Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, November 05, 2007

EMI Selling WAVs of Radiohead's Back Catalog for a Mere $167 [Anti-Dealzmodo]

from Gizmodo by adam frucci

Radiohead made waves with their latest album, selling it in digital form for whatever price you wanted to pay for it. Now EMI, their old label, is looking to hop on that bandwagon of goodwill by offering a set of all of the band's past studio albums and one live album in a number of formats, including uncompressed WAV files on a custom Radiohead Bear USB drive.

In case you've been living under a rock for the past 14 years and don't own a single Radiohead release, now's your chance to get on board. The first way to buy it is in a set with all seven discs in digipacks with original artwork. That'll set you back £40, or about $83, which isn't much of a discount (thanks mostly to the insane exchange rate).

The next option is to buy all seven albums as digital downloads, all encoded as 320kbps MP3s, along with digital artwork. The price for this is an unforgiving £35, or $73.

The last option is probably the most appealing to Radiohead die-hards, as it comes with a limited-edition USB drive. The 4GB drive will come loaded with the seven albums encoded as uncompressed WAV files as well as digital artwork. The price for this "strictly limited edition" piece of hardware? £80, or $167. Yes, $167 for a thumb drive loaded up with WAV files.

So, how many of these sets do you think EMI will sell? You've got to appreciate the choice of encoding options, but those prices are beyond insane. And the real problem is that only the most devoted of fans would even consider spending this kind of coin on RH materials, and they obviously own all the back catalog already. So, uh, what the hell, EMI? [Product Page]

PG&E and Ausra Partner on Solar Thermal Power

from Earth2Tech by Katie Fehrenbacher

The solar thermal startup Ausra only started talking publicly in September, but already the Khosla and Kleiner Perkins-backed Silicon Valley company is one of the more high-profile cleantech startups around. This morning, Ausra provided additional details about a planned solar thermal power plant in California and an agreement to sell solar power to California utility PG&E (PCG).

PG&E says it will buy 177 megawatts of solar power generated from a one-square-mile plant that Ausra will build in San Luis Obispo, Calif. The solar thermal plant is expected to start generating power in 2010. PG&E previously entered into an agreement with Israeli solar thermal company Solel and is in talks with Oakland, Calif.-based solar thermal company BrightSource, too.

Solar thermal systems use mirrors and lenses to focus sunlight onto liquid-filled tubes, which in turn power steam turbines. The plants can provide large amounts of power at lower costs than other renewable sources, and Ausra is working to deliver electricity at the price of 10 cents per kilowatt hour or lower. When solar thermal technology can provide a price that is low enough, Ausra's co-founder and chairman David Mills told us that he thinks it could one day replace coal.
How Ausra's technology works.

Sierra Wireless intros Apex 880 USB HSUPA modem

from Engadget by Donald Melanson

Sierra Wireless sure doesn't seem to be skimping when it comes to USB HSUPA modems, with it now following up its recently-released 880U and 881U models with its new and somewhat improved Apex 880 modem. About the biggest addition here is an always useful microSD card slot, which should let you ditch at least one USB thumb drive from your bag. The modem itself is also slightly smaller than the previous models, measuring just 85mm x 37.5mm x 15mm. Otherwise, you'll get the same peak data speeds of 7.2 Mbps on the downlink and 2.0 Mpbs on the uplink as before, and support for tri-band UMTS and quad-band GSM/ EDGE networks to keep you connected at all times. No word on a price just yet, but it'll apparently be available in January.

[Via Electronista]

Google and HTC's "Dream" phone prototype semi-revealed

from Engadget by Paul Miller

Sure, a Google-sponsored phone OS in the way of Android is pretty great news for mobile phone land, but what if your really had your heart set on some Google hardware this Monday morning? Well take heart, because Forbes has the skinny on an HTC device labeled "Dream," (most likely not pictured above) which could very well be oft-rumored hardware of legend, and could also be hitting the market as early as next year. Apparently the phone is one of roughly five prototypes that Google had built to demonstrate the Open Handset Alliance software to potential members, and HTC's Peter Chou says in the two years it's been working on OHA designs, "this is the best one we've seen." The device itself, which measures about 3 x 5-inches, sports a touchscreen, navigational controls at the base, and a full swivel out keyboard. When swiveled the screen goes from portrait to landscape mode, but unfortunately that's the limit of info on the actual hardware. The software apparently has "time-sensitive" touch controls that expands your area control the longer you touch. Icons for your most important apps -- which are apparently email, text documents, and YouTube -- are lined up across the top of the screen. There's also some fancy stuff under the hood to keep an ongoing browser session open to speed launch times, and the browser downloads large files in stages to speed delivery. HTC is considering a commercial version of the phone, which we could be seeing as soon as the second half of 2008.

I Honor the Place Where the MARK Bookmark and I Become One [Bookmark]

from Gizmodo by Benny Goldman

Avnish Gautam has designed an amazing concept bookmark that lights up at night and covers the area you're reading. The MARK uses flexible OLED technology on a thin piece of plastic to illuminate the reading area to your preferred brightness. I know when I'm reading the Fake Steve Jobs book , the only thing that irritates me more than that frigtard Tom Bowditch is my dim and clunky book light that is never in the right place. This concept won the Red Dot Award for best design in 2007, so if OLED technology is up to speed expect it to be available sometime soon. Namaste Avnish, and hit the jump for a bonus picture of the MARK in daylight. [Yanko Design]

[Yanko Design ]

Wearable VholdR Palm-Sized Camcorder is Tiny, Convenient and Sturdy [Camcorders]

from Gizmodo by Charlie White

Take your first look at the new VholdR, a wearable, palm-sized camcorder created especially for shooting extreme video for quick uploading to YouTube. Notice that its lens takes up most of its volume, and its 4.8-ounce weight and 3.7-inch length encourage you take it along. It even includes helmet-mounting hardware for those wild snowboarding and whitewater rafting sessions, as well as proprietary shake management so you can keep your clips from inducing viewer vomit sessions. When you're done shooting, its VholdR desktop software lets you keep your videos organized or upload them to YouTube with a single click.

The VholdR is built tough for taking plenty of abuse, too, made of anodized aluminum that's splashproof. The hardware compression engine on board is impressive, crunching down its 640x480 30fps video to manageable file sizes. We especially like that single button to roll, easy to operate even with gloves on. And there's no tape or fragile hard disk to worry about—it records everything onto a microSD card. The first few are expected to be available by Christmas, retailing for $349.99. [VholdR]

Airbox CM3 Turns Your Car Into a Wi-Fi Hotspot, Even at 100 MPH [Wireless]

from Gizmodo by Sean Fallon

The new Airbox CM3 mobile router allows devices like PDAs, laptops, and gaming consoles to be simultaneously connected to the internet in a moving vehicle via Wi-Fi or one of two Ethernet jacks —no additional software or PCMCIA cards required. When connected to a 3G digital cellular telephone network (generally EV-DO), speeds average out at 400-800 Kbps with bursts up to 2.4 Mbps. When no 3G signals are available, the Airbox will switch to 2G and average speeds of 120 Kbps. According to product tests, the wireless range extends up to 300 feet and the connection has proven reliable —even when traveling at 100 mph.

As you might have guessed, the Airbox is powered by a car cigarette lighter, but what is really interesting is the compact size. The weight is comparable to a paperback book, and the dimensions are small enough to place it under a car seat. You can even take it indoors and connect it to a standard electrical socket for home use. Available for a whopping $499 (cellular data plan required.) [WAAV via Gizmag]

Salesforce Lets Loose Digg-For-Ideas

from TechCrunch by Nick Gonzalez

Just when you thought Digg cloning was dead, Salesforce has thrown its hat into the ring. The company best known for their SaaS CRM is unleashing their Digg-for-ideas, “Salesforce Ideas”, into the wild. Although announced back in October, they are now releasing the product publicly. Now any enterprise can order their own clone of Salesforce’s IdeaExchange, which lets customers post ideas on how the company can improve their product.

It’s targeted at, and works best for, existing Salesforce customers with a specific community of customers. Unlike the free opensource Pligg, this software may cost you. It’s being release for free to professional, enterprise, and unlimited customers. But anyone off the Salesforce platform using the service has to buy a license, which can cost anywhere from $50-$100 per user per month. I’d recommend (free) Satisfaction’s help and idea board for businesses with larger audiences.

Salesforce is pushing the platform integration because unlike Pligg, Ideas’ will know who your customers are. The system will integrate with your CRM account to let only those users in.

The concept is pretty straight forward and a bit more exciting than a straight idea forum. Yahoo has even launched a similar product for their own use. On Salesforce Ideas Users can post product ideas to a moderated board, which everyone can promote or demote up and down the board. The most popular ideas, based on the frequency of promotions over a period of time, make it to the top of the board. Attached to each idea is a discussion thread, where members can leave comments building on the idea.

Salesforce claims to have used ideas on the board to improve their product, and even drive ideas for some AppExchange startups (AppExtremes, Appirio). After a year, their board has about 13,000 users, 5,000 ideas, and drives 100K pageviews per month. Dell runs an instance of the board on Dell Idea Storm, which it credits with the idea to pre-install the Ubuntu Linux operating system on select consumer desktops and notebooks in the U.S, UK, France and Germany.

BuzzLogic Launches Innovative Advertising Platform - Combining Buzz and Ads

from CenterNetworks - by Allen Stern

Earlier this year I had the chance to sit down with the BuzzLogic executive team for an interesting interview. As many of you know, one of my passion areas is analytics and BuzzLogic provides a tool that helps companies and individuals track "buzz" around the online space. This is what Technorati should have been. Last week I had the chance to speak with them again and learn about their new advertising platform launching today.

Tonight they launch what I believe is an excellent addition to their service offering. When a company uses the BuzzLogic monitoring service, they can track who is talking about their product/service (the influencers and the conversations) and monitor the buzz. BuzzLogic has their own ranking systems and provide a more rounded view on what's going on. Just because a blog is ranked 1st for a specific term/category does not mean they will rank the same across any topics they cover. I like this because it allows their clients to see everyone who is speaking about a specific product, not just what some top x list says.

Their new offering is an advertising platform build on top of Google AdSense with other ad networks coming in the near future. The idea is simple in description: once you find out which blogs are talking about your product, you want to advertise your product on those sites to reinforce the message. The actual ad creation process is the same as with AdWords, actually it's exactly the same except it's in the BuzzLogic framework. The real difference is the site targeting. You use the BuzzLogic service to select the sites based on the analysis you have completed. Then you buy ads on those sites. You can see a sample screenshot of the pre-AdWords piece below.

I asked about sites that aren't using Google AdWords and basically those sites won't be available for purchase. As I noted above, more networks are coming soon they tell me. What I don't know is if a site has site-targeting off, what happens. I have site targeting off but would like to be included in the ad buys.

It's an interesting way to "join the conversation" - it's not as effective as actually joining the conversation in comments and reaching out to the writer, but it is a way to get a message out to specific sites discussing a specific product or service.

If you remember back to when the iPhone dropped price and Nokia had some keyword buys, this tool would work well for that type of ad purchase - Nokia could select the blogs that are influencers around the iPhone and get quick access to their readerbase.

One of the quotes they sent over after our conversation comes from Lending Club, a company covered many times on CN. Renaud Laplanche, founder and CEO says, "Social media is becoming the go-to place for our potential customers to learn about Lending Club as they seek advice and information regarding personal finance. BuzzLogic makes it possible for us to target our advertising placements in association with those personal finance conversations, creating a greater value in our advertising spend."

Again, this should be viewed as a complement and not a replacement to joining the conversation. But it is a powerful complement.

Here is a sample of the interface for selecting the "influencers":

BuzzLogic

Attributor Launches Service to Track Copyright Infringement Across the Web

Augustine: great example of focusing clearly on the users' use-case

from TechCrunch by Erick Schonfeld

Every media company on the planet knows that its articles, songs, photos, and videos are being copied and spread willy-nilly across the Web, but they don't have a clue what to do about it. They are not even sure what to do about all of their stuff that is just on YouTube (should they let Google monitor itself or create some vague industry guidelines and hope that every site follows them?). A startup called Attributor in Redwood City, Calif. says it can monitor the Web for copied content no matter where it may be, help publishers and media companies track it all, and help them decide what to do about it.

Attributor was founded in 2005 and has raised $10 million from Sigma Partners, Selby Ventures, Draper Richards, First Round Capital and Amicus. The enterprise version of its service launches today, although it has been testing it with Reuters and AP for about six months. The enterprise service will cost anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year (a more limited self-serve version for bloggers and smaller publishers could cost as little as $6 or $7 per month, and will launch in 2008). CEO Jim Brock gave me a demo of Attributor last week in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria.

Attributor is already indexing 100 million Web pages a day (15 billion total so far), but it is not a keyword index. It looks for bigger blocks of content. Right now, it can handle only text. Images are in beta. And video matching will go into beta early next year. If you are a publisher that is a customer of Attributor, it ingests all your content and comes up with matches. Attributor splits up the world between sites that exhibit extensive copying (more than half of an article, for instance) and just some copying. It shows which sites have linked back to the original source and which have not. "Often, that's all they want—a link," says Brock. Below is a typical dashboard view of what a customer would see. In this case, the content from People.com is being analyzed (based on its feed). Of the 265,000 matches, 103,000 don't link back to People.com.

Attributor also shows which sites generate the most traffic, which are supported by ads, and which ad networks are making the most money off of your content across the Web. Of the sites that copy People.com extensively, for instance, 55,000 are supported by ads. "This becomes a billing engine at some level,"says Brock. But rather than go after each offending site, he thinks that Attributor's data will give media companies leverage against Google and other ad networks. "If I am a big content producer," reasons Brock, "and I can identify all the pages with Google AdSense, my conversations at that point is with Google." They could ask Google to ban the offending sites from AdSense or, better yet, to cut them in on some of the advertising revenues associated with their content.

Ultimately, though, it is all about the links. Links are the currency of the Web. They are the way attributions are made. In most cases, media companies would be better off if they could just get everyone who is copying their stuff to link back to them than by trying to extract licensing fees out of them or suing them. There is a lot less friction in asking for a link, and it doesn't cost anything to give one out. Yet all of those links can turn into traffic, both directly and by imbuing the original source with higher search karma (i.e. a higher ranking on search engines).

A case in point is what is going on with music lyrcis on the Web. The term "song lyrics" is one of the most popular searches online. In a study just released today, Attributor scoured the Web for the lyrics of 14 of the songs at the top of the Billboard charts. It found 1,524 copies, mostly on lyrics sites, social networks, and blogs. The only site that has actually bothered to cut licensing deals with the record labels for these lyrics is Yahoo Music, yet in all Google searches (and even 81 percent of Yahoo searches) other sites outrank Yahoo Music when it comes to finding the lyrics for these 14 songs. Of those sites, 57 percent were supported by ads (mostly AdSense) for ring tones, concert tickets, and the like. A Google search for the lyrics to the Rihanna song Umbrella (pictured above) shows how much AdSense is powering the lyrics Websites.

It's not just lyrics. In another study evaluating 215 recipes on Epicurious, Attributor found 3.959 copies, 65 percent of which did not link back to Epicurious, and 56 percent of which were ad-supported sites. More than half of the copycat sites ranked higher in searches than Epicurious itself. I asked Attributor to run a search on some of my TechCrunch posts. One reporting some early details of Google's OpenSocial project (codenamed Maka-Maka) was the 15th most copied post on TechCrunch since June, when Attributor started monitoring our feeds. (This Hulu post was the most copied overall, being copied 572 times).

For the Maka-Maka post, Attributor found 243 copies, with 200 of those taking more than 80 percent of the text. Fewer than 40 percent actually linked back to the original post (you swine!) and 79 percent had ads on the pages. And this is just for one post. I won't actually link to the offending sites—you know who you are so cough up those links—but here are some screen shots (highlighted portions are copied verbatim from TechCrunch—at least one takes our entire feed, reposts it with AdSense ads, strip out names of the authors, and does not link back to TechCrunch):

Samsung announces 64GB SATA II drives in 2.5, 1.8-inch varieties

from Engadget by Ryan Block

All familiar things: Samsung, SSD flash drives, SATA II, 2.5 and 1.8-inch sizes (read: laptop and portable media device sizes, respectively), 100MBps write / 120MBps read, up to 64GB (again). Not that they stated prices, but we're not even asking. [Via Akihabara News]

iriver's P10 shipping in December?

from Engadget by Thomas Ricker

Get ready for it kiddies, iRiver's P10 appears ready to bust free. According to the forum jockeys frequenting iriverfans, the P10 is set for launch in December. With its biggie, 4.3-inch display and iriver's meticulously applied mechanical and software engineering prowess -- we'll be chomping at the bit for dibs.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Edit Your Images Online With Splashup [Image Editing]

from Lifehacker by Wendy Boswell

Edit your images on the fly online with Splashup, a web-based image editor that integrates with Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa. Splashup offers up a surprising array of image editing tools, far beyond the usual crop of resize and contrast— you can also edit multiple images, play with filters and layers, use a variety of brushes, and more. Splashup is one of the best image editors in a long line of image editors; i.e., Picnik, Pixoh, and Resizr, to name just a few. What's your favorite online image editor? Let's hear in the comments.

Splashup [via eHub]

Inflatable Solar Arrays: Up To 25X Cheaper, Feature Cool 'Puffy' Look [Solar Power]

from Gizmodo by Sean Fallon

Using traditional photovoltaics and a very non-traditional inflatable concentrator and tensegrity truss rigging structure, the folks at Cool Earth Solar have developed a system that could be far cheaper than polished aluminum mirrors. In fact, the inflatable versions are up to 400 times cheaper than regular mirrors and they are so lightweight that they can be suspended on cable lines as opposed to individual base systems —thereby using far less steel in construction. That means faster installation and minimal land use disruption.

Unfortunately, the design does have its drawbacks. For one, the inflatable mirrors would be fragile and less efficient than traditional methods due to the unique shape and the effects of wind on the non-rigid frame. So, in reality, the true cost effectiveness of such a set up is still unknown. Still, Cool Earth hopes to make solar power as cheap as non-renewable power within the next three years. [Cool Earth via Eco-Geek]

MIT developing carbon-free, stackable rental cars

via Engadget by Joshua Topolsky on 11/2/07

Sure, we know you love actually owning a car, but let's be honest -- in large cities with condensed layouts, your H3 doesn't make a lot of sense. A group of researchers at MIT have been hard at work developing a solution that's kind on the planet and your scrawny legs. A team called Smart Cities have designed a small, two-seat, electric vehicle -- which they call the City Car -- that can be "stacked" in convenient locations (say, just outside a subway stop), and then taken on short trips around urban areas. The cars -- which are based around an omnidirectional "robot wheel" that encases an electric motor, suspension, and steering -- can be "folded" and attached to a group of other cars for charging. The lineups of rentable vehicles would be accessible from various points around a city, with six or eight cars occupying just a single "regular" car space. Of course, you'll have to forgo your 24-inch rims... but that's life.

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