Hey, what the hell people? I thought we were finally cool with Vista. We're all PCs, right? So why are analysts yapping about people buying used computers just for copies of Windows XP? Apparently,...
[Windows Computers Desktops Microsoft Vista Windows Vista Windows XP XP ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 1 h, 51 min and 4 secs ago | Share

Filed under: Gaming, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Wow, it seems like only a few weeks ago our very own Mike Schramm was telling us about Flick Fishing, a new fishing simulation game from Freeverse. They've let us know that version 1.2 of this great game will be available soon in the App Store (click opens iTunes - note that version 1.2 may not be available yet).

What goodies did Freeverse pack into the latest incarnation of this US$0.99 bargain? The list is extensive:

• New fish
• New locations
• Quest modes
• Fishing tournaments
• Easter eggs!

In the fishing tournaments, you can play against the iPhone, another player on the same iPhone, or against other Flick Fishing owners on the same Wi-Fi network. The old man in the lighthouse is still dispensing questionable wisdom to fishermen, and the lighthouse has a new, more energy-efficient light source than it did in the 1.0 version. The old man also has a new job as the head of the virtual aquarium, and you can make his day by catching specimens for him.

As with Flick Bowling, another title in the Freeverse Flick Sports line, Flick Fishing is a blast to play and it's cheap. Check out the gallery for fun screenshots!

Gallery: FlickFishing1.2

TUAWSneak Preview - Freeverse Flick Fishing 1.2 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

[fishing freeverse games iphone ipod touch IpodTouch update ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 2 d, 0 h, 11 min and 4 secs ago | Share

Most of Facebook's adult supervision gave the Facebook Prom a skip, we hear. But not recently hired Google execs Elliot Schrage, now Facebook's top flack, and Sheryl Sandberg, the formidable new COO...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
[Camille Hart Caption Contest Elliot Schrage Facebook Facebook Prom Google Sheryl Sandberg ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 6 months ago | Share

<iframe width="600" height="400" src="http://www.dipity.com/timeline/Mumbai_Attack/embed_tl?"></iframe>

The horrendous attacks in Mumbai, while covered extensively by mainstream news outlets, have also been credited as another landmark moment for social media sites like Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. CNN called the Mumbai attacks Twitter’s “coming of age“, while one Flickr photoset has received in excess of 70,000 views.

How to make sense of the outpouring of social media from Mumbai? Social timeline Dipity has just served up a particularly useful account tracking how events unfolded, pulling together news stories and YouTube videos and posting them along a timeline (embedded above).

Some things to try while playing with the above widget:

1. In Timeline View, click on the first bubble, then continue hitting “next event” for the easiest navigation.

2. Hit the Flipbook View, then click on the far right of the timeline to flick through the events of the most recent attack (the Mumbai timeline goes right back to 2001)

3. Click List View for the simplest representation of the data - a list of the videos in reverse chronological order

4. Click Map View to see videos plotted on a map (largely useless in the Mumbai case, but a good Dipity feature)

Dipity is imperfect, for sure: you can quickly lose your place while navigating the timeline. And yet, there is so much social media content created during world events that new ways to view and navigate that data are becoming invaluable. Perhaps even more telling: use cases like these are helping social media to shake off its stigma of being a tool for narcissists or a wasteland filled with life’s minutiae.

See also: Dipity 2.0’s Social Timeline Opens to the Public, Show Off Your Activity Stream on a Timeline with Dipity 2.0

What social media tools are you using to track the events in Mumbai?

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Beyond Twitter Search: How Are You Tracking #Mumbai?
Google Ads for Terrorism Spotted on Mumbai Stories
Slide-Wordpress, Google-DoubleClick, ScanScout, When AJAX Attacks
Millions of MySpacers Rejoice: Photobucket Videos are Back
Broadband Enterprises Partners with ScanScout for Video Overlay Ads
Marvel and DC Comics Partner to Fight Torrents
Clearspring Video Widget Ads Powered by ScanScout

[twitter Dipity mumbai SOCIAL+MEDIA ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 3 d, 22 h and 44 min ago | Share

These official Xbox 360 pants are 100 percent cotton with an elastic waistband, adjustable drawstring tie and an open fly (which is how Chen rolls). They're only 18 bucks, but I'm deathly afraid of...
[360 Accessories Clothes Microsoft Pajamas Pants Xbox Xbox 360 ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 6 months ago | Share

How many creative solutions for calendar design are out there? If you take a look around you’ll find out that most calendars are designed in a “standard” linear fashion. Calendar cards usually have the same structure: the month is designed in bold while the days are placed below within a rigid grid structure. Well, it doesn’t have to be like this. In fact, there are a number of creative approaches one can consider when designing calendars.

Indeed, designers sometimes risk unique design solutions. However, unusual design is not necessarily a good design. It is important that your calendar design reveals function and remains usable. Function is more important than the design. In fact, some designs listed below may be not that user-friendly, but they may serve as a nice starting point and give you some fresh ideas for your future designs.

This post showcases creative examples of calendar design. We have tried to include creative, visually appealing and interesting design solutions. Hopefully, everybody will find something interesting and unusual for herself or himself.

Please notice: this post is rather about information visualization than nice graphics design. Some nice calendar graphic designs have already been collected. Our goal was different: to present some creative concepts for calendar designs and calendar systems.

You may want to take a look at our related posts

• Beautiful Brochures and Booklets
• Data Visualization and Infographics
• Beautiful and Expressive Packaging Design

Beautiful and Creative Calendars

Magnetic Calendar
Eternal, easy customized magnetic calendar. With, even, 32nd day of month just in case. Month’s names abbreviated to 3 letters. Chips can be placed one over another. Special appeal of this calendar is special chips, like “Deadline”, “Arrival”, “Departure”, five “Drink Day” and one “Don’t Drink Day”. Designed by Serhiy and Igor Chebotaryov.

Tielen perpetual calendar
Designed by Sander Tielen from Netherlands.

A-Calendar
Fun little project: this calendar displays the daily hours of sunshine 30 years ago, projected onto the year 2008. Well, that was a lot of work. Designed by Sven Ellingen.

Too cool for words
It’s actually extremely simple: you just need to commit to memory that .|..|…|~|,,,|,,|, > January to December. So if you want to find out what dayname was November 20, you go to 20, move up to the November row, find … and you know immediately that it was a Tuesday! It’s incredibly fast after some practice and the nigh wordlessness of it all can be surprisingly relaxing in a bizarre, zen way. And it has some big ass type.

Perpetual Calendar
This boldly original calendar is designed to be used year after year. Simply move the two magnetic balls to mark the date and month. Made for the Museum of injection-molded plastic and magnets, it can be wall-mounted or used on a desktop. Designed by Gideon Dagan.

Folding calendar
This design makes use of a “folding” dimension in order to share a common grid of numbers among different month headers. Designed by Luis Pabon.

Color Calendar
A pretty colorful calendar concept. Each month color is associated with a month — e.g. blue stands for January and red stands for July. The last page contains contact references to designer’s portfolio. That’s an effective brochure design. Designed by Jonathan Davies.

Pulse Calendar
A circular calendar design concept from Finland. Designed by Pulse247 design agency.

Colour calendar
Colour Calendar 2008 – and every day once again gets its own special color from Switzerland’s design genius, Moritz Zwimpfer. This appealing, spiral-bound desk calendar is a bit like a Pantone book with room for notes; each day’s color brings its own scent, taste and sound, the implications of memory, the possibilities of the future. A beautiful little object, impeccably printed, for the desk or attaché case of a design aficionado, promising enjoyment long after 2008 is history. The appendix includes a calendar overview for 2008-2009, Pantone codes for the 365 colors, and blank pages for memos. Designed by Moritz Zwimpfer.

Orange diagonal with outer numbers
For one thing, orange and gray are a great combination, but more importantly it has an other-worldly weirdness that I very much appreciate it. I guess the strangeness comes from being a novel (I think) way to extend everyday two-dimensional tables with one extra dimension. It’s not a perfect extension–confusing and difficult to follow–but it’s intriguing.

Compact calendar
Designed by David Seah.

Post-It Calendar
Calendar made from post-it paper, the layout and design still needs some work (as always, any of your suggestions and thoughts are more than welcome), but here is the rought concept. The principle how it works: for each day you have a post-it note, each one has a date and a to-do list, before you leave your house, you peel todays note from the wall/frige/whatever and put it in you wallet.

Step perpetual calendar
Simplicity and good design make up this pleasing, yet space-conscious desk accessory. This two piece perpetual desk calendar is made of wood.

Dupont - Corian Calendar
Corian 40 years/40 designers was created to recognize the input designers have made and continue to make to Corian. DuPont asked 40 international designers to create a genuinely functional object - a table or desktop accessory - that reflects the ingenuity of the designers as well as the design possibilities of Corian.

Vintage Calendar System
Simplicity and good design make up this pleasing, yet space-conscious desk accessory. This two piece perpetual desk calendar is made of wood.

Calendar 2008
Calendar doesn’t have to be linear, it can be designed in a shape of a spiral. However, it is not clear how one can actually use this concept. Maybe you have some idea? Created by Krizan Design Studio.

Acrylics Calendar MUJI
This calendar features a grid of movable acrylic cubes with days of the week and numbers that can be adjusted with each month. Comes with a stand for placing on the desktop. Made of acrylic.

108time box
The calendar of 9 years. The endless time flows from the time box. 108 visual pictures consisted ofthe numerals depicted different axes.

Pershing Calendar
Even a simple calendar doesn’t need to look like a calendar. With a moderate use of white space a calendar can be seamlessly integrated in a brochure or booklet. Slick design by Manuel Dall’olio.

Circular calendar
Designed by Entropia.

Information Esthetic Calendar
The design is not meant as a sterile design object, but rather as a sort of graph paper for personal life: people are invited to invent their unique, personal visual code: they can bracket trips along perimeters, circle birthdays, arc weekly meetings, mark time and so on. Pdf-version is available.

Calendar Card
“There is a number of outstanding issues with the design, esp. how to determine day of the week for each date (I’ve tried to address this by highlighting Mondays with a white dot). Type may still be too small as well.” Designed by Ben Stevens.

Meatpixel Calendars
A calendar featuring moon phases, solar phases and another phases of plus minus 30 days. The last calendar is a simple pocket calendar for people with troubles seeing tiny stuff. The roman numbrers are the months, above is the first MONDAY and under is the last day.

Slow printings
Series of “self-printed” calendar and plant posters made by controlling the ink bleeding on the paper. Designed by Oscar Diaz.

Helvetica 2008 Calendar
The calendar is 365 perforated pages with the month, day and date in large and bold type. Each month is shown solid at the top of each page with the overlayed outlines of the 7 days of Mon - Sun, the left numbers 0 - 3 and the right 0 - 9 on each page. Each page corresponds to one day of the year with the particular day and date picked out in solid white over the outlines. Designed by EffektiveDesign agency.

Circle the date stickers
These are so fun! You’ll be organized and having fun all at the same time with these Circle the Date Stickers. Use them on your photo boxes, scrapbook pages, journals, cards - you can even use these in your pantry! Or, bring them to school or work and use them on your reports or projects that have due dates! The possibilities are endless!

Triangular Calendar
“For one thing, orange and gray are a great combination, but more importantly it has an other-worldly weirdness that I very much appreciate it. I guess the strangeness comes from being a novel (I think) way to extend everyday two-dimensional tables with one extra dimension. It’s not a perfect extension–confusing and difficult to follow — but it’s intriguing.” Who knows, maybe you could develop the idea further?

Wallpaper Calendar
Real design ninjas create a calendar wallpaper from scratch, print it out and use it as a (not desktop) wallpaper. Design by Christiaan Postma.

Last Click

Calendario Azteco
Learning good calendar design practices from fellow Aztecs.

2008 Calendar
Well, this is an ultimate design solution. No numbers, only pictures. This is defeinitely a distinctive design, but how useful is it? Designed by Cecilie Ellefsen.

Chalkboard Wall Calendar
A home office is the ideal spot for a family planner. Six weeks worth of squares in a variety of shades can accommodate several schedules. The entire wall is also coated with chalkboard paint for more memos. Start with a base coat of store-bought black chalkboard paint, then mix in varying amounts of white chalkboard paint for lighter squares.

Coffee Cup Calendar
Designed by Takeshi Nishioka. Have a smashing lunch, folks!

Resources

• Creative Calendar Designs at infosthetics.com
• Shift 2009 Calendar Competition
• Calendar Cards Flickr Design Pool
• Publikum Calendar
  Famous annual Publicum Calendar.
• Noa’s Calendar
• Stendig Calendar
  Stendig Calendar is a classic designed by Massimo Vignelli in 1966.

[Monday Inspiration calendar design infographics inspiration visualization ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 5 months ago | Share

Filed under: Software Update, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

As you've probably heard by now, Apple released the much awaited 2.2 firmware update for both the iPhone and iPod touch. This new firmware brings several impressive new features.

Downloading and Installing the new Firmware
First, you'll need to get the new version of iTunes that was released last night. Next, launch iTunes, and connect your iPhone or iPod touch. Click on your device and select the "Summary" tab and then click "Update." The update will then take a few minutes to download and install.

Maps
If you've ever used the maps application before, then you know how useful it can be. Apple has added cool new features with this update, including Google's Street View service. Street View provides a full 360º view of some streets in the US (this isn't available for every street). To try it out, enter an address in the search field. When it's found, click the head icon in the bubble that appears above the pinpoint. The Maps application has a very cool transition from the 2D map to street view.

Gallery: Maps.app in iPhone 2.2

In addition to Street View, Maps also includes public transit and walking directions. When you drop a pin to remember a location, Maps can tell you which address it is near. When you drop new pins, you will also have the option to add the address as a contact (a very nice touch, literally). When you view details for a location, or pin, you can now share this location via email. When you click "Share Location," a new email will be generated with a maps.google.com link.


Read on to learn about Safari, iTunes Store, and additional notes.

Continue reading iPhone/iPod touch update 2.2 Walkthrough

TUAWiPhone/iPod touch update 2.2 Walkthrough originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

[2.2 2.2 firmware 2.2Firmware breakingnews firmware iPhone iPod touch IpodTouch software update SoftwareUpdate upgrade ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 10 d and 1 h ago | Share

Looking for the poking box? A bathroom speaker shaped like a bloody tear? A Mir:ror? You are totes in luck because the boys who brought you Dynamism, the number-one source for cool little Japanese laptops, are pleased to offer Gizmine, the number-one source for crazy Japanese design. I'm in love, for example, with this Issey Miyake chronograph that I'd totally buy except that it's quartz.

[CrunchGear japanese ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 5 d and 11 h ago | Share

A collection of North Korean anti-US propaganda posters.

Though the dog barks, the procession moves on!

(via fp passport)

View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 3 months ago | Share

At their Team Summit Retailer Conference over the weekend, Dish Network pulled back the curtain on a new flavor their latest HD DVR, the 722s. It's got a built-in Slingbox, plus Clip + Sling and...
[722 722s Dish Dish Network DVR Gadgets HD DVR Home Entertainment Sling Sling Media Slingbox ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 6 months ago | Share

Space wallpapers have something overwhelming, mysterious and somehow enigmatic. They illustrate something which is too far away to be observed and provide us with some insights we wouldn’t be able to gain otherwise. In fact, space wallpapers can be extremely beautiful and hence extremely attractive to our eye. And this is a good reason for putting them on the desktop where “cosmic” motifs can serve as a fresh perspective in the tiresome daily routine.

This post presents over 35 space and nebula wallpapers and related resources. Some of the presented wallpapers are real photos, some of them have been created using Photoshop or Illustrator. In either case the result is pretty impressive and definitely worth a look if you are looking for some “cosmic” inspiration out there.

Just to clarify: according to Wikipedia, a nebula (from Latin: “mist”) is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen gas and plasma. It is the first stage of a star’s cycle. In these regions the formations of gas, dust and other materials ‘clump’ together to form larger masses, which attract further matter, and eventually will become big enough to form stars. The remaining materials are then believed to form planets, and other planetary system objects.

Nebula and Space Wallpapers

Pismis 24-1
Psimis 24-1 is the core of the nebula NGC 6357. Well, nice to know. Source: NASA.

Stellar Spire in the Eagle Nebula (M16)
Appearing like a winged fairy-tale creature poised on a pedestal, this object is actually a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula. The soaring tower is 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometres high, about twice the distance from our Sun to the next nearest star. Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).

Preiades Star Cluster
A set of wallpapers from Crestock: together with 12 further wallpapers, this one is available in 8 resolutions. Both wide screen and full screen versions are available for free download.

Red Square Nebula
A symmetric bipolar nebula around MWC 922. Source: Caltech Palomar Observatory. Resolution: 1680×1050.

The Horsehead Nebula
Photo by Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA/NASA).

Greg Martin
Greg Martin has some beautiful designs and illustrations related to cosmic motifs. In various resolutions.

Wallcoo Space Art
60 high-resolution wallpapers illustrating space.

The Orion Nebula
This picture shows the great nebula in the constellation of Orion the Hunter. It is probably the most spectacular of all the objects cataloged by Charles Messier and now called by their `M’ numbers. M42 had been known since the beginnings of recorded astronomy as a star, but it is so outstanding that it was first noted as an extended nebula in 1610, only a year after Galileo’s first use of the telescope. Detailed descriptions started appearing later in the seventeenth century, and it has been a popular target for anyone with a telescope ever since.

Wanderingspace Wallpapers
The growing collection of astrology-related wallpapers: planets, galaxies and space in high-resolution-wallpapers: 1440×900, 1680×1050 and 2560×1600. Wallpapers for iPhone are available as well. Please get to know them: Neptune, Sun, Jupiter.

Etherlight
“The inside of a nebula - depicting Starbirth.” Designed by antifan-real

Ethereal Bloom
Designed by sumopiggy.

M16 - Eagle Nebula Close
“Appearing like a winged fairy-tale creature poised on a pedestal, this object is actually a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula”.

Nebulae Wallpaper
“I tried to combine two of my favorited styles - the detailed one with realistic planet surfaces and the colorful nebulae “WTF?” style. Here is the outcome.” Available in 1024×768, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1600×1200, 1680×1050.

Pierced Heaven
Designed by Yatsuzuka.

Between Realms
“An odd silence resumes after the inexplicable shattering of the universal space continuum; it is during this odd silence, after the shock felt throughout the entire universe, that it becomes evident that a rift has formed, the two realms collaborate in a splash of light & colour, like a dream & yet so real are the liquescent forms of light - it is unlike anything of this realm, as if a pure bliss is breaking through the darkness” Created by j4m3sb0nd.

Reconnaissance
by dilekt

Exotica
Designed by *SamODJ 1680×1050 px

Sky Wallpapers

Fierce Skies
Available in the resolution 1600×1200 px.

While you were sleeping
“This is more of a photoshop comp than anything. The clouds were taken at 2pm on a bright sunny day”. Availabe in high resolution (1200×750), widescreen wallpaper (1680×1050), widescreen wallpaper (1920×1200). Designed by Matt Wilcox.

Wishing I could fly
1280×1024 px. Designed by s3vendays.

Electrical Storm
1600×1200 px.

Peacekeeper Missile Testing

“LG-118A Peacekeeper missile system being tested at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands”

Atardecer

Clouds III
Designed by emailandthings

Coeldo pack
Resolutions: 1920×1200, 1680×1050, 1600×1200 and 1280×1024px. Designed by Uribaani.

Clouds
by EAMejia. Available in 2560×1600 and 1920×1200px.

Shiny Sky
“Taken in Saint-Basile, Québec, Canada with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi. I used a technique called HDR to get the maximum luminance into the picture. I also applied a tone mapping to get rich colors.”

City of Clouds: Brooklyn
Designed by webby85

Aurora Sky
Available in resolutions 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×1024, 1600×1200, 1920×1440, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050 and 1920×1200.

The City of Clouds
Designed by Uribaani. Resolutions: 1920×1200, 1680×1050, 1600×1200 and 1280×1024.

Out with the Lion, In with the Lamb
“This was the scene after one of the hardest hitting storms I’ve ever been in.”

Wallpapers by StudioTwentyEight (kol)
A surrealistic waterfall scene. Resolutions: 1280×1024, 1600×1200, 1920×1200.

Sources and Resources

• Space wallpapers
  offers the highest quality and largest selection of free space wallpaper and space backgrounds for your desktop and Playstation Portable.
• NASA Wallpapers
  NASA site has collections of real stars and nebulas wallpapers in various resolutions.
• Inspiration: Stars, Planets and Galaxies

Ulises E. is the writer of el50.com (in Spanish), a weblog about design, music, internet and some cool stuff.

[Graphics space wallpapers ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 5 months ago | Share

This is what I was talking about yesterday.

"They should put their reporters in Detroit, Columbus, Indianapolis, where ever there are elements of the auto industry, and explain what will happen to these Americans when GM, Ford and Chrysler shut down, even if it's just for a few months. Really show us what the decision is. For once, scare us with the truth, instead of telling the usual bedtime story. That would be the honorable journalistic thing to do, but of course they're not doing it."

Well, someone is doing it. Here's an example.



Instead of sitting in a studio and asking questions based on incorrect premises, that somehow the collapse of the auto industry is a United States thing not happening because the world economy has collapsed, the NY Times sent a reporter and a photographer to Long Beach to describe the scene at the point where imported cars enter the US market.

"Gleaming new Mercedes cars roll one by one out of a huge container ship here and onto a pier. Ordinarily the cars would be loaded on trucks within hours, destined for dealerships around the country. But these are not ordinary times."



View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 12 d and 9 h ago | Share

For the most part, if you want to use a browser other than Safari as your default, Mac OS X makes it easy. Safari’s preference window lets you pick any browser as your default, and most other Mac browsers let you make this choice in their prefs windows, too — so you don’t have to use Safari to specify, say, Camino or OmniWeb as your default.1

Once you make this choice, everything pretty much works as you’d expect. Click a link in any other app and it’ll open the browser you’ve selected as your default. A notable and annoying exception, though, is the Cocoa text system’s “Search in Google” contextual menu item. This is a contextual menu command that appears system-wide. If you Control-click on a word or a range of selected text and choose “Search in Google”, the search is performed in Safari, regardless whether it’s your preferred browser (or even whether it’s already running).

Cocoa’s contextual menu “Search in Google” command, as currently implemented, does hook specifically into Safari’s Google Search feature: the terms you search for appear in the Google Search field in Safari’s toolbar. A simpler way to implement the feature would be to construct a Google search URL containing the terms and open that URL in the default browser. This would make the feature work equally well in all browsers — but would deprive Apple of a few pennies in Google affiliate lucre for each such search.

I use this command somewhat frequently, and whenever I switch to something other than Safari as my default browser, it’s the only tie-in to Safari that really irks me.2

1. Not Firefox, though. ↩

2. There are other Safari-specific tie-ins, like the way iTunes syncs Safari bookmarks, and only Safari bookmarks, with an iPhone. But that one strikes me as reasonable; I don’t expect Apple to parse other browsers’ file formats (although they do parse IE’s on Windows). ↩

View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 7 months ago | Share

MoreCowbell.dj is a little Flash app that take in any MP3, analyses it, and adds rhythmic cowbell and Chritopher Walken samples, thus vastly improving it. More Cowbell.dj (via Waxy)

[Audio Copyfight Funny Happy Mutants music ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 82 d ago | Share

A compilation of "that's what she said" jokes from The Office. I'm retroactively embarrassed for my non-ironic use of this phrase the other day. Sorry, friends. (via fimoculous)

View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 6 months ago | Share

Personally, I have never been big into phone cases. They can be bulky, flimsy, and having one clipped to your belt makes most people look like a tool. I prefer to let them hang out naked and...
[Apple Battlemodo Case-mate Cases Cellphones Feature iPhone iphone cases iShield ishield mirror ivyskin OtterBox otterbox defender Pacific Rim Top xylo t2 ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 6 months ago | Share

There are plenty of ways to embed documents into Web pages, from Scribd to DocStoc. But when it comes to replicating the look and feel of a magazine or book, most digital efforts fall flat. (Olive Software comes to mind—we used that over at Time Inc. to create Web-viewable versions of the magazines, but it was too slow and required a separate client download. Conde Nast’s Flip also takes forever—Mike covered it here.) But our man in France, Ouriel Ohayon, just sent me a link to Issuu, a company that does it right. Issuu lets you upload a PDF and then flip through it seamlessly on a dedicated Webpage or in a small embedded widget (see below). The pages flip fast, and you get a good sense of the layout, even at a small scale. Click on the widget and it takes you to the full page.

Unfortunately, Ohayon also showed Robert Scoble, who is sitting right next to him at a conference in Switzerland and has already posted his thoughts. Beating all of us to the punch, however, is Webware, who discovered Issue two days ago. I am not sure what took us all so long. The company has been around since 2006 and is based in Denmark.

Scribd Loading information about Scribd… Docstoc Loading information about Docstoc…

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

[Company & Product Profiles Issuu ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 9 months ago | Share

Carabiners—D-shaped rings with spring-loaded clips that climbers use—have become more popular for everyday use, like clipping keys, water bottles, or even USB drives to your backpack or...
[Gadgets Stuff we like ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 6 months ago | Share

Yesterday I visited two businesses: one exciting, Sliderocket, and one boring, Bluepulse.

First, about Sliderocket, it’s a new presentation tool. Here is a video I shot with my cell phone yesterday with the CEO. I’ve been using it for my presentations and it’s a TON better than either Microsoft’s PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote for giving presentations. We filmed a demo yesterday that’ll be on FastCompany.tv in June. This thing is sexy, visual, and well integrated into Web services like Flickr and Salesforce. In other words, it’ll get lots of hype from tech blogging journalists like you read over on TechCrunch.

But the second, BluePulse? You probably haven’t heard of them, but they have customers in 198 countries, have hundreds of millions of messages flying around their social network (which is only for users who have mobile phones) and have been grabbing up Silicon Valley’s top talent — they just got Christopher Nguyen who was director of engineering at Google. You can see part of that team in the video I filmed yesterday.

In a future interview that’ll be up on FastCompany.tv in a few weeks where we met former Google executive (this is the same office where YouTube started, by the way).

So, which one is more likely to succeed?

I have to bet on Bluepulse. Here’s why:

1. Market. The cell phone market is growing much faster than the market for PCs or Macs.
2. Competition. Bluepulse wins here big time. Why? Well, let’s assume you’re a kid in India and you get a new cell phone. Do you know of a social network for that cell phone? No. So, BluePulse isn’t having to convince you not to use an entrenched competitor. But look at Sliderocket. If that same kid gets a new laptop he’s probably heard of Microsoft Office and his friends probably use PowerPoint and so, now you’ll have to convince him that Sliderocket, something he hasn’t heard of, is better. That’s a LOT tougher of a job than Bluepulse has ahead of it.
3. Monetization. Bluepulse is building up HUGE engaged audiences that it knows a LOT about. Think about the things that a social network learns about you. Heck, start with just your location. This is stuff that advertisers will pay big bucks for. Someone using a presentation tool? You’ve gotta charge them cause advertising won’t fly in that business model. That’s a LOT tougher of a business to build.
4. Usecases. One thing is going to be working against Sliderocket for at least a few months: Powerpoint works offline. Now, Sliderocket has an interesting answer there (they are building an offline client with Adobe’s AIR technology) but that isn’t finished yet, so when Sliderocket comes out in July you won’t be able to develop presentations in a plane (you will be able to play them, but the real offline client will come later).

So, add all these things up and you’ll see that the more boring Bluepulse is far more likely to build a world-class business that we all talk about than Sliderocket does.

That all said, Sliderocket is one hell of a great product and I can’t wait to show you that sexy demo.

What do you think? Which business would you rather own?

[technology entrepreneur mobile PowerPoint presentation Social Network tool Tools ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 6 months ago | Share

Google’s search-by-voice application is finally available on the App Store. To grab it, visit this link (the page still shows the old version, but you’ll download the new one). The application was originally announced on Friday, leading to widespread excitement that quickly turned to unrest as the application failed to make its debut on the App Store. The delay led to criticism of Apple’s App Store approval process, which apparently leaves all developers in the dark - even Google.

The app allows users to speak into their iPhones to submit queries to Google’s search engine, which can serve up both standard search results as well as movie showtimes, addresses, and other handy information. Voice detection seems to work pretty well, though it sometimes takes a few tries with long phrases and names (I was able to correctly search for the “answer to life, the universe, and everything” after only two tries). And when it works, it’s really cool - I’ll probably be using it on a daily basis.

My biggest issue with the app is that there is apparently no way to use the voice detection feature to call a contact, despite the fact that you can search through contacts using manual text entry. One of my biggest gripes about the iPhone is that there’s no way to make a hands-free call, and while this would still require at least one buttonpress, it would be an improvement. A free application called Say Who offers voice dialing on the iPhone, but it would have been nice to see the functionality integrated into the Google app.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

[Company & Product Profiles Apple google iPhone ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 13 d and 19 h ago | Share

In November 2007, we listed and reviewed 10 promising Semantic Web apps. A lot can happen in one year on the Internet, so we thought we'd check back in with each of the 10 products and see how they're progressing. <script type="text/javascript">digg_url = 'http://digg.com/software/10_Semantic_Apps_to_Watch_One_Year_Later';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'normal';</script><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>What's changed over the past year and what are these companies working on now? The products are, in no particular order: Freebase, Powerset, Twine, AdaptiveBlue, Hakia, Talis, TrueKnowledge, TripIt, Calais (was ClearForest), Spock.

In our next post in this series, we're going to publish a completely new list of Semantic apps to watch! That's right, 10 more Semantic apps. Let us know your suggestions in the comments.

Sponsor

Freebase

Freebase is an open, semantically marked up database of information. It looks similar to Wikipedia, but Freebase is all about structured data and what you can do with it.

Freebase has been one of the more hyped companies in Semantic Web, leading to some skepticism that the product is too much like Wikipedia and offers nothing much new. In May '08, we attempted to dispel the Freebase skepticism. Our conclusion was that the structured database, API, creative commons licensing - among other things - all added up to a richer product than Wikipedia. Then in July, we reported that Freebase was about to hit 4 million topics in its collection - which at the time was 60% more than the English Wikipedia.

However, we noted some concerns with Freebase - "big gaps in the data" along with usability issues. In a follow-up article in August, we covered an interesting tool for browsing Freebase, called Freebase Parallax. Unfortunately, when we tried out a number of searches in Parallax, very few subjects were well populated.

RWW verdict one year later: still lots of work to do for Freebase, in terms of usability and useful data.

Calais (was ClearForest)

When we did our round-up one year ago, ClearForest had been recently acquired by Reuters and at that point it had a Web Service and a Firefox extension. What a change a year brings! ClearForest went on to release Calais, a toolkit of products that enable users to incorporate semantic functionality within their blog, content management system, website or application.

Since launching the Open Calais API early this year, over 6,000 developers have registered with it and the service is doing more than 1 million transactions a day. We wrote about the launch of Calais' easiest-to-use service yet, called SemanticProxy, at the end of September. Version 3.0 was released earlier this month and version 4 is expected by January 09.

RWW verdict one year later: Calais has really blossomed over the past year and it is one of the most promising Semantic services around today. We can't wait to see what's next!

Powerset

Powerset (see our initial coverage here and here) is a natural language search engine. It's fair to say that Powerset has had a great 2008, having been acquired by Microsoft in July this year.

At the time of the acquisition, Powerset said that it needed a bigger partner to expand its product beyond its current state of only searching Wikipedia - something we had speculated about when the rumors of the acquisition first appeared. In its own statement, Microsoft stressed how useful Powerset's technology will be for improving Microsoft's own search products and to "take Search to the next level." In our analysis of the deal, we noted that it was a "bold play requiring exact execution" by Microsoft. We thought it was doubtful that Microsoft bought the company just to enhance Live Search - although in September Microsoft did just that. Possibly the plan is to replicate the Wikipedia solution, then incorporate Powerset into Internet Explorer.

RWW verdict one year later: successful acquisition for Powerset, bold one for the acquirer Microsoft. Can't wait to see what Microsoft does with it!

Twine

Definitely one of the more controversial of the Semantic apps we've covered on ReadWriteWeb. At launch last year, Twine claimed to be the first mainstream Semantic Web app. The company's founder Nova Spivack hasn't been shy to talk the product up even more over the past year. Version 1.0 of Twine was launched late October. At that time Spivack told us that Twine had 500,000 unique visitors in its closed beta, of which 50,000 are currently "active" (a user who visits the Twine site at least once per month). There were 20,000 'twines' at that point, with 1 million pieces of content having been added to the system.

Those statistics are OK for a relatively young beta, however Twine has also been beset by usability and performance issues in its beta period. In March we summed it up with a post entitled: Twine Disappoints After Semantic Web Hype.

RWW verdict one year later: still far from mainstream and reviews have been disappointing user experience has been an issue over the past year. Struggling to find its niche.

Update: Some people have pointed out in comments and via email that many reviews of Twine have been positive. We agree and so we've struck out that line and clarified our position - that user experience has been the main issue.

Hakia

Hakia is a search engine focusing on natural language processing methods to try and deliver 'meaningful' search results. Hakia attempts to analyze the concept of a search query, in particular by doing sentence analysis. Over the past year Hakia has been busy extending its reach - licensing its proprietary OntoSem technology to other companies in March and announcing a Semantic API in June. It also released a social network of sorts, called h-Club.

RWW verdict one year later: Hakia has made good progress getting its technology into the hands of third parties. It's a steep challenge taking on Google though.

TripIt

Tripit is an app that manages your travel planning. With TripIt, you forward incoming bookings to plans@tripit.com and the system manages the rest.

Over the past year TripIt has continued to iterate on its feature set - introducing LinkedIn integration, better mobile functionality, more social networking features, and other goodies.

RWW verdict one year later: TripIt is one of those apps that amazes people when they first use it. Its challenge now is to grab a foothold among mainstream users.

AdaptiveBlue

Disclosure: AdaptiveBlue is a current RWW sponsor and its founder Alex Iskold is a feature writer at RWW.

AdaptiveBlue are makers of the Firefox plugin, BlueOrganizer. As we wrote in January this year, the basic idea behind BlueOrganizer is that it gives you added information about webpages you visit and offers useful links based on the subject matter.

Over the past year the company has been working on a new product, called Glue. Launched last month, Glue is a more social networking oriented version of BlueOrganizer - it connects you to your friends based around things like books, music, movies, stars, artists, stocks, wine, restaurants, and more.

RWW verdict one year later: the company has diversified smartly, but its challenge is to go beyond the 'cool factor' and get more people using the products repeatedly.

TrueKnowledge

When we covered UK semantic search engine TrueKnowledge last year, it was just after it had unveiled a demo of its private beta. Back then it reminded us of the also unlaunched (at that time) Powerset, but it was also reminiscent of Ask.com "smart answers". TrueKnowledge combines natural language analysis, an internal knowledge base and external databases to offer immediate answers to various questions.

One year later, TrueKnowledge is still in private beta - and this author got an error message when I submitted my email to apply to get into the beta. However there are signs of public life in the company blog, which is fairly active. Also the company launched a beta app this month, called Quiz Bot - a natural language search service that likely "won't be able to answer your question, but by asking us you are helping improve the service."

RWW verdict one year later: The jury is still out. It looks like a public beta is still some way off, which puts pressure on it to be extremely good when it eventually does launch.

Talis

Talis is a 40-year old UK software company which has created a semantic web application platform. Over the past year, Talis has continued to make a name for itself as an evangelist for the Semantic Web, most notably through the blogging and podcasting activities of Paul Miller. Talis also produces a great magazine for Semantic Web, called Nodalities, and has an active company blog under the same name. As for the company's products, the platform seems to be iterating nicely and is being used in niche library and government applications.

RWW verdict one year later: Talis has successfully positioned itself as an authority on Semantic Web in the blogosphere, which we love because it's a great way to keep track of Semantic Web trends!

Spock

Spock is a people search engine that got a lot of buzz when it launched. Alex Iskold went so far as to call it "one of the best vertical semantic search engines built so far."

So how has it fared over the past year? Apparently its traffic has been very good. However, as Sarah Perez recently wrote on this blog, the "excitement has worn off." Instead of searching for people on Spock or other similar people search engines, wrote Sarah, most users simply turn to old standbys like Facebook or LinkedIn. To get their mojo back again (and no doubt some money in the bank), Spock has plans to launch a new subscriber-only service in January. It will be full-on public record search tool, which people can subscribe to for $1.99 per month.

RWW verdict one year later: despite claims of great traffic growth, it's clear that Spock as a consumer search engine hasn't quite panned out. Can it re-invent itself as a subscription-based specialist service? Check back in another year.

Conclusion

We're pleased to see that all 10 of the products we profiled one year ago are still very much alive and kicking. One had a great acquisition result (Powerset), at least one has grown into a thriving developer ecosystem (Calais), some are experimenting with new services (AdaptiveBlue, Spock, Hakia), some are continuing to pump out new features and/or apps (TripIt, Talis). However, it's also clear that some are still trying to find their feet (Freebase, Twine, TrueKnowledge).

In our next post in this series, we'll profile 10 more Semantic Apps to watch! Please tell us in the comments which ones have caught your eye recently.

Discuss

[Analysis ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 13 d and 18 h ago | Share

In order to explain serial computation vs. parallel computation, the Mythbusters guys pit two paintball guns against each other in a art contest...one shoots one ball at a time and the other very much doesn't. (thx, steve)

View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 3 months ago | Share

For the guy who wants a Vudu system but demands a rack-mountable setup, the Vudu XL2 is here to foot the bill in Armani boots. It's essentially a Vudu XL in a premium aluminum package, storing a...
[Vudu Internet streaming Movies Streaming Vudu xl2 Xl2 ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 13 d and 17 h ago | Share

Filed under: Cellphones

ASUS' P565 has been pretty much unofficial until now, though we did see some alleged photos and specs of the device not terribly long ago. The phone has just been officially listed on the ASUS site, however, and we've got a quick rundown of its stats (which are pretty much exactly what we'd seen before). The Glide UI-sporting, HSDPA smartphone -- which ASUS claims is the "fastest business PDA phone" in the world -- runs Windows Mobile 6.1, has an 800MHz Marvell CPU, a 2.8-inch VGA touchscreen, 256MB flash memory and 128MB of DDR SDRAM, 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.0, and a microSD slot with SDHC support. Like we said, none of this is a big surprise, but it's the first official look we've had at the handset, though we're still waiting on word about pricing and availability.

[Via wmpoweruser]

800MHz CPU-packing P565 handset appears on ASUS site originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

[asus asus p565 AsusP565 glide glide ui GlideUi smartphone windows mobile 6.1 WindowsMobile6.1 ]
View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 14 d and 18 h ago | Share

<object width="425" height="344"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Zd8f9Zqap6U&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1"/> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Zd8f9Zqap6U&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/> </object>

Your Weekly Address from the President-Elect (YouTube, in addition to radio, which is a new thing.) NOTE TO THE PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION TEAM: This would be much better with Yakety Sax.

View original post | Add to del.icio.us| Updated 15 d and 3 h ago | Share