I’m a sucker. It’s true. As much you guys think we rail against Apple, we’re like abused puppies, slinking back to our master’s hard ankles, shivering and awaiting praise. Why did I pre-order the iPad? Well, first I’m a gadget blogger. Second there is no certainty that mother Apple will grace us with an early review unit so I want to hedge our bets. Third? I want to see where computing is headed.

Bear with me here. Apple is not the bringer of fire to a benighted world. Far from it. In my recent writing I’ve been struck by a few parallels with Steve Jobs to Abraham Louis Breguet, a French watchmaker who lived in the 18th century. He was a mechanical genius, to be sure, but he was also a salesman. While the rest of the benighted world was sloshing around in an admixture of feces and mud in the streets of Paris and telling the time by whether the pikemen were stabbing them for being out after curfew, Breguet was selling watches that would not be out of place on the wrist (had they had straps) of a whale in Las Vegas. He invented secret anti-counterfeiting measures but made them part of the allure and not part of a DRM scheme. He designed elegant and beautiful watches in an age of rococo designs but wasn’t above creating a “subscription” watch for the masses who wanted to own a piece of the good life without paying an exorbitant sum of money. Other watchmakers were making commodities and following Breguet’s lead. That’s what’s happening here.

Read more…

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Confession: I Pre-ordered My iPad And Breguet Made Me Do It

Microsoft loses second Word patent appeal, on the hook for $240 million in damages originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  BBC  | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Microsoft loses second Word patent appeal, on the hook for $240…

Back in November, the location-based social event service Hot Potato launched at our Realtime CrunchUp. Today, they’ve taken what was a solid service, and made it a lot better with a number of upgrades.

First and foremost, there is a new iPhone application that just went live in the App Store. With a completely revamped user interface, the app makes it easier than ever to find and participate in events. Perhaps more importantly, it makes it really easy to create new events — and notably, the service has the nicest third-party Foursquare integration I’ve ever seen. When you click on the button to create an event, you can still manually enter a location, but if you happen to be around the venue, you can simply pick it from Foursquare’s list of venues with the click of a button. This drastically simplifies the event creation process since the venue metadata is already there.

This new app will be crucial for the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, which starts tomorrow. If you’ve been reading TechCrunch over the past week, you’ve undoubtedly seen that just about every location-based service has an app they’re unveiling. And another service based around planning events, Plancast, just launched their app this evening. But Hot Potato offers the best of both worlds as it allows you to both plan future events, and interact with ones currently taking place. The new app makes it very easy to chat about the event, and upload photos and videos.

Also new for SXSW is Twitter integration. On a case-by-case basis, Hot Potato will be pulling in tweets about certain events at SXSW, using a filter to make sure only relevant ones show up. You’ll be able to do things such as filter those tweets to show only those by people you actually follow, which will make them potentially much more meaningful to you. You can also reply to tweets thanks to integration of Twitter’s API. And you can share tweets from within the app that will show up as retweets on Twitter.

Another new features is Calendars — something which each Hot Potato user now has. Obviously, you can add the events you wish to be a part of to your calendar, but people you are friends with on the service can also add you to other events as well. The app also now features Push Notifications now (on top of revamped email notifications).

On top of the new app, Hot Potato has rolled out a completely revamped website with just about all of the same functionality of the new app (as well as the new look and feel). And at the highest level, Hot Potato finally has its own social graph, which can pull in friends from the usual suspects: Facebook, Twitter, your address book, etc.

And here’s something that should really help Hot Potato this week: each time someone checks-in to a SXSW event, Foursquare will recommend they also join the event on Hot Potato. Clicking on the accompanying link with open the Hot Potato app and let them join with a click (if they have an account). As you might expect, you can also check-in to a venue on Foursquare within Hot Potato. With Foursquare likely to be one of the key apps used by conference goers, this cross promotion is simply huge.

On top of all of this, the service now has its own full API, so others can use and interact with their data.

Simply put, all these updates are full of win, and make a good app even better. And remarkably, they’ve managed to cram in all these new features, while at the same time simplifying the overall experience.

Fine the new iPhone app here in the App Store. It’s a free download.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Hot Potato Tosses A New Site, API, And iPhone App With Foursquare…

Talkin’ Windows Phone 7 Series gaming with Microsoft at GDC originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Joystiq  | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Talkin’ Windows Phone 7 Series gaming with Microsoft at GDC

Sony’s calling the PlayStation Move the “next generation” of motion gaming and planning to market it as heavily as an entirely new console, so it’s sort of a big deal — and that means our main dudes at Joystiq are all over it. We’ve already covered the main details, but hit the links below if you’re looking for some seriously deep dives.

• SOCOM 4 to support PlayStation Move
• EyePet to support PlayStation Move, hits North America holiday 2010
• Move supported by 36 companies, 20 games this fiscal year
• The PlayStation Move games (we know of)
• Hands-on: SOCOM 4 (with PlayStation Move!)
• Hands-on: PlayStation Move’s ‘The Shoot’
• Hands-on: PlayStation Move’s ‘Move Party’
• Hands-on: PlayStation Move’s Sports Champions
• We touched it: PlayStation Move from every angle
• ‘Arc’ lives on in PlayStation Move’s logo

Want more on the PlayStation Move? Head over to Joystiq! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Want more on the PlayStation Move? Head over to Joystiq!

Pelago knows that just about every location-based app in the world is seeking coverage right now just prior to SXSW where they will all battle Highlander-style. So they approached me with a pretty smart pitch: curing the “social rut.” What they mean by that is these days, despite the prevalence of social networks, people are actually less social than ever because they’re being roped into playing games like Farmville and Mafia Wars for hours on end. Sitting in their rooms. Alone.

While that may be a part of social networking (a rather large, hugely profitably part), it’s not really social. That’s why location-based networks excite me: they have the potential to bridge social networking with actual social activity. And that’s exactly how Pelago is positioning the latest version of its location-based app, Whrrl 3.

The core idea behind the new iPhone app (which launched in the store today) is that people inspire others to do things. So when you see a friend is out doing something fun, you may want to join them. Or it may entice you to go out and do something else, and hope others see it on Whrrl and join in. It’s the grouping of people with similar interests into “Societies” that is a key to Whrrl 3. For example, a basic society is that each venue in the application has its own set of “regulars.” If you visit the place enough times, you unlock the badge making you a regular, and giving you access to member-level activities, such as recommendations and specials nearby.

One of these societies, launching alongside the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas this week is the Austin Underground which “will provide members with at-your-fingertips access to the hottest parties, events, and other fun things to do at the conference,” according to Whrrl. Over 50 merchants in Austin are participating to provide exclusive offers, apparently. To unlock the membership, you have to check-in at some of the following places: Four Seasons Hotel Austin, Outback Steakhouse, Cool River Cafe, Chuggin’ Monkey, J Black’s, Red Fez and Third Base, and others.

Other key features of Whrrl 3 include Recommendations — you create these (with photos, if you choose), to let others in your social graph (or your society) know fun things to do in an area. Ideas, are recommendations served up to you from societies you’re a part of, your friends, or Whrrl’s algorithms. Fun Facts are shown each time you check-in to a venue, with information about it. And of course, there is a point system (Influence Points) that turn the whole thing into one big game. What’s interesting about Whrrl’s game is that you can get point by inspiring others to do things with the app. Points also allow you to level up in your societies for more special deals.

All of this is an extension of the “footstreams” idea that Whrrl launched last December. That’s where they also first introduced the society idea as well. The key to both of those is about real people doing real things in the real world.  That, in turn, shows what you’re interested in, and allows Whrrl to clump you into these groups with out like-minded people.

So that all sounds great, but will anyone use the app? After all, adoption has been a problem in the past and this isn’t the first time Whrrl is pivoting its product. In fact, they actually did exactly a year ago with Whrrl 2 just before SXSW.

Their main problem is convincing people to use Whrrl instead of the current location-based darlings, Foursquare and Gowalla. That’s going to be difficult because those networks are quickly building up social graphs and once those are established, users are less likely to leave. So Whrrl needs something to differentiate itself, and while their pitch to me is good, it’s an entirely different matter convincing users. And the things that would seem to help differentiate networks like Whrrl actually hurt them sometimes. For example, since location-based services are still new to so many people, it’s best to keep things as simple as possible. But Whrrl is piling on features that, while maybe cool, are likely to confuse new users.

Still, if Whrrl is able to secure some solid deals around Austin to get people using the app and checking-in, that could certainly get people using it. Of course, Foursquare and Gowalla have their own deals too. Then the problem becomes one I’ve had this past week while testing out all these location apps: fatigue. I can’t possibly check-in with each of these apps each time I move from place to place. The people I’m with have started rolling their eyes at me while I take my 10 minutes to check-in to all the different apps.

I’m not saying there can be only one. But one would sure be nice.

Find Whrrl 3 in the App Store here.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Whrrl 3 Wants To Kill Farmville. Not Foursquare. Not Gowalla….

Who says you have to pick between a netbook and the coming onslaught of standalone tablet devices? Okay maybe some (eh hem Apple), but Lenovo’s trying to have it both ways with the IdeaPad U1 and the S10-3t. In clamshell mode the S10-3t looks like any old 10-inch netbook, but swivel around its capacitive mulitouch display and it turns into that slate device you’ve been dreaming of. That’s not all: the S10-3t is one of the first netbooks (or netveritbles) that has the new Intel 1.83GHz Atom N470 processor. But can the S10-3t straddle both worlds and do it well? And perhaps more importantly, is it worth the premium $649 price tag? That’s the question we’ve been asking ourselves for the last few days, so hit the break for some answers in our full review.

Continue reading Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t review

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t review

Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. In it, he responds to critics of his last guest post arguing that enterprise software should be more like Facebook.

Two weeks ago on TechCrunch I posted “The Facebook Imperative,” which posed a simple question, “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Facebook?” It was the next iteration of the question I asked in 1999 that spawned salesforce.com, “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Amazon.com.” If you have read my book, Behind The Cloud, you are well aware how that one question launched a company, and a movement. Its been an exciting decade. But the real excitement is just starting.

Frankly, I’ve been amazed by the huge amount of responses, tweets, and comments (aka “the ruckus across the blogoshere,” as Joe McKendrick calls it). It only strengthens my conviction that we are about to see the greatest revolution in enterprise software, ever. Well, really, the most exciting revolution in computing, ever. It will create more value for users, customers, and vendors by an order of magnitude over what we saw in the last wave. And, it’s really starting to happen right now. It is realtime. It is social. It is mobile. And, it is about time. Literally, it is about productivity.

I’m energized by the excitement I see for a new generation of collaboration software in the enterprise to replace antiquated Microsoft Sharepoint servers and IBM’s Lotus Notes. I’ve enjoyed seeing my observation—that Lotus Notes was conceived before Mark Zuckerberg—reverberate around the web. But, the reality is the Facebook Imperative contained more than a funny line. It hit a nerve. We are all responding—debating—a question that is an imperative because we all need to take software to a new level, and now is the time. Microsoft and IBM have maintained the status quo on enterprise collaboration software too long, and it’s time for a change.

There are an overwhelming number of you who agree that its time to transform the business conversation the same way Facebook has changed the consumer conversation. We are betting salesforce.com’s future on it. Approximately 40% of companies are already deploying or planning to deploy a social computing platform, a number that’s expected to rise, says Irwin Lazar of Nemeretes Research. Not everyone agrees, mostly the vendors that are milking their cash cows. But, make no mistake about it, this generation of social platforms is very different than the last.

Charles Zedlewski emerged from a long blogging hiatus to argue that Facebook is designed for entertainment—not productivity. Well, that’s not surprising given that he works for SAP, one of the companies I have previously referred to as “innovationless”—in my view they remain the Anti-Cloud. Their actions speak for themselves. Still, I’m astounded that more enterprises haven’t figured out how to tap into the real collaborative power of Facebook and Twitter, and the new social models that they have pioneered.

I consider Facebook and Twitter—and the ability to tap into my network of friends and followers—one the most productive ways I can start my day. Using these new Internet phenoms, I’ve tested new ad campaigns and elicited great customer responses, promoted my book to a large audience of people who cared, and with the help of my network, even named new products—all before I sat down for breakfast. I’m not alone; ask Vinnie Mirchandani for a sneak preview of his new book and read how Starbucks, Avon, and Pepsi are using these new social services to increase productivity in their enterprises. Or, look at how Causes, one of Facebook’s most popular apps, is having a fascinating impact on the future of philanthropy.

While my admiration for Facebook is no secret, the fact is that the Facebook Imperative—much like The Amazon Imperative of 1999—is just a metaphor. Like all metaphors, they are terrific catalysts to introduce an idea and orient people. They are rooted in inspiration, but they do not funnel down to the granular details. And, there are details that make this movement entirely new in practice. The power of this new model is to create the next level of productivity, collaboration, and learning in the enterprise. And, I see it happening now in our own company.

For years we’ve been reading about the potential for institutional memory to transform a corporation into a learning organization. But, have we seen it happen beyond very few unique organizations? A true paradigm shift occurs when the barriers of entry are removed for everyone. That is changing fast. With these new social models, there is a way to immediately leverage the knowledge of an organization. People with expertise and relevance are instantly looped in, can participate in the conversation, collaborate, and make contributions more simply than ever before. That will be the catalyst of this new productivity revolution—delivered through these new social enterprise platforms.

We have deployed Salesforce Chatter internally through our own beta program, and we are now using the social models proven by Facebook and Twitter to run our company. Our new social enterprise is built atop our existing business information and applications. It’s not partitioned off from other enterprise applications, but is an integrated part of it—offering a new view of the data that is more productive and easier to use. Through enterprise sharing models, filtering and discovery tools, users have full flexibility over which people and data they follow—allowing them to fully maximize the value of their own feeds and eliminating the risk of “pollutants” some critics fear.

I have learned more about my own company in the last three weeks using Salesforce Chatter than I have in the last three years. It reminds me of the time we went live with http://ideas.salesforce.com. The awareness I have today of what is happening with our employees, our customers, our products, our customer service escalations, and even the deals we are closing is spectacular. Social computing for the enterprise is about seeing what matters to your company, what is happening with your products, and among your people. It’s about the information you need to make decisions finding you. I’m amazed at the potential of this technology. There is just no way I can explain it to you in writing, so here is an actual screen shot that I took off my desktop to give you an idea of the flow (click to enlarge):

It is time to let go of the past and start to create a compelling future for the software industry. I’m energized by the skeptics. It’s familiar. They all eventually convert to what’s important to customers, or become increasingly irrelevant. You don’t have to look any farther than last week when Steve Ballmer spoke to the University of Washington telling them Microsoft was finally “All-In” the cloud. Well, that only took a decade or two. No more software plus services, now they are 100% cloud too. Sure.

I’m living in the post-PC revolution. I’m in a desktopless world that is about feeds and profiles running in all my browsers and mobile devices, and interacting in exciting new ways. It doesn’t matter if I am in the office, at home, or at Starbucks—I am productive wherever I am. The enterprise is not just going to the cloud, it’s now going social, and it’s going mobile. Facebook and Twitter have shown us the way. Like Microsoft, and IBM, not everyone has to get it yet, but eventually they all will. As they say: Shift happens.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

The Facebook Imperative Cannot Be Stopped

More bad news for an already bullet-riddled MySpace: three key employees have left the company to join Gravity, a cross-town startup founded by former MySpace COO Amit Kapur, SVP Steve Pearman and SVP Jim Benedetto.

We covered Gravity’s launch in December 2009.

The three MySpacer’s are Chief Software Architect Chris Bissell (we previously reported Bissell’s resignation), Chief Systems Architect Dan Farino and Development Manager Robbie Coleman.

All of these employees approached Gravity on their own, says our source. But MySpace’s somewhat zealous legal department isn’t shy about engaging in the occasionally ridiculous turf war. We’ve also heard that the best MySpace employees continue to head for the door, and companies that know which employees actually get things done aren’t going to turn away good people.

MySpace declined to comment on this story, other than to confirm that the three employees are no longer with the company. Gravity also declined to comment.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

More Talent Walks Out The Door At MySpace: Three Key Employees Go To…

Platogo, the social games platform, has released its Platogo Wrapper that enables casual games developers to easily integrate their games with Facebook by inserting a few lines of code.

Essentially, it lets any casual game take advantages of the basic social features offered through Facebook, such as the ability for a user to invite and play with friends in their social graph and see how their scores compare, challenge each other, and display their gaming achievements on their Facebook wall.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Platogo Lets Developers Make Their Casual Games Facebook Ready

Meizu MStore open for business, Mr. Jelly on sale now for 29 cents originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Meizu Me  | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Meizu MStore open for business, Mr. Jelly on sale now for 29 cents

Today in Tales from ASUS we bring you the story of the 10.1-inch Eee PC 1005PR. While we didn’t catch this one hiding out in the overflowing CeBIT booth, it appears big A has gone and swapped out the screen on the 1005PE for one with a 1366 x 768-resolution and tucked a Broadcom Crystal HD accelerator inside, which means the little lappie should be able to handle some YouTube HD (at least after you download 10.1 Beta 3). Nothing special apart from that, as it’s standard netbook down the line: 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450, 1GB of RAM, and 320GB hard drive. No word on pricing or availability, but we’re guessing it’ll probably come in at under $400, like the Dell Mini 10 and HP Mini 210. It may not be a bad deal in the end, but we’re still holding out for the Ion 2-equipped 1201PN and for ASUS to someday slow down the frenetic pace of Eee PC iteration.

ASUS Eee PC 1005PR packs Broadcom Crystal HD and high-res screen originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink EeePC.it  |  ASUS  | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

ASUS Eee PC 1005PR packs Broadcom Crystal HD and high-res screen

comScore has just released its US online video rankings for January 2010, and the results aren’t positive. Overall views dropped by around 2.5%, with  32.4 billion in January vs. 33.2 billion in December. And Hulu, which celebrated crossing the 1 billion view milestone for the first time in December, dipped back down to 903 million views. The drop can’t be blamed entirely on seasonality, either, — January 2009’s overall video views were up 4% over December 2008.  That said, video views are still up 119% year over year.

Rankingwise, there weren’t many changes. Google Sites (which is essentially YouTube) is still the reigning champion, with Hulu and Microsoft Sites still rounding out the top three. Fox Interactive Media fell from 4th to 6th place as its views dropped from 550 million December to 293 million in January — a drop of around 47%.

I suspect the drop in overall video growth will be shortlived, given the huge amount of video consumed online during the Olympics last month.

Here are the stats from January 2010:

And here are the stats from December 2009:

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

comScore: Online Video Views Down Across The Board In January

Brazil is sort of a strange country to throw into the “emerging market” category. It’s not a particularly young country like India or Israel, nor is it a country like China or Russia that embraced capitalism fairly recently. Brazil is as old as the US and has had a decently built out infrastructure of things like roads and phone lines for some time.

Yes, it’s a growing country with a young and stabilizing democracy that has a long way to go in terms of technology, modernization and bridging a quality of life between very wealthy and very poor. In that sense, it shares enough in common with emerging markets that Wall Street, at least, tosses it in the “BRIC” bucket. Indeed, Wall Street has had a way bigger crush on Brazil to date than Silicon Valley.
That seems to have had two effects on the startup scene in Sao Paulo. The first is that there’s a good deal of innovation in the finance space. Banks in Brazil had to become advanced, many people told me, because of the runaway inflation that plagued the country for so many years. As opposed to other huge markets like Mexico, China or India that lagged in the adoption of checking accounts and other basic services, in Brazil you had to have your money in the bank, because the value of cash changed so rapidly.  So it’s no surprise more of those there’s-a-better-way spin-offs have come in finance than, say, Web 2.0 or mobile. (There’s a ton in agriculture and other sectors outside the cities too, but more on that in a future post.)
My favorite finance company that I met during my February trip to Brazil is called Crivo, and it left me wondering if that great wave of finance innovation might come from our Southern neighbors, not us.

Crivo has developed a way to do lightning-fast, three-second credit checks. Its servers pull information from a variety of sources, including all the places you’d expect but but also sources like utility records to verify an applicant’s address or ensuring that their phone number doesn’t just go to a payphone. “Even a single piece of information can be useful in detecting fraud,” says Daniel Turnini, one of Crivo’s founders. (Pictured above, on the right, with his co-founders.)

There’s nothing like a FICO score in Brazil so, in the past, credit decisions were made based on negative data and positive data. In other words you are “good” or “bad” in the bank’s eyes. There’s little record for positive data in Brazil, because the wealthiest people don’t want how much they paid for a house or a car in public records. It’s a security issue, Turnini says. That only leaves negative data.

So if there’s no information about you, it’s assumed you’re a good credit risk. But miss one payment and you have a “dirty name,” Turini says. It’s a flawed system. Many good credit risks (indeed I’d bet most people) have missed a payment before, and it’s a huge assumption to make that someone with no credit history would be a good borrower. In recent years there have been banks, insurance companies, and similar institutions vying to cash in on Brazil’s emerging middle class and increasingly wealthy upper classes, but had no real way of knowing how to extend credit.

Sound like great timing? It would have been if Crivo wasn’t started in 1998. Back then, few banks in the US would have been early adopters of something like this, let alone banks in Brazil. (Ok, most banks in the US still wouldn’t be.) Nailing that first customer was near impossible. The founders kept thinking they were on the right track because potential customers would freak out when they saw how quickly the software worked, but they’d never quite pull the trigger on a purchase. Always hoping things would finally click the next year, the founders kept bootstrapping the company. Finally, it did. Toyota’s Brazilian financial arm bought their software and used it to rapidly approve people for loans, beating other car makers who were flooding into the growing market. The company has been on a sharp growth rate for five years now. They did roughly $12 million in revenues last year, and expect that to double in 2010, Turini says. Crivo says it has more than 80 employees and 100 customers today.

There are clear ripple effects if Crivo does well. More people getting credit cards helps grow spending and ecommerce, more small businesses can get loans, and more people who can’t afford to pay in cash can buy houses – to name just a few advantages. We’ve seen the benefits of “greenfield markets” when it comes to innovation in telecom and even physical infrastructure, like roads and trains. Might Brazil be able to come up with some greenfield solutions for finance? It’s easy to see how a FICO score could be improved on and, ahem, really easy to make the argument that way too much credit has been extended in the US in the last ten years. But while we have a system in place, who is going to upend the apple cart and force widespread-adoption of a newer, smarter system? It’s South Korea and telecom all over again.

Yes, I realize that to many tech entrepreneurs, the idea of a country amassing an army of middle managers sounds about as appealing as a resurrection ship of Cylons. But a lot of the most talented local entrepreneurs, managers and even investors I met in Brazil had spun out of a year or two in consulting and finance.

An example was Diego Simon of VivaReal (pictured right, working in his tiny home office), a broad Latin American real estate portal that has increasingly been focusing on Brazil. Neither of the founders are Brazilian – or even live in Brazil – so finding someone like Simon was essential. Entrepreneurs from other South American countries say selling to Brazil as an outsider is harder for them than selling to China. That makes Simon exactly the Droid any company like VivaReal is looking for: He had experience running his family’s business, worked a stint for a multinational but left because he wanted to do something vaguely entrepreneurial – although he didn’t know exactly what. I’ve never been particularly bullish on real estate portals, but if VivaReal does well, it will be in no small part due to Simon criss-crossing Sao Paulo in his Fiat extolling the virtues of online listings under the auspices of a common culture and language.

The problem is—like in China and India—the allure of the multi-national paycheck and prestige is strong in Brazil. The management expertise may be there in greater numbers, but convincing someone to take a gamble on an unproven startup for stock is as hard as it is anywhere in the emerging world.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Brazil: The New Home of Financial Innovation?

Cascaad, which is billed both as an ‘awareness engine’ and a ’smart social media browser’ by the Italian startup behind the service, aims to make the realtime streams you tap into more about you.

Essentially, the tool is designed to filter the never-ending incoming message stream from your friends and millions of others by continuously distilling which part of the chatter is about stories, things and places that match your specific interests, context and social affinities.

Here’s how the service, currently only available as a beta iPhone app (iTunes link), gets pitched in their own words:

The goal is to potentiate your extended awareness of what is happening right now of personal relevance in your world. It is basically a very sophisticated realtime networked search, discovery and filter engine that distills automatically what both your friends and millions of other people are paying attention to on Twitter and other social platforms into the attention-grabbing stories, things and places that match personal interests and social affinities.

Cascaad will soon be releasing a full-fledged Web-based experience, and the company is also working on integrating new data sources and capabilities, including location awareness, as well as extending the platform’s reach. Last week, Cascaad released its first beta of what it calls the SuperTweet API, which it says will allow third-party Twitter applications to “add smart contextual information and monetization [...], including semantic entity markup, nonintrusive in-text affiliate commerce links, related content [and] social relevance scores”.

The startup was founded in 2008 by Erik Lumer (PhD Stanford, formerly at Xerox Parc and founder and ex-CEO of Internet TV startup Babelgum). The company’s R&D unit is based in Milan, employs 8 people and will be opening an office in Silicon Valley some time this quarter.

Cascaad has raised close to $2 million in financing over two rounds (one in November 2009, and one last month) from Italian VC firm Innogest Capital.

Another venture-backed startup doing similar things is Israel-based my6sense.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Cascaad Personalizes Your News Stream In Real Time, Raises Funding

Got a hankering for Pine Trail? We attest to a certain weakness ourselves, and now MSI’s Wind U160 netbook is on sale for $380 to fulfill your Atom N450 snacking needs. We were intrigued by the little laptop when we played with it back at CES, particularly if its standard 6-cell battery hump can really produce the quoted 14 hours of life. For whatever reason Newegg and Buy.com are showing now-shipping right now, while Amazon’s lagging with pre-orders only at this point, but we’re sure you’ll make the right retail choice, whatever happens.

MSI’s Wind U160 netbook up for grabs in the US originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Netbooked  |  Newegg, Buy.com  | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

MSI’s Wind U160 netbook up for grabs in the US

Justice, friends, has been served.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Duckshead Revisited: Apple Approves DuckPhone App After Minor Changes

Turns out Steve Ballmer’s talk up at the University of Washington delivered even more saucy info than we were initially led to believe. In a transcript of the subsequent Q&A session, Steve is shown to have delivered the following statement on the topic of large-screen televisions and Microsoft’s related hardware strategy:

For that big screen device … there’s no diversity. You get exactly the Xboxes that we build for you. We may have more form factors in the future that are designed for various price points and options, but we think it’s going to [be] important.

It’s safe to assume new form factors point to a smaller rather than larger 360 chassis, though the price points and further options he mentions are wide open for speculation. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to forecast Microsoft pushing out its own slimmed-down console to match up with Sony’s PS3 Slim, but we also shouldn’t discount the idea of an Xbox 360 with Project Natal hardware integrated into its shell. In other words, we really don’t know what Steve has going on under that shiny dome of his, we just hope it’s as exciting as he makes it sound.

Steve Ballmer teases new Xbox 360 form factors, price points and options originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Gizmodo, Gearlog  |  Microsoft  | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Steve Ballmer teases new Xbox 360 form factors, price points and…

One of the cofounders of Zynga, the company’s executive vice president of sales and business development Andrew Trader, is no longer with the company, we’ve confirmed. He has been quietly removed from the company’s management page. Remaining cofounders – Mark Pincus, Michael Luxton, Eric Schiermeyer, Justin Waldron and Steve Schoettler, remain.

As of a month ago Trader’s title had been downgraded to VP of Partnerships and Studio Services, although no top sales or business development replacement executive has yet been named.

Why is he gone? No one is saying. CEO Mark Pincus says only “AT [Andrew Trader] and zynga have parted ways. He made an awesome contribution. We need to continue scaling the company.” Trader hasn’t yet returned a phone call asking for his comment.

Zynga’s revenue growth has been nothing short of astronomical over the last 18 months, so it would be hard to blame him for not bringing in the dollars. Perhaps he took the fall for the Scamville saga although that has largely blown over now.

Trader was with Zynga nearly three years, so he’s vested on a lot of his stock. Given how much money is at stake, the whole story about why the first cofounder of Zynga has left the building may never come out. Zynga raised $180 million in December 2009, at a rumored valuation of above $2 billion.

And no, I have no idea why he’s holding a banana in the picture.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Zynga Cofounder Andrew Trader Out

We’ve been dying to know more about Microsoft’s Courier tablet / e-book device ever since we first caught wind of it last September, and while our entreaties to Mr. Ballmer went unanswered, we just learned some very interesting information from an extremely trusted source. We’re told Courier will function as a “digital journal,” and it’s designed to be seriously portable: it’s under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn’t much bigger than a 5×7 photo when closed. That’s a lot smaller than we expected — this new picture really puts it into perspective — and the internals apparently reflect that emphasis on mobility: rather than Windows 7, we’re told the Courier is built on Tegra 2 and runs on the same OS as the Zune HD, Pink, and Windows Mobile 7 Series, which we’re taking to mean Windows CE 6.

As we’ve heard, the interface appears to be pen-based and centered around drawing and writing, with built-in handwriting recognition and a corresponding web site that allows access to everything entered into the device in a blog-like format complete with comments. We’re also hearing that there will be a built-in camera, and there’s a headphone jack for media playback. Most interestingly, it looks like the Courier will also serve as Microsoft’s e-book device, with a dedicated ecosystem centered around reading. It all sounds spectacular, but all we have for a launch date is “Q3 / Q4″, and we have no idea how much it’s going to cost, so we’re trying to maintain a healthy skepticism until any of this gets official — call us any time, Microsoft. One more pic showing the interface after the break.

Continue reading Microsoft’s Courier ‘digital journal’: exclusive pictures and details

Microsoft’s Courier ‘digital journal’: exclusive pictures and details originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Microsoft’s Courier ‘digital journal’: exclusive pictures and details

Apple just announced that its tablet device, the iPad, will be available in the U.S. on April 3. See announcement below.

When Apple unveiled the device a few months ago, we were told it would be available by March. Rumors began to swirl recently that shipment of the devices was delayed until April. According to the release, the Wi-Fi models of the iPad will be available starting April 3, with the Wi-Fi and 3G models rolled out by late April. Starting on March 12, U.S. customers can pre-order the device either online or at their local Apple retail store. The device will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.

Pricing has remained the same, with the basic Wi-Fi enabled model starting at $499. Pricing is as follows: $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB. Wi-Fi + 3G models will be available in late April for $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB and $829 for 64GB.

Apple is launching with 12 apps designed especially for iPad and will run almost all of the 150,000 apps on the App Store. The supposed Kindle-killer will debut with an iBooks app, which will be available for free download from the App Store in the US on April 3. Apple’s partnered witha number of publishers including the Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster.

Apple® today announced that its magical and revolutionary iPad will be available in the US on Saturday, April 3, for Wi-Fi models and in late April for Wi-Fi + 3G models. In addition, all models of iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.

Beginning a week from today, on March 12, US customers can pre-order both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models from Apple’s online store (www.apple.com) or reserve a Wi-Fi model to pick up on Saturday, April 3, at an Apple retail store.

“iPad is something completely new,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”

Starting at just $499, iPad lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more. iPad is just 0.5 inches thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds–thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook–and delivers battery life of up to 10 hours.*

iPad’s revolutionary Multi-Touch(TM) interface makes surfing the web an entirely new experience, dramatically more interactive and intimate than on a computer. You can read and send email on iPad’s large screen and almost full-size “soft” keyboard or import photos from a Mac®, PC or digital camera, see them organized as albums, and enjoy and share them using iPad’s elegant slideshows. iPad makes it easy to watch movies, TV shows and YouTube, all in HD, or flip through the pages of an ebook you downloaded from Apple’s new iBookstore while listening to your music collection.

The App Store on iPad lets you wirelessly browse, buy and download new apps from the world’s largest app store. iPad includes 12 new innovative apps designed especially for iPad and will run almost all of the more than 150,000 apps on the App Store, including apps already purchased for your iPhone® or iPod touch®. Developers are already creating exciting new apps designed for iPad that take advantage of its Multi-Touch interface, large screen and high-quality graphics.

The new iBooks app for iPad includes Apple’s new iBookstore, the best way to browse, buy and read books on a mobile product. The iBookstore will feature books from the New York Times Best Seller list from both major and independent publishers, including Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster.

The iTunes® Store gives iPad users access to the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store with a catalog of over 12 million songs, over 55,000 TV episodes and over 8,500 films including over 2,500 in stunning high definition. All the apps and content you download on iPad from the App Store, iTunes Store and iBookstore will be automatically synced to your iTunes library the next time you connect with your computer.

Pricing & Availability

iPad will be available in Wi-Fi models on April 3 in the US for a suggested retail price of $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB. The Wi-Fi + 3G models will be available in late April for a suggested retail price of $629 for 16GB, $729 for 32GB and $829 for 64GB. iPad will be sold in the US through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers.

iPad will be available in both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models in late April in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. International pricing will be announced in April. iPad will ship in additional countries later this year.

The iBooks app for iPad including Apple’s iBookstore will be available as a free download from the App Store in the US on April 3, with additional countries added later this year.

*Battery life depends on device settings, usage and other factors. Actual results vary.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Apple iPad Available For Pre-Order From March 12, On Sale From April 3

For whatever reason, Android’s high-performance Native Development Kit introduced back in the Cupcake days never got a ton of attention despite the subtle hints that it’d give devs the low-level access they needed to create killer, graphically rich, immersive environments ready to compete with pretty much any other gaming device you could shove in your pocket. Of course, at the time, every phone in the market was running an older, slower ARM11 core — so maybe the new generation of ARMv7-based devices we’ve got hanging around now like the Nexus One and Droid are the catalysts we need to get this party started in earnest. Japan’s HyperDevbox studio has just shared the news that its ExZeus Arcade shooter makes full use of the NDK, your microSD card, and a custom sound driver to bring a gaming experience hotter than pretty much anything we’ve seen on Android thus far; the only catch is that you need Android 2.0 or up and a phone with a dedicated GPU to get it going. It’s available now in the Market for a seemingly reasonable $3.99 — and let’s let this serve as a reminder to other game studios that they’ve got the tools and the horsepower to rock Android hard. Follow the break for video of ExZeus in action.

Continue reading HyperDevbox ExZeus Arcade allays fears that Android games are destined to suck

HyperDevbox ExZeus Arcade allays fears that Android games are destined to suck originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  YouTube  | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

HyperDevbox ExZeus Arcade allays fears that Android games are destined…

According to the site Gigatweet, we are about an hour away from the 10 billionth tweet sent since the dawn of Twitter. More incredible, this milestone comes less than 5 months after the 5 billionth tweet.

The only problem? It’s not an exact science.

Gigatweet isn’t counting to an exact number, but rather is extrapolating out when the 10 billionth tweet will hit based on previous tweet data provided from a range of sources. Most recently, we do know that Twitter is seeing about 50 million tweets per day now, because the service released that information. Other than that, it’s kind of a crapshoot.

To determine when the 5 billionth tweet would happen, watchers were looking at the numbers appended on to the URL of each tweet when it’s sent. The same is true this time around. For example, this recent tweet has the number 9996229078 in the URL. So yes, it would seem that is tweet number 9,996,229,078, but the problem is that Twitter has altered these numbers several times over the years, notably to move up the so-called Twitpocalypse (both 1 and 2).

As Twitter employee Ryan King notes, “Though its more numerology than math, it still scares me that this is my job,” followed by a link to Gigatweet. What he means is that no, it’s not exactly right, but it’s kind of cool, and perhaps close enough.

An interesting side note: the guy who sent tweet number 5 billion, Robin Sloan, now works at Twitter. Who will be number 10 billion? We’ll know in about an hour.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

The 10 Billionth Tweet (Or So) Will Take Flight In About An Hour

In December 2008, Microsoft surprised a lot of people by releasing an iPhone app — Seadragon Mobile. A month later, they ensured the move wasn’t taken as a joke or gimmick by launching another app, Tag, into Apple’s App Store. Now, they have a few, including an app for Bing. And starting today, they’re doing the same for Android.

Tag for Android is the first Microsoft-made app launched on the mobile platform. This is notable, of course, because Android is the mobile platform by Microsoft’s chief rival: Google. Still, as we saw with the iPhone, Microsoft has no problems getting its technology out there, even if it means using rival platforms. Aside from Android and iPhone, Tag also currently works on Windows Mobile, J2ME, Blackberry and Symbian S60 phones.

Microsoft’s Tag technology allows you to use your phone as a mobile barcode reader. You simply point your phone’s camera at a tag (think: a smaller QRCode), snap a picture, and the Tag program will interpret it. This can be used to place things like coupons in physical locations, for example. Other companies, including Google, are working on these mobile barcodes as well. In fact, just prior to the Nexus One unveiling, all Google employees were given the device with a special barcode on the back that other Android devices could scan to get that person’s information.

Despite the high level on animosity between Microsoft and Google, it’s great to see that Microsoft isn’t above creating apps for the increasingly popular Android platform. Microsoft made its own big mobile headlines last month with the unveiling of Windows Phone Series 7, a complete reboot of its mobile strategy, due to launch later this year. That move should help Microsoft better compete with the current hot mobile platforms, Android and the iPhone.

The Tag application is available today in the Android Market; it’s a free app.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Microsoft Launches Its First Android App. Yes, Google’s Platform.

Continue reading AMD’s new AMD 890GX HD chipset announced, reviewed, lauded

AMD’s new AMD 890GX HD chipset announced, reviewed, lauded originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Extreme Tech  |  Hot Hardware  | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

AMD’s new AMD 890GX HD chipset announced, reviewed, lauded

Every year year the World Economic Forum names its Young Global Leaders, a list of up-and-comers from the worlds of business, politics, culture, and non-profits. Last year’s list included YouTube founder Chad Hurley,, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Digg founder Kevin Rose, and Skype CEO Josh Silverman.

Today, the World Econmic Forum named its 2010 Young Global Leaders. There are 197 people on the list overall, including celebrities like musician Wyclef Jean and fashion designer Stella McCartney. Some of the startup CEOs and tech execs on this year’s least include:

Evan Williams—CEO and co-founder of Twitter
Marissa Mayer—VP, Search Product and User Experience, Google
Steven Chen—Co-founder, YouTube
Peter Corsell—CEO, GridPoint
Calvin Chin—CEO, Qifang
Heather Fleming—CEO, Catapult Design
David Rosenberg—CEO, Hycrete

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Evan Williams, Marissa Mayer, Steven Chen Named World Economic Forum…

AT&T CEO: iPad will be mostly used on WiFi, won’t drive many new 3G subscriptions originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Reuters  | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

AT&T CEO: iPad will be mostly used on WiFi, won’t drive many new…

If I were a carrier, I’d probably be feeling rather nervous right now – and / or infuriated.

Skype for Symbian, which you can also download the app straight from the Skype website, will run on any Nokia smartphone using Symbian^1, the latest version of the Symbian platform.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Skype App Hits Ovi Store, And Potentially 200 Million Nokia Handsets…

Sony files for ‘PlayStation Arc’ trademark in Japan — all but a done deal? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Joystiq  |  Siliconera  | Email this | Comments

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Sony files for ‘PlayStation Arc’ trademark in Japan — all but a done…

Over the weekend, Citysearch pushed out an update to its iPhone app with a much smoother user interface, better local search, and maps are now the default view. I am happy to report that it no longer looks exactly like Yelp’s iPhone app. The improvements should help it close the gap (Yelp is currently the No. 4 free Travel app, while Citysearch is No. 36). In fact, it now does some things Yelp’s app cannot do, the most important of which is that Twitter is baked into it in a very smart way.

Just like on Citysearch’s website, an increasing number of the local listings are associated with what people are saying about those restaurants, bars, and stores on Twitter. In addition to Citysearch user reviews, you can also see recent Tweets about the listings. And the app acts as a limited Twitter client in that you can Tweet out a short review from each profile page. The app prompts you to sign into your Twitter account and autofills a tweet with a link to the Citysearch page of that business. It is still a work in progress though. Right now the Tweets are filled in with an @citysearch handle and thus don’t show up on the Citysearch’s page for that business. By the next update that will change to the @handle of the business, and it the Tweets will start showing up on the Website as well.

Citysearch is building out a directory of business Twitter accounts and is beginning to catch Tweets about its millions of local listings. Within the next few weeks, the Twitter account names will start to become part of teh profile data available to developers via its CityGrid APIs

Some other nice touches to the app include a sliding icon menu bar at the top, which let you filter different types of listings (restaurants, salons, shopping, clubs, bars, cafes, arts & entertainment, banks, gas stations, movie theaters, pharmacies, bakeries, attractions, parking, and hotels). And if you shake the iPhone while looking at a listing, an offer might pop up. The “Shake For Offer” feature isn’t as cool as the augmented reality easter egg in Yelp snuck into its iphone app,

Here’s a video showing off the features of the new Citysearch iPhone app:

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Citysearch Upgrades Its iPhone App With Twitter Reviews And “Shake…