Posted by The Blogging Desk on Mon, Nov 29, 2010 @ 02:00 PM
Engadget:
It's not like anyone could predict the media streamer war that would erupt in 2010, but it looks like Western Digital's taking things pretty seriously. The company has just issued a somewhat major overhaul for its WD TV Live Plus and WD TV Live media players, adding Facebook support while also giving US-based users the ability to instantly rent or purchase movies via Blockbuster on Demand.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Mon, Nov 29, 2010 @ 09:00 AM
Nielsen:
The iPad is the most desired Christmas present among kids 6-12, according to research released by Nielsen. That’s not a typo, in the elementary and pre-teen set, it’s the iPad that’s tops when it comes to the gimme gimme feelings. Amongst everyone else (those 13 and up), the iPad was #4 on the list, and iPhone and iPod touch also made the Top Ten in both lists.
The survey results, which Nielsen titled “Kids in the U.S. Eyeing Big-Ticket Tech This Holiday Season,” found that the 6-12 year group most wanted an iPad, (31% of respondents), a computer (29%), and an iPod touch (also 29%).
“Of note,” the company wrote, “the iPod Touch outpaces the perennial handheld gaming favorites
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Fri, Nov 26, 2010 @ 02:00 PM
Mashable:
Facebook has received a notice of allowance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the trademark on the word “face” when used in the context of online chat rooms or bulletin boards.
Facebook filed for this trademark in December 2005. The notice of allowance does not mean that Facebook has been granted the trademark just yet, but it’s getting really close. In the next three months, Facebook must pay a fee and file a statement of use, at which time it must prove that it is actively using the mark to provide goods or services, and then get the approval of an attorney.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Fri, Nov 26, 2010 @ 09:00 AM
TechCrunch:
There’s a lot of hoopla right now that Google’s Chrome OS has been delayed and will miss the stated release date of “this year”. Much of this is based off of the comment that Google CEO Eric Schmidt made last week at Web 2.0 Summit, in which he said that Chrome OS would be available sometime in “the next few months”. So I asked Google today if they were still sticking with the “later this year” availability of Chrome OS — the answer I got? An enthusiastic “yep!”
But just in case, I decided to follow up and ask if that meant an actual shipping product was coming or some test version of the OS? The answer there was much more murky. “We’re not going into details at this point,” is what I was told.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Wed, Nov 24, 2010 @ 02:00 PM
Engadget:
The orders actually first opened up in October, but the automaker has only just recently revealed the actual cost to customers. That will be $849 a month on a lease-only basis, which may seem a tad high but does include both fuel and insurance (alright, so it’s still high).
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Wed, Nov 24, 2010 @ 09:00 AM
BBC:
The Apple I came with its original packaging and a signed sales letter from Apple co-founder and current chief executive Steve Jobs.
The computer, one of only 200 of the model ever made, originally sold for $666.66 when it was introduced in 1976. It was bought over the phone at Christie's by Italian businessman and private collector Marco Boglione. Francesco Boglione, who was at the auction house on Tuesday, said his brother had bid for the piece of technology history "because he loves computers".
Another of Apple's co-founders, Steve Wozniak, who was also present and agreed to add an autographed letter to the lot, said: "I'm very delighted for the gentleman who purchased it."
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Wed, Nov 24, 2010 @ 09:00 AM
BGR:
Oops. It looks like someone running Microsoft’s Windows Phone Twitter account got a little excited and spilled the beans on a 2010 Windows Phone 7 launch at Verizon Wireless. In response to a tweet from Twitter user @joeyjoyjoy asking Microsoft to “get on some CDMA networks already,” an official Microsoft-run Twitter account replied. The response, which came as a surprise considering no official announcement has been made, stated that “WP7 devices will be rolling into Verizon stores this holiday season.” Microsoft’s Windows Phone Twitter account went on to say more devices would launch on Verizon Wireless in early 2011.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Tue, Nov 23, 2010 @ 02:00 PM
MacWorld:
One of our favorite iOS 4.2 features is AirPlay, which lets you stream media from your iOS device to an AirPlay-compatible component such as the latest Apple TV or an AirPort Express. But we also want to be able to do the opposite: stream media from a source to our iOS devices. For example, a 32GB iPad can’t accommodate the 85GB of music and movies you’ve accumulated on your iMac. But if you couldaccess all that media from your iPad by streaming it over your Wi-Fi network, you might find that arrangement to be just as convenient. (In fact, the Apple TV lets you do exactly this, as does iTunes’s Home Sharing feature on Macs and Windows PCs.) Similarly, we’d love to be able to play, on our iOS devices, music and video on network drives—such as, say, a hard drive connected to an AirPort base station.
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Tue, Nov 23, 2010 @ 09:00 AM
Korea Herald:
Samsung said consumer demand for its Galaxy Tab has been robust, outpacing supply in most countries.
The brisk sale boosted its confidence to meet the goal of selling 1 million units this year.
“We believe tablet PCs will take over a bigger portion of the market next year,” Samsung’s mobile division head Shin Jong-kyun said at the IFA gadget expo in Berlin in September. “For this year, we’re projecting to sell up to 1 million units.”
The burgeoning tablet PC market is becoming increasingly crowded as other competitors such as Research in Motion, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola are rolling out their own products.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Fri, Nov 19, 2010 @ 03:00 PM
USAToday:
Firesheep -- a month-old Firefox plugin that anyone can use to sidejack your free Wi-Fi session -- is gaining attention in tech security circles.
Any time you use a free public Wi-Fi hook up -- such as those you find at Starbucks and many airports -- your risk of having someone sitting nearby commandeer your session is imminent. That's because most free Wi-Fi hook ups are unencrypted.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Fri, Nov 19, 2010 @ 10:00 AM
Via MacRumors:
The 11-inch model received a "very good" rating for ergonomics and display, a "good" rating for performance and "fair" ratings for versatility and speakers. Consumer Reports also found the MacBook Air had battery life of 6.25 hours. The Toshiba's battery life came in at 5.5 hours of battery life.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Thu, Nov 18, 2010 @ 03:00 PM
The Telegraph:
It's been fascinating, then, to see how opinion morphed and shifted as people started to experience Kinect for themselves. Not so much a softening as a complete about turn. Not only did the device work, but it worked brilliantly and, most importantly, was guffaw-inducing fun.
Me? A vocal critic of Kinect in the past, I was convinced five minutes after turning it on.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Thu, Nov 18, 2010 @ 10:00 AM
Engadget:
There's no denying that e-books are already big business, and market research firm Forrester is now offering some pretty impressive numbers that show just how big it already is, and how much bigger it will get in the next few years. The firm surveyed some 4,000 people and found that while just seven percent of those actually read e-books, they still bought enough of them to translate to $966 million in sales this year -- a number that's projected to grow to $3 billion by 2015.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Wed, Nov 17, 2010 @ 03:00 PM
Via BB:
In addition to attacking the companies that make 3D printing possible, patent owners may try to stigmatize CAD filetypes in much the same way that copyright holders stigmatize the bittorrent file transfer protocol (or even MP3 files). Successfully equating CAD files with infringement could slow the mainstream adoption of 3D printing and imply that anyone uploading CAD files to a community site is somehow infringing on rights.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Wed, Nov 17, 2010 @ 10:00 AM
Gizmodo:
The ZTE Peel is an iPod touch case with a built-in 3G hotspot. It's a little gimped compared to a full-on hotspot, though, and pricier too. It costs $80, only supports two devices at a time, and a piddly 1GB of data runs $30 per month (albeit, contract free). To compare, Sprint's OverDrive with 4G service costs $50, and for $60 a month you get 5GB of data over 3G and unlimited 4G data.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Tue, Nov 16, 2010 @ 03:00 PM
Official Google Blog:
To continue helping our publishers, today we’re excited to be rolling out a completely new AdSense interface to all of our AdSense publishers, globally, in more than 30 languages and in each of the 200+ countries where AdSense is available. The AdSense interface is how publishers set up, manage, optimize and see reports on the ads on their sites.
With this new interface, AdSense is even easier to use, and we’re also providing publishers with all the tools they need to manage and increase their advertising revenue. We used lots of direct feedback from our publishers to make this overhaul.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Tue, Nov 16, 2010 @ 10:00 AM
Gizmodo:
Typically, the point of a compromise is to bring together the best of both sides. The Tab is like a compromise's evil twin, merging the worst of a tablet and the worst of a phone. It has all of the input problems of a tablet, with almost none of the consumption benefits. With more apps geared to its tweener size, it could be a lot better, but it's not clear they're coming anytime soon, if ever. The Tab is an awkward first attempt at this kind of tablet—wait for somebody else to do it better.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Mon, Nov 15, 2010 @ 03:00 PM
Alt:
So, apparently this is what a functioning 16-bit arithmetic logic unit looks like... at least when it is designed in Minecraft. And that ain't the half of it! It seems that there are a whole bunch of folks who are taking the game, with its avatars, pitchforks, and immense landscape, and building computers and the like. Indeed, there is also a complete 8-bit CPU out there, which takes binary machine code and sends output to a line of torches. While we'd rather spend our time teaching our avatars to breakdance in Second Life, we do admire the hard work that clearly went into these projects.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Mon, Nov 15, 2010 @ 10:00 AM
Have you played The Incident on your iPad? What about your iPhone? If you have both you are in for a treat.
Big Bucket Software:
This is a beta of The Incident 1.3 running my TV. Here’s how it works:
1. Plug your iPad into the TV, 2. Pair your iPad with your iPhone or iPod Touch, 3. Sit on your couch and play.
And that’s it. You never have to get up to touch the iPad. You do everything from the controller. It works great.
For 1.3, I have brought all the menus to the controller and Neven has widened all the artwork to accommodate the panoramic new look. It’s just like your old gaming console from the 80s only widescreenier.
Amazing!
Posted by The Blogging desk on Fri, Nov 12, 2010 @ 03:00 PM
BGR:
If you’ve heard about the Kik messaging app, or as some would call it, “the new BBM”, you probably sat at the cool-kid lunch-table at school. Kik, a multi-platform messaging app designed to do one thing — communicate instantly and effortlessly with buddies — has absolutely exploded over the last few weeks. Originally on track to launch an innovative (and pretty cool) music-sharing, remote-controllable service, Kik soon found themselves creating a messaging app with some of their existing technology while the music service firmed up behind the scenes. After a pretty poor original launch (I tried Kik back then and the beta was definitely a beta — I uninstalled it soon after it was first installed), Kik stripped away almost everything until they ended up with one of the quickest and most reliable messaging apps around.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Fri, Nov 12, 2010 @ 10:00 AM
Ken Segall:
This ad clearly says that the iPad has now available on Verizon. It has special effects. It uses the word “magic.” What more do you need?
Apple hates relying on other people’s creativity. When all they can do is say yea or nay, at some point they’re forced to approve — if only to ensure that the ad airs within our lifetime.
But let’s not lose sight of the important thing: Verizon and Apple are finally working together. This should make 2011 a much more interesting year. There’s plenty of time to worry about the pesky little details later. Like better ads.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Thu, Nov 11, 2010 @ 03:00 PM
Business Insider:
Hulu CEO Jason Kilar just announced Hulu's revenues, we think for the first time: The company will generate $240 million in revenue this year, up from $108 million last year, and $25 million in 2008, Kilar said on stage at the NewTeeVee Live conference.
Posted by The Blogging desk on Thu, Nov 11, 2010 @ 10:00 AM
From the Google Apps Blog:
New service activity graphs have been added to the Administrator control panel. The activity graphs display information about the number of active users in your organization as measured by login activity. We display trend lines showing user activity for the prior 1-, 7- and 30-day periods for Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Sites.