tirsdag 30. juni 2009

Palm Pre får PlayStation emulator

Oh boy. Jeg har funnet en grunn til å belaste mitt Pre tilbake fra de døde. ZodTTD, leverandør av iPhone emulatorer i massevis, har truffet igjen ved å installere psx4all på hans Palm Pre. Overraskende nok, Zod sier Pre maskinvare kjører emulator måte bedre enn iPhone 3GS. Men det er ikke alle fersken og krem. * Det er [...]

Apple-exec-turned-VC sees big opportunity in mobile infrastructure

Bob Borchers, who led Apple’s marketing efforts for the iPod and then the iPhone over the past five years (and even appeared in iPhone videos), recently made the leap to venture capital, becoming a general partner at Opus Capital. Yesterday, I had a chance to talk to Borchers and hear more about the startups he wants to invest in.
Of course, I had to ask him about the move to Opus, since the shift from being a marketing director to VC isn’t that intuitive. But Borchers didn’t share any juicy stories about an acrimonious split — instead, he said that after helping to build an ecosystem of products around the iPod, then seeing an ecosystem of applications and developers start to explode around the iPhone, he was so excited about the opportunities in mobile that he wanted to start investing.
So what are these opportunities? Borchers said many of them lie “between mobile and a few industries.” As an example, he pointed to demonstrations at recent Apple events showing off the capabilities of the iPhone in the medical industry, like accessing real-time patient monitoring data on the phone so a doctor can check in on patients even when they’re not in the room, and a glucose monitor that delivers readings to the iPhone.
“Having a single great application is probably a necessary condition, but it’s not a sufficient condition,” he added — in other words, startups have to have a plan to build a company and a line of products, otherwise they’re one-hit wonders.
Not that you have to be application-focused, either. There’s also a big opportunity for “horizontal plays” that support the applications, he said.
“I think there are opportunities in the services space as well as the hardware space as well as the application space,” Borchers said. “If you look at push notification on the iPhone, there’s this huge clamor, a huge intent to use it by all of these thousands of developers. But very few have grasped the fact that you have to have a server … Your backend has to be able to think about that.”
(Hmm, sounds like those Push.io guys who offer infrastructure and backend services for iPhone app developers are on to something.)
Given Borchers’ background, does that mean he’s going to be all about the iPhone in his investments? Not exactly, he said — after all, there’s a huge smartphone market beyond the iPhone.
“The bigger opportunities are those that can go across these platforms,” he said. “At the same time, I feel like if you don’t have a strategy that addresses the iPhone and some of these other halo devices, you’ll have a hard time getting the visibility in the marketplace you want to have.”

Nutritionist: Jackson ba for sedativa

Michael Jackson led av alvorlige bouts av søvnløshet og pleaded for et kraftig beroligende tross vite dens skadevirkninger, en nutritionist som arbeidet med singer sa tirsdag.

Hva er nytt i iPhone OS 3.1 Beta?

Vel, iPhone OS 3.1 Beta bare gikk live på Apples Developer Center og, som vanlig, det er et forsøk på å finne ut hva som er endret. Our lovely utviklerinformasjonen venner har allerede begynt river det fra hverandre i søk av det skjulte perle detaljering iPhone 4GFP (The FP står for "Face kraft"), og vi kan holde orden på hva de finner.

Cleantech bounces back in Q2 with $1.2B

The big story a couple months ago was how cleantech investing had fallen off a cliff in the first quarter — signaling what many feared would be a prolonged negative trend in the sector. But it looks like things have started to turn around, with new data showing that $1.2 billion has already been sunk into green technology across 85 deals since the beginning of the second quarter.
To give you some context, the first quarter this year saw only 59 deals, amounting to $836 million. So while the space isn’t exactly roaring back to life, the rebound bodes well for the rest of the year as the downturn continues to ease.
Solar power commanded the most, bringing in $330 million in investments, but wasn’t as far of a front runner as it has been in the past. The second quarter saw more support for automotive applications, for example (a little above $202 million), and a sizable chunk ($195 million) went to biofuels and cleaner coal innovations. Surprisingly, batteries came in fourth with $181.5 million — but that is sure to grow with all the emphasis placed on the area by the administration and powerful car companies. Oddly, the report breaking down this data released by Greentech Media, combined wind and geothermal sources of energy, a space that only garnered $22.2 million even though wind is usually spotlit as the number two renewable energy source behind solar.
So what turned things around? Many analysts thought cleantech investing would take a year or more to grow back. But it looks like the federal stimulus package, with its generous allocations for green technology, has worked its magic before any money is even handed out. Many companies, across all categories, have employed a clever “wait and see” strategy with investors, swearing up and down that business will explode as soon as the stimulus funds jumpstart lagging production schedules and capital expenditure projects. And it looks like VC firms agree. It’s rare for a firm’s portfolio companies to get a major cash infusion that doesn’t dilute their holdings — it must seem like an opportunity that is too good to pass up.
That being said, investing has not come in the same shape and size that it has in the past. Early-stage startups have benefited significantly in the last quarter, mostly because investors are trying to get them in shape to qualify for government support. Similarly, late-stage companies have had an easier time finding financing, arguing that government funds could push them to profitability and even to public offerings. That leaves mid-size startups, which have still had a trying time finding backers, according to Greentech’s analysis. On top of that, the average amount given to any of these companies has gone down — with no firm giving $100 million or more to solar or biofuel operations, even though those are the two areas where large sums are needed the most for factories and the like. These companies will still need to wait for September’s government cash drop to realize larger-scale progress.
Regardless, it looks like the sun has come out for cleantech after a rather gloomy six months. Back in April, when the situation looked the most dire, we reported that Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, predicted that cleantech would top venture capital within five years. We got some skeptical feedback from readers who clearly agreed with the market’s mayday attitude. But if things continue on this upward trajectory, Heesen might not be far off.

China’s crackdown on virtual goods transactions could ripple through the game economy

China’s new crackdown on the fast-growing virtual goods industry has many possible outcomes, both good and bad for game publishers.
Those publishers make most of their money through virtual goods transactions. China has more than 298 million Internet users and its online games industry is one of the fastest growing parts of the worldwide game business.
Yesterday, China’s Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Commerce issued new rules that prohibit virtual currency from being spent on real world goods and services. The rules state, “The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services.”
The rule change was interpreted as a ban on gold farming, which is the use of laborers who earn lots of virtual gold in a game and then sell it for real money to people who don’t want to spend a lot of tedious time “leveling up” or gaining powers for their virtual characters. If the gold farmers are eliminated, game publishers will be happy because it eliminates a nuisance for gamers who are annoyed by the unfairness of gold farming, which allows gamers to skip over tasks that others have to undertake.
Both U.S. and Chinese game publishers could benefit from China’s crackdown on abuses of virtual goods. It could make gamers more willing to play games that aren’t plagued with gold farmers. On the other hand, if the crackdown discourages people from buying virtual goods, game publishers could see the value of the virtual goods decline, and with it see a drop in popularity and profitability of their games.
That could be risky, since the Chinese market is a test bed for new ideas in new business models such as games that are free-to-play and monetize through virtual goods. You can play a game for free, but a more powerful sword might cost you 25 cents.
In China, virtual goods is like the goose laying the golden eggs. The demand for games hasn’t been hurt in the recession, in part because the Chinese game operators make the bulk of their money through virtual currency transactions, which are so small that people don’t think twice of making them. Online game revenues are expected to grow 38 percent to $3.8 billion this year, according to market researcher Niko Partners.
The government said virtual money trade topped several billion yuan after growing at a rate of 20 percent a year. The most popular Chinese online currency is the “QQ coin” issued by Tencent, which has at least 220 million registered users. Tencent said it would support the new rules.
The government said it was concerned that virtual goods have become an avenue for gambling and illicit trade — from money laundering to online theft or fraud. Lisa Cosmas Hanson, an analyst at Niko Partners, said that the new rules aren’t exactly a direct ban on gold farming. But they could have that effect, since the law is meant to eliminate for-profit gaming, which includes gold farming.
She believes that the government is fearful that it can’t reap tax revenue from the unknown earnings associated with virtual-to-real transactions. But she notes that the problem of under-reporting taxable income is endemic through all of China.
But making the practice of trading virtual goods for real money is easy to make illegal, but hard to enforce. The gold farmers may not be affected, Cosmas Hanson said, because of a technicality. Most of China’s gold farmers, who operate in sweatshops with dozens of fellow farmers, operate on servers on foreign soil. The government can only control what goes on with domestic servers, she said.
Juan Carlos Pineiro Escoriaza, director of the film Second Skin (a documentary about living in virtual worlds which debuts in theaters Aug. 7 and on DVD on Aug. 25), filmed a gold farming business in the city of Sanya in the province of Hainan, China.  He agreed that the gold farmers use overseas servers to disguise their activities so that the rule enforcers at game publishers such as Activision Blizzard can’t find and ban them.
Pineiro Escoriaza said that the gold farmers he saw worked in shifts around the clock to earn gold in games that their supervisors sold for real money. He said that it’s possible that 100,000 people are making a living from gold farming. Some of those are in tough conditions, where people work around the clock for minimum wage.
The government does seem concerned about protecting minors, who are now banned from purchasing virtual goods. A variety of laws are aimed at curbing addiction to computer games and protecting youths. But the government didn’t seem concerned that gold farm operators are exploiting their laborers. Nor did it seem concerned that it could wipe out the jobs of 100,000 workers if it is really serious about its crackdown.
The government may also be concerned that the online currency could become more important than the real-world currency, which would mean that the government would lose control of important parts of the economy.
“Personally, I think it is a control issue,” said Sean Kane, an attorney who specializes in virtual worlds at Drakeford & Kane. “China wants to clamp down on a market that is basically unregulated.”

California gets green light for strict greenhouse gas requirements

The White House today approved California’s move to institute tough greenhouse gas emissions regulations for automakers well ahead of similar federal legislation. The waiver, officially granted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is said to be a first major step for the country to follow California’s lead in cutting emissions across the board.
Following close on the waiver’s heels, the Climate Bill approved last week by the House of Representatives would codify many of the regulations California is already implementing. For example, the cap-and-trade system that has quickly become the most controversial part of the bill, is very similar to the system deployed in the golden state in 2006. It also echoes rules currently being developed by the California Air Resources Board, to go live by 2012. The other major pillar of the bill — the requirement that utilities across the country generate 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020 — was also preempted by California, which has set a lofty requirement of 33 percent by the same year. President Barack Obama has also been very vocal about scaling California’s rules to the national level by 2016 — a steep challenge considering that real action will only start to take place in 2012.
By giving California permission to institute its own standards (as well as the 13 other states and Washington, D.C. that have already copied them), the White House is essentially requiring automakers located there to immediately begin selling more fuel efficient vehicles (including hybrid and alternative fuel-based cars) toward a goal of reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2016. Industry analysts predict that these companies will start phasing out SUV product lines, as well.
Those who were opposed to the waiver, primarily automakers, unsurprisingly, note that the policy changes will make every new vehicle $1,032 more expensive than before — downplaying the counterargument that this amount could be made up for in gas savings within two to three years of purchase, according to California Air Resources Board. Car makers, who initially sued to block the waiver, dropped their objections following the federal bailout of Chrysler and General Motors.
The bailout funds have also hushed the automotive industry on the issue of ambitious fuel economy mandates. Last month, Obama announced that car makers would be required to hit 35.5 miles per gallon with all of their product lines by 2016– 10 miles per gallon more efficient than the current standard.
California environmentalists, including green-friendly governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, are celebrating their victory today, after waiting several years for approval. For 40 years, the state has been out ahead of federal policy — each time asking for a similar waiver that was always been seamlessly approved. In 2007, president George W. Bush denied the waiver for the first time, winning favor from automakers statewide. It’s significant that one of Obama’s first environmentalist actions in office has been to overturn this decision.

PlaySpan utvides til nye land med online spill forhåndsbetalt kort

PlaySpan sa i dag har den vokst i Brasil, Tyrkia og andre land med sine Ultimate Game Card, et forhåndsbetalt kort som selges i butikker som gir spillere kreditter til forbruk i online spill. Utvidelsen betyr at Ultimate Game Card vil nå være tilgjengelig i tusener av nye butikker. Spillere kan bruke kortet for å bruke penger på mer enn 1000 elektroniske spill, virtuelle verdener og sosiale nettverk. Disse kortene er populære blant barn som er for små til å ha kredittkort og på steder der kredittkort brukes ikke. I Tyrkia PlaySpan kort vil være tilgjengelig i over 3000 Internet gaming kafeer, samt flere Tyrkisk nettsteder og portaler tilbud lokale betalingsalternativer. Tyrkia har rundt 28 millioner Internett-brukere, mange av dem som spiller PC online spill. og en avgjørende unge befolkningen som viser en sterk preferanse for multiplayer PC / online gaming. I Brasil, Ultimate Game Card vil bli distribuert i mer enn 1.400 internettkafeer, hvor et flertall av online spill foregår. Det vil også være tilgjengelig i over 4000 butikker. Omtrent 6 millioner Brazilians spille i internettkafeer mens en annen 18 millioner spille hjemme via bredbåndsforbindelsene. Santa Clara, California-basert PlaySpan søker flere internasjonale plasseringer å selge sin kort. Full fortalte den Ultimate Game Card er tilgjengelig på 45.000 steder i Nord-Amerika. PlaySpan også håndterer virtuelle varer systemer for elektroniske spill, og tilbyr en virtuell varer betalingssystemet via Reservedeler Endre og PayByCash egenskaper. Sine investorer inkluderer Easton Capital, Menlo Ventures, STIC og Novel TMT Ventures. Rivals inkludere skaperne av forskuddsbetalte spillet kort som InComm eller GMG.

Rabbi-venn: Jackson var en plaget sjel "

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, den ortodokse jødiske rabbiner som er kjent for sin sekulære oppsøkende og TLC show" Shalom i hjemmet, var venner med Michael Jackson i flere år.

iPhone OS 3.1 beta og SDK Allerede Rolling ut til utviklere

Det ser ut som Apple har allerede begynt å sende ut betaversjonen og SDK for neste gjentakelse av iPhone OS 3.1 til utviklere. IPhone 3.0-programvaren ble sluppet omtrent to uker siden, i forkant av iPhone 3GS lanseringen. Ved de fleste kontoer det er ganske stabilt, selv om noen brukere har hatt batteri problemer. Derfor er det litt rart at Apple ville iterate opp til versjon 3.1 allerede, i stedet for noe som 3.0.1, som det pleier å gjøre ved mindre oppdateringer og feilrettinger. Kan vi ser en større oppdatering til OS allerede? Jeg sa at det ikke mye av interesse i versjonsmerknadene for å indikere noe større som er ny eller endret.

Meebo Tries to Fill “Moments Of Boredom” With An Ad Network For Partner Sites

How do you advertise on a Web-based instant messaging service without interrupting conversations and annoying the hell out of users? Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg thinks he has the answer: "There is a moment of boredom while they are waiting for a response, that is when they click on ads." He's observed this based on how people interact with the ads which began appearing on Meebo.com last March. Today, Meebo is creating an ad network across partner sites which use its new Community IM service, which ads a Meebo IM bar at the bottom of participating sites.

Visitors to one of the 85 partner sites which have implemented the Community IM product (including Current TV, DailyStrength, Flixster, and Webs.com) can chat with their IM buddies without leaving the sites. Today, Meebo is introducing new ad units which pop up along the bottom left of the browser, beginning with ads for the Toyota Piou and AT&Ts. For the Toyota ad, a little car icon pops up on the left of the Meebo IM bar, away from all of the chat activity on the bottom right. If you click on the car, a larger ad 900X400 pixel rich ad overlay opens up which can show a video or any number of interactive ads. "When they click we do not take them away from the conversation," says Sternberg. During the whole time people is watching the ads, they can still chat with their friends through the Meebo IM column on the right.

Twitter Rolls Out UI endringer for å forenkle din sosiale Connections

Twitter har nettopp rolig rullet ut et sett med endringer til brukergrensesnittet på "Etter" og "tilhengere" deler av sin nettside. Disse endringene vil gjøre det enklere å administrere hvem du følger samt utføre handlinger, for eksempel @ svare noen eller direkte meldingsenheten dem direkte fra siden. Det er to nye visninger for å se på disse områdene. "List" er et kompakt liste over etterfølgere, mens "utvidet" tilbyr flere detaljer inkludert brukerens siste tweet og deres virkelige navn og plassering. På etterfølgere side, er det også en knapp som gjør det mulig for ett klikk følgende brukere som allerede følger deg.

ClackPoint Brings Voice, Document Sharing To Google Friend Connect

Over the last six months Google has been ramping up Friend Connect, its social online identity platform that's a direct rival of Facebook Connect (both products opened up to the public last December). Since then Google and third party developers have released a slew of gadgets and features, including the Social Bar, Recommendations, and Comment Translation. One of the latest to join the fray is ClackPoint, a powerful new gadget that integrates realtime text chat, voice conferencing and basic document sharing with Friend Connect.

The gadget works as you'd expect. Clicking on the 'Call' button will activate your microphone, and your voice can then be heard by anyone else in your chat room. Alternatively, you can dial in from a phone to one of the site's dedicated lines (hit the button in the upper right hand corner for a list of numbers). There's also a standard text-based group chat. As far as sharing goes, you can participate in a group-edited notepad, import PDF slides that can be viewed by other chat members, and quickly send out a poll to everyone else in the chat room.You can try out the gadget for yourself here.

iPhone app anmeldelse: Flick Fiske

La oss innse det: det er mange crappy spill tilgjengelig for iPhone. Selv 99 cents - så billig som det er - er mer enn jeg er villig til å betale for de fleste spill, siden jeg neppe få enda en dollar er verdt av glede fra dem. Ikke så med Freeverse's Flick Fiske. Denne 99 cent spillet tilbyr mye for at svært lite prislappen. I tillegg til flott grafikk, glimrende lyd og anstendig spillet, kan du kjøpe utvidelse innholdet i spillet. Og det er en rekke smarte multiplayer aspektene innebygd også.

Spain’s Fotowatio plans $500M solar foothold in the U.S.

Fotowatio, one of Spain’s largest solar developers is soon to be one of the United States’ as well. It just announced that its American subsidiary, Renewable Ventures, is raising a new fund to back solar projects to the tune of $100 million this year alone. In the next two years, it plans to invest upwards of $500 million.
The fund is yet another sign of Spain’s rising solar dominance, second only to that of Germany, where government incentives and subsidies run deep. Based in Madrid, Fotowatio has moved fast — it acquired Renewable Ventures earlier this year and has already incorporated into its broader strategy to invest $3.2 billion in solar projects in Spain, Italy and the U.S. by 2012. And it’s garnered American support in this pursuit, notably from General Electric’s Energy Financial Services.
Renewable Ventures, formerly called MMA Renewable Ventures when it was owned by MuniMae, started raising the current fund before its acquisition in January. And its investment policies have remained the same — basically, it retains ownership of the solar facilities it finances and brings in revenue by selling power to utilities.
The fund in question is called a tax equity fund, meaning that those who invest in it will receive returns in the form of federal tax credits instead of cash. This makes sense since cleantech projects usually benefit from generous government tax credits. Renewable Ventures hasn’t disclosed the fund’s current investors, but Wells Fargo has contributed in the past. Incidentally, major U.S. solar developer SunPower just landed a $100 million deal with Wells Fargo to fund its solar installation systems.
Many of the projects Fotowatio and Renewable Ventures plan to finance — and they have already committed to a few — will be eligible for U.S. stimulus dollars from the Department of Energy in the fall. Much of the money invested beforehand will probably be used to develop projects to a stage that will attract more government support. Renewable Ventures has not specified whether it is looking for certain companies to back, but has expressed interest in getting involved in the concentrating solar thermal sector (in which water is heated by sunlight to turn steam turbines).
Renewable Ventures already has partnerships with giant Chinese solar panel maker Suntech Power Holdings and the San Francisco-based Gemini Solar Development Company.

Meebo launches toolbar ads today, ramping up revenue

Meebo is taking another big step towards making its instant messaging service profitable. It’s officially launching a new product that runs interactive pop-out ads within its IM toolbar available on partner sites. You might be on a racing site, for example, chatting with friends about car models, and you’ll see an ad for Toyota’s Prius — with AT&T, it’s one of the two marquee advertisers now using the service.
The toolbar ads were first announced in March, and intend to build off of Meebo’s recent successes with getting other sites to use the toolbar as well as selling similar advertising on its own site .
In case you’re not familiar, Meebo’s home site lets you log in and chat across multiple IM networks, including AOL’s AIM, Google’s Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger, Facebook, MySpace, and more. The toolbar lets other web sites add a small pane at the bottom of their web pages; people on those sites, including social networks like MyYearbook, can either chat with friends on those sites or with their friends on the other IM services they’ve tied in with Meebo. So far, 85 partner sites have signed up, with the toolbar being deployed on around 40. Around 15 million people are exposed to the bar through these sites every month, with about 20 percent of them actively using it. Including the 15 million exposed to the toolbar, as well as its home site and other widgets, Meebo claims to reach more than 50 million.
Meanwhile, Meebo has been running similar ads on its home site. They appear on the home site’s toolbar — and now on partner site’s toolbar, and when you mouse over them a 900 by 400 pixel screen opens that displays a video or other interactive advertising. The ads can be targeted to users based on age, gender and relevant interests. Meebo says these ads see an average of one minute of time get a 10 times higher click-through rate than traditional online banner sites on social media sites.

Jackson fans pack Harlem for Apollo memorial

Fans av Michael Jackson lined gatene utenfor Harlem's Apollo Theater tirsdag for en sjanse til å betale sine måter for sent "King of Pop" i salen som bidro til å starte sin karriere.

Har Google Apps knekke Microsoft Outlook? Ikke lenger

De av dere som får ubehagelig rundt konfrontasjoner og argumenter kan puste litt lettere nå - det ser ut som Google har løst en nylig spyttet mellom søk gigantiske og Microsoft peaceably med en bug fiks. Problemet startet når Google annonsert var det slik at brukere av sin Google Apps-pakke for elektronisk verktøy for å synkronisere disse tjenestene med Microsoft e / kontakter / kalenderprogrammet Outlook. Det virket som en god måte å oppmuntre bedrifter til å prøve Apps uten nødvendigvis å gi opp Outlook. Ikke så fort, Microsoft sa - en "alvorlig feil / feil" i Apps Sync funksjonen brøt Outlook søkemulighetene. Da Google svarte at Outlook søk fortsatt fungerte fint, takk, og at problemet var med et nytt produkt, Windows Desktop Search. Jeg er ikke en Outlook-bruker, så jeg er ikke sikker på hvor stort problemet var dette for de fleste brukere. Jeg mistenker at de fleste av pressen dekning hatt mer å gjøre med drama av se Microsoft og Google gjør (ganske liten) swipes mot hverandre. Og uansett hvor ille feilen ble Google nå sier at det er løst, slik at Outlook / Apps-brukere kan søke i e-poster med normal Outlook søkefunksjonen, eller Windows Desktop Search. Windows Live Hotmail integrasjon med Outlook er løst, også. Videre Google legger til: "Vi jobbet tett med Microsoft for å ta [de] to spørsmål." Se barna? Mamma og pappa er ikke kjempe lenger.

Video: How to surf faster with Internet Explorer

A few enterprising Microsoft employees have produced a low-cost video that shows how Accelerators, a feature of the Internet Explorer 8 browser, reduce the number of steps to perform common tasks.
What Microsoft’s doing is attempting to beat Google by changing the game. Instead of trying to lure Googler users away with higher relevance, more pages in a search index, or faster search response, Microsoft is focusing on saving the Internet user’s time by keeping them away from Google’s life-eating search box.
Accelerators are shortcuts to common tasks, such as getting a map, that you can select by clicking your right-hand mouse button. Internet Explorer ships with a few of them, but you can add many more such as the new Bing Maps accelerator.
They’re complicated to explain, but easy to watch and learn.
(The clip below is done in Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, rather than Flash. I had problems getting it to play in my Chrome browser, and it developed a mind of its own while playing in Internet Explorer 8, too. You can accelerate yourself by skipping the first minute to watch the first test, which begins at 0:55.)
<iframe src=”http://ping.fm/kwxRJ allowtransparency=”true” width=”430″ height=”326″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″></iframe><br /><a href=”http://ping.fm/ZLhRS ></a>
There are probably Greasemonkey add-ons to do all of this in Firefox. Why aren’t the Mozilla folks doing more clips like this to promote all those features they’ve spent years building into their own product?

Themes: Another way that FriendFeed is getting more like Gmail

Lifestreaming service FriendFeed is getting more and more like Gmail, the popular email service that the startup’s founders built back when they were at Google. Today, FriendFeed is getting themes so users can personalize the site interface — like what Gmail introduced last year. Last week, it introduced file-sharing, so you don’t need to upload and share files through email or other services.
The themes themselves aren’t a huge news item (unless you’re a FriendFeed user, I suppose). There are just six to choose from right now, and a lot of us seem to prefer the Helvetica design (pictured) for its black-and-white, clean, minimal look. If you like more colors, check out the others: Classic, Fresh, Bamboo, Flowers, Butterfly Corner and Blue Wave. A create-your-own theme feature is presumably coming soon, for better or worse.
More generally, what FriendFeed does — let you share what you’re doing from around the web, follow your friends, comment on and “like” the items they share — is a more efficient way of processing information than the traditional email inbox. The company’s effort in that direction kicked into high gear when it introduced a real-time interface in early April that automatically updated the site with new content from you and your friends. Then, it introduced smaller features, like a way to privately message groups of people — which cofounder Paul Buchheit has said the company uses internally instead of email lists.
Buchheit, and his peers at companies like Twitter-for-business service Yammer and Facebook, all seem to agree on that point. Or so they said during a panel I moderated in March at South By Southwest:
[A]ll the participants agreed that social streams of data are going to be an integral part of the web going forward. David Sacks, the chief executive of Yammer, went farther, calling these streams “email 2.0.” No one seemed to disagree….
FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit likened it to the old days of AOL (the dial up, closed system variety), when you could only send email to other AOL users. Eventually, he noted, AOL was forced to open up to these messages to the rest of the Internet. He believes that status updates will eventually become a federated medium as well. And perhaps it’s no accident that Buchheit started one of the services which is already helping to spread this social data around the web (it both pulls in and posts back to Twitter, for example) — when he was still at Google, he helped create Gmail. So maybe the social stream really is the next email.
A lot of these services even look a lot like email. The central focus is on a stream of messages, with the left hand side devoted to filters, which are more or less like folders, as Sacks pointed out. One company, Microsoft, is even using its email service, Hotmail, as the foundation for its social stream. Others, like Yahoo, are starting to do this as well.

Flickr legger direkte til Twitter publisering

Hva fant dem så lenge? Flickr har en innebygd funksjon som lar medlemmene tweet sine bilder. "Du kan laste opp direkte til Flickr og Twitter samtidig, eller tweet et bilde som allerede er på Flickr, ved hjelp av et spesielt kort Flic.kr URL, sier selskapets FAQ. Det forklarer også hvordan du kan legge inn bilder fra telefonen, og hvordan du tweet fra Flickr. Fra en epost som sendes til oss via Twitter's PR bedrift (vi har lagt til lenker til aktuelle kontoen konfigurasjon sider): Hvis du vil bruke Flickr 2 Twitter, medlemmer må først godkjenne Flickr å legge til sine Twitter-kontoer. Når autorisert, medlemmer vil kunne tweet bilder fra "blogg"-knappen på bildet side eller fra sine mobile enheter. Mobile opplasting er mulig når medlemmer aktivere sine opplasting via e-post-innstillinger (unike Flickr e opplasting adresse + "2twitter") . Når du har tweeted din Flickr-bilde, vil det se omtrent slik ut. Her er noen eksempler på Flickr innlegg til Twitter. Dette er Flickr respons på Twitpic, Posterous og PhotoBucket. Flickr kan bli sent til spillet, men det har forbrukeren merke anerkjennelse Posterous bare kan drømme om.

ParAccel bringer inn $ 22M for analytisk databaser

ParAccel, produsent av database-teknologi som gjør at brukerne kan se bredere mønstre i store datasett, har reist $ 22 millioner i en tredje runde med finansiering fra Menlo Ventures, Bay Partners, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Tao Venture Partners og Walden International. Pengene vil bli brukt til å utvide sin markedsføring, VentureWire rapporter. Basert i Cupertino, California, ParAccel sier den vil nå lønnsomhet i 2011. I tillater bedrifter å dele dataene sine mange forskjellige måter, selskapet konkurrerer med heavy hitters som Oracle og IBM. Det er også rivals mindre aktører som Green Plum, Vertica Systems og Aster Data. Oppstartstiden har reist USD 50 millioner i kapital til dato.

Michael Jackson vil fra 2002 ligger

A vil fra Michael Jackson skrevet i 2002 har vært lokalisert, men det kan være ett av flere, den Jackson familiens advokat sa tirsdag.

Sprint og Harris teamet opp for å gjøre 2010 Census telle

Med 2009 halvveis over den amerikanske regjeringen er utveksling opp for hva som er sikker på å bli en av neste års største virksomheter: den kjedelige ferd med å telle hver eneste av sine borgere. Det er rett folkens, det er T-minus 9 måneder til 2010 Census. Det er en stor jobb for sikker, og det er nøyaktig hvorfor Census [...]

BlackBerry Tour nå mer regjering byrå vennlig

Hvis du jobber i et topp hemmelig området (les: regjeringen etat, våpen lab eller Apple campus), telefoner pakking kameraer (eller frittstående kameraer, for den saks skyld) er vanligvis frowned upon. Husk "Loose Lips Sink Ships" kampanje WWII? Heldigvis for deg høy falutin folk, RIM holdt deg i tankene når du designer BlackBerry Tour. Du vil kunne [...]

Berøringsskjerm netbooks på vei

Digitimes rapporterer et ryktene at noen netbook beslutningstakere vil produsere lavprisalternativ datamaskiner med touchscreens som erstatter musen og styreflate. Flyttingen vil frigjøre plass for et større tastatur. Minst noen netbook beslutningstakere, Digitimes rapporter, mener at en netbook med berøringsskjerm og større taster selger bedre enn en med en styreflate plunked ned i midten av et tastatur der tastene er shrunk å gjøre plass. Det er viktig å merke, men at netbook beslutningstakere ikke planlegger å kvitte seg med tastaturet og bygge en tablet PC. Apples skjermbaserte tastaturet drops jaws, men som et middel til å skrive på noe lenger enn en tweet det exasperating. New York Times anmelder David Pogue rost Palm Pre nye mikro-sized tastatur som "raskere og mindre frustrerende enn å skrive på glass, som han mente å skrive på en iPhone. Det er derfor i stedet for å bruke touchscreens å erstatte tastaturet helt, netbook beslutningstakere planlegger å starte med å erstatte bare touchpad og kanskje museknappene. Hva vil de se ut? De vil se ut som i Eee PC bildet her, men uten styreflaten skjult under modell hender. Se alle rom som kunne gå bort? I ytterligere to år, den eneste store forskjellen mellom en smarttelefon og en netbook kan størrelsen på sine skjermer og tastaturer. [Photo kreditt: Beste foto fra Engadget. Nederste bilde fra ASUSTeK]

Firefox 3.5 takes you back to a time before browser add-ons

There’s been a lot of activity in the web browser market during the year since Mozilla released Firefox 3 — we’ve seen the release of Safari 4 and Internet Exporer 8, and Google has entered the competition with Chrome. Now Mozilla has a new release of its own, Firefox 3.5, with a bunch of new features.
I’ll have more on those new features in a second, but perhaps the most important and noticeable change is speed. As someone who does most of his work in Firefox, my biggest objection has been the occasional slowness and instability, which seemed to increase over the last few months. Mozilla says that using the Sunspider Javascript test, Firefox 3.5 is twice as fast as Firefox 3, and 10 times as fast as Firefox 2. I haven’t given Firefox 3 a thorough test,yet, but in the hour that I’ve been using it, I haven’t had to sit and watch my MacBook’s spinning color wheel (indicating that I need to wait as a page loads), and that’s a welcome change.
Then again, I can’t make an apples-to-apples comparison yet, because none of my browser add-ons (namely, programs I downloaded to enhance Firefox) are working yet. The fact that many of my biggest loading programs occurred on pages that used Google Gears (which gives me offline access to applications like Gmail and Google Docs) probably contributes to the new feeling that my browsing is going really smoothly. Which is nice, except the availability of add-ons, particularly Gears, was one of the main reasons I switched to Firefox.
In his review of the new browser, Technologizer’s Henry McCracken says, “Not all Add-Ons will be compatible with Firefox 3.5 out of the gate, but most major ones already work.” I don’t use enough add-ons to verify that, I have asked Firefox and Google for comment.
Here are some of Firefox 3.5’s other features:

Available in 70 different languages.
Private browsing mode, where none of the websites you visit or cookies you collect will be saved.
In the same vein, you can also tell Firefox to forget that you visited a specific site.
Viewing video and audio in the browser without downloading additional software like Flash or Quicktime, also making it easier to interact with video in web applications.
Location-aware browsing, so that websites can give you information that’s specifically relevant to your geographic location.
Tear-off tags, allowing you to create a new window from a tab when one window is getting too crowded.

You may recall that Mozilla set the record for downloads in a single day when it released Firefox 3. There are no plans to repeat that stunt for Firefox 3.5, Mozilla says, because that might “melt the Internet.”
[top image from Universal Pictures' film The Land Before Time]

Michael Jackson offentligheten skal fredag

Michael Jackson kroppen tilbake til sin Neverland Ranch torsdag morgen etter en offentlig visning fredag CNN har lært.

Hvorfor Jackson dødsårsaken ikke kommer raskt

The Los Angeles County coroner kontor anslår at toksikologiske tester på kroppen til Michael Jackson kan ta seks til åtte uker. Hvorfor tar det så lang tid, og hva er de ute etter?

Adobe avsluttes en uke

The San Jose Mercury News rapporterer at Adobe Systems, maker av Flash Player som brukes til de fleste Web videoklipp, har stengt ned sin Nord-Amerika for uken som Kostnadsreduserende flytte. Flyttingen slående fordi Adobe er, av de fleste beregninger, vellykket. I tillegg til Flash, Adobe nå utvikler og selger mange av de mest populære analysevareverktøy brukes av grafiske designere og nettsted byggherrer: Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, og flere andre. Selskapet er lønnsomt, selv om salget har vært lavere enn planlagt. Andre kvartal inntekter falt 41 prosent til NOK 126 millioner. CNET rapporterte tidligere denne måneden at salget av selskapets flaggskip produkt Creative Suite 4, noen versjoner som selger for $ 1500 på Amazon, har blitt myk grunn til gjeldende lavkonjunktur. Stoppen er én av tre planlagte for dette året, etter en layoff siste desember 600 av selskapets 7400 ansatte verden rundt. (Adobe har siden hyret en annen 260 ansatte i rimeligere steder utenfor USA) Den første stoppen var i april, den tredje er ennå ikke utlyst. I første avslutning, økonomidirektør Mark Garrett fortalt Bloomberg at selskapet hadde også frosset lønn, redusert bonuser og kutte tilbake på reisekostnader. [Bilde fra junglecode.net av Daniel Sofer]

Kommende Omnia HD-oppdateringen for å løse AMR lydopptak i HD videoer

Samsung Italia Facebook profil delt noen interessante opplysninger til abonnerer lesere. Samsung Omnia HD er i ferd med å komme i ikke én, men to viktige oppdateringer i løpet av de neste to ukene. Den første ...

Siste høyttalere på MobileBeat: Steve Boom og Sam Altman

Jeg er glad for å kunngjøre den nyeste høyttalerne vi har rekruttert for MobileBeat 2009, vår konferanse om den 16 juli i SF: Steve Boom, sjef for mobile sosiale nettverksselskapet Mig33, kanskje den mest nedlastede mobil til alle tider, og Sam Altman, konsernsjef i en annen mobil sosiale nettverksselskapet Loopt som sporer posisjonen din via GPS. (For øvrig har vi ganske jazzed nå om vår linje for MobileBeat. Vi har omtrent alle som alle som kommer, og vi skal gjøre daglige oppdateringer fra nå av, registrer deg nå før det for sent. Våre siste MobileBeat tilfelle utsolgt.) Steve Boom skal snakke på et panel som adresserer hvordan utviklere kan dyrke sine programutvikling i en reell virksomhet. Dette er første gang Boom har snakket offentlig mens Mig33. I fjor gikk han Yahoo Mobile, der han var nr. 2 utøvende og hadde vært ti år. Han tilsyn selskapets bredbånd partnerskap med AT & T, Rogers, BT og Verizon. Til tross for sin Yahoo arv, han sa forrige uke at han er en "stor fan av (Googles) Android," sier det er mer sannsynlig å bli en betydelig Spillet veksler enn iPhone, nemlig at Android kommer ut på et så bredt spekter av håndsett - opptil 20 - I løpet av neste år, og iPhone er fortsatt en enkelt telefon under flere kontroller. mellomtiden Altman's Loopt var en tidlig spilleren for å hjelpe brukere oppdatere oppholdssted automatisk via GPS-teknologi på sine mobiltelefoner, og vi har skrevet nylig om noen av de nyeste teknologien utviklingstrekk som kan bygge på denne plattformen, nemlig "stamme annonsering." Loopt også møter konkurrenter som Brightkite.

Cashing in on non-English search engines

It’s sometimes easy to forget just how global the World Wide Web really is.
Hundreds of millions of people are surfing at any given time. We in the U.S. (and other English speaking countries) have a tendency to think everyone speaks our language.
While many do, that’s not as big an advantage as it seems. Global consumers are over five times more likely to buy from a website with content in their native language.
The foreign language Internet - meaning all web content not in English - is an enormous opportunity for companies to increase revenue, but one that most ignore. In doing so, they’re not only throwing away money, they’re unnecessarily increasing their competition.
Launching a web page in English instantly pits you against billions of other pages on the search engines. Launching a page in another language can make it much easier to achieve prominence.
At Lingo24, we launched a Danish micro-site at a cost of under £100/$160 at the beginning of last year. By September, sales had reached a level that allowed us to take on a full-time account manager - and the Danish market has become a significant and growing slice of our business. All totaled, international revenue now accounts for 64 percent of our business.
Obviously, you don’t want to ignore the domestic market, but your company’s entry into an underserved territory could attract the eyes of industry watchers in that country. That can mean media attention alone, improved search engine positions and customers. Seek out relevant media in the markets you target.
Combined, foreign language markets can be worth more than your domestic market. Need proof? Look at Google. The dominant search engine in all but a handful of countries, Google derives 52 percent of its revenue from the foreign language Internet.
Putting together a foreign language Internet site may sound daunting, so here are a few things to keep in mind as you begin planning your strategy.
Develop your understanding of the market. If you have customers abroad, or domestic clients with links abroad, ask them whether they think your offering might be attractive internationally. Ask for contacts that can validate your ideas and perhaps become your first customers.
Check out the competition. Google’s automatic translation tools can help you quickly determine what your competition is up to.
Evaluate the demand. Use Google and Yahoo’s tools to identify the key phrases you need to target in your foreign markets.
Have your site professionally translated. Google’s translation program is adequate for understanding content, but completely unreliable for a company website. Use a professional translation company to get the message right for your customers.
Market your site online. The principles are the same as in English. Build links through partners; use pay-per-click; and try to get mentioned on sites your potential customers frequent.
Following these steps (and repeating the process in other languages) can result in a larger, better-diversified business.
About the author: Christian Arno is founder of Lingo24, a global translation and website localization company.

AMD stirs opp sprøytenarkoman med begrenset opplag prosessorer

Advanced Micro Devices' nyeste mikroprosessor er så sjeldne du kan ikke engang kjøpe et. AMD Phenom X4 II 42 Black Edition TWKR prosessor er tilgjengelig i dag. Men ikke for deg. AMD gjør bare 100 av disse prosessorene for super geeks kjent som "ekstreme overclockers." Det vil si at de er laget for folk som vil kjøre sjetonger så fort som mulig, bruker supercooling metode for å holde dem fra å smelte ned. AMD har gjort dette i månedsvis nå, siden den lanserte sin raske prosessorer tidligere i år. Hver gang det lanseres en litt raskere chip, den lager en stor del av den. Det er en merkelig og dyr hobby, men noen må gjøre det. Overclockers er vanligst i spillebransjen samfunnet, der kjører spillet raskere enn du kunne muligens vil spille den slags merke av æren. For en nanosecond disse nye prosessorene vil gi AMD den bragging rettigheter har de raskeste prosessorer i verden. Intel har ikke besvart AMD på en stund med tanke på å lansere en litt raskere prosessor. Men bragging rettigheter, selvfølgelig ikke har mye å gjøre med salg. Intel er fortsatt kongen på denne fronten. AMD gir sjetongene til noen alvorlige overclocking eksperter å gi både eksperter og chips noe oppmerksomhet. Igjen, vil de skryter av dem og spre gode ord blant vanlige spillere, som er målene AMD virkelig ønsker å fange. Og husk, barn, bør du ikke prøve hva disse gutta gjør i videoen hjemme. Med mindre du ønsker å sette huset i brann.

Palm Pre&#39;s GSM-versjon dukker opp ... igjen, denne gangen i Vietnam

Det er ikke første gang vil du høre oss si at GSM-versjon av Palm Pre ble oppdaget ... sted. Vel, dette skal gå på til Palm endelig bestemmer seg for å slippe ting på vår side av Big Pond. Men til da ...

Blackberry tur til å starte på Verizon Wireless på 12 jul

Hvis du har vært bite dine negler av forutse lanseringen av Blackberry tur, har du sannsynligvis vil gå til en psykiater ASAP. Men du kan også gjerne vite at Verizon Wireless nettopp annonsert at de vil bli frigjøre tur på 12 juli. Tour gir noen helvete-bøyd på Verizon (som mennesker som faktisk ønsker sine telefonen å ringe og motta anrop) en god multimedia telefon i $ 200 prisklasse.

Flyulykke, fars liv frem i boken

Norman Ollestad husker treet lem.

F.A.S.T. brings cool 3-D aerial dogfights to the iPhone

The 3-D air combat game F.A.S.T. debuted a couple of weeks ago on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
It’s a very difficult game to play, but it’s been growing on me. That’s because I’d ordinarily think it would be impossible to do this kind of high-quality 3-D graphics game on a mere mobile platform such as the iPhone. This is the beginning of the next generation of iPhone games, and so we’re taking the rare step of doing an actual review of it.
I first saw it a couple of days before its June 7th release when Shervin Pishevar, chief executive of Social Gaming Network, showed it to me on his iPhone. F.A.S.T. stands for Fleet Air Superiority Training, and the game lets you fly a modern jet fighter and shoot down bad guys with missiles or guns. Since that time, the $4.99 game has moved to the No. 1 position for paid games on the iPhone and iPod Touch.
The 3-D graphics are really vivid, much like what you’d expect from a flight simulator game on a PC. The game is full of solar flares, blinding sunlight, clouds, and cool aircraft contrails. You can still see jagged edges (a sign of primitive 3-D graphics) on the aircraft, but you don’t really notice them because the action is so fast. Pishevar said his team worked hard on the 3-D engine to display the fast-moving graphics. You wouldn’t think such graphics were possible on an iPhone with its ARM-based processor and graphics technology that is downright primitive compared to the latest PC or game console graphics.
The game relies on the accelerometer in the iPhone for its main controls. You obviously don’t have a joystick to fly an aircraft with the iPhone. But you can tilt the iPhone in various directions to steer your aircraft in 360 degrees. You can tap the corners of the screen to turn more tightly. And you can tap the icons for guns or missiles with your finger. If an enemy missile locks on your aircraft, you shake the iPhone so that your aircraft drops flares, which draw away the heat-seeking missiles on your tail.
At first, I thought the game was a great example of a second-generation iPhone game. It is so different from the games with primitive graphics and slow, methodical, turn-based game play. Then, as I played it, I found that it was too hard. Try as I might, I couldn’t hit a thing with a missile. Part of the problem is actually a good thing. The game has no tutorial and it just throws you right into the action.
As soon as you start it, it shows an animated clip of a jet evading a missile and then you choose your battle. The single player missions start with you in the midst of a dogfight with one other pilot. You have to learn on the fly, so to speak. You can tap the camera to get a third-person perspective of the battle. That’s useful when you’re trying to get away from someone on your tail or a missile tracking you. The controls are extremely responsive, although making turns could be easier.
As I flew more, the game started growing on me. I started getting better about shooting down aircraft and progressing through the exercises. There are total of 30 missions, with the difficulty increasing from novice to insane. When you first fly, you only have the choice of two planes. But you can unlock as many as 10 planes, including the F-150, F-4, F-15, F-16, Eurofighter 2000, and F-22.
In a sense, the initial difficulty may turn off a lot of players from this game. But I’m an old flight simulator fan and I suspect there are a lot of others out there. I miss this kind of game, since they really don’t do them for the PC as much anymore, and it’s always a little weird trying to fly jets with console game controls. When you’re really trying to fly the aircraft right, you look downright silly. You hold the iPhone in your hands and gesture wildly, moving your arms up and sideways or downward. If you play the game in public, it’s quite possible people around you will just start chuckling because you’re moving so fast. That’s where the F.A.S.T. name actually makes sense.
If you tire of the single player game, you can fight two-on-two or one-on-one in a Wi-Fi enabled multiplayer match. That’s when F.A.S.T. becomes more like a party game where you get a chance to destroy your friends before they destroy you. SGN promises more upgrades to the game as it adds iPhone 3.0 functions.
The difficulty of the game will turn off the newbies, but it will satisfy hardcore players who really want something challenging. This is one of those games that will frustrate you as you try over and over to nail the enemies. But it’s also a game that you’re going to stick with for quite a long time, since it brings out your determination to overcome a difficult challenge. In that respect it reminds me of a lot of games I played over and over again on the PC or the consoles until I mastered them. I have to tip my hat to Pishevar, who says the 3-D engine can be reused in other games. I don’t see that many next-generation games on the iPhone yet. But I can understand why this hit No. 1.
[Are you an entrepreneur or executive active in mobile? Join us at MobileBeat 2009, our mobile conference for industry leaders. Sign up soon.]

Fawcett &#39;siste av det ikoniske pinup girls&#39;

Bildet sier alt.

Første bemannede solkontroll flyet avduket i Sveits

Første fly konstruert for å kjøre kun på solenergi ble innført nær Zurich, Sveits etter å ha brukt seks år i stealthy utvikling. Record-setting varm luft ballooner Bertrand Piccard planlegger å ta fly, kalt Solar Impulse, på flere tester flyreiser innen utgangen av året, viser at flytrafikken ikke av begrensninger når det gjelder å cleantech innovasjon. Håndverket, som er laget av lettvekts carbon fiber og formet som en veps med wingspan av en Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet (207 meter), er bygget slik at den kan fortsette å fly om natten, selv i fravær av solen. Hvis Solar Impulse gjør første Trek i forventet to dager og en natt uten hendelsen teknologien vil bli tilrettelagt for en annen, litt annerledes solenergi flyet skal være ferdig og fløyet rundt i verden i 2012. Veier mindre enn en mid-size bil (3.306 pounds), Solar Impulse kun plasser en passasjer. Sollys absorberes med om lag 12.000 solceller fordelt over sine vinger. Det er deretter brukt til å drive fire ti hestekrefter kompakte elektriske motorer - og hva som ikke brukes umiddelbart, er lagret i 882 pounds av batterier. Dette forbeholder energi blir brukt til å holde flyet værs på kvelden. Hvis flyet utfører riktig under en innledende dagtid flyreise, Piccard planer om å ta det på en sammenhengende 36-timers flytur å påvise effekten av batteriet systemer. Det sveitsiske flyet er ikke den eneste solar-powered fly i verk. NASA har arbeidet på Helios i flere år, og Qinetiq stenger på sin Zephyr modellen. Sistnevnte kom nær å bli det første - å fullføre en ubemannet 54-timers flytur i 2007 - men ingen sigar. Piccard sier han først fikk ideen for Solar Impulse tilbake i 1990 da han lykkes circumnavigated kloden i en varm luft ballong.

Fawcett sønn frigjort til å delta begravelse

Redmond O'Neal vil midlertidig bli frigjort fra fengsel til å delta i begravelsen av sin mor, skuespilleren Farrah Fawcett, tirsdag tjenestemenn sa.

&quot;Dette er det: Jackson fans få refusjon eller souvenir

Michael Jackson-fans som har kjøpt billetter til hans siste konserter får full refusjon, eller om de valgte en commemorative lodd konserten promoter sa tirsdag.

Cardiac device maker VytronUS raises another $11M

VytronUS, a medical device startup that remains secretive about its product, has raised another $11 million in its first round of funding, according to VentureWire. That new money, from existing investors Delphi Ventures and New Enterprise Associates, brings the total amount raised to $17 million.
The Sunnyvale, Calif. company says it’s developing a cardiovascular device that’s entering animal trials, but isn’t offering more details.

Inflated laptop battery claims may lead to class action lawsuit

A couple of weeks ago, Advanced Micro Devices blew the whistle on the battery-life claims that laptop manufacturers make in their ads. The chip maker said the battery life cited in these ads cite were based on tests done in ideal conditions that users wouldn’t encounter. Quite often, actual battery performance is half the time advertised.
Now it looks like that’s going to result in a class action lawsuit against computer makers. Girard Gibbs, a law firm that specializes in securities litigation and consumer class actions, is looking for possible plaintiffs related to the issue and is offering a “free consultation.” It’s time for the computer industry to move to regulate itself in a hurry.
In an interview, Patrick Moorhead, a vice president at AMD, all but predicted that litigation would happen. He said, “We’ve seen this movie before and it has three endings. Either industry will regulate itself. or FTC will come in and say what to do. Or some giant class action lawsuit will happen, as there was when” computer makers made misleading claims about things such as the performance of hard drives, CD-ROMs, and the diagonal length of monitors.
Things started getting fishy in the past year when companies started advertising “all day battery life” for laptops that clearly didn’t last that long. After AMD started doing interviews, a number of articles hit the fan. David Pogue of the New York Times wrote that a fair description of battery life is long overdue.
Moorhead suggests that the industry adopt two different measures of battery life. Computer makers should measure resting time, or the time a battery will last when a laptop isn’t in use but is still turned on, and active time, which is what happens when the computer is actively being used. Of course, AMD does have a vested interest. In the ads, Intel-based machines fare better than the AMD ones. But in real-life testing, the gap between the two isn’t so wide.
AMD was part of a group, BAPCO, which approved the Mobile Mark 2007 benchmark that is used in today’s ads. Intel and computer makers are the members. Moorhead said he is bound by a non-disclosure agreement and so he can’t say how AMD voted on that benchmark. But he said the benchmark measures the battery life of a laptop when its screen brightness is only about 20 percent of normal, the CPU (central processing unit) is in 7 percent usage, and the Wi-Fi radio is turned off. Those really aren’t normal conditions, and that’s why actual measurements of battery life by reviewers is often so different from the advertised benchmark times.

mandag 29. juni 2009

Sense Of Fashion Is A Social Marketplace For Indie Fashion

Sense of Fashion er en israelsk oppstart som skal være en markedsplass for både Indie mote designere å selge sitt design og for forbrukerne å få tilgang til klær laget av håper designere. Webområdet har også et sosialt formål det kan enhver bruker lage en mote hjemmeside sorterer hvor du kan legge til bilder av det du bærer din favoritt klær og design. Designerne kan opprette storefronts på denne plattformen også. Området har ambisjoner om å være mer enn bare en markedsplass for nye og spennende måte. Webområdet håper å koble kjøpere, designere og trendsetters. Designere kan trykke på en potensiell kunde base av brukere som har opprettet sin egen måte, og brukere kan påvirke designere ved kommentere design og mote lagt ut på nettstedet. Brukerne kan også samhandle med andre kunder på området. For eksempel, Sense of Fashion har en "Fashion Emergency" funksjon som gjør at du be venner til å stemme og velge hvilke element av klær ser best på deg.

Birdfeed: Endelig En iPhone Twitter klienten til kamp Tweetie&#39;s Speed og enkelhet

Hvis du eier en iPhone, er du har minst en Twitter-klient på det. Og selv om hverdagen ser ut til å få nye inn i App Store, på slutten av dagen, Tweetie alltid synes å være en som jeg går tilbake til. TwitterFon, Twitterriffic og sist, TweetDeck, alle er verdige utfordrere, men jeg finner hver av dem mangler i noen forbindelse. Vanligvis er det enten fart eller enkelhet. Tweetie synes å være en perfekt kombinasjon av de to. Men et nytt program, Birdfeed, kan være litt mer perfekt. Når du først støvel opp, kan du tenke Birdfeed ser litt sparsom. Men det ligger mye bak denne enkle design, det er bare tucked away, for ikke å rot hoveddisplayet erfaring, som så mange programmer gjør. Hovedformålet Birdfeed skjermen består av Twitter tidslinjen, en knapp for å laste nyere tweets, en knapp for å skrive en tweet, og en knapp til din konto - det er det. Klikke på noen tweet i tidslinjen, vil laste den på sin egen skjerm og derfra kan du enkelt se at personens profil, svare på tweet, favoritt eller videresende den (retweet den, legge ut en lenke til den, eller en kobling til det).

YouTube Slik forstand Release handlingsfremmende sjablonger, Lar Tilknytte Off-Site

I morgen, YouTube skal frigi en meget viktig tillegg til sin suite annonseringsformål produkter, og den har potensial til å ha en stor innvirkning for politikere, merker og veldedighetsorganisasjoner likt. Den morsomme ting du antakelig syntes det var allerede der ute. Produktet offisielle navn er handlingsfremmende Overlegg, og det er omtrent like enkelt som annonser kommer: det er en semi-transparent pop-up som kobler brukere til en nettside du velger. For eksempel kunne jeg plassere et overlegg på en TechCrunch video invitere brukere til å besøke tilsvarende innlegg vi skrev om det. Ja, det er så enkelt. Det er vanskelig å tro, men du har aldri vært i stand til å gjøre dette på YouTube før nå. Hvis du noen gang ønsket å trekke brukere ser på at YouTube-videoen til et annet nettsted, du har å inkludere det som en kobling i sammendraget på høyre side av siden, som de fleste overser allikevel. Brukere kan inneholde lenker i merknadene, men bare til andre YouTube-videoer. Tenk tilbake til president Obama landemerke valgkampen, som ble hjulpet på ingen liten del av hans YouTube tilstedeværelse. Hvis han noen gang ønsket å lede besøkende til en av hans kampanje hjemmesider, han vil måtte be besøkende angir hans webadressen manuelt. Det er et ganske stort hinder for å overvinne. Dette blir kvitt den.

Venture Capitalists V. Founders: Battle At Mochi Media

Mochi Media, the fast growing Flash game advertising network and payments platform that we covered last week, is in the midst of an internal battle over the fate of the company.

The company is mulling over an acquisition offer that would give investors Accel Partners and Shasta Ventures their original investments of around $14 million back, but not much more. Founders and other employees wouldn't make much from the sale.

Normally this is an easy offer to turn down. The company is doing well and has "plenty" of money left in the bank, sources say. The founders obviously would want to continue to grow the business and hope for a good outcome.

But for some reason at least one investor, Ping Li from Accel, wants to close the deal and take his original investments off the table. He has been pressuring the founders and management team to accept the terms offered, multiple sources say.

That's left the founders frustrated, who apparently turned down an offer from Time Warner to acquire the company for $65 million or so a year ago. Li convinced the founders not to take that deal, sources say, and instead raise more money to go for a "home run." Now, a year later, Li wants to sell the company for a small fraction of that $65 million.

Ooma reiser $ 14m mer midt tøff runde

Ooma er mye hyped selskap som selger en kostbar VoIP boks ($ 249) som du kan installere i hjemmene for å foreta gratis land-line samtaler, har reist en annen $ 14 millioner i risikovillig kapital Vi har bekreftet. TechCrunch rapportert historien tidligere, men løselig rapportert at finansiering "utryddet" tidligere investorene som valgte å ikke delta i runden. Men vi høre det var ikke tørke ut. Snarere eksisterende investorer som ikke deltok, ble omdannet til felles, slik de gjorde mister visse rettigheter, inkludert bord representasjon og noe som kalles "avvikling preferanse", som garanterer et minimum utbetalingen til investorene i tilfelle et salg. De har også mistet sine pro-rata rettigheter, slik at de ikke vil være i stand til å beskytte sine investeringer mot fremtidige fortynning. En stor tidlig investor, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, effektivt fikk tvunget ut. Denne runden ble ledet av eksisterende investor Worldview Technology Partners, et firma som selv har hatt problemer med å skaffe friske midler det siste, og vil trolig trappe ned etter at det dispenses sin gjenværende midler. Ooma har reist totalt $ 56 millioner. Det er ikke lønnsomt. En av våre tidligere skribenter brukes Ooma, og generelt likte det. Men utfordringen er at Ooma generallu gjør en engangs salg av sin enhet, og så har problemer med å få faste inntekter. Det krever også folk til å betale for enda et tele-tjenesten, da de allerede har en bredbåndstilkobling og en fast linje. Med gratis-tjenester som Skype blir mer populært, det konkurransedrevet landskap trolig forbli svært tøft for Oooma.

Roundup: Dell’s iPhone-sized gadget, Malcolm Gladwell vs. Chris Anderson, books on smartphones

Dell engineers are working on a pocket Android gadget — It’s roughly the size of an iPhone, the Wall Street Journal reports. In industry-speak, the device is what Intel calls an MID — a “mobile Internet device” somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop.  What’s news isn’t that Dell engineers are fooling around with gadgets, but that the PC maker is seriously considering taking this product to market. Sources told the Journal that Dell has explored selling the device through wireless carriers.
Books on smartphones gain momentum –  Shortcovers has added the Palm Pre to the supported platforms for its limited set of e-books. Titles include Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, a three-second download for 10 bucks. Wattpad, which distributes public domain and Creative Commons-licensed titles for free, has announced an app for Android gadgets. The e-books are more readable than you might expect. The only roadblock to reading John Grisham on your Pre is that book publishers are still reluctant to release large portions of their catalogs in a widely-readable digital format.
Comcast to roll out WiMAX in Portland, Oregon — For years, WiMAX technology has promised to provide wireless Internet access at up to 70 megabits per second. Engadget reports that Comcast, which bought into WiMAX tech maker Clearwire in 2008, will soon give Portlanders first crack at it.
Malcolm Gladwell reviews Wired editor Chris Anderson’s new book, Free – Ten-word version: “He’s forgotten about the plants and the power lines.” Since the New Yorker has already embraced Anderson’s core concept, you can read Gladwell’s review for free. Update: Anderson just posted a response: “Dear Malcolm, why so threatened?” Anderson has been defending himself for not marking portions of the book that were republished from Wikipedia.
Windows 7 pre-order is an Amazon top-seller — CNet’s Ina Fried reports that, contrary to conventional wisdom on Windows, consumers are lining up to buy.

Ny versjon av OffiSync bringer mer Google i Microsoft Office

OffiSync har allerede fått positive trykk for sin integrering av online tekstbehandlingsmaskin Google Dokumenter med Microsoft Word. The Seattle selskapet tar som integrering videre med nå tilgjengelige versjon 2, ved å legge til Google nettsøk og bildesøk. VentureBeat skribent Dean Takahashi var allerede imponert OffiSync - sett den kan du bruke Office, men også søke, samarbeid, og lagre dokumenter til Internett via Google Docs. Nå kan du også søke på Internett selv for relevant informasjon eller bilder via en boks i Word. Så hvis du arbeider med et forskningsprosjekt, kan du gjøre din web forskning i Word (ikke glem biblioteket, kids!), Og deretter markere relevante passasje fra et nettsted, klikker du bare "sett inn", og materialet er lagt til i dokumentet. Ikke bare gjør dette gjør OffiSync mer nyttig, men det illustrerer også hva grunnleggeren Oudi Antebi mente når han sa Dean til planene om "Googleizing Microsoft Office. OffiSync er ikke bare prøver å gjøre to produktene fungerer sammen, men fremfor å bygge på Office og gjør det mer web-aktig, slik en oppstartsenhet som Xobni legger til flere sosiale funksjoner Outlook. Hvis OffiSync fortsetter bedring, vil det være i en styrket posisjon til å konkurrere når Microsoft utgir en egen online-versjonen av Office, Office 2010. Andre selskaper forsøker å integrere webtjenester med Microsoft-programvare også - Zoho utgitt en versjon av sin Office-verktøy Microsoft Sharepoint, og Google har nylig kunngjort at Google Apps synkroniseres med Microsofts e-postprogram Outlook. OffiSync selv finansiert. Den gjeldende versjonen er gratis, men Antebi planer om å ta betalt for en organisasjonsversjon senere.

Vanity URLs: Facebook’s latest move to reach marketers

Names, in their simplest form, are how an association is created between an individual and tangible objects, actions and concepts. These labels and associations can affect how people will ultimately perceive an entity, both on and offline — so they matter for brands.
Meanwhile, leading social network Facebook has been making a series of changes to their platform in an attempt to facilitate the creation a stronger bond between individuals, communities, and brands.

Two weeks ago Facebook began letting people register “vanity” URLs, either for personal profile pages or for public profile pages. By getting a vanity URL, these people can further develop their presence on the web. These URLs can be easily recognized anywhere (you can imagine seeing http://ping.fm/gtquK in a Coke ad, for example), and they can help a profile page appear more prominently in search results. Of course, there’s another incentive to get a vanity URL – someone could use a vanity URL with your name or brand to spread false information or take your business, as has happened with many domains on the web.
While Facebook’s vanity URLs are noteworthy, this has been available on blogs for some time, as well as other social networks like MySpace and Twitter. Twitter’s microblogging service has proven itself to be an especially fast way for marketers to reach a lot of people. But unlike Twitter, MySpace and blogs,  the 200 million-some monthly active  users on Facebook tend to share information privately with their real-world friends. For brands, Facebook URLs are a new way to tap into those connections.
Smaller brands get access vanity URLs
To prevent squatting, Facebook put a couple temporary measures in place. Any owner of a public profile page that registered within a couple weeks before the vanity URLs were opened was not allowed to register a URL. Neither was any public profile page with less than 1,000 fans. This way, anyone who had recently or unsuccessfully attempted to copy a major brand via a new page (say, by creating their own fan page for Coke), wouldn’t be able to register.
Now that users and larger, older public page owners have registered their URLs, Facebook has opened up registration to any page owner starting yesterday, Sunday, June 28 at 12:01am Eastern Time.


How will this affect smaller brands?
Full access to vanity URLs is comes right as Facebook rolls out a number of other public-facing features useful to brands. Facebook’s new “Everything is Public by Default” setting lets individuals and public page owners send out status updates and other information that is publicly available.

It’s interesting that in such a short time Facebook has made such significant changes to the platform. What’s extremely interesting about this is that they originally gained momentum and a sense of value to many early users in that it was a closed community that was more private. It wasn’t as much about lifecasting - it was about small networks and the areas they overlapped.
For most Facebook users, the ‘public by default’ setting won’t have much of an effect on their daily habits — they don’t want to make their private conversations public. Nonetheless, Facebook is letting them do so, and in this way creating ‘mineable’ data like what Twitter has. The status updates, links people share, comments, friend relationships, and more that people share are, in sum, valuable information in determining what sort of things people like — and would like advertising for.
For brands, the ‘everything public’ is great, since they will have the ability display a public-facing profile that can be reviewed by the anyone and everyone, showcased by the website itself and its user-base. A company can now have their social media presence elevated as a true extension of their brands and services.
Facebook’s new ‘Hybrid Engagement Ads’
Facebook is beginning to make ads more interactive. For example, you might see an ad for a brand’s page, see a “become a fan” button, and officially become a fan without having going to the page itself. The advertisements are just the next step of the ‘in-feed’ ads it has had for years. As with sharing, their relationship to the new Vanity URLs is simple - Through naming there’s an opportunity for consistency within the ad message or title.
The effectiveness of a Hybrid Ad will be related to the proposition being offered through that ad. The ability to engage in ads that can have an immediate action will also depend on that actions result. That Facebook makes the ads appears as part of the user’s profile experience lends the high possibility that many users will trust these ads and engage, as long as the proposition is relevant.
Conclusion: Start experimenting
All of these changes, the Vanity URLs, Hybrid Ads, and the overall trend toward public-facing information, can be viewed in light of Facebook’s goal: Blending relevant advertising  with the content its users are sharing. The URLs make the brand more transmittable and accessible, while the ads invite users to create and disseminate co-created content. This branded content then becomes increasingly public, as Facebook rolls out similar changes.
Facebook’s product is continuing to evolve. But the product line-up has become diverse and built-out enough where brands large and small can benefit through trying them out.

Benjamin J. Weisman, is a Digital Director and Lead Strategist with Iris, a global, independent, integrated marketing agency working across all media and all disciplines. Working with global clients which include Sony Ericsson, Sony, adidas, ING, Shell, Coca-Cola and Hertz, Iris delivers award-winning creative work and integrated solutions across advertising, direct, digital, PR, retail, experiential and sponsorship, in addition to management consultancy.

Why bit.ly may beat Digg

URL shortening services are among the most arcane, seemingly trivial part of Web 2.0 services. Yet they’re a potential goldmine of information about what humans on the Internet, not automated bots, find valuable or at least interesting.
Compared to, say, Google Maps, the way a URL shortener works is blessedly simple: A human Web surfer or automated Web server gives bit.ly a URL, for example http://ping.fm/C6BAU In return, bit.ly gives back a short URL that looks like this: http://bit.ly/YZLpD. The user or server publishes the bit.ly URL instead of the longer original saving valuable space in a short update on Twitter or another social network.
At the same time, bit.ly makes a note to itself that “YZLpd” should be translated to www.verylongname.com/very_very_very_long_url.html. Whenever a user clicks on the shortened URL, their browser sends a request to bit.ly for, in this example, http://bit.ly/YZLpD. Bitly redirects the user’s browser to the long-form original URL on anothe rsite.
bit.ly earlier this year replaced tinyurl.com as the service used by Twitter to automatically shrink long URLs inside its users’ tweets. Bit.ly’s auto-shortening lets Twitter users post links without overrunning Twitter’s 140-character limit on all tweets.
Can you spot the potential business? As Twitter’s default shortener, bit.ly collects an average 2 million new URLs per day — 100 times the number of URLs submitted to Digg. Bit.ly tracks 150 million clicks per week on its shortened URLs. The company wants you to think of those as votes, which would make bit.ly one of the Net’s largest running polls on what is and isn’t interesting.
TechCrunch has confirmed the rumor that bit.ly will soon go into competition against Digg and other user-generated-content sites with a service internally dubbed bit.ly Now. Bit.ly claims its collected data can tell not only what’s popular right this second, but what’s about to blow up huge. Unlike Twitter’s trending topics list, which shows what’s being tweeted a lot, bit.ly measures what links Twitter readers are actually clicking.
The most obvious way to monetize this information would be to sell it as an embeddable data stream for news sites — an automated ticker that shows what everyone’s clicking.
You can already see some of the data bit.ly collects by adding a  ’+’ character onto the end of any bit.ly URL. In the example shown here, I’ve gotten the bit.ly Now listing for a photographer’s blog by editing http://ping.fm/EsKLf to http://ping.fm/nEHa8+. There’s surely a way to resell this info, too.
But can bit.ly really replace Digg? TechCrunch editor Mike Arrington writes that “Digg has to constantly fight users who try to game the system.” If bit.ly catches on as an arbiter of what’s hot or not, users will figure out ways to game bit.ly, too.

Steve Jobs tilbake til arbeidet på Apple

Steve Jobs gikk tilbake til jobben i dag hos Apple. Hva om det? Andre CEOs må være så sjalu. Jobs gjør aktuelt bare ved å gå til arbeid. Dette er en av de dagene da jeg lyst til å være en flue på veggen på hemmelighetsfull Cupertino selskapet, som har mestret kunsten å operere i skjulemodus. Fremlegging eksperter virkelig ønsker å vite hva han gjør 24 timer i døgnet. Det vil være interessant å se hvordan Apple og styret håndterer dette. Jeg vil bare vite hva han har på sin liste over gjøremål. Her er en celebrty som har hatt en annen pensel med dødelighet, og synes å ha kommet tilbake fra sitt leveren transplantasjon i stand til å utføre jobben som konsernsjef. Han forlot stillingen i januar og i løpet av hans tid av sjefen i konsernet Tim Cook syntes å gjøre helt fint å få produkter som iPhone 3G S, en haug med Mac laptopper og iPhone 3.0-programvaren ut døren. Cook synes dyktige nok. Jobs hadde sin leveren transplantasjon bare to måneder siden. Og han overlevde kreften tidligere. Nå, til 54, med milliarder i Apple lager han åpenbart ikke har til å jobbe. Men han må bli inspirert til å komme tilbake for noen grunn. Han synes drevet å lykkes. Apple investorer kjørte aksjen ned 47 cent til $ 141.97 i dag. Men aksjer er opp mer enn 66 prosent i år. De synes å tro at Jobs har mange triks opp sin ermet. Dette flytter sannsynligvis berolige investorene at Jobs kommer til å arbeide sin magi på noe nytt. Klart, vil han ikke kaste bort sin tid på små ting. Jeg tror han vil gjøre sin karakter og ikke føler at jobben er gjort ennå. Hva det skal bli? Hvordan slår Apple TV til en spillkonsoll? Hvordan bruke iPhone som en instellar Star Trek Communicator? Jeg skal vedde det vil være en doozy.

Report: Games will see strong growth over next three years

Game publishers should be able to grow revenues 9 percent a year in the U.S. and Europe as they embrace digital content and find ways to extend the consumption of games for the current generation of game consoles, a new report says.
The market for console game software is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9 percent from 2009 to 2011, while hardware revenues will decline 25 percent a year due to falling prices, according to Michael Pachter and Edward Woo, the analysts who created the report for Wedbush Morgan Securities. All other entertainment is expected to grow zero to 2 percent in the same time frame, the report says. That’s a bullish report, given that game industry growth has turned negative in the past few months as the recession slows down demand.
The 210-page report details the size of the game industry as well as major trends within it and how they affect startups trying to find opportunities in the digital content portion of the game industry. As such, it provides some good insight into several game-industry issues I discussed in one of our most popular posts about the game business.
Games are the fastest growing entertainment market with a bright digital content future. In 2008, worldwide hardware and software sales were $44 billion, while US hardware and software sales were $19.5 billion. That compares to the combined US movie box office and DVD movie market of $22 billion and entertainment-related book sales of $9 billion. Right now, games are about 15 percent of the overall $75 billion in entertainment spending in the US. That percentage is expected to grow, since games are the fastest-growing entertainment sector. A reason for the growth is that gamers continue to play games even as they get older; the average age of gamers is now 35, compared to under 20 in the 1980s. There are also many more female gamers, who now account for 35 percent of the console market. In a separate report today, market researcher NPD said that females are a growing part of the console audience.
Beyond 2011, revenues from non-traditional sources — online games, casual games, mobile phone games, downloadable content, and in-game advertising — are expected to contribute meaningfully, offsetting slowing growth of packaged goods software sales, the report says. Over 10 years, digital content is expected to account for almost all of the game industry’s growth.
Nintendo holds the enviable position in the console and portable business. In past game console cycles, sales dipped in the transitions. Software sales in the U.S. were down 9 percent in 2000, for instance, and 3 percent in 2005. The current generation of consoles began when Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 in November, 2005. Portables, meanwhile, saw a renaissance that began in 2004 with the launch of the Nintendo DS. The launch of the Wii and the DS Lite in 2006 changed everything in Nintendo’s favor. Since 2005, overall software revenues have grown 60 percent, largely because of Nintendo’s success.
Nintendo’s Wii is expected to be the dominant console, with an expected 49 percent share of the U.S. and European markets at the end of 2009, compared to 29 percent for the Xbox 360 and 23 percent for the PS 3. But by 2011, Sony is expected to pull even with Microsoft in the No. 2 spot. Of the $44 billion worldwide sales in 2008, about 40 percent, or $17.7 billion, was hardware sales.
Hardware sales of consoles are tracking about the same as they were in the last generation of consoles. To date, high sales of the Wii are offsetting slower unit sales of the PS 3 and Xbox 360. The report says there were roughly 78 million current-generation consoles sold worldwide as of year-end 2008, with 16 million PS3s, 23 million Xbox 360s and 39 million Wiis sold. That compares to 78 million legacy consoles sold worldwide at year-end 2003, with 54 million PS2s, 12 million Xboxes and 12 million GameCubes.The report expects consoles per gaming household to stay constant at about 1.4.
Nintendo has essentially turned the tables on Sony. It succeeded in grabbing the mass market, while the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 snared the hardcore gamers with high-definition TVs. Nintendo started out with a low-priced console aimed at party gamers with the added twist of the unique Wii motion-sensing controller.
The Wii enabled much earlier and broader participation of the mass market than would otherwise happen in a console cycle.
Wedbush Morgan predicts that the console cycle is likely to last beyond the typical five-year mark, which begins anew in 2010. While Nintendo  may introduce a high-definition version of the Wii, the console makers are not likely to be motivated to introduce new machines in the near future.
Costs are going up, but digital distribution has promise. The cost of making games has gone up. In the last generation, the average console game required 18 to 36 months to finish and cost an average of $4 million. In the current cycle, console games take 24 to 36 months to develop. Average development costs are now $8-10 million. Those costs are starting to subside as developers learn how to make games better.
Online games, casual games and mobile are expected to grow steadily, while downloadable content and in-game advertising will really pick up once the consoles hit a higher penetration of overall households. Activision Blizzard is an exception, since a quarter of its revenue and half of its profits come from the online game World of Warcraft.
Online subscription and game-related downloads are expected to be a $3 billion opportunity as video games on demand services such as OnLive are launched. Wedbush Morgan predicts that OnLive will be a breakthrough success and will be widely adopted. But it will be a long time before such services take a big chunk of the market away from retailers.
Asia, meanwhile, is likely to be the market where massively multiplayer online games such as WoW take off. There are an estimated 10 million MMO players in Asia, generating monthly revenues of $500-700 million. Free-to-play games, supported by the micro-transactions such as the sales of virtual goods, are also a small but fast-growing part of the game market.
Digital downloads will eventually become a big market, but for now they are hampered by small hard drive space on the consoles (20 gigabytes to 80 gigabytes on an Xbox 360).
The iPhone and in-game ad opportunities are over-hyped. Cell phone games are roughly $2 billion overall, largely from downloads on older phones. But cell phone games are not expected to close in on console or portable game sales levels for some time, largely due to the hardware limitations of the devices. Cell phone games are viewed as a path to making casual gamers, particularly women, into more active gamers. But the market in terms of dollars is still small, since the average paid game is about $2, and overall iPhone game revenues in the first year are about $400 million.
In-games ads have been hyped in past years, but Wedbush Morgan believes that it’s a smaller opportunity, ranging from $2 -10 billion a few years from now, depending on the success of measuring user interaction with ads.

Googles andel av annonseringsforbruk: 2,66 prosent

Et sett diagrammer av Search Engine Land bidra redaktør Greg Sterling viser at mens Google ser ut som en gigantisk selskap, inntektene er ikke så stort, selv for en tech bedrift. Å koke ned Sterling artikkel: Googles inntekter er en femtedel som IBM, Verizon og AT & T. Selv Microsoft samler inn tre ganger så mye per år: $ 60 milliarder mot Googles $ 21 milliarder. The New York Times har en rapport på Googles we're-ikke-det-store forsvar mot regjeringen intervensjon. Men Sterling's er en bedre leser. Diagrammet ovenfor viser hvor lite annonsering på Internett fortsatt. Google-programmene AdWords og AdSense har vokst markedet for online-annonser, i stedet for bare å fange en del av eksisterende skuring. Likevel Googles 30 prosent andel av amerikanske online annonseinntektene - litt over $ 21 milliarder - er mindre enn tre prosent av den totale amerikanske annonsering. Mange selskaper fortsatt Balk ved annonsering på nett, eller begå flere av annonsene sine budsjetter til Web-annonser. En grunn er at om høyere priser elementer kunder fortsatt ønsker å snakke med et menneske i stedet for ett klikk på en $ 1000 kjøpet. RingRevenue en Santa Barbara-baserte oppstart i Southern California, hevder å ha teknologi til å koble til online kampanjer og over-the-telefonen salg å spore hvilke annonser som resulterte i hva salg. Sikkert Google har egne løsninger under utvikling. Mellomtiden Sterling's diagrammer gjør en stor sak mot Google påståtte monopol på Internett. Selskapet har en enorm tilstedeværelse både online og i pop-kultur. Likevel tar det bare% 2,66 prosent av kostnadene i markedet serverer. Det er ikke et monopol, er det en samtale å vokse ti ganger større. [Bilde av Search Engine Land]

SpaceX øke ytterligere $ 60M for private space reise

Space travel selskapet Space Exploration Technologies Corp, bedre kjent som SpaceX, har reist $ 15 millioner for en ny finansiering runde, ifølge VentureWire. Runden mai slutt vokse til $ 60 millioner. VentureWire første sett nyhetene i regelverket filing og har bekreftet nyheten med Draper Fisher Jurvetson, firmaet ledende runden. Det høres ut som selskapets fortunes fortsette å forbedre oss. Grunnlagt i 2002 av PayPal medgrunnlegger Elon Musk, som fungerer som administrerende direktør for både Hawthorne, California, og elektrisk bil maker Tesla, SpaceX begynte påvise selve fjor når det endelig lansert en rakett i verdensrommet etter tre mislykkede forsøk. Nå DFJ administrerende direktør Steve Jurvetson sier luftfartsteknologi bedrifter og offentlige etater er hiring SpaceX å levere satellitter i bane - for eksempel, er det planlagt å lansere et malaysisk satellitt i juli. SpaceX's trykk materialer også si det planer om å levere lasten tilbake og videre fra Low Earth Orbit (som resupplying International Space Station) starter neste år. Moskus utgangspunktet investert $ 100 millioner av sine egne penger i selskapet. SpaceX også reist USD 20 millioner fra Stiftere Fund (et firma som drives av PayPal co-gründere) i fjor. SocalTech rapportert på midler tilbake i april, men DFJ nylig bekreftet nyhetene. Jeg har sendt SpaceX (som ikke kommentere for VentureWire historie), og vil oppdatere hvis jeg hører tilbake.

Når Billy Mays ropte det, folk trodde

Billy Mays alltid fortelle deg hvem du snakket med.

David Blaine now douching up your iPhone

I don’t know if you guys are aware, but nothing is better for making people think you’re awesome than doing card tricks. No, seriously. Anyone you know with a ton of friends only has so many friends because of their card trick repertoire.
Actually, there is one thing that’s cooler than doing card tricks: doing [...]

Ryktet: Nvidia Tegra telefoner i Q409? [Oppdatert]

Vi er begeistret Nvidia's Tegra så lenge de har blitt vist sin prototype telefoner - som å være klart, er ganske lenge. De har klart å jam et udyr av en datamaskin ned i en itty-bitty chip og vask strømkravene ned til mindre enn én watt, alt mens [...]

Facebook gets new CFO: Genentech veteran David Ebersman

Facebook chief financial officer Gideon Yu left the company this spring, in somewhat strange circumstances, with Facebook saying it wanted a CFO with public company experience. Now it has one: former Genentech CFO David Ebersman.
While Ebersman worked at biotechnology company Genentech for 15 years, his experience was on the business side. He rose through the ranks as a business analyst and product manager before becoming chief financial officer in 2006 through its sale to Roche this past spring. This experience is what Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg emphasized in the company press release today: “He was Genentech’s CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a fast growing company will be important to Facebook,” Zuckerberg said.
What revenue at Facebook? Using information obtained by ourselves and others, we’ve estimated that the company is on track to make at least $500 million this year. It only says that its revenue has been growing by 70 percent this year, and that it could be profitable in 2010. An aside in a New York Times article from April suggested that Yu wasn’t as bullish Zuckerberg, and left as a result:
Facebook said last month that it was on track to become profitable next year. But as it did, Gideon Yu, Facebook’s experienced chief financial officer, left the company. Three people familiar with the internal maneuverings at Facebook said Mr. Yu objected to such a rosy projection as the company was struggling to finance its expensive global growth.
The former treasurer at Yahoo and the former CFO at YouTube (he sold it to Google), Yu certainly had some public company experience. But Ebersman has more. Presumably, he liked what he saw at Facebook enough to join. The social network has stayed demure about doing an initial public offering; from what I’ve heard, its plan is basically working. It gets more users, gets them to share more information, uses data about what they share to target ads better — and as long as it can get people sharing even more, it can serve those ads more often. It’s not a sexy, short-term plan but for Ebersman, who grinded out a big success with Genetech over one and a half decades, it must seem like a good one.
The release:
PALO ALTO, Calif. — June 29, 2009 — Facebook today announced that David Ebersman, the former executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) of Genentech, the pioneering biotechnology firm recently acquired by Roche, will become the company’s chief financial officer.
Ebersman will report to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Founder Mark Zuckerberg.  He will oversee Facebook’s finance, accounting, investor relations, and real estate functions.  He also becomes a part of the company’s executive management team, which directs all aspects of company strategy, planning and operations.  Ebersman will formally start in September 2009.
“We received a lot of interest in the CFO position and had the opportunity to meet with many impressive candidates,” said Mark Zuckerberg.  “We quickly recognized that David was the right person for Facebook.  He was Genentech’s CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a fast growing company will be important to Facebook.”
“After meeting with Mark and the rest of the team, I was thoroughly impressed with everyone’s drive and sense of purpose to help people connect and share,“ noted Ebersman.  “Mark is constantly pushing the company forward and he’s assembled a world-class team that is achieving remarkable results both for its users and as a business.  I’m excited to join this effort and this new industry.”
Ebersman worked at Genentech for nearly 15 years. He served as the firm’s executive vice president and CFO from 2006 through April 2009, when Roche Group acquired the company.  Prior to joining the company’s finance organization, he was senior vice president of Product Operations.  He joined Genentech as a business development analyst.  Previously, he was a research analyst at Oppenheimer & Company Inc.

Googler Prashant Fuloria kobles Facebook, som arbeider på inntektsmuligheter

Google produktadministrasjon direktør Prashant Fuloria rolig gled over motorveien 101 forrige måned, fra Googleplex i Mountain View til Facebook's nye hovedkvarter i Palo Alto, som Inside Facebook første rapporterte i dag. Han holder samme tittel, og et noe lignende fokus. På Facebook han vil bidra til å gi generelle inntektsmuligheter produktutvikling, inkludert sosiale nettverk er fortsatt-små betalingssystemet samt reklameinnslag, selskapet sier. En Googler siden 2003, Fuloria har jobbet på søkemotorens betalingssystemet, Checkout blant andre produkter. Ene kan være tilgitt for å tenke på at Facebook er forsettlig målretting Googleplex for rekruttering, selv om den har en mangfoldig blanding av folk fra Yahoo, Apple og andre ledende teknologiselskaper. Ex-googlere eller "Xooglers" som de kaller seg selv ", som er på Facebook nå inkluderer: Chief opererer offiser Sheryl Sandberg, markedsføring og politikk Vice President Elliot Schrage, plattform leder Ethan Beard, og engineering director Greg Badros. De fleste av disse personene hadde sluttet seg til Google før den ble offentlig i 2004, etter IPO attrition er uunngåelig for enhver bedrift, og på Google, mange tidlig ansatte har gått til engel investere, startet sitt eget selskap, eller deltar andre hot startups - særlig Twitter). Som Facebook nears 1000 ansatte, det synes å ha tjent seg tittelen "De fleste Google-" - minst til Twitter gjør noen mer hiring.

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Let’s close out Boston “Innovation month” with a bang!

Chris Shipley and I arrived in Boston today, the latest step in our campaign to find the best companies to launch at the DEMOfall conference in September.
We’re meeting at Vox, at 6pm. More details here. Make sure you register. First 40 people in the door get a free drink.
It so happens we’ve got excellent timing. We’ve arrived just in time to close out Boston’s “Innovation Month,” an initiative launched by Boston Globe Scott Kirsner. He proposed that the June be used to mobilize the local tech community to remember what it takes to generate economic growth (good article about it in the Mercury News). Instead of wringing hands about layoffs at big companies like EMC, people need to remember it takes risky entrepreneurship — along the lines of what we have in Silicon Valley — to thrive. I just talked to Scott, and he’s happy with the debate it sparked. The month was already a time when several tech events were being held, and so it was a good time to do this. Check out the initiative’s twitter handle (neinno#) to follow the chatter. Kirsner said he’s planning to come tonight too.
We’ve also invited Xconomy’s Bob Buderi and his team, along with Dan Primack’s PEHub to co-host the event. There are already about 100 people signed up, so this will be good networking.
We’re inviting any entrepreneurs or interested professionals who would like to learn whether they’re right for DEMO, the leading conference for emerging technology product launches. It’s being held on Sept. 21-23.
Chris and I will also be holding meetings with entrepreneurs today and tomorrow. Just fill out a form (pick either launch or pitch), and drop me a note that you’d like to meet on one of those days, and we’ll get in touch and set something up.
Alumni companies at DEMO include Adobe Acrobat, Sun’s Java, Netscape Navigator, Placeware, the foundation for Microsoft Live Meeting, Palm Computing, WebEx, Salesforce.com, TiVo, E-Trade; VM Ware, Google’s first foray into mobile search, and many more.

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