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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

CHART OF THE DAY: 44% Of New Twitter Accounts Were Made In The First 7 Months Of This Year

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We've seen plenty of charts on Twitter's growth, but this one really grabbed our attention.

In the first half of 2010, 44% of Twitter's total account population joined the service, according to data from Sysomos, a social media tracking company.

It's a pretty impressive growth spurt for the already formidable social network.

The caveat: New Accounts created do not equal new and active users. Twitter appears to have many Zombie accounts, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Zombie accounts are people signing up to spam Twitter, and do other non constructive things.

So while this looks pretty great on face of it, the growth might be a little bit slower than what we're seeing here.

chart of the day, new twitter accounts created, dec 2010

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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Your iPhone Takes Stirring Long-Exposure Photos With This Magic App [Video]

Sure, you've got your Hipstamatic filters and your ProCamera bag of tricks. But to capture truly ethereal slow-shutter speed shots and lithe light paintings, you're going to need Magic Shutter. It looks pretty amazing, and amazingly pretty.

You can choose among front and rear-curtain sync effects in flash modes, meaning that the blur effect either tails or leads the sharp image. It's a creative blend of the iPhone's video and still camera, and may just elevate the app camera effects game from "hipster art" to "art art."

While Magic Shutter does a terrific job of mimicking the blurry beauty of a long-exposure photo, you are a wee bit limited in output resolution because of limitations Apple puts on using the camera at full resolution for video. It's disappointing! But not so much, I'd guess, that it's a dealbreaker, especially at $3 and with an upgrade coming next month that promises improved output. [Magic Shutter via iPhoneography via Wired]

Streaming Video from iPad and iPhone to Linux Computers [Video]

Someone has ported Apple's Airplay to a Linux box running Ubuntu and XMBC. It seems to work flawlessly, allowing the user to select and stream from any Airplay-enabled device. It seems pretty simple and straightforward, and works with video and audio.

I wonder how long it would be before we start seeing Airplay in every Linux-based TV set or video box coming from China. [Ubergizmo]

JBL's AirPlay-enabled On Air Wireless speaker dock hits the FCC

JBL was one of the first companies besides iHome and Denon / Marantz to announce support for Apple's AirPlay technology, so it's no surprise that the company's On Air Wireless speaker dock just hit the FCC, complete with its manual -- we've been hearing that AirPlay will be all over the place at CES 2011. The On Air Wireless seems like a fancier riff on JBL's On Air line of speaker docks and alarm clocks -- it features that familiar swoopy-loop design but adds in a large color LCD display that displays album artwork while streaming music. Looking at the manual, the display also makes WiFi setup and configuration a little easier, which is nice. All in all, it looks promising, but we'll see what price and availability looks like when we get to CES.

JBL's AirPlay-enabled On Air Wireless speaker dock hits the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 09:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Planex MZK-SNG02US brings DLNA to your SD cards and USB drives

Not looking to go all out with a DLNA-ready NAS or dedicated media player to get some streaming started on your home network? Then you might be able to get by with something like Planex's new MZK-SNG02US device, which packs a single USB port and an SD card slot, and basically acts as DLNA-enabled bridge between your storage media and your router. Unfortunately, it looks like this one is only available in Japan at the moment, and its ¥8,000 (or $95) price tag places it a bit closer to some of those aforementioned dedicated devices than we would have liked. We're guessing that will get knocked down a bit if and when it's released (and most likely rebadged) over here, though.

Planex MZK-SNG02US brings DLNA to your SD cards and USB drives originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 10:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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