We’re big fans of The Richter Scales, the musical group that have brought us Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Here Comes Another Bubble, and gut-busting songs at the 2008 Crunchies and most recently the parody of Silicon Valley at the 2009 Crunchies a few weeks ago. The group is releasing an animated video of its song ‘I’ve Got Mail and I’ve Got it Made,’ which was one of the two songs The Richters sang at the first Crunchies in 2007. As you may remember, it’s about what happens to a guy when he follows the instructions in all the spam email he receives. Enjoy!
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REDMOND, WA – Regardless of how fast your broadband connection is, Microsoft plans to deliver consistently high quality, "smooth streaming" of the Winder Olympics with adaptive streaming technology, a system that delivers video tailored to the connection speed and CPU power of the end user.
NBC Sports is using Microsoft's Silverlight to stream the Vancouver Games.
Microsoft is teaming with Akamai to deliver the video files.
Earlier today, via Skype hook-up, we spoke with Microsoft principal evangelist Jason Seuss who said the system is designed to deliver high quality video for connections from 400kbs to 3.5mbs.
Much more on Microsoft and adaptive streaming of the Olympics by Ina Fried of CNET News.com. Big feature about technology around NBC Sports operations by Glen Dickson at B&C.
HTC Dragon and friends turn up on Dopod roadmap originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Last year, Yahoo still dominated display advertising on the Web in terms of sheer number of ad impressions on its properties, but social networking sites MySpace and Facebook came on strong. Some new data from comScore in its just-released 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review ranks the top Web properties by the number of display ad impressions.
Yahoo served up an estimated 521 billion impressions last year, according to the report, followed by Fox Interactive Media (i.e. MySpace) with 368 billion, and Facebook with 330 billion. Microsoft sites (No.4) only served up 218 billion display ads, whereas Google (No. 6) served up only 70 billion. (These numbers do not include paid search text ads)
Apple’s $499 starting iPad price tag is already lower than many people — and a few competitors — expected, but apparently Steve and company have left themselves a little wiggle room: Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope says that Apple told him it’ll remain “nimble” when it comes to iPad pricing, suggesting that the price could drop if sales don’t meet targets. That’s not a hugely surprising thing to say, considering Apple’s trying to be the first to achieve real success with a ‘tweener device and strong pressure from netbooks, laptops, and smartphones threatens to collapse the space entirely, but a lot of people are taking it to mean some kind of drop is a done deal — particularly since Apple cut the price of the first-gen iPhone by $200 just a few months after it launched and saw already-solid sales triple. We’re honestly not so sure, though: Apple always tells investors that it’s confident in how its products are priced but responsive to market changes, and it’s not like a smaller price cut boosted the Apple TV into hit product territory. We’ll see what happens after the iPad actually goes on sale — we doubt we’ll see any changes for another few months at least.
Analyst: Apple to be ‘nimble’ on iPad pricing, athletic on pommel horse originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
A week ago we asked readers to tell us how they’re using Google Wave in their daily lives, and despite a bit of “ha! no one’s using Wave!” snarking on the Twitter, we got lots of interesting responses.
Unsurprisingly, most Wavers use it as a real-time wiki, but some take advantage of features unique to Wave, like inline and private replies, public tags, and gadgets. I featured the most unique use cases I got in a brand new chapter just added to The Complete Guide to Google Wave. The following is the text of the just-published Chapter 10, which describes ways in which a few people who don't work for Google are using Wave to get things done—with screenshots.
So far you’ve learned the finer workings of Wave in great detail, but there’s a big difference between understanding how to swing a hammer and building a house. In this chapter, you’ll meet regular people who are already getting things done with Wave in their daily work and life. You’ll learn the Wave techniques they’ve developed through trial and error, and the specific Wave features they use to get certain jobs done. Finally, you’ll create wave templates you can use and reuse for your own purposes.
Google is planning to unveil a broad new social product on Tuesday that will integrate with at least two existing Google products. Some details emerged earlier today on the Wall Street Journal (“a new feature that makes it easier and faster for users of Gmail to view media and status updates”), but our understanding is that the product goes well beyond a Gmail integration.
As I wrote last night, there is still a lot of room for improvement in online social services. Status updates, photo and video sharing, review and location based content are not only decentralized today, but are becoming overwhelmed with spam and other noise.
The Google event begins at 10 am. Tune in to TechCrunch for live coverage.
Since the dawn of Facebook’s Photos feature, users have been tasked with the not-so-terrible burden of having to manually click through every photo in an album. Sure, you can also hit the arrow key on your keyboard to jump to the next picture, but even that repetitive task could send you inching down the treacherous path toward carpal tunnel syndrome. Now, there’s a way to view hundreds of photos without lifting a finger: a new Facebook Prototype lets you turn these photo albums into slideshows. You can activate the prototype here.
The new feature was released as a Facebook Prototype some time last week, and it’s about as basic as they come. After activating it, you’ll find a ‘Play’ button nestled between the ‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ navigation buttons in the photo viewer. Clicking it will turn the album you’re currently viewing into a slideshow, displaying a new photo every five seconds. That’s it. There apparently isn’t any way to change the frequency of the photo changes, and there aren’t any fancy transitions like you’ll get from iPhoto. But hey, you don’t have to click any more.
Facebook Prototypes are similar to Google Labs, in that they allow the social network to showcase some of the pet projects and unfinished features created by its engineers. Prototypes launched in September at TechCrunch50, and have since spawned some compelling new features, including a Mac desktop notifier, an improved photo uploader, and even a measure of Gross National Happiness.
There’s just no two ways about it: the integrated self-timer is easily one of the most amazing technologies to ever be invented. Yeah, we said it. Unfortunately, beeping for ten seconds while a shooter races to get in position isn’t always ideal or fun, and that’s where isharq comes in. His Arduino-based mod is amongst the most flexible out there for DSLRs, enabling it to morph from a basic laser trigger hack to something that senses heat, movement or sound (just to name a few) and then makes your camera react accordingly. As it stands, his setup triggers his DSLR to snap a shot whenever a laser beam is broken, and if you’re eager to see more, be sure to peek the in-action video just past the break. Oh, and the source link holds all the secrets to recreating something like this in your own laboratory.
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When you bop between your work and home computers all the time, it’s tough keeping your favorite music at your fingertips (”Which computer has my Once More, With Feeling soundtrack on it?”) AudioBox lets you listen to your music from anywhere.
(Click the image above for a closer look.)
AudioBox is a web-based media player that puts your music (and, eventually, movies) in the cloud so you can access it from any computer with an internet connection and standard browser. Just upload your favorite media files to AudioBox’s secure server, and stream them anytime you want to hear one of your favorite tunes. In fact, you can also access your music via your mobile browser (the company says an official iPhone app is in the works).
Uploading files is easy-peasy. Just locate music on your computer’s hard drive and send files to AudioBox in batches or one at a time. Create and delete playlists, shuffle and repeat songs, or filter by artist, song, or genre. The app supports drag and drop, so organizing your media files is a snap.
