Nokia's BH-803, BH-602, and BH-604 Bluetooth cans
Monday, June 18, 2007
Friday, June 15, 2007
Late with your car payment? ON TIME system equipped cars won't start
Filed under: Products and services, Competitive strategy
Sekurus' ON TIME system patches a legal wireless-controlled device into the car's electrical system. The consumer is given a wireless control that he must push before he can start the car, which sends a signal to Sekurus. The company verifies that financing is up to date before authorizing the car to start. The customer begins receiving a countdown three days before the vehicle is disabled.
The system also serves as a theft deterrent, since car thieves won't be able to start the car without the wireless remote.
The product is especially useful for sub-prime car loans, a $75 billion market. The company claims that, because lenders can depend on this system to increase pay rates and reclaim vehicles, it will result in more borderline drivers receiving financing that otherwise would not. ON TIME also can be used by new dealers who have problems with cars being stolen off their lots.Featured Windows Download: Change folder and file names in bulk with Flash Renamer
Windows only: Shareware application Flash Renamer renames your files and folders in bulk.
Flash Renamer doesn't just flat-out rename; it can change the case (UPPER and lower) of file names, search and replace strings within file names, rename MP3s based on tags, clear read-only attributes and add counters to files that are related (like photos).
The unregistered version of Flash Renamer is not limited in any way whatsoever - except for the popup at launch reminding you that you haven't registered. A license will set you back $19.99 and buys you free lifetime upgrades and free tech support over email. Flash Renamer is shareware for Windows only. Thanks, Jeremy!
Flash Renamer [rl vision]
Jingle Awarded Patent For Advertising-Supported 411 Calls
If the patent is enforceable, and Jingle has the stomach to try, it will be a significant hurdle for their competitors. The company has raised significant capital (over $60 million), but that is nothing compared to the resources of Google and AT&T. If those companies are serious about this business, it could get ugly in the courtroom.
When we last heard from the company, they claimed to be receiving 17 million monthly calls and had grabbed over 6% of the U.S. market for directory assistance calls.
Google Zeitgeist -- keeping the pulse of the world
Archos gets set to unveil Gen 5 products
We knew they were coming, and now Archos really wants you to know that they're coming, with the company's website now replaced with a teaser page counting down to the imminent launch of its new fifth generation PMPs. Don't get too entranced by those decreasing digits though, we'll have complete coverage of whatever it is the company has in store before you know it.
[Thanks, Mike]Sigma SD14 reviewed: promising, but not quite there
Augustine: example of great tech that missed the consumer/user boat...
We've been hearing about Sigma's SD14 14.1-megapixel DSLR with that nifty Foveon 3-layer image sensor since last year, but it looks like all the hype was just that: Popular Photography got their hands on a review unit and wasn't too impressed. Although the cam earned high marks for color accuracy and image quality, the reviewers didn't see the full potential of the novel image sensor -- JPEG shots were rated on par with the 8-megapixel Canon Digital Rebel XT, while RAW images actually had less detail in them than shots taken by the 10-megapixel Nikon D80. The reviewers also knocked the slow image processor, which they found produced blocky JPEG images at higher ISOs and took 8-10 seconds to clear its buffer after shooting just six pictures in burst mode. Although the Foveon sensor is promising, the review concludes that you're probably better off spending your $1,600 elsewhere -- not exactly a ringing endorsement of the "fundamentally better technology" Sigma and Foveon promised.
Read - Sigma SD14 review
Read - Foveon X3 sensor review
baby monitor swipes NASA shuttle feed
Looks like Summer Infant has a whole lot of explaining to do after one of its baby monitors has reportedly been able to "pick up black-and-white video from inside the space shuttle Atlantis." A Chicago-based mother probably had uncomfortable flashbacks to Signs after her newly purchased monitoring system chose to broadcast video of the mission right on the screen, but a NASA spokeswoman has already deflated hope that it was somehow coming directly from the shuttle. Apparently, a live feed is also available on NASA's website, which is leading investigators to focus on more earthly origins -- the mom, however, will probably just cancel her cable and keep on watching intently "to see what happens next."
Thu Jun 14, 4:52 PM ET PALATINE, Ill. - An elementary school science teacher in this Chicago suburb doesn't have to turn on the news for an update on NASA's space mission. She just turns on her video baby monitor. black-and-white video from inside the space shuttle Atlantis. The other still lets her keep an eye on her baby.
"Whoever has a baby monitor knows what you'll usually see," Meilinger said. "No one would ever expect this."
Live video of the mission is available on NASA's Web site, so it's possible the monitor is picking up a signal from somewhere.
"It's not coming straight from the shuttle," NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean said. "People here think this is very interesting and you don't hear of it often — if at all."
Meilinger silenced disbelieving co-workers by bringing in a video of the monitor to show her class on Tuesday, her students' last day of school. At home, 3-month-old Jack and 2-year-old Rachel don't quite understand what their parents are watching.
"I've been addicted to it and keep waiting to see what's next," Meilinger said.
Summer Infant, the monitor's manufacturer, is investigating what could be causing the transmission, communications director Cindy Barlow said. She said she's never heard of anything similar happening.
"Not even close," she said. "Gotta love technology."
iPod blamed for stealing the thunder from contemporary art
If you've been yearning for controversy, why not meet Mr. David Hockney? Commonly know as "Britain's best-loved living painter," Hockney has suggested that the proliferation of the iPod has been a primary contributor to the recent "fallow period of painting." He insists that today's society is "all about sound," and even mentions that people are turning off their eyes and ignoring contemporary art whilst "plugging their ears." Put simply, he believes the modern "decline in visual awareness" rests heavily on Apple's own cash cow, and further stirred the pot by insinuating that it led to "badly dressed people" who cared not about lines nor mass. As expected, a spokeswoman for Apple Australia refuted the claims, and while we certainly have seen no shortage of brilliant creations since the iPod explosion, there's always two sides to the canvas.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Taxes: Pay your estimated taxes online
The June 15th tax deadline looms, which means freelancers, sole proprietors and other misc income-making individuals and small businesses have an estimated quarterly tax payment to make. Up until now estimated tax payments were one of the last things that I wrote a dead tree paper check for; but it turns out I was living in 2001. The US Department of Treasury offers EFTPS, an online payment system that takes electronic estimated tax payments. The catch is you have to enroll online and wait up to 15 days to get your PIN number via snail mail, so it's already too late for this payment deadline. Also, not sure about other states, but California's Franchise Tax Board also offers online payment, too.
Shoestring opportunity
TV Guide was purchased for more than $3 billion, back when a billion dollars was a lot of money. At one point, it was worth more than ABC or NBC.
CMP, like many other trade magazine publishers, is busy consolidating, laying people off and closing magazines as they try to move to digital.
Put those two facts together and there's an opportunity. In fact, a bunch of them.
Who is curating YouTube? Who's the TV Guide of a world with a million channels?
We don't need someone to point us to goofy edited scary car ads. What we need are tiny, specialized sites that obsess about specific industries. Is there a good video every day about how to do better real estate sales? If there isn't, there soon will be. Or for heart surgeons?
For every segment where there is currently a trade magazine, I believe there's an opportunity to build a blog-like, woot-like, ad supported page that finds the good stuff. Jeff Jarvis, who ironically used to work at TV Guide, is already doing this with politics.
Like most opportunities, this one will be obvious later. And then it'll be too late for most of us to get in.
Stealing $3 billion from Wal-Mart
Filed under: Wal-Mart (WMT)
Thieves have stolen $3 billion worth of stuff from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) in the last year, according to the AP. That's enough to make a pretty good size company but it represents less than 1% of its $348.6 billion worth of sales in the last year.
It turns out that Wal-Mart is not the only one suffering from the problem. Theft cost retailers $41.6 billion in 2006, according to a joint study released Tuesday by the National Retail Federation and the University of Florida. The study found that the theft rate as a percentage of sales rose to 1.61% of sales in 2006 from 1.60% in 2005. So at 0.9%, Wal-Mart is relatively tough to steal from.
Interestingly, it turns out that most retail "slippage" comes from employees. Specifically, employees stole about 47% of the dollars and customers swiped about 32%. Administrative errors accounted for 14%, supplier fraud accounts for 4%, and the remaining 3% is unaccounted for.
Continue reading Stealing $3 billion from Wal-Mart
Kodak High Sensitivity Image Sensor Tech
Kodak Image Sensor Solutions has today announced a new Color Filter Array (CFA) layout (and image processing path) as an alternative to the widely used Bayer pattern which should provide higher sensitivity. This new layout features one 'panchromatic pixel' (monochrome) to every colored pixel (red, green or blue) and there are three proposed layouts. Kodak ISS are presenting this as a technology solution which can be applied to any size, megapixel count or type (CCD / CMOS) of sensor. Kodak claim a one to two stop improvement in sensitivity, the tradeoff is of course color resolution which is effectively a quarter of the traditional Bayer pattern. This interesting development will of course only be proven when we see it actually implemented and we can compare it to traditional Bayer.How To: Track your Flickr page views with Statr
Statr for Flickr allows you to track and plot page views statistics for your Flickr account. Graphs are automatically updated on a daily basis and can be linked from external websites.
Getting started with Statr is a breeze -- all you need to do is grant Statr read access to your images. It takes Statr a day or so to collect data before it will begin displaying your page views. Unfortunately, Statr is a little simplistic and only displays page views. It doesn't give you any information about uniqueness of visitors, visitor frequency, visitor location, etc. If you're proud of your Flickr traffic, Statr also generates some in-line HTML so you can showoff your Flickr traffic graph.
Statr for Flickr [LinuxInside.org]
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