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Tuesday, July 12, 2011

AMD announces the Radeon HD 6990M, has some pointed words for NVIDIA

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/12/amd-announces-the-radeon-hd-6990m-has-some-pointed-words-for-nv/

Here are five words you've heard before: "the world's fastest notebook GPU." Why, NVIDIA made just that claim two weeks ago, when it touted the GeForce GTX 580M as the nimblest card this side of Pluto. Not so fast, says AMD. The outfit just unveiled the Radeon HD 6990M with DirectX11 and HD3D support, and it insists this is the speediest GPU on the block -- specifically, up to 25 percent faster than any other GPU that's been announced to the public. And yes, AMD's well aware of that 580M. Just like NVIDIA came out swinging, making pointed comparisons to the Radeon HD 6970M, AMD's got some fighting words of its own: the outfit says the 6990M can whip the 580M in the benchmark AvP and games such as Batman Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age 2, Shogun 2, BattleForge, Left 4 Dead, Metro2033, Wolfenstein MP, The Chronicles of Riddick, and E.T.: Quake Wars. We don't need to remind you that these numbers merely represent the story each company wants to tell. Still, you get the idea: these are the top-of-the-line cards each has to offer at the moment, and they'll likely be competing for space in your next gaming rig.

As you can imagine, the 6990M joins other Radeon HD cards in supporting the company's Eyefinity technology, as well as GPU app acceleration. Let it be known, too, that while the 6990M supplants the popular 6970M as far as performance claims go, AMD tells us the 6970M will still be available for the foreseeable future. Speaking of availability, the 6990M will be offered in the Alienware M18x -- right alongside NVIDIA's 580M. Additionally, you'll find it packed inside Clevo's P170HM and P150HM. And you didn't think we forgot about specs, did you? Head on past the break to find the full PR, along with a handful of technical details straight from the horse's mouth.

Continue reading AMD announces the Radeon HD 6990M, has some pointed words for NVIDIA

AMD announces the Radeon HD 6990M, has some pointed words for NVIDIA originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Monday, July 11, 2011

Finding The Common Link: Commonred Wants To Take The Awkward Out Of Networking

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/11/finding-the-common-link-commonred-wants-to-take-the-awkward-out-of-networking/

Vaporware Labs, a software company that makes social, mobile, and web apps, like Steve Young Football for the iPad and iPhone, and MEETorDIE, an an online tool that tells you how much money your company is wasting by having meetings and how it might be spending that money more productively. (You can read our coverage of MEETorDIE here.) Today, Vaporware Labs is launching a new product called Commonred, which is putting a new spin on professional networking.

Commonred wants to be the place you go to find a common link (the name is a shortening of “common thread”) with just about anyone — though they’ll need some user adoption to ensure that last bit. Essentially, the startup wants to take the cold call/email/approach out of the networking process. Or, another way of looking at it: Commonred is an attempt meld the meetup and “new people” discovery space, inhabited by startups like Sonar, Meetup, and LetsLunch, with professional networking sites/apps like Branchout and Hashable.

Vaporware Labs, like many others, holds a monthly meetup (called Startup Grind) that allows entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to meet each other, network, and share ideas. The motivation for Commonred was bred from these meetups and from the observation — that is endemic to all new meetup experiences — that giving entrepreneurs (and people in general) ways to more quickly find commonalities between themselves and the people they’re meeting leads to less awkwardness and a greater chance of building a strong(er) relationship.

According to Vaporware and Commonred Founder Derek Andersen, Commonred is an attempt to “streamline the serendipity of finding someone that you went to the same high school with or someone that has also lived in, say, New Zealand”. Since much of our personal information is scattered across the social networks, “or lives on our blog or Plancast profile”, he says, when one wants to build a working relationship with someone, the process can be akin to a scavenger hunt.

So, how does it work? Pretty simple. You connect all of your social profiles to Commonred, and the site takes your social graph data and builds a profile, taking a user’s social infrastructure and combining it with its own set of data. Commonred then presents its users with a snapshot of commonality they share with others — it’s not a fire hose of information, just the quick bullet points, like schools, places, hobbies, and companies, that help you quickly find things you have in common. You can compare your contacts to other individuals, which then appears in a tree-like view (which you can see to the right).

In turn, this makes you slightly less (or more, depending on how you look at it) creepy when you approach someone or email someone in hopes of networking.

Of course, the problem with this is that we all have a lot of collective contacts on Twitter, Facbook, LinkedIn, etc., but, in reality, we have 5 to 10 relationships that we value higher than the others — those people that we’d go to bat for in any circumstance. Commonred has created a “Board of Directors” feature that allows users to select their 10 most trusted (or most valued) contacts. This will not only allow other users to know how cool you are when Mark Zuckerberg shows up on your Board, but just another filter for finding commonality.

Commonred is offering 200 free invites to TechCrunch readers, which can be accessed here. Check it out and let us know what you think.

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Vaporware Labs

Commonred

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An iPhone Gaming Thinger I Can Stand Behind

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/11/an-iphone-gaming-thinger-i-can-stand-behind/

This little designware project would be amazing if it were real. Essentially it’s a double case for the iPhone can adds a D-pad, buttons, and more hand-room to the standard iPhone. It doesn’t exist (and probably never will) but it’s pretty darn cool-looking could actually work if someone made it.

Alan Li designed it as a student project and I hope Thinkgeek or someone buys it from him ASAP.

via YankoDesign

MomentFeed Gets $1.2 Million Seed Round To Help Enterprises Manage Specials By Location

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/11/momentfeed-1-2-million-location/

Geo-based marketing is just getting started, and local businesses are feeling their way around how best to use service like Foursquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla, and even Twitter. It’s hard enough if you have only one store. For chains and national retailers, managing Foursquare Specials across 400 stores is a nightmare. MomentFeed is trying to bring some order and analytics to this chaos with a location-based marketing dashboard aimed at businesses with more than one location.

The LA-based startup just raised a $1.2 million seed round from DFJ Frontier, DFJ JAIC, Factual founder Gil Elbaz,and Rapleaf founder Auren Hoffman, and Walter Kortschak.

MomentFeed pulls in merchant location data from Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, and Gowalla, and gives retailers a unified view of all the check-ins, deals, and specials across their locations nationwide. (It is also built on Factual’s location data, which helps to harmonize locations between services). With one dashboard, a retailer like 7-Eleven or a fast-food chain can see that maybe more people are checking in with Foursquare in New York, but with Facebook Places in the midwest and adjust their targeting accordingly. “We are built on the place signal, instead of the keyword as the primary signal,” says CEO Rob Reed.

The startup offers tiered services, from analytics to campaign management to CRM, which range in cost between $29 and $99 per year per location. It is still not clear what merchants will be charged to run specials on Foursquare and other services, but Reed expects to share revenue with each location service. “We are happy to share revenues with Foursquare and others for the data,” he says, “similar to Twitter with DataSift.” (DatSift also raised money today in a $6 million series A).

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MomentFeed

DFJ Frontier

Gil Elbaz

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Gmail+: Google Already At Work On âSeveralâ Gmail/Google+ Integrations

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/11/gmail-plus/

One of the factors that led me to conclude that I could walk away from email for the month was the emergence of Google+. It’s yet another network where people can now message me if they need to get ahold of me.

Further, Google+ makes Gmail look like even more of a dog. To be clear, Gmail is still the best email service out there — but it’s also still an email service. It’s a service based around technology that is decades old. And while Google has put a better front-end on email and added the killer search functionality, compared to tools like Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc, email seems a bit like watching black and white television in a world of 1080p flatscreens. I hate it. I’d like it to die.

And Google may help.

Mark Striebeck, Google’s Engineering Manager for Gmail, left a public note in Google+ yesterday letting everyone know that Google is already working on integrating Google+ into Gmail. Specifically, he cites “several Gmail / Google+ integrations” in the works. At the same time, he wants to use Google+’s new Hangouts group chat feature to get ideas and feedback on how the integration should work. Tomorrow on Google+, Striebeck’s team will hold a brainstorming session. Here are his main questions for the integration discussion:

I’m pretty sure that all of you use some email client – many probably Gmail. But regardless of the client:
- What email features would make it easier to interact with Google+?
- How could we integrate Google+ features into Gmail?
- How can we integrate social concepts in Gmail to make the email experience itself better?

Those are all key questions. It seems as if the Gmail team is not only thinking about simple, surface-level integrations with Google+, but also deeper use of the technology behind the service to fundamentally alter Gmail. I’m all for that.

But wait, wouldn’t such integration just be another Google Buzz or Google Wave? If Google handles it as poorly as they did with those services, sure. But all indications right now are that Google has no intention of handling anything about Google+ poorly. Love or hate Google+ itself, it’s pretty clear that Google is firing on all cylinders with this project. And there’s every reason to believe that this will continue into the Gmail integration.

If handled correctly, Google+ could actually be the fastest service ever to go from 0 to 100 million users, as Bill Gross predicted earlier today. But that’s still a long ways off, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here. I just want a better email experience if and when I do come back to email.

Previously, I outlined exactly what I’d like to see from Gmail — that is, Gmail Lite – that still stands. But if I can’t have that, I’ll settle for Gmail with deep Google+ integration.

Update: Due to a “crush of interest”, Striebeck has posted on a slightly altered plan for feedback tomorrow.

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Google+

Gmail

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