Archive for: News
I’m all about netbooks and laptops. There’s something sexy about having all that computing power in such a portable little housing. May I introduce to you LG’s new x300 laptop sporting 2Ghz of processing power and measuring up at a very slim 17.6mm. And sexy she is.
A look from the outside
The portable machine also has a 1.3 mega pixel webcam, reflective keyboard (keys have resistance to bounce back quickly), SSD and a sleek, minimalistic design. It all comes to together very nicely. Even though it is quite skinny, it can run for over three hours. While that may not be hugely impressive for some, the fact that it ships with a spare 2-cell battery for when the going gets tough is.
It was officially announced at the CES conference yesterday. However, we’re all still waiting on one thing – a retail price. Guesses anyone?
Social media for the promotion of blog posts and other online material has really taken off in the past two years. Perhaps the most famous (and notorious for crashing websites) is Digg.com – launched a few years back with funding of just $40 million and is now the world’s leading social media promotion website. That is of course, if you only look at sites aiming to promote content alone.
Twitter on the other hand has become a social media promotion tool and a social network – a devilish combination. Because of this, Twitter passed Digg’s traffic rating back in March and is continuing to climb despite periods of stagnation in terms of traffic. Digg however, is falling. Since September, a 15% drop in traffic is indicated by the ComScore graph above and we haven’t even seen the results for December yet.
As the war between Facebook and Twitter calms down could we be now seeing Digg trying to take on Twitter in a no-holds-barred?
Over the past week, Yelp and Google have been in heated debates concerning Google acquiring the service which was founded by two former PayPal employees and allows users to submit reviews of their local services. After days of deliberation both parties had agreed on a price – half a billion dollars. It seemed that everyone was quite happy with the deal until the CEO of Yelp Jeremy Stoppleman notified Google over the weekend that the deal was off.
What happened?
Well nobody knows for sure but it must have taken something big for Yelp to walk away from half a billion dollars and pressure from internet giant Google. My guess is that another offer has been tabled. Obviously, Yelp wan to keep their cards close to their chest should this deal fall through and need to go back to Google. Perhaps one of Google’s rivals such as Microsoft or Apple have decided they want Yelp?
It’s no big secret that the Russian market has been a tough one to crack for major western companies. Nintendo wouldn’t even bother trying to sell the Wii there as they feel Russia just isn’t ready for social gaming and the internet seems to hold less cultural value when compared to other countries.
However, Google are trying desperately to get a firm foot-hold in the market and as such have made a bid of around the $200 million mark for the country’s most popular instant messaging service; ICQ. Skype are also rumoured to be interested in the deal.
AOL owns ICQ at the minute having bought it in 1998 for $400 million (they’ll be making a loss). It now has over 30 million users with in excess of eight million of them living in Russia. So getting such a huge chunk of the market instantly would be a huge help for Google. Or whatever Western company manages to close the deal for that matter.
Everyone’s been going a little crazy about the up and coming Google Phone which will carry the Google brand and supposedly be super cool. Speculation and excitement are a couple of words that come to mind. What will it have? hat can it do? What kind of apps are going to be available?
Well, to be honest, I’d say we’d know much of the information before Christmas sets in.
The reason I’m so sure? Because everyone at Google HQ and beyond are now testing the device daily and using them as their mobile phones so they’ll star making videos etc.. and slowly leak them. As these thing go.
A blogger who apparently got his hands on the phone tweeted the picture below of the phone.
At this stage, the phone must be nearing completion as it’s rumoured to be launching early next year. But I must say, fair play to Google for keeping the lid on next year’s most anticipated phone to the extent that they have (we were always expecting a few grainy pictures). But have no misconceptions, Google want a few blurry pictures or a 20 second clip to be leaked. It ads to the anticipation. Remember when the first pictures of the PS3 emerged? To be alerted as to when more information is leaked, stay tuned to Crenk.
If there’s one corporation that can make a business venture a success, it’s Google. If your company is lucky enough to be taken under its wing then you know your in for success. Or at least a ton of money.
A bunch of ex-Google employees founded a service called Ardvark which allows users to ask people for information and post questions. It was originally developed as a mobile-only app but has recently launched a website version.
They have just received a huge offer from Google amounting to $30 million dollars. Despite all the benefits that an investment from Google would bring to Ardvark the original creators are left with a dilemma. Clearly the project has promise if Google are showing interest, so they may like to roll the dice on this one and refuse to sell hoping for more money in the long run. But then if it’s a flop they could be $30 million down and looking rather foolish indeed.
Other investors and bidders are said to be making offers. To be honest, I can’t see them holding out much longer. That much outside pressure and money dangled in front of them must be swaying debates in the conference room.
Recently, Nokia (perhaps foolishly) released a video of their new N900 smart phone running an SNES emulator playing some classic titles. The video had a voiceover which clearly amped up the phones gaming capabilities for classic emulators:
“There’s already a bunch of great retro gaming emulator apps available for you to download,” says the video voiceover which clearly shows options to use emulators for consoles such as the NES, SNES and GameBoy.
SO Nintendo got a little angry. But to be honest, I think they’re taking this too far. If anything, they should be considering releasing emulators for old-school games on smart phones like the have with the Wii. There’s definitely a market there and people would definitely jump at an official emulator rather than a third party one which is difficult to set up.
A few months ago, everyone was saying “Oh! Blogging is dying on its feet” or “This time next year blogs will be dead and gone”. For a second or two, I started to believe them. After all, micro-blogging was flying up like a firework and blogs were the first victim – no matter how hard bloggers tried to integrate them into their blogs. And for someone like me who just started up their own blog – this was bad news.
But it appears as though Twitter is slowing down and blogging is on the rise once again. The chart above illustrates the recent trend. The orange line represents Twitter and as you can see it grew alongside WordPress (blue line) between February and June. Then it took off by itself leaving WordPress in the gutter. But from September onwards, Twitter simple flattened out and WordPress went back on the rise.
I don’t think Blogs and Twitter are really in the same league. After all, people like information and entertainment – and squeezing that into 140 characters is too much of a task. Looks like blogging will be around for quite a few years to come.
The other day we profiled Swype here on Crenk, letting you know that it would be preloaded on the Samsung Omnia II. Now, I discovered that the popular video streaming service Qik will have an app that will come as standard on the second incarnation of Samsung’s Omnia smart phone.
Until recently, Ustream was the go-to service for streaming video. Celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher use it to broadcast live to their fans. By making this app standard on the phone, allowing people to easily stream video onto the web or other people’s phone, the balance may shift.
I think this is a good idea – and an addition that will improve the overall appeal of the phone.
The only other phones with Qik pre-loaded is the Nokia S-60 based phones. If the Omnia II is anywhere near as popular as the first version, Qik could be seeing some serious user numbers heading their way.
The Red Ring of Death and the curved shape – both features of the XBOX 360, which I hate. No matter which way you put it, it always looks out of place amongst my other players and cable boxe. It has always baffled me as to why games companies simply can make minimalistic games consoles – although I suppose the Wii was a step in the right direction.
The XBOX Elegant edition which will be out shortly features a new layout and a new (regularly shaped!) exterior made from aluminium. It’s bulkier than the previous incarnation but at least it looks better than it.
The reason why it’s bulkier is because it has extra cooling features which can help prevent the Red Ring of Death.
Bad News: I did some serious digging around and every major tech blog is stumped when it comes to finding out how. Also, nobody is 100% sure where the original picture came from. But it does appear to be real and the second when we have details – I’ll post an update.
