good look at what makes its motion tracking tick, I'm going to fanboy out a bit on the platform, as responsibly and logically as I can. Here's why I think Natal is a watershed in motion controls.

  For a Motion System It Facilitates Passive Entertainment
  People are lazy. If we can use a remote instead of changing a channel on the television five feet away, we'll use a remote. And I'd argue that if we can login to our preferred entertainment by just sitting on the couch (through Natal's facial recognition), we'll do that next. Is talking or gesturing more simple than channel surfing on a remote? Not necessarily, but...

  Voice Recognition Is Still Promising Technology
  Just because we haven't managed to perfect voice recognition doesn't mean we should write it off in every product into the future. It's getting better all the time, helped by increased processing power, and once you integrate voice into a system, it allows you to jump deeper into any tree of menus than most UIs allow. For instance, on an iPod, you have to navigate through a handful of separate screens to get to a particular artist. With voice recognition, you'd just say that artist's name.

  Natal Can Support Peripherals Too, You Stupid, Stupid Idiots
  If there was one thing I couldn't stand hearing again and again at E3, it was that Natal would force all gamers to mime controls in every game. Not true—at least, not for any reason made clear to me. Programmers would be free to include all kinds of controllers should they chose to. And if Natal's cameras are tracking 48 points on your body in 3D space, and its software can distinguish you from various non-human objects, I find it hard to believe that you couldn't hold an actual steering wheel to play a racing game, if you wanted to. Personally, I've grown a bit sick of tripping over plastic controllers in my living room, but I'm sure that third-party devs and hardware manufacturers will be happy to integrate and sell all the acrylic modular baseball bats you can stand.

  Natal Can't Cost More Than a Party's Worth of Wiimotes
  No one knows what Natal will cost. But you know what? I doubt it will cost more than $242, the amount a Wii owner needs to spend to outfit their console with controllers for four people. Microsoft was not specific as to the number of gamers supported simultaneously in Natal's multiplayer (to be fair, we haven't seen the system fully tracking wireframes beyond two people at a time). But a future in which a console's price isn't doubled by its peripherals sounds pretty appealing to us.

  Natal Tracks 48 Points, Nintendo and Sony Track 1, Maybe 2 Points
  Sony's Wiimote-like demo was the best physically-based motion tracking I'd ever seen. It was pretty freaking impressive to watch augmented reality replaced Sony's controller with a sword, whip and even bow and arrow. But even with two controllers, Sony and Nintendo's systems are really only tracking two single objects (perfectly) in space. So when you are swinging that sword with so much flourish, the human figure is just an arbitrary placeholder. How will you dodge? Or should I say, how will you feel like you're dodging? The D-pad, I can almost guarantee. OK...so how will you kick?

  Natal Would Be Too Good To Be True...In Nintendo or Sony's Hands
  Other companies could (and have) made infrared body-tracking cameras. Why are we so confident in Natal? Aside from our positive hands-on experience, Natal has Microsoft middleware/dev tools behind it. Where few third parties have wielded the Wiimote with as much finesse as Nintendo, and Sony is traditionally mute on how companies can unlock the power of their complicated hardware architecture, Microsoft launches Xbox products with the software necessary to make them work. Oh, and Microsoft is approaching Natal with 100% earnestness, calling the platform "the endgame." Sony's motion control, according to Sony, is less important.

  The Coolest Mind In Motion Controls Says It Exceeds Anything He's Seen
  Johnny Chung Lee, the same guy behind those crazy-awesome Wiimote mods, is working on the project. And he says this about it:
  

  The human tracking algorithms that the teams have developed are well ahead of the state of the art in computer vision in this domain. The sophistication and performance of the algorithms rival or exceed anything that I've seen in academic research, never mind a consumer product. At times, working on this project has felt like a miniature "Manhattan project" with developers and researchers from around the world coming together to make this happen.

  That quote's more than just hype—it's educated hype.

  Also, if you haven't seen Lee's video showing off the potential of headtracking in displays, do so right now. Why? Because I'm all but positive that headtracking is one of many unannounced features in Natal that will change the way we think of 3D, without a 3D display.

  I don't know that Natal will render the PS3's motion controls (or Nintendo's new Wii MotionPlus) completely worthless overnight. I do think there's a level of speed and accuracy (60 fps!) with which Sony will be able to duplicate a good old blunt instrument, possibly even better than Natal. (Then again, no one has actually played Sony's prototype.)

  But an idea as bold as Project Natal, in the hands of Microsoft, which has been on its game, so to speak, with the 360...yeah, it took E3 in my book. And next year, when there are some actual games to see on the platform, it damn well might take E3 again. [Project Natal on Gizmodo]

  
  
  

  
  

  

ReadWriteWeb

• 

  Sneak Peek: Push Notifications in iPhone OS 3.0

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 5:00pm EDT

  One of the most highly anticipated features coming to the new iPhone OS 3.0 is the ability for applications to deliver push notifications. Although Apple decided not to allow background processes because they drain the battery, the push notification service itself will have a persistent connection to the phone. This will permit apps to alert the user when there are any changes. These alerts will come in three varieties: badges, text alerts, and audio alerts. Text alerts appear like SMS messages, audio alerts play a sound, and badges show up on the app icon itself.

  Recently, a video of instant-messaging application BeejiveIM appeared on YouTube, giving us a sneak peek of the push notification feature in action.

  Sponsor
  

  In the video, you can see someone using the Beejive application to send instant messages to a friend. After closing the app and even turning off the screen - just like when your iPhone goes to sleep - another instant message came through. The screen lit up and the message appeared just as an SMS text would, except in this case the message title reads "BeejiveIM" which helpfully lets you know which application is sending the alert.

  After moving the slider to unlock the phone, the BeejiveIM application appears - you don't have to flip through screens to locate the app and launch it! That's a great, time-saving feature and will be especially handy for those of us whose springboards are full.

  If you watch the video through the end, you'll also get a sneak peek at the OS's cut/copy/paste feature, another of which has been desperately needed for some time.

  It's been widely speculated that the new iPhone 3.0 OS will make its official debut next week at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. We're certainly hoping that rumor is true!

  Discuss

  
  

  

Gizmodo

• 

  Nintendo Wii MotionPlus Hands On: One Year, Three Games Later [Nintendo]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 5:00pm EDT by matt buchanan

  One year after its unveiling, WiiMotion Plus is days away from locking onto Wiimotes everywhere. Let's get the bad news out of the way: Go ahead and earmark another $80 for Nintendo's coffers.

  Last year, Mark said the thrill of 1:1 motion it delivered was "greater than maybe any experience I've had on the Wii aside from Super Mario Galaxy."

  This year, I tried the three games NIntendo was showcasing with Wii MotionPlus at its booth to see how far it's come and, this close to the final product, whether it's really worth it: Wii Sports Resort, EA's Tiger Woods PGA 10 and Grand Slam Tennis. The former two come with a MotionPlus dongle bundled in.

  Grand Slam Tennis
  "What the hell do I need MotionPlus for?" was my immediate reaction. It felt no more precise than Wii Sports Tennis—it simply let the game distinguish whether I was holding the racket on the left or side of my body, so I could swing backhand and forehand style (and it didn't do that so well). The abstraction level—the conceptual distance between my actions and what happened on the screen—also didn't feel great. It certainly wasn't 1:1. Not so hopeful!

  EA's Tiger Woods PGA 10
  Aha, here we go. Tiger Woods PGA 10 delivers more on the 1:1 front—as you twist the Wiimote left or right, so does the club on screen, which translates predictably in your shots. I kept cutting the ball way to the right, since I couldn't keep my swing entirely straight. But I felt completely in control—I knew it was my fault and it was mimicking my motions perfectly. Score.

  Wii Sports Resort
  No surprise, Nintendo's own software is where it shines, where the value of MotionPlus comes through the most.

  What was surprising was where it mattered the most: In the dueling sword game, while my sword onscreen mapped perfectly to my motions with the remote (with ever so slightly perceptible lag) I destroyed my opponent with high speed wrist waggles, so in actually gameplay, MotionPlus seemingly offered nothing.

  Then I got to archery. Holding the Wiimote vertically, it becomes the bow. The nunchuck is where you grip the string. So, you start with your arm out and bring the nunchuck up to the Wiimote. You press Z to virtually pinch the string, and pull the nunchuck back toward you, away from the remote, like you'd prime a real bow. Release Z, and the arrow fires. It's a really satisfying experience, one of the Wii games where the motions don't feel totally arbitrary. It depends on the MotionPlus to relay precisely where in space you're holding the remote, so you can aim. So you need MotionPlus—a definite win.

  Finally, I played table tennis. It destroyed any doubts I had about MotionPlus. Everything was mapped precisely 1:1. If you twisted the remote left or right as you swung the paddle, the ball would respond when you smacked it with topspin or backspin. The physics, while simple, felt completely natural, along with everything else. It was fast, it was accurate, it was a blast. I felt like I was actually playing table tennis, more than I've felt like I was playing any other sport on the Wii.

  This in part due to the scale of the game—replicating ping pong 1:1 is much easier than tennis, which takes place on a different scale. But the mastery of the simulation, the fluidness means you'll never go back to Wii Sport Tennis, which feels positively last-gen by comparison. Wii Sports Resort delivers on so much of the original promise of the Wii.

  What it made clear, however, is that MotionPlus by itself doesn't necessarily guarantee the experience is going to be better, just because the remote tracking is that much more accurate. It's still totally up to the developer to make use of it in a way that's actually good—so while Red Steel 2, and maybe even the new Zelda will require MotionPlus, it doesn't mean they're necessarily going to have better motion controls or be better games. It just means they can be better. Way better, even, if the developer knows what they're doing.

  But then again, if a bunch of games require the MotionPlus, it's not like you're going to have much of a choice anyway. [Giz@E3]

  
  
  

  
  

  
• 

  Driving the $1.4 Million Protoscar Lampo Solar-Powered Electric Roadster [Solar]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 4:40pm EDT by Adam Frucci

  Our gearhead brothers over at Jalopnik recently got a chance to take the insanely expensive Protoscar Lampo, a solar-powered roadster, for a test spin.

  The Lampo will never actually be for sale because Protoscar isn't an automobile manufacturer. Instead, the prototype was designed to show just what was possible with today's technology.

  Because of that, the car doesn't quite drive like its pricetag might make you expect.
  

  Driving the Lampo is not that different from driving any other car, apart from the lack of a gearbox. The "central selector," as it's called here, allows you to choose forward drive or reverse. There's also an "E"-mode where the car will brake using mainly the torque of the electric motors, maximizing the energy recovery. This is not intended for regular braking, but works brilliantly holding speed constant or slowing down while driving downhill. The Lampo's main problem is that this is basically the only feature of the car that works as it's supposed to.

  If you spend a six-figured amount on a car, you'll want it to fire on all cylinders or whatever that translates to in EV-speak. The Lampo doesn't. In theory its twin motors and battery packs running the front and back wheels separately are good for 268 HP and 325 Lb-Ft of torque, but for "technical reasons" the power output has to be limited to somewhere in the region of 60 % during our test drive. Maximum speed is supposed to be over 125 MPH, but it's been restricted to 75 MPH. Hard acceleration is also out of the question, as that may upset the batteries and cause all sorts of problems. Problems like fire.

  Which is all fine, because again, this is a prototype. And it's still impressive that a solar car is out there. Just its existence promises that we'll see the good parts of this car in consumer autos at some point, with the bad parts left off. [Jalopnik]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Guess What? Many Of You Wasted Money on Your 1080p TV (But There's Hope) [HDTV]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 4:20pm EDT by Sean Fallon

  The other day I posed a simple question: How far do you sit from your TV? The results show that many of you are not getting all the definition out of your HDTV.

  As mentioned, the Lechner Distance chart illustrates that there are specific distances at which the human eye has the best chance of processing all of the detail that HDTV resolution has to offer. According to the data collected in the poll, many of you are probably sitting too far away, especially those of you who sprung for a 1080p set.

  Poll results in the 1080i/1080p group for sets under 40-inches indicated that a whopping of 60% of respondents were sitting over six feet from the screen. This is definitely too far away to see all of the detail.

  For sets between 40 and 52 inches, 43% of you are sitting over eight feet from the screen. Again, too far away to see it all.

  For sets over 52-inches, 35% are sitting between 8 and 10 feet, while 30% are sitting over 10 feet away. To put it in perspective, a 60-inch 1080p set should be about 8 feet (or closer) from you to get the full experience. Even a huge 70-inch 1080p TV should technically only be nine or so feet from your head!

  In case you haven't yet checked out the full chart at HDGuru, here are the optimal viewing distances—based on screen size—for some common-sized 1080p HDTVs:

  1080i/p
  • 28-inch set: 3.7 feet
  • 32-inch set: 4.2 feet
  • 37-inch set: 4.8 feet
  • 40-inch set: 5.2 feet
  • 42-inch set: 5.5 feet
  • 46-inch set: 6 feet
  • 50-inch set: 6.5 feet
  • 52-inch set: 6.8 feet
  • 60-inch set: 7.8 feet
  • 63-inch set: 8.2 feet
  • 70-inch set: 9.2 feet

  Analysis
  You will notice that we didn't go into detail about those of you who responded to the 720p portion of the test, and that's because, by and large, you are watching at about the right distance. 720p TVs can be set out farther than 1080p, yet because they're cheaper, they finds their way into smaller living rooms. Because of the interplay of these two factors, 720p sets are all the more likely to be set up at an optimal viewing distance.

  But 1080p, considered better, winds up in larger living rooms, but not always at larger sizes. The joke is, by keeping it as far off as we noted above, you are not much better off with that fancy 1080p set than you would have been, saving some cash and going with 720p.

  A final observation is that 6 to 8 feet is far and away the most common distance across all TV sizes and resolutions for you folks—we don't know what it means except that there are other factors besides Lechner distance that play a larger part in the decision to place the TV, and that most of us—Giz editors included—are unaware that we are not getting the full bang for our HDTV buck.

  The situation can be easily remedied by consulting the Lechner chart and whipping out a good old tape measure. In some situations this may not be possible given the dimensions of a room, so it is up to to decide what your priorities are—like should I move the TV to a smaller room, or go out and buy a bigger TV? [Original Survey]

  
  
  

  
  

  

Webware.com

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  Microsoft offers unworkable solution to Bing porn

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 4:02pm EDT by Larry Magid

  Tag parser: Error processing tag 'slideshow'. java.lang.NullPointerException

Gizmodo

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  Palm Pre or The New iPhone 3G? [Question Of The Day]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 4:00pm EDT by Sean Fallon

  So, let's get right down to it. Knowing what we know about the Palm Pre and the likely release the iPhone 3G 2009, which one (if any) is worth your hard earned cash?

  
  Are You Getting the Palm Pre or the iPhone 3G 2009?(poll)
  

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  Apple WWDC 2009 Live: Monday, June 8! [Wwdc 2009]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 3:40pm EDT by Jason Chen

  You've seen our rumor roundup. You're ready. Dial in the live.gizmodo.com liveblog at 10AM PT, Monday, June 8 to get up-to-the-second coverage of Apple's WWDC announcements. Check in early, since the shenanigans start hours before. [Gizmodo Liveblog]

  
  
  

  
  

  
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  The Week In iPhone Apps: My Life Is Indistinguishable From The Sims [App Store]

  Posted: June 5th, 2009, 3:20pm EDT by John Herrman

  This week, the App Store goes on a little gaming kick. Sort of like the real world. COINCIDENCE?!? Yes.

  It's not that there weren't a few cool iPhone announcements at E3—there were!—it's just that not much from LA actually made it to the App Store this week. Luckily, a few great ones did, along with some also-good, non-game stuff too.

  The Sims 3: It's not every week we get a full-fledged iPhone conversion game from a studio like EA, and it's even rarer that they're truly worth the price. Despite somewhat unwieldy controls and sometimes choppy framerates, the Sims 3 is one of the great ones. It's an honest Sims game, not a half-assed mobile version, which is probably why EA feels like they can charge $10 for it.
  

  Parachute Panic: In this simple little game, you direct pencil-drawn parachuters to a safe landing, avoiding helicopters, UFOs, and sharks (?) on the way down. The gameplay is engaging, if a little bit repetitive. The artwork looks great, and the soundtrack is fantastic, though it's painfully apparent that the developers really, really like Katamari Damacy. A dollar.
  

  Isotope: A fantastic top-down, Geometry Wars-esque shooter, Isotope wins the day for its control scheme: direct your ship with a nicely-size left d-pad, and shoot in any direction with a second d-pad, which spawns wherever you plant your right finger. The free version is worth an hour or two of play, and the pay version is just three dollars.
  

  LightSource/Graycard: These two apps provide common photography tools—just not for the iPhone's camera. Graycard is an adjustable white balance calibrator; useful if you're not satisfied with your DSLR or video camera's presets, but only marginally helpful in my testing. LightSource is much more practical—it simulates the colors of common photographic light sources. The iPhone's screen isn't that bright, so you can only use this to light still life or low-light shots. A dollar each.
  

  Up: Whoa, hey, it's another movie promo app! This one isn't really worthy of its Pixar namesake, and the game—the most prominently displayed part of the app—is terrible. That said, the extra promo material might be worth the free download, since the included clips, bios and photos give a better sense of what the film's like than all the rest of Disney's cryptic advertising campaign, combined.
  

  AppSales Mobile: How about one for all the devs out there? AppSales Mobile tracks vital app sales and download statistics, tapping into Apple's iTunes Connect reporting system. It's only fitting that such an app exists, though we shouldn't expect to see it in the App Store anytime soon. But come on, you're developers! DOWNLOAD! COMPILE! SIDELOAD! (via TUAW)
  

  This Week's App News on Giz:

  • iPhone Zips Will Let You Unzip Jeans to See Naughty Bits

  • Ideas We Like: App Store for Apple TV

  • Rumor: iPhone 3.0 To Stop Allowing You to Re-Download Apps For Free

  • Belkin's TuneCast GPS-Assisted FM Transmitter Is Like Putting a DVR I