Solar Power: Floating Solar Island Will Produce Energy While Annoying Plankton and Fish
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Brilliant: FIQL Avoids Copyright Trap Through Music Videos
from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington
FIQL is a nice niche social network focused on music playlists. Users upload, categorize and share their playlists with others. People who view the playlists can buy songs through links to iTunes and other music services. But for the most part they can't simply listen to the songs online, other than through somewhat cumbersome links to Napster and Rhapsody, which allow people to listen to songs for free with certain restrictions.
Since listening to music on playlists has so many restrictions, the service hasn't grown much - it has just 15,000 playlists from 50,000 registered users since launching in 2005.
But at 9 AM PST I have a feeling they will be getting a whole bunch of new users and a lot more playlists when they launch a new product called FIQL TV. That's because they figured out a brilliant, if somewhat obvious, end-around to copyright laws that restrict them from playing music outright: music videos hosted on third party video sites like YouTube.
It's widely known that music videos are available on video sharing sites (some of them are even distributed legally). In fact, sites like Middio have sprung up that do nothing more than provide music video search for YouTube and other sites. There are a number of services that also allow people to download these videos to their hard drives (see our own YouTube download tool) - and converting them to iPod format is only a small additional step.
Videos are regularly pulled down as copyright holders complain, but they are quickly re-added by other users. That means bookmarks of videos often go stale, but using a search engine will always help you find what you're looking for in no time.
FIQL Leverages Music Videos To Avoid Copyright Trap
FIQL has also created an embeddable player for those videos that can be dropped in to MySpace and other social networks and websites, or add it to their Facebook application. So now, if you have a favorite playlist in iTunes, you can simply export it to FIQL and get an embeddable player back that plays the music videos of all your songs. An screencast overview of the new service is here.
Problem solved.
Or, mostly. Technically FIQL is still subject to copyright claims. But they've pulled themselves one step away from direct contact with the content owners, who are mainly focused on the sites that actually host the infringing content. Case law is still developing in this area, but they are under little real threat of litigation.
Is Your Computer Connecting To Websites Without Your Knowledge
If you are worried that some programs on your PC are secretly making connections to websites in the background, here's a quick tip that uses a simple DOS command to detect and prevent such suspicious activity:
1. Type cmd in your Windows Run box.
2. Type "netstat -b 5 > activity.txt" and press enter. After say 2 minutes, press Ctrl+C.
3. Type "activity.txt" on the command line to open the log file in notepad (or your default text editor)
The file activity.txt will have a log of all process that made a connection to the Internet in the last two minutes. It will also show which process connected to which website in this time. And not just the web browsers (like iexplore.exe or opera.exe), the log will also show your IM clients, download managers, email programs or any software that requires a net connection.
Scroll though the activity.txt file and look for any process names or website addresses that you are not aware of. If you track one , go to the task manager (or Process Explorer) to find the location of the executable on your computer and eliminate it.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Cellphones: Digitimes Reconfirms gPhone
Apple: iPhone GPS Hack Works and is Awesome
Kind of. It's off by a few hundred yards, but this is a lot better than the total lack of location awareness that the iPhone officially enjoys. And its FREE. It also claims Wi-Fi positioning, which I don't completely understand. A caveat: It crashed Chen's phone, but it worked great for me. And this is only version 1.0, but maybe the real question is why wasn't this functionality built into the iPhone to begin with? Go Navizon!
Who Owns Your Financial Data?
That's the question we should all be asking. Now that Mint has finally launched and joined Wesabe, Geezeo, Buxfer and a few others in the personal financial web service space, it's time to discuss what it means to take your personal financial data out of the hands of your bank and credit card company (who thinks they own it but do not), and put it on the web.
Wesabe, a Union Square Ventures portfolio company, has a Data Bill Of Rights.
It says:
- You can export and/or delete your data from Wesabe whenever you want.
- Your data is your data, not ours. Our job is to help you understand and act on your data.
- We’ll keep all of your data online and accessible for as long as you have an account. No “archive access” charges.
- Any data you want us to keep private, we will.
- If a question comes up not covered by these rights, we will answer it remembering that your data belongs to you.
That's a good start. But I think its time to discuss this at length. And there's no better place to do that than in the blogs. Here's some questions to ponder.
- who owns the metadata you and others create about the transactions that come into the system? - is it better to let the service do the tagging or is it better to let the community to do the tagging of the transactions? - should the tags be shared and if so, when and with whom? - where should your login and passwords be stored? - can these services be hacked? - is personal identifiable information (PII) being stored with the data?
I am sure there are more questions. So now that we have a full fledged category here with at least four high quality companies in it, let's figure out the rules of the road.
Mint Wins TechCrunch40 Top Company Award; Takes $50,000 Prize
Jason Calacanis just announced that Mint was chosen as the best presenting company at TechCrunch40. The provider of an impressive personal finance application will receive $50,000 as part of the award.
Mint presented its application this morning during Session 5, which was entitled "Productivity and Web Applications". See our coverage of that session here.
Mint is a personal finance application that lets users track and monitor their financials in one place without the need of routine maintenance or accounting knowledge. Their application tracks bank, credit union and credit card transactions and alerts users to upcoming bills, low balances or unusual spending. Mint's patent-pending technology automatically categorizes transactions, so users know with precision where they are spending money, what their bank and credit balances are, and how much interest they have earned.
Their application also helps people find ways to save money by constantly searching for deals on credit cards, bank accounts, etc. Mint's technology also analyzes your finances and makes suggestions all while using the same security systems as top banks.
Metaplace: open DIY virtual worlds for everyone
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on 9/19/07
Metaplace -- a virtual world creation system that lets anyone make their own multiplayer games, link them and share them -- has just launched, at the Techcrunch 40 event. Metaplace was created by Raph Koster, the architect of Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online -- and the author of the incredible Theory of Fun. Metaplace is a world-creator that runs right in your browser, and that makes it incredibly simple to share objects, characters and entire worlds. I joined the advisory board as soon as Raph told me what he was working on and why -- this is one of the coolest ideas for gamespace that I've ever heard of.
LinkOur goals are sort of idealistic. We think there are all kinds of things on the Internet that would be improved if anyone could have a virtual place of their own. Right now, there aren't enough good games, for example, and they all seem to be about elves in tights or soldiers in battle armor. Metaplace allows more diversity. Right now, there are lots of people who want to use virtual worlds for research, or education, or business, but it's just too darn hard to get one going. Now you can create a world in just a few minutes and start tailoring it to your needs. Basically, we wanted to democratize the process of making online spaces of all sorts...
We speak Web fluently. Every world is a web server, and every object has a URL. You can script an object so that it feeds RSS, XML, or HTML to a browser. This lets you do things like high score tables, objects that email you, player profile pages right on the player -- whatever you want. Every object can also browse the Web: a chat bot can chatter headlines from an RSS feed, a newspaper with real headlines can sit on your virtual desk, game data could come from real world data... you get the idea. No more walled garden.
DigiTimes: Google will definitely launch its own branded handset
Citing sources at "Taiwan handset makers," DigiTimes is reporting that "Google will definitely launch its own branded handset." However, the Googlephone's OS, hardware specs, production contractor and operating partners have still not been finalized. Given that we're already pretty sure that Google has developed their own mobile OS based on Linux, we'll assume that their use of "finalized" refers to the final feature set and UI polishing -- not the possibility of the gPhone running Symbian or WinMo, for example. DigiTimes' sources also note that Google is contemplating going with a 3G handset instead of EDGE for its initial foray into the cellphone market. However, the choice for Qualcomm's 3G versus TI's EDGE could push the introduction of the HTC manufactured handset into the first half of 2008. Come on Google, it's post-Labor Day now so just go ahead and announce your plans already. We're big boys, we can take it.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Imogen Heap - Just For Now
Popout
Imogen Heap singing acapella "Just For Now" (from her album "Speak For Yourself") at the Studio 11 for Indie 103.1FM on september 2006. Amazing performance. Thanks to Derek and Daniele for the video.
Projectors: Toshiba TDP-PX10U Surprisingly Bright for a Such a Puny Projector
Slick: Vaio Zoom Concept is Exactly How We Want Laptops to Look in the Future
[Renewable Energy: First Large Scale Wave Farm Approved in England
Metaplace Unveiled: Raph Koster Brings Virtual World To The Web
Call it Second Life on the web, call it an MMO markup language, call it the most powerful open-standards, web-driven game platform ever made public — however you end up describing it, we finally have the main details to go on. After a year of rumors and terse venture funding announcements around Raph Koster's new San Diego-based startup, Areae, his stealth Internet project is finally public.
Hours before he went onstage at TechCrunch 40 to officially introduce Metaplace, Areae's metaverse for the web, Koster's publicists finagled me an extensive interview and first look at the platform. Formerly Sony Online's creative director, Koster also directed the Star Wars Galaxies MMO and led design on the groundbreaking MMO Ultima Online. So everyone in the online game/virtual world industry has been eagerly waiting to see just what he was planning.
To be honest, I'd expected a user-created online world built on top of a Java platform or something. Instead, Koster's vision is far more ambitious: in effect, he's proposing to make online world elements like dynamic, graphically shared space, avatars, and virtual currency part of the standard code which drives the web. How is that possible, and how can they compete in such a crowded market? What follows are my first hasty notes, on the day the web married the metaverse.
Destroying the traditional walled garden: An MMO accessible through Flash apps, 3D clients, cellphones, etc.
Up to now, most MMOs have been "walled gardens", requiring an extensive client install. Metaplace, by contrast, is "A Web browser with virtual world capability." And it's a browser that comes with its own tool kit, for people who want to build worlds, and a community/marketplace where developers can give away or sell their templates, scripts, and so on, hosted on the Areae network.
Thanks to the underlying HTML-style code by which Metaplace defines each individual world served by its network, you can literally copy and paste attributes like graphic appearance and user interface from one Metaplace world to another. In the demo, Raph showed me a Habbo Hotel-style living room (Metaplace will launch with this 2D isometric graphics view as standard), but Raph and his team expect the variety of worlds to grow with their tools, eventually accommodating hardcore MMOs like World of Warcraft—or even a new Second Life.
So instead of a single contiguous world, someone visiting the Metaplace web site gets presented with a YouTube-style home page (see photo of Metaplaces Beta log-in page ). Instead of videos, however, you have a variety of worlds to choose from, with ratings in terms of popularity, genre, and other categories. This prevents users looking for different worlds with different audiences and genre expectations getting their experiences crossed. (Or as Koster calls it: "Oh no, you got my Cartoon Network in my Suicide Girls!")
Gaming the system: Koster eats his dog food
As a renowned game developer, Koster has a rolodex of top developers in games and the tech world in general, and says Areae has been talking with an A-list roster of people interested in creating their projects in Metaplace. More key, Koster say he'll be developing his own next MMO on the Metaplace network, which will probably gain a large audience in and of itself (thanks to his reputation) — while also creating a signature prototype for his company's platform. (Koster wouldn't provide any details on his new game, however — he said he's saving that for a later announcement.)
Areae's many revenue models
- World-making is free — much like some introductory blog services, Areae only starts charging users for hosting their Metaplace world when they begin generating heavy traffic.
- There'll be sponsored worlds from advertisers and/or Areae partners.
- Virtual currency can be spent across the network, and can be sold for real cash — which users and developers can buy from Areae.
- An Adsense-style ad network will track user behavior based on what Metaplace games and worlds they play, and feed them appropriately targeted ads.
- A mini-Metaplace world can be embedded within a web ad, creating instant brand engagement to promote a sponsor's products.
Philosophical Differences: Metaplace vs. Second Life
While Second Life is evolving as an immersive 3D metaverse which slowly incorporates web elements like XML and RSS in-world, Metaplace is beginning as a web-based network which swallows the attributes of online worlds. As Koster put it: "We don't think the Net is getting stuffed inside a giant 3D client." That's just the Second Life strategy, which demonstrates the fundamental philosophical difference between Raph Koster's Areae and Philip Rosedale's Linden Lab. Rosedale wants a one-world utopia where all Second Life users share the same space. Koster wants a metaverse that looks more like the web. "Cramming people into one world doesn't make sense to us," he told me.
Metaplace: The geek details
- Content creators will use the Lua programming language.
- Client agnostic.
- Fully interoperable with the web.
- Modular scripts that are click-and-draggable from world to world.
- Every object in Metaplaces is a web object, and can thus serve XML data. ("We speak web top to bottom.")
- World developers have tools to charge their users Metaplace money, which they can then convert into U.S. dollars. (Which is why you'll need to give Areae your Tax ID number, when cashing out.)
- Areae is now developing an open source 3D engine and cell phone-driven platform. ("All of our clients will be open source.")
- Speaking of which, Creative Commons licensing is in consideration. "That seems like a natural fit." (And notably CC evangelist Cory Doctorow is on Areae's board of advisors, along with other stellar MMO figures.)
- Open Beta planned for Spring 2008.
- Alpha testing begins now, starting with 50 volunteers. In later months, that will expand to 500, and by the time it goes to closed Beta by the end of the year, will have room for up to 5000, a community of early adopters which Areae will help teach to use the development tools. Go to the Metaplace site to apply for an opening.
Intel announces Penryn for November 12th, shows off Nehalem and 32nm SRAM
It's Fall IDF time in San Francisco, and Intel really came out swinging in the chips department. The company is releasing 15 of its new 45nm Penryn this year, with the first chips hitting on November 12th, and another 20 hitting in Q1 2008. That could get some of those chips into desktops before AMD's 65nm Phenom hits, and is earlier than was expected from the chip giant. The Penryn chips are promised to bring a 20 percent performance increase while improving energy efficiency. Intel also took the opportunity to show off Nehalem, Penryn's followup. Nehalem sports a new micro-architecture to further reduce power drain, and it can adjust itself dynamically to best suit the task at hand while saving power in the process. And just to tease, Intel talked up its 32nm SRAM tech, the world's first 32nm chip, which will apparently be ready in 2009, but we'll settle for faster chips and longer battery life from the likes of Intel and AMD in the interim.
[Via TG Daily]
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