Just a quick post to remind those of you who wanted to participate to our contest that there is only 5 days left before the closing date.
We’re giving away more than $1300 in prizes, most of it in cash, and there’s only about 25 entries so far. This means that right now, people have a 1 in 4 chances of winning something.
So what are you waiting for? Start writing!
Yep, that’s 17,000 watts of audio power, delivered right into your eardrums. At this point, I think that the word “loud” is largely irrelevant because this is WAY BEYOND loud. Not only will the guy listening to this audio system will turn deaf after a few weeks of cranking up the tunes, but his car will probably be falling apart in a year or two because of the vibrations.
Yes folks, the team in charge of Google’s Gmail just announced their popular email service will now support the IMAP protocol.
This will allow Gmail users to send and receive mail directly through traditional mail applications, such as Outlook, Apple Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird.
Yes, I know, Gmail already supports POP, so why should you change your local mail application settings to use IMAP? The answer is simple: Unlike POP, IMAP offers bidirectional communications between the local and the remote mail clients, so if you delete a message in Thunderbird, then go on vacation and log in to your Gmail account via a Web browser, the action you accomplished at home will reflect inside the web interface.
Most users do not have access to this new feature yet, but it shouldn’t be very long until it becomes available for everybody.
Sometimes you just can’t be neutral. That, apparently, is the reasoning behind Comcast’s recently revealed actions regarding several peer-to-peer applications, including BitTorrent.
In case you haven’t been following the story, here’s a quick rundown.
It started five days ago when the Associated Press ran a story called “Comcast Blocks Some Internet Traffic.” In this story, the reporter, Peter Svensson, points out that Comcast was blocking P2P traffic by interfering with certain packet streams.
Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer — it comes from Comcast. If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: “Sorry, I have to hang up. Good bye.”
This may have never been major news except for two things: First, back in August, Comcast denied that it was doing this exact thing, Second, Ubuntu 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon, was released six days ago. And when the #1 Linux distribution in America is released, you can bet your sweet bippy that the FTP mirrors for it will get hammered, leading people to consider using BitTorrent to get it. Comcast users had problems getting Gutsy.
For me, this HDD USB dock is a dream come true. In the past, how many times did I have to open a computer just to install an old, unused drive, then recover just a handful of files?
Too many times.
Sure, external drive enclosures exist to facilitate the task, but there’s nothing out there that’s as quick and easy as this hard drive dock. Compatible with both Windows and Macs, this thing only costs $46.79 and you can plug in any 2.5 or 3.5-inch SATA drive, just like you would do in good old days, not unlike those eight-track cartridges.
2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA HDD Stage Rack (GeekStuff4U)
Is your bartender giving you the booze you paid for? The following video shows how some people are getting ripped off by crooked bar owners.
Being the good geeks you are, you should all know Sandisk, a corporation that has been manufacturing diverse flash memory products and MP3 players for years now.
But like all companies, Sandisk has to take steps to innovate if they want to keep consumers looking their way. Monday, the company released the Sansa TakeTV, a flash-based USB device that will let you transfer video content directly from your PC to your television, eliminating the need for large set-top boxes. The Sansa TakeTV is both small and compatible with all current television models on the market.
The way the device works is insanely simple:
The Sandisk TakeTV is compatible with Windows Vista, Windowx XP, Linux and Mac. The 4GB version, which offers approximately five hours of video playback, goes for $100, and the 8GB version, which offers twice as much, goes for $150.
Even if I am a French Canadian guy, I rarely browse the French blogosphere. There’s something about “la langue de molière” that is so anti-tech that the hairs on my arms stand up whenever I hear some of the bogus expressions French people come up with to designate technical concepts.
However, there is one exception to this, and it is Loïc Le Meur’s blog (which, incidentally, also has an English version). Here is a small excerpt from his English “about” page:
Loïc is a well-known serial French entrepreneur who created and sold 4 Internet startups, also blogger and vlogger. Loic’s blog is #1 in France, read by more than 250 000 unique visitors per month, he made hundreds of video podcasts including the only podcast with President Nicolas Sarkozy).
A few weeks ago, Loïc launched a new online service, Seesmic, which could be described as some kind of video Twitter on steroids.
When it launches, his new concept will probably revolutionize the world of online video content as we know it. But don’t take my word for it, watch the following videos and make your own impression.
And here’s another interesting video that shows how discussions are handled between people in Seesmic:
These clips are a part of a series of videos that Loic films to document the launch of his new startup. The whole series can be seen on Seesmic’s front page. This should be particularly interesting for those of you who desire to learn a thing or two on how a new business evolves in the first few days of its existence.
By David Peralty
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
I have three stories about Facebook today, one focusing on its ads, one on its apps, and one on its popularity.
The first comes to us from TechCrunch and talks about how Facebook Flyers can allow you to target your advertising on the site to certain demographics. Here is a bit from the post:
Flyers let you target by country, city, gender, age range, political views, relationship status, education level, workplace affiliation, or any keyword in a person’s stated interests. It’s that last option that could be really powerful. For instance, simply putting in different keywords into the Facebook Flyers ad-targeting page reveals that of the 19,951,900 Facebook members in the U.S., 101,000 are into rock climbing, 411,000 are into cooking, and 706,160 people are into traveling. Such targeting could theoretically allow advertisers to reach exactly the people they want, instead of the scatter-shot approach favored today.
This is something that many websites with a diverse membership have been trying to effectively do, and while some have succeeded, I think that this might become the most detailed version of targeted advertising.
The second story comes from a new service site called APPMRKT, which allows people to buy and sell Facebook applications. Currently, there are only five advertisements for applications on their sales page, with features ranging from a 924 user GTalk application that would allow a web based Google instant messenger client in your Facebook page, to a 52,000 user Friends Quiz application. Prices also range from a buy it now of $1200 to $20,000 depending on the popularity of the application and its included features.
The third, and final story comes from TechCrunch once again, this time focusing on its popularity, and growth. It seems that while MySpace is still the most popular social networking site, Facebook is coming up fast in rankings.
From the article:
New figures released by HitWise show that in Australia at least, MySpace is now losing market share as the Facebook juggernaut continues. Traffic to MySpace in Australia has dropped 5% as Facebook has tripled its traffic in the 10 weeks to October 13, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Anyone want to take a guess at how long it will be before Facebook overtakes Fox’s MySpace?
Yesterday, the folks at Apple released a great guided tour covering some of the new features of Leopard, their latest release of OSX. As it always is with Apple’s presentations, this one was very informative and excellently done. Videos after the jump.