Archive for: new
Last year, I reported that the 3D home entertainment trend was on the up. Recession or no recession, it’s coming. The latest development in this tantalising three dimensional tale is the release of HDMI 3D glasses for use at home with a 3D TV.
Whether you’re a fan of wearing weird glasses while watching TV or not, you’re going to be happy with this next piece of new: there isn’t going to be much bickering between the companies about format issues. When almost any new development is made in the tech industry, each company almost always seems to choose its own format. That way, they hop to gain loyalty and crush the others. One wins, a lot loose. And of course eventually we’re left with one format. This time though, they;re doing things differently. They’ll all be going with the active shutter glasses which you can see in the picture.
The ones above are geared up for HDMI 1.4 and will be compatible with future updates to HDMI technology. So 3D is coming, prepare to be either dazzled or extremely annoyed.
Motorola Droid is definitely one of the most understated smart phones. Well, perhaps not understated, just over-shadowed by the likes of the iPhone and more popular Android devices from HTC. However, it would seem as though Motorola are keeping their hopes up for the OS by releasing a new update for all Droid devices. I don’t think anybody expected it to come this soon.
The announced the impending update, which will ‘start to roll out this week’ on their official Facebook page. Besides from announcing the new update, they go on to tease us anxious fan-boys by saying that they “will have more information to share on other device upgrades later”. So maybe some of Moto’s other devices are due for a service check.
Let’s hope that the new update fixes the known Droid bugs and maybe even gives the OS a slight facelift.
One of the emerging trends in the online world is to have a translation service. Google Translate is probably the best well known with ad-ons and blog widgets to help people translate web pages, documents and the likes. However, the problem is that it’s often a little too ‘literal’ meaning some sentences don’t make sense when translated. They get ‘lost in translation’, if you will.
My Gengo allow users to upload a document, have it translated by a professional and then returned to them at a very low rate (normally 70% lower than freelance translators charge on sites like Elance). I think this is a great idea. A few times I have needed letters and documents translated for my business and have had to spend quite a lot of money to ensure they’re translated properly – especially when I’m sending them to a client or a potential one.
The site offers translation services between languages like English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Italian and Russian. They recently received investment from tech entrepreneur Dave McClure so it looks like this start-up might just be a success in the near future.
Since Twitter got really popular thanks to all the celebs who made it famous, the only way to tweet has been either directly on the website or using an app such as Tweetie. Now however, Comufy, a London based tech company brings us TweetSwitch.
Basically, it enables you to set up your account to send certain tweets to your IM. You can then in turn respond to these tweets from the IM service. Selecting what kind of tweets you want to receive is threefold. You can receive all tweets, tweets where you’re mentioned or replied to (such as @Crenk) or the most important ones, direct messages.
At the moment, some main IM clients such as AOL, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger are supported and it’s said to be coming to the ever growing Skype. This is a really cool new feature, effectively creating a switchboard for your Twitter account!
Classics, 
Nanos, Shuffles, Touches – Apple have made so many different shapes of iPod that you need adaptors for practically every accessory you can buy. Apple likes things to look sleek and neat, so having fiddly bits of plastic to swap over for each of the many iPods they would like you to buy (you couldn’t possibly take your 60GB classic jogging with you!) is not acceptable, and so for all the neat freaks and must-have-it Apple fans, they’re developing a universal dock to accommodate all different shapes and sizes. They’ve filed a patent for, as they phrase it:
A dock for supporting a plurality of differently-shaped electronic devices, the dock comprising: a housing; a connector coupled to the housing; and a compressible support layer positioned at least partially about the connector, wherein at least a portion of the compressible support layer compresses to the shape of at least a portion of an electronic device that is attached to the connector.
Featuring:
A method for supporting a plurality of differently-shaped electronic devices in a dock that includes a compressible support layer positioned at least partially about a connector, the method comprising:attaching an electronic device to the connector of the dock; compressing at least a first portion of the compressible support layer with at least a portion of the bottom of the electronic device when the electronic device is attached to the connector; and supporting at least a portion of a side of the electronic device with at least a second portion of the compressible support layer when the electronic device is attached to the connector.
Which translates to a standard iPod connector in the middle of a squashy or springy surround, which you compress part of by pushing your iPod into, the uncompressed part supporting the sides of the device, perhaps a bit like one of those pin-art pads that were fashionable around when the Lawnmower Man came out.
Google’s minimalistic homepage has been a cornerstone of the internet for the past decade or so. Now, they’re testing out a new homepage which will take the word count from thirty down to one; ‘Google’.
Basically, it will look like the screenshot above with everything but the Google logo and search function being removed. This includes their famous ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button
When you move the mouse however near any area where buttons used to be they will appear. The thinking is that this new method will have the best of both worlds: minimalism and functionality.
However, they are only bucket testing the new homepage to see how it goes down so only a certain percentage of users will actually get access to the new design. For those of you who can’t, see the video below.
So, after what seemed like an endless few weeks or fights, press releases, rumours and delays the Facebook 3.0 app is now officially released for the iPhone. I think a celebration is in order.
So, what are our first impressions here at Crenk? Well there good. Very good in fact. When I first started up the app I noticed a few things almost instantaneously that had changed from the previous app. For example, up the top left hand corner there is a button which when pressed it will give you a search bar and down the bottom the alerts feature which tells you what your friends are up to and if you need to respond to anything will pop up.
It is also more in touch with the actual web based Facebook. For example, you can RSVP to invitations rather than just being informed of their existence and you can also chat easier with friends.
Of course there are the new features that literally work with the iPhone. You can now call and send texts to your Facebook friends without having to leave the app. I think this is a cool feature and one that Facebook will not regret making as that’s what smart phones are all about – integration.
Finally, there is the web browser. At first I though this was a little unnecessary but then it became clear why they put it there. How many of your Facebook friends send you links or how many times do you decide to follow up a news story you heard from friends? Now you don’t have to exit the whole app and start up Safari just to follow a link!
This bird’s-eye view of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania was the first image ever seen by the GeoEye-1, the world’s highest-resolution commercial satellite sponsored by Google, when it opened its camera door earlier this week.
The 4,300-pound satellite collected the image at noon EDT on Oct. 7 while moving from the north pole to the south pole in a 423-mile-high orbit at 17,000 miles per hour, or 4.5 miles per second. The spacecraft can take photos at a resolution of up to 41 cm – close enough to zoom in on the home plate of a baseball diamond, according to Mark Brender, GeoEye’s vice president of communications and marketing.
Even though the GeoEye-1 satellite sports a colorful Google sticker, its key customer is actually not Google but rather the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a U.S. government agency that analyzes imagery in support of national security. The NGA is paying for half of the development of the $502 million satellite and has committed to purchasing imagery from it. Google is GeoEye’s second major partner.
“This is the opposite of a spy satellite,” Brender said in a phone interview. “Spies don’t put info on the internet and sell imagery. We’re an Earth-imaging satellite, and we can sell our imagery to customers around the world who have a need to map and measure and monitor things on the ground.”
There’s one catch for Google: While the GeoEye-1 will provide imagery to the NGA at the maximum resolution of 43 cm, Google will only receive images at a 50-cm resolution because of a government restriction, Brender explained. However, Google’s partnership with GeoEye is exclusive, meaning the search-engine giant will be the only online mapping site using the satellite’s photos.
A second satellite, GeoEye-2, slated to launch in 2011 or 2012, will have a resolution of 25 cm, company representatives promised. However, Google’s satellite imagery will not likely get more detailed because of the 50-cm regulation.
It has been reported that sources at a major client of investment house ThinkEquity say that the firm considers a Microsoft (MSFT) link-up with Yahoo! (YHOO) in the search business to be “imminent”. The comments were made by analyst William Morrison. ThinkEquity did not have an immediate comment.
Sources beyond ThinkEquity speculate that under the terms of the arrangement, Yahoo! will be paid $3 billion upfront and will get 11o% of the revenue that its searches provide after traffic acquisition costs in each of the first two years. In the third year, that figure would go to 90%.
Microsoft will then have control of 30% of the US search market if they can close the deal with Yahoo. Given that Microsoft’s own Bing is on the rise also, it will then only be about taking share away from Google. However, I can see how this deal with allow Microsoft to take marketshare from Google, Google has much better technology and a huge amount of brand loyalty. comScore put Google’s US June search share flat at 65%, Yahoo! at 19.5%, down .5%, and Microsoft at 8.4%, up .4%.
For Yahoo!, the transaction would give it the opportunity to lock in a substantial revenue stream from search and potentially save several hundred million dollars over the next three years by cutting development personnel and costs. If the transaction materializes, Yahoo!’s share could jump $4 or $5.
Android devices seem to be the next big thing and are hotting up the market pretty quick with Google being the main warrior. However recently, there have been rumours that the old Finnish mobile giant Nokia were planning to jump into the Android platform and abandon its Symbian platform which the company actually owns.
The company bigwigs decided enough was enough and flat out denied any rumors that they would be releasing an Android phone onto the market at the Nokia World event in Germany this coming September. A report stating these predictions in The Guardian has been responded to by Nokia. “There is no truth to this story whatsoever. It is a well known fact that Symbian is our platform of choice for smartphones”, said Nokia in a statement to TechRadar.
For a company to make such bold statements about its own future in the mass media it’s almost a sure thing that Nokia won’t be using the Android platform anytime in the near (or distant) future, preferring to stick to its own developments. As for the meantime, Nokia are continuing in their development of a new platform of their own called Maemo OS for their internet tablets. Outsourcing is not one of Nokia’s favourite habits.
From blogs.adobe.com
Adobe AIR Marketplace is a central resource that allows developers to make their applications available to millions of potential users and makes it easy for consumers to find them.
The new AIR marketplace was launched a few days ago and features a brand new look and several new features. Do check it out!
As we mentioned a few days ago Compete was releasing a new user interface on the 15th of April. The time has come and here is what the new interface looks like.
The interface has had a huge makeover, in which now combines all of Compete’s business elements in a much simplier way. All of Compete’s solutions can be now found in a simple hearder bar, which offers everything from Analytics to Keyword tools. The analytics tools has a much cleaner and easy to user interface, but Compete is still trying to push Pro accounts as much as possible.
Overall the feel of the site is much better than before, and with the cleaner finish the usability of the site increases. I just wish my traffic would increase!
