SanDisk Sansa TakeTV 8GB video player leaked
Update: This whole thing sound familiar? It might, SanDisk announced its USBTV initiative at CES this year, so it looks like this is the first resulting product. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Update: This whole thing sound familiar? It might, SanDisk announced its USBTV initiative at CES this year, so it looks like this is the first resulting product. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out.
Samsung's 40-inch 1080p LCD TV panel -- just 0.39-inches thin
Samsung's 5 megapixel G800 gets launched, available next month
Casio Exilim EX-V8 reviewed
[Via Photography Blog]
Vinod Khosla Shares His Portfolio
Vinod Khosla gave a speech down at Sand Hill Road yesterday in which he offered the most detailed description of his portfolio companies that we've heard. Breaking it down into four categories — the war on oil, the war on coal, efficiency and materials — he discussed at least 32 portfolio companies that he hopes will shape the future of energy and fight climate change. He showed off a list of 26 companies in March.
As Khosla put it, "Hopefully we'll see a hundred portfolios like this. I'm happy to share all my strategies so we get more people," to have portfolios with a large amount of diverse energy companies. At the event, he used a PowerPoint slide to showcase his portfolio companies, and more recently posted a similar slide on his web site. Though the two slides are actually a bit different, here are some of the lesser-known companies from both lists: efficiency companies Seeo, Newco1 (is that a placeholder name?), and PAX Streamline (just called Streamline on this list); water companies Quos and NanoH2O; biofuel company Ethos (although a biofuel company called Kior was on the other list); and plastics companies eChromics (which he referred to as Soladigm on the other list) and Calera.
My Listening Habits This Year
Joelaz did this for me. It's spot on. This is my year in music. Wow. Thanks Joelaz!
Here's a link to a larger view of this.
UPDATE: Joelaz says you just give this service your last.fm login and you can get one of these for yourself.Flickr To Add Online Photo Editing Tools Via Picnik
From: TechCrunch: Michael Arrington
Currently, you can rotate photos on Flickr, but the editing stops there. When the new tools launch, users will be able to edit photos more extensively using the Picnik Flash based tools (see our review here).
The deal has been signed and implementation will occur sometime in the next few months, Flickr told me yesterday. Users will be presented with an edit option on the photo page. Clicking it takes the user to a new Flickr photo edit page, with the Picnik tools integrated via an iframe. After editing, users can add the edited photo to their Flickr account or, if they are a Flickr pro user, overwrite the original.
Business terms around the deal are not being disclosed at this time. Picnik is self funded to date.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Flickr Launches New Geotagging and Places Pages
GeoTagging Updates
Flickr first launched geotagging for photos a year ago - to date 29 million public photos have been geotagged, with 150,000 new ones coming in each day. They aren't making any changes to the way photos are geotagged (using Yahoo maps), but they are updating the results pages for searches.
The existing pages don't show large numbers of geotagged photos effectively; the new pages do a better job by placing actual tags from photos on a world map. Users can quickly find photos based on tags and geotagged information. Enhancements to navigation are also being introduced.
Overall, the enhancements are good, but the real win here comes when devices auto tag photos via GPS devices. Until then, most users can't be bothered with taking the time to add the appropriate meta data.
Places Pages
Pages are built around the Flickr concept of "interestingness," but based on places and tags. So China/bicycle shows popular photos of bicycles taken in China. Paris/architecture is another example. Any of 70,000 places can be viewed, optionally followed by any tag. Flickr is also adding in additional information on the place, such as weather and local time, as well as relevant Flickr groups.
The product will get better over time, too. Eventually users will be able to adjust pages by time or season, so pictures from New York in the Fall can be viewed, for example. Or pictures from a specific event that happened in a city.
Flickr now has over 1 billion photos and 37.7 million unique monthly visitors. 2.5 million news photos are uploaded daily by 15 million registered users. I wonder if founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield ever wish they hadn't sold out to Yahoo so quickly, for just a rumored $30 million or so in 2005…
Compulab's EM-X270 brings DIY to smartphones
Compulab may start a trend in the do-it-yourself world with its introduction of a fully functional -- less screen -- handheld computer. Starting at $122 you get the basic module running an Intel Xscale CPU up to 520 MHz with either Linux or Windows CE and for a bit more cake can add cellular radio, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, camera, or VGA touchscreen to your handset. Of course, you'll need to design yourself a nice housing as they don't seem to carry any, but hey, that's half of the DIY fun right there. Good luck with those projects, and if you make something cool send us your pics.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Five iPhone Apps We Can't Wait To Install
Now that Apple is officially opening up the iPhone and iPod Touch to third-party developers, we thought we'd give software companies some projects to work on. Here are five iPhone apps we can't wait to get our hands on.
Adobe Flash: Adobe's ubiquitous plugin is installed on some 99% of PCs, but 0% of iPhones. This would let iPhone users play Flash-based games, navigate Flash-based Web sites, watch Flash-based video, and load Flash-based ads.
RSS Reader: Read the newspaper on the subway with one hand. Web-based RSS reading is possible using the iPhone's Safari Web browser, but it requires an Internet connection to load content. A real RSS reader -- like our favorite Mac-based reader, Vienna -- which stores feed content on the iPhone for offline reading is a no-brainer.
IM/Chat: Adium is hands-down the best instant messaging client for Mac, and would make another great app for the iPhone. Chat on AIM, Google Talk, and a dozen other IM networks with one piece of software. Even better: Skype, iChat, or a similar app that can handle Internet audio and video chats. Apple's wireless partner AT&T would hate this -- who needs cellphone minutes anymore? -- and this would kill the carrier's pokey EDGE data network, but could work great over wi-fi, and eventually, a 3G connection.
Slingbox: So far, the iPhone's video watching is limited to whatever is on YouTube or iTunes. How about streaming live television from your home cable connection?
Remote Desktop: Left an important file at home? Whether a lightweight VNC ("virtual network computing") app or a full-fledged version of Apple Remote Desktop, it would be handy to be able to access your home computer via iPhone. Such apps already exist for Palm Treos and other smartphones, so porting to the iPhone couldn't be too tricky.
Readers: Any other apps for our wishlist?
Social Mapping: Game Not Over Yet
Platial CEO Di-Ann Eisnor says the combined companies will reach 15 million unique users per month and will store 100 million user-generated location-based points of data, including photos, videos, reviews, stories and people (see examples here and here). 25% of all distributed map widgets on the Internet will be served via the platform.
Frappr never took outside financing. Platial raised two rounds. They took $800,000 in angel funding in October 2005 from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Omidyar Network, Ram Shriram, Georges Harik, Jack Dangermon, and Ron Conway. In February 2007 they raised an additional $2.6 million from Keynote Ventures, with participation from most of the previous investors.
Where did Forrester get its Twitter data?
Peter Kim of Forrester writes on his blog “Our data shows that 6% of US online adults use Twitter regularly.”
I say bulls**t.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that many people are using Twitter.
My data shows that the regular users are between 50,000 and 300,000. A high percentage of which are outside the United States. That doesn’t come anywhere close to the numbers required for 6%.
Keep in mind that Hotmail has about 200 million users every month. Yahoo Mail says they have about 250 million worldwide users.
But, I’d love to be proved wrong. Where did this data come from? How was it collected? Does Forrester stand behind it? What’s in the report that Peter linked to (I am not a Forrester client, so don’t have access)? Does it contain other numbers that just don’t jibe with common experience?
UPDATE: Someone just Twittered me this: “Peter Kims’s source on the unique users (he says 447,000 in Aug07) is Nielsen//NetRatings.” I doubt that’s data for “regular” users, or even online adult users in the US. I could see total registered users being that high, but that’d be world-wide. Watch twittervision.com someday and you’ll see that there are lots of users outside America.
UPDATE 2: Peter Kim responded here, and says they didn’t get the data from Nielsen. I still think the survey is very flawed if it’s bringing back such numbers.
Google Phone: Our Google Phone Wishlist
Tight integration with Google Apps:
• Picasa: A 2MP camera with decent color and low light performance should take a shot, and upload it directly to your Picasa web storage as a mirror. Likewise for YouTube uploads.
• Google Talk: Both IM and VoIP makes this a fancy web communicator. The carriers may not like this, but we've got a feeling Google will sell this sans carrier. Oh, and other IM client support.
• Google Video and YouTube: To at least match the iPhone, they have to have their video sites ready for mobile usage. Uploading
• Google Earth: Google Earth for 3D maps, with GPS and app integration.
• Google Docs support with full read like the ones for iPhones, Windows Mobiles and BlackBerries, but real with full editing right on the phone, and support for multiuser editing.
• Google reader for RSS.
• Product Search, including camera phone barcode reading for quick price comparisons.
• Google Transit, Google Ride finder (taxis, limos and shuttles) integrated into maps.
• Third-party Support: Allow an open platform for other people to develop for. Even a company as big as Goog can't do everything by itself, and with niche apps developed by end-users, you can service minor target segments that wouldn't otherwise be cost-effective for you to cover.
• Those apps should be native, or at least widgetized for performance reasons. Native apps just run faster. We don't mean Java apps either, because those are even worse in terms of battery usage.
• This thing is going to be a data transfer hog while it swaps info with all Google's online services. A 3G connection that toggles on for heavy downloads and uploads, but reverts to Wi-Fi or 2G for background email checking, etc. (To save battery.)
• Push GMail and exchange server support.
• A music player that doesn't suck: It's not going to be an iPod, but it's gotta have something in terms of media features that can top Windows Mobile phones. Try Rhapsody support. Stay away from WMPlayer as a load program, please.
• Search from the home screen: Bring Google's search-centric features to your phone, letting you search contacts, the web, your emails, and every other bit of data right from your home screen, much like the Helio Ocean does.
• Hardware Keyboard: The iPhone's virtual keyboard is passable, but we still love the solid feel of a key clicking. Our favorite is HTC's slide-out QWERTY keyboard, which is great because HTC is the rumored contractor for the Google Phone's hardware.
• Touchscreen: Since it's probably going to be an HTC-made phone, a 3-inch touchscreen on par with Windows Mobile phones is the least they can do. While it would be nice to have multi-touch gestures, it's not completely necessary.
• Long Battery life: We don't mind sacrificing some portability for a battery that can last an entire day, even with heavy screen and 3G usage. Nokia's are known for optimizing battery life without sacrificing too many features, but the Google apps may be too processor intensive—especially when combined with 3G.
• Form-factor: We love the slide-out form factor that HTC usually uses, which gives us a spacious keyboard as well as a big screen on top. A Treo-like shape with keys on the front wouldn't be too bad either, but would sacrifice screen space.
Funny thing is, Helio's Ocean and Nokia's N series phones do a lot of this. The UI needs to be slicker than what either of those companies have done so far, though. (Maybe they should hire some ex-Apple software people.) Anyhow, we don't even know if this phone is real, for certain, so I'm not sweating it.
EDGE Tech intros $400 32GB DiskGO USB flash drive
[Via MobileMag]
Universal, Warner, and EMI to sell music on flash drives
The major record labels' ongoing fixation with physical media continues on, as Universal , EMI, and Warner have each announced plans to sell music preloaded on flash drives. Universal says the move is "aimed at the younger, 12 to 24 year olds, who no longer believe that the CD is as cool as it used to be," but that "people still want to own a physical product." Yeah, too bad that physical product is a DAP. Predictably, the $10 flash drives will cost twice as much as normal CD singles but contain additional content -- just like that ridiculous "ringle" concept we just heard about, only with more plastic and manufacturing involved. There's no word on what format the music will be in or what the DRM will be, but it's not like it really matters, since no one is going to buy these anyway. No word on when we'll see this Stateside, but UK teenagers can expect to be patronized by the record labels sometime in the next few months.[Via Pocket-lint]
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