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PRS Guitarbud jacks your axe, ego into iPhone / iPod touch originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google has introduced the second update to the Beta channel for its open source browser in less than a week. Google Chrome 4.1.249.1030 Beta is currently available for download, but only for early adopters running Windows, just as it was the case with the previous release. The mountain View-based search giant, while developing flavors of Chrome in parall... (read more)
YouTube will now display banner ads on the mobile version of its website. Google made the announcement in a blog post today, enticing would-be advertisers to sign up by saying that users of its mobile video website are tech-savvy early adopters with cash to spend — the ideal ad demographic.
Google’s all about the mobile ads nowadays; it acquired mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million last November, and AdWords (those contextual sponsored links in search results and the like) went live on iPhone and Android a year ago.
YouTube has experimented with mobile ads in the past, running exclusive campaigns with select advertisers and deploying ads to some users in the United States and Japan. Sony advertised the DVD release of recent Oscar-nominee District 9 on YouTube mobile, for example.
The company’s leaders and engineers are wise to try and stay on top of this. The search giant is a prominent force in desktop ads, but as more people adopt smartphones it’s not hard to imagine that mobile will eventually be an even more powerful influence in the advertising sphere.
Tags: ads, advertising, business, MARKETING, Mobile 2.0, youtube
Mozilla is hard at work on the next major version of its open source browser, and early adopters can already get a taste of the successor of Firefox 3.6. Two preview releases of Firefox vNext have already been made available for download, and could very well be followed by a third by the end of this week. Mozilla's Benjamin Smedberg reveals that plans are... (read more)
It has become painfully clear that smartphones are where the growth is in the handset market. Evidence of this is seemingly everywhere:
But do these signs mean there is room in the smartphone market for new vendors? Recent news out of Palm and Garmin indicate the smartphone playground isn't necessarily the profit panacea one would expect. Specifically, Palm said it now expects full-year revenue to be "well below" its previous estimate of between $1.6 billion and $1.8 billion, while Garmin said it has so far been "disappointed" with sales of its nuvifone products. Those stumbles could give Dell, Acer, LG and other hopefuls pause as they ramp up their own smartphone efforts.
"Instead of, 'If you build it, they will come,' it's turned into, 'If you build it, will they come?" noted IDC's smartphone analyst Ramon Llamas.
However, both Garmin and Palm faced challenges unique to them, Llamas said. Palm's marketing efforts so far have targeted the "Valentine's Day" crowd instead of more traditional smartphone early adopters (meaning, young men), Llamas explained, while Garmin suffered from a scarcity of promotion and an ecosystem that relied too heavily on interest in mapping and directions.
CCS Insight analyst John Jackson largely agreed. "We knew that Palm would launch the Pre into the teeth of new flagship products (or revs of products in Apple's case) from Apple, RIM, HTC and others," he said. "The same is true for Garmin, compounded by the issue of Google (and now Nokia) basically undermining the navigation proposition with freeware. Without a portfolio, a limited number of stock-keeping units (one in Garmin's case and basically two in Palm's case) are that much more likely to get lost in the mix. Apple is the exception, but that success story is well known at this point."
However, Garmin and Palm's troubles don't necessarily foreshadow across-the-board failures by others hoping to break into a smartphone market dominated by Nokia, Research In Motion, HTC and Apple. Llamas said emerging vendors must foster an ecosystem and promote their devices as on-the-cusp innovations rather than also-rans--tough goals, but doable. The availability of Android, Symbian and Windows can give manufacturers a step up.
"In a sense, the 'smartphone' market is just the new phone market," contended Jackson. "It's huge, but that hardly means you can stroll on in and make money. The traditional mobile phone market has always been tough sledding for new entrants. The availability of Android and other open/open source software platforms doesn't fundamentally change this. Vendors need scale and a degree of differentiation if they are to have any shot at achieving decent margins over time."
That said, though, I think it's clear that the newest batch of smartphone aspirants--which stretches from Dell, Acer and LG to Aava Mobile, Else Mobile, modu, Anydata, General Mobile, ZTE, Saygus and a host of others--face a steep road in their bid to separate themselves from the likes of BlackBerry and iPhone. After all, failed efforts like the Sendo X, the Sierra Wireless Voq and the Neonode N2 show just how difficult it is out there. --Mike
Facebook will finally make itself heard in the rapidly developing world of location-based services, according to The New York Times. The company will unveil a location-based feature at its f8 conference in late April.
“The new location feature will have two aspects, according to the people familiar with Facebook’s plans. One will be a service offered directly by Facebook that will allow users to share their location information with friends.
The other will be a set of software tools, known as A.P.I.’s, that outside developers can use to offer their own location-based services to Facebook users.”
We had heard of at least five geolocation projects being hacked on last month at Facebook, but it was unclear whether any of them would get the green light to go to market. (The company, which prides itself on hiring engineers that build and break projects quickly, always has several experiments in the works.)
Facebook has to walk a delicate line because it now caters to a mainstream audience, not a crowd of early adopters. So it has to design a product that doesn’t alarm people’s sensibilities around privacy while still offering cutting-edge features. Although Facebook’s engineers have been working on such a tool for close to a year, it waited to see what kinds of experiences people preferred, whether it was persistent-location sharing or temporary check-ins.
The move doesn’t necessarily spell the end for the group of startups like Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt which have led the way in geolocation. Facebook thinks of itself as a platform for a whole host of location-based experiences and many of these apps, Foursquare included, already can publish location data to Facebook’s stream through their Connect integrations.
Tags: geolocation
Companies: Facebook
3D is set to be big this year, and Samsung is hoping to tempt early adopters with a promotional offer that attempts to combat one of 3D TV’s main problems — lack of content — by bundling in a 3D movie with certain sales.
The promotion takes the form of a new “Starter Kit” that offers U.S. consumers the chance to enjoy 3D movies in their own living rooms, rather than having to head to nearest cinema to check out the eye-popping action.
In 2010, Samsung will offer a range of 3D-capable TVs, including the LED 7000/8000/9000 Series, LCD 750 Series and the Plasma 7000/8000 Series. Still, just two models will actually hit shop shelves this month: 46-inch and 55-inch models of the LED C7000.
The promotional Starter Kit will see anyone who buys a 2010 Samsung 3D TV and 3D Blu-ray Player or Home Theater System getting two pairs of Samsung 3D active glasses and a 3D version of DreamWorks Animation’s Monsters vs. Aliens on Blu-ray with 3D Shrek promised in the second half of the year.
As well as 3D abilities, the new LED TVs offer Internet@TV connectivity with the new Samsung App Store on board. To give you an idea of what you’ll have to cough up to go 3D in the comfort of your own home, pricing for the TVs alone ranges from $380 to $7,000.
Samsung’s 3D range arrives ahead of Sony’s due this summer and just a day ahead of Panasonic’s, due to launch in conjunction with Best Buy in the States on March 10.
Will you be splashing out for three-dimensional television? Let us know in the comments below.
Tags: 3D, 3dtv, dreamworks, samsung, televisions
It struck me in a lengthy discussion with an old CIO friend of mine this weekend at Big Bear Ski Resort. As the great Mark Twain once said, “All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.”
Brandon Matthias wasn’t aware of FourSquare or Gowalla or even Google Buzz.
Not surprising given how recent these tools have become popular with the early adopters. But after I explained the social geo-location networks and Mayor concepts he brilliantly suggested that companies do the same.
He believes companies should create a “Mayor” concept for the company where enterprising employees earn the right to become departmental or functional Mayors.
In other words, create content or knowledge experts that are socially elected by their peers based on the frequency and quality of the knowledge shared.
So in addition to expert search, you create an environment where experts self-proclaim - motivated by social recognition.
Lesson Learned: Wisdom can be found in the oddest places. Even places too.
(Cross-posted @ Seek Omega )
Two new releases of Google Chrome were made available for download the past week, pushing forward the browser on two of the development fronts it is advancing on. The Mountain View search giant delivered updates to both the Dev and Beta channels of Chrome, offering early adopters new builds to test-drive. In this regard, testers have been able t... (read more)
Roost CEO Alex Chang sent me a note last week alerting me to the launch of the company’s app on Facebook, “Social Real Estate.” It enables local agents to create a “real estate” tab on their pages full of market data and other information.
Chang explained, “The Roost app allows a local agent or broker to configure a free ‘Real Estate’ Tab on their business page within minutes. It leverages external API’s to bring in true local market real estate, schools and lifestyle data. This is just the first iteration of the tools we plan to offer.”
Here’s an example of what the app looks like and the information it presents (note the “real estate” tab in the screen below):
Click on the tab and this is what you see: promotional copy, maps, data and so on . . .
In email I asked Chang if he knew how many local realtors had Facebook Pages. He estimated that in the US there are about 300,000 (or somewhat more) agents on Facebook. The National Assn of Realtors claims about 1.3 million members, not all of whom are active. Chang guessed that the agents on Facebook represented perhaps 40% to 50% of the active agents in the US.
Realtors have always been among the most interesting of SMB categories. Many of them are aggressive, early adopters of new marketing methods. Imagine a fairly complete digital marketing program that doesn’t involve a penny of media spending:
This represents considerable effort, especially the blogging, and there’s money spent here to set up all these things. But there’s no “advertising” involved. Agents still may want to do some traditional media ads, but in terms of online this could all be done — and be quite effective — without spending a dime on advertising. This is the scary reality for publishers and media companies.
The Canon Digital Rebel T2i (550D, Kiss X4) may be currently sold out (see stock status page) but it has gotten in the hands of a number of early adopters - and some decided to share this with the rest of us. See some video unboxings of the camera by non-camera-reviewers on the YouTubes:
+ Francis Imp - first DSLR; with unboxing assistant
+ Soldier Knows Best unboxing
+ Sly Fox with big knife; video/audio is sped up (thus the Chipmunk effect)
+ and lots more
On the stills side of things, Photography Bay has an ISO comparison set, with RAW vs JPEG included in each ISO setting.
Forget brick walls, there is a new favorite subject in the dpreview forums, tomatoes ;-)
And now back to the movies, Cinema5D features a video preview of the camera by retailer Digital Rev. They take the camera to an animal-abuse facility (horse races).
Happy Friday, people! Along with the venerable tradition of Follow Friday, today also marks this week’s edition of the Friday Poll.
Last week we wanted to know if location checkin services freak you out in terms of privacy concerns. Reactions were pretty mixed, although many of you felt like services gave you enough control over permissions and what to make public. Some were concerned about the “digital divide” between early adopters who probably have the experience to know how to use the tools wisely, and the more general public who may end up confronting more privacy issues due to unfamiliarity with these services.
This week there’s another hot topic on the table, thanks to a comment made by Google’s European Director of Online Sales John Herlihy, who said that Google’s focus is squarely on mobile because “in three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.”
We definitely wanted to find out what Mashable readers thought about the future of desktops in light of the push towards mobile: Will desktops still be around? Can these form factors co-exist or will mobile rule the day in short order? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
Pete Cashmore: Desktops will be a lot less relevant versus laptops and phones. Even for processor-intensive tasks, high-end laptops often suffice.
Ben Parr: No — it will take a lot more time than that. However, you will start seeing app stores replacing traditional purchasing of software in three years.
Josh Catone: “Irrelevant” is a pretty strong word. I don’t know that desktops will ever be irrelevant as long as we continue to use computers. While mainstream users will undoubtedly gravitate toward small, fast, easier-to-use machines like laptops, smart phones, video game consoles, tablets and other connected devices for most of their day-to-day computing, there will likely continue to be a need for desktops in many corporate environments and for resource-intensive tasks (like editing film or rendering computer graphics).
Brenna Ehrlich: No. While it would probably be more cost effective to have one device that caters to your every need, it still remains difficult to both read and write on mobile devices. That all speaks to the permanence of devices such as laptops, but I’m not so sure about desktops.
Matt Silverman: Not completely, but certainly less relevant as we get more processing power into laptops and tablets. If we can do gaming and audio/video production equally as well on a portable computer, then why not?
Christina Warren: No. I think the paradigm will change and that secondary and mobile devices will grow in importance, but no, I don’t see desktops becoming irrelevant in three years.
Tamar Weinberg: Nope. PC gamers will always be reliant on the type of hardware that only desktops offer. Mobile technology will become a lot more prevalent, but as desktops are usually always ahead of the game in terms of feature set and power, desktops will still have a place.
Barb Dybwad: Even mainframes are still around so, no, I don’t think desktops will totally disappear. The rise of netbooks though shows that a lot of people just need “good enough” for a lot of tasks and are willing to trade performance for mobility in lots of use cases. But I agree with Tamar that gamers will still demand the PC hardware experience, and other power-intensive tasks like video-editing and multi-track audio will keep desktops in service for some time even as some users will be doing more of that on laptops and mobile devices too.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ericsphotography
Tags: computing, desktops, future, Google, laptops, lunchtime poll, Mobile 2.0, polls, predictions, smartphones
For those of you whose iPod Touches just aren't big enough, Apple has finally announced the pre-order and on-sale dates for one version of its much hyped iPad tablet thingamajig.
Starting next Friday, March 12, early adopters can put in their advance order for the WiFi version of the iPad. They will be available in three different memory size/price levels: $499 for 16GB; $599 for 32GB and $699 for 64GB.
The actual on-sale date for iPads is April 3.
These dates only pertain to sales in the U.S. and only to the WiFi edition. The pricier 3G version of the iPad will be on sale later this spring.
Apple announced Friday that the first iPads will be available on April 3 and that the long-awaited device will be available for pre-order on March 12. The launch is for the WiFi-only version, with the 3G-enabled device on sale later in the month.
The release of the 3G version will also coincide with rollout of both models in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK, Apple said.
Apple thoughfully picked a Saturday for the debut so fewer early adopters will have to make up lame excuses for not showing up to work and will not have to conceal their true appearances if they are near the front of the line.
See Also:
Follow the Hippie: Leadership Lessons Through Dance http://bit.ly/cAaviv
When Sigma Partners' Richard Dale posted a video of a random dancing guy to his Venture Cyclist blog I was skeptical. I'd seen the original video sans narration and dismissed it as a strange sociological phenomenon condensed into a quick three minute clip. Nevertheless, when the same video is narrated by MuckWork and CDBaby founder Derek Sivers, it provides some valuable leadership lessons for entrepreneurs.
Sponsor
Having first presented the video at this year's TED Conference, Sivers make the case that instead of the first mover / leader being the catalyst of a movement, it is in fact the first follower that rallies others.
Says Sivers, "Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire. "
For entrepreneurs, it means that the key to virality isn't just building a great product. It's about having the right early adopters to teach others how to use the product and become comfortable with the novelty of something new. Sivers explains that it's the early adopters that others follow and not the trailblazing / seemingly crazy leader. In other words, it's important to respect your earliest users and give them the mechanisms to make their support public.
Says Sivers, "We're told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective. The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow. When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in."
We've seen our fair share of angel investors, early executives and engineers follow a lone nut and build successful businesses. As an entrepreneur, who do you credit as your first follower and what efforts have you made to ensure that the act of following is made public?
Discuss
Boomers Slowly Joining the Mobile Web http://bit.ly/dxQfHt
New statistics about baby boomers' usage of the mobile web are here, and the news, sadly, is not surprising. This generation of users (ages 45 and older) has been slow to adopt mobile Internet technology. However, that's not to say they aren't getting on board with the mobile web revolution - they're just taking a little more time to get here than the other demographic groups surveyed.
Today, only 55% of boomers consider their mobile phone a necessity, a number which likely shocks younger generations whose attachment to their handheld device is so strong, they claim to "feel naked without it."
Sponsor
The delay with which baby boomers embrace new technologies isn't limited to the mobile web - this is just the next item in a series of technology trends where boomers seem to lag behind. Outside of the pro-social media analyst group Forrester (whose reports we desperately want to believe), most studies show boomers have been slow to adopt new technology, be it social networks or smartphones.
Although as of summer 2009, older users were joining Facebook in record numbers, even outnumbering high school students on the site, it took a long time for them to get there. This group of technology users is definitely not filled with early adopters. Instead, boomers need to wait and see the benefits of a new technology before signing on, or so says eMarketer, the analyst firm who released this latest mobile web report. On Facebook, that benefit was likely the "network effect" - enough of their friends urged them to join at the same time as their younger family members were busy posting photos and videos of the boomers' grandchildren, something boomers didn't want to miss out on.
As for the mobile web, although the technology in question is different, the desire (or lack thereof) to participate is the same. Until the boomers see a real need for the mobile web, smartphones and the accompanying mobile apps, they'll get by just fine without it, thank you very much.
A few key stats from eMarketer's report:
As Lisa E. Phillips, eMarketer senior analyst, kindly puts it, "boomers are underrepresented among smartphone users." The good news is that's starting to change. Slowly but surely, boomers are becoming more interested in smartphone devices. Phillips notes that their interest is influenced by the prevalence of smartphones in the marketplace combined with a down economy which is forcing boomers to forgo retirement. Because many smartphones have a business aspect to them, boomers are starting to see the appeal of these devices.
However, the most important factor slowing their adoption is price. As carriers reduce prices for both phones and data plans, many more boomers will join their younger counterparts to become mobile web users themselves.
Discuss
Boomers Slowly Joining the Mobile Web
- Rob DianaBoomers Slowly Joining the Mobile Web
- Chris Brogan
No less than 66% of companies plan to upgrade to Windows 7, albeit later rather than sooner, according to an October 2009 survey from Forrester Research, titled Windows 7 Commercial Adoption Outlook. But the latest Windows client from Microsoft is already the fastest selling operating system in history, having already sold in excess of 90 million copies in ... (read more)
I'm imagining a Venn diagram of 1.) People who've already built a PC compatible with USB 3.0 and 2.) people who are gravely concerned about data security. The middle section is quite large! Hence, the Super Talent SuperCrypts.
These jumbo-sized flash drives, which are backwards compatible with USB 2.0, have been built around AES hardware encryption, with 128-bit ECB and 256-bit XTS encryption for the Standard and Pro Editions, respectively. Capacities will range from 16GB to 256GB, and while Super Talent hasn't announced prices yet, don't expect these drive to be cheap when they start selling later this month.
Anyway, encryption and comically huge storage options are nice features and all, but this is a USB 3.0 drive, so tell me about the speed:
This new drive supports USB 3.0 speeds of up to 240MB/s.
Granted, that's almost certainly a read speed rather than a write speed, but still, 240MB/s download put this in league with later generation SSDs, which is pretty amazing for a thumb drive—even a chubster like this one. [PCPer]
Apple iPad
During the official launch of the iPad in January, Apple said that the iPad would go on sale worldwide at the end of March.
Mac Rumors is now reporting that it has heard that the official on sale date is Friday, March 26th at 6PM.
The report corroborates with a blog post from the Examiner which claims that the iPad will go on sale on March 26th and Apple store employees will begin training on March 10th. The post also reveals that advertising for the iPad will begin March 15th and early adopters will receive a “special gift”.
Google has decided to let all advertisers utilize its Click to Call program (only mobile, on high-end smartphones). Before you needed a physical address (i.e., local business). You associated a phone number with an address as part of Google’s location extensions in AdWords.
Now you no longer need a physical address and can use any phone number in your ad. So the call can go to a local distributor, store or national call center, however the advertiser would like to route or handle the call.
Google is still only charging for the click. In other words there’s no additional cost or separate bidding for the inclusion of the phone number. Google has done this to avoid complicating its system. But the company hopes that savvy advertisers will “get” the value of this and start bidding up the price of keywords and ads that contain phone numbers.
National advertisers apparently were seeking access to the program, so Google decided to expand it. These ads perform quite a bit better than conventional AdWords on smartphones, according to Google.
This is the PPCall program that everyone has waited for Google to implement, except that it’s a deal right now because you only pay the cost of a click. Early adopters will reap the benefits and the relatively low cost of these calls.
I’ve also written about it at SEL.
Ars Technica has broken the silence on the Apple iPad processor and published new information on the mysterious A4 chipset that powers Apple’s upcoming tablet device. Erroneously thought to be powered by a dual-core Cortex A9 processor, Ars has inside information that suggests the A4 is a single core Cortex A8 based system on a chip, instead. The A4 is also reportedly a scaled down SoC that strips out excess controllers and connectivity options that are often included on other off the shelf SoCs which are designed to be compatible with a wide variety of mobile devices. Apple potentially only had the iPad in mind when developing this chip and incorporated the bare minimum components necessary to power and control the device including a PowerVR SGX GPU, Cortex A8 CPU, NAND and DDR memory interface block, system and security hardware, and a limited number of I/O controllers. A scaled down single-core Cortex A8 SoC does not necessarily mean it’s wimpy, but it may be enough of a letdown to persuade some potential early adopters into waiting for the 2nd generation iPad before coughing up their hard earned cash. Then again, with a $499 price point for the entry model, we’re not sure.
Mozilla is gearing up to make available the second Alpha build of the next generation of its open source browser. Firefox 3.7 Alpha 1 was released to early adopters, emphasis on early adopters, in the first half of February 2010, and this week the second Alpha development milestone will also be offered to testers. Essentially, Firefox 3.7 Alpha 2 is the Mozi... (read more)
Electronics market intelligence firm iSuppli issued a report Monday morning that claims 78 million television sets with 3D capability will be sold in the year 2015. ”The market so far has been more talk than action,” researcher Riddhi Patel wrote in a note accompanying the report. “However, announcements made before and after the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January indicate that 3D TV is becoming a reality.”
At CES, Patel wrote, Sony, LG, Panasonic and Samsung demonstrated home 3D sets. Other companies showed Blu-ray disc players that played 3D video from standard-sized discs.
For the next couple of years, iSuppli forecasts that only early adopters will spend the average $1,768 selling price for a 3D set. But it’s likely that TV makers will soon start adding 3D support to inexpensive models, rather than keeping it a premium feature. If you can buy a 3D set in five years for, say, $500, iSuppli’s forecast for a tenfold increase in the number of sets bought by home viewers in 2015 doesn’t seem like a stretch.
Companies: Isuppli
