ZAP announces mysterious high-performance electric car
Monday, June 25, 2007
New details about the iPhone
- 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 รก la MagSafe.
Continue reading New details about the iPhone
Fiber optic tablecloth: the new candlelit dinner
Vision Robotics' harvesting machines edge closer to the farm
Write a Text Blog with Pen, Paper and a Digital Camera
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.
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
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
Run Windows Vista, Office 2007 Together Without Installation
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.
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).
The Facebook Problem
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
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.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Preview CSS in IE 6 and Firefox simultaneously with CSSVista
Windows XP only: Freeware app CSSVista offers side-by-side live previews of CSS (cascading style sheets) code in Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox simultaneously.
CSSVista is a three-paned editor—one window is a CSS editor, one window the IE 6 preview, and the third is the Firefox preview. Although Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 ages ago, boatloads of users are stuck with IE 6. Unfortunately, the rendering engine for IE 6 is an odd bird requiring lots of special attention from developers—especially when it comes to creating cross-browser compatible websites.
CSSVista requires the .NET 2.0 runtime and, despite the name, is a free download for Windows XP only.
CSSVista [Site Vista]
ChipIn Empowers Micropayments On Facebook
ChipIn on Facebook supports existing Facebook events or can be used separately with ChipIn created events. Creation of new “ChipIn’s” is simple, the ChipIn Widget can be customized using photos from a users Facebook account and each ChipIn can also be promoted directly to Facebook friends.
We covered Lending Club, the exclusive Facebook P2P lending service on June 20; ChipIn is at the other end of the spectrum targeting micropayments, yet together they demonstrate the continuing growth of finance on Facebook. There is any number of new Facebook applications being launched daily, and whilst many provide a wow factor and are useful, not that many to date have a real world financial use. It’s not too farfetched to imagine ChipIn being used as a political or charity fundraising tool on Facebook in the near future. 
Apple passes Amazon to become the #3 US music retailer
Things must seem pretty rosy in Cupertino -- just a week before the mega-hyped launch of you-know-what, market research group NPD's quarterly survey shows Apple has passed Amazon to become the third biggest music retailer in the US. This isn't the biggest of surprises, since Steve himself predicted that the iTunes Store would overtake Amazon at the Showtime event back in September, but the leap to #3 is a little unexpected, since Apple also outpaced Target last quarter. iTunes is now rocking a 10% market share, just behind Wal-Mart at 16% and Best Buy at 14%, and while we don't expect to see it pass those two giants anytime soon, we'd bet that uptick in DRM-free sales has got the iTMS crew at Apple licking their chops.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Linux-powered VoIP uber-phone does WiFi video conferencing
We're not sayin' we'd put one of these bad boys in our living room or anything, but adorning the board room table with a four-line VoIP phone that sports a built-in 3.5-inch LCD, webcam, and Zach Morris-style handset wouldn't be a half bad use of resources. The SysMaster Tornado M20 uber-phone does a lot more than hold down IP calls, as it also manages to handle video conferencing, IPTV, video- / audio-on-demand, internet radio, voicemail, email / chat / news, and local weather information. This conglomerate even touts a dual-core processor, 32MB of RAM, and 32MB of flash memory, and the integrated Ethernet jack, WiFi, RCA audio outs, and Linux-powered UI are all welcome additions. Of course, we've no idea if you can rig up Tetris on this thing and use the 4, 8, and 6 keys to control your pieces, but it'll only cost you $260 and a tick of your time to find out.
System X: Ross Lovegrove's modular fluorescent lighting
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