Trying, but not buying -- Nielsen: Twitter�s audience is exploding; but 60% don't return the next month - http://tinyurl.com/dcvlxe
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Seagate Replica does automatic, incremental backup for the everyman
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/27/seagate-replica-does-automatic-incremental-backup-for-the-every/
Read - ComputerShopper review
Read - Official Replica site
Filed under: Storage
Seagate Replica does automatic, incremental backup for the everyman originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsAveratec debuts 12-inch $699 N2700 ultraportable
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/27/averatec-debuts-12-inch-699-n2700-ultraportable/
Filed under: Laptops
Averatec debuts 12-inch $699 N2700 ultraportable originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsUnitek's 3.5-inch SATA HDD bay / MicroSD card reader is more fun than it looks
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/27/uniteks-3-5-inch-sata-hdd-bay-microsd-card-reader-is-more-fun/
Aside from his stunning portrayal as Col. Kurtz ("I swallowed a bug"), Brando is our go-to guy for drive bays and memory card readers. If you're not holding out for a dock that plays DivX movies (or tells the temperature in your cube) this device should be right up your proverbial alley. The Unitek 3.5-inch USB Multi-Functional Bay sports a 2.5-inch SATA HDD enclosure, SD(HC) and MicroSD(HC) card readers, and a four pin power port -- 'cos you can't have too many four pin power ports. Since this is Brando, we were hoping to see something with a little more kitsch appeal, but we suppose that we'll just have to hold out for something from the Happy-Kid line. If a sane and sober-looking approach to portable storage is what you're after, be sure to size this guy up in the gallery below.
Filed under: Peripherals, Storage
Unitek's 3.5-inch SATA HDD bay / MicroSD card reader is more fun than it looks originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsGenius G-Shot HD520 camcorder does 720p for $149
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/27/genius-g-shot-hd520-camcorder-does-720p-for-149/
Continue reading Genius G-Shot HD520 camcorder does 720p for $149
Filed under: Digita l Cameras
Genius G-Shot HD520 camcorder does 720p for $149 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsApple prototyping "iPhone lite" and MacBook Mini / media pad for Verizon?
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/28/apple-prototyping-iphone-lite-and-macbook-mini-media-pad-for/
[Via TUAW; image courtesy of Frunny]
Read - BusinessWeek
Read - Adium stats
Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops, Portable Audio, Portable Video
Apple prototyping "iPhone lite" and MacBook Mini / media pad for Verizon? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | CommentsMonday, April 27, 2009
Toshiba to ship 32nm process NAND flash memory
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/27/toshiba-to-ship-32nm-process-nand-flash-memory/
Man, talk about a lightning quick turnaround. Just over two months ago, Toshiba was caught showing off 32 nanometer NAND flash chips, and now the firm's gloating about being the world's first to hit the "ship" button. Er, it will be should everything continue as planned. As the story goes, Tosh will start mass production of 32Gb NAND flash memories in July 2009, while 16Gb products will begin to ship in Q3 of this year. The point to this madness? To get more memory into smaller devices, which ought to make future smartphone / MID / UMPC buyers quite jovial.[Image courtesy of Tech-On]
Filed under: Storage
Toshiba to ship 32nm process NAND flash memory originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | CommentsFlip Ultra HD: Our Favorite Cheap Camcorder Goes HD [Flip Ultra Hd]
Besides going HD—bringing it up to par with our other fave, Kodak's ZI6—the Flip Ultra HD gets HDMI, a rare rainbow unicorn for these cheap pocket cams. It's got two hours of record time, and removable rechargeable batteries. Gary walked out of Best Buy with the so-far-unannounced Flip Ultra HD for $200, which is high compared to Kodak's upcoming $150 Z1x. Still, we can't wait to get our hands on it. [Gaxonline via Engadget]
Follow the Deadly Swine Flu Pandemic in Real Time With Google Maps [Apocalypse Now]
In case you have not been paying attention to the news during the last few days, there's a pandemia going on. A spike of infections of the H1N1 Swine Flu—a mutation of a pork virus that jumped from pigs to humans—happened in the city of Mexico (103 dead already) and it is quickly spreading through the world now, thanks to airline connections.
Reading the map is very simple: We are all going to dieThe pink markers are suspect, the purple markers are confirmed, and deaths don't have a black dot in the marker. The yellow markers are negative, but I don't see any.
Have fun watching. While you can.
View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map
P.S. Stupid Apophis can't reach us in time! Hahahaha. Ha. But it looks like pigs are getting their revenge for all these centuries of crispy bacon and pork buns. [Google Maps]
Seagate Replica Is Time Machine for Windows PCs [Backup]
You plug it in, agree to the Terms of Service and it copies your entire hard drive—then every so often, records changes you make, so if your girlfriend has second or third thoughts about that home video you made together and deletes it to keep it from haunting her future Senate career, you can just zoom back a few hours into the past and retrieve it. Or any other precious file that mysteriously slips into the ether. If your whole system crashes out, it comes with a boot CD that you're not going to want to lose that'll let you restore your entire hard drive. Also, it looks like a hard drive for aliens.
It's $130 for 250GB of backup, or $200 for 500GB. [BoingBoing Gadgets, Seagate]
GE Makes Holographic Storage Breakthrough For Cheap(er) 500GB Discs [Storage]
Sheinhardt Wigs GE engineers have announced a breakthrough in the formerly retardedly-expensive field of holographic storage: by making the holograms smaller, they can squeeze 500GB on standard-sized optical discs.
And the even cooler part is that the base tech will be very similar to the laser systems used to read CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs today, so the new holographic-enhanced players and drives would still be backwards compatible with previous optical discs.
Still quite a while until this approaches the realm of a product, but it's good to know about the next stupid format war this will surely spawn well before it happens! [NYTimes]
Alpha 680, The First Android Netbook Priced At $250 [Android]
Beyond that Computerworld claims the Alpha 680 is smaller and lighter than ASUS netbooks and it will run a 533 MHz ARM11 processor. A full list of specs are already available on Skytone's website.
If all goes as planned, we should be seeing a product on store shelves sometime in the next 3 months or so—although there are no guarantees it will be on time and on price. [Boy Genius via Computerworld and Phandroid]
Essential Tools for Starting Up Your Side Business [Entrepreneurship]
Photo by intenteffect.
Now that you've paid your income taxes, you want to turn your nights and weekends into an extra income stream (and business expenditures into tax deductions). With the recession in full swing and pink slips getting handed out at the job, now's a great time to take the leap and set up shop on your own. Whether you're selling t-shirts, building the next great webapp, or contracting your brilliance out to clients, several handy tools can offer small biz services you need for free or cheap. Let's take a look.
Get Physical
Just like you'll publish your business address on your cards and web site, you'll also want a separate phone number for your side or small business. I was lucky enough to get in early on a free (but invite-only) Google Voice number that lets you set up custom greetings for customers and forward business calls to my cell phone during business hours. Many voice over IP services offer similar features that let you set up filters to separate business and personal calls so your customers don't get your personal voicemail greeting.
In the age of email, faxing is a pretty antiquated way to exchange documents. Still, if a customer wants to fax you something, use a free-to-cheap service like eFax to get faxes digitally to your email inbox. Photo by turtlemom4bacon.
Make Your One Essential Hire: An Accountant
Most side businesses want to avoid hiring a lawyer unless absolutely necessary because, well, attorneys are expensive. However, out of the gate, you at least want to have a good accountant. Especially when you're first getting started, an accountant can answer questions like "Should I found an LLC or an S-Corp?" and help you figure out how your business will affect your taxes. In some areas (like here in San Diego), there's a yearly city tax for running a business and a local business registry (which I had no idea existed when I moved here). Your accountant will be able to answer finance-related questions and help you deal with all those annoying details of just getting set up.
Establish Your Business Presence Online (and Off)
Now that you've got yourself a name, address, phone number, and accountant, it's time to get down to busine! ss. Cons ult with your accountant about what type of business you should found (or if you should just stick to a sole proprietorship) and get to filing the paperwork. Tools like previously mentioned MyCorporation can help you found your company; otherwise a good accountant can help you do the paperwork as well. Make sure you talk over what you need and how the business entity will affect your finances before you make your move.
These days no business is in business until it's got a web site. Register your company's domain name using a reliable registrar (and that business address you set up). After their awful Super Bowl ad I got tired of popular registrar GoDaddy's annoying upsells and low-class marketing and switched over to NameCheap; I've also had a good experience using Dotster. If you're going to spring for web hosting, your host may offer domain registration as well. (Adam and I both like DreamHost.) However, if your company's web site is a straight-up brochure or simple blog, there are many ways to host your business domain name with free apps.
You may also want to claim your business name on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and unlike domain registration, that's free. Twitter's a super-easy way to distribute short bits of news about your business, and on Facebook you can easily set up a business page for connecting with your customers and letting them know what you're offering.
Distribute Your Goods
Wrangle Your Paperwork
Paperwork like contracts, invoices, taxes, business cards, and bills are an inevitable reality of running a business, but there are a few ways to reduce the occurrence of dead trees in your venture. In lieu of faxing or filing in manila envelopes, I'm still in love with my ScanSnap document scanner for turning receipts and contracts into PDFs instantly. For invoicing clients, the excellent Blinksale is an inexpensive and easy way to track what's gone out and what's coming in. (Plus their invoices look a lot better than that Microsoft Word template you've been using.) Freelancers tracking billable hours should check out Harvest for time-tracking and invoicing capabilities as well. Finally, for nifty custom business cards, check out Moo.com's offering.
Manage Your Customers
More from the Twitter Front Line
As far as small business owners go, I'm pretty green, so this morning I asked my more experienced Twitter followers what must-have app or service helps run their side or small business. Here's a sampling of what I heard back:
- @daftviking: "Freshbooks is one of my must-have svcs (I'm just a nerd, not good with accounting)" (Editor: Several others mentioned Freshbooks for accounting as well)
- @mthology: "I know there's Skype and Google Voice, but I've been using Gizmo5 to provide a business phone # as well as VM sent to my email."
- @lesterg: "Lately Google Docs used as project status sites for clients. Clients can access from anywhere."
- @jlewsader: "must-have app or service help run your side/small biz? Google Voice and Zoho
- Adobe PDF Writer. I use it to sign contracts. Faxing offends my sensibilities"
- @erdoland: "Campfire, Pyro, Quickbooks, WordPress."
- @howtogeek: "Must have small biz app? Basecamp and Gmail Apps"
- @jojm: "Our small "virtual" software company relies on IRC , Email, Skype, and Google Docs - in that order - for communication."
- @sethclifford: "Couldn't function without Basecamp. Didn't have it until recently, and absolutely loving it for organizing, communication."
- @smartgoat: "We've started using Mechanical Turk for data entry on one of our sites. It's been a huge time saver."
- @stevenpaulr: "evernote and google calendar. That's pretty much my entire scheduling/billing system right there."
What apps run your small business depends a whole lot on what your need. What must-have apps run your side or small business? Share the love by posting them up in the comments.
Gina Trapani, Lifehacker's founding editor, loves running a small biz on great apps. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday (except today, because it's Friday) on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.
Polaris Brings Google Analytics to Your Desktop [Downloads]
If you don't have your own web site, this application (and Google Analytics in general) is useless to you. If you do have a web site, chances are you're a little bit of a Google Analytics junkie. Rather than keeping a tab or window open dedicated to Analytics, Polaris Desktop Reporting pulls Analytics out of your browser and puts it into an attractive widget-style look at your web site's visitor and traffic status. The application is fast, integrates many of the reports you likely look at regularly, and overall works like a charm.
Polaris is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux, requires Adobe AIR. If you're planning to use the app for more than one web site, Polaris costs $15/year. If you're new to Google Analytics but think it might be for you, head over to our guide to improving your web site with Google Analytics.
Polaris for Google Analytics [Desktop Reporting via RefreshingApps]
Take Aerial Photos with a DIY Kite Camera Timer [Weekend]
Instructables user Mikeasaurus was interested in Kite Aerial Photography—yet not so interested in shelling out a lot of money for a custom rig or building his own timing circuit for the shots. He wanted a mechanical device that would trigger his camera on an interval, work with any digital camera, and required no special adapter or plug. He created a mechanical timer out of the motor from a child's toy and other miscellaneous parts like a paint stirring stick, thumb tacks, and a BIC pen.
Although his end creation has a bit of a Frankenstein appearance, it got the job done effectively for him, and he was able to take over 400 pictures from the kite rig's maiden voyage. It also fit his criteria of working on any digital camera he could mount to it—assuming the kite was big enough to lift it! Check out his tutorial at the link below for more information. If you have your creative way of getting photos, airborne or otherwise, share your technique in the comments below.
Kite Areal Photography [Instructables]
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