Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, June 25, 2007

Instant Messaging: Google Talk adds Group Chat

from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

Previously mentioned Google Talk Gadget has integrated a new Group Chat feature for your Google Talk contacts.

To use Group Chat, just start a conversation with a contact, then click the drop-down on the right of the chat window and select Group Chat. From there you can add as many contacts as you want. Granted, the idea of Group Chat is far from innovative (a lot of GTalk users have wanted this for sometime), but it's nice to finally see it rolling out. Group chat is currently only available with the Google Talk Gadget. Thanks Mike!

Google Talk Gadget

Google Apps: Add live Google data to Google Spreadsheets

from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

The Webware weblog highlights 5 things you didn't know about Google Docs and Spreadsheets, most notably that you can insert live lookups in Google Spreadsheets via Google search and Google Finance.

Using two special formulas, users can create cells that will update constantly with data or information gleaned from Web searches or Google's finance service. This works for things such as stock symbols, sports statistics, or any other piece of information you want to source and keep up to date automatically

For example, you can insert the current price of Google stock in a spreadsheet by entering =GoogleFinance("GOOG"; "price"), or check out the number of internet users in Paraguay with =GoogleLookup("Paraguay"; "internet users"). Very cool.

5 things you probably didn't know you could do in Google Docs & Spreadsheets [Webware]

Broadband Subscribers, 300 million strong

from GigaOM by Om Malik

At the end of first quarter 2007, the total number of broadband subscribers was close to 300 million, and according to folks at Point Topic, we are way past that number by now. Thanks to strong growth in Eastern Europe and China, the broadband subscriber base is growing at much faster clip that most imagined.

Chart of international broadband subscriptions as of first quarter 2007 Romania for instance has over million subscribers. Smaller countries like Slovenia and Lithuania are only getting started and we should expect to see the add more zip to the growth rate in EU. US remains #1 in terms of total subscribers, but China is nipping on its heels. France is the fifth largest broadband country in terms of subscribers, ahead of South Korea.

Making Real Money from Virtual Goods

from GigaOM by Wagner James Au

The latest revenue model for online communities doesn't exist—literally. Several companies are already making quite a lot of actual money, not through advertising or subscriptions, but by selling items that are really just images on a screen. That's the main theme of the Virtual Goods Summit, a conference held at Stanford last week, the brainchild of Google's Charles Hudson and my friend Susan Wu, a VC at Charles River Ventures.

While the term evokes gold coins and magic items bought and sold in MMORPGs, conference attendance by social networks like Dogster and Hot or Not suggests how pervasive the concept has become. Virtual goods can also be gifts you send to friends on your network (as in Facebook), and it's an already growing income stream. Consider some highlights from the conference:

Three Rings' CEO Daniel James on Puzzle Pirates, a casual MMO: "We do about $350,000 a month in revenue, of which $250,000 is virtual currency sales."
Craig Sherman of teen hangout Gaia Online : "Virtual economy, we have about 50,000 completed auctions every day. Plus 12 virtual stores that are like an Amazon space, 6,000 items sold."
Dan Kelly from virtual currency exchange site Sparter, on the total value of the industry: "It's easily a billion dollar [secondary] market. Consumers have told us these things have value, the industry now is trying to reconcile that with their business model."

The question is why they have value, and Robert Scoble began the moderating of one Virtual Goods panel by noting a real Swiss watch that sells for $20,000—roughly $19,500 more than meaningful functionality and quality would ever require. With Hot or Not, users can buy each other virtual flowers, and according to CEO James Hong, intention drives the willingness to pay more: "We sell more expensive flowers to people that have a relationship."

Kudos to Mark Wallace and the staff of Virtual World News for taking such copious notes to the conference's many panels—read more here, here, here, and here. Be sure to also read the conference presentation– first in the West, I believe– on the phenomenal success of QQ , China's largest IM/games/social network, where you can buy virtual penguins as pets (54 million sold so far), with a virtual currency that's so popular, the Chinese government is worried it'll destabilize the official one.

Nokia N95 + RC plane = unlimited DIY aerial photography

now, this is what I call community involvement! and viral!

from Engadget by Darren Murph

If you've found yourself tempted by other interesting DIY aerial photography rigs, but spent all your dough on the Nokia N95 instead, you may still be able to make a lifelong (or momentary) dream come true. A pioneering lad over at the N95 Blog has suggested that nearly unlimited high-resolution aerial photography can be yours if you're willing to strap your precious handset to an RC plane and get savvy with Pict'Earth software. The application allows users to create a theoretical Google Earth of their own if the existing imagery isn't up to snuff with their personal standards. Still, we'd have to mull this one over mighty hard before attaching such a valuable communicator to a potential death bed, but feel free to let us know how things go if you can muster the courage.

[Via AllAboutSymbian]

ZAP announces mysterious high-performance electric car

from Engadget by Joshua Topolsky

ZAP (which stands for Zero Air Pollution) announced another new entry to its electric car stable, an as-yet-unnamed sedan that will apparently sell for $30,000. The California based company claims their new model will reach a top speed of 100 mph, and will have a 100-mile range between charges. But here's where this story gets really interesting: ZAP announced a different model back in January which still hasn't seen the light of day, and AutoblogGreen questions whether the company has been using press releases as a method of increasing their stock price for short term cash-flow. Competitors like Tesla have prototypes on the road, but no such luck with ZAP, which certainly raises a number of questions, and definitely gets you thinking about the word vaporware. Read -- ZAP press release Read -- AutoblogGreen's take on ZAP

New details about the iPhone

from Engadget by Ryan Block

Remember the winning Engadget commercial, "The Long Arm of Steve Jobs"? We posted it after the break, but finding someone who's spent some serious time with a pre-launch iPhone and getting them to talk is basically a lot like that. Still, we managed to smuggle out some freshly leaked details from a very trusted inside source who's been fooling around with a unit. Here's what they had to say:

The keyboard was simply described as "disappointing". Keyboarding with two thumbs often registers multiple key presses (two or three at a time) resulting in a lot of mistakes. The best way to type is with a single finger (as shown in most of Apple's demos), but two thumbs is supposedly very difficult. After trying it for a number of days our source gave up using their thumbs.
The text auto-correction only works well for simple words, but doesn't work for proper names. We can only assume this bit will get better with time as Apple fills out its predictive text dictionary.
"It won't replace a BlackBerry. It's not good for text input. It's just not a business product."
The touchscreen was said to, in general, require somewhat hard presses to register input, and needs some getting used to.
In addition to its dock, the iPhone comes packaged with a polishing cloth (the thing's supposedly a fingerprint magnet, no surprise) and the usual smallish power adapter.
The Bluetooth headset will debut in the $120 range, and will come with its own dock for charging both the phone and the headset. The headset will feature a miniature magnetic charging interface á la MagSafe.

Click on for more impressions on the headset, browser, YouTube, and more.

Continue reading New details about the iPhone

Fiber optic tablecloth: the new candlelit dinner

from Engadget by Darren Murph

We highly doubt LumiGram's Luminous Fiber Optic Tablecloth was designed with power outages in mind, but why hook up a boring string of lamps or fiddle with half melted candles when you can plug this bad boy into the generator? The cloth, which has fiber optics woven throughout, cotton borders, and a Europlug mains adapter, proves most useful when the lights are dimmed, and should prove quite the centerpiece at your next get-together. The illuminating device is available in a trio of sizes, comes in a variety of color schemes, and will cost you a very unappetizing €949 ($1,270) for the privilege. [Via LuxuryLaunches]

Vision Robotics' harvesting machines edge closer to the farm

from Engadget by Darren Murph

In just eight short months, the automated harvesting machines at Vision Robotics have apparently come quite a ways. Currently, funding is flowing in from growers' associations who are "very nervous about the availability and cost of labor in the near future," which has allowed the company to move forward in developing a pair of robots to pluck fruit from trees or vines. The duo would work in succession as the first robotic "scout" would scan the area and construct a 3D map with the location of each item that needs captured; the "harvester" would follow behind and pick the fruits that its eagle-eyed teammate mapped out. The firm has reportedly reached the build phase on the complex machines, and while a prototype or two should be ready to rock by next year, we're unlikely to see these go mainstream before the next decade. [Via Wired]

Gallery: Vision Robotics' harvesting machines edge closer to the farm

Write a Text Blog with Pen, Paper and a Digital Camera

from Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal

Dislike typing on the computer keyboard or the tiny cell phone ? You can still write a beautiful text blog - just get a piece of paper and a pen or pencil to jot down your blog posts.

These are called handwritten blogs - the paper note with your text is scanned using a digital camera or a scanner and posted on the web as a regular photograph. Even PostSecret is an handwritten blog.

handwritten blogs

There an entire Flickr group devoted to the community of handwritten bloggers. It would help if you have a good handwriting style but sorry, no Google Juice for you as search engine bots can't read your handwritten blog posts. Very creative.

More examples at flickr.com/handwrittenblogs/ and mivox.com/.

Incoming Links on YouTube Expose Hundreds of FTP Passwords

from Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal

youtube videos with ftp passwords

As these screenshots show, some incoming links on YouTube videos are found to contain username/passwords of FTP servers that could allow anyone to login into these servers.

If Google doesn't fix this immediately, it could possibly become a big security issue for FTP sites whose credentials are now available in Google cache.

Earlier these YouTube links had revealed clicks on Adsense Gadgets ads. The latest issue was discovered by Rohan Pinto of konkan.tv/.

To ensure that your FTP servers are not in the YouTube database, run the following query:

site:youtube.com "clicks from ftp" your_server_name

© 2007 Digital Inspiration | About Us | India Inc. | Web Picks

Run Windows Vista, Office 2007 Together Without Installation

from Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal

Too lazy to install the new Office 2007 or Windows Vista on your machine ? Worried that the new software might break existing stuff on your computer or may not work at all ? Here's something for you - Windows Vista cum Office 2007 inside Windows XP.

Microsoft today released a free combo VHD edition of Windows Vista and Office 2007 Professional which includes Publisher, Excel, Outlook, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, and Word.

You can download this all-in-one package from Microsoft Download Center and run it on your Windows XP computer without making any modifications by using the free Microsoft Virtual PC software.

office 2007 vista on xp

Start the Virtual PC software and just open the Windows Vista cum Office 2007 image - the software will run independent of your existing XP SP2 setup and will not alter or install anything on the computer.

Excited ? There's a small catch - though the Office 2007 / Vista image file is free, it is a bit bulky (~2 GB to be exact) and requires addition 10 GB of free hard drive space for running smoothly inside the Virtual PC software.

If you think your Broadband connection can take the load, get the Office 2007 cum Vista installer from microsoft.com/downloads/ (file available in VHD image format).

© 2007 Digital Inspiration | About Us | India Inc. | Web Picks

The Facebook Problem

from A VC by Fred

Brad Feld has a post up where he talks about The Facebook Problem. Brad sees an emerging problem for those who are developing apps for Facebook and says:

It seems like Facebook could easily turn on CPM based ads on all of the Facebook apps pages and do a revenue share with the application developer. Suddenly, the application developer would get paid for the massive new page views they are getting (as would Facebook), and Facebook would create a real incentive for the publishers to stay with their apps and grow them.

In the absence of this, Facebook is going to need to address the “value to the apps developer” quickly, before some of the larger apps vaporize due to the developer saying “I’m not willing to keep paying for servers and bandwidth.” I can think of a couple of other approaches here, including Facebook building an in-the-cloud infrastructure for their developers that they make available to one’s that reach a certain level of popularity. But - the straight “we’ll make more money and share it with you” seems the most logical approach to me.

I see a different Facebook problem. Invite overload and application noise. I cannot keep track of all the invites I am getting, both the standard invites and the application invites. And what's worse, I can't keep track of all the applications that all of my friends are using.

We all know I am not the Facebook generation. So maybe I am just not capable of dealing with this level of social networking. But I bet that many of the members of the Facebook generation are secretly wishing for the old Facebook where it was more about them and their friends and less about being a social operating system.

The comments to Brad's post have a few such examples. Since there are a bunch of members of the Facebook generation who read this blog, please tell me what you think.

Thieves take off with $50,000 worth of cellphones

from Engadget by Conrad Quilty-Harper

The anecdotal evidence for a spike in electronics robberies is piling up, with the latest high profile robbery netting the thieves $50,000 worth of cellphones from a T-Mobile store. Three armed men walked into the store in Fort Bend County in Texas on Thursday, and demanded the "good phones" from the store's safe and the tapes from the CCTV. Staff were tied up, and the thieves deposited the phones into black plastic bags and walked out. Unfortunately for the robbers, T-Mobile keeps a good track of its inventory, and can identify any of the phones if they turn up on the network (meaning that the $50,000 sticker value is much lower on the black market). Crime doesn't pay, especially when your stolen goods can be tracked. [Via textually]

Visa Taps Aspiring Filmmakers for “Life Takes” Campaign

Augustine: never before has there been such interest in and acceptance of good consumer-generated media

Visa has extended its "Life Takes" campaign since ads broke during the 2006 Olympic Games in Torino, Italy

Visa USA is sponsoring an international competition for amateur filmmakers as part of its effort to extend its "Life Takes Visa" brand campaign, launched a year ago, into new consumer channels.

Visa is working with the 48 Hour Film Project (48HFP) for the "Life Takes" Invitational contest that will give the winner an audience with ad execs and a $10,000 prize. Since Visa will have rights to all the films entered, it could use them in future advertising or promotions, but has not announced plans to do so.

The two will invite 30 filmmaking teams to create a short film that shows their interpretation of Visa's tag line, "Life Takes." Each team gets a $500 Visa gift card for expenses.

Filmmakers have 48 hours to create a seven-minute film or video from start to finish—casting, writing, producing, directing, editing, adding music, and getting equipment.

A panel of Visa execs and advertising and entertainment professionals will judge the entries in September. The three top films will be showcased at an awards event in San Francisco. Second prize is $5,000; third prize is $2,500. Media agency OMD handles the invitational contest for Visa

48HFP has been promoting the competition this month at its 2007 tour stops in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. The international tour began in March and runs through August, traveling to 55 cities, where teams spend one weekend making a film from start to finish.

48HFP is expecting more than 1,500 48 Hour film teams to make films during the 2007 tour. The grand-prize winner will also receive a $7,500 gift card, courtesy of Visa.

Susanne Lyons, chief marketing officer Visa USA, said the credit card company was eager to see how these talented individuals interpret the campaign and "reinforce the various ways that Visa empowers consumers to do what they want to do, need to do and never thought possible."

Visa launched "Life Takes Visa" in February 2006, its first new tag line in 20 years (Promo Xtra, Feb. 8, 2006) . TBWA/Chiat/Day handles the advertising.

Since the launch, the "Life Takes" campaign has been featured in a "live art" billboard execution in New York City, in popular video games and the latest refresh of Hasbro's iconic The Game of Life.

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