Archive for July 3rd, 2008
How about Your Own Invisibility Cloak
Apologies to Harry Potter, but we seem to be on the verge (I mean, just barely at the verge) of developing an invisibility gadget. Yes, that’s right — invisibility. Like a Klingon Bird of Prey, the effect is the same: to hide the user from sight. While one mostly sees such technology being used for military purposes in books and movies, there are some applications that are grounded in reality. (Really?) One approach to creating a cloaking device is using something called a superlens,...
F|R Interview: 2 Founders, 2 Careers’ Worth of Funding Tips
Founders Gary Swart and Stephen Pieraldi presided over the Venture Capital and Seed Financing Workshop at GigaOM’s recent Structure 08 conference . This week, the pair sat down with Found|READ to share additional lessons from their careers in fundraising. Swart is CEO of oDesk, a staffing platform that lets companies hire and manage their global talent virtually. Previously he co-founded Intellibank, which he described as “an ill-fated XRM startup that taught me many lessons, most s...
Apple Lets a Little Air Out …
Apple has quietly dropped the price of the high-end MacBook Air by $500. The Air, which comes with a 1.8GHz upgrade (from 1.6GHz) and a 64GB Solid State Drive (SSD), is now $2,598. Compare this to the original price of the 1.8GHz/SSD MacBook Air at $3,098 just last week. The difference in price appears to be a combination of price drops in both the processor upgrade ($200 vs. $300) and SSD ($599 vs. $999). (And maybe it wasn’t selling so good — although I do have a colleague w...
AT&T Dropping CallVantage?
Just got this email stating that as of July 7th, AT&T will no longer offer CallVantage through their affiliate channel. To me, this is “codeword” for “we’re no longer promoting CallVantage and expect AT&T to end CallVantage entirely in the near future.” I’ve read about many affiliate programs that when they’re ended, it’s the end of the road for that product. Further, the emails explains, “We ask that you remove all of your promotion...
GTalk on iPhone
Google has released a Google Talk client for the iPhone that allows instant messaging as long as the application is open. I’d like to think of this as a nifty way around rising texting costs, but that’s unlikely, given how much time my phone spends in my pocket. If this type of mobile app takes off, it will raise a usability question for the high-end phone and MID apps developers. So much of our PC lives revolve around multiple applications staying open — and around the user f...
Fill Your Grill With Kanye, Whedon and YouTube
You just had to squeeze a little more work in on this Fourth of July holiday, didn’t you? Well, we’re glad you stopped by. But before your fire up the BBQ, take a minute to catch up on what you might have missed over at NewTeeVee. A federal judge ordered YouTube to hand over its user data to Viacom. If it stands (the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the judge’s order violates federal law), that means Viacom will know all about your secret obsession with making Avril Lavign...
Sony PS3 Boo-Boo …
Can’t believe stuff like this still happens! Can’t anybody here play this game! Sony has been forced to pull the 2.40 version of the PlayStation 3 software from download servers because of complaints that the new update was causing problems for the owners of the console. It was only available for an hour, but apparently caused enough mayhem that Sony pulled the plug. Bad news — they sent it out that way. Good news — they acted really, really fast to stem to dama...
The iPhone Makes Semiconductors Fun Again!
For a while there, covering the chip industry was like covering a race run by a rabbit and a cheetah. AMD was the rabbit, while Intel — with its much larger market cap and greater profits — was the cheetah. Evey now and then the rabbit would fool you into thinking he was going to pull ahead, but we all knew who was going to win. In the past few years, however, two things have brought more runners and more diversity to the course: a challenge to the x86 architecture, and the iPhone. ...
Google Takes Its Broadband Show on the Road
Speculation that Google is working with French ISPs to build out a Gallic WiMax network has folks at Fierce Wireless wondering if Google may push open broadband overseas by investing in WiMax deployments. They point to a report in a French paper that says Google has teamed up with Illiad-owned ISP Free (Om loves these guys) and Bollore Group’s Bollore Telecom, which own licenses to the WiMax spectrum in France. Google has already invested in the nationwide U.S. WiMax effort Clearwire, ha...
Bandwidth Barons Want More Money for Fewer Bytes
According to AT&T, Time Warner and others, usage-based pricing is coming to your Internet connection. While the reasons for this change in pricing model are varied, both in terms of technology and politics, it’s clear that consumers used to an “all-you-can-eat” buffet of streaming video, photo-sharing and podcasts are headed for a lean diet of Web 1.0 and email. Unless, of course, you want to pay a lot more for your Internet connectivity. How much more? While the service provider...
Rogers Backlash on iPhone Pricing
Well, in the wake of Canada Day, you’d think we’d be feeling all good about ourselves. Perfect time to get excited about the iPhone, which has finally come to Canada - legally, that is. What a golden opportunity for Rogers to bring the gift that keeps giving and endear themselves to the wireless digerati. We sure have a strange market up here for wireless, not to mention a wildly successful wireless spectrum auction that has been brought in some $4 billion for the government. Can...
State of U.S. Broadband: Demand Hits Speed Bumps
A new report from Pew Internet shows that broadband growth in the U.S. has slowed down to a crawl, a sign that U.S. broadband carriers would have to work hard to find ways to grow their overall businesses. Pew points out that 55 percent of adult Americans have home broadband connections. According to some estimates there are over 64 million broadband connections in the U.S. Some additional interesting bits from Pew’s report: Broadband users report an average monthly bill of $34.50 for h...
Femtocells: What is in it for us?
Knowledge of femtocells in the consumer space is currently at absolute zero, so there is a huge education task in front of the cellcos Read More… ...
Connect the Dots. Become a Connector
Open your eyes. Take a look around. Open your mind. Take hold of the people you know and the new people who you just met and the person you met last week. For some of us, life is a game of connect the dots in motion. The goal seems to be to figure out the relationship between the dots and then figure out what the next step(s) should be. People who are successful connectors have an inveterate knowledge of this. Only those of you who are aware of these dots can take advantage of them. The experie...
Building a Better Mousetrap…or Not
Two realities/truths exist within the Web 2.0 landscape: 1. It is easier than ever to take an idea and transform it into a start-up given that development, marketing and distribution costs have plummeted since the initial dot-com boom. 2. The are no lack of blogs/bloggers more than happy to write about start-ups even if their prospects for success are, at best, uncertain. Case in point is identi.ca, which an open-source, Twitter-like service that launched with a splash yesterday. Its potential ...
Is YouTube Killing Video Originality?
The promise of web video was that cheap cameras, easy editing software and free online distribution would open up new vistas of creativity. Instead we’re just seeing the same things, mostly parodies, over and over. Some are just recycling the same ideas. It’s just becoming faster and easier, which is spawning more of it, as people chase video views on YouTube. Continue Reading. ...
Go For Fully Trackable Advertising, Says Biz Guru Tim Ferriss
In a recent post, best-selling author and business guru Tim Ferriss (”The 4-Hour Work Week”) advises startups to return to basics to achieve consistent — and growing — profitability. Along with commonsense reminders about “what gets measured gets managed” and the 80/20 rule, Ferris says that “good advertising works the first time.” He highlights the importance of direct response advertising — instead of image advertising — that is fully...
Espial Acquires Kasenna
Here’s a noteworthy item that came out on Canada Day. In short, one IPTV middleware company has acquired another IPTV middleware company. It’s not a huge story or a huge deal, but still of interest to anyone following this space. The players involved are Ottawa-based Espial Group and California-based Kassena. It’s a very small deal dollar-wise - not even $10 million - but there are a few aspects worth commenting on. First, it’s a Canadian story. I’ve followed Espial...
Mike Bartlett Comments on Skype 4.0 User Feedback
About two weeks ago Skype launched a new type of beta … one that actually will end at some point in the reasonably near future but that is also a major effort to incorporate user feedback while trialing some new concepts. As mentioned in my previous posts about this beta, this is not a replacement for your current Skype 3.8 or earlier installation in mission critical situations but rather Skype wants to trial this version with a broader audience than simply their very dedicated set of desi...
Those Jonas Brothers Sure Do Get Around Online
While pop stars’ fortunes these days are heavily dependent on building an online fan base, the reverse is even more true. Social media sites are tripping over themselves to score the one celebrity who will shower them with rabid fans. I’m surprised to see how often the words “The Jonas Brothers” show up in my inbox. And no, it’s not because I’m signed up for their fan club alerts or anything like that. It’s because these guys are huge. Their magical c...
First Frameless Plasma Is Coming!
While not as easy to set TV technology firsts like Olympic swimming trials world records, still, it’s pretty impress that LG plans to launch the world’s first frameless plasma TV. The new model, dubbed PG61, the new plasma resembles a seamless black sheet of glass. The unique combination of frameless design, enhanced audio performance and amazing viewing experience earned the PG61 the ”Best of innovations Award” at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show. According t...
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News, opinions and announcements about fast changing communication tools and technologies, from various blogs and ezine.