You may not be familiar with the company Tronical but you will know their work because they are responsible for Gibson’s Robot Guitar tuning systems. Well judging by this video it appears that Tronical are about to launch some standalone systems that can be retrofit to pretty much any guitar be it a Les Paul [...]
Category: News
Steve Jobs 1955 – 2011
With Steve Jobs’ passing, we have lost one of the greatest technological innovators of our time.
Once known as Silicon Valley’s enfant terrible, Steve Jobs had gained the status of an iconic visionary, after the unparalleled success of the iPod (with iTunes), the iPhone and more recently, the iPad.
Today, after bringing his company to the top and stepping down as CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs has died at age 56.
Here is the message that Tim Cook sent to all Apple employees:
Team,
I have some very sad news to share with all of you. Steve passed away earlier today.
Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.
We are planning a celebration of Steve’s extraordinary life for Apple employees that will take place soon. If you would like to share your thoughts, memories and condolences in the interim, you can simply email rememberingsteve@apple.com.
No words can adequately express our sadness at Steve’s death or our gratitude for the opportunity to work with him. We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much.
Tim
All Our Lightbulbs Will Have IP Addresses
When we remarked that home automation technology was a reason we needed iPv6 technology, we weren’t kidding. If Netherlands-based NXP has it their way, we’ll all be using networked LED lightbulbs, each with their own IPv6 address. More »
(Via Gizmodo.)
No Agenda – Show Banned by NASA
This Episode’s Executive Producer: Carrie Schön
Art By: Jesse Anderson
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(Via Dvorak Uncensored.)
Entire GeoCities archive now available as a torrent
GeoCities closed in October of 2009. If you miss the barrage of animated gifs, under-construction signs, and animated backgrounds, then you’ll be happy to hear that the Archive Team has collected the entire contents of the GeoCities archive and is giving it out freely as a torrent for anybody to download. Given the size of GeoCities, it surprises me a bit that the entire torrent is only 641GB. It’s not even 1TB?! I guess animated gifs, rainbows, and midi music doesn’t take up a whole lot of space. But for what it’s worth, this is such an awesome torrent worth download (I just wish I had the bandwidth to spare to get this).
(Via Doobybrain.com.)
Verizon iPhone confirmed
Fortune, in an article today describing the long and winding relationship between Apple’s Steve Jobs and Verizon’s Ivan Seidenberg, claims they’ve confirmed a Verizon iPhone is coming in ‘early 2011″.
According to the story, Verizon passed on the iPhone in 2005 because Steve Jobs wanted too much control over where it was sold, too high a cut of service fees, and wanted to take on too much of the customer relationship. When Seidenberg tried to revisit the idea in 2007, just prior to the original iPhone launch, Jobs had concerns about CDMA not being a global standard. 4G LTE plans weren’t enough to jumpstart the discussions back then.
Lowell McAdam, who will succeed Seidenberg at some point next year, contacted Jobs again in late 2007, when AT&T’s network was already suffering under iPhone demand, to make sure they ‘weren’t missing something,’ something which McAdam says Jobs agreed with in principle.
It took until October 2010 for Apple and Verizon to come together at all, and only for iPad 3G + MiFi bundle sales, but it was an important first step. And the iPhone?
people familiar with its development say it is a fait accompli. Verizon, sources say, will sell its own version of the iPhone 4, which will work on Verizon’s CDMA-based 3G network. Unfortunately for globe trotters, the first version of the phone likely won’t be built to work outside the U.S. — it probably won’t carry a special chip that can turn it into a ‘world phone.’ However, it may have some of the features on the iPad distributed in Verizon’s stores, like live TV for customers of the FiOS cable service.
The whole article is worth a read, and also includes a lot about Verizon’s relationship with Google and Eric Schmidt, and their current use of Android as an alternative to iPhone (though in the current quarter it hasn’t brought in anywhere near the amount of net subscribers).
For those keeping score at home, however, we now have Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Fortune on record confirming the iPhone is coming to Verizon. Are you starting to believe?
(Via The iPhone Blog.)
HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
We’ve already talked about using RSS as a business intelligence tool, but how do you choose the right software to get maximum benefit out of your news reading? With a number of options and myriad features on multiple platforms, it can be a daunting task to even get started.
In this article we’ll take a look at some of what you might consider when shopping for a news reader. Do you need cutting edge, up to the second information at your fingertips? You might want to look at ‘ticker’ style applications that scroll new headlines continuously. Or maybe you need to monitor a large number of feeds but are primarily interested in a subset of specific keywords or topics. In that case, you’d want to look for an RSS reader that supports a Smart Folders or Saved Searches feature.
If you need to keep news feeds in sync across multiple platforms, from Mac to Windows or from the web to a desktop or mobile clients, there are solutions out there for you too. Many of these readers also help you share individual articles and posts with your colleagues and collaborators as well. Let’s take a look at some of the options available online, on your desktop and on your phone.
Online
The reigning king of online newsreaders is currently Google Reader. One of the advantages of an online RSS reader over a desktop version is accessibility: you can use it from any web browser, even if it’s not your primary computer, and all your feeds will be exactly the way you left them. Of course, one of the disadvantages of a web-based newsreader is that you typically need an active internet connection to make use of them, whereas a desktop client can download feed items you can later read offline.
One of the areas Google Reader excels, however, is in its ability to also sync with various desktop and mobile clients. Not only does that give you some measure of offline access to your feeds (as does installing and enabling Google Gears), but it prevents you from having to sort through some of the feeds you’ve already read elsewhere when you switch from your computer to your phone, or even from web to desktop client. We’ll look at some of the desktop and mobile clients Google Reader syncs with in the next two sections.
Another potential option in this category is NetVibes. Though it’s officially classified as a Start Page moreso than an RSS reader, it can import and monitor news feeds along with a number of other apps or widgets designed to bring various types of information into one at-a-glance interface. NetVibes offers far more flexibility and customizability than a straight up RSS reader, but the downside is it’s not the best solution to monitoring a large volume of feeds. Google also has a similar product dubbed iGoogle worth checking out as well.
Desktop
If keeping news feeds in sync between a Macintosh and a Windows computer is part of your requirements, you’ll want to take a look at two industry-leading news readers on their respective platforms: NetNewsWire and FeedDemon. Both of these readers sync with Google Reader, making cross-platform feed reading a lot more painless. Even if you don’t need cross-platform compatibility, both readers are full-featured and worthy contenders for your desktop feed reading needs. Both offer the ability to watch for specific keywords or set up saved searches that automatically bring up important topics in your niche to the forefront of your news reading sessions.
Another worthy option on the Mac is Shrook a free RSS reader that syncs back to the web to keep your feeds in line whether you’re reading from your Mac, iPhone, or any computer with an internet connection. On Windows, take a look at the free and open source RSSOwl.
For a news ticker type experience on either the Mac or PC, check out Snackr, an Adobe AIR client that continually scrolls headlines from your feeds across your desktop. This type of news reader can be handy for those who want to be able to see stories at a glance without having to switch back and forth between applications or browser tabs.
Mobile
On the iPhone, Reeder is a solid mobile client that syncs with Google Reader. Newsstand is another iPhone client that does so, along with the ability to easily export or send stories to a number of external sources like email, Twitter, delicious and more. There’s also a special iPhone-formatted version of Google Reader you can simply use in the Safari mobile browser that works quite well.
On the Android platform, FeedR is a great option for reading feeds, with a free demo version and a reasonable $0.99 version that removes certain intermediary dialog boxes. You can import feeds from an OPML file and even cache feeds for offline reading as well. For a solid client that syncs with Google Reader, check out NewsRob.
Palm webOS users might want to see if the iPhone-formatted Google Reader works for your needs; it’s not specifically customized for Palm devices yet still tends to work rather well. BlackBerry users can also access Google Reader in the phone browser, or check out FreeRange or Viigo. Windows Mobile users can also use the browser method to access Google Reader, or try the free NewsBreak Lite or YoMoMedia, which syncs with its own web-based feed reading client as well.
Shop Around
Don’t hesitate to spend some time shopping around and trying several clients before settling on your feed reader of choice — or even continuing to use more than one at a time. Thanks to the OPML standard, it should be a relatively simple process to export and import your feeds from one client to another. This means that building a master list of news feeds in one client is highly worthwhile, since it can travel with you even if you move to a new RSS reader down the road.
(Via Mashable!.)
Google Wave
Google Wave is the company’s ‘online tool for real-time communication and collaboration.’ It’s basically a media rich messaging client that allows users to embed documents, videos, and pictures directly into conversations. The Google API can be used to build live social gadgets, such as live real-times games (chess, etc.). Continue reading for a video presentation.
(Via Tech Blog.)
Facebook Lite Launches Internationally
Following the US rollout last night, Facebook Lite, the lightweight version of Facebook that hides distractions like Apps, is now available internationally.
As of this morning, our European editors are able to access the service at lite.facebook.com. Meanwhile, European Twitter users also report that the service is working for them. Mashable commenters in Singapore, the UK, Sweden, Estonia and many other countries report that it’s working for them too.
Some claim that if the site doesn’t work initially, you can get access by setting your language to US English.
Are you able to access Facebook Lite yet? Let us know in the comments.
(Via Mashable!.)
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