Samsung's SGH-F700 gets (really) official on Vodafone
from Engadget by Darren Murph
Friday, September 14, 2007
Desktop Factory's cheapo 3D printer is coming
Lindy intros Wireless VGA Projector Server
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Miro needs your donations to build the future of Internet video
Miro needs your donations -- the project is trying to raise $50,000 to pay programmers and designers to make its player even better. Miro (formerly known as Democracy Player) is the best and most promising video player I've ever used. It's free and open -- licensed under the GPL -- and it incorporates three different technologies that make watching videos easier and better than any of the proprietary players like Windows Media Player or iTunes. These technologies are VLC, a free and open video playback engine that plays all video formats, no matter where they come from; RSS, so that you can subscribe to "feeds" of your favorite videos (including subscribing to feeds of YouTube videos matching your keywords); and BitTorrent, so that you can download files without costing the people who host them -- so the more popular a file is, the cheaper it is to host.
Miro is a bet on a future for "Internet TV" that is as open as the Web, controlled by no one. Otherwise, the way things are headed, we could end up with one or two giant companies owning the future of video. No one -- not community activists, not video startups, no one -- benefits when just a few companies control the platform.
The Miro fundraiser will raise money to pay the talented hackers who have been producing regular updates to the Miro platform, ensuring that there's always an up-to-date version for the Mac, Windows and Linux. I believe in Miro enough to have volunteered for their Board of Directors since they started -- I hope you'll help us keep on producing the future of Internet video. Link
(Disclosure: I am a board member for the Participatory Culture Foundation, the 501(c)3 charitable nonprofit that oversees production of Miro)
Q&A with Austin Mayor Will Wynn
Mayor Wynn is just that. He has helped Austin become one of the leading cities for incubating clean-tech startups; the city now counts at least 25 of them, such as HelioVolt, as part of its local industry. He’s also trying to make sure clean tech stays in Austin: The city is working with HelioVolt on an economic incentives package to try to make sure the company’s manufacturing facilities stay local, for example. “We are spending a lot of time, effort and money in a targeted way to try to grow the clean technology sector here in Austin,” Wynn told us. His efforts are clearly resonating with Austin residents; according to his web site, he got over 78 percent of the vote in the most recent election. Oh yeah — and he walks to work. Below are excerpts from a conversation with Mayor Wynn.
Q. Why is the clean tech industry important for Austin?
A. It starts with the fact that Austin has a great tradition of a positive environmental perspective. It used to be focused on water quality and air quality, and now folks are becoming more aware that we need to talk about energy. We are truly a clean tech capital. We founded the Austin Clean Energy Incubator. Austin Energy is a beta lab for clean energy companies, and we have an aggressive solar panel system.
Q. There are a lot of debates about what clean energy options are viable. What are you excited about?
A. Well Texas blew past California in terms of wind. I’m also really interested in material sciences, smart appliances, computer chips. The tech sector will also play a huge role in this. There are fortunes to be made here. If we are smart, we are going to be right in the middle of the economic opportunity that combating global warming will offer. This will make a lot of people a lot of money.
Q. What do you think about carbon offsets; do you do these in your daily life?
A. We are actually in the process of creating a city-wide carbon footprint calculator that will focus on locally-based offsets for Austin, using local projects in the area. We’ve been waiting to roll that out, and it has been taking us awhile to create it. Hopefully we are weeks away from launching it.
Q. Austin leads in clean tech innovation, but when it comes to “a green city,” SustainLane said that Austin dropped in rankings “because the city remains heavily car-dependent, with ramifications for congestion and overall economic health.” What do you think about that criticism and are you doing anything to help the situation?
A. I agree completely. Transportation is far and away our biggest challenge. We will knock it out of the ball park for energy, but for transportation it is difficult and that is because of land use challenges. We are a sprawling metropolitan area. I use myself as an example: I moved downtown into a high-rise and dramatically reduced my car use, but ultimately it will take dramatically different land use patterns to have a viable mass transit options.
We are dramatically reassigning land use for every place we can. And there is opposition every time we try to do that. I am proposing an election for 2008, to have a significant passenger rail referendum.
Google's (GOOG) YouTube Gains Share, MySpace Loses
Nielsen//Netratings' August traffic report says YouTube's traffic grew 66% year-over-year from 34 million unique visitors last August to 56.5 million uniques this year. News. Corp's (NWS) MySpaceTV, meanwhile, fell 6% from 17.9 million uniques last August to 16.8 million last month. While Nielsen doesn't break down the numbers, it would be interesting to see how YouTube's distribution on Apple's iPhone and Apple TV products has juiced its traffic.
Of note, Yahoo! Video doubled year-over-year and Veoh's August uniques grew 346% from 663,000 to 3 million. We wonder: where will News Corp.'s next project -- its two-years-too-late Hulu venture with NBC -- show up on this list next year? Nielsen's chart after the jump.
See Also: CBS's Quincy Smith: Hulu Strategy a Waste of Time, Money, Economics of Online Video 3: $5 CPM = Keep Day Job
+------------------+---------------+--------------+----------+ | Site | Aug-06 UA | Aug-07 UA | % Change | | | (000) | (000) | | +------------------+---------------+--------------+----------+ | YouTube | 34,039 | 56,453 | 66% | | vids.myspace.com | 17,923 | 16,759 | -6% | | Google Video | 13,483 | 14,450 | 7% | | AOL Video^ | NA | 13,632 | NA | | MSN Video | 11,984 | 12,486 | 4% | | Yahoo! Video | 5,958 | 11,987 | 101% | | Metacafe | 2,822 | 4,151 | 47% | | Break.com | 2,926 | 3,954 | 35% | | Veoh | 663* | 2,958 | 346% | | Atom Films | 1,102 | 1,422 | 29% | +------------------+---------------+--------------+----------+ Source: Nielsen//NetRatings
Samsung's F700
Samsung F700 Specifications
HSDPA 3.6 Mbps, EDGE
900/1800/1900 MHz + 2.1GHz
3 Megapixel camera with Auto-Focus
Display: 265,536 TFT (3.2", 240x432)
Full Touch Screen
MPEG4/H.263/H.264/ MP3/AAC(+)/eAAC+
QWERTY Keypad
MMS / E-mail / JAVA / WAP 2.0
Bluetooth® 2.0 / USB
Flash UI / Document Viewer
Full HTML Browsing
Offline Mode, BGM
Memory
microSD™
112 x 56 x 16.mm
Virgin America launches in-flight, air-to-ground broadband
[ Boing Boing Gadgets ]: Virgin America shared more details today on its partnership with in-flight wireless broadband provider AirCell -- air-to-ground wireless internet will be available on all VA flights "sometime in 2008," and will be offered two ways: BYOD (bring your own device, laptops or pdas or whatever), and also through VA's inflight entertainment system called Red.
AirCell also has a deal in the works with American Airlines for air-to-ground wireless, but from what I can suss out in the press release, two things make the VA deal different...
Fair use industries returned $4.5 trillion to the US in 2006
The Computer and Communications Industry Association has just released a study it commission to calculate the value returned to the US economy by fair use and other exceptions to copyright. We often hear stories about how much money the US economy generates by giving certain sectors and companies exclusive access knowledge and information, but it's rare to see such a quantitative approach to the value created by not creating regulatory monopolies in certain cases. Even more interesting is the sum that the study comes up with -- according to the economists (who worked "in accordance with a World Intellectual Property Organization methodology"), "$4.5 trillion in revenue [was] generated by fair use dependent industries in 2006, a 31% increase since 2002, fair use industries are directly responsible for more than 18% of U.S. economic growth and nearly 11 million American jobs. In fact, nearly one out of every eight American jobs is in an industry that benefits from current limitations on copyright."
"As the United States economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based, the concept of fair use can no longer be discussed and legislated in the abstract. It is the very foundation of the digital age and a cornerstone of our economy," said Ed Black, President and CEO of CCIA. "Much of the unprecedented economic growth of the past ten years can actually be credited to the doctrine of fair use, as the Internet itself depends on the ability to use content in a limited and nonlicensed manner. To stay on the edge of innovation and productivity, we must keep fair use as one of the cornerstones for creativity, innovation and, as today's study indicates, an engine for growth for our country"Link (Thanks, Trey!)
Texas: Giant web woven by a variety of spider families
Scientists report that the massive 200-yard spider web recently discovered in Texas's Lake Tawakoni State Park was woven by spiders from many different species working collaboratively. Thousands of spiders have rebuilt the web three times after it's been torn up by rain and wind. Texas A&M University entomologist Allen Dean has identified spiders from such families as funnel web weavers, sac spiders, orb weavers, mesh web weavers, wolf spiders, pirate spiders, and others working on the Web. From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (photo from Tx. Parks & Wildlife Dept.):
Link to Star-Telegram, Link to Texas Entomology site about the webThe motive may well be food, researchers say. The larger the web, the more flies and bugs get stuck, providing an abundant food supply for the spiders. "Spiders generally are cannibalistic and keep their webs distinct," Dean said. "We're not sure what started the initial webbing ... but there probably have been thousands of spiders working on the web. "With the amount of rain that has occurred this year and the huge food supply available, it just created the right condition for all of this."
Create Flowcharts and Other Diagrams Online with Draw Anywhere
If Google every wanted to add a Microsoft Visio like flowcharting application to their Google Office suite, they'll have plenty of good options to choose from.
Draw Anywhere is a new web based tool for creating flow charts, org charts and other drawings online. Like the Picnick image editing, DrawAnywhere is done in Flash and sports an extremely responsive interface.
You can either save your Flowcharts online or export them as images and PDF files. drawanywhere.com
Samsung's SGH-P520 is the Armani Phone
Filed under: Cellphones
Archos's Generation 5 players are now available worldwide
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
Leaked Samsung G800 Reveal 5 Megapixel camera with 3x Zoom
[GSM Helpdesk and Let's Go Mobile via Unwired View]
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Survival: Life Saver Portable Water Filter Cleans the Crap Out of Your Water...Literally
After showing the bottle off at a defense conference in the UK, Pritchard sold all 1000 of his $385 bottles in under four hours. Defense experts were impressed with the fact that it could filter 4,000-6,000 liters before the filter had to be replaced. An innovation such as this could have a significant impact if it ever reached the consumer market, not only being used as emergency gear, but for camping and travel as well. [The Register]
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