Friday, April 25, 2008

$100 femtocells to be sold by AT&T?

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/277406332/

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Yep, we're mandating that this one be filed in the rumor folder for now, but according to a report from ThinkPanmure, AT&T Mobility is planning to move up to 7 million femtocells acquired from UK-based ip.access. As the story goes, AT&T inked a contract with the aforesaid firm for up to half a billion dollars in femtocells over five years, and it's supposedly aiming to sell each to end users for "as little as $100." As expected, spokespeople for AT&T and ip.access weren't around / didn't care to comment on the matter, but a dame from the former did admit that it was "examining the potential benefits of femtocells through lab tests and planned to conduct a trial later this year." Of course, AT&T wouldn't be the first US carrier to offer the boxes, but it's not like Sprint's $49.99 Airave set any sales records or anything when it launched late last year.
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Forest Fire âClear Cutâ Robot

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/yankodesign/~3/276845569/

Yep, this is exactly what you think it is. The forest fire prevention robot by Jordan Guelde is an advanced robot designed to clear large areas of foliage from around a forest fire to help stop the flames from spreading. Traditional back burning would certainly be cheaper and possibly less lethal to surrounding wildlife, but complete with and array of hubless motors, and integrated fuel system of its back this robot is a hell of a lot cooler. Unfortunately this version is intended for entertainment design rather than the production line, but with the help of Governor Schwarzenegger maybe the production line is possible?

Designer: Jordan Guelde

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Get wet with style

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/yankodesign/~3/277248029/

So as I was gazing longingly at this bathtub design called “Sorgente” by Lenci Design for Teuco, I realized that I was schooled on the difference between a bathtub and a hot tub. A bathtub is obviously for bathing, and a hot tub is obviously for more recreational use and relaxing. Barely a difference here right? Well Teuco does not see too much of a difference either and has married the two with their latest creation. Highlighted by a seamless sunken profile and fitted with 8 Hydrosilence whirlpool jets, the tub's function is super quiet to ensure a tranquil experience. You can also enjoy the benefits of a control panel or remote control operation, underwater lighting, a magnetic headrest, and a pull-out shower with a flexible hose. It fills automatically and treats the water with its internal filtration system. Plastic battleships not included.

Designer: Lenci Design [ Via: Trendir ]

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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Tips for success in a Web 2.0 world

Published: April 23, 2008
MRM Worldwide's digital strategist outlines three key considerations for keeping up with the new online consumer.

Web 2.0 has been described as "lots of video," "cool user interfaces that use javascript," "social networking," "word of mouth." Google, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc. have been used as examples, as have countless other companies and terms, correctly or incorrectly. But what really is the essence of this new wave of websites rising from the ashes of the first web implosion? And what are the implications for advertising and marketing?  

Web 2.0 versus Web 1.0 Web 1.0 was about the tools which made getting information online easier -- HTML, website creation software, standards, internet connections, etc. This led to an explosion of information online and generated the estimated several hundred billion web pages online today. Web 2.0 is about organizing, filtering and prioritizing the vast amounts of information so that the information becomes more useful, timely, and relevant. Web 2.0 was born out of necessity in the current "age of too much information." It also has profound implications for advertising since advertising messages are part of the clutter and people have accustomed themselves to tuning everything out until such time they are interested in researching something for themselves.

Modern users' high expectations Web 2.0 sites, which include Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc., have collectively set extremely high expectations among users. These "modern users" are impatient -- they want their information right now; they are intolerant -- if a site disappoints or frustrates them, they won't come back, and they are vocal -- they tell their friends about good sites and about bad ones too. In their quest to cut through the clutter and find the information they want, they demand speed, collaboration, and trust.

  • Speed: Modern users are impatient -- they want what they want as quickly and efficiently as possible. The simplicity and single-purposedness of tools like Google have conditioned these extreme expectations.
  • Collaboration: Modern users expect the collaborative effort of the community to help them filter and prioritize content -- e.g. bubbling up the best videos to watch, recommending the best products to buy, etc. -- so that the users don't have to wade through the clutter themselves. 
  • Trust: Modern users have highly sensitive "BS radars" and they tend to go back to sources of information (people or places) that have earned their trust over time. Information from a trusted source is extremely valuable to them because it saves them the time of having to figure it out for themselves.

Implications for modern advertising and marketing The diverse sites of the Web 2.0 landscape have set an extreme bar of expectations among modern users -- i.e. consumers. This fact has profound implications for advertisers and marketers who are fighting for these consumers' attention (to sell them something) in this "age of too much information." Advertisers must therefore satisfy the three key dimensions of modern users' high expectations:

  • Speed: Make information easy to find, persistent, and deliverable through whatever channel or device the user chooses to use when searching for information. In a world where consumers tune everything out until they go looking for something, a broad brand message, targeted based on segments or personas and delivered through "push channels" is just not good enough, fast enough, or useful enough for individual modern users.
  • Collaboration: Leverage the collective power and input of your most loyal customers (your power users or enthusiasts) to identify, filter, and prioritize the information for the "rest" of your customers or potential customers -- this helps fulfill both the 1st and 3rd parameters of speed and trust and it may even yield specific messaging that works -- i.e. how would they tell their friends about your "wiz-bang" product or service? -- use their words, not your own.
  • Trust: Use more "two-way" tactics such as digital/online than "one-way" tactics such as advertising to create truthful dialogs with customers. Sustained dialog and careful listening engenders the trust necessary for customers to reveal insights about what they value, how they buy, who they tell, etc. This has implications for not only marketing messages but also product innovation (e.g. new features, etc.) or even business innovation (e.g. new pricing strategy, etc.).

Notable quotables Chris Anderson: "Users are seeking more specialized and less generic products -- the "long tail" of retail -- and they are going online in this quest. The beauty of this is that we can observe what they value, what excites them, and what they talk about."

Malcolm Gladwell: "There are enough technologies, services, communities and information online that we have passed an important tipping point in the age of information -- the shift of power from advertisers to consumers. A single user post on Consumerist.com got amplified to the point that a telecommunications giant publicly announced the removal of an anti-customer clause in their terms and conditions."

Seth Godin: "Consumers are empowered with information, technologies, services and peers to tune out all 'interruption media' until such time they want something; and, even then, they get their information not from traditional advertising and marketing messages, but rather from trusted sources who act as filters that help them cut through the 'noise.'"

Esther Dyson: "Modern users are getting ever more cognizant and savvy about their personal information and who has access to it and how it is used. While traditional advertising pushed the boundaries of privacy in its quest for more information in order to do better targeting, trust and privacy are paramount to the modern user. In the next evolution of advertising, who will be able to achieve perfect targeting (to the level of the individual) while respecting and protecting that individual's privacy?"

Dr. Augustine Fou is SVP, digital strategist at MRM Worldwide.

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Sony's DMX-NV1 Bravia Internet Video Link now available

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/276199655/


Remember that Sony Internet Video Link for Bravia TVs that we told you about way back in February of 2007? Well apparently the $299.99 units have hit stores, and are now available for your purchasing pleasure. If you'll recall, the pricey boxes allow you to stream internet video, music, and light content (like weather and traffic) into your television via the company's familiar Xross Media Bar interface. Of course, you'll be dropping a pretty big chunk of change on something with fairly limited use, but hey... it's your money.

[Via Zatz Not Funny!]
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Negroponte Moots Windows XP Version of OLPC--Is It a Case of So Long, Sugar? [Olpc]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/276136172/negroponte-moots-windows-xp-version-of-olpc++is-it-a-case-of-so-long-sugar

The founder and chairman of OLPC has admitted that only using open-source software has not been good for the project. Just a day after the resignation of group president Walter Bender, Nicholas Negroponte admitted that the choice of the Sugar operating system has hit the XO laptop project in two places: usability; and popularity.

With Windows XP already available for the XO on an SD card, the news that future OLPC machines may have Windows XP, with Sugar running on top, may dismay the non-profit brigade. But with no support for the latest versions of Flash—a staple on many educational websites—the XO may not be catering to its supposed target audience.

If Windows XP does become the XO's operating system, then a substantial reworking of the laptop will be in order. Currently just 1GB of internal memory is available, and XP needs around 1.1GB. Sticking a larger SSD inside the machine will just pump up the price, making the XO even further out of reach of those who need it. [ComputerWorld]


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Intel Mash Maker Launches Without Chips on the Side

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/275463549/

Intel’s Mash Maker application, which launches today, isn’t exactly a new idea; Yahoo Pipes and Microsoft’s Popfly are similar. But Mash Maker marks the first time Intel has launched a software effort with no hardware attached. Presumably you can run Mash Maker on a computer with an AMD inside without melting your motherboard.

I was super skeptical at first and frankly, still am. According to Robert Ennals, senior researcher at Intel Research Berkeley and the architect for Mash Maker, the goal of Intel Research is to make the computing experience better. He said Intel Research and Intel Capital are the only divisions at Intel who have the freedom to think outside the PC box, as it were. Fine, Intel launched Mash Maker to make the Internet a better place. Does it?

Jeff Klaus, marketing director for Intel Mash Maker, said it is more useful than Pipes or Popfly because it not only allows users to make mashups, but also allows those who have downloaded the Mash Maker client to see which previous Mash Maker mashups might improve their web surfing experience. This way users of Mash Maker can benefit even if they don’t know how to create mashups. As one of the biggest complaints I have about Pipes is the difficulty I have using it (yes, it’s a me-centric complaint), I have to think there are others who could benefit from this.

In the meantime, I’ll watch with interest as Intel moves outside of its chip-centric world. A few years ago it made the decision with its Intel Capital venture investing arm to look not just for companies that could eventually sell more Intel chips, but also those that might make for a good return. In 2007 it started investing in seed deals, especially consumer-facing startups, as part of that expanding mission.

As for selling more chips, programs such as Mash Maker may not directly influence buying decisions, but by making the computer easier to use, Intel makes them more important and thus, more necessary. And by associating its brand with a fun application, Intel is achieving brand recognition in a much more sophisticated way than its dancing bunny-suited guys back in the 90s.

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Virtualization Goes Mobile With VirtualLogix

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~3/275053959/

Motorola Ventures today put an undisclosed amount of money into Sunnyvale, Calif.-based startup VirtualLogix, which aims to do for communications equipment and mobile devices what VMware has done for the server. I’m pretty leery of companies throwing around the v-word, but with its take on virtualization, VirtualLogix is actually creating value.

For proof, check out the plans for a sub-$100 multimedia 3G phone developed by Purple Labs using NXP chips running VirtualLogix’s software. The software allows a processor to run a rich operating system on the same chip that controls the baseband access. (In a typical smartphone — depending on the applications and radios needed — this takes two or more chips.) The end result is a high-end feature on a low-end phone using fewer chips. That’s excellent for device makers, but VirtualLogix counts among its investors TI and Intel, two companies that want to sell more chips.

VirtualLogix CEO Peter Richards explained this contrast away by saying the chip vendors just want to make customers happier. But while that may be true, what’s really behind the chip firms’ interest is VirtualLogix’s ability to take software written for single-core chips and run it on multicore chips by virtualizing the multicore hardware. Multicore chips aren’t in phones right now, but given how much we want our handheld devices to do, they will be.

The other beneficiary of virtualizing a communications device is the gear market, where VirtualLogix customers such as Alcatel-Lucent are using the software to combine multiple products, like call routing servers, call management servers, etc., into one box rather than four or five. Virtualization as offered by VMware and Xen is creating a lot of savings by allowing companies to reduce the number of servers they use in data centers, so it stands to reason that it can do the same in the telecommunications world.

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Dell Introduces Their Smallest, Greenest PC Yet [Dell Green PC]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/275649178/dell-introduces-their-smallest-greenest-pc-yet

Michael Dell, the king of Dell, just previewed his company's smallest and greenest desktop PC yet at FORTUNE Brainstorm: GREEN. There's no name for this mini green PC, shown rendered above, but it's 81% smaller than a mini tower and 70% less energy-consuming. It's also shipped in recycled and recyclable packaging, and look a whole lot like those cheapo Sun workstations that colleges love(d) to use. As long as this machine is at least as powerful as a laptop (we don't mean an Eee PC), we're all for Dell's enviro-conscious direction.


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DIY Discovery Channel: Casio EX-F1 Slow-Mo Cam In My Backyard [Digital Cameras]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/275831958/diy-discovery-channel-casio-ex+f1-slow+mo-cam-in-my-backyard

Tomato violence only marks the beginning of my love affair with the Casio's Exilim EX-F1, aka the Hiro Nakamura supercam. It's crazy addictive. Last weekend I went looking for fast-moving objects to capture in slow-mo, and in my backyard I came up with a freakin' menagerie of unexpectedly interesting little beasties.

Everything is a twitch here, a blur there—you have to realize that this whole two-minute video consists of just 10 to 12 seconds of real life, shown at 300fps or 600fps. (1200fps turned out to be too much of a novelty, too dark to be practical, as you can see in the tomato-blender vid.)

Shooting slow-mo takes some getting used to, and because you end up with long stretches of zero movement, the in-cam video editor is not just a luxury but a necessity. In the end, though, everything looks like it's ready for Discovery Channel. I think that chipmunk's gonna be a star. [Casio Exilim EX-F1 on Giz]


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Tips for success in a Web 2.0 world

By Dr. Augustine Fou  SVP, Digital Strategist, MRM Worldwide 

Web 2.0 has been described as "lots of video," "cool user interfaces that use javascript," "social networking," "word of mouth." Google, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc. have been used as examples, as have countless other companies and terms, correctly or incorrectly. But what really is the essence of this new wave of websites rising from the ashes of the first web implosion? And what are the implications for advertising and marketing?  

Web 2.0 versus Web 1.0 Web 1.0 was about the tools which made getting information online easier -- HTML, website creation software, standards, internet connections, etc. This led to an explosion of information online and generated the estimated several hundred billion web pages online today. Web 2.0 is about organizing, filtering and prioritizing the vast amounts of information so that the information becomes more useful, timely, and relevant. Web 2.0 was born out of necessity in the current "age of too much information." It also has profound implications for advertising since advertising messages are part of the clutter and people have accustomed themselves to tuning everything out until such time they are interested in researching something for themselves.

Modern users' high expectations Web 2.0 sites, which include Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc., have collectively set extremely high expectations among users. These "modern users" are impatient -- they want their information right now; they are intolerant -- if a site disappoints or frustrates them, they won't come back, and they are vocal -- they tell their friends about good sites and about bad ones too.

continue reading... 

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3K Longitude 400 Mini-Notebook -- you'll never guess what this reminds us of

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/275635780/

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Alright peoples, how many Eee PC knockoffs do we really need? Is 10 enough? How about 100? There seems to be no end in sight, and here comes the relatively unknown 3K Computers to give it a whirl. We'd say the first mistake is the 7-inch screen, gotsa stay ahead of the curve. Pair that with the 400MHz processor and a $400 pricetag and we haven't the slightest idea why we'd go in for this little Linux-based boringbook. Oh, wait... nope, we got nothing.
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