Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook: 6/3/07 - 6/10/07

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Asus stuns Computex with £100 laptop

Wednesday 6th June 2007

4:12AM, Wednesday 6th June 2007

Asus chairman Jonney Shih sprang a surprise during Intel's Computex keynote today with the announcement of a $189 laptop.

The notebook measures roughly 120 x 100 x 30mm (WDH) and weighs only 900g. We saw the notebook boot in 15 seconds from its solid-state hard disk. The huge auditorium then burst into applause as Shih revealed the astounding price tag. Dubbed the 3ePC, Shih claimed the notebook is the 'lowest cost and easiest PC to use'. As the crowds rushed the stage, we sneaked off to the Asus stand to take a closer look.

The notebook uses a custom-written Linux operating system, much like the OLPC, though unlike the OLPC, Asus has chosen a more conventional interface. The desktop looked fairly similar to Windows and we saw Firefox running on one 3ePC. A spokesperson from Asus told us that the notebook would come with "an office suite that's compatible with MS Office", though he refused to confirm or deny whether that meant OpenOffice.

He claimed the 3ePC would be available in all areas of the world, not only developing nations.

The low price comes from some interesting design choices, primarily the flash-based hard disk. A disk of today's standard capacity would cost more than notebook itself as we saw with the 32GB Samsung disk, but Asus uses a 2GB disk. We were not allowed to touch the 3ePC so couldn't tell how much of this is left after the bespoke OS is installed.

The CPU also remains a mystery, though Shih said the version on show did have 512MB of RAM. Another version will be available for $299, but nobody could tell us what the difference between the two models is.

Kingmax shows off 16GB SDHC card

It doesn't seem too long ago that a 16GB solid state disc was a sight to behold, but now that SSDs are creeping up to 256GB and beyond, it's about time the flashy guys caught up. While we knew Kingmax was aiming to unveil its 16GB SDHC (only to match the early moving MICRODIA) card at Computex, pictured proof is always preferred, and it looks like all you digicam owners with SDHC-capable slots can rejoice as the sizes beneath this one quietly tumble in price. Notably, it was suggested that the cards were practically "ready for mass production," and should be available worldwide fairly soon. [Via Inquirer]

Friday, June 08, 2007

Will the iPhone be undone by its keyboard?

from Engadget by Ryan Block

For those in the audience enamored with the iPhone -- especially those willing to look past the lack of 3G and requisite 2-year service agreement -- there's really only one x-factor left: the touchscreen keyboard. We've all seen it done, but no one's ever seen it done right -- and Steve seems to think it's going to be off the chain. So why is Dvorak, noted tech pundit, and goader of Mac users and iPhone fans, reporting that he's got insider information that the iPhone's keyboard is complete crap and "people are going to return the phone in droves"? Well, that might have something to do with the fact that he's Dvorak, but we did consult a trusted and well connected source who, as it turns out, has heard the very same thing from multiple iPhone users, and who further noted that an accessory keyboard to go with the device may become necessary if the touchscreen keyboard doesn't cut the mustard. Of course, we can only reserve judgment until we wrap our paws on a real production model, but we hope it all turns out well -- even if only because we're sincerely frightened of an iPhone-incited fanboy riot in the streets.

Does Digital Fingerprinting Work?: An Investigative Report

Written by Liz Gannes Posted Friday, June 8, 2007 at 12:00 AM PT

Audio and visual fingerprinting of copyrighted video is seen as the best way to combat infringement, but in NewTeeVee's testing this week across multiple sites, it did not work. We were surprised to be able to upload multiple times the exact same copyrighted file, even after we explicitly told the hosting site and the fingerprinting provider about it and they took it down.

What follows is a description of our procedure, accompanied by the vehement disclaimer that we were doing this only for educational purposes.

Microsoft recently took its Soapbox user-contributed video site out of the public eye until it could implement filtering technology from Audible Magic. Last Friday, it relaunched, supposedly armed and ready to fend off copyrighted content. So we asked our intrepid reporter Craig Rubens to test how the system worked by uploading a Daily Show clip.

Surprise, surprise, the clip went up like a charm (screenshot). We called Microsoft to ask what was going on. You should talk to Audible Magic, they said; our system is only as good as their index. We called Audible Magic, who essentially blamed Microsoft, for only implementing the audio version of its software. The reps then set off to nail down statements from their companies, a process that took most of the week.

Only sometime last night did the clip finally get taken off Soapbox, replaced with a copyright violation notice. To see if the system had been corrected we uploaded it again today, and again it appeared about 40 minutes later. At this point, if all went as it was supposed to, the video should have been automatically added to the index of banned clips, and then rejected when we uploaded a duplicate. But again, we had no problem.

Concerns about whether digital fingerprinting is ready for action have persisted, and market leader YouTube has hesitated to deploy its "Claim Your Content" system while it is being perfected. However, confidence in fingerprinting has moved past the optimism stage. "This technology works," says MPAA Vice-President Dean Garfield, as reported by BusinessWeek.

Audible Magic has bagged most every high profile deal in video filtering: MySpace, Dailymotion, Break.com, and GoFish/Bolt.

The Audible Magic representative insinuated the company's technology was deployed in fuller form on MySpace — which recently launched its "Take Down Stay Down " and filtering system using AM's system — so we also tried uploading the clip there. Interestingly, that also posed no problem. See it in action here.

Below is Craig's description of the procedure he used to upload his clip to Soapbox. He says after about 50 minutes of "processing" the video went live and was playable. The MySpace experiment was even quicker, taking about five minutes.

Search for "Daily Show" on YouTube
Select first clip of actual Daily Show with Jon Stewart content and download it via KeepVid.com (selected video )
Convert the video to a Soapbox approved format (shockingly, Microsoft doesn't like .flv)
Upload Daily Show clip to Soapbox
Allow time for Soapbox to process, convert, and (supposedly) scan for copyrighted material.

Here are the official statements Microsoft and Audible Magic sent yesterday after days of deliberation and phone calls about the issue.

"We are continuing to work with Audible Magic to fine tune our implementation of their proactive automatic filtering services to best meet the needs of our content partners. The fact that a clip of any unauthorized copyright material slipped through is unfortunate, but that's why we also provide rich notice and takedown tools to content owners to automate and expedite the process of identifying and removing unauthorized content. We are committed to working in partnership with the industry to continue to evolve our technologies and solutions for customers and partners." — Rob Bennett, general manager for Entertainment and Video Services at MSN

"Audible Magic's technology has the ability to identify content such as 'The Daily Show' clip in question. We are working closely with Microsoft to customize our solution in order to meet the business needs of their Soapbox service." — Vance Ikezoye, founder and CEO of Audible Magic

Though all these systems, as advertised, depend largely on identifying content once in order to block it future times, we made no bones about identifying our uploads as Daily Show clips. We also had no problem uploading the exact same file after we had informed the proper people about it and they had taken it down.

Of all the videos on the web, Comedy Central clips are a huge bone of contention, figuring into Viacom's pending $1 billion-plus lawsuit against YouTube and its parent Google. Funnily enough, the original Daily Show video is still live on YouTube.

Eurocom intros all-in-one LV190 / LV220 ViiVA systems

from Engadget by Donald Melanson

They may not boast a name like the "F-Bomb," but Eurocom's new all-in-one LV190 and LV220 ViiVA systems look like they should be able to garner a fair bit of attention on their own. Boasting 19- and 22-inch widescreen displays, respectively, the systems can be configured with your choice of Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Extreme processors, NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 graphics, a max 4GB of RAM, up to two 500GB hard drives, and an internal TV tuner, among other options. Knocking things down a notch, however, is the somewhat lackluster 1680 x 1050 resolution on the 22-inch display, and an even lower 1440 x 900 on the 19-incher. If that's not a deal breaker for ya', you can get your order in now, with systems starting around $1,500 and going up considerably as you pack on the upgrades.

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Thursday, June 07, 2007

MIT's wireless electricity demoed, dubbed WiTricity

from Engadget by Ryan Block

We always knew Tesla was right: MIT physics professor Marin Soljacic and his team of researchers behind the latest wireless electricity scheme have reportedly demoed their magnetically coupled resonator technology on a 60-watt lightbulb that wasn't plugged in. Of course, no technology should be without a name, and so they've dubbed it WiTricity. Apparently Soljacic thinks it's possible to commercialize WiTricity within the next few years, which would be totally amazing if it was powered by Steorn's humanity-saving infinite energy device. [Warning: subscription req'd for link]

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Inside the YouTube of Games

from GigaOM by Blake Snow

Casual Flash games generate monthly pageviews in the hundreds of millions, but the game industry has been painfully slow to capitalize on this massive audience—the chief exception being Pogo.com, which Electronic Arts acquired for about $50 million in 2001. Today some 1.4 million “Club Pogo” subscribers pay $40/year - another nice $50 million in annual business.

Jim Greer, former Technical Director Pogo, like EV thinks that there is a big business to be made out of casual games, and raised a million dollars for his new start-up, Kongregate, which aims to be the YouTube of games, offering free, ad-supported Flash games and an online community to increase the site’s stickiness. After the break, Greer talks revenue model and numbers.

What’s so YouTube about Kongregate

‘YouTube for games’ is really just the attention-getter for people who don’t know that much about the space. What we really are is a community for web gamers and developers. Current web game sites don’t do community right, if at all. If I beat a game on Miniclip or AddictingGames, I don’t take anything with me and can’t even see the other people who are playing it as well.

Kongregate by the numbers

Page views for March were 2.4 million. That’s up from 400K in February. Registered users are in the low five figures - until recently the only incentive to register was to socialize. Now that we have persistent rewards for playing games, we’re seeing much better registration rates. Right now we have 483 games, and they’re coming in at a rate of 40-50 per week. Those are from 224 developers.

Leveraging Ad Revenue

The participation rate for YouTube is somewhere around 2%. That means 98% of the users came there to view videos, not upload them. If our participation rate is around .05%, it doesn’t really kill us. Good games are something you play for hours. A good viral video you watch for two minutes. So we can have a lot fewer games and have plenty of entertainment value…

(To encourage user-generated content), most other sites pay developers a small one-time license fee. They make a lot of money and they don’t share it. We think we can inspire love from our developers, both because they like our community, and because we treat them well… By default, all developers receive 25% of the ad revenue generated from their games… [But] it’s possible for a game to earn 25%, 35%, 40%, or 50% of ad revenue (depending on performance).

Unlike YouTube, users can’t share games on other sites and blogs (yet), but this is something Greer believes is “less of a blockbuster strategy than it was for video.”

All this sounds promising, but unlike other proven online communities, making a enjoyable Flash game takes a lot more time and talent than, say, uploading a funny video, and that barrier limits Kongregate’s content stream. So what’s it going to take for Kongregate to become the number one online game destination? “Much better virality than we have right now,” says Greer. “I’m very happy with where we’ve come in the six months since we founded the company. I think we can do a lot in the next six to twelve.”

You can follow Kongregate’s saga on Greer’s blog.

VC Rating: Scribd tries to live up to YouTube comparison

from VC Ratings by Joshua Jaffe

Company: Scribd Description: Online document storage and sharing Competitors: eClips Location: San Francisco Amount Raised: $3.5 million Round: First Date Announced: 6/5/07 VC Firms: Redpoint Ventures, Kinsey Hills Group VC Directors: N/A Quick Take: Founded last summer with $12,000 and launched in December with another $40,000, Scribd took a big step up with its recent $3.5 million first round funding at a reported post-money valuation of $17.5 million. Aside from that lofty valuation, Scribd is being called the 'YouTube of Documents.' They prefer to refer to themselves as the 'World's Largest Open Document Library'. Sounds similar to Google's mission. Whatever the tagline, Scribd has big expectations to live up to. It can meet them if it can extend its first mover advantage as the biggest document storing and sharing service online. Monetization is a dream. The trick will be to convince more people to participate.

Technology (1 out of 10): 5 Market: 8 Management: 3 Chances for IPO: 3 Overall VC Rating: 7

MyLifeBrand Aggregates Social Networking Sites

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

MyLifeBrand is a service that lets user’s aggregate social networking memberships and navigate between them from the one place.

MyLifeBrand supports Friendster, LinkedIn, Bebo, Facebook, H15, Orkut, MySpace, and TagWorld among others and is working on support for a number of niche social networks including Angling Masters, Navy Seals and Drunk Duck.

Users are also able to add their contacts from external networks to their MyLifeBrand friends list creating a master friends list.

The difficulty in managing multiple social networks is real and any heavy Web 2.0 site user will understand the problem. We covered Spokeo in November 06 and a number of similar services since.

MyLifeBrand gives social networking aggregation a decent shot, however presenting external sites in a frame doesn’t work for me (see screenshot).

The introduction of the Facebook’s F8 platform shows the real direction in this space. Facebook allows external sites and services to be integrated directly into Facebook and not through frames as with MyLifeBrand, delivering a far superior user experience. This is not to say that MyLifeBrand won’t be able to find a user base, it’s just that they are probably 12 months too late in releasing, and 6-12 months behind in delivery and integration to become a major player. The long tail is long and there is always room for new comers, so I do wish them luck; competing against Facebook will be a challenge.

Incuby: Social Networking For Inventions

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

San Antonio, Texas based Incuby is aiming to build a community where inventors can display inventions to the general public, entrepreneurs and investors.

In developing the site, the team behind Incuby have toured the United States meeting with different inventor groups. They found that inventors are tired of the high costs associated with travelling and presenting at trade shows and are ready for “a place of their own on the web”.

The site is still in development and will move to a closed beta test in the coming weeks with a broad number of inventors already signed up to test the site.

The focus is creating an environment where inventors can coexist and communicate online with each other, while presenting their innovations. Through ecommerce enabled profiles, each inventor will be able to manage their product’s sales while adhering to a customer feedback system that is similar to eBay.

Shopping inventions does share similarities with the financing and development path of Web 2.0 startups. In truth the only real differences are tangible vs intangible IP and that tangible invention patents and trademarks prevent the same ideas being copied over and over again like they are in Web 2.0, for example with social bookmarking sites and Digg clones.

Sometimes it’s the simplest ideas that work best. Incuby is a simple yet solid idea that has the potential of going far. If I was an inventor myself, I’d be signing up as soon as it launched.

Intel talks up 3-Series chipset, Core 2 Extreme CPU for laptops

from Engadget by Darren Murph

Shortly after revealing that a quad-core laptop chip was indeed in Intel's pipeline for 2008, the firm has decided to go public with even more laptop-based processor details over at Computex. Intel's executive vice president Sean Maloney had the honors of "unveiling" the 3-Series chipset family (formerly known as Bearlake), which will of course support DDR3 RAM, PCI Express 2.0, HDMI, and can come stocked with G33 / G35 Express integrated graphics. More importantly, the outfit formally introduced plans for an Intel Core 2 Extreme mobile processor that should be released in Q3 of this year. According to Mr. Maloney, the chip is targeted to be the company's "highest-performing mobile dual-core processor that still includes energy-saving power features for laptop designs." No word just yet on whether or not this CPU will cost more than the rest of your laptop components combined (but we wouldn't be surprised). [Via Laptoping]

Philips unveils SPC620, SPC1000, and SPC1300 webcams at Computex

from Engadget by Darren Murph

While we thought we'd already seen the crown jewel of webcams before, Philips apparently thinks otherwise, as it boasts quite heavily about its new trio of display-mountable cams that were unveiled at Computex. All three devices support background customization and emoticon integration, wide-angle lenses, and face-tracking capabilities. The SPC620 holds down the low-end with a vanilla VGA CMOS sensor and will run you €49.90 ($67), while the SPC1000 includes a directional microphone and noise reduction filter, two-megapixel sensor, and a 5x digital zoom for the very same price. The €99.90 ($135) SPC1300 features Pixel Plus 2 technology seen in the company's Flat TVs, a six-megapixel sensor, audio beaming system, twin directional microphones, and Digital Natural Motion technology that purportedly nixes any frame rate flickers when video chatting. All three webcams should hit shelves in Europe, America, and Asia this August. [Via TechDigest]

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Phreetings - Create Photo Greeting Cards with Flickr Pictures and Your Text

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/06/create-photo-greeting-cards-with-flickr.html

Amit: The interface is intuitive - search the images from Flickr database (you can also limit search results based on Creative Commons license), add some text and the photo card turns into a webpage.

Here's a sample greeting card created from the the profile pictures of MyBlogLog visitors.

Thanks, Amit!

PictureSandbox

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7527

Mike Linksvayer: April’s most sophisticated Flickr/CC mashup yet has relaunched with angel funding as PictureSandbox.com with cool tools to find and reuse CC licensed photos in lightboxes, cards, and more.

Thanks, Mike!

Phreetings have color schemes!

PRIMARY red http://picturesandbox.com/card/6zy5zvmk blue http://picturesandbox.com/card/m04q8oys yellow http://picturesandbox.com/card/58pcslob SECONDARY green http://picturesandbox.com/card/vxarf8i4 purple http://picturesandbox.com/card/ezuemh8j orange http://picturesandbox.com/card/a6uyowys

Geek Chic: The Sims 2 H&M® Fashion Stuff

Geek Chic: The Sims 2 H&M® Fashion Stuff

12 min 47 sec ago by GeekSugar

If you haven't noticed the ads for the new The Sims 2 H&M® Fashion Stuff across the Sugar Network recently I suggest you take a gander. The game, which is available for order now, allows you to dress up your Sims in H&M® clothing collections for men and women with The Sims 2 H&M® Fashion Stuff. Your Sims characters can choose from FabSugar-approved H&M® fashions, then play with retail-themed items like mannequins, clothing racks, cash registers and even walk the runway. It's a real makeover from the days of plain Jane Sims clothing and adds a fun, girlie touch to the game. I dare you to not get addicted.

The game requires The Sims 2, The Sims 2 Special DVD Edition, or The Sims 2 Holiday Edition to play.

Vyew: Free Live Web Conferencing

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Free online web conferencing service Vyew launched earlier this year. Today, they’ve launched a new version that allows users to create “VyewBooks” to share, present, and interact with other people around content such as Microsoft Office files, pictures, audio and video.

The new version includes tools to facilitate the creation of new presentations and also supports a desktop view for live sharing of files, images, and web sites.

A widget-style tool “Vyewlet generator” allows content to be embedded on any website, a screencast tool of sorts that records collaborative work for demonstration elsewhere.

Henry Hon, CEO of Vyew compares the new version directly with competitors: “Vyew isn’t just another WebEx or GotoMeeting where information is communicated in a canned one-to-many format. Vyew is an enterprise-class social computing platform where people can also create, share, and participate with rich content in a many-to-many relationship, both in real-time and asynchronously over time.”

There are a lot of alternatives in this space and competing with the likes of WebEx and GoToMeeting is a challenge in itself. Vyew offers something a different a little different at a competitive price.

Previous TechCrunch coverage here.

Make your own air horn in 3 minutes

Canon crams 50 megapixels into a CMOS prototype

from Engadget by Paul Miller

You won't be seeing one of these sensors in your fashioncam any time soon. Canon has built a 50 megapixel CMOS monstrosity, which is reportedly almost twice the resolution of its nearest competition, and is prepping it as a sort of large format surveillance camera for monitoring large, busy areas such as parking lots and theme parks, along with detailed work like factory part inspections. Despite the sensor's clear industrial-end aims, Canon has managed to build its prototype at 19 x 28mm in size, the same dimensions of the sensors in its DSLR cameras, so who knows where this tech could end up in the long run. So far Canon hasn't even announced release plans for this current incarnation, so we aren't going to go hawking our existing shooter just yet.

More on Apple's new LED-backlit MacBook Pro

from Engadget by Ryan Block

Filed under: Displays

Apple left a little mystery in their MacBook Pro announcement today, and being that this marks their first official release of an LED-backlit laptop we had to take out the guesswork and get confirmation on a few of our more burning questions.

All 15-inch MBPs now use LED-backlit displays standard; 17-inchers still use CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent)
Apple claims users can see a battery-life benefit of between 30 mins - 1 hour (depending on use). They did not have stats on exact efficiencies between LED and CCFL backlit displays.
The new LED backlight is the same brightness: 300 vs 300 nits of the previous gen's CCFL
The viewing angle is also the same as before
In other words, besides faster time from fully-off to full-brightness and an increase in battery life, Apple claims users should notice absolutely no perceivable difference between last-gen displays and the new LED-backlit ones.

Other bits

To clarify, MacBook Pros are using Santa Rosa, but MacBooks are not yet using Santa Rosa
Even though the MBP is 0.2 pounds lighter, we're still without an internal / integrated 3G option

Asus' new Eee PC 701 joins the laptop-lite fray with a bang

from Engadget by Paul Miller

Asus and Intel seem to be bridging the gap between the fairly humanitarian efforts of the OLPC project and their own Classmate PC efforts, and the recent rash of mini-laptop attempts such as Palm's Foleo and VIA's NanoBook. Specs and launch plans aren't entirely nailed down, but this new Eee PC line has quite a bit going for it, even as crowded as this market is getting. The 7-inch ultraportable is based on an unnamed Intel chipset, and runs regular Windows XP or Linux without a problem, but really shines in its "easy" mode that strips things down to a barebones OS mainly for internet browsing (sound familiar, Foleo?). Asus didn't even leave Palm alone with its Wii comparisons either, stating that the Eee name, which stands for "easy to learn, easy to play, easy to work," also conveniently conjures images of the Wii game console, which is known for being novice-friendly. The Eee line will kick things off with the Eee PC 701, which will sport 802.11b/g WiFi, Ethernet and a modem for connectivity, along with a webcam, 512MB of RAM and a 4, 8 or 16GB flash drive for speedy, reliable storage. The real kicker is that prices for the 2 pound laptop are supposed to start as low as $200, and the Intel / Asus duo won't be aiming this at massive governmental purchases, but instead will be offering it to consumers through traditional retail channels. [Via HardwareZone]

More pics of the Dell XPS m1330

Posted Jun 5th 2007 2:27PM by Ryan Block Filed under: Laptops

We still don't have the magic numbers (launch date and price) on that most impressive new Dell XPS m1330, but we did at least secure some more eye candy for you. A couple more shots after the break.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Porsche Design Mobile Group unveils P'9521 handhset

from Engadget by Darren Murph

While the unlicensed version of Porsche's mobile handset still holds a special place in our hearts, it looks like the Porsche Design Mobile Group finally took it upon themselves to join the growing fray and introduce its own co-branded device. The group has already slapped the luxurious logo on a sat nav device as well as a portable XM radio, but Stephane Bret (the group's director) was caught showing off a new mobile in Essen. Unfortunately, details on the phone are all but nil, but we do know that the P'9521 was unveiled at the Red Dot Design Museum and will rock a squarish flip-phone design, integrated camera, and multimedia player. No word just yet on when (or if, actually) this sure-to-be-overpriced handset will hit store shelves, but we can't help but notice that a few formidable opponents are quite a few laps ahead at this point. Click on through for a few more shots.

Continue reading Porsche Design Mobile Group unveils P'9521 handhset

Tiny thermoacoustic engines pave the way for screaming gadgets

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

Looks like all that heat generated by your laptop may finally be useful for something other than frying eggs -- a group of grad students led by professor Orest Symko at the University of Utah has unveiled an array of "thermoacoustic" engines that turn heat into sound, which can be directed at a piezoelectric mechanism to produce electricity. The US Army-funded research seems promising but is obviously still in its infancy -- one of the designs the researchers demonstrated is half the size of a penny but pumps out 120dB of noise (about the same as a siren), while another bumped out over 135dB, (which is roughly equivalent to a jackhammer). The team expects that future, smaller designs will work at ultrasonic frequencies outside the range of human hearing. Although we're not expecting hybrid-siren-powered laptops to hit anytime soon, you Utes out there may want to invest in some earplugs -- Professor Symko says they'll be testing these designs at the University's water-heating facility in the next year. [Via InformationWeek]

Google and Salesforce Tightly Integrate Adwords Products

from TechCrunch by Nick Gonzalez

There’s been a lot of speculation about Salesforce and Google lately. Tomorrow the two companies will announce a marketing and distribution alliance that will tightly bind Google Adwords to existing Salesforce tools that track sales from online advertising.

Salesforce and Google will be starting an extended partnership encompassing marketing and distribution of their products across 43 countries. It will begin with the integration of Google Adwords and Salesforce’s lead generation tools into a new application called “Group Edition”, available here. Group edition replaces Salseforces earlier version Team edition.

Group Edition will enable Adwords users to track Adsense referrals to their site and build up a customer profile based on a the data a user enters into a site and their navigation path. Businesses will handle their Adwords campaigns through Google, as usual, but Salesforce takes over from there. When potential customers click through to the businesses site, Google tells Salesforce what search terms brought the user to the page and where they navigate throughout the site.

It is our understanding that the technology behind the salesforce side of the deal comes from Kieden, an company that they acquired late last year.

Site owners can also drop “web lead forms” onto the site, which can collect any other customer information (names, email, phone numbers) and bundle it into customer profile. All of this data is enumerated on a dashboard view, which you data on lead generation, sales, and growth. As with any other Salesforce application, users will also be able to mash up the data with other AppExchange Apps. The application will cost $600 for 5 user accounts and come with $50 of Adwords credits.

Private equity buying big piece of Nextag

from GigaOM by Om Malik

Having snapped up whatever there was to buy in the brick and mortar world, the private equity investors are now turning their attention to technology sector. Cadance has been linked with big private equity money. Add comparison-shopping engine Nextag to the list.

Some private equity investors, one of them rumored to be Providence Equity Partners, are looking to buy 66% of Nextag for between $1 and $1.2 billion. Of course these are all rumors for now, and while contacted Nextag, we are yet to hear back from their press relations department.

Nextag is said to be doing about $200 million in revenues, with a lucrative mortgage and other lead generation business being the rocket that is driving the company. Internet giants for example – have taken out its peers – MySimon, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com and Shopzilla. Comparison Engines has a great overview of the market so far and news about this deal.

Video of tot solving Rubik's Cube

from Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

David Pescovitz: Totcube

Totcube

This video seems to depict a cute child solving a Rubik's Cube in less than two minutes. Link (Thanks, Jennifer Lum!) Previously on BB: • Michel Gondry "solves" Rubik's Cube with his feet Link • Rubik's Cube solved in 11.13 seconds Link • Rubik's Cube folk art Link

RIAA and Universal accused of extortion

from Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow: A Florida victim of RIAA lawsuits is striking back, accusing Universal Music Group of being extortionists:

In a new Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid, the defendant has filed the following five (5) counterclaims against the RIAA, under Florida, federal, and California law:
1. Trespass
2. Computer Fraud and Abuse (18 USC 1030)
3. Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices (Fla. Stat. 501.201)
4. Civil Extortion (CA Penal Code 519 & 523)
5. Civil Conspiracy involving (a) use of private investigators without license in violation of Fla. Stat. Chapter 493; (b) unauthorized access to a protected computer system, in interstate commerce, for the purpose of obtaining information in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030 (a)(2)(C); (c) extortion in violation of Ca. Penal Code §§ 519 and 523; and (d) knowingly collecting an unlawful consumer debt, and using abus[ive] means to do so, in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692a et seq. and Fla. Stat. § 559.72 et seq.

About time.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Flextronics purchasing Solectron for $3.6 billion

from Engadget by Paul Miller

Don't feel bad if you've never heard of Flextronics, Solectron or both -- we polled our mom on the subject, and she asked when we were going to give up this "blogging nonsense" for a real job -- but these two fairly low-profile contract electronics manufacturers churn out massive amounts of product for other little companies you might have heard of: like HP, Dell, Sony, Ericsson, Cisco, Motorola and Microsoft. Now Flextronics is ending this bitter rivalry in a Coke buys Pepsi-type shocker, forking over $3.6 billion in cash and stock for Solectron. Flextronics will operate Solectron as a subsidiary, and claims the purchase will help it expand scale and market reach, while saving on costs, with the deal to add about 15 percent to earnings, claims the manufacturer.

Sproose: Human Powered Search Meets Digg

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Asking how many ways you can make a search engine is like asking how many ways you can scramble an egg, there are a number of different ways and although it’s not rocket science you can still end up with something inedible.

People powered search is the trendiest of ~~egg scrambling~~ search engine recipes at the moment. Service such as ChaCha have contractual employees answering search queries in real time. The Jason Calacanis vehicle Mahalo launched in alpha this week with a Wikipedia meets Google model which aims to provide pre-written results for 10,000 search queries.

Danville, CA based Sproose marries human powered search to Digg.

Sproose is a personalized search engine that combines social networking with peer-moderated rankings giving users the ability to prioritize, customize and fine-tune searches to produce relevant web search results.

Sproose users can effectively categorize and index relevant sites and tailor those for personal or group use. Through collective moderation and scoring users can sort through existing sites to assemble only the most appropriate results.

The results aren’t bad. It isn’t clear where the search results are originally pulled from (I’d guess Google) and the social voting feature on link priority creates a different search experience. Video results come from Blinkx and Sproose indexes over 25,000 sources for news. Whether it will take is another matter; everyone wants to be the next Google and there is no shortage of competitors. I can honestly say though that I’ve seen many worse than Sproose.

T-Shirts Meet SMS: Reactee

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Reactee has announced the launch of a line of interactive t-shirts that combine fashion, SMS and activism through “shirts that text back”.

Reactee allows users to create t-shirts that include a personalized message such “Stop Global Whaling” or “Andrew Keen is a Luddite” that is then complimented by a unique keyword such as SUSHI or MORON on the shirt. People who see the shirt can then respond to it by sending the keyword via SMS to 41411. In return senders receive a custom text message response created by the T-Shirt creator.

Example Reactee customers given include individuals such as DJs who want to share their playlists, political activists promoting a candidate, people who just want to get something off their chest, or entire organizations, which can make many shirts with the same keyword and use them to promote their unique cause.

Users can create text alert lists to communicate with those interested in their causes. Additionally, users can make their designs public and include them in the Reactee gallery of shirts that have received the most text messages.

Existing users include the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas and YouthNoise.

TechCrunch readers can use the code TECHCRUNCH to get 20% of any T-Shirt purchased until the end of June.

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