RobotsDinner writes "Anil Dash has a thoughtful exploration of Apple's notorious devotion to secrecy, and argues that not only is there a limit to its feasibility, but that recent events show Apple has reached that limit already. 'If the ethical argument is unpersuasive, then focus on the long-term viability of your marketing and branding efforts, and realize that a technology company that is determined to prevent information from being spread is an organization at war with itself. Civil wars are expensive, have no winners, and incur lots of casualties.'"
Some might argue it's the most subtle update in the iPhone family thus far, but Apple's iPhone 3GS still seems to be moving the sales meter, regardless. The latest and greatest iPhone officially hit the market a few weeks back, and even though Apple claims that demand is still far outpacing supply, we're of the belief that most everyone who wanted one has managed to snag one by now. During our time with the unit, we definitely didn't find too many reasons to upgrade from the already solid iPhone 3G, but given that you probably did anyway, we're eager to hear how things have turned out. Did you upgrade from a prior iPhone to this? Are you joining the iPhone family for the first time? What gripes have you found impossible to ignore? Are you still up in arms about AT&T's inability to provide MMS / tethering service? Are you, like us, completely roiled by the unit's lack of multitasking abilities? Go ahead and let it rip in comments below -- we're guessing Apple has about 11 months or so to take your opinions to heart.
katarn writes "General Fusion is a startup proposing they can create commercially viable fusion using acoustic shock waves, triggered by 220 precisely controlled pneumatic pistons. Their approach is based on a US Naval research concept called 'Linus' and old research done by General Atomics. They feel we now have the high-speed, digital processing capable of pulling off this feat, where decades ago the technology was not available. I think we can hold off on the 'vaporware' claims for a bit; everyone is aware of the horrible track record for turning fusion concepts into reality, but they don't claim to be the first with the idea or that there are not substantial challenges in the way. If nothing else, it is a fascinating concept." Los Alamos National Laboratory has further details on this type of fusion, and longtime LANL researcher Ronald Kirkpatrick did an external assessment (PDF) of General Fusion's plans. Popular Science had a lengthy story about the company a while back. The reason they're back in the headlines now is that they've secured enough funding to begin work on a prototype reactor.
PlayStation 3 Konsole slim" from Sony Computer Entertainment, and really, it doesn't take years of foreign language class to figure out that English translation. It's listed as "platform independent" (har) and has its own Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN), but on the flip side, we're lacking a picture, release date, or any other tangible details. Can't say we've got a feel for the site's track record on random listings, but after all the rumorsandpossible sightings as of late, it really makes ya wonder.
Online advertising stops its nose-dive — Second-quarter global ad revenues, at $7.864 billion, were down 3.4 percent from a year ago. But admit it: After the past year, a 3.4 percent drop almost feels like growth.Is this a “reset” of base level from which the ad market can now grow again? TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld plots the line and explains the economist-speak. Erick, I hate to be all VentureBeat fussy, but do you have more granular data to work with? I’d love to see week-to-week revenues, rather than a plot that jumps in three-month increments. Really, why aren’t we able to keep a real-time ticker on our screens by now?
Windows 7 pricing is higher than home buyers had probably hoped — A box of Windows 7 Home Premium will cost about $150. Upgrade packages will be in the $80-90 range. Buying made simple: You want the Premium edition. The Basic edition lacks the faster, slicker Aero interface that uses your desktop or laptop’s graphics chip — yes, your laptop has one. The Professional and Ultimate editions have office-IT-network tools and applications that only your boss should pay for. Stick with Premium, which really should be called Normal, and you’ll be fine. Ed Bott at ZD has the long version.
Windows Mobile, meanwhile, has been kicked out of Motorola in favor of Android - Om Malik talked to Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha, who explained that Motorolla has decided that the way for a smartphone handset maker to succeed is to pick one OS and focus everything on it.
David Pogue’s Take Back the Beep campaign continues — The New York Times’ Broadway-trained gadget reviewer has struck a nerve with his attack on “the obnoxious, drawn-out, 15-second instructions that Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile tack on to your own voice mail greeting” in order to run up your monthly minutes usage.
Here’s the cheat sheet on which key to press to skip past voicemail intros on America’s four major carriers.
Verizon: *
Sprint: 1
T-Mobile: #
AT&T: #
Pogue today recounts the responses he got from readers, who seemed unusually polite, and from wireless carrier PR people, some of whom seemed to barely understand their own voicemail systems.
Space Shuttle Endeavor puts in a perfect landing — Seven astronauts spent the last sixteen days docked to the International Space Station, building an addition to Japan’s billion-dollar lab. Shuttle landings are cool. While the Shuttle is smaller than an airliner, it comes in a lot faster — 215 mph rather than 160 — and with its nose high in the air. Then it pops out a 40-foot parachute to brake itself to 110 mph before rolling to a stop.
With our CwF + RtB experiment in full swing, we've asked some of the participating artists/authors to provide some guest posts about their own experience with new business models and new promotions. Amanda Palmer, one of the artists involved in our Techdirt Music Club, is someone you're hopefully familiar with by now. She's really been at the forefront of experimenting with these sorts of business models and agreed to write a guest post about her experiences.
As part of this, we're also doing an early announcement of the special promotion that we'll be running next week only. If you don't want the entire Techdirt Music Club, you can just order Amanda Palmer's part: the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book of photographs and short stories -- signed by both Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman -- and Amanda's signed CD as well. That's available now... but only through August 10th until midnight PT.
And here's Amanda's post:
i've been talking with a lot of folks lately about "why this works".
the things i find myself saying over and over to people is that
twitter and the new networking technologies are simply new tools for
artists who have been super-connecting with their fans all along.
i started my band in 2000. we didn't play rock clubs. we played in our
friends houses, in our own houses, in art galleries, in lofts, at
parties. then we gradually brought the party indoors, into clubs that
would book us once they knew we'd bring in 50 drinking/paying bodies.
i treated our email list like gold. i obsessively stayed up all night
and added named after every show. we took the time to meet every
single fan who wanted to meet us after every show (i still do this,
and i know that brian does it in his current punk band, world/inferno). but this wasn't because i felt it was mandatory....i did
this because we LIKED it.
i got into music-making in the first place because i was so hungry to
just CONNECT WITH PEOPLE.
to me, the meeting&greeting was part of the reward, not a chore. but
not all bands think like this. we were lucky. we liked it.
i'm still lucky, because i STILL LIKE IT. i actually love sitting down
for an hour or two and bantering back and forth with my fans on
twitter. they're all intelligent, funny, cool people. very few of them
are mundane or obnoxious. very few of them ask stupid questions.
there's a huge amount of respect between me and the fans and between
the fans themselves. i feel proud that my music has brought all these
freaks together, and i still like attending the party.
for artists who have NO desire to do this, it's quite a quandary
nowadays, because many fans have come to expect it.
it's a slight catch-22: it's impossible to hide and it's impossible to
fake.
and artists who have huge walls about what they're willing to share can
end up seeming irritated....and letting someone else tweet for you is
the kiss of death.
the last tweet a fan ever really wants to see is : "hey THE ARTIST'S
fans!! check out THE ARTIST'S new single, available now on itunes!!!"
people hate that shit. not when you know you can go somewhere else and
get: "fucking hell, let me share with you guys i'm feeling..."
re: the connecting to fans, and giving them a reason to buy....
what i've found is that once people trust and love you as an artist,
some percentage of them will buy ANYTHING if they know the actual
exercise
is to simply put money in the artist's pocket. case in point: when i
did my hock-weird-shit-from-my-apartment webcast auction a few months
ago, fans wrote in
asking if they could bid on the glasses and wine bottle we were
drinking from. the answer: fuck yes. why not? they sold for a few
hundred dollars each.
the reason? these fans knew that it wasn't the objects themselves that
were important. they knew that i was raising rent money, and they
wanted to help; wine bottle was pure symbolism.
another fan tweeted in that they'd love to get involved by buying a
signed postcard for $20...would i do that? when i told them that sure,
i'd do it, 70 other fans wrote in and wanted one for themselves....
and most of them KNEW that i have a section of my website that states
clearly that if you simply send me your address, i'll send you a
signed postcard...FOR FREE!
but they wanted to help. and be involved. and involved them i
did...before ending the webcast i read off a list of all their names.
i knew they'd dig that...and i hadn't promised anything.
i just knew that being recognized means so much when you're sitting
randomly alone behind your computer, watching a webcast, feeling only
slightly connected.
so:
connecting with fans, if they LIKE YOUR ART, automatically gives them
a "reason to buy", even if it's NOT ART, because they want to SUPPORT
YOUR HABIT.
i think we're going to see more and more of that as fans come to
realize that the music is free but comes with the emotional price-tag
of supporting
the artist in any way the artist puts their proverbial hat out (merch,
mementos, special packages, literal/web-based tip jars...or wine
bottles).
how much do you think the hardcore fans who buy the $300 vinyl/art-print bundles would simply buy a random pretty book of monochrome
prints by an unknown artist in a bookstore?
my guess: they will look at the bundle book a few times, admire it,
appreciate it, put it on the coffee table or the bookshelf. and they
will listen to the vinyl....probably.
but are most of those people vinyl-philes? art print collectors?
the point is, they will get two other things that are more important:
bragging rights and the knowledge that they were singlehandedly
involved with and supporting an artist's personal enterprise.
because they love the artist, and they want to support him/her, period.
but the nature of fandom & its responsibilities is going to have to
change to the same extent that the musicians are going to have to look
at their lives & livelihoods (as "working musicians") more honestly.
as musicians rely more and more on fans/listeners/audience within this
kind of honor system, the fans/listeners/audience will have to ante up
or the system just won't work.
my hope is that the future culture of music will equate the pleasure of hearing a brand new band in a
teeny club with the moral responsibility to toss them a few bucks to keep
going, instead of just walking into the night, feeling lucky.
p.s. i created this video about a month ago with my fans at the beach
at the tail end of a twittered flash-gig in LA. watch it, it's awesome.
Thanks Amanda! To get the signed book & CD check out the Amanda Palmer Special, or get the entire Techdirt Music Club for just a little more. Or, if you want to go all out before midnight PT on Monday the 3rd, if you buy both the Techdirt Music Club and the Techdirt Book Club before midnight PT, August 3rd, we'll throw in a free Techdirt hoodie, or a free lunch with Mike Masnick.
iPhone OS 3.0.1 update released, fixes SMS vulnerability Looks like Apple pulled the trigger on patching that nasty iPhone SMS vulnerability a little earlier than we expected. It's not some lightweight, either: you're looking at 280MB of love here, so get downloading, friends.
Nokia Surge review Some might say that this is the most un-Nokia-like Nokia device produced in quite some time (if not ever), but remember, this one was custom made for US consumers and AT&T's audience
We've had a bunch of stories about Apple's rather arbitrary nature in rejecting iPhone apps it doesn't like -- including ones where it claims that they're not allowed because they compete with Apple. However, Apple's recent decision to reject Google's Voice application didn't just attract general public interest in Apple's policies, it appears to have awoken the latest crop of FCC bosses. Yes, the FCC has requested more info from Apple, AT&T and Google concerning Apple's rejection of the Google app. I wonder how the random Apple drone who made that decision is feeling right now?
Either way, this isn't good for anyone. The FCC's reasoning is that it:
"has a mission to foster a competitive wireless marketplace, protect and empower consumers, and promote innovation and investment."
That's actually a bit of a stretch on the FCC's actual mandate. And as ridiculous as I think Apple's actions are here, having the FCC get involved doesn't seem good for anyone either. The FCC shouldn't be involved in deciding what applications get put on phones. Apple's decision has angered a bunch of people, with some swearing off the iPhone because of it. In those cases, those people have other options and other phones to go to. The situation doesn't require the FCC to get involved. It should just require Apple coming to its senses and getting rid of its silly policy of outright rejections of apps it doesn't like.
eldavojohn writes "A new study has found that game characters tend not to reflect cultural diversity. According to the paper from researchers across four universities (PDF): 'A large-scale content analysis of characters in video games was employed to answer questions about their representations of gender, race and age in comparison to the US population. The sample included 150 games from a year across nine platforms, with the results weighted according to game sales. ... The results show a systematic over-representation of males, white and adults and a systematic under-representation of females, Hispanics, Native Americans, children and the elderly.' The researchers also note that games 'function as crucial gatekeepers for interest in science, technology, engineering and math,' and that without these groups represented properly, 'it may place underrepresented groups behind the curve.'"
In an informal interview, a RIM executive strongly hinted that the company's BlackBerry line would be getting a front-facing camera for videoconferencing in early 2010. It's still officially...
The iPhone is – if I may say so – one of the greatest mobile revolutions of the past decade. More and more, mobile phones seem to materialize out of our wildest dreams.
Because of the tight integration of third-party applications, you can do nearly everything with your device — be it gaming, working, fooling around, and of course phoning.
However, because of the sheer vastness of possibilities, not a lot of people are using their iPhone to the full extent of its capabilities. As of such, a lot of great features are missed on the users.
Read about the basic user interface and a ton of incredible iPhone features you would’ve otherwise missed. Stefan explains in detail how to perform both the very simple and the most tedious tasks. Find out how to get your hands on fresh applications, how to keep your device synchronized and even how to jailbreak your iPhone!
Anyone that's ever tried to move their Ikea furniture knows it sucks, because particle board pieces full of nails and screws aren't meant to handle that. However, this Ratchet Furniture set only uses...
Jon von Tetzchner (pronounced “Yon,” not “John”) co-founded Opera in 1995 after developing a small, fast browser for Norway’s national phone company. The original version needed to fit on a 1.2 megabyte floppy disk and run fast on old PCs too slow for the two browser giants of the time, Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Communicator.
Fourteen years later, von Tetzchner has carved out a small but solid niche for Opera. The company’s browsers ship pre-installed on more than 200 mobile phone models and cover more than 20 operating systems including the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS and ASUS Eee Top PC, all of which ship with Opera as the built-in browser. Von Tetzchner says that by some estimates, Opera is the most-used mobile browser in the world. (Wikipedia has an unsourced figure of 40 million shipped phones with Opera built in.)
But Opera isn’t making Google-sized money. Its first-quarter sales and revenue-sharing deals with mobile carriers, search engines and other sites, added up to just over $27 million in revenue. That’s an impressive 59 percent jump over Q1 2008, at a time when most tech firms were bleeding money. But it’s a lot less than the average Valley CEO would hope to be reporting after 14 years in business.
Opera seems perpetually stuck at around 3 percent global market share for browsers, and very little of that coming from Americans. Von Tetzchner’s earnest new product, Opera Unite, which lets users turn their personal computers into globally accessible content servers, has inspired only a small number of devotees.
I prodded Von Tetzchner about his company’s continued solid-but-small status over lunch in San Francisco today. “What Apple has done is very sexy,” he said, “but you have to keep in mind that iPhones are only two percent of the total number of phones” sold or given away by worldwide carriers. “That leaves 98 percent of the world’s phones not tied to Safari.”
Opera is another company like INQ or GetJar that’s well-known outside the U.S. but unknown to Americans. ”People often quote our U.S. market share as if is the global figure,” von Tetzchner said. “Our global market share is just over three percent. That is comparable to Safari and Chrome.”
In the U.S. market, Opera still has lots of room for growth in two major markets: Desktop and laptop PCs, and mobile phones. Von Tetzchner has been thus far unable to sell major PC and mobile makers on making Opera their default browser as he did Nintendo.
Now seems like a good time to try again. The past few months have proven that alternative browsers — Safari and Chrome — can draw enthuasiastic user bases through downloads rather than pre-installation. And the rise of app stores seems to be making users more demanding for quality applications that aren’t sloppy and slow. Opera has that in spades — I use it on my BlackBerry.
But as troubled startup Skyfire has learned, a cutting-edge, well-built browser that plays to the new world of social networks and viral videos won’t automatically be snapped up by gadget makers.
Opera has hung in there for nearly fifteen years. To get to the next level, they need a new round of buzz. What’s not clear is where that’s going to come from.
Researchers at the University of Utah have developed a new, more precise way of placing microelectrodes on the surface of the brain to enable patients to turn thoughts into action. Led by Bradley Greger, a professor of bioengineering, the "Brain Carpet" as it's called, represents a "modest advance" in techniques already in use. The Brain Carpet makes use of smaller microelectrodes, and also employs many more than are usually used. The method involves sawing off the skull of the patient, then placing 32 electrodes about 2mm apart on the surface of the brain. Though they've conducted tests on just a handful of patients -- all epileptics -- the technique, they believe could also be used to help people control their prosthetic limbs much more effectively. The electrodes allow detection of the electric signals in the brain which control arm and hand movements. In the tests, patients have successfully controlled a cursor on a computer screen following the operation, and they see applications for brain-machine interface devices in the future. There's no word on when the Brain Carpet will move from the research to reality phase, but the group's findings have just recently appeared in the journal Neurosurgical Focus.
Set to be bundled with the Easy Piano instructive game for the Nintendo DS is this Piano/Keyboard controller, which lets you go from punishing ears on a full-size piano, to punishing ears on your...
The iPhone is – if I may say so – one of the greatest mobile revolutions of the past decade. More and more, mobile phones seem to materialize out of our wildest dreams.
