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AP - CNN is unveiling the title and premiere date of its new prime-time talk show pairing former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and conservative columnist Kathleen Parker.
Intuit today announced the forthcoming release of QuickBooks 2011 for Mac, the company's financial management software for small businesses. The new version, set to ship on September 27th, brings a numbe...
AP - A new documentary being shown out of competition at the Venice Film Festival explores the trauma of three U.S. war veterans who served in Iraq and how the military handled their cases.
Using SMS tokens for extra security.
Foundem claims 'diversionary straw man tactics'
Foundem — the UK-based vertical search outfit involved in antitrust investigations of Google in both Texas and the European Union — has responded to Google's account of the Texas probe, accusing the Mountain View search giant of "diversionary 'straw man' tactics."…
THERE HAS TO BE THIS PIONEER, THE INDIVIDUAL WHO HAS THE COURAGE, THE AMBITION TO OVERCOME THE OBSTACLES THAT ALWAYS DEVELOP WHEN ONE TRIES TO DO SOMETHING WORTHWHILE, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS NEW AND DIFFERENT. TO SHOOT MALE PHYSIQUES. BUT...
A UBS analyst, John Hodulik, has significantly raised an estimate for how many iPhones AT&T will activate by the end of the September quarter. The number has has almost doubled from an earlier forecast, shifting from 2.5 million to 4.5 million. During the recent June quarter, AT&T activated roughly 3.2 million iPhones. The iPhone 4 only launched in the US on June 24th though, giving the model little chance to have an impact on Apple's latest financial report....
AFP - BP has announced it will publish an eagerly awaited report on the causes of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on Wednesday.
Eye-fi, the creator of camera memory cards that automatically upload photos and videos to your computer or favorite website, has announced that it will launch a software development kit and community this Fall.
That means that any approved application will be able to pull media automatically from your camera into your account online when you walk past an accessible wifi signal. Will the company be generous in approving use of its developer platform? Startups around the world hope so.
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How it Works
Eye-fi has offered its basic service for 5 years and sells its newest 4GB card with "endless memory mode" (stored media is automatically deleted once safely on your computer) for $49.99. Eye-fi bundles the cost of connectivity into the cost of the device, similar to how the Kindle does 3G, but in this case it's data writing not reading.
To date, users have been able to upload media automatically to 45 different sites, from Flickr to Facebook to YouTube to Costco.com. Online reviews of the service are generally very positive. Now any approved application developer will be able include this feature in their apps.
Market Strategy
It's a smart move by Eye-fi. An ecosystem of app developers adds a compelling feature and then every new customer those apps acquire is a potential new customer for the memory card manufacturer.
"Eye-Fi's wireless data card is without a doubt revolutionary in the way it enables real time publishing of photos over WiFi directly from the camera," says Marcus Mac Innes, founder of Irish photo sharing service Pix.ie.
"The out of the box publishing destinations however were limited and many Pix.ie users complained about not having a direct upload facility from Eye-Fi to Pix.ie.
"With the release of a developer API, Eye-Fi seems to be responding to the growing demand for openness which ultimately provides their customers with more choice with regard to publishing destinations.
"So long as Eye-Fi don't discriminate when it comes to commercial use of the new APIs, this move will be a win win for all concerned."
Eye-fi offers an iPhone app and last holiday season the company partnered with Google to offer a free card to anyone who upgraded to a paid Picasa account. Additional options include automatic geotagging of photos and automatic uploads from any AT&T wifi hotspot.
Below: Some of the places users can already upload media from the Eye-fi card.
We got hands-on play time with Killzone 3, one of the hottest upcoming 3D titles for Sony’s PlayStation 3.
There is a fascinating article online this morning from the San Francisco Chronicle's Tom Abate in which he profiles Raymond Lei, a 19-year-old Berkeley student and entrepreneur. While still in high school Lei founded ooShirts.com with just a computer and an idea. A few years and just a couple thousand dollars in capital later, Lei runs a successful 2.5 person team set to earn over $700,000 in 2010. Abate dubs ooShirts an "ultralight startup," but is Lei's bedroom business any different from a lean startup?
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In recent years, lean startups have become a popular sector of Internet businesses that look to push a product at "low burn." A lot of what makes a lean startup lean, according the man who coined the term, Eric Ries, is when the company strives to create value for customers. "Every activity that does not contribute to learning about customers" should be defined as "waste," Ries says.
But Lei's company seems leaner than lean, with almost no "burn" whatsoever. According to the ooShirts.com homepage, less than 0.5% of the company's revenue goes to advertising. Instead the company relies on referrals and repeat customers to help spread the word. By working with over a dozen suppliers, ooShirts keeps its shipping costs low - savings it passes on to its customers in order to undercut competition.
ooShirts is part of a unique subset of Internet companies. While many startups one might categorize as "lean" are developing applications and tools for the Web, ooShirts is playing in the co-creation and mass customization space. These companies serve as intermediaries between customers and manufacturers who can create customized products, and thus can afford to run at a "low burn."
Because of this business relationship, mass customization companies may need to be set aside from lean startups, which by nature are highly iterative product companies. But perhaps there is some intersection between lean startups and the low burning mass customization companies. Or maybe Abate's term "ultralight" is a new class of startups? Either way, running thin is certainly a growing trend among startups, and ooShirts is a fine example of how the Internet is enabling the success of these businesses.
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Nikon's repeatedly rumored Coolpix P7000 semi-pro camera may have been spotted just ahead of a launch this evening. The camera would take more of a direct cue from the Canon G11 with a large optical viewfinder directly above the lens. Accordingly, Nikon Rumors' image would give the camera much more control with two extra, dedicated dials and a function button for programmable commands....Reuters - Oracle Corp investors cheered the surprise hiring of former Hewlett-Packard Co Chief Executive Mark Hurd on Tuesday, sending the business software company's stock up sharply after the latest twist in a juicy drama that has captivated Silicon Valley.
I’m Still Here, Casey Affleck’s controversial ‘documentary’ about his brother-in-law Joaquin Phoenix has finally premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The early reviews are in, and I’ve compiled some excerpts for you after the jump.
Variety: “Result is an utterly fascinating experiment that apparently blends real and faked material to examine notions of celebrity, mental stability and friendship. Whatever auds may think of Phoenix, there’s no doubting his chutzpah, though biz will depend on the level of voyeuristic interest in his and co-helmer Casey Affleck’s strange, postmodern psychodrama.” … “I’m Still Here” could be read as a more meta version of the filmmaking method deployed by Sacha Baron Cohen in “Borat” and “Bruno.” Except that there might be something more tragic, troubling and weird going on here.” … “Auds won’t be able to stop themselves from wondering who was in on the joke (if it was a joke) and who wasn’t.”
InContention: “The most surprising discovery about “I’m Still Here” is that the possibility of it being a ruse doesn’t much diminish its value. Indeed, the film is probably more interesting viewed as an immensely committed, avant-garde performance piece by Phoenix (“career suicide as conceptual art,” to quote one critic I spoke to after the screening) than as an ingenuous documentary – in which case, for all Affleck’s claims of wishing to offer a compassionate study of his friend, the film is a rather narrow, and even exploitative, work. In either light, Affleck has crafted a ragged but grimly compelling essay on our vile celebrity-news culture, in which the aggressors aren’t only the bottom-feeding journalists who delight in stories such as this one, but the celebrities – of whom Phoenix may well be one – who are spurred on by their attention.” … “I’m not convinced that “I’m Still Here” is entirely smart or meta enough to be exempt from this tail-eating circle, but it’s inarguably a film of its era: should it find its way into a time capsule, future viewers will learn a lot more about us from watching it than they will about Joaquin Phoenix.”
ScreenDaily: “Too wryly tongue-in-cheek to cut the mustard as a sincere and intimate portrait of a tortured talent undergoing a creative crisis.” … “The result is a film that is occasionally fascinating and sometimes quite funny, but more often too smugly and frustratingly pleased with its own mindgames. To do a Borat, I’m Still Here would need to come out of the ‘it’s all true’ closet; to be the “compassionate portrait” that Affleck was still insisting it was at the film’s post-premiere Venice presser, it would need to slam that closet door a lot more firmly than it does.”
Independent: “Affleck is a disarming filmmaker. This seems like straight fly-on-the-wall reportage from the battle zone that is Phoenix’s life. However, I’m Still Here is cleverly crafted and edited and often very funny indeed. If it is a hoax, Phoenix is giving one of the greatest method performances of all time.” … “Like its central character, the film is infuriating and provocative by turns.” … “The ridicule that is heaped on him arguably reveals just as much about celebrity-obsessed popular culture as it does about Phoenix himself. The film ends on a mildly redemptive but still mysterious note.”
Guardian: “I’m not sure I buy any of it, but the film is certainly compelling. Like a pair of po-faced co-conspirators, Affleck and Phoenix have cooked up an audacious little distraction; a stage-managed Hollywood Babylon that’s at once gaudily entertaining and wilfully self-indulgent.” … “Who cares, finally, whether this is a documentary or not? I’m Still Here paints a convincing portrait of a miserable, frustrated actor who has lived so long in the goldfish bowl that he can no longer conceive of a life beyond acting.”
Obsessed With Film: “At times the film is also rather too exaggerated to be completely legitimate. Coming close to resembling Borat.” … “Elements of the film seem a bit too convenient, for instance there are multiple cameras with all the angles covered, leaving it sometimes feeling like a Christopher Guest or Larry Charles faux documentary rather than the real thing. And the film adheres to elements of film-fiction structure (things mentioned always have a plot functionality and are usually a set up for something later).” … “There is no question, it is edited together for maximum humorous (as opposed to dramatic) impact, in a way that would be odd if Affleck has any love for his friend. There are even bits that feel straight out of a candid camera show” … “Whether it’s down to a genuine absurdity or to a dedicated genius performer (he’s kept this act up for two years now), I’m Still Here is really funny. I was in stitches for long spells of it and had the best time I’ve had in any film here.”
The official synopsis for the film:
“I’m Still Here” follows Oscar-nominee Joaquin Phoenix as he announces his retirement from a successful film career in the fall of 2008 and sets off to reinvent himself as a hip hop musician.
After Christchurch in New Zealand was hit by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Saturday, dozens of Facebook groups sprang up to do everything from celebrate the city’s survival to organize the distribution of free bottled water. One of the most inspiring groups is a grass-roots volunteer effort led by university students.
According to an Agence France Presse story, students have helped organize relief squads to help clean up the earthquake debris scattered about the city. Sam Johnson, a Canterbury University law student, set up a group called Student Volunteer base for Earthquake clean up, which has attracted 2,457 members.
When Johnson heard that lessons had been cancelled for a week, he set up the group and reportedly had 300 people – both university students and school kids – volunteer on the first day. Equipped with shovels, wheelbarrows and buckets, the volunteers set to work in groups of 20 around the city, liaising with emergency services authorities.
Johnson told AFP: “On Saturday night I saw all these Facebook groups like ‘I survived the quake, lets party’ and ‘buy a T-shirt, Christchurch quake 2010′ had sprung up. I thought ‘come on guys, surely we can do something more positive than that and do something positive for the community’.”
It’s great to see Facebook being used in this way – and also the fact that it’s being written about. Quite often it’s the negative stories that make the headlines, whether it be the woman who threw a cat into a bin or the Israeli soldier making fun of her Palestinian captives. But Facebook, and the web more generally, is a wonderful tool for citizens as well.
Back in the early to mid 1990s when I was a university student, it would have been impossible to organize a clean-up effort like this on such short notice. The choices would have been organizing far in advance via posters, flyers and student newspaper or joining an existing relief effort by a big organization or government body. Facebook just makes it so easy for these sort of spontaneous relief efforts to occur – and experience teaches us that people will help if it’s easy to do so.
Photo source: Image of earthquake damage from Sam Johnson’s earthquake group page.
Reuters - Whether a hoax or not, a new documentary about Joaquin Phoenix and his transition from acclaimed, brooding actor to bearded, shambolic hip-hop wannabe has captivated viewers at the Venice film festival.
RIM, the company behind Blackberry smartphones, is getting into the smart billboard business, according to two patent applications it filed recently. But what would a smartphone maker and roadside advertising have in common? It could be a new way to serve up "adaptive" advertising according to data gathered from nearby Blackberry users.
According to mobile-focused blog Unwired View, the innovation comes in the form of using nearby phones to measure traffic speed and density and then adapting a billboard's content accordingly.
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When traffic is moving fast and drivers have no time to pay attention to billboards, or there's a dense crowd on the street so you are distracted and less likely to pay attention, the billboard may just blast a huge logo and slogan of the advertiser at you, to catch any peripheral attention it can get. When traffic slows down in a jam, and you are sitting bored at the wheel waiting for a car in front to move the next few meters, grateful for any distraction, the same billboard will give you a detailed information about the service, prices, benefits and stuff.
The two separate patents are for "Adaptive roadside billboard system and related methods" and "Adaptive pedestrian billboard system and related methods" and both are described as having a storage system that could retain a number of different messages for different speeds and traffic densities. Beyond the level of detail involved, such a system could also be used to offer interaction opportunities when density is high and speed is low (such as in a traffic jam).
The next step, of course, is for billboards to begin collecting more personal information than simply crowd-aggregated data, such as the types of cars being driven, to cater advertising more specifically to the people present. That same next step, however, treads on thinner ground in regards to privacy than simply the density and speed of traffic, which is already used by systems such as Google Maps to provide traffic analysis.
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It seems like only yesterday that Oracle announced it was hiring former HP CEO Mark Hurd to be a Co-President and member of the Board — that’s because it was just yesterday. And now just one day later, we have a lawsuit filed by HP to block such a maneuver by Oracle.
In confirming the lawsuit in a brief blog post today, HP’s official corporate blog highlights what they see as the key issue here: trade secrets and confidential information. HP even included a link to the full complaint that they’ve posted on Scribd (embed below). Here’s the key nugget:
In his new positions, Hurd will be in a situation in which he cannot perform his duties for Oracle without necessarily using and disclosing HP’s trade secrets and confidential information to others.
It’s important to note that while Hurd signed a non-compete agreement in his contract with HP, those almost never hold up in California courts. Instead, HP’s angle is to say that Hurd has trade secrets that could hurt HP if rival Oracle knew them. This is undoubtedly true, but the question is whether Hurd can perform his new duty without disclosing those to Oracle?
In some ways, this is similar to the fight IBM and Apple had last year over Mark Papermaster (though, thanks to the scandal involved in his HP dismissal, much more high profile, obviously). Following Apple’s hiring of Papermaster, a California court ruled that he had to stop work due to his potential knowledge of IBM trade secrets. This was eventually settled, but Papermaster had to sit on the sidelines for several months. (Incidentally, Papermaster and Apple parted ways only a little over a year later.)
We look forward to Oracle’s response to all of this grandstanding — they had to know this was coming. This is the story that won’t go away.
A British newspaper is reporting that producers are hoping to sign Emily Blunt as a villain in Iron Man 3. The report also says that Gywneth Paltrow will not appear in The Avengers.
