Crenk » featured

Music Video Site Vevo To Launch on December 8th

Steven Finch — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:01:38 +0000

Vevo has to be one of the most anticipated launches of the year and it is all set to go live on December 8th. The source is the Vevo twitter account. The announcement comes a day after Hulu said it too would make a foray into the music video space, with a deal to put up some music videos from EMI on its site.

If you have been living under a rock for the past 6 months, then Vevo is a new music video joint venture between the major record labels and YouTube. At launch the site will include music from Sony and Universal. This is a big move because the most popular sites at the moment on YouTube are the music video channels. Vevo allows YouTube to make even larger revenues because its a lot easier to place advertising against a quality peice of content like a music video, instead of the user generated content on its normal site.

Team Vevo email:

Dear member of the VEVO VIP pre-launch mailing list (Note: that would be anyone who signed up at Vevo.com for updates),

We are excited to tell you that VEVO will launch the evening of Tuesday, December 8!!

We’ve been working night and day for months to bring you the best music video and entertainment experience we can dream up, and in just about 3 weeks you can see it online for yourself!

The VEVO service at VEVO.com and at YouTube.com will go live in coordination with our launch event in New York on December 8th. We’ll be sure to let you know as soon as it’s up and running so you can start having some fun

We can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on!

In the meantime, please keep in touch and let us know what you think about all things VEVO!

The Pirate Bay Closing Their Torrent Tracker for Good

Steven Finch — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:08:53 +0000

The big news this morning is that the Pirate Bay is closing down their torrent tracker for good. After launching the torrent tracker back in 2003 it quickly became one of the worlds largest Bittorrent trackers on the Internet, with some 25 million peers using the service. The Pirate Bay was launched by a few friends in Sweden and was never supposed to turn into a business, and never really did (probably the ultimate open source project).

Despite this success, The Pirate Bay operators today decided to pull the plug and close down the tracker permanently. The evolution of the BitTorrent protocol has made trackers redundant they say, as BitTorrent downloads work well with trackerless solutions such as DHT and PEX.

“Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well,” the Pirate Bay crew write on their blog.

Additionally, Torrentfreak has learned that The Pirate Bay operators are talking to other Bittorrent site ownwers to encourage them to follow suit and completely ditch torrents in the future. BitTorrent has reached a point where trackers and torrents are no longer needed to download files successfully. Supported by all of the major BitTorrent clients, DHT and PEX can handle the transfers and Magnet links can easily replace traditional torrent files.

There are still other services for users who dont want to go trackerless just yet, which include OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent.

Its really sad to see the end of this famous tracker, however times change and technology moves on, and all credit to The Pirate Bay team for trying to push the move even quicker.

Classy External Hard Drives

Augusto Alvarez — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:42:00 +0000

Having external hard drives has become one of the most common requirements for most of us, and if you were thinking that your portable hard drive didn’t combine with your desk nor your wallet, Brinell is giving you a new touch of class for you HD.

They have designed some really cool and elegant covers that will definitely class-up your portable devices. The Purestorage line is made of leather, wood, carbon fiber and even stainless steel. Having all those components you can easily confuse it with your wallet, cigar box or some other items.

The actual hard drives that include this series contain capacities of 160GB and 500GB, with 1.8 and 2.5 inches. And the cost goes from €189 and €229. It shouldn’t surprise you, having excellent built quality comes with a little bit of cost.

I can even see these models in women purses.

PS3 Coffee Table Makes Gaming The Focalpoint Of Your Living Room

Steven Finch — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:15:15 +0000

I must admit that Im not much of a Playstation 3 person, more of a Wii person. However, this product is really making me want to buy a Playstation 3 and deck out my living room.

Stephane Perruchon is the designer of this glass topped table, with the base made up of two gigantic PS3 controllers. It’ll make your place look like the classiest dorm room ever! Which would be awesome if you actually still live in a dorm room, but otherwise, I’m not so sure.

Apple Release New Magic Mouse, iMacs, MacBooks and Mac Mini’s

Steven Finch — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:00:49 +0000

As im sure most people are aware, Apple released new products yesterday and here at Crenk I wanted to just quickly run through them. RAck. r

Magic Mouse

Here it is: the new Magic Mouse, a single button mouse (with a software-controlled right click option) and a touch sensitive top surface that allows you to touch the mouse to pinch, scroll, and drag, just like a trackpad. The mouse uses two AA batteries and lasts 4 months on one change.

It costs $69 and is available at the end of October.

iMac

Fastest iMac yet. Big LEDC-backlit displays in 21,5 and 27 Inch 16:9 aspect ration. Wireless keyboard and mouse standard (check that mouse!). Fastest iMac yet. No surprise there.

The New Macbook

The new MacBook has a durable unibody enclosure (aluminum or plastic?), 1,08 inch thin, light at just 4.7 pounds, 7 hour battery. 13 inch LED backlit display and glass multi-touch display.

The New Mac Mini

up to 2,66Ghz with up to 4GB memory. Faster than ever. NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor for graphics and Wi-Fi built in. Optional 500GB hardisk.

Windows 8 Incoming Features

Augusto Alvarez — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:10:58 +0000

You don’t have to be a genius to be certain that Microsoft is working on the next Windows version for a while now. And even though there isn’t much around about it, gathering a lot of hints, here’s a report about possible (and some certain) next features:

Hibernation improvements: Windows 8 will include a special Hibernation/Resume API that will replace Windows Vista Xpress compression engine used in the hibernation process. Windows 7 includes some improvements in this area, but they are promising a whole new experience.
Kernel security enhanced. PatchGuard feature (Windows’ kernel security module) will provide a new and enhanced security.
Maintaining and improving DirectAccess feature for mobile users. Presented in Windows 7 (along with BranchCache), DirectAccess brings a better experience for mobile users outside the organization.
New user interface. Nothing much about this, but they are promising a new one.
Improvements in the Remote Desktop protocol and other Server tools.
New download experience.
New networking features.
Windows 8 Application Server. For the server version, will include (like already has) the application server role but with a new strategy.

This new operating system, since it will be a major release that will include also the server version, will be in 2012. But still is too early to be certain about things.

On a side note, once I’ve heard that Microsoft always uses a transition operating system in the middle of the main releases. For example: Windows Millennium (between Windows 98 and Windows XP) and Windows Vista (between Windows XP and Windows 7). So, where do you think Windows 8 is?

10 New Points About The New Apple Tablet: To Be Announced in January 2010

Steven Finch — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:47:32 +0000

Over at iLounge they have got a tip from a very reliable source about the specifics of the new Apple Tablet that a lot of people have been talking about. On Crenk we first talked about the Apple tablet back in May and then again in August. The iLounge source also correctly called the iPod nano 5G, iPhone 3GS and Chinese iPhone 3G months ago.

Apple has created at least three separate prototypes of its tablet computer. Let’s call it “iPad.”
Version 1 was designed with a 7” screen, which was judged to be too small. The latest version has a 10.7” screen.
It runs iPhone OS.
There have been reports that it looks like an iPhone. They’re sort of true. It looks like an iPhone 3G, complete with a curved back.
It will come in two different variations: one with 3G networking capabilities, and one without 3G networking capabilities. Think of the 3G version as a bigscreen iPhone 3GS, and the non-3G version as a bigscreen iPod touch.
Screen resolutions will obviously jump considerably from the iPhone and iPod touch 480×320-pixel displays, enabling easy reading of full-sized book and magazine pages, plus cropped newspaper pages. Expect something like 5-6 times the resolution of an iPod touch or iPhone screen (720p or thereabouts) and 7 times the touchable surface area.
It is designed to expand the iPhone and iPod touch media concept to its next potential level: as a slate-like replacement for books and magazines, plus all of the media, gaming, app, and web functionality of the iPhone and iPod touch.
It is not meant to compete with netbooks. It’s an iPhone OS media player and light communication device.
Apple is currently planning to announce it on or before January 19, 2010, and to use an iPhone-like hype buildup period to start selling it in May or June.
It is apparently awaiting a final green light from Steve Jobs; chances of it appearing in the market are believed to be 80% at this point.

Giant Tetris: This Is One Of The Best Video (Arcade) Games I Have Seen In a While

Steven Finch — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:16:59 +0000

This kind of thing only happens in Japan. Giant Tetris! (via Kotaku Japan)

Yahoo Meme: Twitter Meets Viral

Steven Finch — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:09:40 +0000

I was lucky enough to receive an invite to Yahoo’s new product Meme. Meme is a micro-blogging service from Yahoo that works in a very similar way to Twitter. You may now ask, whats the difference?

Yahoo Meme is very fast and stable
Yahoo Meme makes it very easy to post Video, Music and Photos straight into your stream
Yahoo Meme has really focused on making it easy to re-post items you like, with just 1 click (Viral focused)

We have joined just to test out the service and even after testing im pretty sure im going to keep using the account, because it is just so simple and easy to use. If you want to follow Crenk on Yahoo Meme our url is: http://meme.yahoo.com/crenk/

So you may be wondering why doesnt everyone just move over to this service from Twitter, well basically its because of the amount of users using Twitter. Additionally its the community of developers who have helped Twitter grow at the rate they have.

What Yahoo Meme really needs to develop:

Yahoo Meme needs its own URL and identity away from the Yahoo.com domain. It would be good to see this as a standalone service
Ability to resize pictures and videos down so that a lot more streams can be seen in the same window (problem with media in the stream)

Yahoo Meme is currently in private beta, so to mark its launch we can offer a lucky 5 people into the system. All you have to do is comment on this post and let us know why you want to use the service so badly!

Commodore 64 Emulator for iPhone and iPod Touch Has Been Approved by Apple for iTunes Store

Steven Finch — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:30:54 +0000

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.

Spotify iPhone and Android Applications are Now Live

Steven Finch — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:19:49 +0000

The Spotify iPhone and Android applications are now live. Here is a quick look again at both demo’s.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X2 Running Windows Mobile 6.5 and more

Steven Finch — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:33:25 +0000

Sony Ericsson has announced an all new XPERIA X2, which will run on Windows Mobile 6.5.

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
Bluetooth stereo (A2DP)
Equalizer
Sony Ericsson media player
Music tones (MP3/AAC)
Equalizer
Sony Ericsson media player
Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync®
Handwriting recognition
Windows Mobile® 6.5
Motion gaming
Video streaming
Video viewing
YouTube application
A-GPS
Google Maps
Modem
TV out
USB mass storage
USB support
Wi-Fi
Adobe® PDF Reader
Microsoft® Office Mobile