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
Discover Which iPhone Apps Your Friends Are Using
It seems like everyone has an iPhone or at least an iPod Touch these days, and we’re all anxious to share our personal favs and app horror stories with our friends. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an easy way to compare our app cheat sheets, until now.
LivingSocial, the site that lets you share and organize your favorite things from a wide variety of categories, has ramped up their offerings to include an area dedicated to iPhone apps. The new addition offers members an easy way stay in sync with the iPhone apps their friends love and hate.
Whether you’re using the Facebook app or the LivingSocial site, the new app-centric features keep you current on what apps your friends have tried, reviewed, and rated. And from their lists, you can also add your own rating, share your perspective, or purchase apps of interest.
The Facebook application also has an activity feed with real-time updates from your pals new reviews or additions. Plus you can create app lists, choose to add your activity to your profile, comment on your friend’s activity, manage all your iPhone apps in one place, export your list to CSV, or create a widget to use elsewhere.
Unfortunately you will have to manually add your iPhone apps, but once you do you can see related/recommended apps based on your preferences, so it’s pretty quick to get a decent personal repository going. And should you need more LivingSocial on the road, there’s also a complimentary iPhone app which debuted back in October.
(Via Mashable!.)
The Most Ticketed Cars on the Road
ISO Quality Planning, a company specializing in helping insurance companies identify risk, has compiled a list of the most heavily ticketed vehicles on the road, and lead feet everywhere can check it out.
Photo by davidsonscott15.
The group analyzed traffic data on 1.7 million drivers and established the probability of a driver of a given line of vehicles being ticketed. The Hummer and Scion tC dominated the list, receiving 463% and 460% over the average, respectively. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Jaguar XJ sedan and the Chevrolet Suburban attracted a mere 11% and 16% of expected tickets. Given that both the Hummer and the Jaguar are high-cost vehicles, it flips the idea that a huge price tag automatically means more police attention.
The president of ISO Quality Planning Raj Bhat offered this theory when questioned about the Hummer’s ranking on the list:
‘The sense of power that Hummer drivers derive from their vehicle may be directly correlated with the number of violations they incur, or perhaps Hummer drivers, by virtue of their driving position, are less likely to notice road hazards, signs, pedestrians and other drivers.’
Whether Hummer drivers truly have a subconscious ownership of the road, or if it’s just hard to blend into traffic when you’re speeding in a 4-plus-ton rig, is grounds for another study altogether. While the surest way to avoid seeing the blue and red lights is to follow all traffic regulations and being a safe and courteous driver, it’s worth considering at car-buying time that the model you’re looking at carries a strong potential for drawing the attention of law enforcement. If, despite your best driving, you end up bright lights of a traffic stop, check out our tips on how to beat a speeding ticket. For more details on the ticket chart, check out the MSN roundup below, or our gearhead sibling Jalopnik’s own take on the results.
(Via Lifehacker.)
New Traffic Light Prototype
Art Lebedev has released its Luxofor traffic light prototype that takes a totally different route – it uses a square lens that light up thanks to extremely bright diodes, making it much more visible to all road users (pedestrians and drivers alike). According to Art Lebedev, the use of square light is able to fill up the same space taken up by a round lens more completely. Too bad this is but a concept at this point in time, so it remains to be seen whether their ideas will be accepted by road safety councils and local authorities in the future. Judging by their past pricing structure and hard economic times, we think we might be stuck with round traffic lights for a long time to come.
(Via Ubergizmo.)
Revision3 Reports Tripled Earnings for 2008
Kevin Rose’s podcast network powerhouse Revision3 announced their financial returns for 2008, and they paint a rosey picture for online video. It also helps fill in a little bit of the gaps I and the rest of us were left wondering about following the cancellation of several shows on the network earlier in October.
Apple Confirms New MacBook Pro
Apple has more or less confirmed word that new MacBook Pros will be rolling out, after accidentally publishing a support document in PDF format on its site which was specifically meant for the ‘MacBook/MacBook Pro (Late 2008)’ models. There is no word on what the document is about, although chances are it is a service document when replacing the display on the new MacBooks. Ah well, all the agony of waiting will be over come October 14th as Apple dishes out the official mumbo jumbo for all and sundry to drool over.
(Via Ubergizmo.)
So, What Was Google Up To in the Past 10 Years?
The best way to have people obsessing about your birthday is to never tell anyone the exact date. That’s what Google’s been doing; we pretty much know that big G’s 10th anniversary is in September, but the exact time is unknown.
And, while some have written about it almost a month ago, only now Google is officially ‘celebrating’ its birthday by releasing a special tenth anniversary page, featuring an interactive timeline of the company’s history.
They’ve also launched Project 10100, described as ‘a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.’
The project works as follows: you send Google your idea by October 20th; it’s done by simply filling out a submission form, add a 30-second video if you like. Public voting on ideas begins on January 27th, 20 semi finalists will be chosen, and an advisory board will then select up to five final ideas. Google will commit 10 million dollars to make these ideas work.
Check out the introductory video below.
(Via Mashable!.)
Comcast announces 250GB bandwidth cap
Today, Comcast updated their Acceptable Use Policy to cover exactly what they feel is ‘excessive use’. When the Comcast cap starts October 1st, they will contact people breaking the 250GB per month transfer limit and ask them to curb their usage. While it’ll be hard for most people to hit this limit, we still wonder if policing 0.1% of the customer base is worth the effort. At least Comcast has bothered to state the limit instead of just secretly rewriting the meaning of the word ‘unlimited’ like some providers.
[via DSLReports]
60 Million Apps Sold at iTunes Store, There is a Kill Switch, Says Steve Jobs
It’s been a month since the iTunes App Store went live, and in an interview with the Wall St Journal, Steve Jobs has put the apps downloads figure at over 60 million. With the mix of free and paid apps, that brought Apple around $30 million. That’s obviously encouraged Steve: He’s enthusiastic that maybe ‘it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time’ adding that he’s ‘never seen anything like this in my career for software.’
And in a slightly unusual candid comment, for Steve anyway, he’s admitted that the apps won’t be making Apple much profit—instead future sales hopes are pinned on the applications tempting people to buy more iPhones and iPod touches. ‘Phone differentiation used to be about radios and antennas and things like that,’ he argues, suggesting that now the differentiation is about software.
Clearly the app store has been a success so far for Apple and the developers: The top 10 made close to $9 million in one month. What about the infamous ‘I Am Rich’ app? Apple decided to pull it as the result of a ‘judgment call.’
Steve also confirmed the existence of the kill switch for malicious apps, despite last week’s news to the contrary. ‘Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull.’ And you can’t argue with that logic. [WSJ]
(Via Gizmodo.)
Recent Comments