Archive for August, 2007
Technorati cuts staff, CEO exits
Posted by Joe on August 16, 2007 · Comments Off
According to a post on his blog, David Sifry has vacated the CEO position of Technorati and will become chairman of the board. In addition, 8 employees have been terminated to cut expenses. It sounds as if the blog search site is being dressed up to attract a buyer.
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News Flash: WikiPedia Gets Edited By Random Users
Posted by Joe on August 16, 2007 · Comments Off
It’s apparently breaking news that people edit an encyclopedia that people are supposed to edit:
Church of Scientology computers have been used to excise criticism of the church from Wikipedia.
A CBS computer was used to falsely claim that CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer’s real name is Irving Federman. This “fact” was added to Blitzer’s Wikipedia biography.
And folks from The New York Times, Fox News, the FBI, the CIA and many other groups and organizations have also been busy cutting and pasting their version of Wikipedia history.
Umm, it’s not a flaw — [...]
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Netflix Cutting Prices Again
Posted by Joe on August 16, 2007 · Comments Off
Gizmodo is reporting that Netflix just lowered prices again, with the 3 at a time plan now costing just $15.99 a month. The web site still shows this plan at $16.99, and that’s what I was just charged for another month of rentals yesterday. In fact, the AP is reporting that the new pricing is just just a test, and only being offered to some members:
“Netflix is always testing prices. Some members, a small fraction of our total 6.7 million members, have been notified of a lower price on some of their plans. It is not across the board and it was not announced by the company. It is simply [...]
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Best. Game. Ever.
Posted by Joe on August 15, 2007 · Comments Off
Remember that famous Atari 2600 game, Surflizard? Well, there should have been such a game. And the label would have looked like this:
Make your own Atari 2600 game labels at labelmaker2600.com.
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Internet Cafes Provide Haven For Homeless
Posted by Joe on August 15, 2007 · Comments Off
Living in a net cafe:
Japan is launching its first study into so-called “Net cafe refugees,” young people who live in all-night lounges and are feared to become a new class of working poor, an official said Wednesday.
Japan’s omnipresent net cafes — equipped with sofas, drinks, computers and comic books — are designed for businessmen who want to slack off for a few hours or for commuters who missed their last trains home.
But Japan has been alarmed by growing reports of young day labourers who are staying in round-the-clock cafes rather than renting and living in apartments. [...]
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Quicken To Go Online
Posted by Joe on August 15, 2007 · Comments Off
This will change the online personal finance space:
Intuit is planning to release a Web-based edition of its leading personal finance application this winter, possibly early in 2008. Quicken Online marks a key transition for a company that has made its bones selling new versions of its boxed software each year.
Webware reports that Quicken will be open to Beta testers sometime in September, with a likely release sometime next year.
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Digg — The First 10 Posts
Posted by Joe on August 15, 2007 · Comments Off
Patrick Altoft on BlogStorm looks back in time at the first 10 Digg Posts, using the Digg API and the story id parameter. Number one was “CherryOS delayed till Q1 of 2005.” Number 5 was a shameless affiliate link to some speakers on Amazon by Digg founder Kevin Rose. Interesting stuff.
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Facebook Comes To iPhone
Posted by Joe on August 15, 2007 · Comments Off
Facebook has launched an impressive iPhone-friendly version of the site at http://iphone.facebook.com/. Now iPhone users can keep track of Robert Scoble on the go.
[via Mashable]
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Steampunk Not Coming To A Store Near You
Posted by Joe on August 14, 2007 · Comments Off
We assume this post at Sneaky Business about Steampunk as a new design trend computer manufacturers are gearing up for is satire, although CrunchGear either doesn’t get it or is playing along.
Either way, the Wall Street Journal video that inspired the Sneaky Business post is awesome:
I wish computer makers would start cranking out that sort of stuff, but don’t hold your breath.
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Insert Quarter To Continue
Posted by Joe on August 14, 2007 · Comments Off
Are we living in a computer simulation?
This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,†in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.
You couldn’t, as in “The Matrix,†unplug your brain and escape from your vat to see the physical world. You couldn’t see through [...]
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MySpace for YourPet
Posted by Joe on August 14, 2007 · Comments Off
Think of it as the feline Facebook. FunEPets is a social networking site for pets and pet owners that lets users:
* Upload and share photos and videos
* Relax and enjoy videos uploaded by other users
* Browse thousands of funny videos and animations uploaded by other members
* Find, join and create groups to meet and connect with people with similar interests worldwide
* Integrate Funepets videos with your website using video embeds
Why? Why not!
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Shorpy, The Really Old Photo Blog
Posted by Joe on August 14, 2007 · Comments Off
Shorpy bills itself as “The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog”, and features awesome high-quality b&w photos from around the turn of the last century (give or take 50 years), like this one from 1920 (which looks suspiciously like an early Segway prototype — how long was that thing in development?):
If you’re a fan of old b&w photography, this site is just amazing.
www.shorpy.com
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Simple Method To Unlock iPhone
Posted by Joe on August 14, 2007 · Comments Off
Gizmodo is reporting a new method to unlock the iPhone using only an $80 blank sim card:
The hackers are claiming that this method doesn’t use card readers and it doesn’t depend on your previous card version either, so it doesn’t matter if it is a V1, V2 or V3. All of them will work fine.
While the Turbo SIM-based method is not software-only, it seems simple and cheap enough for anyone to follow.
The iPhone itself is used to modify the blank card, so no extra hardware is needed.
Visit Gizmodo for more details.
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300 Page iPhone Bill
Posted by Joe on August 13, 2007 · Comments Off
Even with an unlimited data/texting plan, AT&T itemizes each data transfer on its monthly bill. That explains why Justine, who really likes to text, got a 300 page phone bill. Her recommendation? — “Use e-billing – Save trees and lives.”
[via Engadget]
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Trick Out Your Palm OS Treo
Posted by Joe on August 13, 2007 · Comments Off
CrunchGear offers up some good advice for tricking out your Palm OS Treo, including popular launchers, games, a photo viewer replacement and more. Nothing experienced Treonauts don’t already know, but a good overview. Check it out.
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Winer Splits From TechCruch 20
Posted by Joe on August 13, 2007 · Comments Off
Dave Winer has resigned as an adviser to the TechCrunch 20 conference after the dust up with Jason Calacanis at Gnomedex last week. Winer has also offered an apology to Jason for interrupting his speech at Gnomedex (of course, he then goes on to question Jason’s motives for calling him on his bad behavior). The odd thing about this whole episode to me is that Winer seems to insists that every Business model that he’s exposed to must have the potential to benefit him and his cronies financially. He calls it a win-win. That’s great, but why can’t a business occasionally [...]
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Hotmail Goes to 5GB
Posted by Joe on August 13, 2007 · Comments Off
Microsoft announced today that free users of Windows Live Hotmail will be getting 5 GB of storage, while paid users will be bumped up to 10 GB of storage. You’ll also be able to turn of the annoying “Today” page and go directly to your inbox when you log in. For a complete list of changes, which will be rolled out over the next few weeks, visit Microsoft’s Mailcall blog.
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Newsflash: iPhone Thumb Guy Not Real
Posted by Joe on August 13, 2007 · Comments Off
The guy who surgically altered his thumbs to improve his iPhone user experience doesn’t exist. It was satire (and really good satire, at that).
Strangely, while many readers have grasped that “Surgically alters thumbs” represents satirical social commentary, many on the internet, alas, have not.
Careful reading of the piece makes it clear to any critical consumer of information that the piece is pure humor and not news or reported as fact.
Among the points of the piece: that U.S. society accepts plastic surgery and decorative deformation of the human body for vanity, but not [...]
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100+ Local Mobile News Portals Launched
Posted by Joe on August 13, 2007 · Comments Off
Gannet Co. Inc. has launched over 100 mobile portals tied to its local broadcast and newspaper sites:
The sites—covering 84 daily newspapers, 19 local broadcast Web sites and USA Today—will feature news, sports, weather and other local information, and will be free to access (provided users have unlimited mobile Internet surfing plans in their contracts). The content will be produced by Gannet’s Information Centers, hubs that generate content used across different Gannet media outlets (from print and television to Internet and mobile).
The new sites can be accessed in one [...]
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Joost Is Being Strangled By American Broadband
Posted by Joe on August 13, 2007 · Comments Off
NewTeeVee reports that the sorry state of “broadband” in America may be a barrier to the success of TV-over-IP sites like Joost, not to mention true IPTV players like AT&T. I tend to agree. What’s being done now is impressive, but we need dramatic increases in network speed to make all this amazing stuff work as well as it should. A relative lack of competition among service providers in the U.S. is a big part of the problem, and it probably won’t get better any time soon.
UPDTE: Britain faces similar problems, with ISP’s trying to extract money from the [...]
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StarOffice Joins Google Pack
Posted by Joe on August 12, 2007 · Comments Off
StarOffice, Sun Microsystem’s $69.95 office suite that competes with Microsoft Office, is available for free as an option with Google Pack. StarOffice shares a code base with the free OpenOffice.org suite, but includes some proprietary components (clip art, fonts, etc.). At 143MB, it’s a big download, but StarOffice generally compares favorably to Microsoft Office in reviews. Here’s a recent eWeek review of StarOffice 8.
Here’s the list of free software that can currently be downloaded with Google Pack:
* Google Earth
* Norton Security Scan
* Google Desktop
[...]
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Widgets For The Web
Posted by Joe on August 12, 2007 · Comments Off
Widgetbox is a site offering hundreds of widgets that can be added to any web site. Choose from games, videos, news content, weather, and much more. Widgets are free to use, and installation is simple.
EXAMPLES…
Here’s a widget featuring popular Funny or Die videos:
Get great free widgets at Widgetbox!
And here’s a Pac-Man widget:
Get great free widgets at Widgetbox!
Filed in: SL
Acer Laptop Under $400
Posted by Joe on August 11, 2007 · Comments Off
Our area Wal Mart has Acer laptops in stock for just under $400. I didn’t get the model number, but the specs matched this one. If you need a cheap laptop for basic computing, check your local Wal Mart.
The specs:
- 14.1″ Acer CrystalBrite LCD
- Intel Celeron M processor 420
- 80 GB hard drive
- 512 MB of DDR2
- DVD Player/CD Burner Combo Drive
- 5-in-1 card reader
- 802.11b / 802.11g Wi-Fi
Filed in: SL
AT&T Allows Tethering — For A Price
Posted by Joe on August 11, 2007 · Comments Off
Kevin at JKOnTheRun notes that tethering is now specifically mentioned as prohibited in the latest AT&T Wireless brochure for all data plans. He wonders if heavy-handed enforcement is next. It’s a good question — a lot of people have been using their phones as ad-hoc wireless modems for their laptops for several years now.
It looks like AT&T has finally decided to squeeze some extra money out of those folks. I noticed a few days ago that AT&T now lists data plans which allow tethering, starting at $84.99 per month for unlimited data transfer (PDA Personal Max Unlimited [...]
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Google Video Pulls Plug On Legally Purchased Vids
Google Video is ending it’s DTO/DTR (download to own/rent) video program effective August 15. Not only will they stop selling videos by that date, but previously purchased videos will no longer be playable. So hurry up and watch all those Charlie Rose videos you “bought” for 99 cents apiece.
At least Google is refunding money for video purchases, in the form of Google Checkout bonuses good at certain online retailers (Google should have called them GoogleBucks).
Read more at NewTeeVee.
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