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
()
If
you had to pick the one buzzword that’s dominating social media chatter today, it would
have to be location. Just over a year ago, Foursquare burst onto the scene at the SXSW
conference in Austin, TX. Since then, it’s only grown dramatically.
Our own Pete Cashmore sat down with Bloomberg’s Cris Valerio to discuss the location trend,
the battle brewing between Foursquare and Gowalla at this year’s SXSW, the gold mine that
is location-based advertising, the iPad, and even a little bit about the future of Mashable.
It’s quite a fascinating video — if you do watch it, let us know what you think of
the location trend (and Pete’s on-air performance) in the comments.
Apple may have moved nearly 120,000 iPads in just its first day of pre-orders, an estimate by
private analysts at the AAPL Sanity board suggests. After excluding the 16,500 average orders on a
given day, the collective has used the intervals between order numbers over 19.5 hours to estimate
that about 119,987 iPads should have sold during that period. The statistic doesn't include those
who simply reserved a unit in-store and potentially puts the actual launch day tally considerably
higher....
Apple may have moved nearly 120,000 iPads in just its first day of pre-orders, an estimate by
private analysts at the AAPL Sanity board suggests. After excluding the 16,500 average orders on a
given day, the collective has used the intervals between order numbers over 19.5 hours to estimate
that about 119,987 iPads should have sold during that period. The statistic doesn't include those
who simply reserved a unit in-store and potentially puts the actual launch day tally considerably
higher....
A leaked Verizon training memo reveals how Big Red will be dealing with those who have plans to
connect their BlackBerry to a new BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express (BESX); it is going to
cost you a little extra. The memo explains that those looking to leverage BESX will be required
to have an enterprise level data plan — which typically costs $45/month — as opposed
to the standard $30/month BlackBerry data plan. RIM states the requirements of BESX are:
A BlackBerry smartphone
Subscription to an internet-enabled BlackBerry service plan from your wireless service
provider
Not exactly 100% accurate, as the $30 standard data plan is an “internet-enabled BlackBerry
service plan,” but, we suppose, not entirely false either. We’ve got the
leaked memo after the break.
On March 1, 2010, RIM will launch BES Express (BESX), an entry-level version of BES.As with all
Corporate email solutions, customers will need a corporate email data plan or feature added to a
voice plan to allow access to BESX.
Note: Customers on the Email and Web for BlackBerry $29.99 data feature MAY NOT utilize BESX.
Overview:
BESX replaces BlackBerry Professional Software (BPS) in RIM’s product lineup and allows
businesses using MicrosoftÂ@ Exchange or Microsoft Small Business Server to support up to
75 BlackBerry subscribers without having to purchase Client Access Licenses (CAL) or a dedicated
server. Additional users can be supported if BESX is installed on a dedicated server.
With the launch of BESX, RIM will discontinue the sale of BPS. Verizon Wireless will sell through
our remaining BPS inventory and RIM will continue to support this solution for the foreseeable
future.
Customer Information/Eligibility:
BESX will be available directly from the RIM website. Customers should be directed there for
additional product information.
BESX will not be available directly from Verizon Wireless.
As with all Corporate email solutions, customers will need a corporate email data plan or
feature added to a voice plan to allow access to BESX
Google's Apps suite for domain owners and businesses has
finally received some star treatment with the launch of the Apps Marketplace. Which Google-friendly apps are
free, worth the cost, and entirely useful? These 10 are definitely worth a look. More »
Google's Apps suite for domain owners and businesses has
finally received some star treatment with the launch of the Apps Marketplace. Which Google-friendly apps are
free, worth the cost, and entirely useful? These 10 are definitely worth a look. More »
The creator of Chatroulette has revealed that he is working on a way
to preserve user’s privacy, following the launch of Chat Roulette Map, a Google Maps mashups
that pinpoints the location of users of the service.
Andrey Ternovskiy, speaking in an interview with the New York Times Bits blog, stated,
“There is a certain level of anonymity on the Chatroulette that Chatroulette Map takes
away, but I plan to add something to my site to allow them to still hide their
whereabouts.”
Chatroulette Map highlights a Chatroulette user’s location by looking at his or her IP
addresses, which is revealed via the peer-to-peer nature of the webcam connection. As well as
placing a marker on a map, users are screengrabbed, offering anyone in the world a brief sneak
peak through a stranger’s webcam.
This has drawn criticism from privacy advocates, although those behind Chatroulette Map say they
will remove an image and marker on request if emailed a matching photo to ensure the authenticity
of the request.
17-year-old Ternovskiy, a Russian student currently visiting the U.S., says of ChatRoulette Map,
“I enjoy it”, but obviously realizes his users — some of which appear to have a
penchant for public nudity and masturbation — might be less likely to use the service
without the anonymity it previously offered.
However, this does not mean Ternoviskiy is green-lighting the use of the service for such NSFW
activities. He has introduced a “report” button, which will see someone
“reported” three times banned from the service.
Other points of interest from the interview are the fact that Ternovskiy has yet to collect his
Google AdWords earnings as he’s is still under 18, that he’s been offered a $1
million buy-out, and that last month 30 million unique visitors hit Chatroulette, which is
averaging one million new users a each day.
Eddy Timer 1.6Eddy Timer is a multi-purpose, easy to use timer and stop-watch.
Timer should remind you about any event after predefined period of time. With application
presented, you can create any quantity of preconfigured timers for any purpose with easy launch
by mouse click.
As a timer signal, user can set any sound signal, melody, defined iTunes playlist or defined text
articulation (only English is supported). After timer count finish, it can turn your Mac off,
switch it to sleep mode or execute the predefined script.
Stop-watch should help you to trace amount of time spent for different tasks, and also to
calculate cost of time spent. To provide convenience in time cost calculation, you can set
category and rate for each stop-watch, cost of time spent should be defined according to those
parameters.
Folders are used to organize timers and stop-watch lists.
For convenient timersÂ’ organization, just drag chosen ones with a mouse and set them
in the necessary sequence. For example, you can create some separate timers folders for kitchen,
work, sports, meditation, etc. You can set the next timer automatic activation after the previous
timer counting is completed, for each timers list.
Folders can be used also for stop-watches list sequencing. For example, you create separate
folders for each project with traced amount of time.
WHAT'S NEWVersion 1.6:
Smart folders are added.
In the stopwatch have been added support of option "Customer".
Review of total duration and total cost for the list of stopwatches.
Benedict XVI's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, suggests 'tenacious' plot to implicate
pontiff in cover-up
The pope's spokesman has launched a vigorous counter-attack against a report linking Benedict XVI
to a sex abuse cover-up while he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1981.
Father Federico Lombardi appeared to suggest in an interview on Vatican Radio that the pope, who
also has strong links to the city of Regensburg, was the victim of a plot.
"It's rather clear that in recent days there have been people who have searched
– with notable tenacity – in Regensburg and Munich for
elements to personally involve the holy father in the question of the abuses," Lombardi said. "To
any objective observer it's clear that these attempts have failed."
The Vatican has been appalled in recent days by a flood of allegations of priestly sex abuse in
Germany, Holland, Austria and even Italy.
Today, the pope's former diocese rushed out a statement to pre-empt a story in tomorrow's edition
of the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. It said that when Joseph Ratzinger was the
city's archbishop he had agreed that a priest from another diocese should undergo therapy at a
rectory in his own.
The records suggested that "it was known then that this therapy should probably be carried out
due to sexual relations with children". But instead of sending him for therapy, the statement
said, the diocese's then vicar-general, Gerhard Gruber, assigned him to a parish where at least
one child was subsequently abused.
"Gruber takes full responsibility for the wrong decisions", the diocese said.
The church's attempt to bury the affair was immediately challenged by the Survivors Network of
those Abused by Priests (Snap), which tomorrow is holding "sidewalk vigils" in more than 30 US
cities in support of European victims.
David Clohessy, Snap's national director, said: "As a high-ranking church official for decades,
if Ratzinger knew of one reassigned paedophile priest, the odds are he knows of others, possibly
dozens. German secular authorities should do in Munich what Irish secular authorities did in
Dublin: launch a thorough secular probe of clergy sex crimes and cover-ups."
The latest front was opened in Austria where two newspapers reported cases of abuse among
choirboy in Fügen and Vienna. Today a newspaper in the predominantly German-speaking Italian
province of Bolzano-Bozen recounted the story of a then 15 year-old boy who said that in the
1960s he was coerced into providing sexual services to local friars.
Günstig zu DirectX 11: Während Nvidia
dem Launch der eigenen Fermi-Serie immer näher kommt, purzeln bei AMD weiter die Preise. So
bekommen Sie momentan eine Radeon HD 5750 bereits für weniger als 100 Euro.
Android adoption by
consumers in the U.S. is growing at an astounding rate, according to numbers released this week
by comScore. Not
only did the Google platform’s market share surge 153 percent from October to January, but
it surpassed that of Palm’s webOS for the first time ever. Equally impressive is how
Android market share is now almost half that of longtime competitor Windows Mobile.
AT&T become the final major carrier in the U.S. to carry at least one Android phone with the
launch of the Motorola Backflip, but early
users of the device are reporting that it has been crippled compared to other Android phones.
AT&T has removed Google
search from the Backflip and replaced it with search from Yahoo, which is more than a little
ironic considering Android is Google’s own platform. There are also a dozen special
AT&T apps that perform many of the same functions as integrated Android apps, and these
special apps are not removalble by the owner. Finally, AT&T has disabled the ability for
Backflip owners to download apps from anywhere other than the Android Market.
Google promised the Nexus One would be going to the Verizon network this year, and this week,
some eagle-eyed
folks uncovered proof that it is indeed getting close to release. The Verizon information
indicates the Nexus One will only be sold online, similar to the T-Mobile version of the phone.
Most interestingly, the new Verizon information clearly indicates that its version of the phone
will run the HTC Sense interface. Sense is considered a good addition to the Android interface,
and the original Nexus One shipped without it.
2010 Bentley Continental Supersports - Click above for high-res image
gallery
It may not be the most interesting news you read all week, but we now have a date at which all
Bentley Continentals will be able to gulp down
whiskey with the best of 'em: June.( Well, not exactly whiskey, but ethanol's pretty close.)
Bentley had made the announcement (sans date) at the Geneva Motor Show when it showed off the
Continental Supersports Convertible.
This move as a big first step toward reaching Bentley's stated goal of offering an entirely
biofuel-capable lineup by 2012. In its latest form, as seen in the Continental Supersports,
Bentley's twin-turbocharged 6.0-liter W12 offers up 621 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque.
That's sufficient to push the Conti to 60 miles per hour in 3.9 seconds and onto to a top speed of
202 mph.
As the Continental family is easily Bentley's most popular offering, this means that over half of
all cars the brand sells this year will be flex-fuel-compatible. For those keeping track, the
Brooklands coupe (which will soon be
discontinued), Azure convertible and the
soon-to-be-released Mulsanne sedan (the
replacement for the long-running Arnage) are still
not yet biofuel capable. According to Automotive News, however, the Mulsanne will be
E85-capable shortly after its launch later this year.
We’re
big fans of Animoto, a website that lets you easily create
photo and video slideshows matched to music. The site is constantly innovating its nifty product,
most recently adding an iPhone app and the
ability to incorporate
video. For those not familiar with Animoto, the startup basically allows you to take your
images, video and your music and mash them together to create cool videos. What makes the videos
cool is the company’s technology that renders the pictures so they’re in-step with
the music you’ve chosen, adding nice transition effects. This morning, Animoto is
opening up its API, allowing partners to now incorporate Animoto’s compelling
technologies into independent sites
The first API that being rolled out for the Animoto
Partner Platform is Animoto Quickstart. The API essentially allows any website
to tap into Animoto’s video creation flow. The aim is to make Animoto one
click away from any website that has photos, videos or music. Quickstart allows
websites to connect their own content, including photos, video clips and music to Animoto as the
first step in creating an Animoto video. So partners can integrate Animoto’s
video slideshow creation tool into their sites. And the startup promises that Quickstart takes
only hours to a partner to set up on a site.
For example, SmugMug, a photo sharing site that caters to
professional photographers, uses Quickstart so users can ‘pass’ their photo albums
into Animoto’s video creation flow. So is the user now has the option of making a slideshow
from their hosted photos and simply needs to pick a song to complete their Animoto
video. Once a user slicks to make the slideshow, he or she will be taken to
Animoto’s site, where their video and photos will automatically be placed into
Animoto’s site.
Another use case is a promotion Animoto is launching with iconic musician John Bon Jovi where fans of Bon Jovi can go to
Bonjovi’s site to create an Animoto music video with Bon Jovi’s latest single and
footage from his music video. Pepsi also used the Quickstart API to help users
create video slideshows in a contest involving its ShareTheJoy campaign.
With the launch of this API at SXSW, Animoto is partnering with music publication SPIN magazine to allow fans to promote their favorite
South by Southwest bands for a chance to win prizes.
From now until March 31, 2010, fans are can create and submit Animoto videos featuring songs from
top South by Southwest bands for a chance to win $1000 and a spot on Spin.com, and other
prizes.
Â
Currently Animoto has 1.4 million users and makes money off of its paid subscriptions. On its
site its free to create 30 second videos, but you need to pay $3 per video to make an lengthier
slideshow. The site sells a year long subscription to users for $30. A large part of
Animoto’s subscription business are composed of professional videographers and
photographers who pay $20 per year to create their own branded videos that they can download, and
burn to a CD (and the slideshow doesn’t bear the “Animoto” logo).
Animoto’s CEO Brad Jefferson tells me that 10 percent of users, so 140,000 people, are
currently using some type of paid subscription on the site.The company is already
cash-flow positive, which isn’t bad for a startup that’s less than three years
old.
In terms of monetizing the API, Animoto isn’t charging any of its partners. In fact, its
actually paying its partners in terms of affiliate fees. So if any partners lead new or existing
users to the site who end up buying a subscription, Animot will give the partner a 40 percent cut
of the first year’s fee.
The Quickstart API seems to be the first of a few sets of APIs that will extend Animoto’s
technology onto the other sites. It’s a smart move. While many photo sharing sites have the
ability to make slideshows, the technology is not nearly as fun and easy to use as
Animoto’s. And Animoto is undoubtedly a compelling tool for an brand marketer to use for a
campaign. Frankly, the possibilities are endless because Animoto is such an easy tool to use.
Frequent travelers :turn your iPhone into your personal travel assistant and save time while
traveling.
On the road, at home or at the office, how many times do you need to check your trip details in
order to take your flight or your train, find your hotel details or pick up your rental car ?
The travel friend Pro has been developed to enable frequent travelers to centralize their trip
details on their iPhone and enable them to share easily their trip itinerary with colleagues,
customers or family. Wipolo enables you to retrieve your trip details in a single click (flight,
train, hotel or car rental) anywhere and anytime. To save you more time your travel friend Pro
offers your smart services such as flight status, train status, maps and useful local information :
weather of the day, currency, time zones or telephone index.
How does it work?
It is just simple as a click. No typing required. You just need to forward your trip reservation
emails to our platform: mail@wipolo.com Your trip will be
available on your iPhone within a 24 working hours maximum deadline.
Main features
-Centralize your trip details on your iPhone by email forward
-Dynamic display of trip details
-Check live flight status
-Check live train status
-Aggregate local information on destination: currency, time zone, telephone, weather of the day
-Find on map your trip’s points of interests
-Find your trips history with all details
Mains benefits
-Get your trips details on your iPhone
-Save time while traveling
-Share easily your itinerary from the application
Compliance : any trip emails with valid provider content
Prerequisite : be owner of a valid email address to create your account, forward your reservation
emails to our platform and receive information from your travel friend.
Conditions : Pricing includes a 3 months subscription to live status services.
Subscription renewal is an an in-app purchase (monthly or annually).
For more details visit our launch website www.wipolo.fr and hear from Wipolo on twitter : wwipolo
What's New
New features : 100% useful for travellers.
· Display automatically 24hours before your train or flight status. Update every 10 minutes if
details are published. Just synchronize your application.
· Add new email adresses to your WIPOLO account (enables you to send your reservation emails
from your professional or private adress)
· Save critical personal information (passport copy, driving license copy, insurance numbers).
So useful when you need to fill in travel documents or in case you have lost them.
· Register your travel awards programs. Save time when you need to find numbers.
· Board with your travelFriend! Save your boarding pass (2D tag) into the application.
With a full report from SXSW forthcoming, tonight will be alien madness as 20th Century Fox has
launched the official website for
Nimrod Antel's Predators,
the Robert Rodriguez Troublemaker Studios produced remake/sequel (so I'm told) that arrives in
theaters July 9. The site features a background tease of a Predator, a look at a "Predator Hound",
the full synopsis, along with a special behind-the-scenes clip that gives you a really, really good
look at the film and its stars (you can see it all below)! In addition, the site teases a March
18th (next Thursday) launch for the official trailer, so watch this spot! What do you think of the
footage shown? Talk, talk, TALK!
Over the past few days I’ve
watched this meme about the so-called “geowars” ahead of SXSW gather steam, both in
the blogosphere and on Twitter. And it’s giving me a headache. For some odd reason, people
believe that SXSW is going to be a full-blown coming-out party for location-based services that
will launch at least one of them into the stratosphere.
Ever since Twitter made such a big splash in Austin a few years ago, many startups have come to
believe that if they can do the same, they will subsequently become an overnight success —
a foolish assumption. It took a lot longer than that for Twitter to go from an early-stage
curiosity to a mainstream phenomenon.
Even last
year’s debutante, Foursquare, took a whole year to
sign up 500,000 users, including myself. Impressive, but not Facebook impressive! Its rival
is Gowalla, a liberally funded startup that recently crossed the 100,000 subscriber mark
(and released a much-improved and a fantastic upgrade). Others such as
Pelago/Whrrl are literally spraying Austin to get the attention of SXSW visitors. Add to this
dozens of unknown and/or little known services and you have the “geowars.”
My problem, of course, is not with the technology per se, but with its implementations. With the
exception of Foursquare, most LBS startups have not found a way to even briefly engage
me. Many of them are going to meet a fate no different that that of a moth flitting around a
flame on a dark summer night. So in case you hadn’t noticed, I am a tad
skeptical about this notion of geowars.
Y'know,
OnLive and Gaikai aren't the only game-streaming services on the
block. OTOY has been laying
lowfor a minute, but the "other" game streaming service has finally made its big announcement: it's going to release in Q2
2010. In fact, OTOY isn't just a service for streaming games; there are now claims of streaming
movies, PC applications and "other graphically-intensive applications" to any mobile device with a
web browser.
OTOY will employ AMD Fusion Render Cloud technology,
a CPU/GPU server platform that will stream games straight into your see pee youz through
the company's software suite. And if you have no idea what that means, check out a demo of
the service right here,
courtesy of TechCrunch -- basically, it's like playing games on your computer. What a novel
idea!
Y'know,
OnLive and Gaikai aren't the only game-streaming services on the
block. OTOY has been laying
lowfor a minute, but the "other" game streaming service has finally made its big announcement: it's going to release in Q2
2010. In fact, OTOY isn't just a service for streaming games; there are now claims of streaming
movies, PC applications and "other graphically-intensive applications" to any mobile device with a
web browser.
OTOY will employ AMD Fusion Render Cloud technology,
a CPU/GPU server platform that will stream games straight into your see pee youz through
the company's software suite. And if you have no idea what that means, check out a demo of
the service right here,
courtesy of TechCrunch -- basically, it's like playing games on your computer. What a novel
idea!
Aviary, the online creative platform is a visionary
tool. When it launched a few years back, the irony of a Flash based Photoshop competitor was,
well, ironic.
With the launch of Aviary in Google's
App Marketplace, we can say that the company is close to making lightening strike twice, this
time around creating a home for the creative professional and their most important assets.
We want this to work - so we ran it through the paces. Here we got a front-line view on where
cloud app meets cloud. We looked forward to counting the pixels that get wasted in the process.
Sponsor
Aviary and Google will disrupt Microsoft (the default filesystem for the world), and along side
it Apple and Abobe, with this simple joining of services that allows users to create, share,
publish and present with a simple Web based client and "always available" files.
It feels like the tide has changed and soon it will be hard to imagine an app not
defaulting to file storage in the cloud. In a world of cloud-hosted apps, writing to a PC
filesystem just seems wrong and goes against the grain of a mobile workforce. The creative
professional's cloud is going to be in vivid color and available from the local coffee shop.
As a clear sign of preparation for these applications, Google Docs
Last fall, I interviewed Pixar CTO/indie film producer Oren Jacob for a GigaOm Pro
piece about using online data in the offline world. At the time, Jacob was considering the
idea of putting his latest project, the Spellbound-esque documentary Ready Set Bag!, online in full for free, as a means of
figuring out how to target audiences who might subsequently go to theaters to see the film again.
Since then, though, Jacob and his team have revised their strategy considerably, and today, at
the Tweet House SXSW event, Jacob announced the launching
of a new Blip channel for the purpose of spreading the word about Ready Set Bag!,
enlisting an eclectic yet well-known team to create content about the film, including
Auto-Tune the News creators the Gregory Brothers, mash-up artist Mike Relm, animation studio Jib-Jab and Pop17 founder
Sarah Austin.
Ready Set Bag! tracks a large ensemble cast of grocery baggers training to win the title
of Best Bagger in America at a national competition held every year in Vegas. Jacob is currently
in process of negotiating a deal with a to-be-named distribution company and is aiming for a
summertime release in 35-40 cities (to date, the movie played at film festivals and individual
theaters, mostly in northern California).
Because the film was a documentary, there’s hours of footage directors Alex D. da Silva and
Justine Jacob had to leave on the cutting room floor — and it’s that, plus the
existing film, which will be made available to the Gregory Brothers, Relm, Austin and anyone else
who wants to get involved with the channel, which launched today with the film’s trailer.
Each will experiment with the existing content in their own way — for example, JibJab will
use animation techniques similar to their
other photo-based series to introduce audiences to the film’s cast of intrepid grocery
baggers. (If you need help guessing what the guys behind Auto-Tune the News might do,
then I feel sorry for you.) In addition, excised storylines and deeper character pieces will be
uploaded as well, giving audiences a broader look at the world of the film.
In order to get his starting line-up of channel contributors, Jacob relied on both old-school and
new media networking, which included approaching Michael Gregory in the men’s room after
seeing him speak at NewTeeVee Live last November. But with the channel’s launch, anyone
will be allowed to submit ideas for their own remixes, spoofs or other contributions directly to
Jacob, who called it “a wide-open casting call” when we spoke via phone.
Those involved committed for a number of reasons, ranging from altruistic — all ad revenue
from the online content will be donated to food banks around the country — to more nerdy
— Jacob showed them the film, and they liked it. Having been provided with a DVD of the
film as well, I get why so many have gotten on board. Ready Set Bag! is an extremely
kind, human story, and you also learn a lot about the challenges of grocery bagging — which
might not seem super-exciting to you, but that’s just because you’ve never seen it
done right. The challenge for a film like this is, of course, getting seen, but Ready Set
Bag! might just be able to bring the eyeballs in.
Similar to Yugo-nostalgia, the
nostalgia for the common Byzantine past can sometimes transcend some of the barriers
erected through modern nationalism and racism in the Balkans.
Mizar, a cult rock band that uses
Macedonian traditional music and Orthodox Christian chant in much of their work, recently
released a new single, “Konstantinopol,” featuring Harmosini Choir. YouTube user
vizantijamk [= Byzantium Macedonia] created an unofficial video clip using a number of
depictions of the siege and fall of
Constantinople in 1453, including a modern romanticist, kitschy image of the
last Greek-speaking emperor riding a horse on the battlements (minute 0:16).
The above-mentioned image from an unattributed source is interesting in two aspects:
Insisting to put the revered leader on horseback at an awkward spot can be related to the
insistence of the Macedonian government to
erect as many new equestrian
statues as possible, even to Fin de
siècle revolutionaries and intellectuals such as Goce Delchev, Dame Gruev and Nikola Karev, who had no relation to cavalry.
Some Facebook users promoted the clip through the pages based on the Macedonian Orthodox
Christian identity, such as Speak Macedonian [MKD] and
Macedonia Above All [MKD], adding comments of praise for Mizar, who were the first band in
former Yugoslavia to produce a rock album entirely in Macedonian language.
Janis used the Orthodox Christian formula “may God rest their souls” to
express sympathy for the defenders through a comment [MKD] on the blog
Kichevo, which reprinted a 2007
post [MKD] about the fall of Byzantium. Even though the author praised modern Turkish
Istanbul as a cosmopolitan tourist hot-spot, this extensive article described the event mainly
from the viewpoint of the besieged Christians. The story downplayed the damage inflicted by the
Crusaders, even though the siege of 1204 seems far
more destructive, as
shown by Balkanalysis.com:
…With a barbarity that would have made even the wickedest sultan blush, the Crusaders
looted, burned, raped and murdered their way through Constantinople, stealing both saleable
riches and priceless works of art, destroying age-old monasteries, and generally going against
everything that their “Christian” ideals stood for. In its severity, the Latin
conquest of Constantinople was ten times worse than the Ottoman conquest of 1453.
Of those Ancient Greek texts which are no longer extant, several were in circulation right up
until 1204. Yet none of today’s “lost texts” were to survive that year.
Although the terrible loss of human life is today barely an echo in our historical consciousness,
we are still suffering from the cultural destruction caused by the Western sack of
Constantinople. It is all but forgotten, however. While everyone recalls the rapacity of the
Turks (presumable, because they were Muslim), no one remembers the violence unleashed by one
Christian state on another, in a period when religion constituted the grounds for diplomatic
relations.
Amidon, recalled another old post - from 2006 - which advocated the view that
Byzantium, its culture and institutions were not destroyed, but absorbed into
the then-multicultural Ottoman Empire, which defined Islam as the primary state religion almost a
century and a half later.
In the post Our Misery and
Constantinople [MKD], Surface Surtuk writes that he feels “appalled by this
mystification of the submissive (not of the subdued!), this glorification of a battle lost 557
years ago.”
Noting that at the time, the Ottoman value system of meritocratic feudalism was far more
appealing to the Christian peoples of the Balkans than the Byzantine system of personal
connections and nepotism, he explained:
…Our [ancestors] played an important role in the conquest of the city, in several ways. The
Janissaries, who first stormed the walls,
were our boys. Serbian prince Lazar (or his son) took part with a squadron of brave, armored
Christian knights, alongside other vassals, like the nobles from Wallachia (southern Romania). The expert Saxon miners from my native area of Osogovo undermined the city walls with explosives and
dug a tunnel underneath them. Fortunately, the Byzantines also hired a Saxon from Germany who
started digging from the other side, and met them half way - killing them like rats underground.
A key weapon for the siege was an enormous cannon, built by a Hungarian Christian who sold it to
Mehmed the Conquerer after the Byzantines
declined to provide a sufficient honorarium. The city was betrayed by the Christian Venice - which refused to
aid it with its fleet, because Mehmed guaranteed larger privileges - and the Genoan colony of Pera, which remained neutral and refused to
oppose the Ottoman fleet. The French king preferred to expand his territories and confiscate
property of slain heretics rather than to launch a new crusade to aid his fellow co-religionists.
Our [Macedonian] contribution would have been greater, but fortunately the old Turkish vassals
King Marko and Constantine Dragash had already given
their lives for the Ottoman cause. Only two territories in the area resisted the Ottomans at the
time: Neuberg or Novo Brdo [New Hill] fell two years after Constantinople, and in retribution the
Turks killed all the leading citizens. The lands held by George Kastriot fell after his natural death in
1468, and their population was forcibly converted to Islam in retribution.
Those who submitted and bowed to the Ottomans were not cut by the saber, nor were they
assimilated into Muslim Turks, nor were they driven from their homes. They remained as they were,
professing their faith and speaking their own language.
The Saxons cleared their conscience by rising against the Ottomans during the Karposh Uprising [of 1689], resulting in their
destruction as an ethnic group in Macedonia.
This disjointed discussion continues, even though the participants do not link to each other, and
maybe are not aware of the overall context.
Libellus Antoniiposted
a song lamenting the end of the “Roman” empire in the Pontic Greek language, providing translation in
Macedonian:
One of Microsoft's major justifications for the Yahoo search deal is scale. CEO Steve Ballmer has
repeatedly asserted that greater scale would allow Microsoft to improve search accuracy. Just
last week he told Search Marketing Expo West attendees: "The ability to put
together Yahoo's volumes and Microsoft's volumes and use that in a way that improves the
experience more, let's call it all involved parties, we think is absolutely fantastic."
But the scale argument presumes that Microsoft and Yahoo would combine search share. The deal is
in place but not fully implemented, and already Microsoft's Bing is taking away search share from
Yahoo -- not Google. In February, Bing's US search share reached 11.5 percent, up from
11.3 percent month over month, according to ComScore. Yahoo share declined to 16.8 percent from
17 percent during the same time period. In June 2009 -- the month before announcing their search
deal -- Yahoo search share was 19.6 percent and Microsoft 8.4 percent. But Microsoft already was
rising, because of the Bing launch and millions of dollars in supporting advertising. For
perspective, Google search share was 65.5 percent in February and 65 percent in June 2009.
The Microsoft-Yahoo search deal is a dumb idea, for three main reasons:
1) Microsoft's marketing push behind Bing shows that share can be gained organically, without
taking on the expense or logistical hassle of managing Yahoo's search business.
2) Microsoft search share gains foreshadow the inevitable: Microsoft-Yahoo combined search share
will diminish rather than aggregate. Combined share would have been 28 percent in June 2009; 28.3
percent in February. At first blush, the numbers might seem encouraging for aggregated share but
the cost is declining Yahoo share. Cannibalization is inevitable.
Also the ComScore share data is for search engines and doesn't include heavily searched
cross-domains like YouTube. Americans conducted 9.9 billion searches at Google in February, 2.496
billion at Yahoo and 1.498 billion at Bing. YouTube (and a few other Google sites): 3.553 billion
or about 30 percent more than Yahoo. If ComScore ranked YouTube like Google, Yahoo would be No. 3
in search share.
I first warned about flawed combined search share math about a year before (May 2007) Microsoft
gave up its hostile Yahoo takeover: "There is no guarantee a Microsoft-Yahoo could
successfully aggregate search share." Bing is more likely to cannibalize Yahoo share than combine
with it over the next 12 months. In July 2009 I predicted: "Combined Microsoft-Yahoo share will be less than 20 percent
within 12 months of the deal's closing." We'll see.
3) Search is -- or was -- Yahoo's crown jewel. Yahoo started as a search engine and remained a
contender even as Google gained share. As I asserted in May 2008: "Removing search
would be akin to lobotomizing Yahoo." That's essentially what the Microsoft search deal will
do to Yahoo.
Yahoo's banner advertising business is still big, but its future is uncertain during the
Microsoft search-take-over transition. Meanwhile, Google has added banner ads to YouTube and to
mobile search.
Yahoo is little more than a beloved brand without search, particularly with CEO Carol Bartz
dismantling the company's other prized assets. You know, little things like disbanding the mobile group earlier this week. Would someone please take away
the axe from that woman!
So what do you think? Should Microsoft and Yahoo have cut that search deal? Please answer in
comments.
Watch out! Rumored launch dates are falling from the sky today. Next up is the dual-screen,
Android-powered
Spring Design Alex and a rumor
that states the ebook reader is headed towards a March 16th launch. That’s next Tuesday,
kids!
Thanks for your patience. We’re almost ready with our Alex store.
Keep checking in and by the first week of March you’ll be able to order your Alex
online.
–The Spring Design Team
We took a look at the Alex at CES 2010 and it’s definitely one step above the Nook in terms
of taking advantage of the dual screen setup. Hopefully we’ll get a chance next week to see
if it stands up to the Nook or Kindle in real world use, though.
Festival attendees can download the Chevy iReveal application on
the iPhone which will allow them to participate in a scavenger hunt-like game that blends
augmented reality with location-based functions. A map in the application shows the location of
Chevy vehicle promotions around Austin where users can "unlock" the ability to view 360-degree 3D
models of the cars in an AR view using the phone's camera.
Using AR to promote vehicles with 3D models is nothing new,
but this is one of the first versions to reach consumers on their phones. The automotive industry
has been one of the leading areas pushing desktop webcam-based AR experiences that have allowed
users to interact with 3D models of cars from their homes. This new promotion from Chevy is
unique in that it allows customers to have the same experience on their iPhones.
According to the App Store, AR iPhone application developer acrossair has produced the application for Chevrolet. The interesting
thing about this experience is the way it blends the dichotomous features of mobile and
webcam-based AR. The 3D model manipulation we are used to seeing on the desktop is wisely mixed
with the location-based map info seen in most mobile AR applications. By taking the best of both
worlds, acrossair and Chevrolet have opened the door to a new breed of mobile AR advertisements.
Augmented reality isn't the only emerging technology Chevrolet is
experimenting with at SXSW; quick response (QR) codes, which are like a technological cousin of
AR, are a large part of the company's promotions as well. When investigating Chevrolet's latest
cars, users can photograph QR codes placed strategically on the cars to learn more about specific
parts of the car. A QR code placed on the hood, for example, will launch information about the
car's engine. Christopher Barger, Director of Global Communications and Technology for General
Motors, is excited about the future of QR codes and AR for the automotive industry.
"Imagine using Quick Response Codes to download the price and options for a vehicle on a dealer
lot right to your cell phone. Or, imagine using augmented reality to virtually preview different
colors of the Camaro in your own driveway," Barger says. "We are just scratching the surface of
what's possible with mobile technologies and social media applications."
Chevrolet is also teaming up with Gowalla to provide location-based advertisements to people
checking in at SXSW. One promotion they are offering is a shuttle ride from the airport in one of
their new cars to select users that check in at the airport, so don't forget to fire up Gowalla
when you land in Austin. For more information about mobile and desktop AR advertising, be sure to
check out our report on the subject coming soon!
This doesn't come as much of a surprise, but Android Central seems to have
obtained a screen shot from a deep, dark, top-secret Verizon system that indicated that the
upcoming CDMA version of the Nexus One will be
"available only through www.Google.com/Phones." That, of course, matches T-Mobile's strategy of
quietly letting Google do its thing -- and Verizon's strategy of keeping its network "open" -- so
you'll just have to remember to not line up at your local store at 8PM the night before the launch,
otherwise you're going to come away very, very disappointed. What's a whole lot stranger, though,
is a mention that it runs HTC's Sense UI, which
means one of a few things: Google's allowing carriers and manufacturers to have their way with the
Android builds sold directly through its own store, the Verizon-branded Nexus One is the
Incredible, or the document is just
sorely confused. The way we see it, there'd simply not be enough differentiation between the Nexus
One and the Incredible for them to come to market as separate products if they were both running
Sense -- and besides, isn't variety the spice of life?
The
pricing scheme announced this week by OnLive, in
which you'd pay $15 a month for the privilege of buying and renting games, won't be the only way to
interact with the streaming service. In addition to that "OnLive Game Service," the company will
open an "OnLive Game Portal" sometime after the June 17 launch of the main service. It sounds a lot
like the browser-based streaming offered by competitor Gaikai.
The Game Portal is a free browser-based service that allows streaming of a selection of demos, as
well as a limited number of full games for rent -- for a per-game fee, without the monthly charge.
The selection of games is limited not just in number, but also "subject to available OnLive service
capacity and whatever usage limits are associated with each given demo."
The Portal will work with the OnLive set top box, in addition to the browser plug-in. It is
expected to roll out sometime in 2010, after the June 17 launch of the main service.
The
pricing scheme announced this week by OnLive, in
which you'd pay $15 a month for the privilege of buying and renting games, won't be the only way to
interact with the streaming service. In addition to that "OnLive Game Service," the company will
open an "OnLive Game Portal" sometime after the June 17 launch of the main service. It sounds a lot
like the browser-based streaming offered by competitor Gaikai.
The Game Portal is a free browser-based service that allows streaming of a selection of demos, as
well as a limited number of full games for rent -- for a per-game fee, without the monthly charge.
The selection of games is limited not just in number, but also "subject to available OnLive service
capacity and whatever usage limits are associated with each given demo."
The Portal will work with the OnLive set top box, in addition to the browser plug-in. It is
expected to roll out sometime in 2010, after the June 17 launch of the main service.
Last week, I wrote a little article about Microsoft's
four-color approach to QR black-and-white barcodes, the still-in-beta Microsoft Tag, which
was also the company's first official Android application.
I only briefly touched upon the many things that are being done with QR codes: advertisements
that you scan with your cell phone camera to pull up related content on the Web, business cards
that you can scan for an instant call to the card's owner, or boxes that you can scan for an
instant Web-based list of contents.
One area that I neglected to mention is tourism. For the last couple of years, more and more
cities have begun to employ black-and-white QR codes as virtual tour guides. Historical sites and
points of interest are being labeled with QR codes that tourists can scan with their mobile
phones to obtain relevant information.
One of the first places that started using these codes was San Francisco, where restaurants were
tagged with QR codes in the front window that linked to Citysearch listings and user-submitted
reviews. New York City's Gotham tours has yellow QR stickers up in Manhattan which provide more
information about famous locations in the area.
The barcoding craze is now being picked up by tiny American towns that recognize it as a cheap
way to keep tourists interested. This week, Long Beach, Washington (pop. 1,283 as of the last
census) announced that it has tagged sites such as the "World's Longest Beach" arch,
the "World's Largest" frying pan, the World Kite Museum & Hall of Fame, a gray whale
skeleton, and a 20-foot tall bronze evergreen tree as scannable points of interest in its town.
It may not be the most enriching stuff, but it has its uses.
Today, the Northern Italian city of Turin (Torino), site of the 2006 Winter Olympics, announced
it has joined in on the craze as well. But it's the first city to use Microsoft's four-color HCCB Tags instead of
the more common black and white QR codes. With the TagReader app, users can scan Tags around the
National Museum of Cinema, Palazzo Madama, Museum of Oriental Art (MAO), Civic Gallery of Modern
and Contemporary Art (GAM), and the Borgo and Rocca Medioevale Museum. All of these launch mobile
browser pages with text information, video, or MP3 content.
Viliv’s first clamshell is coming soon. We knew that. But the company was previously very
quiet about when. Apparently though, the N5
could launch as soon as May. *fingers crossed*
I played with the the N5 at CES 2010 for about 45 seconds and while it looked nice, it
didn’t feel nice. The keyboard was about as solid as Jell-O and the hinge was all
loosey-goosey. I’m hoping those flaws were because it was a pre-production model. Spec
wise, it kicks the crap out of the UMID mbook BZ that I’m
currently review with more RAM, faster CPU, bigger SSD, and Windows 7. Hopefully it feels as
great, too, because that’s the one thing the mbook BZ has going for it. Hopefully
we’ll
find out in May.
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.
If
you had to pick the one buzzword that’s dominating social media chatter today, it would
have to be location. Just over a year ago, 
Apple may have moved nearly 120,000 iPads in just its first day of pre-orders, an estimate by
private analysts at the AAPL Sanity board suggests. After excluding the 16,500 average orders on a
given day, the collective has used the intervals between order numbers over 19.5 hours to estimate
that about 119,987 iPads should have sold during that period. The statistic doesn't include those
who simply reserved a unit in-store and potentially puts the actual launch day tally considerably
higher....
The creator of 
Günstig zu DirectX 11: Während Nvidia
dem Launch der eigenen Fermi-Serie immer näher kommt, purzeln bei AMD weiter die Preise. So
bekommen Sie momentan eine Radeon HD 5750 bereits für weniger als 100 Euro.
Android adoption by
consumers in the U.S. is growing at an astounding rate, according to numbers released this week
TravelFriend Pro 1.2
Description:
Over the past few days I’ve
watched this meme about the so-called “geowars” ahead of SXSW gather steam, both in
the blogosphere and on Twitter. And it’s giving me a headache. For some odd reason, people
believe that SXSW is going to be a full-blown coming-out party for location-based services that
will launch at least one of them into the stratosphere.
Everyone has been talking about how this year's SXSW will be the "year of
location" as 
Using AR to promote vehicles with 3D models is nothing new,
but this is one of the first versions to reach consumers on their phones. The automotive industry
has been one of the leading areas pushing desktop webcam-based AR experiences that have allowed
users to interact with 3D models of cars from their homes. This new promotion from Chevy is
unique in that it allows customers to have the same experience on their iPhones.
Augmented reality isn't the only emerging technology Chevrolet is
experimenting with at SXSW; quick response (QR) codes, which are like a technological cousin of
AR, are a large part of the company's promotions as well. When investigating Chevrolet's latest
cars, users can photograph QR codes placed strategically on the cars to learn more about specific
parts of the car. A QR code placed on the hood, for example, will launch information about the
car's engine. Christopher Barger, Director of Global Communications and Technology for General
Motors, is excited about the future of QR codes and AR for the automotive industry.
The 
Last week, I wrote a little article about Microsoft's
four-color approach to QR black-and-white barcodes, the 
Recommandations
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
