Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Lightning Round: Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card [Review]

from Gizmodo by Mark Wilson

The gadget: The Eye-Fi. It's an SD memory card that adds Wi-Fi to any camera. Plus the free Eye-Fi service supports automatic uploads to 20 different web photo sites (like Flickr) as well as a computer on your home network.

The verdict: It works flawlessly.

The performance: Like we said, the Eye-Fi works flawlessly. Setup takes roughly five minutes (you program the card through your computer and bundled card reader.) From there, you simply snap pics in the range of your router, and chances are, by the time you go back to your computer, the pictures will be viewable. If your router dies, you turn off your camera, or even if you take out the card and put it back in, the photos will upload when you get things sorted out again. It's actually a normal 2GB memory card underneath all of the other functionality and can work as such.

The catch: We figured iIt must drain more battery —but apparently in-camera SD power standards dictate that this extra consumed power needs to be minimal, to the level of not noticeable to the end user. Unfortunately, the product doesn't support hotspots.

The price: $100

The verdict Part II: Sure, the Eye-Fi is basically a cradle replacement. But snapping photos and automatically uploading them in real time to share is truly fantastic, especially when the images can be better than one's camera phone. And the entire product experience is built with Apple-like simplicity. If you can get over the price and are sick of cords, we strongly recommend the purchase. Available now. [eye-fi]

Meebo Opens Site to Developers

Meebo Opens Site to Developers

By REBECCA BUCKMAN
October 30, 2007; Page B4

Meebo Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up aiming to morph from a Web-instant-messaging company into a general-purpose media company, will open its Web site to software developers, throwing it into possible competition with the likes of Facebook Inc. and Google Inc.

You can, on Facebook, where thousands of free applications let you interact with friends in unusual ways. But while fun for users, developers are vying for eyeballs, hoping to turn a profit with ad dollars. Stacey Delo reports. (Oct. 29)

Two years ago, Meebo began offering technology that enables instant messaging through a Web site without the user downloading software from other companies. Now, in a bid to become a broader "destination" site and cash in on the online-ad market, the Mountain View, Calif., company will allow outside software developers to build programs and applications around its instant-messaging technology.

The new programs, which could expand Meebo's reach, will stress activities that can be enjoyed live online with groups of friends, like interactive speed dating and computer games. Meebo, backed by high-profile Silicon Valley investors Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, hopes to make money by selling online ads inside the programs.

The company's transformation shows how hot the trend of social networking and Web-based "communities" has become, and how eager venture capitalists are to fund such ventures, despite questions about their profit potential. Meebo started collecting revenue only two months ago, from ads sold inside its chat rooms. The company, with its focus on live activities, "has the potential to be a fabulous business" and earn money, said Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia.

Facebook, a popular social-networking site, opened its Web platform this year. Since then, nearly 6,000 programs have been added to Facebook's site, the company says.

Meebo's initial rollout will feature services including Internet phone-calling and online video. The company is partnering with TokBox Inc., also backed by Sequoia, to provide video Web calling. It will work with Ustream.TV Inc. to offer live, streaming video. The idea is to encourage programs that stress the always-on nature of Meebo and its users, as opposed to the "static" set-up of sites like Facebook and Google's YouTube, says Seth Sternberg, Meebo's chief executive.

Instead of posting a video on YouTube, a Meebo user could stream video of an event as it is happening and simultaneously share it with a pre-selected group of instant-messaging friends, Mr. Sternberg says. He co-founded Meebo two years ago with Elaine Wherry and Sandy Jen.

This year, Meebo launched Meebo Rooms, which essentially are chat rooms. It has had success parlaying some rooms into larger media partnerships. CBS Corp., for instance, now links to the Meebo chat room about the offbeat TV show "Jericho" and has made it the main Jericho chat room on the CBS Web site.

"We want to encourage lots of different partners . . . to build really super-viral, super-engaged platforms to sit outside of cbs.com," said Patrick Keane, an executive vice president and chief marketing officer for CBS Interactive. CBS provides behind-the-scenes Jericho footage and other tidbits for the Meebo chat room and has signed on as a Meebo advertiser, Mr. Keane says.

CBS says it is working with other sites, including Facebook. Facebook has added programs that offer instant-messaging to its site, which might reduce any advantage Meebo has. Meebo executives and investors say the company has established itself as a destination for instant-messaging, with more than six million unique users logging in monthly.

Write to Rebecca Buckman at rebecca.buckman@wsj.com

Monday, October 29, 2007

CE-Oh no he didn't! Part XLVII: NBC Universal chief says Apple "destroyed" music pricing

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker clearly did not get enough raisins in his cereal this morning, because dude was not holding anything back during that speech he gave at Syracuse's Newhouse School of Communications -- in addition to saying NBC had made only $15M in iTunes video sales despite being the number one producer of content, he flat-out said that Apple and iTunes had "destroyed the music business" in terms of pricing and that video was next unless "we take control." Of course, seeing as consumers can access Universal's entire music catalog with various subscription services for under $10 a month ($36 a year, in the case of Yahoo Music) and entire NBC shows for free on the web, but still choose to buy songs and shows straight-up on iTunes anyway, it might be fair to say that NBC Universal is still figuring out how to monetize its content effectively, but really, where's the fun in that? Round 7, fight!

Toshiba A2 HD DVD Player for $200 at Circuit City

from Engadget by Conrad Quilty-Harper

When they say "competition's good," they obviously meant "competition means cheap HD DVD players": Wal-Mart's $198 Toshiba HD-A2 has been copied by Circuit City, which is now selling the same player for $197.99 online. Add it to your cart, and see for yourself. As one tipster said, with deals like this popping up this early, signs are looking good for one helluva Black Friday.

[Thanks to everyone that sent this in!]

Sprint Sprints to be the First to Agree to Phone Unlocking [Sprint]

from Gizmodo by Haroon Malik

Sprint has become the first American CDMA wireless company to begin unlocking their hardware once contracts have been honored. The move will allow other unlocked handsets to function on Sprint's network, but whether the reverse will occur with the other carriers is yet to be seen. For ex-Sprint customers who are happy with their phones but want to move to a different provider, it will not be imperative to purchase a new handset for the switch. This is because the unlocked handsets will function on all compatible carriers across the board. Well done to Sprint for being the first out there to get the, now inevitable, mass unlocking phenomenon well underway. [Boy Genius Reports]

The Simplicity of Time Machine Compels You [Mac OS X Leopard]

from Lifehacker by Gina Trapani

If you're running Leopard and you've got an external hard drive, you will back up your data, even if that wasn't your intention when you bought the drive or plugged it into your Mac. That's because Leopard's system snapshot mechanism, Time Machine, is dead simple to enable—and Leopard prompts you to turn it on the moment you plug in your FireWire drive. You'll think, "why not?" and why not indeed.

In System Preferences, Time Machine has exactly two settings: the On/Off switch, and what backup drive it should use. Once it's on, it creates hourly, daily, and weekly snapshots of your Mac, and automatically deletes the oldest ones when you run out of space on your drive—no user configuration required (or even possible, as far as I can see).

That terrible day you delete a file you need, to restore a past snapshot you'll use Time Machine's overwrought interface to fly back through space and time to that happy day when your file did exist. Gimmicky? Sure. But Mac guy John Gruber says that's a good thing:

Apple has made something so effect-laden and so extraordinary that users want to see it in action—the fact that that something is backups, which, let's face it, is effectively a chore, is a noteworthy achievement. Making backup software that people can't wait to try, and which, once activated, just automatically kicks in and does its thing on a regular schedule, is like making people want to go ahead and sign up for life insurance.

In short, Apple's used the best productivity trick in the world: to make the right thing to do the easy thing to do. Leopard's release will no doubt bring on an uptick of Mac users who diligently back up their system and data without even thinking about it.

Leopard [Daring Fireball]

Leopard Hacked For Self-Hating PC Users [Hacks]

from Gizmodo by Mark Wilson

We had written a very smug, Macs rule PCs drool post reporting that PC users could run Leopard. And then our Mac froze up and we lost it all. So now you just get the news straight, without our giggling. The news, once again: OSX Leopard has been hacked to work on all Intel PCs, and the process is ridiculously simple, requiring a small .zip and a touch of blank media. [UPDATE: And it looks like you need Tiger pre-installed, too.]

Of course, by installing Leopard on a PC, you are endangering the stability of the space/time continuum, risking not just the future of the Earth and our own humanity, but the existence of everything in the Universe. And we could never condone anything that Back to the Future told us was best avoided. [ OSx86]

Thanks Jason!

Simpler Video Ads (for advertisers) With Adap.tv

from TechCrunch by Roi Carthy

2007 has been a milestone year for video advertising with a gamut of companies attacking the opportunity from every which way. Today Adap.tv, a relatively new entrant into the contextual video advertising space, is announcing a new initiative with potential to propel it to the front of the pack. Adap.tv is letting advertisers without any video advertising experience jump right in with practically no effort, and zero production cost.

Generally speaking, advertisers face a number of challenges in respect to in-video advertising: Pre/Post rolls typically cost in the $10-$30 per CPM range. On top of that, producing the ads themselves is a costly endeavor. Then there's the matter of being able to convey only a single message. Lastly, the inability to safeguard against ad placement in questionable content is a major deterrent for many advertisers.

adap.tv's new offering tackles most of these issues head-on, with the most interesting aspect being support of keyword and product datafeeds—routinely used to structure search engine marketing campaigns. This is significant because it means that advertisers can reuse existing datafeeds by importing them right into adap.tv for instant targeted video advertising campaigns. Advertisers using AdWords or Overture can easily export their campaign structures to CSV format, upload them into adap.tv, and presto: instant video ads.

On top of datafeed support, adap.tv is also introducing:

Content Rating: Advertisers can employ content rating levels—G, PG, PG-13 & NC-17—in three dimensions: violent, sexual and illegal content. Rating levels are automatically determined for each video through adap.tv's content analysis technology.
Ad Templates: Brand oriented look & feel can be leveraged through ad templates which can range from flat, to animated, to interactive (see video below).

Amir Ashkenazi, CEO, claims that publisher and viewer growth is doubling month-over-month and that the company serves ads and pays publishers on almost every video view. Advertisers now include the likes of Amazon, Kayak, EVOgear and Let'sTalk.

The race for UGC video monetization is in full throttle and while it's hard to pin-point a clear leader at this point, adap.tv is certainly positioning itself as a player to keep an eye on. VideoEgg and others are also strong contenders, and YouTube is the 800 pound gorilla.

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Loading information about Adap.tv…

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Jailbreak Your iPhone or iPod Touch with One Click [How To]

from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

Jailbreaking the iPod touch/iPhone is now an utterly simple, one-click affair—which means if you've been waiting to jailbreak your iPod touch or iPhone (since the 1.1.1 firmware upgrade), the time is now. Just point your Safari browser to http://jailbreakme.com/ and click the Install AppSnapp link. It may sound scary, but the web site takes advantage of a mobile Safari exploit to install Installer.app (the gateway application for installing more applications) to your device. If you give it a try, here's what you can expect.

After clicking the Install AppSnapp link, Safari will close (or at least it did for me) and your phone will eventually return to the "Slide to Unlock" screen (it could take up to 5 minutes, depending on your connection speed—the whole process literally took less than a minute on my phone). The AppSnapp instructions state that once you slide, you'll see the Installer.app icon, meaning you're ready to go. When I tried unlocking my phone with the slider, it froze up, so at this point, I just restarted my iPhone. When it finished booting up, there was Installer.app in all it's glory, ready to install all sorts of goodies on my iPhone. "What kind of goodies?" you ask. Applications like these, for example:

The iPhone/iPod touch applications available have actually improved and broadened a lot since just last month when I made that iPhone app gallery, so there are still a whole lot of great apps available that aren't included in the gallery. As you may remember, we showed you how to jailbreak your iPhone using a couple of different methods several weeks back, but this one-click Safari hack requires absolutely no hacking skills—or even advanced computer skills. As always, proceed at your own risk. This method does exploit your phone and could potentially give access to your info if malicious forces were at work. However, one of the particularly interesting things about this installation method is that not only does it install Installer.app, but it also fixes the exploit that allows this to happen.

JailbreakMe.com/AppSnapp [via TUAW]

Two-faced Pantech Duo officially launches on AT&T

from Engadget by Darren Murph

No surprises here, but the Pantech Duo (split-personality and all) has officially arrived in late October, just as we were led to believe. Ready to rock texters' worlds on AT&T, the Duo does indeed boast Windows Mobile 6, a QWERTY keypad and a numeric 'board for your convenience, UMTS / HSDPA compatibility and a 320 x 240 resolution display. The unit measures in at 4.02- x 1.97- x .83-inches, and if you dig what you're seeing, it can be yours today for $199.99 if you're cool with signing a two-year agreement.

[Via Reuters / Yahoo]

SanDisk starts shipping 8GB microSDHC and M2 cards

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

SanDisk was trumpeting its 8GB microSDHC cards all the way back in June, but it's taken until now for the company to ship the little buggers -- but we're also getting an 8GB Memory Stick Micro (also known as M2) version as a reward for our patience. The 8GB SDHC card will set you back $139, while the M2 stick is $149, and both should be in stores worldwide now, according to SanDisk.

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Samsung unveils Super-WriteMaster 16x DL DVD burner

from Engadget by Conrad Quilty-Harper

Samsung has rolled out its fastest DVD burner yet, with the Super-WriteMaster (ha!) SH-S203N running at 20x for DVD± R discs, 16x for dual layer DVD+R variants, 12x for DVD-RAM, and progressively slower for other disc standards. It's all kitted up with a SATA connection standard, and supports LightScribe burning so you know what the hell's on that disc you just burnt. Samsung says this is the fastest dual layer DVD burner out there: we don't know if that's true, but we do know it's faster than our crappy 8x DL burner. Pick it up anywhere from now for $79.99.

Create A Backup Image of Your System with DriveImage [Featured Windows Download]

from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

Windows only: Freeware application DriveImage XML creates and restores images of any drive or partition on your system. That means that next time you freshly install Windows on your computer (whether XP or Vista), you can back up that clean and sparkling system state with DriveImage XML. If things get messy down the road, you can just as easily restore that fresh system state with the program's simple interface. We've given you the complete guide to system partition imaging and restoring from the open source perspective, but the freeware, Windows-only DriveImage XML offers a much more user-friendly alternative for the faint of heart.

DriveImage XML [via FreewareGenius]

Run a Better Google Talk on Your Desktop with Prism [Mozilla]

from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

Ever since Google updated the web-based Google Talk gadget, I've firmly felt that the web-based Google Talk is head and shoulders above the desktop client (if you don't need file transfer or voice calls, that is). Last week we told you about Prism, Mozilla's update to the stripped-down browser and web application environment WebRunner. Put the two together (using this URL when you create the Prism application) and you've got what feels very much like a desktop version of the Google Talk gadget. Prism is still very early in development, currently Windows-only, and—honestly—requires way more memory than I'd like (around 30MB for my Google Talk), but with more time and development, the single-use approach to web applications as desktop apps could catch on. Thanks Jon!

Prism [Mozilla Labs Blog]

Google “People” Reader

from GigaOM by Om Malik

Amanda Mooney has a great idea: Google (GOOG) should build "capability to import my Outlook, Ziggs, LinkedIn and Plaxo contacts into my Reader account and have Google instantly subscribe to news and blog feeds related to my people." In other words, they can implement some sort of "auto discovery" and turn Google Reader into a life stream aggregator ala Facebook. The only negative: Google will have even more information about us. What do you guys think?

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