To display the most relevant entries to you in priority,
vote for the stories you are interested in
()
and reject those that you are not interested in
()
We knew virtual camera systems are
starting gain traction, particularly in the world of cinema and within James Cameron's little set
of toys, but it's pretty wild to see one in action. NaturalPoint is showing off its OptiTrack
motion capture system at
GDC, a budget-friendly multi-camera setup (if $6k is your idea of budget-friendly), but it also has
a prototype of sorts of its upcoming virtual camera system. The camera's orientation and movement
is actually tracked in the same way a motion capture suit is, and if you're in the same tracking
space as a motion capture actor you can do "real" camera work with a live 3D rendered preview of
the action. The shoulder-mounted camera has controls for virtual tracking and dolly moves, along
with zoom, and has zero problem delivering that shaky handheld look that's all the rage in visual
effects these days. There's no word on much this will retail for, but despite the fact that we have
absolutely zero use for it we totally want one. Check out a video of it in action after the break.
Gallery: OptiTrack mixes motion capture with a virtual camera Continue reading OptiTrack mixes motion capture with a virtual camera for
delicious, Avatar-esque results OptiTrack mixes motion capture with a virtual camera for delicious, Avatar-esque
results originally appeared on Engadget
on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Palm just showed
us the Unreal Engine 3 running on webOS, which apparently took a couple weeks to port over to the
platform using that fancy new PDK. It runs at a
pretty smooth clip, with just a tiny bit of artifacting in our enemy's death animation. As an added
bit of wow factor, Palm has it currently setup to demonstrate the game at 1 fps when in card view.
Like most touchscreen shooters, this doesn't really solve the problem of simulating dual analog
sticks, but it's still a fun and good looking engine for a mobile device. We're still unaware of
any games that have been built for the mobile engine, which has now been shown for iPhone,
Tegra 2, and
will be headed to the iPad as well, but we have to assume we'll be seeing some before too long.
Check out the webOS video after the break.
Not too long ago, Toyota reigned as the
seemingly untouchable hybrid leader. That dominance — in terms of both market share (50
percent of hybrids sold in the U.S.) and mindshare (no alt-fuel vehicle on the market is better
known or more widely recognized than the Toyota Prius) — means that as the Prius image
takes a beating, other models across the spectrum of green cars will also get bruised.
Mike Omotoso, senior manager for J.D. Power and Associates’ global powertrain unit, told me
the firm plans to lower its hybrid and electric vehicle forecast for 2010, although it has yet to
determine how big the hit will be. For the first two months of this year, the hybrid share of
light vehicle sales hovered at around just 2.3 percent, compared to 2.8 percent for all of 2009
and 2.4 percent in 2008, according to Omotoso. That’s due to a number of factors —
including high unemployment, a weak economy and the biggie: gas prices. But the Prius and its
technical troubles loom too large to ignore.
Prior to 2009, the Prius’ share of U.S. hybrid sales had slipped below 50 percent only once
since 2005 — in 2006, when it dropped to 42 percent. But even that offers a sign of
Toyota’s dominance in the hybrid space. Omotoso explained that 2006 marked “the first
year for the Camry hybrid and the first full year for the Highlander hybrid. So other Toyota
models cannibalized Prius sales.”
Regulators are only beginning to look into the most recent incidents. But initial reports suggest
the problems may not have been linked to a floor mat that pinned down the gas pedal in other
Priuses and prompted Toyota to issue a recall last year for 2004-2009 models of the hybrid. Last
month, when problems surfaced with the regenerative braking system of some 2010 Prius models,
Toyota
attributed them to a software glitch.
Regardless of what investigators and Toyota may turn up if they check out the cars involved in
this week’s incidents more closely, however, one thing’s already clear: Videos that
zipped around the web and TV news shows this week of a visibly shaken driver,
and quotes from the
911 call he made during the 23 minutes that his 2008 Prius hurdled at high speeds down a
Southern California highway before a highway patrol officer helped him stop, aren’t helping
to repair the reputation of either Toyota or advanced vehicles.
Given the Prius’ status as the poster child for hybrids, Omotoso explained,
“consumers might think that if the Prius has a problem then all hybrids might be
dangerous.” That concern creates one more obstacle for new vehicle technologies to
penetrate the mainstream, as some car buyers may forgo experimenting with the next generation of
green cars — among them plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles from General
Motors’ Chevy Volt and Nissan’s LEAF to BYD Auto’s e6, Coda Automotive’s
Coda Sedan and Fisker Automotive’s Nina — rolling out over the next few years.
That perception problem is a hurdle that many car makers can’t really afford in this
nascent market. Plug-in vehicle developers are competing for a niche that’s likely to
remain quite small for years to come. Nearly a decade after the Prius debut, hybrids still hold a
single-digit sliver of the pie. And despite optimistic projections from investors like Warren
Buffett, who has said he expects all cars will run on electricity by 2030, other
forecasts suggest significantly slower adoption, mainly due to high price tags.
Lux Research forecasts that even if oil costs $200 a barrel in 2020, just 4 percent of
vehicles sold globally will be all-electric or plug-in hybrid because of the high costs of the
battery technology. According to Lux, plug-in hybrids could sell 3 million units per year by 2020
if the price of oil reaches those heights, while hybrids can be expected to sell that many by
2020 regardless of oil prices.
In addition to presenting a challenge to companies vying to win over consumers to advanced
vehicles, Toyota’s ongoing troubles also highlight a need for the government, the auto
industry and even drivers to collect and manage (or in the case of drivers, to file), vehicle
safety data and complaints in a more open and timely manner. Noting in prepared testimony that
regulators and Toyota had received complaints of unintended acceleration in Toyota models seven
years ago, Consumers Union is
issuing that challenge – to increase transparency of vehicle safety
data – in a hearing this morning on the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration’s oversight operations. As much as technology may be part of the problem
with Toyota’s vehicles, it could also be part of the solution — helping identify
problems before too many drivers are put in the situation of having to call 911 from behind the
wheel of an out-of-control car.
Mark June 17 on your calendars as that would be when the OnLive 'Games-on-Demand'
service powered by cloud-servers arrives. Steve Perlman and Mike McGarvey, founders of OnLive,
has taken the opportunity to announce the subscription plans for the service for both PCs and
Macs, albeit only for folks living in the US, with no word on availability and their respective
subscription plans for the European region at the moment. What is OnLive? It is a 'Games on
Demand' service powered by Cloud-servers and based on subscription model. The moment you access
the huge library of games, you can play them instantly over the Internet without having to worry
about system compatibility and going through the whole tedious installation process. With 720p HD
quality video gaming, expect to spend more time cooped up at home now. For more context, check
out our hands-on of the
OnLive Game Service at last year's GDC.
http://www.BattleMethod.comIf you want to learn how to win freestyle rap battles, then check out
my newest Battle Method system.Click here to download now:http://www.BattleMethod.comThe Battle
Method is a step-by-step course that reveals you the insider tips to win in rap battles.Learning
how to freestyle battle is very important because it can help get recognition as a true emcee and
battling is a skill that is necessary to become a great emcee in hip hop.In the Battle Method
course, you will strategies, tactics, techniques, and action steps to greatly take your freestyle
battling skills to the next level.Here's what you will learn in the Battle Method:- Enjoy the
satisfaction of winning something and being labeled a champion by your peers.- Impress your
friends and people whenever you go to parties by winning rap battles on a consistent basis.- Get
to have a great time with friends and other rappers.- Be invited to more parties because you will
be a true value
If InstantAction.com's CEO Lou Castle is to be
believed, we're apparently going to be playing games pretty much wherever we want in the
not-so-distant future. He's just revealed plans (via
IndustryGamers) to relaunch his site with a new business/distribution model and a partnership
with game streaming service Gaikai. In addition to
the already existing model of a quick download (a claimed 4 - 5 minutes) that still somewhat relies
on your computer power to process the game's graphics, IA will now offer a streaming option for
those who'd prefer a quicker, less hardware reliant gaming experience. "It's the perfect
implementation of a thin client solution because when it's available it's brilliant and when it's
not available it's ok ... you only have to wait a couple minutes."
The aforementioned streaming option (employing Gaikai) will also be embedabble on the web,
as demonstrated with Assassin's
Creed (not to mention to us earlier
today) "Now if people are reading a review of a game, they don't have to go find it ... they
can play it right then and there in the browser."
And that's just the beginning -- Castle clearly has an eye on digital distribution services when he
talks about employing Facebook as "InstantAction's Xbox Live." IA's new distribution model
essentially promises to developers/publishers the ability to release games with a variety of
payment methods (pay as you go, free-to-play, one-time charge, etc.) while incorporating the
aforementioned embed and streaming functionalities.
So far, the company has inked one deal for distribution (with LucasArts for The Secret of Monkey
Island: Special Edition) and Castle claims to be pursuing others right now. And apparently
it won't be too long before we get to check out the new system ourselves, as the revamped digital
platform is said to be "launching soon."
Ever since its
inception, the Internet has blurred the boundaries between author and audience. Whether you're a
blogger, a pillar of the printed word, a podcast coinnaseur or a developer dealing with the
latest CMS, navigating the next step in Internet publishing can be a feat.
So, hit up these 10 events at SXSW Interactive 2010 to say goodbye to Gutenberg and hello to the
interactive, multimedia, real-time, crowdsourced and community-funded future of online
publishing.
Sponsor
This is part of a series of ReadWriteWeb guides to SXSW Interactive 2010. If this guide isn't
your cup of tea, be sure to check back for more information soon!
Wanna ditch that desk job for the cubicle-less life of a professional blogger? What better way to
kick off your SXSW Interactive 2010 than with a book reading from the editor and founder behind
ProBlogger, Digital-Photography-School.com, and Twitip, three blogs that collectively reach over 3 million unique
readers a month. Before you get into any panels predicting the death of this or that, let's start
off with how you're going to start a blog and become rich, wealthy and wise.
If book readings aren't your bag, then how about a workshop on how to get to the bottom of all
this content we create by the second?
"As the Internet has accelerated the creation of all types of content, it's become more and more
difficult to sift through that content and find something of quality. We've tried it with
machines and even mass consensus but the results are either wrong or lowest common denominator.
The irony in all this is that we really need other humans to help us. The vast breadth of content
on the Web only highlights what we've always relied upon: the valued opinion of others."
What happens when every member of an audience suddenly becomes an author? Eyes from every angle
and a battle over the right to create versus the right to privacy. Come watch as CNET News' Daniel Terdiman and Burning
Man's Andie Grace surely take two separate sides on this issue.
"The EFF recently argued that Burning Man's not as open or
nurturing as people think, and uses the DMCA to control photographers' rights. This caused a
firestorm of controversy, forcing Burning Man to say its interests are protecting its trademark
and attendees from being exploited by unscrupulous photographers. This panel will explore the
tensions and the legal/community issues this controversy raised."
"Crowdfunding inverts much that is wrong with traditional funding by breaking down the barrier
between creators and audiences, and turning fundraising into a interactive experience. This panel
brings together several perspectives from the world of crowdfunding to explain different
approaches to raising money from the audience for bloggers, artists, podcasters, developers,
filmmakers, musicians, and more."
We can't really get away with talking about the wild world of online publishing without
mentioning one of the founding fathers of all that is interactive and communal - Wikipedia. But can Wikipedia really take the next step and go to
video?
"Wikipedia is the most successful collaborative experiment in human history. Now it's getting a
big upgrade: video. OGG Theora video paired with open source tech by Kaltura is evolving the wiki
and prompting some big questions. Can wiki video work as well as wiki text? What does video mean
to the Wikipedia community? How long until Grandma can hop in and improve the video entry on her
favorite old crooner?"
While we're at it, not only have we left the printing press in the dust, but our standard
categorization and assembly of media may be on the way out too. So, let's throw the baby out with
the bathwater and get to talking transmedia. And you thought Wikipedia
might be complicated.
"The promise and possibilities of transmedia storytelling have been on the horizon for several
years. The concept involves immersive storytelling that utilizes multiple media outlets
concurrently to enhance and advance the narrative. Some see this as a better way of totally
involving an ever more fragmented and distracted audience. So join us for a "late breaking"
assessment of the state of the movement. Has transmedia finally arrived?"
Continuing along with the idea of traditional and less-traditional media, we'd love it if you
stopped by our party on Sunday night! We're cohosting with NPR, PBS and a few others at KLRU's
Legendary Austin City Limits Studio. We'll have live bands, Tex-Mex nosh, margaritas - the
quintessential Austin experience. Free shuttles will be available at the Hilton.
"Much has been said about the death of journalism, but little has been offered in way of
solutions. This panel will focus on solutions instead of problems, consensus viewpoints from both
old and new media, and offer new insights into the operational structure of journalism and media
for the 21st century."
Bringing it back down to a realm we've almost forgotten, what about the life of the good old
book? What's coming next? Will we break out of the binding?
"Call SXSW 2009's infamous ''New Think for Old Publishers'' (aka ''Geeks School New York'') a
missed opportunity. How did book publishing become the last media industry to embrace digital and
how will this change? New publishing models, strategy and a brave future for books and we who
love them."
What better way to end your SXSW 2010 with a timely prediction of the death of CMS as we know it?
"The medium is the message. On the web, the medium is community. This shift has made legacy CMS
products as outdated as scribes and printing presses. Open source technologies are disrupting
this market and moving into mainstream enterprises. Join Drupal founder Dries Buytaert as he
discusses how social publishing will bring content and community together."
Those are our SXSW Interaction recommendations for publishers of all stripes. If you've
got suggestions or feedback, let us know in the comments! See you in Austin, folks!
If InstantAction.com's CEO Lou Castle is to be
believed, we're apparently going to be playing games pretty much wherever we want in the
not-so-distant future. He's just revealed plans (via
IndustryGamers) to relaunch his site with a new business/distribution model and a partnership
with game streaming service Gaikai. In addition to
the already existing model of a quick download (a claimed 4 - 5 minutes) that still somewhat relies
on your computer power to process the game's graphics, IA will now offer a streaming option for
those who'd prefer a quicker, less hardware reliant gaming experience. "It's the perfect
implementation of a thin client solution because when it's available it's brilliant and when it's
not available it's ok ... you only have to wait a couple minutes."
The aforementioned streaming option (employing Gaikai) will also be embedabble on the web,
as demonstrated with Assassin's
Creed (not to mention to us earlier
today) "Now if people are reading a review of a game, they don't have to go find it ... they
can play it right then and there in the browser."
And that's just the beginning -- Castle clearly has an eye on digital distribution services when he
talks about employing Facebook as "InstantAction's Xbox Live." IA's new distribution model
essentially promises to developers/publishers the ability to release games with a variety of
payment methods (pay as you go, free-to-play, one-time charge, etc.) while incorporating the
aforementioned embed and streaming functionalities.
So far, the company has inked one deal for distribution (with LucasArts for The Secret of Monkey
Island: Special Edition) and Castle claims to be pursuing others right now. And apparently
it won't be too long before we get to check out the new system ourselves, as the revamped digital
platform is said to be "launching soon."
Amybeth
Hale is a Talent Attraction Manager with AT&T’s Interactive Staffing team. She uses
social technology to help drive awareness of job opportunities as well as interact with
candidates. Connect with her on Twitter at @researchgoddess.
As conference season is upon us (including SXSW, of
course), I began thinking about all the things one might need to survive and stay connected with
a busy schedule of travel and networking. Personally, I’m headed to San Diego to attend
both SourceCon and the ERE Spring Expo.
Then I remembered that I’m the proud owner of an iPhone, and that almost everything I’ll need to make
it through is easily accessible and at the tip of my fingers. Here are some of the apps which I
believe will help you navigate, stay connected, and meet new friends when you attend a
conference.
If you’re the ultimate procrastinator and you haven’t yet booked a hotel, even on
arrival at the conference, the Priceline Hotel Negotiator app is for you. It pairs a great
deal-finder with some comic relief in the form of William Shatner, the Priceline Negotiator. Just
load up this app and shake — you’ll get a chuckle and some sweet hotel deals
within a radius of your current location.
So you’ve booked a hotel, but the room doesn’t offer complimentary WiFi (grr!). This
app will use your location to find some local spots that offer free WiFi access. You can tailor
your results from as near as 0.1 mile away, to as far as 40 miles. You can also filter results by
categories such as libraries, cafes, airports, and hotels. You could probably couple this app
with the Priceline app to make sure you don’t book a hotel room without WiFi in the first
place.
Let’s say you’re in a city you’ve never visited before, and you want to find
some cool stuff to check out. Sure, you could use Yelp, but where’s the augmented reality fun in that? My
former co-worker Tim Sears created
this app, and it’s a neat way to find anything from ATMs, to gas stations, to hospitals, to
movie theaters. Better yet, you can also check out who else is tweeting around you locally, who
is sharing Flickr images, and learn about local
attractions via Wikipedia and Bing search functionality. Note, this app works best with the
iPhone 3GS.
Foursquare is a great way to see who else is
hanging out at the same locations as you, and the gaming element of earning badges for check-ins
is just plain fun. You earn points for checking in to multiple places in one day and for being
adventurous and going to new places. You can see what your friends have been up to, leave tips
and to-do items for other travelers, and tweet out your locations so that others know
what’s going on. At any social media-minded conference, there’s sure to be a lot of
location-based networking to be done through Foursquare.
Gowalla is very similar to Foursquare in terms of
location-based social networking, though I personally like Gowalla’s graphic layout better.
Gowalla also allows the creation of user-generated “trips” that you can take, like
the SEC Football Stadium Trip, or the
Austin BBQ Bonanza (for those headed to
SXSW). Again, you can see where your friends have been
and also see who else is hanging out at your current check-in location. It’s a great way to
meet and make new friends at a conference.
I fully intend to take a ton of pictures at both conferences I’m attending. Though
I do intend to bring a fairly nice (and very large) digital camera, there’s no
greater instant gratification than snapping a photo on your iPhone and sharing it with the world.
The TwitPic app lets you do this in four simple
steps: Choose a picture from either your camera or a photo album; Write a comment; Log into your
Twitter account, and; Send away!
You want to share a really fun moment from the conference, but a still photo simply won’t
do it justice. Or perhaps you want to share a little taste of a presentation, or do a live
interview with another attendee. This app lets you stream live video from your iPhone directly
through your Ustream channel. You can set it up to
automatically tweet when you are live, as well as take instant polls from viewers. It’s an
easy way to share some live moments with those who could not be there.
This one’s a no-brainer. Who doesn’t have the Facebook app on their iPhone? Use it to keep up
with your friends back home and share updates about your trip. Made a new contact at the
conference? Just search for them in the app and add them as a Facebook friend.
I’ve only recently been introduced to Brizzly, but I really love it. For those of us who
manage multiple Twitter accounts, this is
a great alternative to trying to navigate the mobile version of CoTweet (which currently does not have an iPhone app). With
Brizzly, you can connect to up to five Twitter accounts, as well as Facebook, and keep on top of
everything. You can also save searches and upload photos. The only functionality I miss is the
column layout from TweetDeck, but Brizzly
certainly gets the job done.
Tip: Create your Brizzly account on a
computer before you download the app, as it makes for quicker set-up on the iPhone.
Glympse is a really cool app that lets you share your location with others. But it’s more
than just a geo-tagger — it shares your ongoing location. Basically, you can create and
share your own “breadcrumb trail.” You can set it so that people will be able to
access your location and follow your movements from within five minutes, and up to four hours.
This is a great way to share which sessions you’re in with fellow conference-goers so they
can easily find you.
Like a good blogger, I plan to push some content to my readers while I’m at the
conferences. Now I can do that right on my iPhone. This app works with both .com and self-hosted
WordPress blogs. You can moderate comments as well as add and edit your posts from this app.
It’s a nice little travel tool for bloggers who may not always have access to laptops or
WiFi.
You want to stay connected with your fellow conference-goers, but you a) Forgot to bring enough
business cards, or b) Decided to “go green” and skip the paper cards all together.
BeamME lets you e-mail, text, or tweet all of your contact information to someone instantly.
BeamME users can easily reciprocate and shoot their information right back. Plus, your contact
info arrives in a manner which can be downloaded in a nice, tidy vCard format.
Cost: Free
Do you have any other favorite apps that would be great for conferences? Add them in the
comments below!
Knowing that
you're getting a federal tax refund is awesome, but the wait for it to land in your bank account or
mailbox can be maddening. Finance blog Get Rich Slowly show us how to check the status of your
refund anytime. More »
Knowing that
you're getting a federal tax refund is awesome, but the wait for it to land in your bank account or
mailbox can be maddening. Finance blog Get Rich Slowly show us how to check the status of your
refund anytime. More »
Scott Harris, who is a great commenter on the blog and has his own nifty blog, The Vault, is
trying to fulfill something he began years ago - reach every one of the "Hallowed Ranks of
Marveldom" from Marvel's first official fan club, the Merry Marvel Marching Society.
Only Fearless Front Facer remains, so join Scott as he tries to gain this very rare honor!
Click here to
check out the beginning of his quest for FFF!
Google has announced the initial roll-out of a new feature for its mobile product search: Local
inventory checks. This means that you can look for a product and then find out if a store near
you has it in stock.
To try out the new “in stock nearby” feature, go to Google.com on your iPhone, webOS,
or Android phone (basically anything that uses Mobile WebKit) and then select
“Shopping” from the “More” link. As long as you have enabled your
location, when you search for a product, it will let you know in the results if a store nearby
has it in stock.
For instance, I want to get a new Blu-ray player for my bedroom, and I’m thinking about
getting the LG BD-570. Searching for this tells me that Best Buy carries it and that it is
in-stock nearby. When I click on that link, I get a listing of stores based on their proximity to
where I am, and whether or not the product is in stock. From here, I can either get directions to
the store or call them directly.
It’s a pretty cool concept, albeit limited with only a few stores in the program right now.
It certainly adds a more useful element to local shopping, especially while on the go. We’d
love to see this rolled into the Google
Shopper app for Android too.
What do you think of being able to check inventory levels from Google? Do you use Google’s
mobile product search? Let us know!
Mozilla's developers are busily crafting all kinds of features for future versions Firefox -- Jetpack's no-restart add-on functionality,out of
process plugins, a bigger, badder JavaScript engine. They're also taking a look at how we log in
and out of websites and trying to standardize that process.
To that end, Mozilla has put together a draft spec (which you can view at Google Docs) which
would add new extensions to the HTTP client/server communication process for authentication.
They've also released an experimental add-on for Firefox called Account Manager
which you can use to demo proposed system on a handful of sites. Right now, Facebook, Google,
Yahoo! and three Mozilla sites (Addons, Personas, and Bugzilla) should work -- Mozilla has
hard-coded support for them into the addon itself.
Facebook worked nicely. After logging in, the key icon in my toolbar illuminated and clicking it
revealed that, yes, I was logged in to Facebook as myself. I didn't have the same luck with Google,
but that's to be expected at this point.
Anyone who wants to can code in support for the spec can check out the draft doc and implement
support on their sites, and the code for the Account Manager addon is available as well.
Foursquare means business. The 1-year-old startup now has a huge brand — Starbucks — using its platform
to test out an experimental customer rewards program.
Starting today, frequent Starbucks visitors who check in at retail locations using Foursquare
will earn customer rewards. Although there’s no financial incentive or free coffee to begin
with, customers can unlock the “Barista badge” after five checkins.
Of course that’s just the beginning; the coffee behemoth plans to use Foursquare as a
testing ground for alternative reward strategies and to unlock “the pulse of the
experience” for each store.
If you think this is a straight-up play to offer location-based mobile coupons, think again. The
New York Times Bits Blog writes that the company is “hoping to use Foursquare to
provide even more meaningful prizes, like invitations to special events, photo-sharing or online
reputation scores.”
As Starbucks figures out how best to leverage the checkin, we have to step back and appreciate
the magnitude of this decision. With Starbucks on board, there’s no question that
Foursquare has all the tools necessary to appeal to — and reach — a mainstream
audience. Plus, now that a second company (the first was Tasti D-Lite) is tapping into
Foursquare as a loyalty program platform, the additional proof of concept will pave the way for
other businesses to follow suit.
It seems like in the past few months Google has relentlessly released new
applications, some of which perhaps could have used some more baking in the oven before they were
unleashed on the general public. To some it's becoming a tiresome exercise simply to try to keep
up with everything that Google is doing week in and week out. But there is a method to the
madness, and it has a lot more to do with Google's bottom line than you may think.
We all know that the way the search engine giant makes money is through advertising - over $23 billion in 2009 -
but what may surprise you is that its advertising-based revenue comes almost exclusively from
sites that are owned by Google.
Sponsor
Guest author Daniel Cawrey is a freelance writer and tech enthusiast, among other things. You
can check out his latest musings in blog form at thechromesource, where he writes about Chrome browser,
Chrome OS and just plain Google in general.
Take a look at this graph from the
Silicon Valley Insider that depicts the location of advertising and the dollars associated with
it:
Ever increasingly, Google is relying on itself to make money through its own real estate - places
where it can position the ads that advertisers purchase. This is a concern for publishers that
rely on Google for revenue through Adsense because there has to be a point at which this is no
longer a profitable exercise for the company.
If it reaches that point, Google will essentially be subsidizing publishers. And it may not have
a choice but to keep doing so. Because without fresh content creation, what is there for users to
search for on the Internet that is of value? The main tenet of the search business is to provide
quality results, and while that may be the case now, if publisher's Adsense revenues were
affected, one can wonder what kind of effect that would have on content.
So although Google may have made some mistakes with applications like Buzz, along with the
half-hearted emergence and now slow death of features like Gears, expect them to continue to
increasing space for content to grow, even if that means one of several strategies:
Become an ISP
An experimental program has been announced whereby Google will provide gigabit service via fiber
directly to homes in select markets. Interested municipalities and community organizations are
encouraged to submit a proposal
for this right. At the World Mobile Congress, CEO Eric Schmidt talked about the goal of this
program being purely experimental, which means showing infrastructure operators such as cable
companies that this is possible, rather than Google becoming a full fledged ISP. But once the
fiber has been rolled out, it doesn't roll back in, does it? How long does the "experiment" last?
Trounce the Competition in the Browser Wars
Google's Chrome browser is getting a lucky break over the next few weeks. That's because Windows
users in Europe who use Internet Explorer will be getting an update to their machines notifying
them
about browser choices that they have. This is in response to the European Union's ruling that
Microsoft's practice of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows restricts competition. While the
update offers many browser choices, the result will be a boost to market share for Chrome. It has
steadily grown in popularity and already has roughly 5% of the market since emerging in 2008.
Offer Computing Architecture to Device Manufacturers Completely Free
We've seen this already with Android, and it appears that the no-cost operating system has
basically saved Motorola from a fall to obscurity with its release of the Droid. Expect to see
more of these developments as 2010 unfolds with Chrome OS attempting to break into not only the
netbook market, but also tablets and smartbooks, which fill the gap between a high end mobile
phone and a netbook.
So when you hear these new announcements of applications and services that Google rolls out,
think of content. Think of how they can better deliver information to users. They want it to be
as easy and as seamless as possible. While sometimes these initiatives don't always work out,
they aren't going to stop trying.
People have been asking us for years when we’d be getting shirts and other cool stuff out
the door so they can represent their love for our awesome community. The time has finally come to
unveil the new store and we’re
excited to have both the original Gamers With Jobs
t-shirt along with the first winner from our design contest back in ... wow, that’s a
long time ago.
One of our absolute favorites was one of many designs submitted by community member Fredrik
Skarstedt. He had a bunch of awesome ideas but his Friend Me Up
graphic design was particularly inspired. We’re very pleased to offer a regular t-shirt in
multiple colors and babydoll versions for the ladies!
This is only the beginning. Over the next few months we plan to release new stuff based on what
you guys want and some of our other winning designs. Big thanks to Cleveland Printwear for making our
awesome swag!
*note* We have folks outside the US and Canada covered too, check out the international order
form on the site.
- Add support for native Gentoo packages (Aleksey Lim).
- Added --select-only option. Requested by Bastian Eicher.
- Allow https: URIs in and lt;feed> elements.
- An implementation's "id" doesn't have to be path or digest (it just has to be a unique string).
You can use and lt;manifest-digest> to give a set of digests with different algorithms and the
"local-path" attribute to give the pathname. If the ID contains an '=' then it is added to the
digests list, for backwards compatibility. The Selections XML format also now supports and
lt;manifest-digest> and the local-path attribute. This is part of a gradual change to the new
format; please continue to use the old syntax for now to support older versions of 0launch.
- Rank digest algorithms and download using the best available. This means that, for example,
0launch will default to using the sha256 digest when available, even though the id attribute uses
sha1 for compatibility with older versions.
- Support several package implementations in feeds for different distros. There is a new
"distributions" attribute on and lt;package-implementation>, which is a space separated list of
distribution names where the element applies. Each Distribution object is given the chance to
report how well these names match the current distribution (for example, Ubuntu might report 1 for
"Debian" and 2 for "Ubuntu"). The highest scoring element(s) are then passed to
Distribution.get_package_info(). Based on work by Aleksey Lim.
Changes
- In the GUI's version column, only show "(was ...)" if the implementation ID changed. Before,
simply reloading the same XML file would display things like "1.0 (was 1.0)". However, commit
d8f59932 broke that by reloading the feed even if no changes are detected, in case some other
instance of 0launch updated the file. Note that it's still possible to get the "X (was X)" message,
if the ID changed but the version number didn't.
Python API
- Added Implementation.local_path attribute. This is the absolute path of the implementation for
local implementations, or None if it's not local (a distribution package or a Zero Install package
identified by a digest, whether cached or not). This is so that we can avoid id.startswith('/')
checks everywhere, since this doesn't work on Windows.
- ZeroInstallFeed._get_impl always creates a new Implementation. Before, calling this twice with
the same ID returned a cached copy, but we never used this feature.
Bug fixes
- Removed unused code. In the very first (0.1) version of the injector we downloaded from local
files rather than using HTTP, etc, and some code to support that was still present.
- Fixed error for passing a parameter that wasn't a GTKWindow (Rene Lopez).
- Fixed typo in error message format string. Reported by Aleksey Lim.
- Removed old check for gpg. _run_gpg checks again later anyway, and does it correctly (accepting
gpg2, not just gpg). Reported by Aleksey Lim.
- "No automatic updates" didn't work (Aleksey Lim). The GUI set freshness to -1 to disable checks,
but Policy only checked for zero.
- Don't require a bzip2 executable when handling .tar.bz2 archives. We'll fall back to Python's
built-in tar.bz2 support. Reported by Rene Lopez.
- Fixed unpacking of zip archives with "extract". unpack.extract_zip() moved the extracted contents
up to the parent directory, while all other other extract methods leave them in place.
- Fixed error when a download has the wrong size. Reported by Aleksey Lim (#2921426).
We'd
already gotten word of HP's new $40 million "Let's Do Amazing" ad campaign earlier
today, but the company has just now rolled out its first series of ads to give us some
indication of how all that money is being spent. Somewhat curiously, for an ad campaign partly
intended to reintroduce the HP brand to consumers, the ads stray pretty far beyond HP's consumer
products (including a trip to a UPS sorting facility and the Venetian's IT department), but we do
at least get to see Dr. Dre extol the benefits of HP Beats audio -- not to mention a little
beatboxing from Rhys Darby of "Flight of the Conchords," who serves as the host of the ads. Head on
past the break to check out the Dre ad and HP's introduction video, and hit up the link below for
the rest of the series.
The Web is huge. And growing. Faster everyday. It's almost like an ocean where there's no
evaporation (the data on the Web stays there virtually forever), but yet, it's always raining in
it. The rain is the new content that's added into the ocean.
Every tweet is a drop, every blog post is a drop, every check-in is a drop that falls into the
ocean. This ocean is almost constantly under a tropical storm in some places, like Twitter or
Facebook.
Sponsor
Guest author Julien Genestoux is the founder and CEO of Superfeedr, a company dedicated at making RSS and Atom feeds
realtime. It has implemented PubSubHubbub from day one and now host several hubs, including
ReadWriteWeb, Tumblr, Posterous and Gawker. Follow Julien on Twitter.
When you're a search engine, you obviously have an exhaustivity requirement. You can't really
skip on indexing the Indian Ocean. Google sends its bo(a)ts all over the ocean where it's raining
to update its index. However, the ocean is growing so fast that it will eventually become harder
and harder to stay exhaustive.
Unfortunately, not only the ocean is growing, but it's also raining more, which means that if a
bo(a)t is away from a zone for too long, when it will be back it will have changed tremendously.
That's what happens when you see results in a search engine that are 1- or 2-years old, or even
older. They're not wrong, they're just often inaccurate, but rank well.
It's a real technical problem for search engines to know where to send their bo(a)ts, and at the
right time! And when Google says they're going to feed their search index with PubSubHubbub data,
that's what they're trying to do: save a little bit on the boats.
I strongly disagree with John Battelle when he says this
is not a huge deal. My take is that he
sees this only as a great technical and infrastructure opportunity for Google, not so much as an
immediate benefit for the end user. I strongly disagree - and so do you. You disagreed
when you typed "earthquake" into Twitter Search, or even "hudson crash", or "Mickael Jackson". At
that point, you knew that Google wasn't able to provide you with the information you were looking
for, and this is a massive loss for Google.
Google will have a hard time getting this brain share back. The first thing it needs to do is to
actually have results that date back from the minute when people look for these things.
You may argue that if you search 10 times a day on Google, you go maybe once a week to Twitter
search. I'm the same, no worries. Yet, I know that Twitter is much better than Google at
contextualization. When I do a search on Google, I expect to find the absolute truth. If
I look for earthquake, I'm looking at facts about earthquakes: pictures or maybe
historical data. If I look for earthquake on Twitter, I'm looking for context; I want
what is being said about earthquakes now (and here!).
As a matter of facts, Google always had a lot of issues about context because they know so little
about the people who search there (or maybe they know a lot, but don't want to scare us). Adding
PubSubHubbub is a way for them to be able to take the "time dimension" back. They many never have
the conversations that Twitter has, but they will have a much bigger ocean of data than Twitter's
sea of Tweets
As I’ve made abundantly clear over the past several days, just about every service that has
anything to do with location is launching something at the SXSW festival which starts tomorrow in
Austin, Texas. Don’t believe me, here’s a small sampling (Foursquare,
Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, Plancast, Brizzly, Twitter). So, how are you going
to wrap your head around all this location data? SimpleGeo has
an awesome way.
Vicarious.ly is a real-time location-based stream of
information presented in a nice visual way. While the plan is to eventually launch one for many
different cities around the U.S. and eventually the world, the first one is based around Austin,
for SXSW. To make it, SimpleGeo partnered with BlockChalk, Brightkite, Bump Technologies, Flickr,
Fwix, Foursquare, Gowalla, and Twitter to pull all of their location data and place it both in a
constantly-updating stream, and put data points on a Google Map at the top of the page. These
data points are represented by the logos of the various companies, so it’s easy to follow
visually.
Those concerned about the privacy implications of this need not worry, Vicarious.ly doesn’t
pull actual user names from the companies mentioned above. Instead, they simply note that
“someone” checked-in at a venue. They do, however, give the venue name, which is a
hyperlink. So if someone just checked into Stubb’s Bar-B-Q in Austin on Gowalla,
you’ll see a link back to the Gowalla page for that venue. Likewise, if someone uploads a
geotagged picture to Flickr, you’ll see a thumbnail of the picture in Vicarious.ly’s
stream, and clicking on it will take you to that picture’s Flickr page.
It’s fairly amazing to see just how much activity there is even today, the day before the
conference starts. Tomorrow and the weekend should be insane. “The amount of real-time,
location-based information we’re indexing is staggering. Â We wanted a powerful
way to showcase that, so we built Vicarious.ly and targeted the launch to coincide with a massive
gathering of geeks,” co-founder Matt Galligan says about the project.
You’ll note just how much of the activity are check-ins from either Foursquare or Gowalla.
Those two are likely to be the two main competitors in the location war that will take place this
weekend. (If you’re surprised not to see tweets in the stream, it’s a bug that
SimpleGeo hopes to squash tonight).
For more on SimpleGeo, which has a powerful set of tools to easily provide geolocation
infrastructure for other companies (such as the new hot startup,
StickyBits), check out this and
this.
The one track we were most looking forward to from Green Day: Rock Band was, of course, "Brain
Stew/Jaded" from the outfit's 1995 album. It's a powerful, triumphant tune -- and, apparently, it's
also super hard. The Harmonix crew attempted the song during last night's "Rock Band Bar
Night" event at GDC, and -- well, it ended in tears. Or rather, jeers.
You can check out some off-screen footage of their tremendous failure above, or footage of them
actually playing the game past the jump. To be fair, the drummer didn't see the flurry of notes
coming at him, due to his attempt to refresh himself with some libations. You know who else was
enjoying a few beverages? The drunk dude who kept trying to throw the devil horns up in front of
our camera while we were filming. Really, drunk dude? Really?
The one track we were most looking forward to from Green Day: Rock Band was, of course, "Brain
Stew/Jaded" from the outfit's 1995 album. It's a powerful, triumphant tune -- and, apparently, it's
also super hard. The Harmonix crew attempted the song during last night's "Rock Band Bar
Night" event at GDC, and -- well, it ended in tears. Or rather, jeers.
You can check out some off-screen footage of their tremendous failure above, or footage of them
actually playing the game past the jump. To be fair, the drummer didn't see the flurry of notes
coming at him, due to his attempt to refresh himself with some libations. You know who else was
enjoying a few beverages? The drunk dude who kept trying to throw the devil horns up in front of
our camera while we were filming. Really, drunk dude? Really?
Foursquare, the New York-based location services startup, has more
than 500,000 users and 1.4 million venues, it announced today, one
year after it launched at SXSW. The company says it had its biggest day ever last Friday, with
275,000 check-ins from users declaring they were located at a certain venue. It also now has 16
employees and 1,200 venues offering specials (which is one revenue model the company is working
on, alongside a coming small
business analytics tool).
While we’re at the stats game, Foursquare also says it’s had 15.5 million check-ins
and 1,000,000 badges awarded to encourage users to participate (in a bid to inspire further
loyalty, it is offering temporary tattoo
badges at this year’s SXSW). Foursquare raised $1.35
million in September and continues to be actively pursued by VCs.
The company is most definitely hyped disproportionately to its
adoption, but at least it has more users than media mentions. The word “foursquare”
has been used 4,140 times in articles indexed in
Google News since 2009 and 89,311 times in
Google Blog Search — but surely many more times on Twitter, which doesn’t offer a
long-term index.
mpt pinged me today to ask why Empathy has two icons in the panel.
That’s odd, what is that yellow icon on the left?!? I responded that we didn’t we
ship it that way, we ship it with messaging indicator support built in! You have to go check a
box to turn that off. Likely he flipped the box at some point in his install and forgot about it.
This happens to everyone all the time!
I don’t maintain Empathy, the desktop team does, so how did I know we shipped it that way
out of the box? I checked on a new system, with a fresh ISO from the day before, right then
and there when he asked the question. How do we keep track of what we’re shipping by
default and what we’ve customized on our own day-to-day PCs?
Enter testdrive. It’s in Lucid already
or if you’re in Karmic use the PPA.
After that I dragged the little wheel into my panel. When you click on it you get something like
this:
Now you need to wait for a minute. The first time you do this it will download the whole ISO. So
just stick an old one in the cache directory or let it sync. Don’t worry, after the first
time it gets much easier. Then a few minutes later we can confirm our findings:
Aha, indeed by default we don’t ship that weird icon in the tray. Whew! The best part of
this is tomorrow when we need to know about how something is working in the default install we
just click on the wheel, let it sync, test, confirm, and then move on! And since it keeps a cache
you never have to redownload the whole ISO. And there’s things in there for -server,
netbooks, and other arches, so it’s handy to check things across different kinds of Ubuntu.
This is great for confirming bugs and checking out what’s new!
Virginia Woolf's house, Gertrude Stein's flat – feminist pilgrimages are a
great way to connect with history. So when Vera Groskop said girls were boring, her mother
decided it was time for her first trip
Despite my best efforts, my three-year-old daughter Vera hasn't exactly been celebrating her
girlhood of late. In fact, influenced by her six-year-old brother, she can frequently be heard
muttering, "Girls are boring. I want to do boys' things." I can see her point. Her brother's life
is full of Star Wars, pirates, football and other action-packed phenomena. Vera gets Hello Kitty.
She clearly finds this unsatisfying, and the situation is coming to a head. "I am not a girl,
Mummy, I am a boy," she told me recently. "My name is Peter."
But it's good to be a girl, I tell her. Being a girl is fun. There are women's successes to be
celebrated. There is joy in the female condition. How can I prove this though? In our home city,
London, there is just not that much physical evidence of women's greatness. The Alison Lapper
statue in Trafalgar Square was taken down in 2007. There are nine male statues in Parliament
Square – and no female ones. London's first public statue of a black woman,
Bronze Woman by Aleix Barbat, in Stockwell Memorial Garden, did not appear until 2008. Germaine
Greer has frequently complained that women are underrepresented in public monuments, noting that
one of the only recent sculptures of a woman is of the actor Diana Dors at the Shaw Ridge leisure
complex in Swindon. Now, I like Diana Dors. But this is pathetic.
I was not about to frogmarch Vera to Swindon, but I loved the idea of an adventure, exploring
women's hidden imprint on our streets. So I decided it was time for her first feminist
pilgrimage. My mother-in-law reeled: "That poor child." But I knew how to sell it to Vera. "Would
you like to come and find out what lots of important ladies did, and then we'll have cake?"
"Yes," she replied seriously. "I would like cake."
Rachel Kolsky, a London tourist guide, has run women's walking tours since 2005. "They open
people's eyes to the hidden history of an area," she says. "There is a great women's story on
every corner." Vera and I set off on a three-hour walk around the East End of London, starting at
the Royal London Hospital, the focal point of the Wonderful Women of Whitechapel and Spitalfields
Tour. Here, Kolsky tells a story about Eva Luckes, the famous hospital matron, whose successes
included the containment of a typhoid epidemic. The hospital's inner courtyard has a magnificent
statue of Queen Alexandra, who was instrumental in bringing a new treatment for tuberculosis to
the hospital. "Look at that strong, proud lady, Vera!" I say. "You said I could have cake," she
says. "I'm cold."
Then Vera starts to cry, bringing our adventure to a sudden end. This is the problem with
Kolsky's brilliant London tours: in order to showcase women's buried history, they cover a lot of
ground. Great for an adult, but slightly too ambitious for a three-year-old.
I am not deterred though. Quite the opposite. As we head home I am hatching plans for future
feminist pilgrimages. In the UK, we can follow in the footsteps of Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen,
and the Brontës. Or, next time we are passing the Houses of Parliament, we could check out
the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst, one of London's few female landmarks, in Victoria Gardens. Then
there's a trail of Pankhurst family blue plaques to be followed in London, from 50 Clarendon Road
in Holland Park to 120 Cheyne Walk in Kensington.
Further afield there is Gertrude Stein's apartment in Paris at 27 Rue de Fleurus. Now a private
home, this address was once host to weekly salons and packed with paintings by Renoir, Gauguin
and Cézanne; Picasso was a regular dinner guest. You may only be able to walk past these
days, but you can still reminisce fondly on key passages in Stein's classic work The Auto-
biography of Alice B Toklas. Or, in the same city, you could visit Simone de Beauvoir's grave
– next to Sartre's – at the Cimetière du
Montparnasse.
In New York there is a lengthy Dorothy Parker trail leading from the Ansonia at 2108 Broadway
(one of New York's most famous apartment blocks: Parker lived around the corner), to the 1925
birthplace of the New Yorker magazine at West 47th Street, where Parker worked, and on for
cocktails at the Algonquin Hotel. Then there are all the great feminist museums: the Elizabeth A
Sackler Center for Feminist Art, for instance, at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, which includes
a gallery devoted to Judy Chicago's "vaginas on plates" sculpture, The Dinner Party.
Maybe I will even start a "Sylvia Plath does New York" fund for when Vera turns 16. We will stay
at the Barbizon Hotel at 63rd and Lexington – which was once women-only
– wearing dresses with matching bags, as Plath did. We'll lunch near the
one-time offices of Mademoiselle at 575 Madison Avenue where Plath was an intern. Or we'll
criss-cross Massachusetts in a turquoise 1966 Thunderbird Convertible à la Thelma and
Louise in honour of Louisa May Alcott, tattered copies of my favourite childhood book, Little
Women, in tow. More likely though, we might just go to Stockwell when the weather warms up and
take a look at that Bronze Woman, holding her baby triumphantly aloft. As long as there's an
ice-cream van nearby, I'm sure Vera will be up for it.
For anyone who wants to explore women's lives and history, here are some other great ideas for
feminist pilgrimages.
Bath: Jane Austen
Austen lived in Bath from 1801 to 1806. The Jane Austen Centre at 40 Gay Street is gearing up for
September's Austen Festival which features "the opportunity to dress throughout the week in
18th-century Regency costume". You can have "tea with Mr Darcy" (a £10.50 high tea with
cucumber sandwiches, scones and cream) all year round. Those keen for an Elizabeth Bennett-style
constitutional can download a free audio walking tour "In the footsteps of Jane Austen" at
visitbath.co.uk. There is also a
"Jane for the day" suggested timetable: "12.45pm: Visit the Assembly Rooms: in Jane's day, guests
assembled for balls, to drink tea, play cards, listen to music or just to talk and flirt. 3pm:
Stroll around the streets Jane would have known."
Sussex: Virginia Woolf
"It is not so much a house as a phenomenon." So wrote Quentin Bell of Charleston, the country
home between Eastbourne and Lewes that was used by the writers, artists and thinkers known as the
Bloomsbury group in the early 20th century. Virginia and Leonard Woolf originally spotted this
late-17th-century Sussex farmhouse, situated at the foot of the South Downs, and coaxed
Virginia's sister, Vanessa Bell, to move there in 1916. It reopens for the summer on 31 March,
with special tours on Fridays.
The Woolfs' own country home was Monk's House near Lewes, East Sussex (nationaltrust.org.uk). This
property is occupied by tenants so is open only for short visits on Wednesday and Saturday
afternoons between April and October. But there is the ideal pilgrimage on Saturday 26 June: an
eight-mile walk "In the Footsteps of Virginia Woolf", from Monk's House to Charleston, with lunch
at local stately home Firle Place (£25). To book tickets, call Charleston on 01323 811626
(charleston.org.uk).
Washington: Michelle Obama
The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (on the National Mall, 14th Street and
Constitution Avenue) has hundreds of exhibits commemorating the women's reform movement. The
museum's First Ladies' Collection celebrates the influence of presidents' wives and has been one
of the most popular exhibitions for the last 100 years, including archive material, diaries,
memorabilia and costumes. This week, the white chiffon Jason Wu gown Michelle Obama wore to the
inaugural balls went on show for the first time.
For another tribute to Obama, head to her favourite takeout joint, Good Stuff Eatery at 303
Pennsylvania Avenue SE in Washington DC for a "Prez Obama" burger or to Ben's Chilli Bowl at 1213
U Street NW for the Obamas' favourite half-smoke chilli dog. Nearby Busboys and Poets (2021 14th
Street), a cafe and bookshop, hosts feminist events and has a huge feminist book collection.
Amsterdam: Anne Frank
"Now our Secret Annexe has truly become secret . . . Mr Kugler thought it would be better to have
a bookcase built in front of the entrance to our hiding place. It swings out on its hinges and
opens like a door." The canal house at 163 Prinsengracht was the hiding place of the young Jewish
girl Anne Frank and her family during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, and there are numerous
tours of the city that include the house, where you can visit the annexe where Frank wrote her
secret diary. The house opens at 9am, and it is best to visit early to avoid queues (annefrank.org).
Paris: Simone de Beauvoir
As the French travel bible Guide du Routard notes, "In the winter Simone de Beauvoir came always
first thing in the morning to the [Café] Flore to have a seat near the stove. Sartre
recreated the atmosphere of an English club. Everybody listened to jazz, read poems or played
little acts." Pay homage to the great feminist philosopher over a café au lait at
Café Flore, before downloading a walking tour from St Germain to the Louvre at girlsguidetoparis.com for $1.98
(£1.30). This takes in 60 Rue de Seine where de Beauvoir once lived, and while you are
strolling, remember: one is not born a woman, one becomes one.
· Wonderful Women of Whitechapel and Spitalfields starts at 11am on 13 March. Tickets
can be booked through the Women's Library on 020-7320 2222. Battling Belles of Bow, 11am on
Saturday 5 June, follows in the footsteps of Sylvia Pankhurst. For more information on other
tours, emailrachel@smallcakes.co.ukor visitgoeastlondon.co.uk
A website that sorts everyday the most relevant information to you.
Vote for the news and Matoumba will learn your tastes and the information that you like the most.
It is all FREE!
Find here the history of the stories you found interesting.
Show this to people who share the same interests as you,
and if they use Matoumba, their own votes will fine recommandations to you.
We knew virtual camera systems are
starting gain traction, particularly in the world of cinema and within James Cameron's little set
of toys, but it's pretty wild to see one in action. NaturalPoint is showing off its OptiTrack
Palm just showed
us the Unreal Engine 3 running on webOS, which apparently took a couple weeks to port over to the
platform using that fancy new 
Not too long ago, Toyota reigned as the
seemingly untouchable hybrid leader. That dominance — in terms of both market share (50
percent of hybrids sold in the U.S.) and mindshare (no alt-fuel vehicle on the market is better
known or more widely recognized than the Toyota Prius) — means that as the Prius image
takes a beating, other models across the spectrum of green cars will also get bruised.
freestylemethod
Ever since its
inception, the Internet has blurred the boundaries between author and audience. Whether you're a
blogger, a pillar of the printed word, a podcast coinnaseur or a developer dealing with the
latest CMS, navigating the next step in Internet publishing can be a feat.
Google has announced the 
Foursquare means 
It seems like in the past few months Google has relentlessly released new
applications, some of which perhaps could have used some more baking in the oven before they were
unleashed on the general public. To some it's becoming a tiresome exercise simply to try to keep
up with everything that Google is doing week in and week out. But there is a method to the
madness, and it has a lot more to do with Google's bottom line than you may think.
The Web is huge. And growing. Faster everyday. It's almost like an ocean where there's no
evaporation (the data on the Web stays there virtually forever), but yet, it's always raining in
it. The rain is the new content that's added into the ocean.
Recommandations
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
