Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player: $100, this Friday, Wal-Mart
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Specifications of Verizon’s LG Voyager outed
Filed under: Cellphones
[Via MobilitySite]
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Life After Text Links: ScratchBack
Since the Google crack down on text link ad sales this month many in the blog related advertising industry have been scrambling to introduce new offerings. Text-Link-Ads.com (a TechCrunch sponsor) launched ShoppingAds.com this week, a nice looking CPC advertising system geared for blogs.
New comer ScratchBack, led by well regarded online marketer Jim Kukral, offers an online “tipping” system. It allows a publisher to accept tips and “give back” links or images in return. Each listing has a unique message; when a visitor mouseovers a listing, a custom message shows up in the form of a bubbletip. Publishers name their price on tips, and earn money from every interaction through the ScratchBack system. The service is free to signup, and publishers get the code for a “TopSpot” widget in minutes. ScatchBack will be taking a small cut from each transaction, although the percentage hasn’t been finalized.
Kukral calls it a “cross between textlinkads and blogads, but more fun and more options for publishers, and more fun for readers (who become your best advertisers).”
Notably, the system has been approved by Google (they checked) as every link is “nofollow” and the widgets are built in javascript; this is a product that provides an alternative advertising model that won’t see publishers punished in future Google crackdowns.
This isn’t a product for the top end of town, but it does provide a creative alternative to the many bloggers out there looking for new ways of making money.
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Facebook Music is Coming! (Steve/CO-ED Magazine)
Facebook Music is Coming! — As reported earlier this year, Facebook has been rumored to announce an online music service to compete with iTunes and MySpace in the near future. — This just in: the "Facebook Music" platform will serve as the social networking giants first step into the music space.
Source: CO-ED Magazine
Author: Steve
Link: http://coedmagazine.com/entertainment/Music/3400
Folding@Home recognized by Guinness World Records
Filed under: Gaming, Networking
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Pringo Powering Social Network From Yokahama
LA based white label social networking networking startup Pringo has announced the launch of a new social networking site that is focused on saving the planet and tires.
The site, “Eco Treadsetters” comes from the Yokahama Tire Corporation and is focused on reinforcing Yokohama’s online branding, increasing its user base and enhancing the company’s position as “a socially-aware tire manufacturer that is focused on protecting the Earth.”
Users can create profiles, communicate with each other, form sub-communities, have a profile page etc…the pretty much standard social network feature set. Users are also able to “submit their environmental projects, created to help preserve their respective communities, to potentially win prizes, including an eco-trip to Costa Rica and gift certificates from Patagonia and iTunes.”
Pringo has been off our radar for a while as more well known white label services such as Ning get most of the attention. The company has built up a respectable corporate business providing social networking solutions to sites such as 11on11.com, CBS Radio and ePharma.
It’s no slight to Pringo when I say that I just don’t see the appeal of a social network from a tire manufacturer; after all there is nothing wrong with how the site functions and no doubt they were paid well to host it. The long tail may be long, but I think in this case Yokahama wont gain decent road traction.
See our chart of white label social networking providers here.
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Samsung’s F700 to arrive on Verizon as SCH-U940?
Filed under: Cellphones
Verizon Wireless customers, you may want to sit down for this one. Samsung's oh-so-sexy SGH-F700, which is currently thrilling quite a few Vodafone customers, could be headed to The Network -- and soon. According to Phone Arena, the Verizon variant of the F700 will be dubbed the SCH-U940, but actual details beyond that are scant. We are told that the unit will boast a 440 x 240 resolution touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard and a two-megapixel camera, but beyond that we're left to wonder. No worries though, as the phone will reportedly be landing "in a few months," so keep your eyes peeled, cool?
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Eye-Fi hands-on, impressions
Filed under: Digital Cameras, Features, Peripherals, Wireless, Networking
Gallery: Eye-Fi hands-on, impressions
Continue reading Eye-Fi hands-on, impressions
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Google Is Courting Facebook Developers In More Ways Than One
Google is taking a multi-pronged approach when it comes to winning over the hearts and minds of Facebook developers. We already know that it will attempt a direct appeal to get developers to come over to Google’s side and create social applications via its OpenSocial APIs. But Google is also trying to convince Facebook developers to use Google’s new pay-per-action ads (still in beta) to get more people to install their apps on Facebook. Google’s AdSense team is specifically targeting Facebook developers with an invitation to its pay-per-action beta program (reprinted beow).
A pay-per-action (PPA) ad only costs the advertiser something if a specific action is taken by a consumer—in this case, installing a Facebook app or going to a developer’s application page on Facebook, where the developer can make money showing his or her own ads. For the most part, it seems these PPA ads will appear on Google itself or on sites elsewhere on the Web that are part of the AdSense network. Thus they will (ironically) drive more traffic to Facebook.
But there’s another, albeit speculative, scenario. According to VentureBeat, Google may try to sneak AdSense ads into Facebook itself. This is a stretch, but bear with us. Google would have to do so through a back door, by appealing to developers themselves, who control the ads on their own pages within Facebook. If Google can show generic AdSense ads on Facebook, it could show these PPA ads as well. In the letter to Facebook developers, Google curiosly says the PPA ads will appear on “individual publishers in the Google content network, including other Facebook applications.” It seems that Facebook would crack down on any such sneak attack, given its ad partnership with Microsoft. But it would be interesting to see which ads do better on Facebook: Google’s PPA ads or Facebook’s upcoming SocialAds. Let the most relevant ads win.
Here is the full text of the letter from Google to Facebook developers:
Dear Facebook Application Developer,
Would you like to drive more users to your app? We’ve expanded our pay-per-action (PPA) beta test and would like to invite you to participate by creating ads for your Facebook application.
To start setting up your first pay-per-action campaign, click on the link within the pay-per-action alert in your AdWords account and follow the simple steps at http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=68150 to get your PPA ads up & running across the Google content network and on other Facebook applications.
Key Benefits of PPA
* Save money by paying only for actions that you define, such as users adding your app. Rather than paying for clicks or impressions, you only pay when a visitor performs a specified action, such as installing your Facebook application or visiting your main application page.
* Save time by setting up AdWords conversion tracking: you can set your desired cost per action and pay for completed actions to hit your cost-per-action targets.
* Increase conversion rates by using publishers’ knowledge about visitors to their websites to your advantage. Individual publishers in the Google content network, including other Facebook applications, choose to display PPA ads that they feel will appeal to their visitors. This works to your advantage, as publishers are motivated to choose ads they believe will have a high conversion rate.With PPA, you decide how much you want to pay for each type of action, whether it’s $1 for a user installing your application or $.15 for visiting your application page. You can also control your spending by setting a daily budget. In addition, you can view clicks, impressions, conversion rate, cost per conversion, total conversions, and total cost for each pay-per-action campaign by running a Placement Performance Report or a pay-per-action report in the Report Center of your AdWords account.
For more information about pay-per-action ads and a list of our most frequently asked questions, please visit the pay-per-action section in the Google AdWords help center: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=11635
We are excited to offer you a new way to attract new users to your Facebook application and meet your advertising goals.a If you have any questions, please email adsense-developer-research@google.com.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
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The Significance Of Grey Hair
One reader asked whether VCs think talented young entrepreneurs are sufficiently qualified managers. The answer to this is 'it depends'.
VCs frequently take meetings with less experienced entrepreneurs and they often invest in them. Experience is not inherently a barrier. Nobody assumes that being less experienced makes you incapable of building substantial value. What some entrepreneurs lack in experience they more than make up for in hunger, creativity, intelligence and drive.
Young entrepreneurs are valued. VCs expect them to have unique drive and commitment to their ideas that can improve the odds of success. This energy factor can go a long way in some aspects of the business, including product design, inspiring employees and grabbing lots of media attention.
However some companies are more complex, requiring management to develop large organizations, enterprise sales functions and other more technical business components. In most cases, theses initiatives are more successful when someone with deep experience leads the charge.
As a result, the answer to this question is a function of what the business intends to accomplish. If there are business units that require substantial experience, a team of young guns isn't going to be sufficient.
The key to success for less experienced entrepreneurs lies in understanding that they don’t know what they don’t know. Being wise enough to seek help is a critical component of success. The takeaway from this is that entrepreneurs should do their best to objectively evaluate the needs of their company and make a best effort to put the right team together regardless of age.
This column was provided by Mark Davis. Mark is the author of Get Venture, a column designed to help entrepreneurs raise venture capital. In addition to his column, Mark is active in the venture community as an entrepreneur, advisor and venture capitalist. He currently works at DFJ Gotham Ventures, a leading early-stage IT venture capital fund based in NYC. Mark earned his B.A. in Economics with a minor in History at Duke University and is pursuing his MBA at Columbia Business School, where he is the Early Stage President of the Private Equity and Venture Capital Club and the Founder of the Columbia Venture Community .
Wireless ECG patch developed
Filed under: Wireless
[Via Medgadget]
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Google OpenSocial Image Gallery
Last night we outlined the details emerging about Google’s social networking initiative, OpenSocial. Below are some screenshots of OpenSocial in action that we didn’t have time to include in that post.
Most of these shots show the integration of iLike and Flixster applications with social networks on Ning. A few show the integration of applications with orkut and hi5. We’ve also included an overview document below.
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A bit about Open Social (Dave Winer/Scripting News)
A bit about Open Social — Standards devised by one tech company whose main purpose is to undermine another tech company, usually don't work. — In this case it's Google trying to undermine Facebook. — And I don't think it's going to work. — What would be exciting and uplifting …
Source: Scripting News
Author: Dave Winer
Link: http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/10/31…
Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader delayed until end of the year?
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Handhelds
Although it hasn't had the buzz of some other longstanding rumors, we've heard a lot about Amazon's Kindle ebook reader over the past year -- everything from shady pics to tagged content to a supposed October 15th ship date, which came and went with nary a peep from the etailer. Now Brad Stone at the New York Times -- who predicted that ship date to begin with -- says that his sources have told him that the Kindle has been delayed (shocking), but will still make it out by the end of the year. Stone also says Amazon is still perfecting the service and wants to have as much Kindle-ready content (Kindling?) available at launch as it can -- and that the built-in EV-DO modem will pull down content over Sprint's network. That's news to us, but until we actually see this thing we're going to take our Kindle with a large grain of salt.[Via mobileread]
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Is It A Bird? Is It A Plane? No, It’s Google’s Share Price!
Wow, maybe Henry Blodget wasn’t so wrong after all. Google broke through $700 a share in trading today, closing at a record high of $707, just over 3 weeks since breaking through the $600 mark.
Google did have the benefit of a surging NASDAQ; the exchange favored by tech stocks closing up 42.41 pts or 1.51% after the Fed cut US interest rates by 25 basis points to 4.5%. A range of analysts including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and others have raised their target price for GOOG stock to $800 and above.
It’s not all clear sailing ahead for Google, though. The US Federal Reserve wouldn’t be cutting interest rates if it thought the US economy was healthy and the Federal Open Market Committee said that although financial market turmoil linked to a US housing downturn had eased in part, “the pace of economic expansion will likely slow in the near term, partly reflecting the intensification of the housing correction,” which if applied to Google would see its revenue growth slow.
International markets also present a problem for Google, with a decline that wasn’t widely reported when Google announced its 3rd Quarter earnings result October 18. According to Google’s statement, if it hadn’t been for currency movements international revenue would have dropped $121 million in the 3rd quarter (presuming that USD has remained at the same level). It might have been a blip but it’s certainly something to watch given most of Google’s growth opportunities should be coming from outside its home country, given the relative maturity of the US internet market.
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Today’s most popular headlines are Top 10 … [Stats Feed]
USB Ferris Wheel Phone Stand shocks and awes
Filed under: Cellphones
Unfortunately, we've no idea exactly what mobiles are compatible with ConnectLand's USB Ferris Wheel Phone Stand (aside from the HTC Touch, obviously), but we're all probably better off that way. This undoubtedly bizarre device can be powered via USB or a pair of AA cells, and it sports an incoming phone call alarm in the form of... wait for it... a spinning Ferris Wheel. That's right kids, whenever your handset receives a call, the wheel starts to spin and LEDs begin to flash, giving you plenty of motivation to hand out your number to anyone who will call it. Those with money to burn can snap one up for $27, but if you're that curious to see how this thing works, why not save your dough and peek the (intensely boring) video after the jump?Continue reading USB Ferris Wheel Phone Stand shocks and awes
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Update Your Quicksilver, Don’t Panic [Featured Mac Download]
If you've been trying to download and install Quicksilver in order to get Leopard up to snuff, you've probably noticed that the Quicksilver site is down. In fact, it's been down for quite a few days now. Fear not, Quicksilver lovers, as the application's developer contacted us to let us know that the last version we posted about included a bug that caused some Quicksilver installations to ping for updates like crazy, which brought down the homepage. That, consequently, has meant no one has been able to download Quicksilver or any Quicksilver plugins for a few days. So, whether you want to install Quicksilver fresh or you've already got it installed, go grab the latest version from the link below (it's a direct link) and help put out the fire for the folks who who so kindly bring us Quicksilver free of charge.
1,000 WooMe Invitations for TechCrunch Readers
WooMe - a website for “speed introductions” that presented at TechCrunch40 but is still in private beta - is giving out one thousand invitations to our readers (redeem yours here).
You would be excused for mistaking WooMe for a speed dating website like SpeedDate.com (covered here). WooMe users are put into one minute-long webcam sessions with one another to decide quickly whether or not they are compatible. After five subsequent sessions, you indicate which of the people “woo’d” you or not. If they were woo’d by you too, then you can choose to contact them for $1. This obviously lends itself to speed dating, and indeed 75% of the 30,000 total sessions conducted in private beta have been for dating purposes.
However, the company is insisting that the service has many non-romantic uses. You can leverage WooMe to find a travel partner or someone to babysit your kids (hopefully you’ll make that decision after more than a 1-minute long face-to-face). You can also just use it to find people with similar interests to you. Last night, WooMe hosted an event for UC Berkeley that got students together to meet over topics such as “I still love Cal football”.
CEO Stephen Stokols says that almost 7,500 people have mutually woo’d each other on the service so far. On Friday, WooMe will add the ability to tag the people you meet over webcam. These tags will stay in people’s profiles so new introductions come loaded with some basic information about a person.
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WikiAnswers Passes One Million Questions - Brilliant Marketing Product
NY-based WikiAnswers is reporting this evening that they have passed the one millionth question. For those of you who keep score, the question was, "Are there readily available substitutes for gold in industrial applications?" Today's interesting question is, "Why is pumpkin pie served on Thanksgiving and not on Halloween?" I can only guess it's because Halloween was created way before there was an America :)
WikiAnswers unique monthly visitor count in the U.S. has grown 317%, to over four million reports Comscore. This ranks WikiAnswers as the second-fastest growing domain of the top 1,500. Community Director Jay Bailey noted that yesterday, registered users grew by 1,867, a new daily record.
The best part about WikiAnswers is how smart of a marketing idea it is. People love to share bits of knowledge they have so this site should continue to grow. Of couse, should they want to increase pageviews, just have the guides as more questions because you know someone will answer. Their most popular users (example user) seem to contribute a huge number of the questions to the site.
Five Things Yahoo Search Can Do That Google Cannot [Search Engines]
Did you know that you can jump straight to a Wikipedia search or start composing an email directly from Yahoo's search box? Weblog Digital Inspiration highlights five cool Yahoo search tricks—like the two mentioned above—that Google doesn't do.
For instance, type !wiki google in Yahoo! search box to search Google in Wikipedia.com. Other popular shortcuts are !ebay, !amazon, and !flickr. You can also execute these from the Firefox search box without changing the default search engine.
The post also highlights lyric search, ordering keywords in queries, and the linkdomain operator (which returns how many times one site links to another). It's not that these non-Google supported features will get many users to switch from Google to Yahoo, but some of the arguably worthwhile features might take you to Yahoo's doorstep on specific occasions—especially Yahoo's lyrics search.
Buffalo’s WHR-HP-G54DD AirStation router comes loaded with DD-WRT
Filed under: Wireless, Networking
Buffalo's out tooting its own horn today, as the AirStation Wireless-G MIMO Performance Router claims to be the "first commercial wireless router to come with DD-WRT firmware pre-installed." Aimed squarely at the SMB and SOHO market, the WHR-HP-G54DD (WHR-HP-G54 pictured) is the first device to emerge from the firm's partnership with NewMedia-NET. Of note, this device features five QoS levels to prioritize traffic, optimized link state routing (OLSR), a data transfer application with VPN functionality, PPTP protocol support, WMM and DDNS, and a bevy of management applications including remote network status logging, remote web management via HTTPS and web-based backup / restore. If all this sounds like your cup of tea, you can pick one up now for £41.70 ($86), and you can check out the full (and we mean full) list of specifications right there in the read link.
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Google Culture Creep At YouTube
As far as I know, YouTube never changed their logos for holidays like famously Google does. But today they did, quietly adding a pumpkin to the logo in lieu of the television screen we normally see. Too bad it wasn’t something a little scarier. An evil looking clown, for example, would have been perfect.
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V7 lets loose budget-priced NAV730 and NAV740 GPS units
Filed under: GPS
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Speed Up a Slow My Computer with a Simple Tweak [Windows Tip]
If you're used to taking a coffee break because of long hangs every time you fire up Windows Explorer, the How-To Geek weblog suggests turning off network folder and printer searching in Explorer's folder options. Just open Explorer, go to Tools -> Folder Options and click on the View tab. At the top of the File and Folders list, uncheck "Automatically search for network folders and printers" and click OK. If the networking issue was your Explorer slow-down culprit, you should notice a significantly faster startup next time you open up My Computer.
HP hit with patent counterclaims from Acer
Filed under: Desktops, Peripherals
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Using Pubmatic Could Land You Some Free Advertising
Advertising has gotten a lot more complicated since the early days of the internet. There are hundreds of ad networks out there. With targeting being the name of the game, efficiently allocating your ad space to visitors is nearly impossible. In response, automated ad optimization engines have started up to help manage these advertising complexities. Using one seems like a no-brainer for publishers concerned about making the most of their advertising. Advertising rates change too quickly over time and the complexity of serving the right ads to your different demographics is simply too hard to handle by hand, particularly on websites with large footprints.
There are several engines out there already, including YieldBuild and The Rubicon Project. Now TechCrunch 40 finalist Pubmatic is hosting a contest to draw more publishers to their platform. Every month, the two publishers who see the greatest gains using Pubmatic will receive thousands in free advertising on top “web 2.0 web sites” (i.e. blogs). The amount is still unknown because they are still finalizing the sites they are advertising on. You can sign up for the program here.
PubMatic’s ad optimization engine is similar to YieldBuild and the Rubicon project. Unlike these earlier two, Pubmatic is actually live with 1,300 sites and open to anyone else. The engine serves as a meta ad server that serves the highest revenue ad network for each visitor given the time, geographic, demographic, and layout aspects of your site. It currently supports ad networks like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network and Value Click. They also provide them with a central dashboard to track all their ad networks and ad configurations. Below you’ll find more information from their TechCrunch 40 video.
Pubmatic has already picked the November winners WinCustomize and BikerOrNot, which they claim have seen over 100% increases in their ad revenue since using PubMatic. YeildBuild and The Rubicon Project have boasted similar increases for their publishers. To a degree, it all just depends on how poorly monetized your site was to start. However, Pubmatic is looking for sensible successes from fairly well trafficked sites and will double check your previous monetization metrics to ensure the increase in revenue is real.
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Crealev builds a levitating lamp
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Read -- Crealev website
Read -- Video of the lamps in action
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Minimize Windows to Thumbnails with ThumbWin [Featured Windows Download]
Windows only: Manage and minimize your open windows to desktop thumbnail previews with freeware application ThumbWin. At first glance this application might seem a bit frivolous, but after diving into the preferences, you'll notice a ton of worthwhile functionality—from fully configurable keyboard shortcuts, several different management options including drag and drop arrangement and resizing of thumbnails, and the ability to exclude certain windows by name or type from being thumbnailed. Add to that a small memory footprint, and this is a tempting application to add to your startup items. ThumbWin is freeware, Windows only.
