Thursday, May 17, 2007
Belkin Network USB Hub gets official
Posted May 15th 2007 9:11AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Peripherals, Wireless
Continue reading Belkin Network USB Hub gets official
Posted by Augustine at 9:11 PM
Labels: network print sharing, USB hub
The Motorola RAZR 2
Posted May 15th 2007 10:05AM by Chris Ziegler Filed under: Cellphones
Small LCDs with integrated backlight sensor use 30% less juice
Posted May 16th 2007 6:47AM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Displays
Posted by Augustine at 9:03 PM
Labels: cellphone, LCD, light-sensitive
D-Link's Xtreme N Duo MediaBridge enables HD streaming
Posted May 16th 2007 8:34AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Wireless, Networking
Posted by Augustine at 9:02 PM
Steinway & Sons, Peter Lyngdorf partner for high-end A/V equipment
Posted May 16th 2007 11:19AM by Ben Drawbaugh
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Posted by Augustine at 8:59 PM
Labels: Objects D'esire
enano's latest mini PCs tout Core 2 Duo, energy efficiency
Posted May 16th 2007 3:19PM by Darren Murph Filed under: Desktops
Posted by Augustine at 8:56 PM
Labels: core 2 duo, miniPC
Samsung develops 8GB microSD card
Posted May 16th 2007 11:48PM by Chris Ziegler
Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals
Samsung and LG.Philips announce AMOLED displays
Posted May 17th 2007 7:54AM by Thomas Ricker Filed under: Displays
Continue reading Samsung and LG.Philips announce AMOLED displays
Is Fotolog next in line to be bought?
Fox Interactive, the corporate parent of MySpace may not be commenting on its rumored $250 million purchase of photo sharing & hosting service Photobucket, but the tongues are already wagging with many wondering who’s next. The name of the photo-sharing start-up quietly doing the rounds of likely buyers is one that is going to surprise many.
We have heard from multiple sources that Fotolog, a social photo site is one of the fast growing properties, getting a (notoriously unreliable) Alexa ranking of 24, which puts it above Photobucket.
The New York-based Fotolog started in May 2002 and now has eight million members, and is doing about 3 billion page views a month, with about 13 million unique users. In the last month alone the start-up has added about 700,000 users. Quantcast data puts them at about 26 million uniques.
So why is this company not getting the attention? Mostly because it is big in Spanish-speaking regions and in Southern Europe. The company has signed a deal with AOL, which will likely goose up the revenues for this little start-up.
But one should not confuse Photobucket and Fotolog. Fotolog CEO John Borthwick, a former Time Warner executive, on his blog notes:
Photobucket is a tool that is agnostic of destination – while Fotolog is a destination. Photobucket stores image-based media, then distributes it to your page on social networking sites such as Myspace, Bebo, Piczo, Friendster, etc. Fotolog is a destination where you post one image a day which then becomes the center of a social interaction/chat with your friends. It’s intentionally simple – stripped down and focused on the social media experience.
Borthwick agrees with the arguments we made in our post yesterday, even though he believes MySpace has grander ambitions for Photobucket.
Photobucket is a photo and video tool that could become a web-wide locker for the storage of digital media. Just as eBay’s acquisition of PayPal wasn’t meant to just serve just eBay, my guess is that NewsCorp’s purchase of Photobucket isn’t just meant to serve MySpace.
So who would be interested in this company? My guess is a large media player without a social media play. IAC, Viacom and several private investors could be interested in Fotolog. This is one you need to keep an eye on.
Flying without ID won't work? Try making your own ID.
The CBS affiliate here in Kansas City (KCTV) just did an investigation into airport security, and proved that it doesn't matter what kind of ID you show when you try to board a plane, as long as the ID looks kind of real. So while people test the system and try to fly without an ID at all, I think the bigger story is that requiring an ID at all is a total sham security measure. The TV station made an ID from scratch and the screeners accepted it with no questions asked. They even have an interactive display on their website showing how they created it and all of the crazy stuff they included on it. Kind of funny and scary at the same time.Link
Neuros OSD: a set-top box that treats you like an owner
Augustine: this is product-development 2.0
The OSD can record from any analog video source, from a TiVo to a satellite box to a DVD player to a games console. It records to any removable media you plug into it, such as a USB thumb-drive or a hard-drive -- so you can record your favorite DVDs, your best video-games, or your TV shows straight to drive. Needless to say, it'll play back from all this media as well.
The OSD is networkable, and can schedule programming in advance like a TiVo. It can play back all the standard download formats, including Xvid and Divx.
Best of all, the OSD is open: anyone can hack its firmware and add features to it (Neuros will even pay hackers for adding features to the box). Unlike traditional PVRs that come lumbered with anti-copying technology to appease the Hollysaurs and anti-hacking technology to appease the investsaurs, the OSD actually treats you, the customer, as the owner of your device, and encourages you to wring every possible erg of value from your purchase. LinkPosted by Augustine at 4:50 PM
Labels: digital media, neuros OSD, recorder, set-top box
Your old CD ROMs could help kill a bogus patent!
To help bust this overly broad patent, we are looking for Prior Art that shows the use of this technology before 1994. Specifically, we are seeking the following items:Link1. NetNews CD-ROMs, sold by Sterling Software, preferably volumes #1 through #35. These CDs may have been also available through CD Publishing Corporation.
or
2. Other CD-ROMs that were distributed in 1993 or earlier that contained hypertext content or were installation disks for applications that linked to Internet content.
Posted by Augustine at 4:49 PM
Labels: patent reform
Orange Japanese watch tells time with intersecting polyhedrons
from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow TokyoFlash's latest wildly impractical, handsome Japanese wristwatch is the EleeNo WebTime Elite. Although this isn't nearly as impractical as a watch that vibrates the time in Morse code, it is nevertheless extremely handsome. I'm really becoming a fan of "butterfly clasp" watch-straps that make a continuous loop around your wrist. Plus it comes in orange, which is unquestionably the best color a watch can be. Link
See also: Binary LED watch from TokyoFlash Crazy TokyoFlash watch: the Pimp Watch Radio Active watch from Tokyo Flash Scope watch tells time using line-intersections on Cartesian grid Impractical lovely pixelwatch from Japan
Image-search isn't a copyright violation
The Ninth said that Google's Image Search thumbnails are fair use -- that's the good news. The less-great news is that the court also ruled that Google is a "secondary infringer" where it has "actual knowledge" of copycat sites in its index and fails to do anything about it.
Today's decision reversed the lower court's holding [PDF] that Google's thumbnails were not a fair use, following and bolstering an earlier image search engine precedent, Kelly v. Arriba Soft [PDF]. The court rightly took into account the important public benefit that search engines provide -- not simply the impact on the particular parties in this case -- and what would serve copyright's fundamental goal of promoting access to creative works. While Google's transformative use of the image provided a very real public benefit, Perfect 10's potential loss of thumbnail licensing revenue was highly speculative.The Court also shot down Perfect 10’s claim that Google was displaying the full-sized versions of infringing images from third-party websites by framing them or providing an HTML in-line link tag to end users. The Court correctly discerned the technology at issue, finding that when you frame a page or provide an in-line link, it’s the site that you’re pointing to that could be displaying the picture, not the search engine that coughs up the HTML.
Posted by Augustine at 4:34 PM