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
()
I tried it out and it was very impressed by the speed and accuracy of the motion tracking (he did
flicker a bit and have problems when my lights were to bright, so be prepared to work a bit to
make him happy). This is a Flash implementation of augmented reality created by Digital Pictures Interactive; all it takes
is your web browser, a webcam, and a printed marker symbol. Now, would it kill the little guy to
smile every once in a while?!
It seems to be based on the ARToolKit
developed by Dr. Hirokazu Kato of the University of Washington.
I enjoy Augmented Reality much more than Virtual Reality because 99% of the AR environment is the
real world in all of its infinitely detailed glory and I can accept a few lower fidelity objects
overlaid here and there. Even the highest quality VR worlds still feel much less than real in a
way that usually pulls me out of the experience.
a
href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/papervision_augmented_rea.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890"
/Read more/a | a
href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/papervision_augmented_rea.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890"
/ Permalink/a | a
href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/papervision_augmented_rea.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments"
/Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/computers/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more
articles in Computers/a | a
href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F11%2Fpapervision_augmented_rea.htmltitle=Papervision%20augmented%20reality%20in%20Flashbodytext=Papervision%20-%20Augmented%20Reality%20%28extended%29%20from%20dpinteractive%20on%20Vimeo.%20I%20tried%20it%20out%20and%20it%20was%20very%20impressed%20by%20the%20speed%20and%20accuracy%20of%20the%20motion%20tracking%20%28he%20did%20flicker%20a%20bit%20and%20have%20problems%20when%20my%20lights%20were%20to...topic=tech_news"
/Digg this!/a
A tidy and useful ‘Web 2.0′ SaaS application designed to simplify the management of
meeting rooms in the office environment. Niche and Nice!
CEO’s Pitch
Using our online meeting room manager, you can check the availability of any meeting room in your
office and make a booking in real-time using a web browser. Organising meetings made easy.
Imagine the simplicity of using an online room scheduler to book a meeting room from your desk
rather than having to locate a meeting room coordinator and have them check availability and
reserve on your behalf. Typically the larger the organisation the more time can be taken up in
the organising a room for a meeting. With bookmeetingrooom.com staff will be able to see with one
quick glance which rooms are available from where ever you are. It’s a fantastic facility
for anyone who schedules meetings and those who have to attend them.
Mashable’s Take
Fortunately, it’s been a few years since I worked in an office big enough that booking
meeting rooms was required. But if I still did, a service like bookmeetingroom.com would make a
lot of sense. It’s a web-based application for managing meeting rooms, allowing employees
to see a calendar for all of an office’s available conference space and make bookings.
While booking meetings is a seemingly simple task, Bookmeetingroom.com takes just about
everything into consideration, like allowing companies to maintain meeting rooms in multiple
buildings across different time zones, with reports built in for administrators to see how their
workspaces are being utilized. Like other software-as-a-service business models, pricing is based
on the number of meeting rooms being maintained and the number of users accessing the system.
If an app for managing meeting space sounds like overkill, you’ve probably never worked in
a company where booking meeting rooms becomes a political affair and you wind up huddled in a
janitor’s closet. (or maybe I’ve just had some really bad jobs in the past ...). The
alternatives are typically either a system based on Outlook/Microsoft Exchange’s scheduling
features, or just having a receptionist maintain a list of who has what rooms booked.
In any event, bookmeetingroom.com has found a nice niche with a nicely executed web-based
product. It seems a bit like something 37Signals should’ve come up with.
Editor’s Note:This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable -
The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have
your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/11/littleshoot-twilight.png"
width="873" height="599" style="display:block;float:none;" / New peer-to-peer file sharing web
service LittleShoot finds and downloads files right inside your web browser. LittleShoot founder
(and former LimeWire engineer) Adam Fisk says he created LittleShoot to overcome LimeWire's
shortcomings. To get started, you can search for a keyword at the LittleShoot web site without
installing a thing and you'll get dozens of results from YouTube, Flickr, Yahoo, and LittleShoot
users. (See the results for a search on "Twilight" above.) To play or download a file, you will
have to download and install a small LittleShoot add-on. To publish a file on LittleShoot, hit the
Publish tab and add a file on your local computer. The Mashable web site reports that LittleShoot
is optimized to find nearby computers that host the file you need as well as defaulting to
computers on the same ISP to increase download speeds and responsiveness. All in all, LittleShoot
is looking very promising for P2P-ers who don't want to run full-fledged BitTorrent or other
clients. What's your favorite way to P2P? Let us know in the comments. iThanks, Sangraal!/i/p div
class="related"a href="http://www.littleshoot.org/home"LittleShoot/a [via a
href="http://mashable.com/2008/11/21/littleshoot/"Mashable/a]/div br style="clear: both;"/ a
href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a4801dff9138d0c415a70658a9de18eap=1"img alt=""
style="border: 0;" border="0"
src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a4801dff9138d0c415a70658a9de18eap=1"//a img
src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=a4801dff9138d0c415a70658a9de18ea" style="display:
none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=zt0blN01"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=Zas15HZ6"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=R9synWqU"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=R9synWqU" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=n4lF6eW7"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=n4lF6eW7" border="0"/img/a /divimg
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/xDLHnS3szwc" height="1" width="1"/
New peer-to-peer file sharing web service LittleShoot finds and downloads files right inside your
web browser. LittleShoot founder (and former LimeWire engineer) Adam Fisk says he created
LittleShoot...
Google is far from bowing out of the browser wars. Latest reports indicate Google will attempt to
have its Web browser pre-installed on PC.br style=clear: both;/ a style='font-size: 10px; color:
maroon;'
href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:356eba27d18624a96cd5412e5f2708e7:xtWIR%2BZGhBt6oOaxI%2FhFRFQnBQF676j0CPAqDWCSfNBNNPqpe8S8y8030eCPjdOLwRlOW1gZWjFv'img
border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif'//a
a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;'
href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:1b686ac6494e88c0f5d04f8b0035a5e1:2v8y%2FIvl3lX1kr0OwOdGgWvJIIZ63eKdhb7x4MAgwpNx0bclrxk3wm1iEnOssM9%2F4iK8AUcfQ8Wp'img
border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit'
src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;'
href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:d2e4a3409e46c3ba6ba9d6b31422e5b0:LNV5PEJDxbAZvti7jD0b85sw8G%2BbINUE0KABasMIdhQWW3YnYjQDSnd4SFI0XtYRKuImiqICx4wYSw%3D%3D'img
border='0' title='Add to Slashdot' alt='Add to Slashdot'
src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/slashdot.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;'
href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:81654079ab2008e0af599001e7326db4:Snm5LatvTGMqAptDEuUiCYk3ppAGWM%2BCm1A1Z%2FdaBpgoNuaC%2BbVYRNjLDqScIDhBlE3Ir6Li5Gfs'img
border='0' title='Email this Article' alt='Email this Article'
src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/emailthis.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;'
href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:36b314b84db249cf2ce2cd9f156ef228:LKvpr1GCqsIm8wnjWoyG%2FLL3kssW3jIihluMamVejlCBShIBfNrBvUgW4MwpbQ8WZ6BZ9EZ0O5PNFw%3D%3D'img
border='0' title='Add to StumbleUpon' alt='Add to StumbleUpon'
src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/stumbleit.gif'//a br style=clear: both;/ a
href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a31086b7d13e6b75e18769da04c967f7p=1img alt= style=border:
0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a31086b7d13e6b75e18769da04c967f7p=1//a img
src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=a31086b7d13e6b75e18769da04c967f7 style=display: none;
border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/
ERDlauncher is a simple file launcher written in Erlang and using the ERDialog framework for a Web
interface. It will list files in a Web browser, and clicking will open files in the browser or
handle them according to the browser setup for that MIME type. pa
href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/2PYi21Kqk2AJz2hR-MXWs7ruhmY/a"img
src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/2PYi21Kqk2AJz2hR-MXWs7ruhmY/i" border="0"
ismap="true"/img/a/pimg
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-unix/~4/7JZRdCnc3EY" height="1"
width="1"/
ERDlauncher is a simple file launcher written in Erlang and using the ERDialog framework for a Web
interface. It will list files in a Web browser, and clicking will open files in the browser or
handle them according to the browser setup for that MIME type. pa
href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/XtfN6KruY-si5RaQx_tKR45Epps/a"img
src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/XtfN6KruY-si5RaQx_tKR45Epps/i" border="0"
ismap="true"/img/a/pimg
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-global/~4/7JZRdCnc3EY" height="1"
width="1"/
centerimg title="Nokia Patents Gesture Controls" style="MARGIN: 0px" alt="Nokia Patents Gesture
Controls" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/11/nokia-patent.jpg" border="0" //centerbr /
pNokia has yet to make touch-based interface a mainstream method of navigation on its handsets, but
that could soon change with news of the Finnish cell phone manufacturer leaking out that it is
working on gesture control for cell phones in a recent patent that was filed in January this year.
This patent will involve an ultrasonic-based system that is able to tell where your fingers are
pointing at the display, and can even detect basic gestures such as opening and closing one's hand
to manipulate a Web browser. Sounds rather far fetched? We think that most people will settle for
touchscreen displays instead since that is much more certain compared to gesture controls. What do
you think?/p pPermalink: a
href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/nokia_patents_gesture_controls.html"Nokia
Patents Gesture Controls/a from a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"Ubergizmo/a | a
href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a
href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"BlackBerry
Storm/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081121085713" area shape="rect"
href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081121085713?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/
area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img
usemap="#google_ad_map_081121085713" border="0"
src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081121085713amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F11%2Fnokia_patents_gesture_controls.html"//p
pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/zhzTn91x390T2C49Q3bdxWRSgM4/a"img
src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/zhzTn91x390T2C49Q3bdxWRSgM4/i" border="0"
ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=huLOk74K"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=OeksjbJp"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=OeksjbJp" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=iHN9f4rg"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=OjSLYysX"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=OjSLYysX" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=Q17AKF1m"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=Q17AKF1m" border="0"/img/a /div
Scorch 5.2.5Scorch is a free web browser plug-in that lets you view, play,
transpose, change instruments, save and print Sibelius scores (.sib files) on the Internet.
pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/nokia_patent2.jpg" width="800"
height="687" /Nokia has always held the line that the reason their top-end N-series has yet to see
any sign of a touch-based interface was because they were simply waiting to "do it the right way."
(The company's first all-touch device, a
href="http://gizmodo.com/5058030/nokia-5800-xpressmusic-hands+on-with-nokias-first-s60-touch-phone"the
5800/a, was made official only a few months ago).All's fair there, but when I asked Nokia's Chief
Designer Alastair Curtis this week in New York what exactly the "right way" entails for Nokia's
more internationally focused phones, the answer was, of course, "wait and see!" What did come up
indirectly, though, was mention of gesture control for mobile phones—something
a recent Nokia patent seems to indicate as well. /p pThe patent, filed in January of this year,
shows that Nokia has been cooking up something gesture related for quite some time. The patent
calls for an ultrasonic-based system for divining where your fingers were pointing at the screen,
and to also detect basic gestures like opening and closing your hand to control a web browser
(similar to gesture based interfaces in PCs). While this seems like an incredibly roundabout way to
go about something that seems far more natural via touch, especially on a mobile device, I guess
I'll reserve final judgment for when I'm surfing the web via jazz hands on a new N-series piece,
should that day ever come. [a
href="http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1Sect2=HITOFFd=PG01p=1u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htmlr=1f=Gl=50s1=%2220080005703%22.PGNR.OS=DN/20080005703RS=DN/20080005703"Patent
Application/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a
href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=75e052b4bd0cba1d4b0d4ea7b4eca3eep=1"img alt=""
style="border: 0;" border="0"
src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=75e052b4bd0cba1d4b0d4ea7b4eca3eep=1"//a img
src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=75e052b4bd0cba1d4b0d4ea7b4eca3ee" style="display:
none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=fguWP1gJ"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=yOCARZP3"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=74QAp10B"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=74QAp10B" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=yWyc1yx5"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=yWyc1yx5" border="0"/img/a /divimg
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/_uYabqKIhvY" height="1" width="1"/
pobject width="494" height="400"param name="movie"
value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vQL0tqLCjcQhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen"
value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed
src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vQL0tqLCjcQhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="494"
height="400"/embed/objectMercedes-Benz new myCOMAND system has appeared at the a
href="http://jalopnik.com/tag/la-auto-show/"Los Angeles Auto Show/a, taking on the a
href="http://gizmodo.com/5070122/bmw-idrive-40-remixes-xbox-360-and-ipod-into-simpler-control-system"fourth-generation
BMW iDrive/a. Whereas the latter has an Xbox 360 feeling, this one gets some clues from Apple's,
specially Coverflow and the menu navigation, which reminds me of the first version of the Apple TV
and Front Row. One big difference is that myCOMAND is connected to the web, grabbing information
wirelessly and presenting it through their own on-screen apps. Looking at the high resolution
screens and the feature list, it looks very good:/p pscript type="text/javascript"
charset="utf-8"galleryPost('mycomand', 3, '');/script/p p· Off-board navigation: The GPS is
constantly updated, from the maps to the points of interests. It also has a satellite overview and
the search language is open: you can write directions without having to follow a format. It looks
like the are plugging into Google Maps for this one, although I'm not sure how well the writing
will work using their navigation knob./p p· Trip assist: This part is quite nice, grabbing
information pertaining your planned trip from different web sources and presenting it in a useful
manner. You can, for example, see the weather forecast for the trip, as well as giving you the
possibility to make hotel and restaurants reservations from the system itself./p p· World
radio: Instead of using a normal radio, this one plugs into the web to access all the stations
available. The menu gives the possibility to access radio via genre. More interesting is the idea
of storing your music in a web server and accessing it through the system directly, without the
need to connect an digital music player or storing things locally./p p· Internet telephony:
It has support for voice over IP systems like Skype./p p· Web browser: They also include a
web browser, in case you need to get more information than the one provided with the thin clients
above./p p· YouTube: For huh... hmmm. iSome/i reason./p pThe navigation knob, which looks
similar to the a href="http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/notag/powermate-5576.php"Powermate/a, is simpler
than the iDrive 4.0. Our a href="http://jalopnik.com/tag/la-auto-show/"Jalopnik comrades/a will
have to try it to see if their user interface approach is better or not. [a
href="http://www.emercedesbenz.com/Nov08/19_001517_Mercedes_Benz_Debuts_myCOMAND_Internet_Based_Infotainment_System_At_Los_Angeles_Auto_Show.html"Mercedes
Benz/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a
href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=86e1f373f34c866416f246fd64fe5ff6p=1"img alt=""
style="border: 0;" border="0"
src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=86e1f373f34c866416f246fd64fe5ff6p=1"//a img
src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=86e1f373f34c866416f246fd64fe5ff6" style="display:
none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=h7HDN7dU"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=nGkNAEin"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=73nHQO7j"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=73nHQO7j" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=TIXZOHyO"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=TIXZOHyO" border="0"/img/a /divimg
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/2wCMaabbx0s" height="1" width="1"/
Auction Hunter is a native Cocoa application for OS X, built to make your life
easier on eBay. It allows you to monitor auctions that you are interested in bidding on, or that
you would like to simply observe and store for future reference.
Main features of Auction Hunter are:
Automatic bidding and sniping tools, that let you set your snipe amount for an item you like,
so that Auction Hunter will place the bid with eBay until just a few seconds before the auction
ends. This allows you to not attract attention to the auction, causing price to go up. You can
also easily cancel or change the snipe when you like, before the auction ends, not risk anything.
Searching tools, that automatically let you to save and run the same searches on eBay,
storing the results in user defined folders. You can also specify a time interval to be used to
periodically run the searches. If new items are found, Auction Hunter will change the folder
color, so you immediately know there is something new. New added items are also highlighted in
yellow!
Thanks to a built-in powerful database, Auction Hunter allows you to store thousands of
auction listings (with thumbnails too!) so you can search through all saved items and what they
sold for, even for past auctions no longer available on eBay. If you like, you can also save the
full content ofÊ the item’s web page, and open it later with Safari
for future references.
Auction Hunter periodically updates the information about the auctions you are interested in,
and let you know at first sight what is going on, due to the use of colors and bold typeface. For
example, a red line says that the auction received no bids or that reserve price is not met,
while a black line means that the auction will sell, but not to you. A green line says that you
are the high bidder. A line in bold face font, instead, means that you placed a bid on that item.
Colors and bold typeface are combined to provide all possible auction status.
Auction Hunter provides support for all international eBay sites, and also automatically
updates all the categories when you launch the application.
If you have more than one eBay user IDs, for example one for your hobby and one for work, you
can use them at the same time!
Bids and snipes are now performed on the site where the auction was found on.
When double-clicking on an item, now it will be open in web browser on the site it was found
on. You can override this behavior by turning the new checkbox "Always open auctions in browser
with preferred site" on ("eBay" preferences panel).
A new item has been added to the auctions contextual menu, to let you open selected items in
browser using one of the supported ebay sites.
pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/gnr_myspace_logo.jpg" /It's clear now that the Web has
once and for all replaced TV's role in the music business. Yesterday Guns n' Roses released their
emvery/em long awaited album Chinese Democracy via a colorful a
href="http://www.myspace.com/gunsnroses"MySpace page/a. Then today a
href="http://www.npr.org/music/"NPR announced/a that they will offer an quot;Exclusive First
Listenquot; to the new albums of two music legends - Neil Young and Paul McCartney. In late
September NPR had a similar arrangement for a
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95047293"Bob Dylan's latest album/a.
Younger musicians are flocking to Web platforms such as a href="http://www.imeem.com/"Imeem/a and a
href="http://www.last.fm/"last.fm/a to promote their music. For bands still under the radar, all
the afore-mentioned sites cater to them - but also small sites like a
href="http://muxtape.com/"Muxtape/a (a notice on its homepage currently reads: quot;relaunching
soon, in the service of bandsquot;). /p pAll of this is further proof that Web technology has gone
mainstream in the music business./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a
href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12668amp;cb=12668' target='_blank'img
src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12668amp;n=12668' border='0' alt='' align="right"
//a/p pIn an age when MTV seemingly doesn't play any music anymore - instead preferring to bore
anyone over 15 years old with a href="http://www.mtv.com/ontv/all/"insipid 'reality tv' shows/a -
it represents a big shift away from TV to the Web, when promoting new music./p pThe Guns n Roses
MySpace page is impressive. It offers the full album online, a couple of days before the official
release in stores. True GNR fans, including this author, will still buy the album when it is
released. But by promoting the album online a couple of days before release, it encourages new fans
and gives Guns n Roses a lot of free publicity and viral uptake on the Internet. This will almost
certainly increase overall sales./p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/gnr_myspace2.jpg"
//p pWhile Guns n Roses hasn't gone as far a
href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/poll_what_is_radioheads_album_worth.php"as Radiohead
did/a with their latest album In Rainbows - which was released as a 'pay what you want' download
before it was even an actual CD product - Guns n Roses and MySpace is an appropriate partnership
for both parties. For Guns n Roses, it allows them to reach a young, hip, massive audience. And for
MySpace, it gives them a lot of page views and we presume a very healthy profit from the record
label and retailers such as Best Buy (which has a banner ad right at the top of the page). We
should also point out that Guns n Roses has employed some a
href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081120/0736312898.shtml"heavy handed tactics/a to stop illegal
file-sharing of the album, so they haven't been entirely savvy about the Web. Still, the MySpace
promotion is inspired. /p pWe've been impressed by many of the online music services this year -
last.fm has a
href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/lastfm_redesign_the_good_the_b.php"continued to evolve/a
its web services, Imeem has been a
href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/imeem_taking_off.php"a revelation/a for many music fans,
a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/statistics_online_music_apps.php"Pandora's traffic
continues to grow/a despite ongoing legal issues, sites like a href="http://hypem.com/"The Hype
Machine/a (a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hype_machine_adds_new_features.php"our
coverage/a) and Muxtape (a
href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/muxtape_with_coverflow.php"when it was available/a)
offer something new and different, and so on. /p pimg
src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/npr_nov08.jpg" align="right" /But we're also noticing some
of the more traditional radio stations vastly improving their Web sites - and NPR is a great
example of that. NPR Music is currently marking its one year anniversary. It features content from
NPR and 12 of its public radio stations, but what's impressed us has been the quot;original-to-NPR
Music featuresquot; such as live performances, studio sessions, first listens to forthcoming
albums, and interviews. This author is a subscriber to NPR's a
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=37agg=1"All Songs Considered
podcast/a, which has recently featured a
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94315732"a full Radiohead concert/a and
a a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18960914"Guest DJ appearance/a by
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke./p pI want my MTV? Not anymore. I can get everything I want in my Web
browser! Although to be fair, even MTV has a href="http://www.mtvmusic.com/"moved/a its music to
the Web./p stronga
href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/music_promotion_moves_to_web_instead_of_mtv.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong
pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/Fgx45wqYVOZOENgWTbzho1_1-g0/a"img
src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/Fgx45wqYVOZOENgWTbzho1_1-g0/i" border="0"
ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=PPukyEHA"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=56FaEV4W"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=ZBl05SiX"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=ZBl05SiX" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=CMaewpG3"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=CMaewpG3" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=BPf3kuk4"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=BPf3kuk4" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=ffxUcX8b"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=CxHidydW"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/_WC-mz3ZlXI" height="1" width="1"/
pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=4874d7a1796c7aa60049d72dmaxX=293maxY=205" border="0"
alt="lively.JPG" title="lively.JPG" width="293" height="205" /Less than five months after launch,
Google (GOOG) is a
href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/that-was-quick-google-kills-virtual-world-lively-goog-"shutting
down virtual world Lively/a. The a
href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/lively-no-more.html"reason/a it's going away: It's
useless to Google's search ad business. Which is why the company said it's dumping Lively to "focus
more on our core search, ads and apps business."/p pBut that doesn't mean that Google couldn't have
built a decent virtual world if it wanted to. If Google wasn't under the gun by a tanking economy,
and if they had real incentive to build a virtual world, here's how they could have made Lively
more successful:/p ol listrongHold up the launch of Windows- and Internet Explorer-only Lively
until it runs on Firefox and the Mac./strong A disproportionate number of the early-adopter
community uses the Mac and/or the Firefox web browser. If you throw a Hail Mary like "everyone get
avatars and move into 3D chat," you need the Firefox and Mac users on board right away. (This goes
for Google Chrome too, the company should port it to the Mac ASAP.)/li listrongScrub the virtual
world completely free of sex and violence./strong In Lively, you could use the "crush" command to
make an anvil fall out of the sky and wallop another user's avatar, or use "kick" to hit someone in
the groin. It was funny. Actually, it was so funny a
href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/google-s-lively-is-just-like-second-life-no-one-s-there-but-perverts-and-griefers-goog-"all
anyone did in Lively was try "punch" or "choke" anyone in range/a. And some of Lively's avatar
designs -- especially the anthropomorphic animals -- were creepy enough, even without random
furries always trying to beat you up or romance you./li listrongShowcase what can be done with the
technology./strong Here Google made the same mistake with Lively that Linden Lab made with Second
Life -- it put its virtual world technology out into the public domain and thought its mission
ended there. It doesn't. Google should have hosted its own Lively rooms and held events in them,
encouraging new users to try out the service. Lively rooms would have been a great tie-in with
other Google services like Orkut or Google Groups -- but Google was content to let Lively flounder
alone at lively.com./li listrongMake Lively an extension of Google's advertising platform/strong.
It would have been relatively easy for Google to program Lively to include advertisements piped in
from elsewhere on the web, so a virtual room contains a space a few hundred pixels square that
rotates through an ad in Google's inventory. The company could then split revenue with any website
that hosts and gets traffic to an ad-enabled Lively room -- just like it does with flat web pages
via AdSense. There's probably only pennies involved, especially in this ad climate. And good luck
finding advertisers who prefer avatars to real customers. But Lively could have been much more
likely to propagate if people had financial incentive to use it./li /ol pOf course, Google did none
of these things. The point: Watchers of the fledgling virtual worlds industry -- which raised a
href="http://www.virtualworldsmanagement.com/2008/q3.html"almost half a billion dollars/a in
investment just in the first three quarters of this year -- shouldn't read Google's departure from
the game as a negative verdict on the virtual worlds idea as a whole. Google didn't even really
try./p pstrongSee Also:/strongbr /a
href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/that-was-quick-google-kills-virtual-world-lively-goog-"That
Was Quick: Google Kills Virtual World 'Lively'/abr /a
href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/google-s-lively-is-just-like-second-life-no-one-s-there-but-perverts-and-griefers-goog-"Google's
Lively Is Just Like Second Life -- No One's There But Perverts And Griefers/abr /a
href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/google-no-sex-in-second-life-killer-lively-goog-"Google:
No Sex in Second Life-Killer Lively/a/p pa
href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/FS1ggcHEQwJGFTT_ZBmrcFBaArY/a"img
src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/FS1ggcHEQwJGFTT_ZBmrcFBaArY/i" border="0"
ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=xwdkqqI2"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=xwdkqqI2"
border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=S5aUI9CV"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52"
border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Wzg3dxfW"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80"
border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=5jaj06tj"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=5jaj06tj"
border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=v49baHgr"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131"
border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=nLs3hMiZ"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336"
border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=89cIT4g8"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41"
border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=OZf6L5p7"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50"
border="0"/img/a /divimg
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/SL9eoEg_cfw"
height="1" width="1"/
For all their mesmerizing graphics and adrenaline fueled gameplay, it might come as a surprise to
non-gamers that many of today’s most popular computer games are bogged down by downtime (I
should know - I spent the better part of 1999 mining virtual ore in Ultima Online to become a
master blacksmith, and enjoyed about 10 minutes of it). MMOs like World of Warcraft see epic
battles punctuated by hours of wandering mostly empty wilderness, while FPS games often punish
gamers for dying by making them sit out and watch their comrades go at it until the beginning of
the next round.
Today GotGame is giving
these gamers something to do during these bouts of boredom. The company has released Rogue, a web browser
based on WebKit and Adobe’s AIR platform that integrates directly into most of
today’s popular gamers, allowing users to swap between their game and the web with a single
hotkey. Gamers will be able to check their Email, listen to Pandora, watch Hulu videos, or
casually browse the web at their leisure, jumping back into the game within seconds whenever they
need to (the browser supports opacity, so it’s easy to tell when you need to swap your
attention).
It’s possible to accomplish similar multitasking by placing games in ‘Windowed’
mode (which doesn’t make them take up the full screen), but this makes games prone to
crashing and poor performance. Conversely GotGame says that Rogue should run perfectly fine with
most games, and should only slightly affect performance (though the effect will increase
significantly if you watch Flash-based movies like Hulu).
While it may seem counterintuitive to non-gamers, GotGame Rogue is a great idea - I would have
loved to have had it during my gaming years (instead I was forced to sit a TV next to my computer
monitor). Provided the app is as stable as GotGame claims, it will probably do very well. Other
players in this space include Xfire, which offers an
in-game application for socializing with other gamers.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear
drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Synergy. Can you dig it? Sony does, finally noticing those 14 million accounts stranded on the
console-side of PlayStation Network. We imagine the meeting went a little something like this:
Exec One: You see, we've got 14 million people over here [*motions to his right*]. But what if we
could take them [*lifts his hands up*] and stick 'em over here, too? [*motions back to his
left*]
Exec Two: So are you gonna eat that last Mint Milano or what?
Exec One: No -- well ... let's split it.
Exec Two: Deal.
The result? PSN IDs are being incorporated into PlayStation.com and, at a later date,
PlayStation.Blog. Doing so will make your friends list and other features accessibl
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
