January, 2008 — Tech News and Analysis

Archive for January 2008

Toshiba G450: USB modem or cell-phone on a stick?

Need a little voice action with your data-centric 3G modem? Toshiba seems to think so and offers it up in their Portegé G450 USB modem. The smallish HSDPA … Read More »

 
 

Here’s something we’ll be keeping an eye on: The Film 7 fund, a collaboration among five Hollywood producers and two Silicon Valley executives that will finance films without the help of studios. We just got pitched on a Palo Alto meet-and-greet this weekend that will feature … Read More »

RIM has announced their intention to update the BlackBerry platform the first half of this year to provide messaging and security enhancements.  BlackBerry users will predominantly notice improvements to the … Read More »

Developers: Verizon Wants You!

Two months after saying it would open up its network to other devices, Verizon Wireless is inviting developers to a mid-March conference where they can learn more about building software and devices that will run on its network. It’s an … Read More »

Israel Cleantech Ventures Fuels CellEra

A breakthrough in fuel cell technology, which seems to be perpetually “just a few years away,” means there’s still a lot of room for startups to help bring this complex technology to market. We recently read in Israel’s Globes, via a blog post from Read More »

Pownce Opens Up

We’re so used to the web sites and services we use being in perpetual beta (GMail anyone?) that it comes as somewhat of a surprise when one actually launches. But that’s what happened today with social network Pownce: it’s not … Read More »

4 Reasons to Brace for a Turbulent Earnings Season

Stock markets around the world are tumbling, with the Dow staying firmly in negative territory even in the face of an emergency interest-rate cut. And ready or not, the parade of technology earnings is on its way as well. A handful of tech bellwethers have already … Read More »

As a Dish Network customer, this won’t help me worth a whit, but it’s a safe bet that we’ve got some DirecTV subscribers amongst the reader base. Macenstein … Read More »

I’ve been derelict in my duties: not trying out the new InkSeine application on my tablets. While I get a day of detention, you can check out what all the growing excitement … Read More »

ARM Strength: 10 Billion Processors

ARM, a Cambridge, England-based company that licenses microprocessor-related technologies, says the total number of processors that use ARM technology now exceeds 10 billion. The first ARM chip shipped back in 1991. The ARM-based chips are in every hot device: the Nokia N95, iPods, the iPhone, … Read More »

Netvibes Grows Up

Netvibes, with today’s release of the latest version of its personalized start page service, Ginger, thinks it finally sees a way to revenue. The three-year-old company, which has offices in Paris, London and San Francisco, aims to begin monetizing its technology through … Read More »

More Must Reads

SnapTell Launches Mobile Movie Explorer; take a picture of a DVD cover with your mobile phone, send it into the service and it will respond via MMS messaging with details about the film. (release) GoldSpot Media Raises $3 Million; mobile video ad-insertion management company gets Series … Read More »

A day after we pointed out that AT&T’s new wireless offer, which tacked on a two-year contract to a SIM card (sans handset), was just plain “goofy,” the largest U.S. wireless carrier is saying it was a “mistake” — that the “two-year contract” term wasn’t … Read More »

Germany’s SkySails has said bon voyage to the first kite-powered ship traveling from Germany to Venezuela. Actually the kite only helps propel the boat, but is estimated to cut from 10 percent to 35 percent of the ship’s diesel fuel costs. The kites, … Read More »

UPDATE: Many readers are coming to this older article via search. You can find the updated post for this year’s ceremony here. Just as they do every year, the Academy trotted out its Oscar nominees at the crack of dawn this morning, but this year … Read More »

In my first Found|READ post, How to Work the Room, I gave you tips on how to amp up your social graces for the business party circuit, because — a much as we might hate to admit it — a founder’s startup success … Read More »

I’ve held off on trying FlickrFan, a new Mac application written by Dave Winer last month. In case you haven’t heard about it, it’s an OPML / RSS … Read More »

Sure, they’ve heard the complaints and jokes about Indian accents. Yes, they know that when your computer is broken, you can’t always go online for the help you need to fix it. But the era of personal service outsourcing is here, and iYogi, a … Read More »

A team of scientists have announced the discovery of a new material consisting of “nanoscopic cages” that are particularly good at trapping and storing methane. The research, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, suggests that the compound has a 28 percent … Read More »

Last week I got to speak with Microsoft’s Dan’l Lewin, an Apple alumnus who now leads the software giant’s Emerging Business Team, meaning he’s Microsoft’s chief embassador to VCs and startups — Ballmer’s “Man in the Valley.” (Here he is giving a keynote at GigaOM’s … Read More »

Yahoo can become the jewel of Web 3.0. It already has strong, or at the very least interesting positions in numerous verticals. But it needs more of them, and it needs to thoroughly monetize them. Read More »

Before launching uJogo, a rewards-based poker site, its founders paid research firm TNS to conduct a study that they hoped would shed some light on the online poker market. What they learned was compelling: There are about 30 million adults who play roughly three … Read More »

As gas prices rise and greening your corporate fleet can offer both a marketing move and a budget plan, it was only a matter of time before biofuels started filling more company’s fuel tanks. Hot on the heels of GM’s recently unveiled investment in Read More »

A rumor surfaced on the internet this weekend hinting that the next revision of the MacBook Pro will have the same multi-touch abilities as the Air. That’d be logical, after all – the MacBook Pro’s haven’t been updated in a while, and that would be … Read More »

Whether you frequently work with digital photos online or manage a lot of personal photos, one of the very best new gadgets to have on your radar is the Eye-Fi card. At January’s Consumer Electronics Show it won Yahoo!’s Last Gadget Standing competition, and … Read More »

FileMaker’s new personal database, Bento is big on style and ease. Watch the tutorial movie and in less than five minutes you will be comfortable using Bento’s main features. Bento comes with a set of libraries (databases) that relate directly to OS X’s Address Book … Read More »

If your New Year’s Resolution to get fit is still under construction 21 days later, here’s a quick set of Web 2.0 sites combining social networking, online record keeping and solid health and fitness information for your consideration. Note – If it has been years since you’ve … Read More »

Modu is coming and this teaser video is everywhere.  What is it you think? http://www.youtube.com/v/8Fx4WUutlJY&rel=1&border=1 Read More »

If you remember the Amiga OS I am pretty sure it is fondly.  This OS was so far ahead of its time and in many respects reminds me of OS X.   Amiga Forever 2008 is still alive and kicking with development still ongoing and they are … Read More »

Shai Agassi’s electric vehicle infrastructure venture Project Better Place announced on Monday that it will build its first pilot electric battery rechargeable grid system in Israel, and has partnered with the Renault-Nissan Alliance on the project’s electric vehicles. There were some rumors about … Read More »

Robert and I must have some blog telepathy going on. He checked the performance of Vista both pre- and post-SP1 and I followed suit. I’ve been sharing info on my Samsung … Read More »

On Friday night TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Read/WriteWeb and GigaOM cosponsored the 2007 Crunchies awards in San Francisco. It was a great event, and in case you couldn’t attend, you can catch the video here. The line-up of finalists in categories like ‘best bootstrapped startup’, ‘Best use of … Read More »

Actually, the laptop bag doubles as a WiFi finder, but why quibble? Soyntec offers the Wiffinder 200 Urban Bag for 34,40 Euros so you can tote up to a 15.4-inch … Read More »

HBO has announced that it is finally going to start offering its content online (in a somewhat meaningful way) through its new HBO on Broadband service. But the initiative seems so unnecessarily complicated that one has to one wonder if HBO gets a sick thrill … Read More »

Typically when you sign up for a two-year contract with a wireless carrier, you get to pick a handset — one that is either free or, at the very least, highly subsidized. But AT&T today started offering a new plan that allows you to buy … Read More »

Until recently, if you wanted to use an iPhone, you were by definition an individual user: there was no official corporate support from AT&T. That’s now changed, with the introduction of new iPhone plans directed specifically at “Corporate Responsibility Users” – AT&T speak for business … Read More »

Virtual meeting company Unisfair has scored $10 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners after proving that meeting people face-to-face isn’t always necessary or cost effective. As a telecommuter, I’m duty-bound to agree, although I’d rather gouge out my … Read More »

Batteries are often cited as the biggest hurdle to a future populated with electric vehicles. Why? We decided to ask John Voelcker — automotive editor for IEEE Spectrum, writer and consultant — for his take on the future of the automotive battery. Here’s his thoughts: Q: … Read More »

For all of the internet hype J.J. Abrams curried for his latest display of inimitable cinema mystique, Cloverfield remains firmly stuck in twentieth century. The driving voyeuristic shtick of the film — the character-held camera that documents the entire incident — is never developed beyond … Read More »

A New View of TwitterGridjit is a data visualization tool for Twitter. Unlike most of the Twitter clients out there, which focus on presenting the same chronological stream of tweets as the web site and letting you post … Read More »

Google Documents is slowly becoming the big gorilla of the online document, crushing smaller players by its sheer mass. WebWorkerDaily reports that one such service, Coventi Pages, is heading to the deadpool, and will shut down on February 1, 2008. It’s slick features … Read More »

We could already be suffering a recession in the U.S., and the tech industry is not immune, as potential Yahoo! layoffs show. What should you be doing now to protect yourself? Keep building that online persona. Share who you are and what you’re about … Read More »

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