There are several tools where you just enter a twitter handle and you can create a story or news hub.

We have storify (beta) that turns what people post on social media into stories.  Collect the best photos, video, tweets and more to publish them as simple, beautiful stories that can be embedded anywhere.

There is paper.li that creates sort of newspaper with just twitter handles and lists and even Facebook.  A different and nice way to discover new content…  See mine for example: http://paper.li/tokao

We invite you to join tens of thousands of people coming together on bridges all over the world — from the Millennium Bridge in London, the Brooklyn Bridgein New York City, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, to the Grand Barriere Bridge joining Rwanda and Congo — to show your support for women’s causes and celebrate women’s achievements.

We also invite you to donate to one of the incredible

Find a bridge event near you and register, or create your own bridge event

Register to join a bridge event. Attend in person or virtually. Use the search box at the top of the map to find and select a bridge event near you. Or create your own bridge event: click the “Create new event” button at the top of the map and invite others to join using our Event Toolkit.

The Event Toolkit includes assets that you can take with you to the event such as hand held banners or use to promote it such as online banners or posters.

organizations that work to improve the lives of women worldwide. Support a cause you care about at the bottom of the page. See you on the bridge!

Support a cause that you care about

Like a stripped-down Segway, Inventist‘s new Solowheel is geared for the mobile urbanite. The “self-balancing electric unicycle” operates through gyroscopic technology, which a 1000-watt rechargeable lithium-ion battery powers. On a full charge (which takes about 45 minutes), the Solowheel lasts two hours—but the battery actually recaptures energy when going downhill.

Weighing only 20 pounds and consisting of little more than a simple wheel with a fold-up foot platform on either side, you can easily throw it in your backpack or briefcase once you reach your destination, or carry it by its convenient handle.

This guest post is by Tien Tzuo, founder of Zuora, a subscription billing company. Previously, he was chief strategy officer and employee No. 11 at Salesforce.com.

Publishers have been struggling for years. Now local newspapers, magazines and even the New York Times, that Grey Lady, are being treated like old ladies by Apple, stealing their pocketbooks while they’re trying to stay on a fixed income.

This week, Apple announced what the publishing industry has been clamoring for,subscriptions, in exchange for a whopping 30% cut. Clearly, paid subscriptions are a part of the future of all online media, whether tied to a print version or not. That’s what The Daily is all about and even AOL might one day go down that path (Tim Armstrong admitted as much on CNN). It’s part of the shift to the Subscription Economy that’s happening across not just media, but software, cloud computing, communications, consumer services, entertainment, you name it. In just the past year, as one example, my company, Zuora, has signed over $1 billion in contracted subscription revenue.

But something very dangerous is happening. Apple is now calling the shots for the entire publishing industry’s digital strategy. Think about that for a minute. While Apple is prescient and makes great products, it’s hardly a publishing expert. Yet, Apple is setting up new rules that could bring the publishing industry to its knees. As if it weren’t already in that position.

It’s not that Apple can’t save publishers—which I don’t think it will with these financial terms. It’s that its model completely ignores the realities of the publishing business:

• The App Store and iTunes only offers one subscription pricing model. Will a single model work for the San Jose Mercury News, the Wichita Eagle and Runners World? The reality is that it’s likely going to be very different for different titles and subscribers.
• Apple has no way to bundle physical and digital goods. Do you want to give up home delivery forever? Or would you still like to get a Sunday paper every week or monthly glossy magazine along with your digital version? I bet most consumers would like some combination of both.
• With the Apple model, there’s not enough adequate ad revenue from tablet editions of magazines and newspapers. In particular, eliminating the Sunday delivery also means that local papers lose a huge advertising vehicle.
• Consumers won’t stand for one subscription through one device. People want to consume their news on whatever device they have at hand—whether it’s a Blackberry, an iPad or an Android phone. Amazon is showing us all the way with their “Kindle reader everywhere” strategy (with syncing bookmarks to boot), and Google has set a strong standard in its deal with Time Inc around Sports Illustrated subscriptions. Publishers also know that content ubiquity requires platform independence.
• As last week’s article from John Squires, former EVP for Time Inc, so rightly points out, access to customer data is truly the lifeblood of the publisher’s business model. In the Apple world, Apple is the one controlling this data.

To quote Steve Jobs himself, “A functioning media is vital to a functioning democracy.” I agree, and I think there’s a better way to use the genius of the iPad and other devices that enables publishers to control more of their destiny—and benefits everyone financially.

So what’s a publisher to do?

Take Matters Into Your Own Hands: Don’t be tempted by that juicy red apple called the iPad. You need to build your own online subscription commerce strategy, one that allows for lots of different ways to package up your content and sell it.

Not Your Father’s Subscriptions: The industry continues to see “subscriptions” in terms that are far too simplistic. Yes, consumers will never agree to switch to a full “subscription only” paywall, so you need to have flexible billing that can slice, dice and package content by the month, the article, by home delivery days, by online, and the list goes on.

Make It Easy: Provide customers single click convenience while providing a PCI-compliantpayment and billing process. You need to be able to bundle, cross-sell and rapidly deploy promotions to capture more readers than you ever could through a call center.

And as for Apple? Can you redeem yourself?

Customers with Benefits: If you want that 30% cut you have to let the publishers own the subscriber relationship. Share that data and you both win. Simply giving subscribers “the option” won’t cut it.

Freedom of Choice: You know consumers want both print and digital. This isn’t music. There’s no love lost for the CD. Most consumers want to keep home delivery, and publishers want to be free to work across platforms and devices. “Control” and “closed” are completely counter to the anti-Big Brother brand.

Help Them Help You: Selling publications is not the same as marketing the latest Black Eyed Peas song. Newspapers and magazine titles will get lost in the iTunes model. Just being part of the App Store isn’t enough. You need to deliver more merchandise value for a 30% cut.

The bottom line? The Subscription Economy is here, and Apple should be applauded for offering content via subscription. Unfortunately its model just scratches the surface. In the end, publishers should think twice before taking a bite of the Apple. This current plan will do more to hurt publishers then to help them make the shift to the online world.

(from techcrunch)

Content is still the king.

In the past content was generated by a small elite of journalists, correspondents… big news agencies, or journalist with opinion and good writing.

This has been changing. They are struggling to find their place now. Traditional media is married to a physical support (paper) which is expensive to produce and distribute, it is not real time and the companies behind are not flexible and adaptable towards new models…. now we all have the tools to broadcast, write, publish our content.

Anyway, what I wanted to highlight in this blog post is that I have observed an evolution of the tools towards laziness and minimum effort.

We have the blogs, sure, and we will continue to have them, as we still have magazines and newspapers. We can build them around a topic we want or like, around our lives, our interests, our community… we can have it in isolation or being part of a blog community such as blogspot.

Then a new trend started. Not everybody has time or skills to write. In fact probably it is still a  minority. Other tools were more focused to the crowd: micro-blogs such as tumblr or posterous. Less writing. Just share something you see out there, a link a photo, …

Then twitter, with 140 characters, first in parallel with SMS, now twitter just twitter . Surprisingly it quickly became very very very popular.

Twitter is limited so a lot of complementary services were born around it: twitpic, yfrog… and even we have seen better twitter products that have ended up dieing. Products  like Buzz or Brightkite, not limited in space, handling location, photos, comments… for me far superior products… but I guess this is life. Beta was also superior to VHS and it was VHS who won.

So we have gone from Blogging to micro blogging to twittering, to twittering with location (foursquare, gowalla) to now a whole new wave of social media products:

Just take a photo with your phone, have your network, comment, like, push it to all the social media channels… no writing. Is this laziness?

Check out what is hot on this: Instagram and PicPlz

Of course they all coexist but I am curios to see how this evolves. I believe Brightkite was too early to be successful. Same with Buzz and even Wave.

In any case, everybody is in Facebook and facebook evolves and has everything: wall for short or long messages, link stories, videos, add comments, photos, checkins …  an ecosystem where everybody is and that offers everything.

Still the perception for the people is that is a closed ecosystem where all the friends are. Same for linkedin and your professional cloud.

Perception is key. Even if Facebook has attempted to change this, by trying to make things public and therefore creating a controversy on privacy issues, they are still perceived as a closed tool and the content you find there is thought as this: confidential for friends only.

There is also the fact that it is becoming too big, even at the point of threatening the Internet itself.

Are twitter and instagram and the others just for a minority of people who want to broadcast to everybody with the dream of being popular? marketing tools for individuals and companies?

A media for spreading news fast?

I’d like to read you in the comments.

Newseum is a cool website that will allow you to see the front page of most of the newspapers published on paper.

Credit card theft and fraud are two of the largest problems plaguing consumers, banks and businesses today. The problem is exacerbated by the ease at which criminals can steal credit card numbers – either by stealing data with a magnetic strip reader, or by copying a number down with pen and paper. A new revolution in credit card technology, however, looks to solve these problems by creating an ultra-secure smart credit card.

Dynamics Inc., a startup which recently raised $5.7M in series A funding (second in size in the financial sector only to Jack Dorsey’s mobile payment startup Square), announced its high-tech solution to credit card theft this week at DEMO in Santa Clara, California (see video embedded below). The company has developed electronic credit cards that provide users with both added functionality and security.

By creating thin and flexible electronics components, Dynamics’ credit cards can feature buttons, displays and – the killer app – automatically reprogrammable magnetic strips. One demo card features multiple accounts which the user can toggle with buttons on the card, and another has a display which hides and shows the card’s number behind a secure passcode.

The magnetic strip on the back of the card can be dynamically changed or erased, creating an amazing layer of security at the card level. The buttons, while credit card-thin, actually have tactile feedback and can feature small colored lights. The cards have a lithium polymer battery that can last a hefty 3 years, and have passed industry stress tests for durability, heat and water resistance.

Dynamics has been running stealth pilot test programs with many notable banks, and these cards should start appearing in the hands of customers in the near future.

Asus just released the new Eee PC 1015PME is the first 10 inch LED display netbook from Asus with a 1.5GHz dual core Intel Atom N550 processor,  a 320Gb Hard Drive, 1Gb or RAM and USB 3, wifi n, bluetooth… and 13 hours of battery life, and 500Gb of cloud storage…

If you are looking for a netbook that it is more a laptop, this could be the one… and only for $349.

The only think I don’t like is the 0.3Mpx camera… why not a better one?

Also windows 7 starter… but I don’t actually know the differences among different windows versions. Do you?

Anyway, I am going to seriously consider this to update my sony VAIO t series, now obsolete.

The second beta of Skype 5.0 brings a number of changes both outside and in – most importantly, you can now make group video calls with up to 10 people. It also welcomes in a fresh new look, as well as increased stability and better quality when making group video calls.

Make group video calls with up to 10 people

You can now use Skype to make group video calls* with up to 10 people – letting you bring even more of your family, friends or business together, even if you’re cities or continents apart.

Note that everyone in a group video call now needs to be running this version, so if your friends, family or colleagues are using Beta 1, they’ll have to upgrade before you can include them in group video calls.

A refreshed user interface

You’ll notice that the new-look Skype is sleeker, neater and crisper than before, and they’re proud of the work our interface designers have done to refine and mature the interface for this version. They have also added Skype Home, where you can follow your contacts’ mood messages, set your profile picture and mood message, receive account notifications and learn more about using Skype.

Better stability and quality

They have made improvements to call quality when making group video calls, as well as fixed a number of bugs affecting stability, so your calling experience should be smoother than before. This version also includes automatic call recovery, which should help automatically reconnect Skype calls that are interrupted due to network problems. They have also made a number of other housekeeping fixes since the first beta – but please bear in mind that this is still a beta version, and so there may be the odd bug remaining.

* Group video calling is currently available as a free trial. For group video calls, everyone in the group video call will need Skype 5.0 Beta 2 for Windows.

(from skype official blog)

We have read and seen tons of promised for Android based tablets, all with all the features lacking in the iPad such as cameras, USB ports, you name it.

Well none of them are in the market, except for the Samsung Galaxy Tab that can be seen on sale on Germany for nearly 1000 usd.

There was also a lot of talk about wepad, also in Germany but I don’t think it is there yet. What it is sure is that this is about to boom. The Samsung android tablet runs froyo 2.2, has 16 or 32Gb and cameras. And it is much samller than the iPad.

Take a look at the comercial. It looks very good:

Steve Jobs announced a lot of updates and new products in its yesterday keynote:

• iOS 4.1 now and iO4 4.2 by November (free updates) also for iPad (so multitasking by November). It will include wireless printing from iPhones, iPods touch and iPads, and AirPlay, to stream your music videos and photos over wifi.
• New iPod touch: very flat, with retina display and HD video recording (2 cameras). Like an iPhone 4 (with facetime) but without the phone and very light and slim.
• New iPod Nano, running iOS… just a squared screen, small but awesome.
• New iPod Shuffle (back to the origins).
• New Apple TV. 1/4 of the size of the current one for $99. Running sort of iOS but no app store. No internal storage. A4 chip and connected to Netflix, YouTube, Flickr and mobileMe. You can buy  rent HD movies for $4.99 and shows for $0.99. Amazon has already responded with the same prices but for buying the stuff instead of renting it.
• iTunes 10. New logo (with no CD in it) and Ping, a sort of social thing for music. I don’t know if they want to kill MySpace… You can update you iTunes to 10 if you have jailbroken iPhone. No problem.

Finally Facebook has partnered with Gowalla and Foursquare to create Facebook Places.

They just updated the iPhone app but it is still not working. Nothing on the web yet.

A lot of questions though: How are they going to use Places? How are they going the manage check-ins? They said they were partnering with Gowalla and Foursquare but I cannot see how. Is Facebook going to kill this two successful startups?

• Zenhabits
• PostSecret
• Climate Progress
• HiLobrow
• Hipster Runoff
• Kottke.org
• Cake Wrecks
• The Oatmeal
• S___ My Kids Ruined
• Deadline Hollywood
• Everything Everywhere
• The Sartorialist
• Information Is Beautiful
• The Daily Kitten
• Shorpy
• Apartment Therapy
• Double X
• Strobist
• Roger Ebert’s Journal
• The Awl
• GeekDad
• Engadget
• The Washington Note
• The Consumerist
• Pitchfork

Essential Blogs

• The Daily Wh.at
• TechCrunch
• Gawker
• Politico’s Ben Smith
• Boing Boing

Overrated Blogs

• FAIL Blog
• The Big Lead
• Perez Hilton
• Mashable
• Daily Kos

Read more here.

From google official blog:

At Google we have experts on everything from Python to penguins. However, connecting our expert teachers to eager students around the globe can be a complicated business. To that end, we are excited to release our new internal learning platform, CloudCourse under an open source license. Built entirely on App Engine, CloudCourse allows anyone to create and track learning activities. CloudCourse also offers calendaring, waitlist management and approval features.

CloudCourse is fully integrated with Google Calendar and can be further customized for your organization with the following service provider interfaces (replaceable components):

• Sync service – to sync CloudCourse data with your internal systems
• Room info service – to schedule classes in your locations
• User info service – to look up user profile (employee title, picture, etc)

CloudCourse has been developed in Python, using the Django web application framework and the Closure Javascript library. Deploying CloudCourse on App Engine is a breeze, and should take less than 5 minutes.

We developed CloudCourse to:

• provide a course scheduling system fully integrated with Google services
• demonstrate what it takes to built an application using App Engine

By releasing CloudCourse as open source we hope to help developers who want to port or build enterprise applications on App Engine. Digging into the source code, you will find many examples of how we addressed challenges like long running processes, locking, synchronizing with external systems, high performance transactional workflows, and more.
All the techniques that we used can easily be applied to other applications.

CloudCourse is available for download now. If you would like to discuss the project or if you have any questions, please join the CloudCourse mailing list. Happy hacking!

Following with the series of Jeff Jarvis videos, here another video that discusses about the business of news which is changing radically. The old-time economics of supporting a big newsroom, printing the news on paper and getting it to people’s doorsteps seems increasingly unsupportable given the exodus of advertising dollars to internet sites.

If you have dedicated half an hour watching this video, then you should read this very interesting article.

Click here on the left to have it here.

How to Save the News

After nearly a year in private Beta, Silentale, which is calling itself the “Dropbox for communications”, opens to the public today.

The service is a kind of personal CRM system, providing a searchable backup of your contacts, messages and attachments across various communication channels, including email and social networks Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It’s designed to address the fragmentation of electronic communication, combining a unified address book and archive of messages .

Adopting a classic freemium model, Silentale comes in two flavours, a free and paid version. However, premium accounts are being waved for users who sign-up before the end of May.

The free version is limited to 5 services (accounts) and can only be used to import 6 months of messages. The premium plans, which are being introduced on 1st of June, offer up to 10 accounts and the ability to import 2 years of messages for $49/year, or for businesses that need to manage multiple channels, a $99/year price plan that supports up to 20 accounts with unlimited import. However, premium accounts are being waved for users who sign-up before the end of May.

Since launching in private beta, Silentale says it has processed more than 50 million messages and 10 million contacts. Interestingly, users have been archiving data from an average of 4 accounts, which would full within the free version, so perhaps that doesn’t bode so well for the company or suggests that Silentale is really targeting business and enterprise customers not individuals.

The Paris-based company offers an API for third-party developers, and a Firefox add-on is currently available that shows a contact’s details and the latest messages exchanged when viewing an email from them or browsing their profile on the likes of LinkedIn, Salesforce, Facebook etc.

Additionally, Silentale says it has an accompanying iPhone app in the works, which is very close to release, along with one for Android and an Outlook plug-in.

Can we all get a better deal by making purchases together?

That’s the idea behind a new breed of “group buying” Web sites — at least one of which may be valued at more than $1 billion.

It’s hardly a stretch to predict that group buying will become one of the biggest Web trends of 2010, and the market leader will be one of the most closely-watched sites of the year.

Groupon, which traces its origins back to 2008, has a simple premise: If enough people agree to buy something, they all get a big discount.

Today’s deal for those in New York: Save 50 percent on a $20 purchase of cupcakes from “ChikaLicious Dessert Club.” If 450 people agree to the deal, everyone saves money.

If that critical number is not reached, however, the deal is a dud. The site offers one deal per day in the cities it covers, and the number of cities in the network is growing fast.

It’s a good idea for sure, but it might also be an incredibly valuable one. Web rumors this week suggest Groupon may be in the process of raising a new round of venture capital at a $1.2 billion valuation. The money follows a $30 million round that valued Groupon at $250 million. In layman’s terms: Investors think Groupon is set to be the Web’s next breakout hit.

Groupon’s competitors are seeing big investment, too. Rival siteLivingSocial recently raised $25 million. BuyWithMe has raised $5.5 million. How many group buying sites are there now? Possibly dozens: SocialBuy, Groop Swoop and Scoop St., to name a few.

The dynamics of group buying mean that Groupon has a significant early advantage, however: The more users a site can gain, the more leverage it has to score big discounts from businesses.

It’s a hot market we should have seen coming. The top Web trendsat the start of the year included the “real-time Web” and “location.” With almost constant web connectivity provided by smartphones and free Wi-Fi at coffee shops, airports and bookstores — not to mention the immediacy of Twitter and Facebook — we’ve come to expect instant gratification online. Group buying meets that need.

Groupon is local, too, targeting deals to metropolitan areas. There’s a further trend Groupon capitalizes upon: Social networking brings us together to share opinions and experiences … why not deals too?

Is Groupon worth a billion dollars? Could the group buying market be worth multiple billions? Investors seem prepared to make that bet.

Editor’s Note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media. He writes a weekly column about social networking and technology forCNN.com.

(Article from CNN)

Gizmodo has a nice story on a prototype iPhone next generation forgotten in a bar.

Looks like an Apple guy forgot the phone in a bar. The story is credible: the phone was inside a cover that made it look like a 3gs but when removed, a different phone… the new iPhone that we are expecting for this summer.

What’s new

• Front-facing video chat camera
• Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
• Camera flash
• Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
• Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×640 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
• What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
• Split buttons for volume
• Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic

What’s changed

• The back is entirely flat, made of either glass (more likely) or ceramic or shiny plastic in order for the cell signal to poke through. Tapping on the back makes a more hollow and higher pitched sound compared to tapping on the glass on the front/screen, but that could just be the orientation of components inside making for a different sound
• An aluminum border going completely around the outside
• Slightly smaller screen than the 3GS (but seemingly higher resolution)
• Everything is more squared off
• 3 grams heavier
• 16% Larger battery
• Internals components are shrunken, miniaturized and reduced to make room for the larger battery

Is this the future of technology? The co-founder of Oblong, John Underkoffler, is the man who came up with the gesture-based interface used in the Steven Spielberg movie. And now he’s building it in real life.Welcome to spatial operating system:

Google could be launching later today a social status update feature in Gmail. The Wall Street Journal reports that it is a new Gmail module that could integrate status updates as well as content from YouTube, Picasa and potentially other social sources.

Google is organizing at its headquarters an event where they will “unveil some product innovations in two of [its] most popular products.”

The description fits very well with the WSJ report. Gmail is one of Google’s most popular products, and this new social status update feature would be a “product innovation” within Gmail.

What happened with the Internet in 2009?

How many websites were added? How many emails were sent? How many Internet users were there? This post will answer all of those questions and many more. Prepare for information overload, but in a good way.

We have used a wide variety of sources from around the Web. A full list of source references is available at the bottom of the post for those interested. We here at Pingdom also did some additional calculations to get even more numbers to show you.

Enjoy!

Email

• 90 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.
• 247 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
• 1.4 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
• 100 million – New email users since the year before.
• 81% – The percentage of emails that were spam.
• 92% – Peak spam levels late in the year.
• 24% – Increase in spam since last year.
• 200 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 81% are spam).

Websites

• 234 million – The number of websites as of December 2009.
• 47 million – Added websites in 2009.

Web servers

• 13.9% – The growth of Apache websites in 2009.
• -22.1% – The growth of IIS websites in 2009.
• 35.0% – The growth of Google GFE websites in 2009.
• 384.4% – The growth of Nginx websites in 2009.
• -72.4% – The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2009.

Domain names

• 81.8 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2009.
• 12.3 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2009.
• 7.8 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2009.
• 76.3 million – The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
• 187 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2009).
• 8% – The increase in domain names since the year before.

Internet users

• 1.73 billion – Internet users worldwide (September 2009).
• 18% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
• 738,257,230 – Internet users in Asia.
• 418,029,796 – Internet users in Europe.
• 252,908,000 – Internet users in North America.
• 179,031,479 – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
• 67,371,700 – Internet users in Africa.
• 57,425,046 – Internet users in the Middle East.
• 20,970,490 – Internet users in Oceania / Australia.

Social media

• 126 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
• 84% – Percent of social network sites with more women than men.
• 27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
• 57% – Percentage of Twitter’s user base located in the United States.
• 4.25 million – People following @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher, Twitter’s most followed user).
• 350 million – People on Facebook.
• 50% – Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.
• 500,000 – The number of active Facebook applications.

Images

• 4 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (October 2009).
• 2.5 billion – Photos uploaded each month to Facebook.
• 30 billion – At the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year.

Videos

• 1 billion – The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day.
• 12.2 billion – Videos viewed per month on YouTube in the US (November 2009).
• 924 million – Videos viewed per month on Hulu in the US (November 2009).
• 182 – The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).
• 82% – Percentage of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
• 39.4% – YouTube online video market share (USA).
• 81.9% – Percentage of embedded videos on blogs that are YouTube videos.

Web browsers

Malicious software

• 148,000 – New zombie computers created per day (used in botnets for sending spam, etc.)
• 2.6 million – Amount of malicious code threats at the start of 2009 (viruses, trojans, etc.)
• 921,143 – The number of new malicious code signatures added by Symantec in Q4 2009.

Data sources: Website and web server stats from Netcraft. Domain name stats from Verisign andWebhosting.info. Internet user stats from Internet World Stats. Web browser stats from Net Applications. Email stats from Radicati Group. Spam stats from McAfee. Malware stats fromSymantec (and here) and McAfee. Online video stats from Comscore, Sysomos and YouTube. Photo stats from Flickr and Facebook. Social media stats from BlogPulse, Pingdom (here andhere), Twittercounter, Facebook and GigaOm.

(from pingdom)

(from engadget)

Here it is folks, the Apple iPad. The screen is gorgeous, tilting is responsive, and the thing is insanely thin and light. Still, if you’ve used the iPhone before — and you can see the two devices side-by-side here — there’s not a lot of surprises here so far. Here are some initial thoughts on the device:

It’s not light. It feels pretty weighty in your hand.

The screen is stunning, and it’s 1024 x 768. Feels just like a huge iPhone in your hands.

The speed of the CPU is something to be marveled at. It is blazingly fast from what we can tell. Webpages loaded up super fast, and scrolling was without a hiccup. Moving into and out of apps was a breeze. Everything flew.

There’s no multitasking at all. It’s a real disappointment. All this power and very little you can do with it at once. No multitasking means no streaming Pandora when you’re working in Pages… you can figure it out. It’s a real setback for this device.

The ebook implementation is about as close as you can get to reading without a stack of bound paper in your hand. The visual stuff really helps flesh out the experience. It may be just for show, but it counts here.

A new payment system has been developed for the iPhone. Take a look to the video

Square is Jack Dorsey’s (Twitter co-founder) new startup that now has Kevin Rose (Digg founder) on board as an investor and YouTube pitch man for the prototype payment device that plugs directly into the iPhone’s headphone jack.

This is from the official google blog:

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve’s blog andthis presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

(from google blog and here a nice blog discussing this)

Zimbra is the email I am using with norai. I use the open source version and it is the best email experience you can have.

They have announced that VMware has bought email and collaboration software developer Zimbra from Yahoo. Rumors of the sale have been floating around for some time now but the writing was on the wall when Scott Dietzen, former CTO of Zimbra, quit Yahoo last fall.
Yahoo bought back in 2007 zimbra for $350 million.

Here the press release from zimbra and vmware.

Books in Under 60 Seconds: Think of a book and you could be reading it in under a minute

Free Wireless: Free 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle. No monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots. For non-U.S. customers, there are also no additional charges for wireless delivery in or outside your home country. See Coverage Map. See Wireless Terms and Conditions

Growing Selection: Over 330,000 English-language books to choose from; plus U.S. and international newspapers and magazines are available for your country. Because publishers give us eBook rights on a country by country basis, available titles for your country will vary from our current U.S selection. We are actively working with publishers to get the rights to all titles for every country and adding this selection every day. Check the Kindle Store to see available titles.

Low Book Prices: New York Times® Best Sellers and New Releases are $11.99 to $13.99 (prices include VAT), unless marked otherwise. You’ll also find many books for less – over 90,000 titles are priced under $5.99

Today Google has officially released the new android 2.1 phone manufactured by HTC called Nexus One.

Here you have the official link.

Engadget had an early copy to review. You can read the review here. It has videos and unboxing photos.

It has a 1Ghz processor, 5Mp camera, microSD (up to 32Gb) and a 3.7 inches screen. Thiner than the iPhone. A very powerful machine indeed.

Gmail is furthering its offline strategy today with the announcement of the ability to include attachments in composed emails when offline. Google says this was one of the most requested features for Offline Gmail and starting today, you be able to attach files in offline mode the way you would in online Gmail.

You’ll be able to attach all types of files except inline images, which are images in the body of the email. When you have Offline Gmail enabled, Google says that mail now goes through the outbox when you’re online or offline, allowing Gmail to capture all attachments regardless of internet connections.

Earlier this year, Google rolled out a Google Gears version of Gmail, which detects when you are offline. It caches your e-mail so that you can read it, respond to it, search it, star it, or label it. When you are connected to the Internet again, it sends all the messages. Google also introduced an offline version of Calendar.

Offline access is a big part of Google’s strategy to chip away at Microsoft’s Outlook’s hold on business email. For promotional purposes, Google now wants Gmail users who are using Offline features to take pictures of themselves while accessing their email from an unusual place, such as a submarine, without internet access. Google will post the most interesting photos on the Gmail Blog. I guess a picture is worth a thousand words.

Just in time to remind holiday shoppers, Amazon has announced an 85% battery life increase as well as a native PDF reader application for the Kindle digital book reader. Whereas the previous battery life topped out at about four days with wireless access turned on, the updated Kindle will run for seven days without needing to be charged.

The native PDF reading support is nice too, since previously users either had to pay a $0.10 per conversion charge or go through several steps in order to convert documents from PDF to the Kindle format used by the eReader. Now PDF can simply be transferred via USB connection or emailed to the user’s @kindle.com email address to be added to the Kindle.

While the native PDF support will also be made available to existing owners of the Kindle (or at least, some of them — Amazon’s announcement doesn’t specify what the requirements are) via a wireless firmware update, the new battery life-infused Kindle will apparently only be rolling out to new buyers.

It’s a couple of minor but nice updates, and a good excuse for Amazon to capitalize on the fact that the holiday season’s other hot digital book reader, the Barnes & Noble nook, is already completely sold out for reportedly the remainder of the holiday gift-giving season. That’s more bad news for B&N, who are also busy fending off a lawsuit from Spring Design over its Alex eReader — which shares some of the key design principles with the nook, a similarity Spring Design says is no accident.

Are you considering picking up a digital book reader for yourself or a loved one this holiday season?

[France] Paris-based Deezer is not waiting for Spotify to expand into new territories and is moving forward with its own plans pretty quickly. The French startup recently raised $9.5 million (€6.5 million), bringing the total invested into the company to nearly $20 million, and today the company’s launching its previously rumored premium offering and a couple of new products.

Basically, the Deezer website, where users can listen to streaming music and create playlists, will remain free of charge while users who would like better sound quality (up to 320 kb/s) and no more advertisements can opt to pay €4.99 per month for Deezer HQ. The Premium offering (€9.99 / month) is the most interesting though, since it gives users the opportunity to download a full-fledged Adobe AIR desktop application and lets them gain access to their accounts through a wide range of mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPod Touch and multiple Android-run and Blackberry devices.

The company commissioned a study that showed more than 80% of its user base was keen on getting mobile access, while 40% was interested in better sound quality. But the Premium offering in my opinion is interesting because it’s basically a way for users to have seamless access to their account and playlists whether they’re opening Deezer up in their browsers, start the cross-platform desktop client or listen to their favorite music on the go. It’s the type of convergence I keep wishing every online music service would offer.

That said, I’ve been playing around with the desktop application for a couple of hours and ran into some bugs that need to be ironed out before it’s good enough for daily usage. I also tested the iPhone application on my iPhone 3GS and that one didn’t have any noticeable flaws. The Premium offering comes with a 7-day free trial by the way, so I suggest you try it out and see if it suits your needs.

Deezer’s catalog is currently about 4.5 million tracks strong and also boasts a good number of web radio stations in a variety of genres. And since it has signed licensing agreement with all the majors (Sony BMG, EMI, Warner and Universal, among others) there’s no immediate risk of the service shutting down because of legal disputes, something we’ve seen happen far too often to date.

Google promise to let developers improve the code and they did. They promised federation for Wave, meaning that anyone could take the Wave code and run their own private or public wave server. Google took the first step towards the full federation of its real-time communication platform by announcing that the developer sandbox version of Google Wave is open for experimental federation.

Let’s be clear: this is a very early stage test of federating the Google Wave code onto non-Google servers. It only affects the developer sandbox, meaning that the preview version of Wave that most people are using is not a part of this test. However, it is a big step in making it a widespread product, rather than only a tool of early adopters. Businesses and individuals can begin testing their own local copy of Wave. This is just the beginning of Google’s legitimate attempt to upend email as the standard for web correspondence and communication.

If you’re a developer with a sandbox account and want to get started, Google has published some installation instructions for a Java version. Be warned though: there will be a lot of changes occurring over the next few weeks, many of them based on developer feedback.

The new version of WordPress for iPhone just arrived in the App Store (iTunes link). While the first version was already quite usable, this update brings a number of new features and usability enhancements to the WordPress experience on the iPhone. The new interface makes it easier to switch between comments, posts and pages. The comments interface now also displays Gravatars. Throughout the app, the WordPress team has tweaked the interface and it’s now easier to manage your blog from the iPhone.

Features

The new version also now automatically saves posts and restores them if the network connection is lost during the publishing process.

Just like the first version, WordPress for iPhone 2 is an open-source program.

It’s important to note that this new version will not appear as an update to the old version. Instead, users will have to install a new app, which can run side-by-side with the older version.

The new version, of course, still offers the same basic feature set as the earlier version. These include support for multiple blogs, photo uploads and post previews, as well as full support for tags, categories and password protected posts.

Blogging on the iPhone

There can be little doubt that the iPhone – or any mobile phone for that matter – isn’t the ideal platform for writing long, thoughtful blog posts. Maybe that’s why WordPress for iPhone 2 puts more emphasis on comment moderation than the first version.

For a quick blog post on the road, though, the app is perfectly adequate, especially if you just want to upload a few pictures. It’s not as easy to use as the more specialized PicPosterous or Pixelpipe but WordPress for iPhone 2 is a far more flexible application and WordPress has a different user in mind for this app.

Again, remember that it is not an update. It is free but you should search for wordpress 2.

Want to be the head of Barnesandnoble.com’s international business? Because they’re definitely hiring a whole team, and they’re starting at the top.

Recruiting firm Russell Reynolds Associates is representing Barnes & Noble in a search for the “head of their international business,” according to a source who was contacted about the position. The job entails building the international business for BN.com from scratch, hiring the team and “building the infrastructure outside the U.S.” They prefer the executive live in New York, but Europe is ok, too. Global ecommerce experience is preferred.

Barnes & Noble is no Amazon, but it is a billion dollar company and they have an upcoming ebook reader that kicks the Kindle’s butt (it’s so easy to love unlaunched products, isn’t it?).

Twitter just released to everybody the ‘list’ feature.

In a nutshell what you can do with your lists is to cluster the people you follow (for instance) in topics.

In my cases at @tokao I see everybody, while @tokao/tech the twits about tech, and so on.

I think it is one of the best things twitter has done since the beginning.

Recently Apple released some new products. Maybe to take some of cloud out of Windows 7. May be not.

There is this great iMac of more than 27″ for $1700 (less than the 30″ monitor…) a beautifully design multi-touch mouse and my favourite… a mac mini server!

I has no CD/DVD and runs Mac Snow Leopard Server. I could consider it as it has my basic requirement of two hard disk in raid. Then you could attach a drobo and voila, the perfect solution…

Spotify is a new way to enjoy music. Simply download and install, before you know it you’ll be singing along to the genre, artist or song of your choice. With Spotify you are never far away from the song you want.

There are no restrictions in terms of what you can listen to or when. Forget about the hassle of waiting for files to download and fill up your hard drive before you get round to organising them. Spotify is instant, fun and simple.

Because music is social, Spotify allows you to share songs and playlists with friends, and even work together on collaborative playlists, Friday afternoon in the office might never be the same again! We’re music lovers like everyone else.

We want to connect millions of people with their favorite songs by creating a product that people love to use. We respect creativity and believe in fairly compensating artists for their work. We’ve cleared the rights to use the music you’ll listen to in Spotify.

You will need to have an invitation (token) to get access as it is still in beta. There 3 plans, free (supported by ads) and two premiums.

There is also a nice iPhone app. This link is for the features and this for the price plans.

The iPhone app is superior to the Pandora or last.fm ones.

The interface is like iTunes (which is a negative point if you want it web based like pandora).

Unlike either Last.fm or Pandora, Spotify actually lets you pick the exact music you listen to, which is a plus.

Of course, there is a catch. In return for being able to access any music you want,  you have to listen to occasional adverts, like radio ads with web links to the products. This for the free version. The  ‘Premium’ account (a tenner a month, or 99p for a day pass)  removes the ads entirely.

Quick Pitch: NoNotes.com is a transcription service for students. Students can record lectures while paying more attention in class, then upload their recording to be transcribed by NoNotes.

Genius Idea: Last week, you might’ve seen the story about the Georgetown student that’s looking to hire a personal assistant to help deal with the overwhelming life of … being a college student (I can’t wait to hear his plan for dealing with the real world).

In any event, NoNotes is a service for that type of individual. The company provides a transcription service aimed specifically at college students, allowing them to record lectures, upload them to a website, and then have written notes prepared for them.

The company uses the tagline “you do the learning, we’ll take the notes,” but you can imagine how this service might be used in practice. Jokes aside, there is something to be said for paying attention to the lecturer in class as opposed to furiously trying to keep up taking notes, and this is the need that NoNotes looks to satisfy.

Like a personal assistant though, NoNotes will cost you money. One hour of class time costs $11.75, with discounts if you buy hours in bulk. That might make it cost prohibitive for many college students, though you can imagine groups of friends chipping in and then drawing straws to see who attends and records a lecture. The company is looking to build its customer base in part by hiring reps at universities.

GazoPa is a similar image search service on the web in open beta. Users can search images from the web based on user’s own photo, drawings, images found on the web and keywords. GazoPa enables users to search for a similar image from characteristics such as a color or a shape extracted from an image itself. There are abundant quantities of images on the web, however many of these simply cannot be described by keywords. Since GazoPa uses image features to search other similar images, a vast range of images can be retrieved from the web. GazoPa is a new visual search service that can navigate users to new territories on the web.

We hope you Android lovers out there are sitting down, because we’re about to knock your socks off. Android 2.0 hasn’t been released, announced, or even pictured. Until now. And we’re doing it like we’re doing it for TV — major screenshots and major information right here, just for you, our beloved readers.

Android 2.0 looks to be a major improvement in Google’s mobile OS and we couldn’t be more excited about it. From native Exchange support to native Facebook support (it will sync with your contacts), browser improvements, a completely updated Maps application, unified email Inbox — there’s much, much more — and a brand new UI makeover, version 2.0 starts to make Android a really viable (and interesting) platform. Bounce over the jump for all the screenshots and our walkthrough!

Please note: this isn’t the final build of Android 2.0 and the follow reporting is based on the version we have running. Things can and will change prior to release.

Microsoft Exchange compatibility looks to be built-in to the OS now, and the new unified Inbox is perfect for keeping up with your personal and corporate email. You can star (flag for the corporate world) emails, mark multiple as read or unread, delete, forward — whatever you want basically. Emails load effortlessly. Unfortunately (or not so unfortunately) the unified Inbox won’t work with your Gmail account as that uses the specific Google-made Gmail email application in Android.

Maps has been updated to include Layers. We’d imagine this will grow over time but now you can overlay search queries, Wikipedia entries, Latitude buddies, traffic, transit lines, and even load remote My Maps where you can share and receive directions with others. Android 2.0 seems to have some multi-touch gestures built-in like two-finger tapping in Maps, that will zoom in, however, there’s no gesture to zoom out and pinching doesn’t work. © Apple.

The browser has a nice little UI makeover with a redone URL entry bar which includes a Favicon. In terms of performance, no this version we have doesn’t have Flash 10, Google keeps making strides in the browser space. It’s worlds better than anything we’ve used previously on a stock Android OS, and jumps one notch higher than HTC’s customized browser. There is not multi-touch in here as of now, but, you can double tap to zoom in and zoom out which is really all we’ve been asking for since Android 1.0. Oh and did we mention this thing flies? We’re talking ridiculously close to iPhone 3GS web page speeds.

There’s now a YouTube widget you can place directly on your homescreen and that allows for literally two-click YouTube video uploads. You hit record, the video recording app launches, you type in a title and description for your newly-recorded video, and it’s up and away.

While the settings area is roughly the same overall, there’s a lot of interesting additions in 2.0. For starters, there’s haptic feedback built-in and a brand new Accessibility option. There’s also a new option for Text-to-speech and generally with Android 2.0, you’re given more control over the settings of your phone and more opportunities to customize it based on your liking. Something completely bewildering is the fact that if you set a lock code for the phone (seriously give people a choice to use numbers or letters as the passcode), there’s no lock interval option, so each time your phone turns off (about every 30 seconds when not in use), you’re forced to enter the password again on arrival. Lame.

Car Home. What? You don’t know what that is? Ok, it’s a new application that’s meant to be used, uh, in your car. Seriously it’s actually quite nice. It’s a consolidated list of icons that help you perform things (presumably using voice commands if you’re driving). Things like doing a voice search across the internet, getting driving directions, viewing a location on a map, selecting a contact, searching through your phone, etc. It’s very cool that you can say, “map of gas stations” and that will open Google Maps and show you on the map where all the gas stations are closest to you. Not exactly new technology, but hey, we didn’t say it was. We said this was all about pushing Android forward, and it is.

The Amazon MP3 application seems to work over 3G instead of just Wi-Fi now, but whether that is something done because of Android 2.0 or just because of the carrier it’s running on, we’re not positively sure.

Contacts seem to be much more roomy and there’s some great functionality built right in. Instead of hitting the contact and then diving through it to find the contact information you need, just tap the contact’s photo. Up will spring a clean and tidy sub-menu with the pertinent information which can be clicked on. Send someone an email instantly, open up their Facebook profile, or even call them! Very cool and all great things that we love seeing.

Things like the music application and gallery application don’t look to have changed too much, if at all. There also looks to be some more flexibility when defining homescreen shortcuts and things of that nature.

That’s all we have for you today, guys. What do you think of Android 2.0 in its not-final version? We’re loving it. And it could help that it’s running on a pretty bad ass piece of machinery, but hey, that’s for another day.

(from boygeniousreport)

Nikon has announced a new player, the nikon D3s, an incredible machine capable of shooting at 102.400 ISO! and with its FX CMOS sensor shoot HD movies as well. It has 12.1 Mp and the will cost around $5.200.

You still have the D3X with 24.5 Mp and the D3 with 12.1 Mp and also $5.500

Here you have the techspecs for the D3s. Looks like the s gives video to the nikons, like the d300s.

• ISO performance: ISO 12800 as standard, expandable to ISO equivalent of 102400 (Hi 3)
• Nikon FX-format CMOS image sensor with 12.1 effective megapixels
• Improved D-Movie function including High-Sensitivity Movie mode and flicker reduction function
• Nikon’s Integrated Dust Reduction System including Image Sensor Cleaning function
• Incorporates Nikon’s original EXPEED digital image processing
• Active D-Lighting with bracketing for up to 5 frames
• Picture Control: Standard, Vivid, Neutral and Monochrome (Landscape and Portrait can be downloaded from Nikon website)
• Quick response with approx. 0.12 seconds start-up time and approx. 0.04 seconds shutter-release time lag
• 9-frames-per-second shooting rate in FX format, 11 fps in DX crop (CIPA Guidelines)
• Nikon’s original Scene Recognition System, utilizing 1,005-pixel RGB sensor, for more accurate autofocus, auto exposure, i-TTL flash control and auto white balance
• Multi-CAM 3500FX AF sensor module featuring 51 AF points
• Viewfinder with approx. 100% frame coverage and approx. 0.7x magnification in FX format
• Durable shutter unit proven by 300,000 cycles of testing on fully assembled camera
• Intelligent power management that lets you shoot up to approx. 4,200 frames per charge (based on CIPA Standards)
• Easy-to-access Live View modes with dedicated button
• Quiet Shutter-release mode for nonintrusive shooting
• High-definition (approx. 921k-dot), 170˚ viewing angle, 3-in. VGA LCD monitor with tempered glass.

Which one is for you?
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Building Maker is a 3D modeling tool for adding buildings to Google Earth. It’s fun to use, and an easy way to get on the 3D map. Here’s how it works:

• Select a city from around the world.
• Make a building with photos we provide.
• Save your building and it will be reviewed.
• See your 3D building in Google Earth!

Qnap has released the 3.0 firmware for their NAS products.

Take a look at the video. I start wondering if I should forget about running a full server at home… with this I could have my blog, my photos, and all my files… and even IP cameras… plus if you buy 2 you could have an offsite backup… to consider.

There is a company called Savant who designs, develops and manufacturers deliver home control and automation, multi-room audio/video, advanced digital audio and video processing, extremely flexible and scalable audio/video switching, digital media server and jukebox capabilities, and an array of integrated applications and services.

The fact that I mention this company here is because traditionally this has been a pretty top end set of products which were accessible only to those with a lot of money.

If you’re looking to do home automation, you’ll spend at least $10,000. Savant’s system is called Protege. It’s a box with a Mac Mini that will control a mid size home for $5,000, and you can control everything from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

I also got a look at the TrueImage Control, which is a visual system to control your lights, TV, etc from a touch panel.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand keywords. Today at TechCrunch50, Microsoft senior vice president Yusuf Mehdi announced a new visual search feature on Bing which returns results as an interactive gallery of images.

For instance, if you type in “dog breeds,” it organizes them for you in a grid of images that you can scroll through using a slider on the right. When you hover over a particular image, it enters the name of that dog breed in the search box. And you can re-order the image results by size, breed, exercise needs, and Bing popularity.

There are more than 100 visual galleries ranging from movies, books, and cars to products, animals, and sports teams. The sorting categories change each time. So for movies, you can filter by release date, title, or rating. Cars can be sorted visually by make, price or mileage.

When you resort, the images fly around the screen to find their new positions. The visual search acts as a showcase for Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, which makes the animations and visual rendering possible.

“The whole concept,” says Mehdi, “is that the world of search will change. There will be a more graphic way people will search, and it will pivot how people search.”

The judges were impressed with his demo. Ron Conway noted, “I think the huge winner here will be consumers because competition breeds innovation, and this nice little battle between Google and Microsoft is fantastic for consumers.”

(from techcrunch)

Browsers	market share
Internet Explorer 7.0	22.99%
Firefox 3.0	17.08%
Internet Explorer 8.0	15.33%
Internet Explorer 6.0	14.04%
Firefox 3.5	3.35%
Safari 4.0	3.66%
Chrome 2.0	3.23%
Firefox 2.0	1.43%
Opera 9.6	1.19%
Safari 3.2	0.69%

(from w3counter)

Windows 7 is not yet officially out, but it nearly has the market share of linux.

OS	market share
Windows XP	60.55%
Windows Vista	22.64%
Mac OS X	7.11%
Linux	1.97%
Windows 7	1.69%
Windows 2000	0.78%
Windows 2003	0.65%
iPhone OSX	0.40%
Windows 98	0.13%
WAP	0.07%

Don’t let Apple’s marketing enchant you – upgrading to Snow Leopard isn’t exactly the hassle-free affair that the Mac maker wants you to believe. You must pick the right cat for you, identify incompatible apps, plan your upgrade path, and customize the installer. Enter Geek’s guide to installing Snow Leopard, the definite resource for Mac fans eager to tame Apple’s big cat.

First of all, you’ll be delighted to know that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade installs on Tiger Macs after all, despite Apple’s insistence that it’s strictly for Leopard people. Although Apple said Tiger users should either upgrade to Leopard before moving to Snow Leopard or migrate directly, using the $169 Mac Box Set (containing Snow Leopard, iLife ‘09, and iWork ‘09), WSJ and Wired have discovered that a Tiger system can be upgraded directly to Snow Leopard via a standalone installer provided on the $29 upgrade disc, resulting in a $140 saving over the Mac Box Set.

Snow Leopard lacks Windows’ awkward activation process. In fact, it doesn’t even come with a serial number.

If you’re planning to upgrade household Macs, go with Family Pack versions of Snow Leopard and Mac Box Set, $49 and $229, respectively. Lucky customers who bought a qualifying Mac or Xserve from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller between June 8, 2009 and the end of the program on December 26 can get Snow Leopard through the Up-to-Date program for only $9.95 (free shipping) plus applicable sales tax.

The $499 server version comes with unlimited client licenses, making up for the hardware price difference compared with Windows-based servers sold on a per seat basis.

Some apps don’t play nice with Snow Leopard

The compatibility of your third-party Tiger or Leopard apps is the first thing that needs to be assessed prior to upgrading. Apple re-wrote 90 percent of the 1,000 projects in OS X, a major brain transplant guaranteed to cause problems with a portion of apps and drivers (just ask early Vista adopters).

Despite Apple’s official stance, you can upgrade a Tiger system to Snow Leopard via the $29 upgrade disc.

Some of the popular apps that either don’t run at all or cause issues in Snow Leopard include Elgato EyeTV 3.0.0 to 3.1.0, Parallels Desktop 3.0, McAfee VirusScan 8.6, Norton NAV 11.0, some versions of AT&T Laptop Connect Card, Adobe Director MX 2004, Adobe Photoshop Elements, CuteFTP, DiskWarrior 4.1, FruitMenu, TiVo Desktop 1.94, Tinker Tool 3.94, WindowShadeX 4.3, and Google Gears browser extension, to name a few. In addition, Apple’s AirPort Admin Utility for Graphite and Snow Base Stations 4.2.5, Aperture 2.1.1, and Keynote 2.0.2 all exhibit issues in Snow Leopard.

In case you’re wondering, Microsoft Messenger, QuarkXPress, and Microsoft Office 2008 run without glitches. Apple may have also killed the support for legacy Palm devices via Palm OS HotSync conduit in Snow Leopard’s iSync 3.1.0, but there are ways around it in AppleInsider’s handy guide.

When it comes to Adobe’s productivity software, the company confirmed in its Creative Suite FAQ that CS4 is compatible with Snow Leopard and that the Photoshop team “found no significant problems” with Photoshop CS3.

However, you’ll need Acrobat 9.1 or later to produce PDF files in Snow Leopard outside the built-in system-wide PDF exporter. Older Macromedia and Adobe apps may experience a variety of installation, stability, and reliability issues and they won’t be updated for Snow Leopard, Adobe said. Users of a 2.5-year-old CS3 should know that the suite isn’t supported when running on Snow Leopard because Adobe hasn’t done the level of testing that true certification demands, a move that some dubbed a forced $699.99 CS4 upgrade.

Subtle tweaks, under-the-hood refinements, and speed gains are worth $29, the media say.

Due to aforementioned incompatibilities, you’ll need to identify which apps have issues by consulting a collaborative project at snowleopard.wikidot.com, basically a collection of independent compatibility tests posted by ordinary users checking Mac apps against the gold master build of Snow Leopard (version 10A432). The three-category list names tested apps that run with no issues, those that have some issues, and programs that don’t run at all.

Don’t forget to check out incompatible apps listed in Apple’s support document and see if your printer or scanner model is officially supported in Snow Leopard.

If too many of your apps are incompatible, postpone upgrading until vendors post Snow Leopard-specific updates. In fact, everyone but early adopters should postpone upgrading until the first major Snow Leopard update (10.6.1) arrives, ironing out bugs and smoothing out rough edges. If you’re anything like us, though, you’ll upgrade in an instant.

Here’s a sum up of key steps needed to ensure as painless installation as humanly possible:

1. Identify incompatible apps and drivers on your system by checking the wiki page and Apple’s support documents (here, here, and here)
2. Install the latest app updates via vendors’ sites or in-app update mechanisms (i.e. for Adobe software).
3. Decide between performing a clean install or upgrading an existing Tiger or Leopard OS, think about custom installation options, start the installer.

You can perform a clean Snow Leopard install (with or without Tiger/Leopard in place) using the $29 upgrade disc, but make sure you back up your documents, apps, and settings first. Since your boot drive will be completely wiped out, you’ll need to re-install all your apps later. If you’re upgrading a pre-existing Tiger or Leopard OS, the installer will scan existing apps for issues, moving known incompatible items into an “Incompatible Software” folder.

A standalone installer on the $29 upgrade disc also lets you perform a clean install, even if you don’t have pre-existing Leopard or Tiger on your system.

Scanner and printer drivers

A revamped Snow Leopard installer is a smooth sail: You basically mark a couple of check boxes and treat yourself with a coffee while the installer copies the files to your hard drive first, resulting in up to 45 percent faster installation than in Leopard. The installer doesn’t require an annoying immediate reboot and it’ll even start over if a power outage interrupts, without losing any data.

Snow Leopard reclaims about 6GB of space on your drive (less than half the space needed for Leopard) by installing only a subset of the most popular drivers, including those for printers and scanners that you had connected to your Mac in the past, as well as drivers for connected devices found on your network and hooked up to your Mac at install time.

Bear in mind there’s no point in manually selecting driver packs as this will increase Snow Leopard’s space footprint unnecessarily: A new Snow Leopard feature automatically retrieves the latest drivers off the Internet, via the Software Update tool, anytime a new printer or scanner is discovered locally or on a network. In fact, some device models have software available through Software Update only. Even if your Mac is offline, you should still uncheck driver packs because you can always install them from the install disc later, whenever needed.

Rosetta

If you don’t run PowerPC-only apps, you won’t need Rosetta, a software emulator that enabled PowerPC apps to run on Intel Macs. The installer deselects Rosetta by default but you may check it if you run legacy PowerPC apps on your Intel Mac. You can check whether an app is PowerPC-only in the Kind field of the Get Info window invoked by hitting the Command + I combo on an app. Even if you don’t install Rosetta, the Software Update will offer to download and install Rosetta the moment you try running a PowerPC app.

Snow Leopard will retain a QuickTime Pro copy if it finds a Pro license on your system.

QuickTime X and QuickTime 7 Pro

The installer will automatically keep QuickTime 7 if you install Snow Leopard on a Mac with a registration key for Quicktime 7 Pro, moving it to the /Applications/Utilities folder.

You can also add the classic QuickTime 7 player yourself later, by downloading it from Apple’s QuickTime site. In either case, the installer copies the new QuickTime X player by default. Representing a radical departure from the steel-themed QuickTime 7 player, Snow Leopard’s QuickTime X features a borderless playback by fading out movie controls and the window’s title bar during video playback.

It also packs in a YouTube publishing feature, in addition to video trimming, screen recording, iTunes exporting, etc. Those who have a QuickTime 7 Pro registration key will find out that the player boasts a greater number of export options than QuickTime X – good thing both can co-exist on your system.

Handy Snow Leopard resources

• Snow Leopard page – Everything you need to know about Apple’s new cat, right from the source, including a detailed list of changes.
• Server Snow Leopard page – Details and full system requirements for Snow Leopard Server.
• Snow Leopard press release – Official information about the terms, pricing, and key features.
• Snow Leopard specs – Snow Leopard requires an Intel Mac and at least 1GB of RAM. Check the link for full system requirements.
• OS X Up-To-Date program – Check to see if you’re eligible for a $9.95 Snow Leopard upgrade.
• Snow Leopard compatibility wiki – A collaborative project collecting results of independent tests pitting Mac apps against Snow Leopard. The page may be slow or inaccessible due to high traffic.
• Incompatible software -  Apple’s list of incompatible apps is divided in two sections: The first contains apps that might cause issues but you’re free to run them, while the other lists programs restricted from opening after upgrading to Snow Leopard.
• Printer and scanner compatibility list- Apple’s list of Snow Leopard software provided for printers and scanners that can be installed using the install disc or the Software Update tool (some models have software available through Software Update only). Apple updates this list as device vendors release Snow Leopard-compatible drivers.
• Gamma 2.2 settings – Snow Leopard defaults to a gamma value of 2.2, rather than a 1.8 gamma setting used in previous OS X versions. This support document is of particular interest to graphic and video professionals.
• Battery menu changes – Info about an improved battery menu bar for portable Macs providing information about the condition of the battery, the amount of time remaining on the current charge, the current active power source, and any current charge status details.
• Wake on Demand – The Wake on Demand feature in Snow Leopard lets you access shared items on an asleep Mac via an AirPort Base Station or Time Capsule with firmware 7.4.2 or later installed, even remotely across the Internet. Apple notes this could be useful to offer full time support for iTunes Sharing, Printer Sharing, Back to My Mac, and more. More at MacWorld.
• BootCamp 3.0 changes – The software which enables a dual-boot OS X and Windows installation on Intel Macs now has the ability to read Mac volumes in Windows, in addition to an improved tap-to-click support, a command line version of the Startup Disk Control Panel, and the support for advanced features on Apple Cinema displays.
• Adobe apps compatibility – The official blog entry with an up-to-date information about the compatibility of Adobe’ products on Snow Leopard.
• Adobe Creative Suite FAQ: Check for the CS4 compatibility with Snow Leopard.
• Photoshop CS3 compatibility – Adobe’s Photoshop team has tested Photoshop CS3 on Snow Leopard and “found no significant problems.”
• Syncing legacy Palm OS devices – AppleInsider’s handy guide to third-party solutions that let users of Palm OS devices sync their Palm Desktop information via Snow Leopard’s Sync Services.
• Lifehacker’s guide to a clean Snow Leopard install.
• MacRumors’ Snow Leopard support forum – A community-based support for Snow Leopard hosted at the popular Apple rumors site.

Snow Leopard hits the headlines

• WSJ’s Walt Mossberg says Snow Leopard “isn’t a big breakthrough for average users, and, even at $29, it isn’t a typical Apple lust-provoking product.”
• NYT’s David Pogue thinks that even for Leopard-running users “paying the $30 for Snow Leopard is a no-brainer,” citing “the leap forward in speed polish.”
• CNET’s Jason Parker recommends upgrading “for all the new features and Microsoft Exchange,” noting that the publication’s tests indicate that Snow Leopard is “slightly slower than the older version of Leopard in more intensive application processes.”
• Chicago-Sun Times’ Andy Ihnatko dubbed Snow Leopard an “impressive and important update that will revitalize your existing Mac.”
• USA Today’s Edward C. Baig is convinced that “Snow Leopard should delight Mac fans, especially those who use Exchange at work,” adding that Snow Leopard “adds bite, especially for business.”
• AP’s Peter Svensson notes that Snow Leopard’s benefits will be most apparent down the road, while Windows 7 promises more of an immediate payoff.”
• Macworld’s Jason Snell says “it’s a collection of feature tweaks and upgrades, as well as under-the-hood modifications that might not pay off for users immediately,” adding that the low upgrade price makes it worthwile for “all but the most casual, low-impact Mac users.”
• Engadget points out that “the sheer amount of little tweaks and added functionality more than justifies skipping that last round of drinks at the bar,” speculating that “Exchange support alone has made the sale for a lot of people.”
• Gizmodo cited “modest changes” and non-existent performance gains in non-optimized third-party apps as key reasons for holding off on Snow Leopard “for at least awhile.”
• Wired singled out six things to know about Snow Leopard, concluding that it “won’t deliver any radical interface changes to blow you away, but the $30 price is more than fair for the number of performance improvements Snow Leopard delivers.”
• PC Magazine compared Snow Leopard to Windows 7, finding the former “more coherent and consistent, and smoother and faster in most operations,” adding that Microsoft’s OS ups Apple’s with the Device Stage, Libraries, and PlayTo media streaming.
• Geek’s list of some of the more prominent features in Snow Leopard (here and here).

(from geek.com)

New gadget from Nokia… not bad.

As of yesterday dev channel build, Google’s chromium is adding a brand new feature to Google Chrome: bookmark sync. Many users have several machines, one at home and one at work for example. This new feature makes it easy to keep the same set of bookmarks on all your machines, and stores them alongside your Google Docs for easy web access.

Everyone is obviously talking about theFacebook/FriendFeed deal, but everyone wants to know one key detail: How much did Facebook pay? Now we know: Facebook paid nearly $50 million when you add the $15 million it paid in cash with roughly $32.5 million (based on current valuations) in stock, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The stock is the key part of this deal. Its value is derived from the $6.5 billion common valuation after a recent purchase of employee stock by the Russian investment group DST. But what’s really interesting about the stock is that these are options that vest over a set period of time (”several years,” says WSJ), just as employees in the company get. Compared to the Parakey deal in July 2007, in which the company got only cash and no stock, this seems like a pretty nice deal (assuming that Facebook’s stock eventually pans out, of course).

Yeap… and other social media sites are experiencing similar attacks.

Are you a globetrotter with a penchant for vivid colors? Mili’s got your back with its compact and surprisingly practical Universal Charger. Capable of plugging into US, UK, EU or Australian-style sockets, this unit covers quite a bit of ground and can power a pair of devices at once via USB. Technically then, you’re unloading the chargers from your bag and refilling it with USB adapters, but a lot of UK road warriors would carry live rattlesnakes around if it meant freedom from those humongous plugs. There are nine color options — some of them are even socially acceptable — for the discerning customer with £20 ($33) in his pocket, and pre-orders are being taken now for August 14 delivery.

Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: ‘What are you working on?’

As employees answer that question, a feed is created in one central location enabling co-workers to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions, and share links and other information. Yammer also serves as a company directory in which every employee has a profile and as a knowledge base where past conversations can be easily accessed and referenced.

Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address. Information is never shared with third parties.

The basic Yammer service is free. Companies can pay to claim and administer their networks.

Yammer was founded by former executives and early employees of PayPal, eGroups, eBay, and Tribe. It is backed by venture capital firms Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures.

We have all worked at companies and understand the needs of companies to share information within a private network. We built the solution that we would want to use ourselves.

Proprietary intranet vendors, be scared. Be very scared. Today,Development Seed, the open source shop behind DrupalCon in DC and other endeavors, has released the public beta of Open Atrium.

Open Atrium is a free and open source intranet built as a Drupal distribution, with some impressive functionality available out of the box. Not only is this a solid piece of software to begin with, but its makers are evangelizing what they think could be a transformative paradigm for extending Drupal’s capabilities.

Development Seed has been around for about six years, and in that time they’ve built Drupal-based websites and intranets for the likes of the UN and the World Bank, among many others. Eventually they thought to themselves, why not put together this intranet as a separate distribution? Something extensible that could be deployed at lightning speed?

Enter Open Atrium.

In addition to being a well-constructed Drupal distro, the software is neatly packaged with an array of useful features for internal collaboration. There are blogs, wikis, a calendar, to-do lists, a ticketing system, and a microblogging tool called the Shoutbox. To aggregate the activity from these various parts, there’s a group dashboard.

Oh, and did I mention that it is multilingual too? As a team that first met while working together in Peru, internationalism is a big goal for Atrium. To my knowledge, the only mature intranet to seriously support both English and other tongues is ThoughtFarmer. (Canadians and their French, eh?)

In addition to the built-in functionality, developers can create their own features with relative ease. These features are not just new aspects to the software, but are actually a kind of meta-module, as described by Eric Gundersen of Development Seed in a phone conversation with ReadWriteWeb.

Feature can be released on their own basis or served through a dedicated features server. The real goal behind them is to “make niche [use cases] work,” according to Gundersen. With virtually any features addition to Atrium able to be shared with others, Development Seed hopes that a healthy App Store-like ecosystem will develop that can “turn this in to an exciting business model” for themselves and other developers.

Speaking with Gundersen, you can tell Development Seed has a serious expertise and passion for open source development, and it really shows in Open Atrium. It may not integrate with your legacy apps or be offered by a big enterprise vendor, but from where we’re sitting Open Atrium stacks up very well compared to any proprietary intranet software.

Would you like to start studing something?
Well we are now in the collaborative era. Wikipedia, Linux, blogger, etc…

Education should be free. This is MIT contribution:

ocw.mit.edu

Remember all those whispers about a Google desktop operating system that never seem to go away. You thought they might with the launch of Android, it’s mobile OS, but they persisted. And for good reason, because it’s real.

In the second half of 2010, Google plans to launch the Google Chrome OS, an operating system designed from the ground up to run the Chrome web browser on netbooks. “It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be,” Google says on its blog.

But let’s be clear on what this really is. This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. It even says as much in the first paragraph of its post, “However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.” Yeah, who do you think they mean by that?

With iPhone 3.0 OS upon us, we’ve finally seen the delivery of much-needed push notifications from Apple. Applications that take advantage of this new feature continue to trickle in, and though the selection is slim right now, there are a handful of apps (some on their way) that should allow you to become more productive throughout your day.

With push notifications, you can now stop checking news for breaking stories, or forget opening your IM app to see if someone is looking for you – rather, you can get instantly notified instead. Let’s take a look at a handful of useful apps that can get you the information you crave even more quickly.

iPhone Apps with push notification

Chat and Instant Message Apps

BeejiveIM: Web – iTunes: By far, my favorite instant messaging app for the iPhone, BeejiveIM ($9.99) combines Google Talk, Yahoo!, MSN, AIM and more all under one program for your iPhone. Now you’ll receive IM notifications even when you have the app closed.

YoFrog: Web - iTunes: YoFrog ($.99) is a mobile group chat application that allows you to chat with all your friends or business associates (who also need YoFrog) at once. No more SMS mayhem! With version 1.1 (sent to the App Store last week and waiting for approval), you’ll now be instantly notified when your contacts are trying to chat with you. They also have a free, Lite version.

Textfree Unlimited: Web – iTunes: Textfree ($5.99) allows for unlimited text messages (for one year) to any other US mobile phone. You’ll need to set up a username for people to text you directly, so it’s not ideal for your contacts – but probably not a bad deal for anyone who sends a ton of text messages and doesn’t want to upgrade to their carrier’s unlimited plan. Push notifications for Textfree will now notify users as soon as a new message comes in (imagine that!). They also have a Lite version that limits you to 15 messages per day and is ad-supported.

IM+ with Push: Web – iTunes: A popular instant messaging app, IM+ ($9.99) can now update you in real time when you receive an IM. You can manage IM with all of your contacts from any of the instant messaging platforms, including Skype.

To-do List Apps

RememberTheMilk: Web – iTunes: One of the most popular web-based to do list managers (and my go-to web app), RTM will now instantly notify you when you have a list item that’s due. The RTM iPhone App is free, but requires a Pro account with Remember The Milk for $25 per year.

ToodleDo: Web – iTunes: Another solid to do list manager, you can purchase their iPhone app ($2.99) to use with your free or paid subscription to Toodledo. Push notifications will let you know when an item with a due-date is coming up.

ReQall: Web – iTunes: ReQall (Free) is a unique information manager for to do items and other reminders. If you haven’t used it, I’d suggest trying it for a week to see if it makes sense for you. Open the app, speak, and let their system convert your speech into a to do item. The app now supports push notifications to instantly notify you of upcoming events.

Reminder Apps

BillMinder: Web – iTunes: ($.99 on sale) The next update of this bill reminder application promises push notifications. Just set your due dates and make sure notifications are turned on. Now you’ll never forget to pay a bill again… accidentally, at least.

NotifyMe: Web: Not to be confused with Notify.me, the IM notifier app, NotifyMe (price unkown) is yet to be approved by the app store, but promises notification for anything you can think of. Set it to notify you when your favorite TV show is about to start, when you are supposed to call back a client, or when you need to change the cat box! You’ll need to set up each alert, but the developer promises you can set up a new alert in as little as two taps. The free version (with some limitations) is in iTunes now.

Occasions: Web – iTunes: Occasions ($.99 on sale) notifies you of the birthdays and anniversaries of your iPhone contacts. You can also add more information about each contact or add reminders for people not on your phone’s contact list. For me, this is great. I manage all of my contacts in GMail and they’re synced to my phone automatically, so now I can get notified of the events in their lives, without having to do much extra work.

Other Apps with Push

AP Mobile: Web – iTunes: The popular free news app now supports push notifications of breaking news. However, it seems like it might not be working properly (serious lag time and not all notifications coming through). If this gets fixed, it could be very useful for those of us who can’t stand missing the latest North Korean missile launch.

AreMySitesUp: Web – iTunes: While push notifications are not yet available for this app, they promise that it’s coming. For an app that is built to “notify” you when your web site goes down – push would be ideal, of course. Their app is a free companion to the Premium membership on their site (starts at $25 per year). There is also a Lite version of the app that works with their free plan.

Zillow Real Estate: Web – iTunes: If you’re looking for a home, it doesn’t get much better than Zillow (Free). While you could always find houses for sale near your location (no need to enter an address), you can now get push-notified of new listings that match any of your saved searches.

E*Trade Mobile Pro: Web – iTunes: For the investors out there, you probably know you can already manage your E*Trade account with their iPhone App (Free), but now they’ve introduced push notifications. You’ll get stock and account alerts pushed directly to your phone’s screen. Next time you miss that big opportunity, it won’t be E*Trade’s fault!

Will Innovators Rise to Push?

While the apps that currently use push notifications are handy, I hope that developers will take this opportunity to do some things above and beyond your typical “message waiting” notifiers. E*Trade, Zillow and a few others get the idea. I’m waiting for the app that allows me to get notified of anything I decide I need to be notified about. With all the open APIs out there today, it’s bound to come along.

Things I want pushed:

1. Allow me to be notified when my car or house alarm goes off.

2. Google, let me be notified of a new Google Alert I have set up.

3. How about instead of giving me a big vibrating brick of plastic at the restaurant while I wait for a table, let my phone connect to your system and you can ping me instead.

4. I’d also like to know immediately when Albert Pujols hits another grand slam – or when any other sporting event I’m interested in occurs.

5. What about when I need two days of rain-free weather, within specific degrees, in order to paint a fence or deck. Should I really have to check the weather forecast every day? I’d rather have an app that did the work for me.

Sooner or later, push notification of almost anything will be a reality, making our digital lives even more real-time. What type of alerts would you like pushed to your iPhone?

(from mashable)

You can’t swing a stick on the Web these days without hitting a photo or media sharing service. Some of the most popular ones like Flickr andPhotobucket have become an indispensable part of our online lives. Among the most recent services to enter the game is Expono, a photo sharing, organizing and protecting service with added features like GPS tagging and the ability to connect with social media servicesFacebook, Twitter and Friendfeed. Expono has everything you would expect to find on a media sharing site like online backup, easy sharing, albums and tagging, but adds a whole bunch more features that you might not expect all in one place. It is certainly worth taking a look at.

In September of 2008, Expono went live with its site and made the bold choice to go with 100%cloud computing. Other sites like SmugMug have done this with great success and it feels like a growing trend. The lower cost and ease of scaling made cloud computing a sensible choice for Expono and the company set about building its incredible array of features. Those features, combined with the company’s talented and ambitious team based in Oslo, Norway, make Expono a contender in an increasingly crowded media sharing marketplace.

Expono is a “freemium” service that allows its non-paying users to transfer 10GB of data a month, use 1GB of storage space and have one custom group. The $45 Plus account allows for 100GB of monthly data transfers, 10GB or more of storage space and up to 10 custom groups. Plus users also have access to a lot more features.

You can go here to view a complete list of Expono’s features. It’s an impressive list, if not a little overwhelming, and you simply need to have a look for yourself. Here are a few of the main features we like:

Custom Location in Maps:

Geotagging has become a pretty popular thing to do with photographs. It’s just interesting for us to see on a map where a photo was taken. It gives viewers added perspective, helps the photographer better organize their collections and could even help businesses attract customers. Expono has a feature that lets users drag a pin, place it on a map where the photo was taken and give that place a name for future reference. It’s a simply but useful tool and a nice feature.

Language Translation:

Expono has not forgotten our Spanish-speaking friends and allows English-Spanish translations. The company is frantically working on translation to other languages like Danish, Russian, French and Hebrew and is actively searching for help translating other languages.

Full Quality Photo Sharing on Facebook:

Expono allows users to share full quality photos and activities and connect on Facebook. It looks pretty straightforward and easy to do:

“Simply go to Facebook Settings on Edit Services menu, press the “Connect with Facebook” button and follow the instructions. It takes 10-30 seconds!”

“After your accounts have been connected, you will be able to tag your Facebook friends on your photos like any other contacts you already have in your address book. With your Facebook friends now on Expono, you can add them to your contact groups, give them access to the photos you want them to see and tag them on your photos.

You can post stories to your wall when you favorite a photo, comment or tag a Facebook friend on Expono or just be able to tell the story behind your precious memory. 

Face Tagging and Sharing to FriendFeed and Twitter:

Expono has extended its integration with Friendfeed and Twitter that allows interaction between users of those services:

“Earlier we had automatic photo uploads announcements to Friendfeed and Twitter every time you uploaded new photos to Expono. The functionality allowed our users to inform their followers and subscribers about newly uploaded photos in a innovative way. Now we have extended that to include direct sharing of public album and photos right from the Share menu, giving your subscribers and followers access to view your full quality photos with just 1 click.”

Basically, you connect your Expono account with FriendFeed or Twitter, tag your friends’ photos, add them to your contact groups and give them access to the photos you want them to see.

See what Expono’s small but loyal group of followers are talking about on Twitter and also on FriendFeed.

Oh, did we mention Expono’s context aware media RSS that allows users to enter a URL into your Wii Opera browser URL field, run it fullscreen and watch a slideshow on your TV? Don’t forget authenticated RSS feeds, GPS support, photo editing, iPhoto photocasting, EXIF and IPTC support and much, much more. We also like that Expono takes your privacy very seriously.

This hungry startup (a core team of six, including Co-Founder and CEO Magnus Jonsson) means business when it says there are other exciting things in the works. Expono team member Daniel Bentes hinted at the company’s interest in a developing a mobile site, similar to Flickr’s new mobile site, that uses Apple’s Core Location service right from Safari. Bentes says, “this kind of location awareness will be the future of not only search and discovery services, but even ad-based and paid content, giving even more value to viewers and readers alike. As of now, Apple’s Core Location is the prime example of this ability”. He adds that the company “…would like to implement the same kind of functionality on Expono.com for the coming iPhone version. But would REALLY love to implement it on the main web version as well, enabling this functionality to an even broader audience”.

Like we said, there are other sites out there that do similar things. But when you combine all these things together and they are done well (in this case they did a great job), you get a very powerful and useful tool that just may be worth forking over your hard-earned money for. If you don’t want to take our word for it, check out what our friend @CleverClogs had to say about Expono over on Friendfeed. She is quite knowledgeable and discriminating about such matters. You might want to also go to the Expono Customer Support Community on Get Satisfaction to see what others are saying and to throw in your own two cents.

Be sure to read the Expono blog for even more information and follow the company’s Twitter updates @expono. The service is still in Beta, but you should have no problem getting an invite if you sign up at Expono.com.

(from readwriteweb)

gdgt (like “gadget” — or g-d-g-t) is a new kind of technology site — a social gadget platform that enables you to connect with the community through your gadgets, and connect with your gadgets through the community. It’s a place for you to engage with your devices and hang out with people who are as passionate about their gear as you are.

gdgt is all about providing you with useful, contextual information — both from here and around the web — to help you get more out of the products you already own, as well as help you discover that next great device to add to your collection. We hope that gdgt will be the last personal technology destination you’ll need, and the place to call home for you and your gadgets.

Want to create your own gadget list and start connecting? Go here to sign up for an account.

The place for you, me, and all the gadgets we know

• Sign up for a free account
• Build your gadget list
• Write reviews and discuss your devices
• Connect with other gadget users
• Check out useful tips and tricks
• Find your next new device
• Read up about the latest gadgets

Over the last few years, Pingdom has established itself as a well-regarded uptime monitoring service, but until now, its services were only available to paying customers. Today, however, Pingdom launched a free version of its service. The free service offers all the features of Pingdom’s paid accounts, though users are limited to monitoring just one website or server. This free account also comes with up to 20 SMS alerts per months, which is a nice perk, given that you probably want to know that your site or server is down as soon as possible.

Pingdom gives users a large number of options. You can, for example, choose to have it ping your server anywhere between once per minute or once per hour. Pingdom is also flexible enough to be able to ping specific ports on your server and also check the state of your SMPT, POP3, or IMAP email server – though with the free account, you can obviously only choose one of these.

In addition to its free service, Pingdom also offers a basic account for $9.95 per month, which allows users to monitor up to 5 sites. The company also offers a business account for $39.95 per month, which can check up to 30 sites. The basic account also comes with 20 free SMS alerts, while business account users can receive up to 200 alerts by text message.

The Pogoplug connects your external hard drive to the Internet so you can easily share and access your files from anywhere.

So forget about expensive NAS systems, configuring your firewall and router… buy this box, plug your USB Hard Disk and access to it via web from anywere!

You have even an iPhone app ;-)

Now businesses can run Microsoft Outlook on Google Apps instead of Microsoft Exchange, so they can achieve the cost savings, security and reliability of Google Apps while employees use the interface they prefer for email, contacts and calendar.

Not Quite Gears

“Although we use the same protocol as gears, we don’t use gears per se,” explained Vander Mey. “It’s all saved in outlook PST files. From a technical level [there] is a MAPI provider; when you connect to Exchange we have built our own MAPI provider – we just change what’s going out on the wire – as opposed to licensing from Microsoft.”

Key Features:

E-mail, calendar and contact sync
Synchronize all Outlook fields in both directions, keeping them up-to-date; Uses a Google native e-mail protocol.

Free/Busy and Global Address look up
The Global Address List feature lets you search for and access e-mail addresses of users and resources in your domain.

Simple, user-driven data migration
Letting users move data to Google instead of having to wait for IT admins.

You’ll need Outlook 2003 SP3 or 2007 SP2 (or SP1 with a hotfix), running on Windows XP SP2 (with selected hotfixes) or Vista SP1 (with a hotfix).

If you want to see how Google Apps for Microsoft Outlook works, watch this three minute video.

NASA and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and industry (METI) released the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) to the worldwide public on June 29, 2009.

It covers 99% of the earth’s surface and it is available for downloads.

The GDEM was created by processing and stereo-correlating the 1.3 million-scene ASTER archive of optical images, covering Earth’s land surface between 83 degrees North and 83 degrees South latitudes. The GDEM is produced with 30-meter (98-feet) postings, and is formatted as 23,000 one-by-one- degree tiles. The GDEM is available for download from NASA’s EOS data archive and Japan’s Ground Data System. In this colorized version, low elevations are purple, medium elevations are greens and yellows, and high elevations are orange, red and white.

Firefox 3.5

Today, Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X AB has announced it has acquired The Pirate Bay website for 60 million SEK, which is roughly the equivalent of 7.8 million dollars.

This was almost immediately confirmed by The Pirate Bay. Although the title of their post is entitled “TPB might change owner,” from the text of the post it is obvious that the site has indeed been sold.

Two facts strike the eye: the incredibly small amount for which The Pirate Bay was sold, compared to its huge popularity and worldwide influence, and the fact the site which has always been perceived as independent and quite controversial, was sold at all. The second fact explains the latter: yes, The Pirate Bay is one of the top 100 visited websites in the world, but it (and its owners) is also encumbered by a recent loss of a very important lawsuit.

The Pirate Bay definitely has a lot of value beyond its controversial core business, the torrent tracker. The team behind it launched several of noteworthy projects, and their words and actions are highly influential, which has recently been proved by Sweden’s Pirate Party triumphal entrance into the European Parliament, largely indebted to the attention it received after The Pirate Bay’s owners lost the lawsuit.

Normally, one would think that this sale is just some quick scraping for cash while they still have something to sell. The Pirate Bay founders are trying to convince us otherwise. From their blog post:

“The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don’t worry – be happy!”

This might very well be true, but the bigger problem is: what will happen to The Pirate Bay now that it has a new owner? The founders claim “nothing,” but I remain skeptical.

“If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That’s the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And – you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That’s awesome and will take the heat of us.“

Compare this to the statement from Global Gaming Factory CEO Hans Pandeya:

“The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers’ need faster downloads and better quality”

It is obvious that this is an end of an era: The Pirate Bay will change; the only question is whether its independent spirit and influence – which were always more important than the torrent tracker itself – will live on, or perish.

(from mashable)

The new CompactFlash adapter from Photofast can hold four 16GB microSD cards running in RAID. This makes the slower microSD format as fast as CompactFlash by striping data across all four microSD cards at once.

For those that don’t need 64GB of storage, the CR-7100 will hold one 16GB microSD, while the
CR-7000 holds one 32GB SD. The 7200 will be available for $30 and the 7100 and 7000 for $25, all in July.

We have talked about augmented reality in the past. It is the fact of adding layers of information into a real image. The most immediate application would be with new phones. Using the camera, gps, compass and Internet to add a layer to what you see with information or actionable interactions.

Here you have some examples:

Michael Jackson has died of a heart attack at the age of 50.
He was unique, a legend. We will miss him.

Deep in Bedrock, Clean Energy and Quake Fears – NYTimes.com.

Google has released another product from the labs: Google city tours

The new site can build itineraries for brief trips to locations around the globe in a matter of seconds. At this point details on the new product are fairly sparse — it looks like Google hasn’t written its customary blog post yet, but given how basic the product is it’s pretty easy to figure out how it works.

(from techcrunch)

In the online reservation space, you probably know about OpenTable. The restaurant reservation service’s IPO in a time of drought for IPOs, made big headlines. Now imagine OpenTable for just about everything besides restaurants. That’s BookFresh.

Who might need such a service? A lot more services and individuals than you may realize. While most services have some sort of scheduling system, many aren’t optimized, and can’t adapt on the fly to openings/changes. Massage therapists, dentists, doctors are all perfect examples of who could use such a system, founder Ryan Donahue tells us. He notes that health and beauty has been a particularly hot area.

He knows that because the service has actually been around for a little while, but it was formerly know as HourTown. But BookFresh is a much better name for the service because, “appointments are much like produce items in a grocery store, it’s a perishable thing,” Donahue says.

And a name change isn’t all that in-store for users. BookFresh wants to be the main platform for all online appointment booking on the web. As such, they’ve created APIs to let developers of sites take advantage of their tools. But you don’t have to be a developer to implement the service, anyone can do it with a simple line of code added to their site. This is important because a lot of people BookFresh is targeting are one-person or small operations, that probably don’t have a web development team.

Donahue likens the idea of BookFresh as an appointment platform to PayPal as a payment platform. (And he should know, he used to work at PayPal — incidentally with Jeffrey Jordan, the CEO of OpenTable.) He notes that just like a lot of sites out there don’t want to go through the hassle of building their own payment system, they also don’t want to have to make an online booking system. Sure, it’s not as complex, but it’s still a hassle — and might as well be impossible for little shops/services.

And BookFresh offers some nice things with its platform. One is the ability for businesses that use it to get calls when a customer is requesting an appointment time. From your phone, you can opt to accept or decline the request. That’s perfect for someone like a plumber, who may be always on the go and not able to get to a computer to confirm appointments. And the offers easy integration with Google Calendar and iCal to place appointments in your own personal calendars automatically when you accept them.

Alongside the name change, BookFresh is announcing a partnership with Webs.com, one of the largest sites for building free websites out there. A lot of small business owners are already using it, and now they’ll have one click access to install BookFresh if they choose to.

In terms of monetization, the service is free for the end user, but businesses/individuals who wish to use it will pay a month fee that starts at $19.95. If larger sites choose to sign-on, there are other deals such as revenue sharing that can take place.

In terms of competition, there is Appointment-plus, but their service forces you back to their servers to handle everything. BookFresh’s platform allows users to stay on the page they are already on to set everything up, Donahue says.

One service that BookFresh won’t be competing with is OpenTable. They have no interest in getting into the restaurant space, Donahue says.

Pixelpipe is a content distribution gateway that allows users to publish text, photo, video and audio files once through Pixelpipe and have the content distributed across over 75 social networks, photo/video sites and blogs, and online storage. They provide a number of mobile & desktop applications for users, liberating their content and sharing their life.

I just added the iPhone 3GS app and configured pipes to this blog, youtube (for videos), facebook (videos, photos and posts) and twitter.

This the THE tool.

UK plugs are bulky. We all know that. For security reason they should have a fuse so when traveling with a macbook air for instance, the adaptor takes more space than the computer.

Watch this video because it is a great solution!

Ping.fm is a simple and free service that makes updating your social networks a snap, with over 40 social networking sites and adding more all the time.

Between ping.fm straight forward posting methods and advanced custom triggers, we make it easy for you to post your messages exactly where you want them to go.

Give it a try!

(from readwriteweb)

A new SMS and email notification service is helping local government agencies reach citizens when and where it will do the most good: As soon as possible, and wherever that citizen happens to be.

Depending on whether agencies in a selected location are participating (currently, nearly 1,000 agencies have signed on since the company’s launch in March), users can sign up at the Nixle website to subscribe to emails, web alerts, and text messages about community issues from tornado watches and traffic accidents to local robberies and fugitives on the loose. Nixle moreover provides a painless way for local agencies to transition into modern times and notify community members of critical details in ways that will have an immediate impact.

“Any tool that helps us improve public safety is worth using,” Oklahoma County Sheriff John Whetsel is quoted as saying in a Nixle press release. “People rarely go anywhere these days without access to a cell phone or the Internet. With Nixle, we’re always able to relay important information, thereby improving the community’s quality of life.”

Users can add as many locations as they like to receive alerts for different areas; for example, I know of several female relatives who would be more than happy to know of police alerts in the various towns I travel to and worry/overreact accordingly.

Users can also choose which kinds of alerts to receive and what on medium they prefer to receive them.

Nixle claims to be the first authenticated, secure service for connecting municipal agencies and community organizations to residents in real time. It uses the Google Maps API to determine and display location and proximity. The company is privately funded and its services are free to all governments, government agencies and organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and end users.

As geographic location and proximity become more and more relevant to users and the wealth of information about locations increases, applications such as Nixle seem like the next logical step in law enforcement and public safety. It’s great that these alerts are available in real time; it would also be great to see a Brightkite-esque “check-in” process made available for users. For example, if I’m at a friend’s house and a store down the street is robbed, it would be great to have the information and know to stay safely inside for a little while.

Then again, real-time availability of information is just as useful as location-based information, particularly when issues of public safety are involved.

What do our readers think? Is a real-time, geo-specific alert system the future of law enforcement? Or is it creepy, Big Brother, Minority Report territory?

(from techcrunch)

There really isn’t much to say here beyond what are being reported as the facts. Apparently, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had a liver transplant two months ago, the Wall Street Journal reports tonight. When you read that, it’s pretty shocking — but not that surprising.

After Apple initially tried to pass off Jobs’ gaunt physique as a minor ailment, Jobs himself came out in January and announced that the undisclosed illness he was suffering from would require him to take aleave of absence from the company. He has been on that leave ever since. But the good news in the WSJ report is that Jobs is in fact feeling well enough now to return to work as scheduled at the end of this month — which is just days away.

But here’s an interesting nugget from the story:

When he does return, Mr. Jobs may be encouraged by his physicians to initially “work part-time for a month or two,” a person familiar with the thinking at Apple said. That may lead Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, to take “a more encompassing role,” this person said. The person added that Mr. Cook may be appointed to Apple’s board in the not-too-distant future.

That seems to suggest that the transition is well underway for Cook to eventually lead Apple. Thatshouldn’t be a surprise, Cook has done a masterful job in Jobs’ absence, pretty much doubling the value of the company’s stock during that time. Jobs has long been thought to be perhaps more important to his company than any single figure is to their’s. But his time away has seemingly proven otherwise. Of course, there was already likely a multi-year pipeline for products when Jobs left.

The business angle is the important one here. Some have alleged that Jobs and Apple have held news of Jobs’ health too closely for a publicly traded company. But Apple’s board of directors, which includes Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Vice President Al Gore, apparently were getting updates on the situation. Here’s what the WSJ had to say on that:

At least some Apple directors were aware of the CEO’s surgery. As part of an agreement with Mr. Jobs in place before he went on leave, some board members have been briefed weekly on the CEO’s condition by his physician.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t note that the timing of this story appears favorable for Apple. This news breaks late on a Friday, after Apple has just held a successful launch of a very high profile new product, the iPhone 3G S, that sent the stock soaring today. Obviously, the market won’t be open again until Monday.

In 2004, it was disclosed that Jobs had suffered from pancreatic cancer, which was cured. But, a side effect of that cancer is likely the thing that lead to this liver transplant, many doctors familiar with such things have stated.

While little is known about the actual operation, the belief is that it was done in Tennessee, because first and foremost, the waiting list of a liver there is much lower than the rest of the country. From the WSJ:

The specifics of Mr. Jobs’s surgery couldn’t be established, but according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the transplant network in the U.S., there are no residency requirements for transplants. Having the procedure done in Tennessee makes sense because its list of patients waiting for transplants is shorter than in many other states. According to data provided by UNOS, in 2006, the median number of days from joining the liver waiting list to transplant was 306 nationally. In Tennessee, it was 48 days.

It’s good to hear that Jobs has apparently recovered well from the very serious procedure, and we look forward to him returning to work, when he’s ready.

Layar is a sort of browser derived from location based services and works on mobile phones that include a camera, GPS and a compass. Layar is first avaliable for handsets with the Android. It works as follows: Starting up the Layar application automatically activates the camera. The embedded GPS automatically knows the location of the phone and the compass determines in which direction the phone is facing. Each partner provides a set of location coordinates with relevant information which forms a digital layer. By tapping the side of the screen the user easily switches between layers. This makes Layar a new type of browser which combines digital and reality, which offers an augmented view of the world.

In other words you take your phone, the GPS and compass locate you, but instead of opening the map app, you open the camera, and you focus whatever you want… like a building. There will be a layer on top of the camera with all the info: if you have in your view a restaurant, maybe the menu, if it is a window, maybe is a house for rent so you have the price and the number of bedrooms. Cool, isn’t it?
Take a look at the video:

Opera Unite is extending what you are able to do online. Opera Unite harnesses the power of today’s fast connections and hardware, allowing all of us to help define the future landscape of the Web, one computer at a time. Read about how Opera Unite is going to change the way we interact on the Web…. in a couple of words a browser with P2P technology.

The future? I don’t know, but a very good idea… indeed.

Opera Unite is

Amazon is releasing the source code of the kindle devices to the world. It’s fairly basic Linux underneath (kernel 2.6.22 on the latest 2.1 software). What’s unclear without compiling one of these and booting it up (to our untrained eyes, anyway) is whether Amazon stripped out its various DRM and licensed codec support — MP3 and Audible seem very likely candidates for explosion, even if turns out Amazon did leave in its own Kindle Book DRM. We’re also lacking an actual specific license for the code, though the folder we unpacked the OS to is called “gplrelease,” so hopefully we’re looking at the GNU General Public License — which would mean manufacturers can take and repurpose this code to build their own Kindle clone / destroyer / gentle homage.

Skip the first two minutes, but devteam has managed to unlock iphone 3.0. Wow!
They will release this for the public on Friday! I can’t wait!

We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth’s climate.

The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.

For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film.

HOME official website

http://www.home-2009.com

PPR is proud to support HOME

http://www.ppr.com

HOME is a carbon offset movie

http://www.actioncarbone.org

More information about the Planet

http://www.goodplanet.info

Watch it online in HD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

If you wish to download the movie.

WHO has just raised the alert to the maxim level of pandemia. Here the official communication:

The new Influenza A (H1N1) virus has continued to spread to many more counties and with increasing numbers of people affected. There is verified community spread in multiple locations. The phase change is not a signal that the virus has become more virulent but reflects wider geographic spread. WHO is monitoring the global course of the epidemic and the severity of illness which could change over time and also manifest itself differently in different locations and countries.

As a consequence of the continued spread of the virus it is possible that cases of Influenza A (H1N1) could occur among WHO staff and their families. We should not be unduly alarmed if this occurs, as to date, most cases of illness are mild and self limiting and do not require hospitalization.

However, we would like to remind you that the most effective way to reduce risk of infection is to practice effective personal hygiene. This includes washing your hands frequently, covering your mouth and nose for coughs and sneezes with a tissue or your sleeve and avoiding close contact with sick people. These measures will help keep people healthy and decrease the number of people around you from becoming ill.

Ø What are the signs and symptoms of infection?

Early signs of Influenza A(H1N1) are flu-like, including fever, cough, headache, muscle and joint pain, sore throat and runny nose, and sometimes vomiting or diarrhoea.

Ø If you do become sick with flu-like symptoms, the recommendations made earlier for access to care remain valid at this stage, as there is no community transmission identified:

□ Stay at home, limit contact with others.

□ Staff residing in Switzerland: contact by telephone your own treating physician who will evaluate the situation and refer suspect cases to the appropriate health facility for laboratory investigation.

Patients suspected of Influenza A (H1N1) should be isolated at home pending the result of the test (24-48h) and avoid close contacts with others.

Patients with confirmed Influenza A (H1N1) can be treated at home if there is no complication. Isolation is recommended as well as surveillance of very close contacts. According to current Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) and cantonal guidelines, only close contacts will be identified. These are defined as: “people living in the same home as the patient, who shared eating utensils and plates, hugged or kissed or cared for the patient one day before and up to 7 days after onset of symptoms”. They will be informed, receive prevention information on a case by case basis (daily fever monitoring for 7 days).

itpints is the new itpints is a real-time search engine. It’s not like Google, nope, with itpints you wont be able to know the aswer to any question. Instead, with itpints you can know what is people publishing on internet about anything of your interest, at the same time you’re searching for it. The relevancy of any result is given by when it was posted on internet. The posibilities are infinite, you can use it to follow what is happening on a concert of your favourite band, or search for news that are not even in the newspapers yet!

Right now there are some other sites like itpints: yauba, scoopler, one riot and social mention (which I think is the best of these). Why another one?, well, if you already used some of these sites surely noticed that most of the results on them are from Twitter. With itpints you will have a better idea of what is happening on internet because itpints do search on more sources than the other sites, and you have the Advanced Search also, where you can filter the results you don’t want to see.
If you need to be updated all the time, you are able to subscribe to the rss feed of your search, so you can receive the results directly into your preffered feed reader without the need of visiting the site!

Compete is an online tool that allows you compare in a very neat way, the trafic of several websites. Very handy.

Yesterday it was the Apple’s WWDC 2009 (Development Conference). They announced a new line of laptops (basically all based on the macbook pro). No more macbooks without the “pro” because they added a firewire 800 to the 13 inches model. They have also removed the slot in the left and replaced with an SD card reader in all the 3 models. Now all up to 8Gb ram and up to more than 3GHz processors and battery life of 7 hours. Two more than in previous models.  Also all cheaper.

They talked about new Snow Leopard for only 29 usd as an upgrade. Spotlight rewritten and many other goodies.

iPhone 3.0 with copy paste but not multitasking. Much faster and exchange support and … Tom Tom!!

Finally new iPhone 3GS. Twice as fast, 3MPx camera with video and video editing. Integrated compass and better battery life. 3G up to 7.2Mbps, voice control… pretty cool.

(published in techcrunch by Jason Kincaid)

Here’s some bittersweet news for those of you eagerly awaiting Google’s Chrome browser for Mac or Linux: tonight Google is publicly releasingdeveloper versions of the Chrome browser for both operating systems, and anyone will be able to download them. Unfortunately you won’t be able to ditch Safari or Firefox just yet — these builds are not close to stable, and you won’t be able to use them on a day to day basis. But you’ll still be able to put something in your Dock that says Chrome, so that’s something, right?

For those who haven’t been paying close attention to the progress of Google’s browser on platforms other than Windows, you’ve actually been able to download builds of the open-source project behind Chrome, which is called Chromium, for quite a while. In our testing these builds have proven to be quite speedy, somewhat stable, but nowhere near ready for prime time — they don’t yet support plugins (including Flash), and there are a number of options that you’d expect out of a browser that simply aren’t there yet.

This developer version of Chrome is essentially a rebranded version of the Chromium project, and doesn’t represent a much-improved new branch that Google has quietly been working on. It still doesn’t support plugins, and there are still some other missing key features, like printing.

My initial impression to tonight’s news was that, while the stable version of Chrome might be a little ways away, tonight’s release might indicate that we’re at least getting close. Unfortunately, it still sounds like we have a while to wait (or at least, Google doesn’t want to get our hopes up early). This is the first part of Google’s three step release channel, which begins with the Developer version, continues to Beta, and finishes up with a build the company is comfortable deeming ‘Stable’. We’re at step one.

Google’s spokesman went as far as to say that the company doesn’t want us to download this version of Chrome unless we’re ready for frequent crashes and a generally not-so-great experience. But if you’re looking to start testing the evolving browser under the name ‘Chrome’ rather than ‘Chromium’, then have at it.

Yeap, Microsoft just launched a new search engine
bing

Here’s the full video of the Google Wave demo from  Google’s IO conference in San Francisco.

Techcrunch review of Google Wave is here. Exclusive interview with the founders is here, and our video and notes from the press conference is here.

Google Wave looks to be an integrated communications platform that brings together email, chat, photo-sharing, and collaborative editing features. Google describes a ‘wave’ as “equal parts conversation and document” and the Wave team basically sees it as a replacement for email and other collaboration tools.

You will need nearly an hour an a half to watch the full video. Looks like a very promising tool, maybe next step in a fusion for collaboration: email+IM+photosharing+wiki. Could be the next big thing.

Finally Google Chrome has been updated to support add ons. Is that the end of firefox advantage?

Google Chrome’s extension system. The long-awaited feature will finally deliver what Firefox and IE users have had for ages: a way to add more tools, services, and additional features to the browser.

(from dailymail)

At first glance, it looks as if some natural disaster has shaken away the walls of these buildings to reveal architecture hidden for thousands of years.

And at second and third glance, it looks like that too.

But these spectacular images are not the unexpected result of an earthquake.

  

Treasure trove: An Egyptian style mural adorns a wall in Los Gatos, California. Pugh paints people into the mural to heighten the 3D effect

  

Greek tragedy: But the Doric-style columns apparently exposed in this university hall are nothing but paint

The incredibly lifelike scenes are actually huge works of art, painted on the side of perfectly intact buildings. Even that woman peering into the ruin above is not real.

The paintings, which have fooled many, were created by John Pugh, who specialises in trompe l’oeil – or ‘trick of the eye’ – art.

He uses his skills to delude the viewer into seeing 3D scenes painted on flat surfaces.

The Californian-born artist said: ‘It seems almost universal that people take delight in being visually tricked.’

His works can been seen all over the world, including in the artist’s home state. The ‘earthquake’ work shown here is located on Main Street in the town of Los Gatos and was created following a genuine earthquake in 1989.

The temple-like interior apparently exposed features jaguar gods, regarded as the creators of earthquakes by the Mayans.

Wonder wave: John Pugh’s Mana Nalu mural in Honolulu. Fire crews rushed to save the children from the mighty wave – before realising it was an optical illusion

  

Blurring the lines: A mural entitled Art Imitating Life Imitating Art Imitating Life, at the Cafe Trompe L’oeil, in San Jose, California

Another picture is of Taylor Hall at the California State University, Chico, where Pugh studied. The mural features Doric-style Greek columns behind the seemingly shattered wall and is called Academe.

Another work, featuring a colossal wave about to crash on to a pavement in Honolulu, Hawaii, took two months of studio work to plan and a further six months to execute with the help of 11 other artists.

It features Queen Lili’uokalani, the last monarch of the Hawaiian Islands with Duke Kahanamoku – the ultimate father of surf.

The scene is so realistic that just as it was near completion, it attracted the attention of the fire brigade, which stopped its truck in the middle of traffic.

Mr Pugh said: ”They jumped out to rescue the children in the mural. They got about 15 feet away and then doubled over laughing when they realised what it was.’ 

  

Having a cow: Valentine’s Day, a mural unveiled during the Global Mural Conference in Twentynine Palms, California

Trick of the eye: John inserts a passer-by into the mural painted in Santa Cruz, California, entitled Bay in a Bottle, who is watching the ocean scene

  

Take a pew: This looks like a nice spot to rest your weary feet on a sidewalk in Sarasota County Health Center, Florida

  

Artist’s impression: John Pugh hard at work. He is currently working on murals for a police station in California and a recreation centre in Calgary, Canada

This is the desired effect and Pugh enjoys the community-bonding properties of his public works.

He works on a large scale in public and residential areas and his paintings can be seen all over the world from New Zealand to Hawaii  – with many telling a story of the area where they are positioned.

Pugh is used to people’s amazed reactions when they pass his murals.

He said: ‘They say “wow did you see that. I thought that was real.”

‘Public art can link people together and stimulate a sense of pride within the community.

‘These life-size illusions allow me to communicate with a very large audience.

‘It seems almost universal that people take delight in being visually tricked.’

Pugh is currently working on a mural for a police station in California and also one for a recreation centre in Calgary, Canada.

The new generation Twitter client for people who value their time and are tired of information noise.

Mixero.

Nokia phone owners have access to the Ovi Store, where they can get a variety of apps. Like iphone’s apple store or android’s google one. Looks like the way to go.

When Rodrigo Rosenberg turned up dead on Mother’s Day in an upscale neighborhood in Guatemala City, his murder was seen as little more than another execution-style shooting in one of Latin America’s most dangerous countries. Now, after a video emerged in which Rosenberg accused Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom of orchestrating the murder, the killing has sparked civic unrest that threatens to topple the President of this fledgling democracy. Thousands of protesters have demonstrated daily in front of the presidential palace, calling for Colom’s resignation. And politicians have said Colom should step aside during the investigation into Rosenberg’s death. “This is the most serious political crisis the country has faced since the signing of the peace accords” in 1996, said Anita Isaacs, a Haverford College political science professor who studies democratization in Guatemala. “The country is hanging on by a thread.”

The video spread across the Internet after family members handed it out during Rosenberg’s funeral on Monday. In the 18-minute tape, a seemingly calm Rosenberg, sitting behind a desk and microphone, alleges that Colom, the First Lady and two associates were involved in murder, corruption and money laundering. The group, he says, filtered public funds through a state-owned bank for personal gain and to finance drug traffickers. Rosenberg then claims that after Khalil Musa, a prominent businessman and bank board member, had learned of the Coloms’ scheme, Musa and his daughter were shot to death in front of a shopping center in April. Rosenberg says the President signed off on the killings. On Sunday, Rosenberg was shot in the head while riding his bicycle.

PLAY.FM is the most comprehensive audio database for DJ and club culture on the internet. More than 12.000 DJ sets, live recordings and radio sessions can be streamed free of charge and on-demand.

Upload, track list wiki, meta-shop
DJs can upload and release studio mixes, radio sessions and event recordings themselves and check their audience statistics. The PLAY.FM audio player visualizes the entire set in wave-form, enabling the user to set time markers in order to identify and inquire about unknown tracks in wiki form. Each identified track is linked to the meta-shop: currently 1.4 million tracks from 5 different online shops can be compared on PLAY.FM’s metashop where tracks are categorized according to quality and/or pricing – 20 further shops will follow in the next weeks.

Promotion platform for the club-music industry
Labels, clubs, bookers and organizers use PLAY.FM as an effective promotion platform: They promote their artists, releases and events by posting live recordings, radio sessions and DJ sets ranging from jazz, house, drum and bass up to techno. On PLAY.FM one can reach music industry’s protagonists, distributors, as well as music lovers from over 140 countries who are able to listen to all of PLAY.FM’s recordings for free and on-demand. Additionally, PLAY.FM’s widget offers users and content partners the possibility to embed mixes into their websites.

Further features scheduled
In order to give users a prompt insight into their desired local scene, PLAY.FM’s “Cities” pages will illustrate all of PLAY.FM’s content on city maps. A PLAY.FM “Channel” will give music magazines, online forums and advertisers the opportunity to present text, image, video as well as interactive flash formats together with PLAY.FM content.

Positioning
The comprehensiveness and depth of PLAY.FM’s content, enable the user to constantly discover new music styles, labels, artists, djs, and clubing locations. With brand-new applications such as the track list wiki, meta-shop and the exact acquisition of audience statistics, PLAY.FM provides for more transparency and intends to actively contribute to the fair distribution of music licensing.

(Jason Kincaid from crunchgear.com)

We’ve gotten our hands on the COOL-ER, a new Ebook reader coming out in two weeks that’s sporting a (relatively) low $250 price tag and a case that looks like an over-sized iPod Nano (it’s also coming in 8 Applesque colors). Interead, the small startup that built Cool-er, is obviously trying to bring Ebooks to a new market, shunning some of the features seen on the Kindle in favor of a lower price-point and a broader appeal. And it just might work.

Unlike Amazon’s device, Cool-er has no wireless connectivety, so you can’t buy books online or browse Wikipedia, nor does it have Amazon’s oddly controversial text-to-speech functionality. But it’s also over $100 cheaper than the Kindle, and while some other devices (like the Sony Reader) are in the same price range, Cool-er also has a very unique look – I’m sure many people (especially younger crowds) would rather sport a colorful Ebook reader than the beige and black color schemes that currently dominate the market.

The device is quite light, weighing in at around 6.25 ounces (the Kindle 2 weighs in at a comparatively hefty 10.2 ounces). Cool-er has 1 GB of integrated memory, which you can expand with up to 4 more GB through the SD card slot. Battery life on a single charge is around 8000 page turns, which the company says should last around three weeks. And the device supports JPEG, PDF, EPUB, and TXT files, as well as DRM for PDF and EPUB. You can find full specs here.

So how does the Cool-er work when it comes down to actually reading?

I’ve been using the original Kindle regularly for a few months now, so any gripes I have with Cool-er may have more to do with what I’m used to rather than what’s actually wrong with the device. That said, I’m not a big fan of the navigation wheel. It’s nearly flush with the device case, and while you can still feel for it with your fingers without looking, you’re going to have to apply some force to the button to change the page. Not a lot of force, mind you, but coming from Kindle’s massive shoulder buttons I could see it getting frustrating. Aside from these issues, the device works perfectly well for reading. You can change between a number of different fonts and sizes, the device supports eight different languages (including Chinese and Russian), and you can easily rotate text if you’d like to switch to a portrait mode (you’ll have to press a button, but seriously – do you really care if your E-reader has an accelerometer)?

The biggest issue I think new Cool-er users will face at this point is actually getting books onto the device. The process is actually quite simple: drag the book from your computer desktop onto the Cool-er using Windows Explorer or Finder on the Mac. It’s very easy if you’re comfortable around computers, but many people would likely prefer some kind of content manager connected to the Cool-er book store that they could sync to their device, so they wouldn’t have to worry about drag-and-drop. For the same reason Apple’s iTunes played a key role in making the iPod popular, Cool-er will need a similar application if it wants to appeal to a broad audience.

The company is also launching an Ebook store alongside the device at CoolerBooks.com, which has over 750,000 available books. Anyone can buy books at 20% off list price, but Cool-er owners will get an extra 5% off across all books. This is a fairly good price, but when it comes to New York Times Bestsellers, Amazon leaves it in the dust – on the Kindle, a bestseller costs $9.99, while CoolerBooks appears to charge anywhere from $3-10 more per book. That said, CoolerBook does have significantly lower prices on some books that are not bestsellers, and the Cool-er’s initial sale price is obviously much lower.

Another factor that will play an important role in Cool-er’s success will be its availability. CEO Neil Jones says that deals are currently in the works to sell the device in retail stores, which could be a huge boon for the company. Cool-er may not have all of the features of some of the other Ebook readers, but if its eight colorful models are sitting on the shelf next to the Sony readers and other less striking devices, it could do quite well regardless.

(by Erick Schonfeld of techcrunch.com)