Archive for: October 17, 2009

By Chris Scott Barr One contest is over, but it’s already time for another to begin. This time around we have a Vusix iWear AV310 to give away. We haven’t done any formal reviews on this particular item, but I have checked our a few of their other iWear products in the past. The device is essentially worn like a pair of glasses (along with a pair of integrated earbuds) and hooked up to some sort of video input. This can be an iPod, game console, DVD player or just about anything. The unit has a pair of tiny screens that gives you the the same feeling as watching a 52-inch TV. If you spend a lot of time commuting, or just like to escape for a bit, this could be a fun way to do it. The best part is that you can get one for free. How can you win one? I’m glad you asked. We have a lot of readers just like you that stop by OhGizmo on a regular basis. We love that you enjoy our work enough to keep reading and subscribing to our RSS and Twitter feeds. However, when it comes to comments and discussions, things are a little quiet around here. So with this giveaway, we’re going to encourage you to comment on new articles as you see them. The contest is going to run until November 1st. On the following Monday, I will pick a random article written in the month of October, and select a comment. That person will receive the Vuzix iWear AV310. Simple, right? There are, of course some stipulations. First, it’s only open to US readers. Second, in order for your comment to be selected, it has to be relevant to the article it was left on. ...

By Chris Scott Barr With today being Friday, there is a little bit of business to attend to. I have a pair of cases that need to be given away to two of you lucky readers. After sifting through dozens of comments, I selected mattmitch and jessicat to receive the two cases.  Congratulations to both of you! Stay tuned for more exciting giveaways here at OhGizmo! [ NZXT ]

Originally posted here:
Announcing The NZXT Case Winners

Apple confirmed Friday that it is allowing App Store purchases from within free applications. Until now, the company had only allowed purchases from paid applications on the iPhone and iPod touch. Insiders agreed that Apple has made a prudent move. John Muchow, founder of 3SixtySoftware.com and iPhoneDeveloperTips.com, wrote in an e-mail that the idea is solid. “I think this is a fantastic update and several clients have already contacted me to talk further about how to best leverage this capability into both existing applications as well as applications on the drawing board,” Muchow wrote. A Smoother Path To Sales The key is efficiency. Lee Barney, a professor of computer information at Brigham Young University in Idaho, said the new approach will lead to significant simplification for customers and developers. He is the creator of the QuickConnect Framework — a way for application developers to employ JavaScript libraries on hybrid projects. “It means that I could distribute one app that is both the demo app and the fully functional app,” he said. The new policy may draw more corporate application developers to the App Store, Barney said. “Right now, a lot of developers are single individuals working out of their homes,” he said. “This could encourage corporate group development. A company could produce an app and distribute it. It gives them an easy revenue stream. It makes it easier for customers to contribute to the revenue stream because they don’t have to download the paid version.” Everybody Wins Everybody is a winner, said Derek Kerton, principal analyst for The Kerton Group. “A common business model for software sales is the ‘free-mium’ version, which is giving away a free version in which levels and features can be unlocked at a later time if the customer chooses to purchase. Although this is a ...

Google executives told financial analysts Thursday that revenues rose seven percent year over year to $5.94 billion in the third quarter, easily beating expectations on Wall Street. Net income climbed 27 percent to $1.64 billion, or $5.13 a share, compared to $4.06 per share in the year-earlier period. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the strong results give the search giant the confidence to immediately begin stepping up investments in personnel, acquisitions and innovation. “While there is obviously a lot of uncertainty about the pace of economic recovery, we believe the worst of the recession is behind us and we’re seeing lots of signs of that in all of the industries that we pay attention to,” Schmidt told investors. “We now have the business confidence to invest heavily in the next phase of innovation.” Boosting Search Quality Seeing “huge opportunities ahead,” Schmidt said Google has the resources and expertise to invest in long-term growth. “We’re already stepping up our hiring,” he said, but “the technological precondition for growth, if you will, is this investment in innovation.” One ongoing company goal is to get to the perfect Google search engine. “We made about 120 search-quality improvements in the third quarter with more, of course, coming this quarter, and then we hope every quarter,” Schmidt said. “And we’re working to create much better ads. Many of our advertisers would like to find more ways to spend money with Google if our products would allow them to do that — and we want to make that possible.” Google’s investment push includes the development of new ad formats, such as the local listings the company is already beta-testing in San Francisco and San Diego, Calif. For this, users basically sign up with just a simple one-page form without having to deal with keywords or manage ...

In a move to compete with brick-and-mortar retailers this holiday shopping season, Amazon.com on Thursday announced new shipping options that aim to get goods to consumers much faster with local express delivery in seven major cities. The new option gives customers what many have clamored for since the early days of e-commerce: Same-day delivery. Amazon will initially offer the service in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Seattle and Washington, D.C. The company said it will extend the service to Chicago, Indianapolis and Phoenix in coming months. Same-Day Convenience “We want to make online shopping as convenient as possible,” said Girish Lakshman, vice president of transportation at Amazon. “We’re continuously working to speed up delivery times, and customers receiving items on the same day as ordered is an exciting step. Now, if a customer needs a last-minute present for a birthday or wants a copy of their book-club book before the weekend starts, they can order from Amazon instead of the hassle of a last-minute trip to the mall.” Amazon’s entire online inventory won’t qualify for same-day delivery, but the e-commerce giant is making thousands of items available for local express delivery. Customers will pay $19 per item for the privilege, unless they are Amazon Prime members. Amazon Prime members pay $6 per item. Amazon Prime is a $79 annual membership program that gives customers faster shipping. Of course, Amazon does have some rules and restrictions for its new same-day delivery service. In most cities where the service is offered, consumers need to order by 10 or 10:30 a.m. Las Vegas consumers can order as late as 11 a.m., and folks in Seattle as late as 1 p.m. One-Upping In-Store Pickup Amazon has also expanded Saturday delivery options. Items ordered before the cutoff time on Thursday using two-day shipping ...

Microsoft is preparing to finally close the book on the dark chapter called Windows Vista next week, as it officially releases its next-generation operating system, Windows 7. One of the biggest problems with Vista was the hardware cost for enterprises. Only six percent of PCs were capable of running Vista’s advanced features at the time of its release, Gartner reported in 2006. Only half of PCs were capable of running even the minimal Vista installation. The situation is much improved today, Softchoice reported in a research note Thursday. The firm said 88 percent of PCs are capable of running Windows 7 — and 65 percent can run the operating system’s advanced features. “We’ve seen a sea change compared to the landscape in which Vista was introduced,” Softchoice Services Development Manager Dean Williams wrote in the note. “The natural PC refresh cycle has more or less eliminated system requirements as a potential stumbling block to deploying Windows 7.” The migration question is about “understanding the benefits of switching” and “implementing a plan to minimize any potential deployment headaches,” Williams wrote. Economy puts drag on migration Not so fast, Michael Cherry, vice president of research for Windows operating systems at Directions on Microsoft, said in a telephone interview. “Microsoft finally has a product corporate customers want, but I’m not convinced (enterprises) have the budgets to upgrade.” In the current economic situation, “IT budgets are under increasing pressure, IT is under pressure to do more with less,” Cherry said. “If the economy wasn’t so bad, you might have enterprises doing massive rollouts, but in this environment I believe they’ll do more of a rolling rollout.” Corporations won’t rush out to buy new machines for Windows 7, nor will they rush to upgrade older machines running Windows XP. “They’ll remove prohibitions from acquiring machines ...

You may not have noticed, but searching for F My Life or “FML” on the iTunes App Store yields more than one — heck, more than three results. All are free, but each app provides varied ways of viewing everyone’s favorite “F” website (and some provide variations of advertising models too) but really my favorite among the bunch is the one by “kreactive technologies” due to the way it allows your to customize your FML searches by top categories or by timeline. [photo from iTunes Store] Post from: Cellphone9

Here is the original: 
FML: In All its App Store Glory

Google will roll out a new online service for booksellers in the first half of 2010. Dubbed Google Editions, the service will allow readers to buy books from various e-book vendors and read them on a broad array of devices, from cell phones to e-readers. Consumers will be able to purchase e-books directly from Google or from existing e-book stores such as Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. Books sold through Google Editions will be hosted by Google, so they will be searchable in a web browser. The store will launch with about 500,000 e-books through partnerships with publishers that have digital rights to the works they represent. Google so far has no plans to manufacturer a dedicated e-book reader that carries its brand name. Google-Powered Devices Google doesn’t need to develop its own e-reader, just as it didn’t need to develop its own smartphone to become a player in the wireless market. Google’s Android operating system, which is technically open source, will be used in many devices, including e-readers, according to Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. For example, Barnes & Noble is venturing into the increasingly popular e-reader market. The Wall Street Journal reported the giant book retailer could roll out an e-reader as early as next month in the U.S. The device will be built on Android. Sterling said the Barnes & Noble reader looks quite polished, though he has only seen images. As Sterling sees it, the Google Editions platform could pose a very strong challenge to Amazon if it builds a large consortium of publishers and related inventory. The technical advantage that it offers is apparent compatibility with any e-reader versus the Amazon Kindle, he noted. “In my current view, Kindle, though a market maker of sorts, is not a sufficiently superior device to dominate the ...

By Andrew Liszewski Instead of fumbling with handles while your hands are dirty, spreading the mess everywhere, Delta’s new Pilar faucets feature the company’s Touch20 Technology which lets you simply tap or touch them to turn the water on or off. The faucets use two capacitive touch sensors in the handle and the spout to detect when you’ve touched them, but are smart enough to know when the handle or spout have been grabbed instead so you can adjust their positions without turning the water on or off. A chrome version of the Pilar faucet will set you back $495 while the stainless steel model is a bit more at $547. [ Delta Pilar Touch Activated Faucet ] VIA [ Popular Science ]

Go here to see the original:
Pilar Touch-Activated Faucets From Delta

Life on FarmVille has had a transformative effect on Laura Phillips. For 45 minutes a day, Phillips, a 41-year-old marketing contractor in the Silicon Valley town of Morgan Hill, Calif., gets lost in the digital game on Facebook, managing crops and animals on her virtual farm. “This is my escape from city life; it’s my relaxation,” she says. “Since Day One, I’ve been a complete addict. I lose sleep at night, worrying about my farm.” Phillips is one of more than 56 million monthly users of the game created by Zynga, a company that specializes in social games for platforms including Facebook, MySpace, iPhone and Bebo. FarmVille had just 354 users on June 20, the day after it launched. It’s widely believed to be the largest and fastest-growing social game ever. FarmVille’s addictive qualities tend to sneak up on the casual interloper. Then again, so has its entire genre: Games are the killer app on social networks. Tens of millions of consumers are opting to play simple, quick games on Facebook, MySpace and elsewhere — often via their mobile devices. An estimated 100 million people are recent devotees of social games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Sorority Life and Bejeweled. The gamers, many of whom eschewed traditional video-game consoles, have spurred revenue for Facebook. The 5-year-old social-networking site recently announced it was operating in the black — a major feat in an industry beset by doubts about its ability to be profitable. Meanwhile, the radical change in the way Americans play games has had a ripple effect on the $45 billion gaming industry. Developers large and small are designing easy-to-play diversions in hopes of capitalizing on the craze. For some, such as Nintendo and Electronic Arts (EA), it’s a return to simpler graphics and elementary objectives. Social games are expanding ...

Here's one more bell and whistle for Phanfare Photon: Now you can wirelessly print any picture stored online onto an HP printer in your home or office. Phanfare Photon is the pcmag.com Editors' Choice smartphone utility for iPhones that automatically uploads iPhone pictures to the Phanfare photo sharing site.

Photon also lets you view on your iPhone or iPod Touch any pictures on your site, not just the ones shot with an iPhone. The enhancement lets you send any Phanfare picture to any "newish HP printer" on a wired or wireless network that also has a wireless (WiFi) segment, according to Phanfare CEO Andrew Ehrlichson. You can make prints up to 5 x 7 inches this way.

The process works this way: When the user selects an image to print, Phanfare transmits a 1.5-MB version used for slideshows (there's also a full-resolution version stored only) to the iPhone over the cellular network. From there, it travels via WiFi, either directly to a wireless HP printer, or to a wireless access point that has a recent-vintage HP printer attached.

Phanfare is an online photo and video sharing site with a twist. Where Shutterfly and Flickr are free, Phanfare charges $50 a year for unlimited storage of videos and photos at any resolution. The $50 also buys the user (and viewers) no ads or teasers to order reprints or souvenirs, and the ability to view slideshows fullscreen, with nothing else onscreen, not even the frames of your Web browser showing.

...

Is eBay pulling down auctions selling Windows 7 party packs?

Sellers on the online auction site are reporting that auctions featuring the party kits for the release of the upcoming operating system have been removed from the site.

A Microsoft spokesman said that the Signature Edition of Windows 7 Ultimate, which was included in the party packs, is clearly marked as not for re-sale.

"While we cannot confirm why eBay has removed these specific auctions, Microsoft routinely works with online auction sites such as eBay to remove infringing auctions," he said.

An eBay spokeswoman said the company would look into the listings in question.

EBay currently has four listings for Windows 7 party packs. Two of those listings do not include the OS, one of them includes it in the price, and another claims that people are bidding on the extras with the OS thrown in as a gift.