Wednesday, July 01, 2009

The Most Detailed 3D Map of Earth Yet [Maps]

The Most Detailed 3D Map of Earth Yet [Maps]

Forget Google Maps: NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy have released the most detailed three-dimensional map of Earth yet. It covers our planet between the 83 north and 83 south parallels thanks to 1.3 million stereo images like these:



The images were captured by ASTER, ! and then stitched together into a seamless map. ASTER—Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer—is the instrument taking maps of land surface temperature, reflectance and elevation flying onboard NASA's Terra satellite. Once the Global Digital Elevation Model was complete, it was divided into 23,000 GeoTIFF files, each covering 1 x 1 degree of the globe. You can download the map here. [JPL]




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Philips Cinema 21:9 TV Will Cost $7400 [TVs]

Philips Cinema 21:9 TV Will Cost $7400 [TVs]

I don't know if we will ever see the 56-inch Philips Cinema 21:9 in the US, but if I didn't have a projector, I would totally fall for it. Even at the $7400 price tag just published in the UK.

The Philips 56PFL9954H Cinema 21:9 uses the same aspect ratio of most movies out there, which means that it eliminates the black bars while watching a Blu-ray title. And while every single consumers electronics expert in the UK is raving about the amazing quality of this 8.3-million-pixel TV set, the Philips Cinema 21:9 still has to do zooming to make the movie to fill its 1080-pixel vertical resolution. In other words: It looks great, but it's still not perfect. [Daily Mail]




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gdgt, the Data Driven Gadget Site, is Live [Media]

gdgt, the Data Driven Gadget Site, is Live [Media]

gdgt is a new gadget site that's database driven. You pronounce it either g-d-g-t or "gadget". I like it, mainly because I can track pieces of information about gadgets I own, but also tech I would like to have.

See, here's my list of gadgets.

Since the database is user generated, I can't wait to get in there and add some classic tech and offbeat stuff. Using it is peculiarly thrilling. The problem with general news sites is that you don't always get news that relates to the gadgets you own; the problems with forums is that the information is relevant to what you're interested in, but highly unstructured. This fixes both. A year or two ago, we decided to cover less new product, and cover more software and updates you can use to improve the gadgets you already have. gdgt is built upon this philosophy.

The site's just launching today, but Ryan Block and Peter Rojas (Engadget and Gizmodo alum) are only getting started and I've been told the road map is epic and long. (Disclaimer: I advise gdgt here and there, too.)

How do you get started? You sign up. Quickly, so you get the user name you want, I would suggest. I'd explain how it works in depth but Veronica Belmont, has a video here with all the details.

Oh and here's my account. Add me as a friend!

UPDATE: Looks like they're down because of traffic, time to ease up a bit and check back later.
[gdgt]






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NVIDIA said to be prepping Ion 2 for late 2009

NVIDIA said to be prepping Ion 2 for late 2009


NVIDIA obviously isn't doing much talking about it itself just yet, but Fudzilla apparently has it on good authority that the company is indeed already hard at work on Ion 2, which promises to bring with it plenty of improvements over the already impressive Ion chipset. Chief among those is a decreased die size, "much faster graphics," and more than twice the shaders of the original Geforce 9400M /MCP79 chipset that the current Ion is based on (which uses 16 shaders). Not many more details than that, unfortunately, but NVIDIA is supposedly looking to launch Ion 2 by the end of this year -- although not before it sells plenty more Ion 1s, of course.

[Via SlashGear]

Filed under: ,

NVIDIA said to be prepping Ion 2 for late 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook ad metrics (click-thru rates) still abysmal, despite known click-fraud problem - http://ping.fm/o8S9X

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Skype 3.0 for Windows Mobile Shares Files, Sends Texts, Skypes [Windows Mobile Apps]

Skype 3.0 for Windows Mobile Shares Files, Sends Texts, Skypes [Windows Mobile Apps]

Skype's finally dropped a brand new version of their app for Windows Mobile. Three dawt oh brings file sharing and SMS texting, for free. Weeeeeeeee. [Skype via jkontherun]




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TubeMaster++ Update Makes Grabbing Videos and Music Easier [Downloads]

TubeMaster++ Update Makes Grabbing Videos and Music Easier [Downloads]

Windows only: Last year we shared TubeMaster Plus with you, an extremely handy program for downloading videos and music from streaming sites. TubeMaster++ has been released and comes with a slew of new features.

TubeMaster++ makes grabbing streaming videos and music incredibly simple. As long as TubeMaster++ is running, it will grab nearly every kind of media you watch over your internet connection thanks to its ability to scan the incoming data and not rely on the browser itself. Whether you're watching a video in Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Opera, as soon as you start watching it, TubeMaster++ will begin capturing it.

You can save files, play them back right in TubeMaster++ and convert them. What formats can you convert into? A better question would be what formats can't you convert into. You can convert audio formats into WAV, MP3, OGG, and AC3, among others. Video can be converted into dozens of formats and presets for mobile devices including the Creative Zen, iPod, Blackberry, PSP and PS3, various mobile phone sizes, and more universal formats like AVI and MPEG4.

TubeMaster++ does lose one feature from its predecessor, because of dependencies it has on installed software it is no longer portable. The trade off will be more than worth it for most people however as the new version is more stable, offers more features, has a built in video and music search engine, and has dropped upgrade requirement to download from adult video-sharing sites. TubeMaster++ is freeware, Windows on! ly, and requires Java Runtime Environment and WinPcap (both of which are included in the installation if you don't have them.)



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Tourist Remover photoshops stray tourists out of your snaps -- Boing Boing Gadgets

Tourist Remover photoshops stray tourists out of your snaps -- Boing Boing Gadgets

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted "Tourist Remover," a service that takes the stray tourists out of your shots of famous landmarks.

"Tourist Removed" is a web app that will remove other tourists from the photos you took of landmarks while on vacation as a tourist. All you have to do is take multiple shots of the same location, and Tourist Remover will only keep the bits that stay the same. It's like diff for photos!
"Tourist Remover" cleans up your vacation photos

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

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Great post by @glenngabe - Facebook or Just Face-Look? Are People 55+ Really Using Social Networking Websites? - http://ping.fm/I11Lp

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NVIDIA Tegra smartphone due from a "top five" manufacturer before 2010?

NVIDIA Tegra smartphone due from a "top five" manufacturer before 2010?

NVIDIA Tegra smartphone due from a
If you want to get HD in your handheld, NVIDIA's Tegra processor is the hot way to do it at the moment, and we've got reasonably concrete sounding rumors from disparate sources that a handset containing one of the chips is currently under development by a "top five" smartphone builder (we're guessing it's not Apple), and that it'll be out sometime before the end of the year, selling at T-Mobile and AT&T for just $199. The details of the device beyond that are scant, with Android being a possibility but Windows Mobile looking more likely, and a continued pledge of battery life of rated for "days and days" of mobile multimedia. We like the sound of that.

Read - NVIDIA Tegra phone due from "big five" firm
Read - Rumor: NVIDIA Tegra phones in Q409?

Filed under:

NVIDIA Tegra smartphone due from a "top five" manufacturer before 2010? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Micron's smaller NAND chips mean more, faster flash memory in the same old enclosures

Micron's smaller NAND chips mean more, faster flash memory in the same old enclosures

Micron's smaller NAND chips mean more, faster flash memory in the same old enclosuresNeed a little more proof that Intel's got some fly SSDs about ready to roll? We have confirmation from Micron that it's working on new and improved 34nm chips in capacities of 8, 16, and 32Gb. These lovelies are 17 percent smaller than the previous rainbow colored flash delights, and are faster too, offering 200Mb/s transfer speeds and when combined into an SSD, able to keep up with SATA 6Gb/s transfers. This press release confirms the chips will show up in flash memory from Lexar, but we're guessing that official Intel announcement can't be far off now.

Filed under:

Micron's smaller NAND chips mean more, faster flash memory in the same old enclosures originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Video: Mobinnova élan sporting a custom Tegra UI

Video: Mobinnova élan sporting a custom Tegra UI


Although we get irked by all the names assigned to netbooks, smartbooks, or in this case, viewbooks, we are still pretty excited about the élan's 1080p capabilities, and now the Netbook News crew are adding to our enthusiasm with a pair of videos investigating the machine's chassis and software. The UI they looked at is notable for being supplied by NVIDIA, and may therefore give a good indication of what future Tegra-based devices of all shapes, sizes and naming nomenclatures may look and feel like. We like the media-centric approach, which complements the platform's strengths well, and the chunky navigation icons avoid the pitfalls inherent in a screen of this size (8.9-inches). Click through for the vids, but be warned: super-glossy screens and pink laptop enclosures lay ahead.

Continue reading Video: Mobinnova élan sporting a custom Tegra UI

Filed under:

Video: Mobinnova élan sporting a custom Tegra UI originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DARPA Hires Company to Build a Machine Reader That Scours the Web

DARPA Hires Company to Build a Machine Reader That Scours the Web

DARPA_logo.gifThe intelligence community is inputting data to the Web at an amazing rate. That mountain of data can be overwhelming to mere humans who are trying to read through pages and pages of information to pinpoint exactly what they're after. Mark Rutherford of CNET News reports that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has hired a tech company to develop a reader that will scour the Web and render certain information and knowledge into a form that is more easily digested and usable.

Sponsor

BBN Technologies was recently awarded a $29.7 million contract to develop a universal text engine that will capture intelligence and render it usable to humans as well as artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Officially called the Machine Reading Program, this new system will "automatically monitor the technological and political activities of nation states and transnational organizations - which could mean everything from al-Qaeda to the U.N." for the US military. BBN expects there may also be many useful civilian applications for its new reader. The company has also developed a real-time audio stream called the the BBN Broadcast Monitoring System that automatically transcribes real-time audio streams and translates them into English.

With this new project, BBN hopes to "develop techniques that can generalize across the linguistic structure and content of diverse documents to extract relations and axioms directly from text rather than relying on a knowledge engineer to encode such information." Here's how it will work:

DARPAreader_chart.jpg

Although it is not immediately clear when (or if) this new machine reader will be available to civilians, we are certainly looking forward to trying something like this out. Some paranoid types will believe this is nothing more than "the man" trying to spy on us, but those people need to realize everything we do online is being watched by someone. If you are really concerned about your online privacy you should secure important data on your computer, call your government leaders and try to change privacy laws, or stay off the Web altogether.

Researchers, medical professionals, consumers, students and others are all likely to benefit from such an application. Not having to spend unnecessary time searching through mountains of information on the Web for something relevant makes life easier and allows us to be more productive.

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12 Companies Targeting Early Tech Adopters

12 Companies Targeting Early Tech Adopters

readwritewebOur mission at ReadWriteWeb is to explore the latest Web technology products and trends. We're fortunate to have a great group of sponsors who support this goal. So, once a week, we write a post about them; about who they are, what they do, and what they've been up to lately. We hope you'll pay them a visit as a way to show your appreciation for their sponsorship of this site.

Interested in being a ReadWriteWeb sponsor? ReadWriteWeb is one of the most popular blogs in the world and is read by a sophisticated audience of thought leaders and decision-makers. We have several innovative new features in our sponsor packages that we'd love to tell you about. Email our COO Bernard Lunn for all the details.

Sponsor

Ready to learn more about the smart companies that support this site you love to read? Read on...


Skip to info about: Socialtext: enterprise 2.0 | Mashery: API management services | Rackspace: cloud computing experts | Aplus.net: Web hosting | Crowd Science: demographic data | Hakia: semantic search | Weebiz: business networking | Mollom: spam filtering | Domain.ME: .me domain registrar | Enterprise 2.0 Conference: business/IT conference | SiSense: Business intelligence | Media Temple and SixApart: our hosts and blogging software



Socialtext

Socialtext provides an enterprise wiki platform for organizations who want to accelerate knowledge sharing, foster collaboration, or build online communities.

Socialtext is currently offering a free white paper entitled "5 Best Practices for Enterprise Collaboration." It explains how collaboration solutions (a.k.a. Enterprise 2.0) can "dramatically reduce enterprise cycle times and costs. These results may be critical to survival in difficult economic times, and the right collaboration solution is the easiest, most cost effective way to achieve them."

Download Socialtext's free white paper at http://socialtext.com.

Crowd Science

Crowd Science gives online publishers reports on the demographics and attitudes of their audience. We at ReadWriteWeb have signed up to this new service, because demographic data is something we've struggled to get in the past. It's important for any online business to know their audience, so Crowd Science is a welcome addition to the stats armory that most of us in the Internet biz use.

You can sign up to get demographic data by clicking here.

Mashery

Mashery is a platform for Web services, allowing companies to manage their APIs using Mashery's expertise. At the "Business of APIs" conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michels explained to the audience that while APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision. He went on to say that Mashery has helped customers such as WhitePages.com, Thumbplay, Compete.com, and Calais. Check out the white paper "Five steps to scaling your business development using Web services" to discover how you can use APIs for your business.

You can find out more about APIs and their business use at www.mashery.com.

Rackspace

Rackspace is one of the world's largest hosting providers, but it's also competing in the cloud computing arena. In October Rackspace announced two major acquisitions: SliceHost and JungleDisk. Slicehost is a popular cloud computing and hosting provider with about 15,000 users, while JungleDisk is one of our favorite online backup services. JungleDisk used to rely on Amazon's S3 storage solution, but it now also supports Rackspace's cloud storage solution. At the same time, Rackspace also announced a new suite of services, Rackspace Cloud Hosting, which combines a hosting platform (CloudSites) with a cloud storage solution (CloudFS), and, in the long run, a tight integration with Slicehost's services.

Click here to explore Rackspace's hosting and cloud computing solutions.

Aplus.net

Aplus.net offers a variety of services relating to Web hosting, including shared hosting, dedicated server, managed hosting, Web design, marketing and online advertising services, search engine optimization, e-commerce solutions, and domain registration.

You can register for Aplus.net here.

Hakia

Hakia is a semantic search engine. It delivers a new search experience based on focus, clarity, and credibility. You can compare Hakia to Google and Bing here.

Hakia currently powers the contextual advertising link engine at ReadWriteWeb with its semantic advertising module, Contexa. Contexa provides page-level contextual analysis (in this case, of blog posts) on the fly and outputs keywords that represent the meaning of the page along with their meaning score. The Contexa system then matches ReadWriteWeb sponsors' requirements with the contextual representation of the page to provide relevant ads for readers. Contexa is offered as a service and can be integrated into any ad system.

Learn more about Contexa by clicking here.

Weebiz

Weebiz is the social network for companies. It's the place where you can promote your products and services, meet new clients, suppliers and partners, share valuable industry information, and leverage your business relations. Weebiz puts companies at the center of a hub where opportunities converge. It is a beautiful and simple-to-use tool that provides the perfect environment for business networking.

You can pre-register your company on Weebiz by clicking here.

Mollom

The web is changing. User contribution is now what makes or breaks a site. Allowing users to react, participate and contribute while still keeping your site under control can be a huge challenge. Mollom is a Web service that helps you identify content quality and, more importantly, helps you stop spam on your blog, social network or community website. When site moderation becomes easier, you have more time and energy to interact with your community.

Mollom is currently protecting over 9,000 active websites and has caught over 83 million spam messages since it started. Its average efficiency is 99.96%. Find out more on the Mollom website.

Domain.ME

.Me is a true phenomenon among TLDs. With its unforgettable meaning and limitless word combination possibilities, .Me gives a truly personal tone to your domain name. If you are looking for a name that speaks for itself .Me is your best choice. Let .Me speak for your online business or personal blog.

.Me potential is enormous and it simply asks for you to be creative and coin the name that suits you best. If you have a great, original idea for a domain name, register .Me before it's taken. To check out other ideas, explore the world of .Me.

Enterprise 2.0 Conference

Forward-looking businesses are using web 2.0 and social tools to achieve new levels of productivity and efficiency in a tough economy. The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is the leading event for business and IT professionals challenging the status quo and leading the charge to Enterprise 2.0.

Over forty sessions across six conference tracks cover the latest trends in Enterprise 2.0 technology innovation and organization-wide change: Enterprise 2.0 in action; social tools for the enterprise; foundations for Enterprise 2.0; new ways to work (Organization 2.0); and community engagement through social media.

SiSense

SiSense sees enterprise business intelligence as being a heavy and expensive project that requires a ton of IT support. Its main product, Prism, enables immediate deployment and connects to any data source, dynamically. In doing that, it frees IT from the need to maintain and build data warehouses, OLAP cubes, and refresh reports. It also frees users to use any business intelligence methodology, reports and charts, to bring more common sense and provide them with uncommon insights.

SiSense Prism is a powerful business intelligence tool, easy to learn and use, that works on your desktop. Create stunning visuals, reports and performance dashboards using a smart tool that is fast and easy to use.

Our Gracious Hosts and Blogging Software

370_rwwmt.jpgReadWriteWeb is hosted by Media Temple and is published using SixApart's Movable Type.

If you've ever wondered what ReadWriteWeb looks like behind the scenes, or if you've never seen the Movable Type publishing interface - that's it on the left. We recently upgraded to MT 4.23, which is the latest version. We got onto this release as soon as it was available - in fact our contacts at Six Apart emailed the actual code to us before it was up on their website. That's customer service for you!

The companies above pay our rents or mortgages and we appreciate it. We hope you'll stop by their sites and see what they've got to offer.

Have you got a smart company that could use some more visits by the sophisticated readers of a blog like ReadWriteWeb's? Drop us a line and let's talk.

Thanks to all our sponsors and our readers for your support!

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Get Your Mitts On GridIron Flow 1.0, A Stunning Workflow Manager

Get Your Mitts On GridIron Flow 1.0, A Stunning Workflow Manager

gridiron_logo.pngGridIron Software has finally brought Flow, its visual workflow manager, out of public beta.

This first stable version available for purchase ups the ante by allowing groups to collaborate on a workflow via the Share Maps feature, as well as adding direct access to Flow from within Adobe applications.

Flow was created with the help of visual designer Mark Coleran, who is known for his work on films such as The World Is Not Enough and the Bourne series. Though it's aimed squarely at creative professionals, Flow is probably the most advanced workflow manager out there, and is well worth a closer look by almost anyone.

Sponsor

During its public beta, Flow was already being hailed as a cutting edge way to organize workflows. On top of the slick interface for creating a workflow map, features such as automatic time tracking, visual search and versioning made it something of a designers dream.

PR-Gridiron_workflow2.jpg

But for managing the projects that actually used the workflow you just created, Flow was limited to purely individual use, since it had no robust method for sharing a workflow map among a team.

Enter "Share Maps", the most expansive addition to Flow's public debut. The new feature makes room for creating a workflow group that can all have access to the same map. In addition to enabling real collaborative workflow creation in Flow for the first time, Share Maps means project managers can now join in. That's sure to make it something more friendly to enterprise use.

The next integration should place Flow one step closer to becoming an essential utility for designers during their work. An Adobe CS4 Flash Panel now included in the package allows users to access their workflow maps directly inside Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign or Flash.

GridIron Flow can be bought through the site for $299 per single license or $399 for three. 1.0 also now supports both PCs and Macs, and there is a free trial as well for those who are still curious to give it spin.

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