Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Thursday, June 07, 2007

MyLifeBrand Aggregates Social Networking Sites

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

MyLifeBrand is a service that lets user’s aggregate social networking memberships and navigate between them from the one place.

MyLifeBrand supports Friendster, LinkedIn, Bebo, Facebook, H15, Orkut, MySpace, and TagWorld among others and is working on support for a number of niche social networks including Angling Masters, Navy Seals and Drunk Duck.

Users are also able to add their contacts from external networks to their MyLifeBrand friends list creating a master friends list.

The difficulty in managing multiple social networks is real and any heavy Web 2.0 site user will understand the problem. We covered Spokeo in November 06 and a number of similar services since.

MyLifeBrand gives social networking aggregation a decent shot, however presenting external sites in a frame doesn’t work for me (see screenshot).

The introduction of the Facebook’s F8 platform shows the real direction in this space. Facebook allows external sites and services to be integrated directly into Facebook and not through frames as with MyLifeBrand, delivering a far superior user experience. This is not to say that MyLifeBrand won’t be able to find a user base, it’s just that they are probably 12 months too late in releasing, and 6-12 months behind in delivery and integration to become a major player. The long tail is long and there is always room for new comers, so I do wish them luck; competing against Facebook will be a challenge.

Incuby: Social Networking For Inventions

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

San Antonio, Texas based Incuby is aiming to build a community where inventors can display inventions to the general public, entrepreneurs and investors.

In developing the site, the team behind Incuby have toured the United States meeting with different inventor groups. They found that inventors are tired of the high costs associated with travelling and presenting at trade shows and are ready for “a place of their own on the web”.

The site is still in development and will move to a closed beta test in the coming weeks with a broad number of inventors already signed up to test the site.

The focus is creating an environment where inventors can coexist and communicate online with each other, while presenting their innovations. Through ecommerce enabled profiles, each inventor will be able to manage their product’s sales while adhering to a customer feedback system that is similar to eBay.

Shopping inventions does share similarities with the financing and development path of Web 2.0 startups. In truth the only real differences are tangible vs intangible IP and that tangible invention patents and trademarks prevent the same ideas being copied over and over again like they are in Web 2.0, for example with social bookmarking sites and Digg clones.

Sometimes it’s the simplest ideas that work best. Incuby is a simple yet solid idea that has the potential of going far. If I was an inventor myself, I’d be signing up as soon as it launched.

Intel talks up 3-Series chipset, Core 2 Extreme CPU for laptops

from Engadget by Darren Murph

Shortly after revealing that a quad-core laptop chip was indeed in Intel's pipeline for 2008, the firm has decided to go public with even more laptop-based processor details over at Computex. Intel's executive vice president Sean Maloney had the honors of "unveiling" the 3-Series chipset family (formerly known as Bearlake), which will of course support DDR3 RAM, PCI Express 2.0, HDMI, and can come stocked with G33 / G35 Express integrated graphics. More importantly, the outfit formally introduced plans for an Intel Core 2 Extreme mobile processor that should be released in Q3 of this year. According to Mr. Maloney, the chip is targeted to be the company's "highest-performing mobile dual-core processor that still includes energy-saving power features for laptop designs." No word just yet on whether or not this CPU will cost more than the rest of your laptop components combined (but we wouldn't be surprised). [Via Laptoping]

Philips unveils SPC620, SPC1000, and SPC1300 webcams at Computex

from Engadget by Darren Murph

While we thought we'd already seen the crown jewel of webcams before, Philips apparently thinks otherwise, as it boasts quite heavily about its new trio of display-mountable cams that were unveiled at Computex. All three devices support background customization and emoticon integration, wide-angle lenses, and face-tracking capabilities. The SPC620 holds down the low-end with a vanilla VGA CMOS sensor and will run you €49.90 ($67), while the SPC1000 includes a directional microphone and noise reduction filter, two-megapixel sensor, and a 5x digital zoom for the very same price. The €99.90 ($135) SPC1300 features Pixel Plus 2 technology seen in the company's Flat TVs, a six-megapixel sensor, audio beaming system, twin directional microphones, and Digital Natural Motion technology that purportedly nixes any frame rate flickers when video chatting. All three webcams should hit shelves in Europe, America, and Asia this August. [Via TechDigest]

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Phreetings - Create Photo Greeting Cards with Flickr Pictures and Your Text

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/06/create-photo-greeting-cards-with-flickr.html

Amit: The interface is intuitive - search the images from Flickr database (you can also limit search results based on Creative Commons license), add some text and the photo card turns into a webpage.

Here's a sample greeting card created from the the profile pictures of MyBlogLog visitors.

Thanks, Amit!

PictureSandbox

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7527

Mike Linksvayer: April’s most sophisticated Flickr/CC mashup yet has relaunched with angel funding as PictureSandbox.com with cool tools to find and reuse CC licensed photos in lightboxes, cards, and more.

Thanks, Mike!

Phreetings have color schemes!

PRIMARY red http://picturesandbox.com/card/6zy5zvmk blue http://picturesandbox.com/card/m04q8oys yellow http://picturesandbox.com/card/58pcslob SECONDARY green http://picturesandbox.com/card/vxarf8i4 purple http://picturesandbox.com/card/ezuemh8j orange http://picturesandbox.com/card/a6uyowys

Geek Chic: The Sims 2 H&M® Fashion Stuff

Geek Chic: The Sims 2 H&M® Fashion Stuff

12 min 47 sec ago by GeekSugar

If you haven't noticed the ads for the new The Sims 2 H&M® Fashion Stuff across the Sugar Network recently I suggest you take a gander. The game, which is available for order now, allows you to dress up your Sims in H&M® clothing collections for men and women with The Sims 2 H&M® Fashion Stuff. Your Sims characters can choose from FabSugar-approved H&M® fashions, then play with retail-themed items like mannequins, clothing racks, cash registers and even walk the runway. It's a real makeover from the days of plain Jane Sims clothing and adds a fun, girlie touch to the game. I dare you to not get addicted.

The game requires The Sims 2, The Sims 2 Special DVD Edition, or The Sims 2 Holiday Edition to play.

Vyew: Free Live Web Conferencing

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Free online web conferencing service Vyew launched earlier this year. Today, they’ve launched a new version that allows users to create “VyewBooks” to share, present, and interact with other people around content such as Microsoft Office files, pictures, audio and video.

The new version includes tools to facilitate the creation of new presentations and also supports a desktop view for live sharing of files, images, and web sites.

A widget-style tool “Vyewlet generator” allows content to be embedded on any website, a screencast tool of sorts that records collaborative work for demonstration elsewhere.

Henry Hon, CEO of Vyew compares the new version directly with competitors: “Vyew isn’t just another WebEx or GotoMeeting where information is communicated in a canned one-to-many format. Vyew is an enterprise-class social computing platform where people can also create, share, and participate with rich content in a many-to-many relationship, both in real-time and asynchronously over time.”

There are a lot of alternatives in this space and competing with the likes of WebEx and GoToMeeting is a challenge in itself. Vyew offers something a different a little different at a competitive price.

Previous TechCrunch coverage here.

Make your own air horn in 3 minutes

Canon crams 50 megapixels into a CMOS prototype

from Engadget by Paul Miller

You won't be seeing one of these sensors in your fashioncam any time soon. Canon has built a 50 megapixel CMOS monstrosity, which is reportedly almost twice the resolution of its nearest competition, and is prepping it as a sort of large format surveillance camera for monitoring large, busy areas such as parking lots and theme parks, along with detailed work like factory part inspections. Despite the sensor's clear industrial-end aims, Canon has managed to build its prototype at 19 x 28mm in size, the same dimensions of the sensors in its DSLR cameras, so who knows where this tech could end up in the long run. So far Canon hasn't even announced release plans for this current incarnation, so we aren't going to go hawking our existing shooter just yet.

More on Apple's new LED-backlit MacBook Pro

from Engadget by Ryan Block

Filed under: Displays

Apple left a little mystery in their MacBook Pro announcement today, and being that this marks their first official release of an LED-backlit laptop we had to take out the guesswork and get confirmation on a few of our more burning questions.

All 15-inch MBPs now use LED-backlit displays standard; 17-inchers still use CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent)
Apple claims users can see a battery-life benefit of between 30 mins - 1 hour (depending on use). They did not have stats on exact efficiencies between LED and CCFL backlit displays.
The new LED backlight is the same brightness: 300 vs 300 nits of the previous gen's CCFL
The viewing angle is also the same as before
In other words, besides faster time from fully-off to full-brightness and an increase in battery life, Apple claims users should notice absolutely no perceivable difference between last-gen displays and the new LED-backlit ones.

Other bits

To clarify, MacBook Pros are using Santa Rosa, but MacBooks are not yet using Santa Rosa
Even though the MBP is 0.2 pounds lighter, we're still without an internal / integrated 3G option

Asus' new Eee PC 701 joins the laptop-lite fray with a bang

from Engadget by Paul Miller

Asus and Intel seem to be bridging the gap between the fairly humanitarian efforts of the OLPC project and their own Classmate PC efforts, and the recent rash of mini-laptop attempts such as Palm's Foleo and VIA's NanoBook. Specs and launch plans aren't entirely nailed down, but this new Eee PC line has quite a bit going for it, even as crowded as this market is getting. The 7-inch ultraportable is based on an unnamed Intel chipset, and runs regular Windows XP or Linux without a problem, but really shines in its "easy" mode that strips things down to a barebones OS mainly for internet browsing (sound familiar, Foleo?). Asus didn't even leave Palm alone with its Wii comparisons either, stating that the Eee name, which stands for "easy to learn, easy to play, easy to work," also conveniently conjures images of the Wii game console, which is known for being novice-friendly. The Eee line will kick things off with the Eee PC 701, which will sport 802.11b/g WiFi, Ethernet and a modem for connectivity, along with a webcam, 512MB of RAM and a 4, 8 or 16GB flash drive for speedy, reliable storage. The real kicker is that prices for the 2 pound laptop are supposed to start as low as $200, and the Intel / Asus duo won't be aiming this at massive governmental purchases, but instead will be offering it to consumers through traditional retail channels. [Via HardwareZone]

More pics of the Dell XPS m1330

Posted Jun 5th 2007 2:27PM by Ryan Block Filed under: Laptops

We still don't have the magic numbers (launch date and price) on that most impressive new Dell XPS m1330, but we did at least secure some more eye candy for you. A couple more shots after the break.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Porsche Design Mobile Group unveils P'9521 handhset

from Engadget by Darren Murph

While the unlicensed version of Porsche's mobile handset still holds a special place in our hearts, it looks like the Porsche Design Mobile Group finally took it upon themselves to join the growing fray and introduce its own co-branded device. The group has already slapped the luxurious logo on a sat nav device as well as a portable XM radio, but Stephane Bret (the group's director) was caught showing off a new mobile in Essen. Unfortunately, details on the phone are all but nil, but we do know that the P'9521 was unveiled at the Red Dot Design Museum and will rock a squarish flip-phone design, integrated camera, and multimedia player. No word just yet on when (or if, actually) this sure-to-be-overpriced handset will hit store shelves, but we can't help but notice that a few formidable opponents are quite a few laps ahead at this point. Click on through for a few more shots.

Continue reading Porsche Design Mobile Group unveils P'9521 handhset

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