Founder and Editor of Crenk. Im CEO of Insomnia Ltd which owns and operates RouteNote (Digital Music Distributor), Adphilia (Site Representation Firm) and Black and White Music (Music Recording Studio).
Formerly called the HTC Click, the HTC Tattoo will hit the European market in October and others a few months later. HTC hopes this phone will bring the loved-by-geeks Android OS to the masses; we’re not sure that will happen, but it looks like a good entry-level phone for the platform.
It’s called the Tattoo because you can adorn it with custom, patterned covers. Wrapped in those covers you’ll find a 3.2-megapixel camera, 512 MB of internal memory, a 2.8-inch touchscreen with a 240 x 320 resolution, GPS, Wi-Fi, a compass, and Bluetooth. Supported cellular networks include quad-band GSM and EDGE, and 900/2100MHz HSPA and UMTS.
There is a new Formula Three car in Northern Ireland that is receiving a great deal of press lately. Not only can the car reach speeds of 130 mph, but it’s made of sustainable materials, too.
According to BBC News, the ‘green’ vehicle, which researchers say is the world’s first sustainable race car, is a result of a collaboration between the University of Warwick’s Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre, the University of Ulster, and others. Powered by biodiesel, it’s made from environmentally friendly products like hemp, soybean oil, potato starch, and recycled bottles. Researchers didn’t sacrifice safety for sustainability, though. The vehicle’s “critical parts” are not made from sustainable materials, researcher Dr. Julie Soden told the BBC.
It’s clear that researchers don’t intend to keep this car in a lab; they want to see it used on the track. As evidence, A1 Grand Prix champion driver Adam Carroll recently took it for a spin. It’d be quite the feat if, one day, researchers could make this ‘green’ car a viable option for competitive drivers.
Im not exactly too sure if this should be on Crenk but it is a very interesting piece of technology that I thought a lot of our readers might be interested in. For a long time now a cushioned trainer has long been the most important part of any wardrobe.
This new concept is basically a running sock. The aim is to provide the runner with a great deal of cushioning while at the same time allow the runner to feel like they have the control of being barefoot. The FiveFingers brand has been getting a lot of press in the USA recently and they were even named one of the best inventions by Time magazine back in 2007.
There has been a lot of talk about the FiveFingers on Twitter in which one tweeter even wrote:
Just got a pair of Vibram FiveFingers – I think my whole running world is about to change.
The ultra-thin socks made from hard-wearing neoprene are said to help prevent injuries including ankle sprains and sore knees and sell for around £80. They are like gloves for feet that basically give the sensation of being barefoot while still protecting the skin.
Vibram says sales of the ’shoes’ have tripled every year since they were first launched back in 2006. It expects to make $10million from sales in North America this year.
Facebook is slowly moving out of the walled garden and toward public information streaming. Now admins of pages or applications on Facebook can share their Facebook activity streams on other websites via a few new widgets.
For Example the live stream box allows users to update their status from within your own site. Im not exactly too sure how this will help as a publisher, but it is a pretty cool embed widget none the less.
The Live Stream Box, works two ways, using tabs to switch between them. Friends mode displays your Facebook stream the way you’d see it, with all of your friends’ latest updates. Everyone Watching mode shows you the activity of other Facebook users who are also viewing the page where the widget is embedded. There’s also a Fan Box that shows the stream of your fan page, and people can like and comment on posts using the widget. The new widgets don’t replace Facebook badges (did anybody ever use those?), so individuals can still use those show off their Facebook accounts.
A previously rejected iPhone title offering emulated play of Commodore 64 titles has been approved after the developer made changes to align it with Apple’s SDK. It allows the iPhone to act as a system that was what was once Apple’s staunch competitor.
According to a report by TouchArcade, Manomio’s $4.99 C64 title was rejected in June despite having lined up all the proper licensing rights.
There has been a lot of talk recently about the new PS3Slim, but we have just come across a completely new design from Tai Chiem, this 3D model will surely make all the gizmo freaks drooling spit all over the place.
From the basic images it seems as thought the designer believes that the next PS4 will have an OLED screen.
XPERIA X2 comes bundled with tons of features including QWERTY keypad, 8.1MP camera, a 3.2 inch sized screen with WVGA resolution and a wide variety of communication possibilities. X2 comes with 14 specially designed preloaded XPERIA™ panels and 16 more to download, users can work with no boundaries with the XPERIA™ X2. From Skype, Mytopia and Google, to games, CNN and Windows Live, the panels ensure users are up-to-date with what matters most to them.
Features include:
8.1 megapixel camera
Up to 16x digital zoom, Auto focus, Geo tagging and Image stabilizer
Nokia has announced at the Nokia World conference in Stuttgart that they will be releasing a new mobile handset called the Nokia X6. The Nokia X6 is sure to turn a lot of heads with its stunningly beautiful design, but it also has a lot of features that could make it the phone of choice for the trendy teen this year.
The Nokia X6 seems to be the successor to the music orientated Nokia 5800, however it also has a 3.2 capacitive touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera, 32GB of storage, and 35 hours of music playback.
“With direct access to Ovi Store, the Nokia X6 is a hive of activity that brings 20 friends and virtual communities, like Facebook, to your homescreen.”
Nokia has also introduced a new social friendly feature called Lifecasting with Ovi; it lets you publish your location and status updates directly to Facebook from the home screen of the phone:
“Lifecasting goes beyond just publishing your status – it is about building deeper and closer connections between people. It triggers new kinds of communication patterns, such as sending messages or status updates or even navigating to a friend or a place. Lifecasting will premiere on the new Nokia N97 mini, companion to the successful Nokia N97.”
It took them a while, but Nokia has finally caught up to the fact that having a feature-packed phone is only half of the equation. Giving your users access to content and enabling them to connect and share with others is equally important, and their latest lineup delivers the goods. Read the full press release here.
ScreenTunes is a free search tool that helps users find where a song has been played in any piece of professionally-produced video content. You just type in the name of the song and it tells you all the films and TV shows in which it’s appeared. You can then listen to the track right from the results (using Grooveshark), or purchase the track on iTunes or Amazon’s online stores.
Along with acting as a search tool for individual songs, ScreenTunes can be used to look up a track by its lyrics. This also works on entire movie titles, so you can type the name to get a quick track list.
ScreenTunes is a very hit and miss service at the moment and I noticed it takes a lot time to actually load the Grooveshark section at times. Additionally, I noticed there are still lots of searches that yield zero results, I guess they will build their catalogue size over time. Clearly you get better results if it’s a mainstream track, but it’s surprising to see how many places any one song can end up.
It has been reported over at Techcrunch that the Feedburner CEO has decided to leave the ship and is now becoming the Twitter COO. This has really made me think about RSS and where it is heading and is Twitter the next big thing in terms of keeping track of your favourite resources?
Steve Gillmor stated:
“Rest In Peace, RSS,” he wrote, saying “It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter…All my RSS feeds are in Google Reader. I don’t go there any more. Since all my feeds are in Google Reader and I don’t go there, I don’t use RSS anymore.”
Everyday I head over to my Google Reader and see what all the major sites have been talking about and for me there is simply no other alternative to easily read over 200 sites in one place. I know I can follow a lot of major sites on Twitter, but it is very difficult to keep track of more than 200 follows, plus you have to be online and watching when they post or you just miss the news (bad thing about real-time).
