Computer Info

It's good keywords of Microsoft's achievement to know about Top 5 Myths About Microsoft

2011-03-11T12:48:00.000-08:00

There's an iconic image of Bill Gates that might help explain our collective fascination with this legendary businessman and his most famous creation, the Microsoft Corp. It's a mug shot from 1977, taken after Gates was pulled over in Albuquerque, N.M., for a traffic violation [source: The Smoking Gun].

The photo shows a chinless 19-year-old geek with tinted prescription glasses and an undeniable smirk. How, we're left to wonder, did this goofy-looking college dropout with questionable driving skills (and wearing an even more questionable flowered shirt) end up becoming the richest man in the world?

If you go searching for answers to that question online, you'll find a lot of half-truths and misinformation. It doesn't help that Microsoft has made more than its fair share of enemies over the years. It really doesn't help that most of those enemies have blogs that enable them to share their enmity with the world. They've accused the company and its former CEO of everything from willfully running a monopoly to stealing some of its biggest technological innovations to actually being evil.

The myths surrounding Microsoft and its founder are closely tied to the creation myth of the personal computer itself. To start off our list of top 5 Microsoft myths, we're going to explore a common misconception about the origin of "windows."

1: Bill Gates is Evil

Arrogant. Bullying. Ruthless. Stubborn. All of these are adjectives that former and current Microsoft colleagues and competitors have used to describe William Henry Gates III. But would those critics describe him as evil? Not in a million years.

When Gates announced that he was stepping down from daily operations at Microsoft in July 2008, it spawned a flood of articles about his legacy. Some compared him to Henry Ford, another person who took an expensive, rarified technology and devised an ingenious way to selling it to the masses [source:Ferguson].

Microsoft's long-time mission was to have "a PC on every desk and in every home." Indeed, Microsoft operating systems have been used on billions of PCs worldwide since 1981 [source: Hamm].

Some journalists and pundits chose to compare Gates to Henry Ford, but a more apt comparison might be to Andrew Carnegie, the steel baron who engaged in ruthless business practices before dedicating the final years of his life to philanthropy. By the time he died in 1919, he'd given away all of his ill-gotten riches to found museums, libraries, parks and numerous charitable organizations.

Gates may be guilty of many underhanded businesses tactics, but has yet to order mercenary troops to attack his own factory (as Carnegie did). As a philanthropist, he's poised to become the greatest giver in the history of the world [source: Gralla]. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already invested tens of billions of dollars toward the eradication of disease and poverty in developing nations and eventually will give away all of Gates' wealth. How evil could that be?

For more great lists, head to the links on the next page.

2: Microsoft isn't Innovative

David Paul Morris/Getty Images
Despite its cutting-edge business ideas, Microsoft isn't known for its technological innovation.

Microsoft has a well-deserved reputation in software circles for being technologically derivative. In other words, Microsoft has borrowed or bought every good idea it's ever had.

This theory isn't unfounded. For example, Bill Gates and friends didn't write the code for MS-DOS. They bought something called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for $50,000, tweaked it and licensed it to IBM for huge profits [source: Moscovitz]. They didn't code the original Internet Explorer, either: They licensed the source code from Spyglass Inc., maker of the Mosaic browser, and used that same basic code for three or four versions of Explorer [source: Sink].

Defenders of Microsoft know that the company isn't such a great technological innovator -- Gates didn't realize the potential of the Internet until 1995 -- but they will say the company has some of the most cutting-edge business ideas in the field [source: Colony].

Think about it. Before Microsoft came along, no one had entertained the idea of selling software and hardware separately [source: Rapoza]. IBM licensed MS-DOS from Microsoft because it wanted to concentrate on hardware. Gates, Steve Ballmer and other Microsoft executives foresaw the lucrative potential in licensing their operating system to dozens of different PC hardware makers.

When the Harvard Business Institute studied the secrets of Microsoft's success, they pinpointed the company's innovative approach to its intellectual property [source: Silverthorne]. Microsoft has created a gargantuan library of proprietary source code "components" that work across the Windows platform. If a developer proves his loyalty to Microsoft, he gets access to that code library -- and hundreds of millions of potential Microsoft customers.

3: Microsoft is a "Natural Monopoly"

Some critics of the U.S. government's ongoing antitrust case against Microsoft defended the software powerhouse as a legal natural monopoly because it earned its dominance by outmaneuvering its free market competitors.

The real definition of a natural monopoly is actually quite different from its conventional meaning. In economic parlance, a natural monopoly is a company that is allowed to monopolize an industry because it's in the best interest of the state and the consumer.

Utility companies are classic examples of natural monopolies [source: Investopedia]. In most cities and towns, you have no choice about which electric company to use. That's because there's a huge barrier of entry for starting a competing electric company. You'd have to build power plants and string miles of cable to create a workable infrastructure. It's cheaper for the consumer -- and more efficient for the state -- to have one tightly regulated private company running the show.

On the surface, Microsoft looks like a natural monopoly of the computer industry. Since the company has some 90 percent of the global operating system market share, Microsoft enjoys huge economies of scale. For instance, smaller software developers could never spend as much as Microsoft can on product development and marketing. They would never make the money back without having to charge much more than Microsoft would for the same products.

The biggest difference is that Microsoft used its "prodigious market power and immense profits," in the words of U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, to not only erect higher barriers of entry for its competition, but to threaten and intimidate anyone who dared knock at the door [source: Moore]. And there's nothing "natural" about that.

4: Microsoft Doesn't Care About Security

Microsoft is the Little Dutch Boy of software manufacturers, constantly plugging security holes in its operating system and application software. These backdoor vulnerabilities allow malicious hackers to gain access to unprotected computers, turning them into unwitting bots that spread viruses and worms to even more computers.

You hardly ever see headlines reading, "Apple Warns Users About Serious Security Hole" or "Red Hat Races to Issue Patch to Thwart Hackers." That's because few programmers would bother to write malicious code and nasty computer viruses for Macs and Linux computers. The reason for this is quite simple: If you're a hacker and your insidious goal is to poison the most machines possible, you'd train your sights on the operating system used by more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers.

Despite the rabid criticism of the security weaknesses of Windows XP, it's wrong to say that Microsoft doesn't care about security. Microsoft employs some of the sharpest minds in the field of cyber security, including security chief Michael Howard and Linux security expert Crispin Cowan [source: Ho]. In recent years, they've launched several long-term, far-reaching security initiatives, including Trustworthy Computing, End to End Trust and most recently, Microsoft Security Essentials. They've also built Windows Vista to be substantially more secure than XP [source: Jones].

The real question, according to veteran tech writer Rob Enderle, is whether anyone at any company could successfully repel the near-constant barrage of attacks that plague Microsoft products. To make matters worse, he says, boasting about security features is bound to attract hackers hungry for a challenge. As an example, the writer cites an announcement from Oracle that called its latest creation "bulletproof." It was successfully attacked the next day [source: Enderle].

5: Microsoft Invented "Windows"

In 1968, when 13-year-old Bill Gates was still programming tic-tac-toe in BASIC, an engineer named Douglas Englebart at the Stanford Research Institute introduced the world to the mouse [source: Reimer]. To modern computer users, the mouse is nothing more than a mundane technological necessity: How else could you click icons, scroll through menus and move cursors? But computer users in 1968 found the mouse revolutionary precisely because no one had ever heard of those things back then.

Englebart is credited with inventing the graphical user interface, or GUI (pronounced "gooey"). In the early 1970s, a team of researchers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) expanded on Englebart's concept and built the Xerox Alto, the first personal computer that featured the now-standard "W.I.M.P." GUI: windows, icons, menus and pointing device [source: Webopedia].

The Xerox Alto ran on an operating system/development environment called SmallTalk that was created in-house by Xerox PARC researchers. In 1979, 24-year-old Steve Jobs of tech upstart Apple Computer, Inc. paid $1 million in Apple stock options for a detailed tour of the Xerox PARC facility. Blown away by the SmallTalk GUI, Jobs demanded the product's technical documentation, which Xerox foolishly handed over [source: PBS].

With the specs for the SmallTalk GUI in hand, Apple released the Lisa in 1983, the first commercial computer to feature a "windows" GUI. Jobs would use a similar GUI for the much more popular Macintosh models. When Bill Gates, who wrote software for the Mac, released Windows 2.0 in 1987, Apple sued Microsoft for blatantly stealing the Mac's look and feel -- something Apple stole long ago from Xerox [source: Reimer].

Apple eventually lost the case and Microsoft's subsequent dominance of the PC market made "windows" synonymous with Windows.

Should you obser for a while? Google Celebrates "Data Privacy Day"

2011-02-26T04:04:00.000-08:00

Google Celebrates "Data Privacy Day"

In yet another made up "day" to bring our attention to something, yesterday was Data Privacy Day:

Data Privacy Day is an international holiday that occurs every January 28. The purpose of Data Privacy Day is to raise awareness and promote data privacy education. It is currently celebrated in the United States, Canada, and 27 European countries.[1] On January 26, 2009, the United States House of Representatives passed House Resolution HR 31 by a vote of 402-0, declaring January 28 National Data Privacy Day.[2] On January 28, 2009, the Senate passed Senate Resolution 25 also recognizing January 28, 2009 as National Data Privacy Day.

To recognize this day, Google released a fairly comprehensive post of all the privacy options and configurations which are made available. I have covered some of these options previously, but if you are looking for a nice refresher or this is news to you, then this post is a great resource.

Topics covered include:

Opting out of ad tracking
Encrypted search
Google Dashboard (to see what Google knows about you)

At least we didn’t have to send a card or talk like a pirate…

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Google Celebrates "Data Privacy Day"

LG Optimus Pad, Roll Out! Video Shows What Honeycomb Will Do With iOS 500 Startups Announces First Class Of New Incubator Program Face.com’s API Now L

2011-02-11T09:25:00.000-08:00

LG Optimus Pad, Roll Out! Video Shows What Honeycomb Will Do With iOS

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 09:18 AM PST

With all the talk of Playbooks and TouchPads these days, it’s sad that poor old LG hasn’t had much traction with their 10-inch G-Slate aka The Optimus Pad.

Well how’s this for traction? This bit of fanfic shows the Optimus Pad fighting, Michael Bay-style, high over a futuristic cityscape. While we all know Honeycomb is going to be amazing, did you know it could shoot fire and lasers?

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 09:06 AM PST

Six months ago 500 Startups, the angel fund headed by Dave McClure, started investing in dozens of startups — they’re now up to around 90 investments. And today the fund is announcing an incubator program similar in many ways to Y Combinator, TechStars, and the numerous other programs that have popped up to support fledgling tech startups.

As with these other programs, 500 Startups is giving each company some seed funding and access to a roster of mentors, in exchange for a chunk of equity. McClure says that in general these startups are receiving between $25-100k for 5% of equity, with the median around $50k (this is more than Y Combinator, though 500 Startups doesn’t have the sweet $150k Start Fund deal). The program lasts for 3-6 months depending on how long each company wants to stay, and McClure says they’ll probably run three batches this year, each with its own Demo Day to showcase the startups to investors, the first of which will be in early April.

McClure says there are a few other structural differences: 500 Startups is willing to accept companies who have already raised funding from other investors, and he says it’s “follow-on friendly” in that 500 Startups is willing to participate in funding rounds for companies that have completed other incubator programs.

500 Startups will be charging each company that participates in the program for desk space at $1,000 per founder per month (which they’ll pay for using some of the money they received upon entering the program). The program has one design and one UX expert on staff, and participants will have access to other mentors as well.

Finally, McClure says that the program is going to have a big emphasis on distribution platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube.

Here’s the list of the first 11 companies to participate in the program and their taglines (that’s one other difference — startups can choose to stay stealthy before Demo Day if they really want to, but they’re encouraged to be more open than in some other programs):

InternMatch – “InternMatch’s mission is to help college students discover amazing internships.”
Baydin – “Baydin’s mission is to facilitate purposeful communication.” (currently working on email trainer)
955 Dreams – Made nifty History of Jazz app
YongoPal – Matches students in Asia who want to learn English from students at top universities in the US
Spoondate – Dating for foodies
Ninua – Made Networked Blogs
Crowdrally – Wants to “provide social influencers with organic digital endorsements, so they can get paid without selling out.”
Rewardli – “Rewardli lets business owners use leverage their social graph in new and interesting ways.”
Wednesdays – “Stay in touch with friends and colleagues. Over lunch. On Wednesdays.”
SpeakerGram – Book speaking engagements
Punchd – Loyalty cards on your mobile phone

Here’s a video of the office space:

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Face.com’s API Now Lets Developers Scan 5,000 Photos Per Hour, Free Of Charge

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 08:59 AM PST

Face.com initially rolled out its REST API, which allows developers to tap its awesome facial recognition technology for use in their own websites and applications, almost a year ago. Today, the startup is moving the API from ‘alpha’ to ‘beta’ mode – and it gets more exciting if you look at pricing.

While over 10,000 developers are said to be using the API since its May 2010 launch already, there were some restrictions to it, as they could only scan up to 200 photos per hour. As from today, developers can scan 5,000 photos per hour (or 120,000 per day) – still at no cost.

It’s a price that’s hard to beat, but that’s not the only thing Face.com says should spark developer interest.

Face.com says the technology has also been improved significantly, enabling third-party developers to pick up more faces in group photos and identifying the people in them more accurately than ever. You can also group similar faces in photos together now, which is great for bulk-tagging support in applications that make use of the API.

The API also boasts easy integration with Facebook (enabling you to recognize Facebook friends in photos across Facebook Connected apps) as well as Twitter (search and tagging for Twitter faces across a variety of photo services).

Face.com previously released a couple of popular Facebook apps, Photo Finder (which allows you to scan all the photos in your Facebook network) and Photo Tagger (which allows you to upload folders of pictures and bulk-tag photos).

The Israeli startup claims its technology has now ‘discovered’ over 18 billion faces across its APIs and Facebook apps, and counting.

Recently, rumors started swirling about the company about the fact that they reportedly rebuffed an acquisition offer from Facebook, and that its technology is actually used to power Facebook Photos' facial recognition functionality.

Face.com has raised (only) $5.3 million to date.

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Social Gaming Network Raptr Raises $15 Million; Hits 6 Million Users

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 08:49 AM PST

Online gaming startup Raptr has raised $15 million in new funding, according to a blog post on the company’s site. This round was led by DAG Ventures with Tenaya Capital and Accel Partners participating. In total, Raptr has raised $27 million.

Raptr’s mission is simple: to make it easy to play games with your friends. Essentially, Raptr is a social networking platform for gamers to track games and share achievements. Users can also share their stats, rankings, achievements, and characters with friends. And they can automatically broadcast their gaming activity to their friends on Raptr and other social sites including Facebook and Twitter.

The network also supports games on PC, Xbox, and PS3; and allows you to see your friends while they are playing games on a number of consoles. You can then chat and browse the web in-game.

And the startup, which had north of one million members last July, has grown to over 6 million members in less than a year.

Of course, Raptr is an independent social gaming network and faces competition from companies like Zynga and Playdom which are mostly centralized within Facebook.

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Mobile Insiders Say Apple’s iAds Are “Hurting”

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 08:41 AM PST

Apple’s iAds are hitting a rough spot. Across the board, several developers I’ve spoken to confirm that “fill rates” for iAds dropped drastically after the New Year and have yet to recover. The fill rate—what percentage of the ad inventory is actually filled with an ad—for two separate developers plummeted from 18 percent to 6 percent. And in a few instances for some newer apps, none of the ad slots were getting filled, compared to nearly complete fill rates from other mobile ad networks. Others report better fill rates but as one developer says, “They have definitely come down.”

One reason for the dip could be just seasonal. The fill rates and advertising budgets across all ad networks in general take a hit after the holidays. But there seems to be something else going on here as well. “The general consensus among the advertising community is that it is a product they don't want,” says one mobile ad tech CEO. The iAds business, he suggests, “is hurting.”

(I spoke with many iPhone app developers and advertising executives for this article. All of them would speak only on background because publicly pissing off Apple is not considered to be a great career move).

When Steve Jobs introduced iAds last year, he set Apple on a course to reinvent mobile advertising. He wanted mobile ads not to suck, so Apple came up with a new format and standards and imposed them on the industry. Instead of cheap inventory that needed to be filled, Jobs wanted the ads to be viewed as branded experiences in their own right. Apple charged premium rates—requiring a minimum commitment of one million dollars for each campaign.

Jobs is not targeting mobile ad budgets, he is targeting television ad budgets. He thinks iAds can be a better experience than television ads and therefore those are the budgets that should be spent on his mobile ads. It is no coincidence that Apple is touting the performance of iAds against TV ads, not against other mobile ads.

Steve Jobs is perhaps the world’s best salesman. Jobs and iAd chief Andy Miller personally helped convince advertisers and CEOs to buy $60 million worth of iAds right off the bat. “My inclination was it was a great sales pitch by Apple and you had CEOs making advertising decisions,” says one exec at a large iPhone app company. It was “glory spend,” coming out of discretionary or PR budgets (very few companies have million-dollar mobile ad budgets). “You only get to make that decision once as CEO,” notes the exec.

And now the chickens are coming home to roost. After selling the initial campaigns, the relationships were dumped into the laps of junior account managers in Apple’s advertising business (which came out of Apple’s $275 million acquisition of Quattro Wireless last year). They are being tasked to get renewals this year from ad agencies and brands or equal or greater amounts. But the experiment is over (advertisers can now see how the ads perform) and these junior salesmen don’t have access to the CEOs. They need to talk to their counterparts at ad agencies and brands, who can’t spend $1 million on a mobile ad campaign so easily. One ad agency executive tells me that the iAd salespeople are suddenly calling a lot more and becoming very aggressive in pushing for renewals.

Beyond the million-dollar commitments, the rank and file at advertising agencies have other problems with iAds. They only run on Apple devices, not cross-platform like mobile ads from Google and others. And even on the Apple platform, there is no visibility into where they run. Advertisers buy a campaign, and Apple decides where to place them across all the apps running iAd inventory. This black box approach stems from issues Quattro was seeing before the acquisition, where all the advertisers wanted to be in the hit apps, which got sold out quickly while the rest of the apps in the network went starving.

The other issue is the pricing. It is confusing to mobile ad marketers because it is based on a combination of both impressions and performance. There is a floor CPM (cost per thousand impressions) for every time an ad is displayed, and then an additional cost for each time an ad is opened up (known as an “expand”). Lots of people mistakenly hit the ads who really aren’t interested, meaning advertisers are paying for unwanted engagements, driving up the effective CPM sky-high to as much as $50 or $60 in some cases (more typically it is a fraction of that, but still well above the low-single digit CPMs of most mobile ads).

“You can’t even imagine what the CPMs were—completely off the charts,” says one developer who made a killing off iAds in late 2010 and now laments that they are drying up. Even with low fill rates, developers were making more than five times as much as ads from other networks. Now the pressure is on for Apple to repeat that performance.

Lowering the million-dollar hurdle might be one way to make iAds more appealing and accessible to mobile marketers. But Jobs is not targeting mobile ad budget. He is targeting television ad budgets. He thinks iAds can be a better experience than television ads and therefore those are the budgets that should be spent on his mobile ads. It is no coincidence that Apple is touting the performance of iAds against TV ads, not against other mobile ads. Will Jobs bend the advertising industry to his will? Right now, it looks like resistance is setting in.

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Google Rolls Out Two-Factor Authentication For Everyone. You Should Use It.

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 08:31 AM PST

Given how much data we’re trusting to online sites these days — email, search history, even voice calls — the repercussions to having our account passwords phished, hacked, or guessed are worse than ever. Unfortunately as far as consumers are concerned, account security has been stagnant for years: nearly every service requires a username and password, and that’s it. Cue the scary music and a Dateline special on having your identity stolen.

But today, Google is making things much, much better for those who want it.

The feature is called two-factor authentication, and it’s been available to Google Apps customers since September. Now it’s rolling out to everyone. It’s a bit confusing and the set-up process will probably intimidate a lot of people, but it’s well worth looking into if you value your account data. You can activate it by hitting the ‘two-step verification’ link on this page. So what exactly does it do?

In short, it makes it so that when you go to login to your Google account, you need to enter both your existing password and a special new second passcode — one that you don’t have to write down or memorize because it’s always changing, so it’s nearly impossible to phish. You generate this second password by firing up a new mobile app available for Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry called ‘Google Authenticator’, or by having Google call or send you a text message to a phone number you entered when you set up the feature. That password will expire in just a few minutes though, so be quick (and yes, you will feel like a secret agent the first few times you use it).

It’s not as stressful as it sounds, because you can elect to only require this second password once per computer (this still keeps phishers from being able to access your account). There are a few more quirks to it — in order to save passwords in applications like iCal, Mail, and most other desktop apps, you’ll have to generate a unique app-specific password. But again, you can save this so you only have to do it once per app.

There are also a few backup measures in place should you lose access to your mobile phone. You can designate a second, backup phone number to send the passcode to, and you’re also strongly encouraged to print out a set of ‘one-time’ passwords to keep in a safe place. This is only for the secondary password — you’ll still have to keep that ‘normal’ Google password memorized.

I’ve been using a beta version of the system for the last few weeks, and for the most part I’ve been very pleased with it. The setup process, though it’s improved since I first used it, is still pretty involved. You don’t really have to do much thinking and the setup wizard only takes a few minutes to complete, but this whole second-password thing feels foreign after a decade (or more) using the old system. This is probably why Google isn’t heavily promoting the feature to consumers yet — you’ll have to go looking for it in your accounts dashboard.

To be clear, two-factor authentication isn’t a new idea. It’s been used by large businesses for years. But giving consumers access to this same protection is a big win, and I’m hoping other services will follow suit in the near future.

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CrunchGear’s Valentine’s Day Gift Guide: Gifts For Girls

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 07:42 AM PST

With Valentine's Day fast approaching it's time to start thinking about the dreaded gift for the gal in your life. Even if you think Valentine's Day is a Hallmark holiday designed to rake in millions of dollars in cash – it is – so you better get used to it because your lady friend still expects a gift.

You could get her flowers, candy, or maybe a fondue set, but let's be honest; your more interesting and intelligent girl doesn’t really want any of that. She just wants something sweet, because it's the thought that counts, right? Scratch that, she wants something cool she can show off to her friends. With all the techy toys that 2011 brought, you guys should have no problem finding something your geek girl will love.

Incidentally, we’re holding a contest for one lucky lad, so pop over here to enter.

Stock Photo Site ClusterShot Avoids The Deadpool

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 07:37 AM PST

Stock photo marketplace ClusterShot, which once aimed to rival Getty Images-owned stock photography giant iStockphoto, has managed to avoid hitting the deadpool after all. As we reported earlier, ClusterShot was to shut down on the 21st of February.

Now it appears the site will live on, although photo uploading and new account creation will remain temporarily suspended until the switch to a new owner has been finalized.

After setting up an auction for the purchase of the site, 20 or so bidders made an offer for the business, and one of them was apparently tasty enough for ClusterShot parent company silverorange to bite.

The buyer requested not to disclose the final purchase price, but we learned from one of the losing bidders that ClusterShot went for a – measly – $25,000.

In a message posted to the ClusterShot blog, the new owner, investor Dominic Ang, says the long-term plan is to ramp up investment in building new features and new capabilities in the ClusterShot platform.

ClusterShot was one of the ventures of Canadian web development company silverorange, which counts Digg’s creative director and co-founder of Pownce Daniel Burka among its co-founders and partners. We’ve fished it out of the TechCrunch deadpool.

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uKnow Raises $500,000 Seed Round, Hires About.com Co-founder

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 07:35 AM PST

uKnow, a company that provides targeting tools for advertisers looking to create custom distribution channels for their ad campaigns, announced today that it closed a $500,000 round of seed funding. The investment was led by iNovia Capital and The New York Angels and included digital media executives Lynn Wunderman, Geoff Judge, Scott Paternoster and Jeff Silverman.

uKnow’s technology uses semantic analysis and natural language processing to identify the content best suited to connecting brands with their audience. BluePrint, uKnow’s targeting application, leverages this technology to allow publishers to work in conjunction with media traders and marketers to create custom channels that pinpoint a brand’s distinguishing characteristics. The application then selects the websites and pages that reflect the client’s particular attributes and offers them the opportunity to buy ad space on those pages.

uKnow also announced today the hiring of Eric Bingham, who was named the company’s President. Bingham joins founders Gregory Fairnak and Peter Gasparini to assist in launching BluePrint. Prior to joining uKnow, Bingham was Chief Operating Officer of Undertone Networks, a digital display and video advertising network. He is also the co-founder of About.com and formerly acted as the site’s Senior Vice President.

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Podio, The Connected Work Platform, Secures $4M In Series A Round

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 07:01 AM PST

Podio, which describes itself as a connected work platform, has secured $4m in Series A funding. Sunstone Capital led the round and the investment is said be used to further develop Podio's product and to hire "key employees". A sort of collaborative social network for the Enterprise or 'Facebook for the workplace', Podio operates in the so-called Enterprise 2.0 space providing tools such as messaging, calendars, tasks, and contact management. However, it doesn't stop there. Podio also gives users the ability to build their own 'apps' without any technical knowledge. Over 2,000 apps have already been built by users, which include CRM systems, meeting planners, process facilitation, recruiting, contract drafting and employee feedback. Naturally, there's an accompanying app store too.

Career and Workplace Community Glassdoor.com Raises $12 Million

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 07:00 AM PST

Glassdoor.com, an online career and workplace community raised $12 million in a Series C funding led by Battery Ventures with participation from existing investors Benchmark Capital and Sutter Hill Ventures. This investment brings the startup’s total funding to $22 million.

Glassdoor is a free jobs and career community where people can find and anonymously share information about companies, jobs, CEOs, salary and even job interviews. To access Glassdoor's full database of information, users have to contribute some job-related data of their own, making th site more of a community. The company also uses the anonymous data to publish insights about the job market and sectors, including the most wacky job interview questions and a list of naughty and nice CEOs.

The startup, which first launched in 2008 (with just 250 companies and 3,000 reviews), has roughly 3.5 million monthly unique visitors and includes employee-generated data, including company and compensation data, on more than 110,000 companies in over 100 countries.

The additional funding will be used for investing in international expansion, more data and advertising technology, and hiring.

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Facebook Analytics Platform Kontagent Now Tracking 100M Users; 15B Messages Per Month

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 06:59 AM PST

Kontagent, an fbFund winner and social analytics platform, has hit a milestone today. The startup is now tracking over 100 million monthly active users and over 15 billion messages per month. That’s up from 70 million monthly active users in October.

Kontagent’s platform gives Facebook app developers, game studios and publishers detailed data of demographics based on geographic location, age groups, gender, user engagement times, social event interaction and other variables. The new version allows developers to track and optimize advertising efforts, user virality, in-app mechanics, virtual goods, currency monetization, and more.

The startup, which has raised $6 million, to date, also extends its analytics platform to iPhone and web applications using Facebook Connect.

The company says that it has grown its monthly active user base by over 300% in the past 12 months and counts a number of well known game developers as clients, including EA, Sony, Ubisoft, Take2, THQ, Konami, Perfect World, Gaia and Tencent.

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Online Security Company Comodo Acquires DNS.com

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 06:54 AM PST

Internet security company Comodo has purchased DNS.com, an aptly named provider of hosted Domain Name System (DNS) services. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

DNS.com no doubt benefited greatly from that three-letter domain name in terms of branding.

Comwired, as the company was previously called, acquired the domain in a private transaction less than a year ago.

With the acquisition of the managed DNS services provider, Comodo is launching a new service called ‘Comodo Authoritative DNS’ as it enables the company to roll out secured DNS services for its existing business customers.

Comodo posits that the acquisition will also boost its relationships with datacenters around the world, in order to deploy additional points of presence near major population zones, adding to DNS.com’s network.

DNS.com will join the Comodo family of brands and the founding team – including former CEO Dan Kimball – will join Comodo and keep developing managed DNS services.

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FlyScreen Lands On iPhone But Not As We Know It

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 06:41 AM PST

FlyScreen, the lock screen replacement for Android and Symbian phones from Israeli startup Cellogic, has landed on the iPhone. But not as we know it. That's because Apple's iOS is locked down as it were (see what I did there) and doesn't allow third-party apps to take over the lock screen. This doesn't mean that iPhone users of FlyScreen don't get access to the app's array of content widgets - they do - but this functionality is accessible like any other app. However, Cellogic has come up with a nice new twist for FlyScreen, something that the company is calling "Ambient Mode", a more fun presentation of content for when the phone is docked.

Panasonic Shows Advanced Fuel Cell For Home Use

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 06:34 AM PST

The news has become muted regarding <a href="fuel cells and their future role in energy supply in recent years, but it seems we’re getting there step by step: Panasonic today said that it has developed a new type of home-use fuel cell [press release in English], which is more efficient and cheaper than its existing solutions.

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 06:00 AM PST

Ah, Sonos. Once you’ve tried it you never go back. The trouble was that it used to cost thousands of dollars to get your home set up to stream music from any wifi connected hard drive to the Sonos speakers. Here’s my Sonos review from way back in 2006.

Then things started to happen. Most notably they released the Sonos ZonePlayer S5, a lower cost Sonos device that could be controlled via an iPhone or iPod Touch. And, last year, they finally had an iPad controller app.

But nothing for Android. Always promised in the near future, but we had to wait. And wait.

And now the wait is over. Sonos says the Android app will be released in March. Details here.

There are some nifty feature that the iOS folks don’t get. Deeper hardware integration allows you to control the volume on Sonos devices via the physical volume buttons on your Android phone, for example.

“We think we make the best wireless music system for the iPhone. Now we make the best wireless music system for the Android, too,” says Sonos marketing director Thomas Meyer.

Good times.

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Sonos

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Nearing A Million Users, Gowalla Moves Forward On The “Social Atlas” Path

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 06:00 AM PST

A few weeks ago, we noted that with a few subtle changes being made to their service, it seemed as if Gowalla was starting to connect the dots on travel. That is to say, it seems like they’re starting to use all the of location information they have in ways beyond simply sharing where your friends are at any given time. Some changes being made today further connect those dots.

Gowalla has just rolled out a batch of updates to their website today that enhance usability when it comes to finding interesting things about a city. Venue (called “spots”) activity, people view, and photos are all now easier to see. The mapping feature is improved. And it’s easier to share and bookmark spots. But the biggest additions come by way of the Highlights feature.

Not only can Highlights now be added directly from a spot page, but there are a ton of new categories for you to add spots to. In fact, there are now nearly 40 different Highlight types that you can use. These range from “Burgers We Love” (assign it to your favorite burger place in a city) to “My Happy Place” (assign it to your favorite overall place in a city) to “WTF” (assign it to a weird, random place).

Gowalla first added the Highlights feature late last year in an attempt to turn the world into a “social atlas”. It’s a nice feature and a good idea. The problem was that there weren’t nearly enough Highlights to go around with the limited categories and the restriction of only being able to assign one place per category. Now there are all these new categories and you can assign multiple places to a Highlight category.

And starting next week, Highlights will become a part of your check-in experience on the iPhone. After you check-in, you’ll see Highlights added by friends on your check-in receipt. And soon you’ll be able to browse nearby spots filtered by Highlight categories. This should help create a “best of the city” (as curated by your social graph) experience.

We’re now just a month away from SXSW which is held in Gowalla’s home turf of Austin, Texas. It was there, two years ago, that the service launched alongside rival Foursquare. In those two years, Gowalla users have created and visited over 2.5 million locations around the world, co-founder Josh Williams tells us. They expect to hit one million users some point this month as well. It’s not Foursquare big, but it’s still big.

Version 3 for Android is also expected to drop soon, and you can bet that Gowalla has some other big things planned for SXSW. One thing we know for sure is a party featuring the band Matt & Kim.

IAC’s Mindspark Acquires Pop Culture Gaming Platform VoxPop

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 05:47 AM PST

IAC’s Mindspark has just acquired pop culture gaming platform VoxPop. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

VoxPop creates embeddable pop culture contextual games for publishers like Entertainment Weekly, E! Online, and Maxim.

VoxPop’s games, which are often ad-supported, are based on opinions and predictions on topics and current events (like the Oscars or the Grammy awards). Games range from an E! Online game on what celebrity wore the best outfit to an awards show to picking brackets for March Madness at NCAA.com. VoxPop’s technology also turns pop culture games into free, shareable widgets for anyone to post on a blog, social networking site or website. Users can even create a "game lobby" of sorts by adding multiple games to a page.

Founded in 2006 by Bill Armistead, Mike Derezin, and Michael Hoffman, the startup has raised $3.5 million in funding from Hearst Interactive Media, and True Ventures.

Mindspark says that the VoxPop platform’s trivia engine will be used to add trivia game mechanics to the network’s gaming sites, particularly in IAC’s IWON gaming brand.
.

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VoxPop Network Corporation

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TigerText Unveils Enterprise Version Of Private Texting Service

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 05:20 AM PST

TigerText, a company that develops a private SMS app, is launching an enterprise version of its product today. Called TigerTextPRO, the service allows companies to deploy their own private and secure mobile network in hours.

As we reported last year, TigerText’s mobile apps allows users to send text messages or photos that can then be deleted off both the sender's and receiver's phone after a selected period of time. Once a sender selects the message lifespan (from 1 minute up to 30 days), expired messages are not only deleted from both phones, but are not stored on any server and they cannot be retrieved once expired. Users can also select a "Delete on Read" option, which will delete the text 60 seconds after the recipient opens the message.

TigerTextPro allows organizations to deploy a private, secure mobile network to allow employees can privately communicate on their existing mobile devices within a company.

With the enterprise version of the app, users download the app on their company smartphones (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows 7) and perform a one-time login to get authenticated. Administrators can then use a web-based tool to control archiving policies, create groups and perform simple user management. The PRO version provides companies, health care institutions and government agencies with administrative and policy-level controls reduces liability and risks of data leakage while enhancing employee communication and productivity.

Already a number of companies in the healthcare and financial sectors are using the Pro version so employees can communicate via SMS without the risk of privacy issues. The startup, which faces competition from Kik Messenger, has raised $1.9 million in angel funding from Herb Madan and the co-founder of Akamai, Randall Kaplan.

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TigerText

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Post-Pivot, SoundCloud Reaches Three Million Users

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 04:05 AM PST

SoundCloud, the audio platform originally targeted at music makers but now a wider consumer play, has announced that it's reached three million registered users. And considering that the Berlin-based startup was at a million users as recently as last May - pre-pivot, if you will - the change of direction would appear to be paying off or at least hasn't affected the company's growth trajectory negatively. That said, these are registered users-only not active users as it were but nonetheless growth does look steady.

BabyU, An Educational Site Designed For Toddlers (And Not Kids of All Ages)

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 03:19 AM PST

If you live and breathe the web—as most TechCrunch readers do—you may have noticed that the minute a child enters your life, you tend to start viewing the web differently. It’s almost comical how many Internet entrepreneurs I’ve come by, who as soon as they become parents, grow a new-found desire to create web products for children.

Being a father of two myself, I’ve seen my fair share of web products and sites for children. In my kids’s case, none outrank YouTube. So much so that I set up Posterous sites for my 5.5yo son Cole (here), and my 3yo daughter, Zoe (here), so they can easily scroll through and enjoy their favorite videos.

The main issue I’ve come across is that sites and web products for children are built for age groups that are too far apart. From my experience, a product or site can’t target 1-3 year olds, and 3-5 year olds, at the same time. Again, from experience, that just doesn’t work. That’s why I find what BabyFirst (a cable and satellite channel) is doing with BabyU to be interesting.

Designed specifically for toddlers aged three and younger, BabyU houses a variety of online games and activities. These span some basic developmental building blocks such as music, math, art and vocabulary. Unsurprisingly, child development experts were consulted throughout the design of the activities, which: 1) are meant for parent/child interaction (as opposed to throwing the child in front of the screen to play alone), and 2) typically range between 5-7 minutes in duration, to meet the youngster’s attention span.

If you’ve ever raised a child, you know that a mouse and touchpad are quite intuitive, but do require a certain level of fine motor skills. Most sites and products I’ve seen don’t take this to heart. BabyU has. The activities are all built upon the use of two keys, and two alone: the space bar, and enter/return key. Unless you’ve raised a child this wouldn’t impress you as very important, but it really is—again, I speak from experience.

BabyU is currently only offered in English, but considering BabyFirst broadcasts in a total of six languages such as Spanish, French and Hindi, it’s likely they will be manifested in the web offering as well.

Additional features will be rolled-out in the future, including a child-oriented video chat offering powered by Vikido, whose founder, Amit Knaani, I profiled in a previous post. In fact, it was the team at Vikido that headed BabyU’s product design and development (as a way to supplement Vikido’s funding as an autonomous play).

BabyU is priced at $1.99-3.99/mo, or $19.99 for an annual subscription.

A Listed SocialGO Raises $2.2m On $24m Valuation Ahead Of Needed Re-launch

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 12:57 AM PST

SocialGO, the community building platform which in the past positioned itself against the likes of Ning, has secured $2.2m in funding from nine institutions in its largest fund raising to date. Since the startup is already floated on the AIM public market in the UK, the fund round was lead by First Columbus, its secondary broker, and values the company at $24m. Prior to this it raised $800,000 from Veddis Ventures.

Abe’s Market, Natural Products Retailer, Closes $3.4 Million Series A Investment

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 12:08 AM PST

A Chicago-area startup that sells natural consumer goods online, Abe's Market, closed a $3.4 million series A investment the company announced today. Accel Partners led the round, joined by the company’s earlier investors, Index Ventures and several angels.

Abe’s Market calls itself the equivalent of an online farmer’s market, and focuses on selling non-food category natural products like beauty, bath, baby or cleaning items, though it also sells some packaged comestibles.

The site provides shoppers with tagging, reviews, and social media sharing tools and incentives. The company has also put shoppers in touch with the people behind the products sold on its site, via live “online shows” and other site content.

Abe's Market co-founder Richard Demb said in an interview Wednesday night that his company plans to use its series A funding on expanding its reach via digital marketing initiatives, taking advantage of social media technology and trends.

Longer term, Demb said Abe’s Market will seek to build features and services that can help sellers who work with the site to grow their small businesses. In particular, the company wants to leverage the collective buying power of small sellers, for products and services that they all need — for example, labels, tags and printing services they need to package their goods, hopefully using sustainable materials.

Demb explained:

“The community of sellers we're tapping into loves talking about what they are doing. We will frequently get groups of our sellers together, in meetings to learn about what's going on in their lives, and not just what's going on in their online business. We want to know how we can be a facilitator to help small businesses that make great products, and let them grow.”

Prior to starting Abe’s Market (with co-founder Jon Polin) Demb co-founded Popcorn, Indiana the company behind those bright red bags of Dale And Thomas kettle corn you see at Whole Foods. His co-founder in that endeavor, serial entrepreneur Warren Struhl, is now an investor in Abe’s Market.

Demb said the experience of working with massive retailers online and off helps him relate to his sellers as much as consumers who are curious about their products. Abe's Market now works with some 300 brands. Demb would not comment on how much revenue he expects the company to reach by the end of the year or how many customers it has.

According to an Organic Trade Association 2010 survey referenced by the company in a press statement, the U.S. organic food and non-food sales reached $26.6 billion — up 5.3 percent from 2008-2009 — with non-food products up over 9 percent.

Adam Valkin, a partner at Accel Partners — which had earlier invested in other online marketplaces including Etsy, Diapers.com and Modcloth — told TechCrunch:

“Abe's Market may have overlap with a lot of segments, and there are a lot of players in [specialty commerce]. But both co-founders have strong marketing backgrounds, and understand what it takes to build a differentiated brand experience and awareness about their own brand, and their sellers, too.

Building this media and marketing machine that you know gets the word out, in turn affects their ability to recruit the most desirable sellers and brands.”

Abe’s Market will compete to sell its premium, natural products against ecommerce players from fellow startups like SaffronRouge which focuses on all organic beauty products, to DailyGrommet which focuses on products made by small businesses, and against sections within goliath ecommerce sites like Wal-Mart.com/Sustainability.

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Abe's Market

Accel Partners

Index Ventures

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Google’s Boutiques.com Adds Fashion Trends Data, Designer Analytics

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 11:32 PM PST

As New York Fashion Week ramps up, Google’s fashion-forward designer search engine Boutiques.com is adding a few new features today. Launched last November, Boutiques.com is both a search engine for all things fashion and is a personalized storefront of boutiques curated by celebrites, stylists, and designers. Powered by Like.com’s visual search engine technology, the site allows users to create their own boutiques and receive personalized clothes and accessory recommendations based on preferences and actions.

Google says that since the site’s launch, it has been collecting data on which products are popular and “trendy” and has mined this data for designers on the site. Designer Analytics is a tool that gives retailers and designers insight into how their products are searched and shopped. Specifically, the tool will be able to show which colors and styles are most liked or hated. Designers can also see how their stats compare to similar brands. It’s similar in some ways to an analytics feature that virtual styling site Polyvore launched recently.

Shoppers can also now checkout a public version of the data, called Trend Analytics, which shows what products are most popular in terms of searches and likes on the site and in Google Search. Other enhancements include a slew of new designer boutiques and the ability for users to upload video to their own boutiques and feature a photo gallery of styles.

Boutiques.com is a radically different products than Google’s other search properties in terms of both features and its sleek, photo-centric interface; so it should be interesting to see how it performs among consumers and designers. It’s still yet to be seen if Boutiques.com can be a thriving success. The blog post states that usage of Boutiques has soared since launch but I’m curious to see the data on visits.

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Google

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The Many Brilliant Layers Of Vic Gundotra’s Nokia-Exposing, Microsoft-Bashing Tweet

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 09:05 PM PST

You have to love Twitter and you have to love Vic Gundotra.

This morning, the Google Vice President decided he was going to have some fun on Twitter. “#feb11 “Two turkeys do not make an Eagle”.,” he tweeted. To anyone outside of the tech space, that sounds like gibberish. Hell, even to many of those in the tech space, that seems like a completely random thing to say. Except it wasn’t random. It was cool and calculated.

The February 11 date that Gundotra references is clearly meant to signify Nokia’s annual Capital Markets Day, which takes place this Friday, the 11th, in London. There, new CEO (and former Microsoft president) Stephen Elop is expected to announce radical changes to the company’s plan and vision. For weeks, rumors have swirled that Nokia may ally with either Microsoft or Google going forward in the smartphone business. Gundotra’s tweet this morning made it very clear who Nokia is going with. The other guys.

How cool is that? A pretty well-known figurehead for Google just dropped a tweet bomb on both Microsoft and Nokia, subtly exposing their news early. And he did it by blatantly insulting both companies. Oh, and by the way, he used to work for Microsoft! For 15 years!

Could it be that Gundotra was just taking a stab in the dark with his quip on Twitter? No way. Gundotra, while now believed to be heading up the social stuff Google is not-so-secretly working on, is also very familiar with Android. He’s been the guy on stage at Google I/O evangelizing the mobile platform to no end. He’s so good at it, that he could almost sell Android to an iPhone user. Almost.

If something as significant as Nokia/Android talks were going down, Gundotra would know about it. On the flip side, he would also know who else the Nokia guys were talking to. You can be sure that he wouldn’t tweet about anything unless he knew something and knew it was a done deal. And you can be damn sure that he wouldn’t tweet calling anyone a “turkey” until he was sure it wasn’t going Google’s way.

A more, um, nuanced report tonight in BusinessWeek confirms that Nokia will partner with Microsoft to put Windows Phone 7 on their smartphones. It’s something we actually first reported hearing earlier this week. And it’s something we’ve been talking about for months, after we heard about Elop’s cordial exit from Redmond. The writing has been on the wall.

That said, Google did have a shot at this partnership. We know that Elop was talking to Google CEO Eric Schmidt a few month ago as Nokia’s MeeGo group was in turmoil. And in recent months, you can bet the discussions between the two sides intensified as Elop considered what was best for his new company. But going with Android, while perhaps smart, would have been the equivalent of Elop punching Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in the face. It wasn’t going to happen.

Instead, the company which still has an absolutely massive mobile reach (Nokia) will partner with the company with endless pockets (Microsoft) that has actually managed to develop a pretty damn good mobile operating system. The problem is that it hit the scene at least a year too late, and perhaps two years too late. A Nokia partnership is exactly what Microsoft needs to have a chance to get back into the game. And it’s what Nokia needs to enter the smartphone game (and maybe even the American market) in a meaningful way.

And that’s why Gundotra’s tweet, while awesome, is perhaps ill-advised. Two turkeys may not make an eagle, but they might look pretty tasty to some new customers hungry for smartphones. This deal makes some sense.

But wait, the tweet actually goes even deeper. It’s actually even more of a mind game.

As Engadget points out, there’s quite the history behind the statement “two turkeys don’t make an eagle.” Specifically, former Nokia VP Anssi Vanjoki said it in 2005 in reference to rival BenQ buying Siemens’s handset business. And you may recall that Vanjoki is the guy who earlier this year compared people using Android devices to Finnish boys who pee in their pants for warmth during a cold winter. Yes, he really said that. And we know for a fact that Google didn’t like that too much.

So yes, there are many layers in such a short tweet. One layer of malice, one layer of intrigue, one layer of humor, one layer of irony, and at least four layers of awesome.

[image: flickr/pen waggener]

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PC Mechanic, New Article

2011-02-10T04:11:00.001-08:00

PC Mechanic, New Article

Are There Wi-Fi Alternatives To 2.4GHz?
Adobe Flash Player 10.2 (Finally) Allows Uninterrupted Full-Screen On 2nd Monitor
Periodic Table Of Google API’s

Are There Wi-Fi Alternatives To 2.4GHz?

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 03:30 AM PST

For the vast majority of people that use wireless connectivity, everything they do with datastreams is carried over the 2.4GHz band.

"Why not 900MHz? Isn’t that just as good?"

900MHz wi-fi is a bad idea because the band is only 13MHz wide while 2.4GHz is 83.5MHz wide. If you were to connect your wifi datastream using the 900MHz band, your stream would be ridiculously slow, as in around 1.5Mbit/sec slow while 2.4GHz can easily go up to 100Mbit/sec or more; this is why no vendors make consumer devices that utilize the 900MHz band.

As a side note, many wireless audio devices (like wireless headphones) to this day still use 900MHz because the band can handle an audio stream easily, but for data it’s a no-go unless you like life in the very-slow lane.

Wireless N @ 5GHz?

Wireless N can use 5GHz, however in order for it to work a very specific set of conditions have to be in place. Firstly, there’s ‘N’ and ‘Draft N’ concerning the connecting computer’s wi-fi card. The drafts are the ones to watch out for because some of them do not allow ‘complete’ connectivity on N. Secondly, the wi-fi router must be in ‘N-only’ mode and not share N and G, because when you do, you’re ‘downgraded’ to 2.4GHz since G doesn’t operate on 2.4GHz.

Said in simpler terms: The connecting computer’s wi-fi card must be fully-supported N, meaning it can support channels operating at 40MHz instead of the usual 20MHz; the router must be operating only in N mode so you have absolute confirmation it is using 5GHz and not 2.4GHz.

You can further confirm you are connecting @ 5GHz by using a utility like inSSIDer, which states up front what band you’re using along with a lot of other helpful information.

What about 802.16?

This is commonly known under the name "WiMAX", and is in general use on mobile networks. A well-written FAQ on how WiMAX works is here.

As for what bands WiMAX uses, it ranges from 2GHz to 66GHz. In the US, 5.8GHz is the band most used.

The question however is: Can you use your own ‘personal’ WiMAX at home?

Yes and no.

A search for WiMAX on Newegg shows there’s plenty of products you can buy that will utilize the technology, but as far as any technology you could personally use outside of a mobile network, probably not.

Your best bet to escape the shackles of 2.4GHz is Wireless N @ 5GHz.

"I like the idea of Wireless N @ 5GHz but I don’t want to lose my existing 2.4GHz G router."

You don’t have to as it’s possible to simply ‘piggyback’ the N router from the G router. Connect the WAN port of your N router to an available port on the G router via wire. The N router then acquires an address from G and it’s ready-to-go. Any devices that need 2.4GHz G connectivity can still connect to the older router, and for others needing 5GHz N connect to the N router.

"So.. I have to run both routers at the same time?"

Yes. Piggybacking an N router from a G router is the most cost-effective way to go about it. There are other wi-fi routers available that can broadcast both 2.4GHz and 5GHz at the same time, but at present they’re too costly to justify the purchase when all you probably want is to connect one laptop via N to overcome 2.4GHz band interference limitations. Furthermore you’re probably not really sure whether 5GHz is actually going to solve band interference issues, so it’s best not to sink too much cash into an unknown until it’s proven itself better or worse.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Are There Wi-Fi Alternatives To 2.4GHz?

Adobe Flash Player 10.2 (Finally) Allows Uninterrupted Full-Screen On 2nd Monitor

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 03:00 AM PST

I have two monitors in my desktop setup. Our illustrious leader, Dave, has 4 (yes, really). One of the absolutely mind-numbingly irritating things about Flash is that in a multi-monitor setup, if you set Flash to full screen on one, then click anywhere on another monitor, it auto-sizes back to regular size. For some time now people have been using hacked DLL’s in Windows to defeat this annoyance.

Flash Player 10.2 finally after all the time now allows uninterrupted full-screen on your secondary monitor and it stays that way while you work on your primary screen.

Sometimes Adobe does get things right, and they finally did with Flash Player 10.2.

Grab your copy of 10.2 here: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Adobe Flash Player 10.2 (Finally) Allows Uninterrupted Full-Screen On 2nd Monitor

Periodic Table Of Google API’s

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 06:00 AM PST

It isn’t news to anyone here that Google has a lot of products and services it offers. But while most people only really know about their end user products (i.e. search, Adwords, Chrome, Analytics, etc.), Google also features loads of API’s (application programming interfaces) which developers can use to incorporate Google technology into their products. Just to get an idea of what is available, Google has put together their available API’s in a Periodic Table format.

You don’t have to be a developer to appreciate this as it is well thought out and put together. There are a lot of API’s here that I checked out just out of curiosity for what it is (i.e. Google Moderator, Social Graph, BigQuery, etc.) so taking a look for a few minutes is well worth it just to see what some of these are.

Developers will definitely want to bookmark this as there is probably something here you may be able to use in the future.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Periodic Table Of Google API’s

The Latest from TechCrunch

2011-02-09T09:14:00.001-08:00

The Latest from TechCrunch

Say Hello To The Palm Touchpad
My6sense Injects A Relevance-Based Tweet Stream Into Twitter.com
Jibe’s Social Job Board Attracting More Than One Million Monthly Job Views
Hands-On With The Iomega Superhero iPhone Back-up And Charger
Gartner: Android OS Sales Trump iOS And RIM, Grew 888 Percent In 2010
Socialware Lands $3 Million To “Put Social Networks To Work”
Visa Buys Virtual Goods Monetization Platform PlaySpan For $190 Million In Cash
Square Goes High Fashion With Vivienne Tam Branded ‘Double Happiness’ Device
Video From The Vaults: One Of Steve Jobs’ First TV Appearances
Social Q&A Goes Local With Crowdbeacon’s iPhone App
Kampyle Transforms User Feedback Into Lead Generation
HTML5 Is An Oncoming Train, But Native App Development Is An Oncoming Rocket Ship
R.E.M. Stands For R.E.M.I.X. (The SoundCloud Singles)
Valleywag’s Ryan Tate Publishes Photo of Zuckerberg’s House; Days Later, Stalker Shows Up
NYC Hack Is Back
i/o Ventures Is Now Taking Applications For Its March 2011 Program
Stealth Startup Bubbli Raises Funding, Wants To Create A New Kind Of Photograph
Watch Out Austin! Dogpatch Labs Is Opening A Makeshift SXSW Office
PSA: Covering The iPhone In 4 Feet Of Concrete May Affect Signal Strength
The Great Valentine’s Day Nook Color Case Gift Guide
The Optimism Of The Gadget Maker
Despite Pushback From Pubs, Apple Will Make iTunes Subscription Billing Mandatory
Blue Marble Energy Raises $1.3 Million More To Make Carbon-Neutral Fragrances, Flavors And Fuel
Keen On… The Domino Project: Seth Godin Reinvents the Book Business (TCTV)
Mildred’s TV Parlor Is Almost Here

Say Hello To The Palm Touchpad

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 09:09 AM PST

It’s official: HP/Palm is releasing a new tablet called the Touchpad. Precentral has some hot news about this new 10-inch Palm slate. It is a touchscreen device running WebOS. It weighs 1.5 pounds and 13mm thick and has a front webcam as well as up to 64GB of storage.

Robert Scoble, of all people, also leaked something about the “littlest phone” he’s ever seen, a new Palm Phone that is as big as a pebble.

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 09:00 AM PST

Twitter’s greatest strength is also often its greatest weakness: it’s a simple, constantly-updating stream. This keeps information fresh and flowing, but it also means that if you step away for a few hours (or even a few days — crazy, I know), you’re likely to miss a lot. And it means that scanning your Twitter stream can sometimes be tedious. A new product launching from my6sense today aims to alleviate both those issues.

The my6sense Chrome browser extension takes your tweet stream and completely rearranges it. If that thought scares you, fear not, this is done in a new tab area that the extension creates on Twitter.com. This area holds a stream sorted by tweets that are likely to be most relevant to you. These tweets can be hours (or even days) old, or they may be brand new. It all depends on the relevancy.

So how does my6sense determine this relevancy? A number of ways. The links you click on, the tweets your favorite, the tweets you retweet, the author of the tweets, the keywords in those tweets, etc. It all is monitored by this extension and then used to serve tweets back to you. And it works well. Once the extension got a sense for what I was interested in, pretty much my entire stream became Apple news. Perfect.

The concept is an extension of the mobile applications that my6sense makes for the iOS and Android platforms. Those take into account a few different social signals (Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, etc), and gives you a stream of information you’re likely to care about. And that works because when you’re on the go, you may not have time to read through all of your social streams. Again, it’s the same sort of idea here, but parsing only the ever-flowing Twitter data.

The idea is a good one. A lot of users would value a way to surface tweets based on relevancy rather than simply time. There have been whispers of Twitter themselves working on similar concept as well, but they would likely focus on user relevancy, rather than tweet relevancy. And the truth is that my6sense hopes that Twitter.com is just another stop for their technology.

The Israel-based startup hopes to spread their attention graph across the web to all kinds of different sites. VP of Marketing, Louis Gray, cites Quora as on particular treasure trove of data they’d love to get their hands on.

You can find the Chrome extension here, and the plan is to release a Firefox extension shortly as well to bring the same functionality to a larger segment of the web.

Jibe’s Social Job Board Attracting More Than One Million Monthly Job Views

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 08:33 AM PST

We’ve covered TechCrunch 50 company Jibe (formerly LocalBacon), which is a next-generation job board that leverages Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to help job seekers find the best positions in the job market.

Jibe has signed up 25 percent of the Fortune 50 as clients and is announcing that the site has grown 454 percent since the start of 2011, surpassing more than one million monthly job views. In January alone, more than 540,000 job seekers visited JIBE to apply for jobs at Amazon, Bank of America, Intel, AT&T and Merck.

On Jibe, job seekers sign in with Facebook Connect. The platform will then pull in their work and education history from their Facebook profile and from LinkedIn to pre-populate their Jibe profile. Then for every job posting, they can see if they are connected to anyone at that company. Jibe allows members to message those people directly to ask for a recommendation or job advice. Jibe uses a credit system that allows applicants to apply for jobs. Applicants can earn credits by linking their Jibe account to their various social networks, broadcasting their job search, sending private messages through the system, or updating their work history profile.

On the enterprise side, Jibe allows companies to add a social layer to the evaluation and vetting process. And Jibe, which has raised $875,000 in seed funding, says that large companies like Amazon, MTV and HP are adopting Jibe because it can be easily integrated into existing recruiting software.

Job boards are dying as social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook (i.e. BranchOut) take over professional networking and job search. But Jibe actually combines a job seeker’s LinkedIn and Facebook social graphs, which helps the site stand out from competitors.

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Hands-On With The Iomega Superhero iPhone Back-up And Charger

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 07:12 AM PST

I’m a big fan of backing up. Do it all the time. That’s why I’m intrigued by this Iomega Superhero iPhone Back-up solution. It’s basically a charger with an SD card built in. To use it, you have to download a free iPhone app, plug in the included 4GB memory card, and drop in your phone. The app allows you to back up your contacts and other personal info to the card and it charges the iPhone. It also backs up your photos.

Once you’ve installed the app, the entire process is automatic. It produces incremental back-ups after the first, longer initial back-up. A back-up of my own iPhone took about five minutes.

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 07:02 AM PST

Gartner has just released a report on mobile device sales for 2010, and unsurprisingly smartphone sales to end users were up 72.1 percent from 2009 and accounted for 19 percent of total mobile communications device sales in 2010. In terms of the fourth quarter, smartphones accounted for 22.2 percent of the quarter’s 452 million sales in mobile devices. Worldwide mobile device sales to end users totaled 1.6 billion units in 2010, a 31.8 percent increase from 2009.

The increase in smartphone sales helped push Apple and Research In Motion up in the ranking of global mobile device manufacturers to the No. 5 and No. 4 positions, respectively, displacing Sony Ericsson and Motorola. In Western Europe and North America accounted for 52.3 percent of global smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2010, with smartphones accounting for close to half of all handsets sold in these regions.

Apple sold 46.6 million units in 2010, which marks an 87.2 percent growth from 2009. Gartner attributes this increase to international expansion and the end of exclusivity deals. RIM’s overall mobile phone sales to end users in 2010 reached a total of 47.5 million units, an increase of 38.2 percent year-on-year, buoyed by strong sales in Southeast Asia, the U.K. and the Netherlands. Additionally RIM saw its market share decline from 19.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 13.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Nokia also didn’t fare well in 2010 according to Gartner’s report. In 2010, Nokia’s annual mobile phone sales to end users reached 461.3 million units, a 7.5 percent drop in market share from 2009. And Nokia’s share of the smartphone market dropped 6.7 percentage points from 2009.

In terms of sales by smartphone operating system (as opposed to manufacturer), Android grew 888.8 percent in 2010 and moved to the No. 2 position behind Symbian, whose market share dropped further in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 32.6 percent or 32.6 million units. Apple’s iOS took the No. 4 position in 2010, selling 46.5 million units in the year.

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Socialware Lands $3 Million To “Put Social Networks To Work”

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 06:52 AM PST

Socialware, which bills itself as a social middleware company, has raised $3 million in additional funding from its current roster of investors, which includes FLOODGATE, G-51 Capital and Silverton Partners, bringing its total to $4.8 million.

Socialware provides the technology and social networking compliance tools to enable the highly regulated financial services industry, specifically, to engage with clients and partners via social networks within a solid framework.

The company says it currently services nearly 100 customers, which include five of the top insurance companies in the United States, as well as other major financial brands.

At the helm of Socialware we find Chad Bockius, previously at Bazaarvoice and BetweenMarkets, who started out leading the startup’s marketing and product strategy before transitioning to the CEO role.

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Visa Buys Virtual Goods Monetization Platform PlaySpan For $190 Million In Cash

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 06:06 AM PST

PlaySpan, a virtual goods monetization platform, has been acquired by Visa. According to the release, Visa will pay $190 million in cash for the company, plus additional payouts for performance milestones. The deal comes nearly a year after Visa spent a whopping $2 billion on e-payment company CyberSource. Visa says that the acquisition of PlaySpan complements the CyberSource deal and will extend the company’s presence in digital and mobile commerce.

This is a big exit for PlaySpan, which has raised a total of $46 million in funding since its launch four years ago. PlaySpan has been growing like a weed, striking partnerships with a number of social network, gaming and media companies, including Viacom, Disney, Facebook, Ubisoft, and Sanrio.

PlaySpan’s flagship product UltimatePay is a 'Monetization as a Service' platform for apps, games, videos and digital goods. Based on the user's location, the payments platform draws from over 85 different payment options. Because of its vast variety of payment options (which include PayPal, pre-paid cards, and a number of credit cards), UltimatePay is designed for a global audience. Currently, PlaySpan powers virtual goods marketplaces across 1,000 video games, virtual world publishers and social networks.

The company also recently launched a mobile version of UltimatePay, which gives smartphone developers a way to deliver a one-click payment experience to mobile gamers, and provide a comprehensive payments offering. The mobile focused platform allows players to view their balance and transaction history, while allowing them to purchase items in-app without ever having to leave the game.

As virtual goods becomes a booming business, PlaySpan has reaped the benefits of technology and media companies looking to incorporate virtual goods into their platforms.

Visa says that ecommerce sales, which reached an estimated $948 billion, are a big growth area for the company. Approximately 45 percent of U.S. online spending takes place on Visa's network today and for Visa's fiscal first quarter 2011, the company reported 25 percent year-over-year growth in ecommerce payment volumes globally. Visa is going to use PlaySpan to capitalize on the growing digital goods market, which generated an estimated $25 billion in consumer spending globally in 2010 and is expected to reach $280 billion by 20143.

The acquisition is even more impressive when you conside that the company was founded by 12-year-old, Arjun Mehta, in 2006. PlaySpan is actually run by the teenager’s father, CEO and co-founder Karl Mehta.

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Square Goes High Fashion With Vivienne Tam Branded ‘Double Happiness’ Device

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 06:00 AM PST

It’s not often that I get to write about the intersection of art, design, fashion and technology, but Square has just made my day. Today, in conjunction with New York Fashion Week, Jack Dorsey's mobile payments startup is teaming up with designer Vivienne Tam to launch a limited edition, branded Square credit card reader.

The brainchild of Dorsey and Jim McKelvey, Square was unveiled last December as a small credit card reader that could turn any iPhone into a mobile cash register. The startup, which just raised $27.5 million in new funding, unveiled apps for the iPad, Android and iPhone. Square has steadily gained traction as a simple payments option for small businesses and is processing millions of dollars a week in transactions.

The branded Square reader is black lacquer-like and features the Chinese symbol for double happiness in red. The design is inspired by Tam's 'China Chic' style and representative of her personal mantra— two characters for happiness (xi) are joined to express the joy of wedded union. As stated in the release, Chinese culture favors equilibrium; yin is balanced by yang. Symmetry is an underlying principle not only in art and architecture, but also in all realms of design, terrestrial or celestial. For Tam, the 'Double Happiness' Square represents the two worlds of technology and fashion going hand in hand.

The ‘Double Happiness’ Square will be available on the designer’s website and in her retail stores for $10 (the unbranded Square is available on its website for free). But proceeds of each purchase will be donated to the Happy Hearts Fund, an organization which aims to improve children's lives through educational and sustainable programs in natural disaster areas.

For Square, this is the first branded partnership, but it’s unsurprising that Dorsey chose to introduce the device into the fashion world. Dorsey is no doubt fashion forward, and is admittedly personally fascinated by the interesection of art and technology. He tells us that Tam’s focus on fitting form factor in day-to-day life parallels his mission with Square.

The technology-forward Tam isn’t new to the gadget scene. She has previously designed branded laptop and netbook computers for HP, as well as headphones.

As for other branded partnerships, Dorsey says it is definitely something the company is looking at when it makes sense. “The Square is something that can be personalzied easily and can be a form of expression,” he explains.

For now, Tam will not actually be using the device to process transactions, but Dorsey says that expanding Square beyond small businesses into larger-scale retail stores could be in the company’s future. “We want to explore larger retail partnerships,” he says, “but that requires more definition in our API.” Dorsey says that as the platform becomes more solid, we will see more retail partnerships later this year integrate with the device as a payments platform.

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Video From The Vaults: One Of Steve Jobs’ First TV Appearances

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 05:49 AM PST

Isn’t this just the cutest thing? It’s Steve Jobs, age 23, getting hair and make-up done for a TV appearance, possibly with KGO-TV in San Francisco. Watch him gape in amazement at the live national feed that is carrying him into homes in California and New York. This is probably the most “aw shucks” you’ll ever find Jobs and it’s a charming portrait of a kid who is definitely on the way up.

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 05:30 AM PST

Social Q&A services are springing up everywhere because often search is too cumbersome or imprecise to answer our questions. This is especially true on mobile phones. A new iPhone app called Crowdbeacon attempts to answer your questions with a local twist. It is designed to answer questions about restaurants, shopping, services, and activities in your immediate vicinity. The answers come from other users, local experts, and business owners, as well as Foursquare tips and Yelp reviews.

Crowdbeacon reminds me a little of Aardvark, the social Q&A service that was bought by Google. When you join Crowdbeacon, it asks you what categories you want to answer questions about and it routes those questions to you. But it’s primary filter is your location. If you know a lot about antique shops, it will only send you questions about antique shops near where you live.

Business owners can also sign up to answer questions. If someone asks a question within six blocks of their store in one of their designated categories, they will receive it via push notification on their iPhones. Some will no doubt try to lure questioners into their stores and turn them into customers, but others will realize that simply offering up their knowledge can generate goodwill and good buzz.

To supplement the realtime answers from other users, Crowdbeacon will also surface related tips from FourSquare, reviews from Yelp, and shopping info from local shopping search engine Wishpond. Over time, the app will fold in answers from other APIs, including Twitter, OpenTable, and SinglePlatform.

It uses basic semantic analysis to place this information into different categories so that they can function as answers when called upon. It also forces you to choose a category before you can ask a question, which can be a little tedious.

Crowdbeacon is a bootstrapped startup was founded by Robert Boyle, who is an entrepreneur-in-residence at interactive agency Squeaky Wheel Media. He also helped launch Glassbooth, a non-profit website that tries to match people with the political candidates who share their beliefs. Competitors to Crowdbeacon include Loqly (iTunes link) and still-in-private-beta Localmind, which will let you SMS questions to people who are checked into a location on Foursquare.

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Kampyle Transforms User Feedback Into Lead Generation

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 03:44 AM PST

When I met Kampyle CEO Ariel Finkelstein last week, the first words that came out of his mouth were: “Can you tell me who the hell are these people that sit over there in the Valley and invent all these stupid terms like ‘Pivot’ … ?!” He then went on to tell me about the company’s most important product insight since launch and how it is changing their business.

When Kampyle launched three years ago, the company had a clear product vision: A platform for site owners that gives them an easy way to aggregate and then follow-up on user feedback. The idea was to combine ‘feedback analytics’ with traditional Web analytics. The theory went that by helping companies close their feedback loop, they could better understand and serve their users and customers. The theory became practice, and Kampyle has been growing in every KPI since.

This is when you would expect the story to take a twist with an unforeseen stick in the wheels. Except the opposite happened. Kampyle realized that all along, they were actually sitting on top of what could be a potential goldmine for their customers. The epiphany occurred when Kamyple began noticing that customers were employing user feedback as lead-generation.

The consequences were dramatic… This meant that Kamyple could completely revamp their sales strategy and pricing. From a nice-to-have feedback analytics product for Marketing departments, they could now market the product as a lead-gen tool for Sales departments. User feedbacks would be seen as ‘qualified leads’ with ROI dollar values attached.

Kampyle began rolling-out the lead-gen offering to pilot customers a few months ago. Finkelstein explained that 60% of users, on average, leave feedback along with their real contact details. So when such user feedback forms were funneled to sales teams, they were treated as qualified leads which converted at uncharacteristically high rates of 35-45%. One Kampyle customer, for example, saw conversions rates jump from 2.8% to 29% and average deal size increase by 220% compared to any other lead source used.

With the new focus on lead-gen, Kampyle beefed-up their product offering with some new features:

Feedback Form Library: For example a custom feedback form for PPC landing pages.
Tagging: Trigger words within feedback forms are used to transform regular leads to qualified leads.
Auto-response: Scripted responses, including time-based incentives and coupons.
API: Integration to Web analytics & CRM products, including SalesForce.

So did Kampyle pivot? My feedback: No, they simply evolved.

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HTML5 Is An Oncoming Train, But Native App Development Is An Oncoming Rocket Ship

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 12:18 AM PST

HTML5 versus native apps. It’s a debate as old as — well, at least three years ago. And pretty much since the beginning of that debate, there has been a general underlying current among the geek community that HTML5 is good and native is bad. Native is what we have to deal with as we wait for HTML5 to prevail.

But what if that never happens?

Let’s be honest: right now, most HTML-based mobile apps are a joke when compared to their native counterparts. It’s not even remotely close. In fact, you could argue that the discrepancy isn’t much smaller than it was three years ago. And considering that the App Store was only on the verge of launching at that point, in many ways, the discrepancy is even bigger. Just look at mobile games now, for example.

Developers often state their love of HTML5 and their commitment to it going forward. But many have no choice. Native app development is not only difficult, it’s expensive.

These days, if you’re going to do native apps, you at least have to support iOS and Android. That means at least two developers for each different language, and preferably more. And if your startup is big enough or hot enough (like Foursquare, for example), you’ll probably want to have apps for Windows Phone, Blackberry, and webOS as well (which, to be fair is largely HTML-based).

Talking to developers, this is the single biggest pain point on the mobile side of things. And many talk about HTML5 as the remedy. A number now choose to build an iOS app then settle on a web app for Android at first. Others do both iPhone and Android but only offer rudimentary sites for the other platforms.

But the fact that very few, if any, choose to go HTML5-only is telling. If we were anywhere close to the language being a unifier and savior, at least some would. We’re not close.

Let’s look at the debate from the perspective of the three hottest technology companies right now: Apple, Google, and Facebook.

Apple is basically all-in on native apps. Google is half-in on native apps, half-in on HTML5. Facebook is seemingly all-in on HTML5 (at least going forward).

Apple is very interesting in this regard. When the iPhone launched in 2007, the only native apps were the ones made by them. Developers were told to build web apps in order to get on the device. Who knows if Apple planned third-party native apps all along or if they pivoted when they saw the opportunity, but a year later, we had the App Store.

It’s the single reason there’s any debate right now.

Apple is now obviously native app all the way. But it’s on their own terms. When a developer makes an app that Apple doesn’t like in some way, they recommend that they make an HTML5 app to bring it to one of their devices.

It’s more or less a “my way or the highway” approach — it’s just a nice way of putting it. Apple is using the hype around HTML5 to their advantage here. They know that those apps can’t compete with their native apps, but so many people are so bullish about the future of the technology (and, to be fair, Apple seems to be as well at least on the Safari side of things) that Apple is able to play that to their advantage.

They might as well say, “you’re welcome to build an HTML5 app *snicker*.”

Google is significantly more gray with regard to their position.

At the past two Google I/O conferences, all we’ve heard about from the search giant is HTML5-this and HTML5-that. But their actions speak louder than their words.

Google has done some great work with HTML5 — some of their mobile web apps are quite good. In fact, they’re arguably the best web apps out there. But they too are nowhere near native app good.

And take something like their Jules Verne logo today — it utilized the iPhone’s accelerometer via the HTML5 baked into Safari to move around. Very cool. But would anyone have thought twice about it if it were a part of a native app? No.

It seems like Google is well aware of this native app/HTML5 app discrepancy. That’s why we’re seeing an increasing number of their once HTML-based apps going native. And it’s not only on their own Android platform, but on the iPhone as well.

And that’s not all. Recent reports underscore Google going a bit native app crazy. There’s apparently a big push inside the company to hire any good app developers that they can get their hands on. And they’re even offering for them to work inside Google as their own startups. Essentially, it sounds like the Googleplex is becoming an app incubator of sorts. One that pays a salary.

But wait, this is Google. Again, aren’t they supposed to be the main torchbearers of the HTML5 movement? Yes. But they’ve also been hedging their bet this entire time. That’s exactly why development of both Android and Chrome OS has continued totally separate from one another.

Chrome OS, an operating system built entirely around HTML5 is still very much in beta mode. Android, an operating system built entirely around native apps is exploding with growth. Which would you back right now?

And then there’s Facebook.

Speaking at the Inside Social Apps conference last month, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor made it very clear that HTML5 is a the key focus for the social network in 2011. He reiterated as much to me when I spoke with him afterwards.

In fact, Facebook is so committed to HTML5 that they’re going to be offering tools to their broad development community in order to help them bring their apps up to speed. Most significantly, this includes games, which are today largely based on Flash.

Taylor echoed the hardships that startups face with mobile development across several platforms these days. Facebook, while much larger than a typical startup, still works in relatively small teams. And while he said that structural changes would help in 2011, they too are betting that HTML5 is the ultimate unifier.

Facebook has an odd history in the mobile app space. When the iPhone first launched, they had easily the best mobile web-based app — which was developed by Joe Hewitt. When native apps were finally allowed, Hewitt built that as well, and again, it was clearly one of the best apps available (and the top downloaded app of all time for iOS).

Then Hewitt decided he was fed up with some of the App Store rules. So he stopped doing iOS work. The Facebook app stood neglected for quite some time. And while it’s better today, it still has the same basic look and feel of the app that Hewitt built.

Meanwhile, on the Android side of things, it has been a nightmare. The Facebook Android app has long been a joke when compared to its iPhone brother. Facebook keeps slowly improving it, but it’s still not as good.

On the tablet side of things, Taylor said the iPad was an unfortunate casualty of Facebook’s lack of mobile team structure leading up to that device’s launch. He spoke about the importance of having a tablet-optimized version of the service soon.

That seemed to indicate that this would be an HTML5-based web app. But I’ve heard reports from two different sources that Facebook has been internally testing a native iPad app in recent months.

Maybe they won’t release such an app. And maybe they take an HTML5-only approach to tablets. But I certainly wouldn’t bet against a native iPad app. And maybe one optimized for Honeycomb as well.

It sounds as if Facebook is all about HTML5 — except when native apps offer a better experience. Which, love it or hate it, is still always.

And such a stance is more or less the attitude that everyone with the necessary resources seems to have. And that’s the point. After all these months and years, we’re still debating the HTML5 versus native app thing — but it still has yet to be a contest.

Everyone seems to pay HTML5 plenty of lip-service. But look at their actions. Apple, Google, Facebook, and developers are all focusing on native apps, not HTML5 apps.

And look at the platform pipelines. Android is (finally) about to get in-app purchasing. iOS is likely to (finally) get a revamped Push Notification system with the next iteration of iOS. Android Honeycomb will offer developers a whole new set of tools and APIs. Both platforms are likely to expand quickly into NFC and everything that can offer.

All of that will be native app only. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It was actually Hewitt who said it best when he ripped the state of web development a new one last year with a series of tweets. The best was: “I want desperately to be a web developer again, but if I have to wait until 2020 for browsers to do what Cocoa can do in 2010, I won't wait.”

If HTML5 is an oncoming train, native app development is an oncoming rocket ship. And everyone seems to know that’s not going to change anytime soon. Even if they don’t want to admit it, their native apps speak for them.

[photo: flickr/tom hilton]

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R.E.M. Stands For R.E.M.I.X. (The SoundCloud Singles)

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 09:30 PM PST

R.E.M.’s upcoming album Collapse Into Now is coming in March, but the band is already getting the buzz going with a little crowdsourcing experiment. A couple days ago, the album’s producer released some tracks from the song “It Happened Today” in files that can easily be imported into Garageband, the music mixing software that comes on new Macs. Fans are invited to remix the song and upload their new versions under Creative Commons license to SoundCloud.

The individual tracks were also released under Creative Commons license so that anyone can download and remix them as long as it is not for commercial use. Producer Jacknife Lee writes:

We ended up with over a hundred tracks with all the percussion, brass, three pianos, celeste, glockenspiels, vibraphone, eight acoustic guitars, two drum kits, bass synths, banjo, mandolin, dulcimer, electric guitars, bass and all the voices.

So far there are already 41 tracks. This one is the best so far, IMHO, and this one plays the vocals backwards How long before a band lets fans remix an entire album?

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Valleywag’s Ryan Tate Publishes Photo of Zuckerberg’s House; Days Later, Stalker Shows Up

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 08:12 PM PST

A few months back, I had a few harsh words for Valleywag editor Ryan Tate over his decision to pay a paparazzo for photographs of Mark Zuckerberg’s house and girlfriend.

Specifically I said…

GO FUCK YOURSELF. I mean, seriously, Ryan, how did you even write those words without slitting your wrists and bleeding out pure shame onto your copy of Pageviews For Dummies? Even if you accept that Facebook's handling of user privacy was a misstep (which I don't entirely), to argue that it's analogous to following someone around with a camera all week and publicising his home address on the Internet just defies belief. Especially when that person is a billionaire who is more of a target than most for the assorted freaks and lunatics who slosh about online.

Tate himself was unable – or unwilling – to respond to my criticisms, or to offer any kind of defense for his actions. Instead he left it to his boss, Nick Denton, to reply. In an email, Denton wrote…

Zuckerberg is the Angelina Jolie of the internet. The media interest in him is undeniable. His lovers, friends and acquaintances — like those of any other celebrity — are caught up in the vortex. He has to make a choice; and they have to make a choice. And none of the choices — retreat from the public eye, abandonment of friendship — are palatable.

Indeed, rather than reining back his obsession with the Facebook founder’s whereabouts, Tate went all out.

On January 13th, he published a follow-up post (which I won’t link to) identifying Zuckerberg’s new address, complete with a photograph which clearly showed a house number…. (I’ve blurred the photo in the grab below.)

So what happened next? Yesterday Valleywag, with not one single word of self-awareness, published this story…

Quote…

Mark Zuckerberg Has an Actual Facebook Stalker

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken out a restraining order against an alleged stalker, a 31-year-old man named Pradeep Manukonda… Manukonda’s been trying to get in touch with Zuckerberg since January, showing up at Facebook offices, and, in once instance, at Zuck’s home in Palo Alto… Manukonda has been ordered to stay 300 yards away from both Zuckerbergs and Mark’s girlfriend Priscilla Chan until a hearing later this month.

According to TMZ, Manukonda showed up at Zuckerberg’s house on January 24th – eleven days after Tate posted its location online.

So there you go, Ryan. Q.E.D. Hope you’re pleased with yourself.

NYC Hack Is Back

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 07:08 PM PST

There’s something happening in New York City. New York Tech Meetup just announced they will be presenting hack demo at every one of their sold out events, New York’s first Music Hackday is hitting this weekend and it will be quickly followed by Foursquare’s first hackday the weekend after. Did the TC Disrupt Hackathon prefigure a growing trend here in the Big Apple?

This past weekend Columbia students demoed their best hacks, concluding their week-long DevFest 2011. Students had a week of workshops from local startups like Foursquare, Aviary and Bit.ly. The results were team hacks for everything from Facebook-generated birthday cards to time-sensitive, class-based messaging systems. Demos were presented to an audience that included New York startup luminaries including Fred Wilson, Chris Wiggins, Dave Jagoda, Steve Jacobs, Justin Singer and Thatcher Bell. Here are some of our favorites from DevFEst 2011.

Highlights

CU Board - Moses Nakamura, Andrew Hitti, Ephraim Park, & Mark Liu. A brilliant and potentially disruptive (for better or worse) idea for the classroom. Modeled on the anonymous boards in 4chan, the idea is to create discrete, time sensitive, open chat rooms tied exclusively to a class and only for the duration of a class. An online, digital note-passing system of sorts that gives students a voice and instructors an unvarnished, real-time view of their lecture.

CU Generals – Jacob Andreas. Inspired by the university’s existing “assassins” game, Andreas created a mobile web implementation that allows for team play and ongoing campaigns. The game uses location services to ensure that users have to actually run around campus to play and win. Excellent UI and gameplay for one dev over a week, new users were signing up and playing while the demo was happening.

Campus Walkabout – Benjamin Ludman, Jordan Schau & Eli Katz. A smartphone web app to give guided campus tours, Campus Walkabout allows prospective students and family to go at their own pace and cater walks to their particular interests (e.g. the campus history tour or historic building tour). Allows for community generated content and would scale well to other campuses.

More great hacks

MatchU.me – Cole Diamond – A kinder, gentler HotorNot, students browse pictures and decide whether they want to be matched. If two people are matched they can facilitate a meeting.
Chinese OCR – Ben Mann – Chinese OCR is an Android app enabling you to take a photo of Chinese text and translate it quickly into English.
Tangible Ecards - Jason Chekofsky – Presented as wireframe sketches, Tangible E-cards is a simple idea – give facebook users a chance to mail real birthday greetings to their friends a week before their actual birthday.
HackBoard – Sid Nair & Kui Tang – An online web community to form and show off projects you've worked on.
Daily Focus - David Hu & Vivek Bhagwat- An online photo scavenger hunt and group querying system.
Zesty Markets - Howie Mao & Samantha Diamond – An e-marketplace platform for niche markets.

i/o Ventures Is Now Taking Applications For Its March 2011 Program

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 06:35 PM PST

i/o Ventures, a workspace incubator that launched just over a year ago, is accepting applications for the start of its March 2011 program. The deadline for applying is March 15th. The five or six startups who pass muster can take a 4-6 month long spot in the i/o Ventures 7,000 square foor loft/coffee shop as well as $25,000 in seed money. Each of the companies in each class gives up around 8% of the company for the package deal.

The six companies in the last batch have all benefited greatly from being a part of the incubator, with two acquisitions and 4 financings between them: Damn The Radio was acquired by Fanbridge, SocialVision was a acquired by an undisclosed suitor, AppBistro raised around 700K from angels like Alfred Lin, Anomaly has raised a 500K round it will soon disclose more details about, Apprats has raised 400K from Dave McClure and other LA angels and Skyara is in the middle of financing a round.

Co-founder Paul Bragiel says that one of the benefits, aside from the space, of being an i/o Ventures-backed company is the repeated exposure to other entrepreneurs and investors, “Our opinion is that the most valuable thing is all the people they get to meet through us and working very closely on a daily basis with us four partners.”

CTO Former Lefora and Meetro co-founder Bragiel joins partners like former MyspaceAber Whitcomb, BitTorrent co-founder and Yahoo corporate development exec Ashwin Navin, HotOrNot co-founder Jim Young at the accelerator’s helm.

You can read more about the first i/o Ventures demo day, here.

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Stealth Startup Bubbli Raises Funding, Wants To Create A New Kind Of Photograph

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 05:52 PM PST

Smartphones with built-in cameras have sparked a wave of hot startups focused on photos, including Path, picplz, and Instagram. But Bubbli, a new startup that’s currently in stealth, has some plans that sound even more ambitious: it wants to use camera phones to create a new kind of photograph. The startup has just closed around $2 million in funding in a round led by August Capital, and it plans to soft launch at TED in the beginning of March (they’ll be presenting on stage).

So what exactly does Bubbli mean when they say they want to reinvent photos? You’ve got me — the startup says it wants to “bring the real world to the flat web”, by capturing places instead of just a rectangular image. It sounds like it could be a sort of panoramic photo, possibly with an augmented reality layer on top, but at this point the company isn’t talking.

Bubbli does have experience with augmented reality — while an intern at Yelp, cofounder Ben Newhouse built the ‘Monocle’ feature that was part of Yelp’s iPhone app, making it the first AR-enabled application to hit the App Store (you point your phone down the street, and Yelp will overlay each venue’s star rating). That feature led to quite a bit of controversy as it was snuck past Apple’s approval process as an Easter Egg, but Apple eventually approved it.

The company’s second cofounder, Terrence McArdle, is a designer from NYC.

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Bubbli

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Watch Out Austin! Dogpatch Labs Is Opening A Makeshift SXSW Office

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 05:07 PM PST

If the above is what your SXSW workspace usually looks like, you’re in luck: For the first time, Polaris Venture Partners will be opening up a temporary Dogpatch Labs office in Austin during this year’ SXSW so entrepreneurs who need a place to work or just hang out can find a safe haven away from all the Interactive craziness.

The Austin branch of Dogpatch Labs will be located at Treehouse Pub, at 501 East 6th Street and will have all the amenities of Dogpatch New York, Cambridge and San Francisco: Free food, desks, WIFI, space, and (yes) foosball. Those wishing to avoid ill-chosen roomies, drunk co-workers or just mingle with like-minded people can sign up here. Polaris Ventures partner Peter Flint tells me they are trying to sign up as many entrepreneurs as possible so don’t be shy.

Along with offering a workspace, VCs Flint, Mike Hirshland, Dave Barrett and Ryan Spoon will be holding office hours in Dogpatch Labs Austin and are obviously very interested in meeting with budding companies. You can grab a time slot here before everyone else does here.

Here's the full Dogpatch Austin schedule:

9am-11pm DPL open for entrepreneurs.
3pm-6pm Polaris Office Hours: http://ohours.org/PolarisVentures
5pm-6pm Informal Open office hours with Partners
8pm-11pm DPL SXSW Party (private invitation)

Monday:
9a-11pm DPL re-opens for entrepreneurs.
3p-6p Polaris Office Hours http://ohours.org/PolarisVentures
8pm-10pm Partners vs entrepreneurs foosball tournament (private invitation)

Image: Melissa Gira Grant/Flickr

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Polaris Venture Partners

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PSA: Covering The iPhone In 4 Feet Of Concrete May Affect Signal Strength

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 04:04 PM PST

Remember “Antennagate“? Oh wait, you don’t? Well let me remind you: it was pretty much the biggest deal ever… for a whole two weeks. Actually, let me rephrase that: it was pretty much the biggest deal ever for some of us in the tech media who were able to write dozens upon dozens of stories about an issue that absolutely no regular person was likely to care about.

Don’t believe me? Maybe you’ll want to ask any of the 16 million-plus people that bought an iPhone last quarter. Or maybe any of the 14 million-plus that bought one the quarter before that. The antenna issue was apparently such a big deal that not only did the iPhone chart record sales each quarter for Apple, but the reports of customers being upset with the product and returning it were basically unheard of. Damn, that pesky antenna — it nearly ruined Apple!

Facetiousness aside, you would have thought that those behind the rally cries for Antennagate would have calmed down over what ended up being a total non-issue. But nope! Not iLounge. They’re back today with “Antennagate 2″ (trademark pending)!

But this time it’s arguably even better. Not only is there a “death grip” problem with the Verizon iPhone, but now there’s a “death hug” problem as well. Now hear this: if you are able to wrap your entire hands around and iPhone and squeeze as hard as possible, you may lose some WiFi signal!

Related: if you lock the iPhone in a room with no signal, you may also lose some signal.

Beyond the fact that no one is ever going to hold their iPhone in the manner that they do in the iLounge video, and beyond the obvious link-bait (which we’re graciously submitting to), I’m just going to throw this out there: if Antennagate 1 was a 10 out of 100 on the problem scale, this is a 0. Or maybe a negative 1.

While I’ve always stood by my stance that the iPhone 4 (the AT&T version, that is) antenna issue was very real, it wasn’t a really big deal, I see this as no deal. First of all, I cannot replicate the death grip issue on the Verizon iPhone. I could (and still can) on the AT&T version. I can’t here. It’s already known that Apple changed the antenna design with this new model, so it seems fairly hard to believe that they would have changed something without correcting that problem.

Secondly, that said, the antenna still is on the outside of the phone. As as we were all made well aware this past summer, the human body doesn’t help boost its signal at all. In fact, it hurts it. I’m sure there are some acrobatic manuevers you can still do with your hands to get the signal on the Verizon iPhone to drop. Like a “death hug”, for example.

Third, covering the iPhone in four feet of concrete will also likely affect signal strength. We’re still waiting on the video proof of this, but consider yourselves warned.

[photo: flickr/coun2rparts]

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iPhone 4

Verizon

Information provided by CrunchBase

The Great Valentine’s Day Nook Color Case Gift Guide

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 02:55 PM PST

You know the drill: Valentine’s Day is next week so here’s come Nook Color cases that would make great gifts. Herp derp. We looked at Kindle cases yesterday so it only makes sense to look at the B&N counterpart.

Not surprisingly, there’s a much smaller accessory market for Nook Color cases and that’s reflected in this gift guide. There simply aren’t that many to choose from and Barnes & Noble seem to understand this. The bookseller just put several very nice cases on special for the upcoming holiday. Check ‘em out. The official B&N cases are by far the best quality ones I tested.

The Optimism Of The Gadget Maker

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 02:11 PM PST

We are at a strange point at whatever economic upturn we’re experiencing in the world economy. Things aren’t quite “right” yet, many are still out of work, and the general sense is that business spending has flatlined. However, things are looking up. How can you tell? Gadget makers are advertising again.

During the dot-com bust, and more recently during the housing crisis, gadget spending tanked and, as a result, gadgets on the aggregate were boring retreads of the same old stuff – laptops, monitors, tower PCs, and phones. Cast your memory back to 2008 when things were just getting rough. What were the the most popular devices? Netbooks: me-too machines made for the price-conscious consumer. There is nothing aspirational about a $500 6-inch EEE PC.

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 01:59 PM PST

When Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily launched last week, Apple’s VP Eddy Cue got on stage to announce one-click subscriptions for iPad publications through iTunes. The Daily already has the one-click billing option as a feature, and Cue promised it would be made available to other iPad newspaers and magazines soon. Cue then started to make the rounds of print media companies in New York City to explain how subscription billing will work on the iPad.

Who will have control over subscriber revenues and data has long been a point of contention between print publishers and Apple. The magazine and newspaper companies want to be able to control subscription billing by sending readers to their own sites to process iPad app subscriptions, but Apple is insisting that they use iTunes. To get through this impasse, I’ve heard that Apple is offering a compromise. Publications might be allowed to route subscribers to their own websites or payment portals to grab their credit card numbers, but they will also have to offer the option of subscribing through iTunes.

It is a brilliant countermove. Apple is basically saying, “Let the subscriber decide,” knowing full well they will choose iTunes. After all, it’s simply easier for consumers to subscribe to digital publications from one place. Nevertheless, already there is some public grumbling from newspapers about being forced to go through iTunes. Except for The Daily, which got to launch first with subscriptions and only offers them through iTunes (in contrast, News Corp’s WSJ app takes you to a website to process subscriptions). Apple obviously wants the rest of the print media industry to follow The Daily‘s example—both on billing through iTunes and the 99-cent-per-week pricing. (You’ve got to wonder whether Steve Jobs had any hand in convincing Murdoch to pick that price). But if other media companies insist on fulfilling subscriptions themselves, they will have to offer iTunes subscriptions as an alternative.

The print media companies want to control subscriptions for a couple reasons. They don’t like the idea of handing 30 percent of every subscriber dollar over to Apple, but even more than that they cannot afford to lose the data that comes with a direct paying relationship with readers. They could live with sharing revenues if it weren’t on an ongoing basis. After all, magazines and newspapers already share their cover price with newsstands. And iTunes is simply the new digital newsstand. The difference is that one-time newsstand buyers sometimes convert into subscribers. As most of us know, once you subscribe to a magazine or newspaper, inertia can keep you subscribing for years.

Once you are a subscriber, the print media companies know a lot about you: where you live, your name, and credit card number. Those details are enough for their database marketers to create fairly accurate demographic profiles of their readers and sell this targeted, captive audience to advertisers. Selling through iTunes, on the other hand, is just a black box. Although, as part of registering for the app, publications can collect some of the same information, such as name, email, and zipcode. What they are really worried about is that iTunes will make it easier to cancel unwanted subscriptions.

CrunchBase Information

iTunes

The Daily

iPad

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Blue Marble Energy Raises $1.3 Million More To Make Carbon-Neutral Fragrances, Flavors And Fuel

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 01:36 PM PST

According to a new SEC filing, Blue Marble Energy attracted another $1.3 million investment — this time in a series A-1 convertible note deal — to create carbon neutral alternatives to petrochemicals.

Blue Marble’s biochemicals can be used to manufacture everything from food and perfume, to plastics, adhesives and synthetic textiles. The company also produces renewable energy from biomass.

One of the company’s best known products is its perfume line, EOS, made partly with spent beer brewery grain from Freemont Brewing in conjunction with the hand-made fragrance retailers Sweet Anthem.

According to the company’s website:

“[Blue Marble]‘s process uses organic material (biomass) including: food by-products, yard clippings, spent brewery grain, algae, milfoil, corn silage, wood chips, and more.

The company’s proprietary AGATE (Acid, Gas, and Ammonia Targeted Extraction) polyculture fermentation technology…uses non-genetically modified bacteria to produce target compounds. [This process] links several kinds of bacteria in a production chain to breakdown plant material. The…bacteria symbiotically works to produce a broad portfolio of compounds.”

In late 2009, the Seattle clean tech company struck a partnership with the Odessa Public Development Authority (OPDA) to construct and run Washington state's first specialty biochemical biorefinery. The joint project attracted a $2 million award from Washington State's Community Economic Revitalization Board (CERB). The plant is now moving out of its pilot phase towards a higher-volume, commercial phase.

In April 2009, the company raised its series A investment of $2 million from an entrepreneur involved in bottling and distributing sodas in Africa, Rajiv Shah who holds a seat on Blue Marble’s board.

Keen On… The Domino Project: Seth Godin Reinvents the Book Business (TCTV)

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 12:29 PM PST

Over the last fifteen years, innovation maven Seth Godin has written twelve best-selling books about breaking all the traditional rules in business. But Godin's thirteenth book, a little thing about initiative which will be published next month, threatens to be the biggest rule-breaker in his destructive career.

Godin's thirteenth book may well be unlucky for the traditional publishing business. You see, Godin's big new thing is the Domino Project, a next generation publishing venture that he is launching with Amazon. And one of the first books published by the Domino Project will be his own little thing about initiative.

What Godin is trying to do with the Domino Project is make books "spreadable." It's a big dream – one that reinvents books in the viral age of social media. But, as he told me when we met in New York last month, most start-up businesses fail because entrepreneurs don't dream big enough.

See Part I of my interview with Seth Godin here.

On the role of technology in the post industrial age

On the Domino Project

On the value of failing small

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Seth Godin

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Mildred’s TV Parlor Is Almost Here

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 12:04 PM PST

Ray Bradbury’s 1950s novel Fahrenheit 451 had a lot of stuff about book burnings. But it captured my imagination when I read it in 7th grade because of the TV Parlors – entire rooms where the walls were completely covered in TV screens, creating an immersive, interactive, 3-D experience. The protagonists wife, Mildred, desperately wants the fourth wall size screen to complete her TV Parlor.

And we all kind of want that, too. Forget that 60 inch television or 30 inch monitor. We want screens that cover walls. Screens we can touch.

Microsoft has done some interesting stuff with cheap infrared lasers and a projector that can create a touch experience on any wall. See this 2008 post where I tested the device.

But that’s nothing compared to what’s being called the world’s largest touchscreen – a 10 meter by 2.8 meter monster that can detect up to 100 simultaneous touch inputs. Once again, infrared is being used to handle touch.

Mildred would have been impressed.

In the late 90s people started buying their first flat screen plasma TVs, paying $15,000 (installation included). Today $1,000 will buy you a much, much better flat screen TV. Would you pay $15,000 to have this 10 meter touchscreen in your living room? A lot of you probably would.

PC Mechanic, New Article

2011-02-09T04:07:00.001-08:00

PC Mechanic, New Article

Need An App For Your Android Phone? Invent It!
IcoFX Quick Tutorial [Video]
Do Green Drives Really Save That Much Power?

Need An App For Your Android Phone? Invent It!

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 03:30 AM PST

Using an Android-based smartphone does have its perks. If you need a particular app but it doesn’t exist anywhere, you can roll your own.

"But I’m not a programmer", you may say. Well, Google took that into consideration and put together the App Inventor.

This short video explains how it works in a nutshell:

As you can see, it’s not exactly a 1-2-3 super-easy thing, however it is a whole lot easier compared to manually coding an app yourself – even if you are a programmer. Lots of drag-and-drop involved, and thoughtful ‘puzzle piece’ style layout so it’s easy to connect things together to have your app perform certain functions.

You can check it out at appinventor.googlelabs.com.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Need An App For Your Android Phone? Invent It!

IcoFX Quick Tutorial [Video]

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 02:00 AM PST

In the video above is IcoFX, a freeware icon editor for Windows. While it’s true there are other more powerful graphics editors like Adobe Photoshop and GIMP, IcoFX’s simplicity definitely makes it worth having installed.

If you do any sort of web design work, whether personally or professionally, a custom favicon.ico file is more or less mandatory these days. The best tool to make those with is IcoFX.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

IcoFX Quick Tutorial [Video]

Do Green Drives Really Save That Much Power?

Posted: 08 Feb 2011 06:00 AM PST

It is no secret that I am a big time supporter of reducing our impact on the environment, so I enjoy reading tech related items on the subject. One article that caught my eye recently was an Ars Technica post titled "Ask Ars: are "green" hard drives really all that green?"

This article is a great read and breaks down the "green" drives from a variety of aspects. But for those of you who only want the highlights, here are a few excepts of interest:

When a drive is "green," the designation usually just means that it runs on the slower side—5400 rotations per minute, as opposed to the more ubiquitous 7200 RPM. But in some cases, this slowdown can translate to drives that are quieter, cooler, and less power-hungry.
[...]
In terms of cost, using a green hard drive compared to a normal one makes very little difference. Assuming your drive spends 4 hours reading and writing and 20 hours idle per day, switching from the WD Black to Green saves you only 45 kilowatt-hours per year. The national average cost of a kilowatt-hour is 11.93 cents, netting you a whopping $5.38 per year for your sacrifice of 1800 RPM. For comparison, changing one 60-watt lightbulb used 4 hours a day to a 7-watt fluorescent one saves you more, about $9.23 per year.
[...]
[I]f you are building a system that you’re not placing all your high-performance hopes on, like an HTPC or a NAS, a "green" drive isn’t a bad option. Quietness and coolness are valued characteristics in HTPCs when you’re looking to avoid drowning out the audio with drive spinning and fans or overheating the surrounding set-top boxes. Likewise, home theater and storage are relatively low-demand operations, so for most consumer purposes you won’t need a high-performance drive. And it doesn’t hurt that "green" drives are also cheaper.

It pretty much boils down to this: if you don’t need performance, green drives make a solid choice because they are cheaper and can end up saving you $20+ in power consumption over the life of the drive. If you have a simple RAID-5 storage box with 5 drives then can add up to $100+ in savings (also factor in the rising cost of electricity and the savings could be more).

Do you use green drives? If so, do you notice a difference over their non-green counterparts?

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Do Green Drives Really Save That Much Power?