Archive for: May 1, 2009

It was the last part of the advertising sector to fall and may be the first to recover, but online advertising is now in a recession. With the four largest Web advertising companies ( Google , Yahoo , Microsoft , and AOL ) having reported March quarter financials, we can get a pretty good sense of how the sector did as a whole. If you add up the online advertising revenues of these four online advertising bellwethers, the total online advertising revenues for the quarter came to $7.9 billion, a 2 percent decline from a year ago and a 7 percent decline from the fourth quarter. The growth of online advertising has been slowing down for a while , but this is the first quarter to experience an actual decline in revenues. Given the poor performance reported by all of these companies during the quarter, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Only Google was able to eke out any annual growth, the rest all saw online advertising revenues drop. The fact that Google’s advertising revenues represents 68 percent of the total and that it saw modest growth helped to dampen the overall decline. On an annual basis, the revenue growth just keeps going down from 18 percent growth in the third quarter to 8 percent in the fourth to this quarter’s 2 percent dip. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, the decline is even steeper. Other than the slight 3.4 percent rebound we saw last quarter in sequential growth, which appears too have been seasonal, the sequential growth rate has been coming down for at least the past six quarters. These numbers represent global advertising revenues, and include network revenues paid to affiliates through AdSense and Yahoo’s ad network. I’ve stripped out Google’s licensing revenues, and for the other companies include ...

The best hacks don’t necessarily make a gadget any easier to use, or more discrete: they just make them cooler.  That’s why this DIY glove phone is so awesome; it takes a Samsung A300 and a leather glove, and crafts a bizarre contraption that you dial by tapping buttons on the fingers, and use by holding your little finger to your mouth and your thumb to your ear. It’s not entirely ridiculous: as well as making Inspector Gadget-style calls, you can also compose SMS text messages with one hand.  Best of all there’s an Instructable telling you how to make your own. In version 2, there’s going to be slightly less wire-explosion on the top, with a box to hold the main board, and a vibrate feature to keep everything nice and discrete.  There’ll also be a more Steampunk theme going on, with copper and rivets, some artwork and perhaps a watch that does the vibro-alert.  We just hope the precarious LCD display stays sticking up. [ via Hack a Day] Relevant Entries on SlashGear Wii Power Glove! Wii Gamer Glove lets you keep hold of your remote Boxing gloves for the Wii - You’re better off without them Vibrating Mitt Chair is shaped like a glove NTT encourage you to reach out and feel your computer

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DIY Glove Phone

The Mophie Juice Pack Air is basically a lighter and more compact model of the extended battery solution of Mophie. The external battery is available for $79.95 USD with the following features: - Ultra-thin, light-weight low-profile design - Virtually doubles the amount of time you have to rock, talk, surf, and send - “Standby Mode” allows you to turn battery boosting on/off - Integrated 4 LED charge status indicator - Available in Black, White, and Purple As you can see, this is an elegant battery solution for your iPhone as it actually becomes part of your iPhone. Post from: Cellphone9

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Mophie Juice Pack Air is lighter, thinner

The Samsung Alias2 is tipped to be hitting Verizon store shelves on May 11th, according to sources at the carrier.  The phone will be the first handset in the US to use E Ink for its keypad: as suggested when the first images of the Alias2 emerged, the dynamic keys can switch from landscape QWERTY to portrait numeric pad. The nature of E Ink means that using it for the Alias2’s keyboard doesn’t have a huge impact on battery life.  E Ink only draws power when changing, not to maintain the display, and as there’s no backlighting necessary in daylight situations that could actually see the Alias2 using less power than a comparable standard etched keyboard. Price is tipped to be $79 following rebates both instant and mail-in, though of course as with the date that’s unconfirmed.  Full specifications for the handset are unknown, but the camera is believed to be 2-megapixel resolution and the display QVGA. [ Images via phoneArena] Relevant Entries on SlashGear Verizon Alias2 leaks with “dynamic keys” Verizon getting Samsung Trance tomorrow Rumor: Samsung F700 “Croix” coming to US? AT&T Tilt, Verizon XV8600 and Samsung i760 Verizon gets Samsung Smooth flip phone

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Samsung Alias2 hitting Verizon May 11th with E Ink keys?

It’s set to be a tough year for smartphones, and there’s plenty of change afoot as companies battle amid tightening customer purse-strings.  The new iPhone is set to arrive over the summer; Palm’s Pre is imminent, and Microsoft have the latest incarnation of Windows Mobile waiting in the wings.  Into that fray, HTC launch the Touch Diamond2 , likely one of the last smartphones to use WM6.1 and an update to what was considered, when it launched a year ago , one of the game-changing handsets of Microsoft’s platform.  Can the HTC Touch Diamond2 maintain that legacy, and will TouchFLO 3D improvements sufficiently mask the aging OS?  SlashGear set to finding out. Physically, the Touch Diamond2 is larger in all dimensions than the original Diamond: 108 x 53 x 13.7mm for the new handset, versus 102 x 51 x 11.35mm for its predecessor.  It’s also heavier - 117.5g versus 110g - though that’s not noticeable in the hand.  Across the front, under the display, there’s a touch-sensitive scroll strip, under which there are four buttons - send, Windows, back and end (which doubles as home) -  while on top there’s the power/lock button.  The left side has the volume control, while the right is blank; the thin stylus draws out of the lower right-hand corner.  Round the back there’s the new 5-megapixel camera, and HTC have abandoned the textured finish of the first generation handset for a flat panel.  Underneath there’s HTC’s ExtUSB port, which carries USB 2.0 and audio signals simultaneously but can also be used with a standard mini-USB plug.  Wireless connectivity includes HSDPA (900/2100MHz) and quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900MHz) together with WiFi b/g and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. Of course, the extra fascia space is given up to a larger touchscreen, now measuring in at 3.2-inches versus the Diamond’s 2.8, ...

Finding the perfect recipe for a dish can be an arduous and time-consuming task, especially if you want to do a search of multiple recipe sites like Epicurious, Gourmet, and the Food Network for the recipe that best fits your needs. Scripps Network, parent company of the Food Network, has soft launched the beta version of its vast recipe search site Food.com in an effort to solve the problem that most cooks face when they sit down at their computers to find a recipe. Food.com basically searches every reputable recipe site, including Food and Wine, Gourmet, the Food Network, Epicurious, Cooking Light, Martha Stewart, Chow.com and more, and gives you a comprehensive list of possible recipes. The site provides requisite information from the original site (photos, ingredients, prep time, serving info) but it also lets you filter choices by types of meal, type of cuisine, main ingredient, cooking technique, publication, prep time and diet. It makes searching for recipes similar to searching for flights on Kayak.com. In order to see the full recipe, you are taken to the site where the recipe is originally hosted. The other feature which is worth noting is the ability to drag a recipe that you like into an “online recipe box.” Food.com also allows you to download a toolbar that allows you to drag recipes from all over the Web into your recipe box. And Food.com saves all of your recent searches and activity in a recipe stream. Another cool feature is the ability to upload a recipe and then share it with Food.com’s database. I did a search for Chicken Marsala on Food.com, Food Network, Epicurious, and Foodista (a Wikipedia for recipes ) and Food.com gave me the highest number of choices in recipes, from a variety of sources, and easily allowed ...

Ask your average Israeli venture capitalist to name a few companies they’re keeping tabs on and Fixya usually makes the short list—so do Benchmark’s Conduit and Sequoia’s Kenshoo . If you haven’t heard of Fixya, the concept is real simple: It’s a post-sale tech support site. On the one side you have users who ask product support questions, and on the other are users who respond and help resolve said problems. In short, Fixya has managed to build itself up as a UGC powerhouse and is systematically milking the cow for all she’s worth. And now it’s adding yet another udder to milk— Product Recommendations and with that it’s delving into new territory, that of pre-purchase support. Not blown away are you? Understandable. That’s because you need to step back to appreciate just how big this here cow can grow and why VC’s are enamored with it. Fixya’s site content now spans a staggering one million products, covering everything from electronics to baby strollers. The site is seeing 15M unique users (mostly English speaking) that generate 60M monthly page views. (ComScore shows half that, with 7.7M uniques visitors a month—see chart below). 250,000 questions are asked and answered per month—75% of the answers are rated as ‘good’ or ‘excellent,’ with 50% answered within 5-6 hours of posting. Interestingly, most questions are about usability issues rather than technical ones. With its new Product Recommendations Fixya is leveraging the large amount of consumer feedback users are providing about products they already own in order to help other users considering buying the same ones. Recommendations are indicated with an overall thumbs-up/down, along with the number of users whose recommendation was rated as a thumbs-up (Fixya weights the user’s vote on product reliability, ease of use and overall value). There are also written ...

Hulu has just released the latest in its series of star-studded ads, this time featuring Dennis Leary in a spot called ‘The Leary Mission’. He plays an alien trying to turn humans’ brains to mush by watching TV online. In the ad he gives the following instructions: “Now I need you to take your stubby little human fingers and hit this button on Hulu. Then you can share those TV shows on your bliggety blogs and your Facey-spaceys and your Tweety pages for all of your bookwormy anti-Boobtubey friends.” How could we resist putting the ad on our own bliggety blog: As I’ve noted before , while Hulu doesn’t seem to be taking itself too seriously with these ads (how many other brands portray themselves as alien plots?), they may well play a key role in Hulu’s long term success. The TV shows and movies offered by Hulu are already popping up on competitors like TV.com , and more recently YouTube, though the latter is still quite a ways behind. Hulu dominates in terms of selection for now, especially with Disney’s recent stake in the site (CBS, which owns TV.com, is now the lone major network holdout). But there’s still a good chance that these sites will converge and feature a near-identical library down the line. Hulu continues to refine its user experience, perfecting its search engine and streamlining its player to be as user friendly as popular. But nice design only goes so far, especially when the others can easily copy it. So Hulu is trying making itself a household name, becoming the de facto leader both in selection and brand recognition while the other guys barely have their foot in the door. So far, it seems to be working - Hulu is the number three video site ...

After the “Inner Circle” screenshots from this morning, we now have the first full review of the HTC Snap.  The company’s latest candybar QWERTY handset , the Snap has a compact 2.4-inch non-touchscreen display, dualband UMTS/HSPA and WiFi b/g, and is HTC’s attempt to take on RIM’s popular BlackBerry line. On the positive side, the keyboard is particularly good, and Inner Circle “just works” - though that could be, they say, because it’s a relatively simplistic feature, pulling out emails from preset correspondents.  The camera is functional, though nothing more, and Windows Mobile 6.1 is its usual dreary self. In the end, though, Smartphone Daily reckon the Snap is unlikely to have the same “crossover appeal” as rival handsets like the BlackBerry Curve or Nokia E71.  That’s perhaps not unusual for a Windows Mobile device, though we bet Microsoft (and HTC, for that matter) would prefer otherwise.  The HTC Snap will go on sale this summer in Europe, with its S522 counterpart reaching the US at the same time. Relevant Entries on SlashGear Sony Ericsson Z550 FlipStart mini-laptop gets piggyback camera Archos 5 Snap On TV DVB-T tuner reviewed HTC Snap “Inner Circle” screenshots The Really Cool keyboard is kinda full of itself

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HTC Snap reviewed: great keyboard but lacks crossover appeal

I’m vaguely suspicious about something called the Yinlips G80 but, judging by MP4 Nation’s review , the touchscreen MID/PMP might actually fill the slot that the SmartQ 5 MID proved unable to .  A 4.3-inch QVGA resolution touchscreen with a clamshell design, the G80 has WiFi for browsing and internet radio, plus USB host support and two 1.3-megapixel cameras. Video review of the Yinlips G80 after the cut That means you can plug in USB devices such as flash drives, external hard-drives and input peripherals, boosting the G80’s 4GB of standard storage (via microSD card) or making browsing and usage more straightforward via a full-sized keyboard and mouse.  We have Windows CE 5.0 to thank for that, which seems to cope well with the Samsung ARM 533MHz processor, and battery life manages 4hrs WiFi browsing or 5-6hrs of internet radio. Audio playback isn’t the best - there’s a low-level hiss in the background - and video quality is limited by the screen’s resolution, but browsing is fair, especially with mobile versions of sites.  Plus, because of its CE roots, there’s flexibility to load new apps and readily tweak the setup.  Not bad for under $160 through importers. Part 1: Click here to view the embedded video. Part 2: Click here to view the embedded video. Relevant Entries on SlashGear Monster Remote Video Review Vaio UX90PS (16GB Flash) Reviewed Verizon V640 EVDO ExpressCard Reviewed Xun Chi 138 absurdly small cellphone video Treo 500v Reviewed

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Yinlips G80 PMP/MID gets video reviewed