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| Posted: 14 May 2009 03:37 PM PDT Google fails, the world panics. Credit: star5112 via Flickr. Imagine your 20 favorite people. Now imagine that three of them had their hands chopped off. Aaaargh! That's kind of what happened to, well, the world this morning when Google went down or performed excruciatingly slowly for 14% of users. People panicked. They tried to figure out what was going on. They complained. Even in German! If you still can't imagine three of your 20 friends missing their hands, maybe this chart will illuminate the situation. Traffic from the top 10 North American Internet service providers to Google networks fell off a cliff, showing that if people can't Google, they're not as interested in the Web. Thankfully, Google restored its services after just an hour or so, blaming Asia for the outage. Imagine if you were trying to fly from New York to San Francisco, but your plane was routed through an airport in Asia. And a bunch of other planes were sent that way too, so your flight was backed up and your journey took much longer than expected. That's basically what happened to some of our users today for about an hour, starting at 7:48 am Pacific time. The blog post by Urs Hoelzle apologized for the outage, reassuring addicted Google users that “all planes are back on schedule now.” – Alana Semuels View original post here:
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| Tweet Later gives Twitter features a shot in the arm Posted: 14 May 2009 02:55 PM PDT
Credit: audreyjm529 via Flickr Twitter's co-founders have for a while been gabbing about charging premium clients for additional features. But one start-up is already making it happen. Tweet Later's flagship feature is the ability to schedule tweets to post at a set time in the future — something that traditional blogging software has had for years. Let's say you're on a transcontinental flight for a day or taking a week's vacation. Instead of a lengthy blackout, you can keep the info flowing by queuing up a series of updates. A number of its other feature seem to overlap with additions Twitter made to the service in its last redesign. But its auto-follow and -unfollow features can be handy: If you're follow-happy, it lets you follow everyone who follows you without pesky manual intervention. Likewise, if followers decide not to receive your tweets anymore, the service quickly drops them from your follow list. So there! The service doesn't, however, skirt Twitter's 2,000-a-day subscribe limit that prevents users from going follow-haywire. With two-thirds of businesses saying they use social media, according to a recent Business Pulse survey, Tweet Later is hoping to profit from offering premium features. For $29.97 per month, users get a dashboard that supports multiple accounts and the grouping of individual users into categories. Granted, many of those tools can be found in desktop software, like TweetDeck or Tweetie. But Tweet Later integrates them into a single Web interface. – Mark Milian View original here:
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| 151.im: Yet another Facebook malware-worm-virus-bug-phishing attack [UPDATED] Posted: 14 May 2009 11:17 AM PDT The Facebook bugs just keep on swarming. If the combination of my Facebook inbox and Twitter chatter is any indication, there’s yet another bug (or whatever you want to call it) floating around on the social networking site. It’s not recent nasty bug Koobface, it’s not mygener.im and, as far as I can tell, it’s not even Boface.BJ. This time the link, which in my case came in messages titled “Hello,” leads to sites with names like 151.im and 121.im. When you navigate to those addresses (and it seems people are, despite the very odd names), you will find a near-exact replica of the Facebook login page. You are, of course, prompted for your login and password. And once you give those, you, sir, have been hooked by the phishermen. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The site has long been known for its resistance to spam: Users can only send messages to one another, so outside solicitations are kept out. But now that a new bug seems to infiltrate Facebook every week or two, the nuisance level of using the site’s messaging system has increased considerably. A reasonable question would be: Is the company doing anything to nip these viral spambugs in the bud before they spread? Update: 11:31 a.m.: Facebook has responded: “This is a phishing attack. We're well aware of it and are already blocking links to these new phishing sites from being shared on Facebook. We're also cleaning up phony messages and Wall posts and resetting the passwords of affected users. We think this is related to the fbaction.net/fbstarter.com campaign of a couple weeks ago. You can read more about how we respond to phishing in our recent blog post here: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=81474932130.” – David Sarno [via LATimes.com]
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| Around the Web 5.14.09: RealNetworks bites back, iPhone slinging banned, WSJ issues Twitter rules Posted: 14 May 2009 09:56 AM PDT
=”"> The Eee Keyboard, coming in June. There's a whole computer in there. Credit: Yoshi5000 via Flickr – The Eee Keyboard has the whole computer built right in, and it's coming in June. Engadget – AT&T restricts the SlingPlayer for iPhone to Wi-Fi connection only. “Slinging” over AT&T's cellular network violates the company's terms of service. SiliconBeat – RealNetworks is suing the six major movie studios, calling antitrust on their resistance to allowing DVD ripping. Bits – With all the hoopla around having sold a billion applications, Apple has made only $20 million-$45 million on its app store. PaidContent.org – According to research on Intel's Atom CPU, the netbook trend seems to be fading. Fast Company – Google just made switching e-mail archives and contacts to Gmail a snap. AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail have reason to be concerned. TechCrunch – Journalists at the Wall Street Journal were served a list of rules about how exactly they can use social media sites, especially Twitter. Silicon Alley Insider – Chris Lesinski Read more:
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| These boots were made for tracking Posted: 14 May 2009 08:30 AM PDT
DARPA, everyone's favorite organization that sounds suspiciously like Dharma, is working on tracking sensors that can be embedded into the sole of a shoe. Micro Inertial Navigation Technology, or MINT for short, is being jointly developed by Case Western University and Intersense (of the Massachusetts Intersenses). These sensors are designed to provide location information in places that satellite-based navigation services fail. Think inside caves in Afghanistan. Intersense currently makes NavShoe™, which is geared for firemen or paramedics lost or trapped during disaster situations. Alas, it's not very accurate. The whizkids at Case Western should be able to improve upon the NavShoe with their "high-resolution, error-correction ground reaction sensor cluster" to make tracking systems suitable for use by Uncle Sam. Hat tip El Reg. Read the original post:
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| Drop.io Adds Seamless Screen-Sharing App With Present.io Posted: 14 May 2009 08:11 AM PDT
A new screen-sharing app launched today from drop.io, which keeps adding features to its private file-sharing service. The new product is called present.io and it lets you set up a screen-sharing presentation with multiple participants in just a few clicks. Present.io has a lot in common with drop.io's chat feature which it added last month, except that it looks like this scales to hundreds of participants and is designed specifically for webinars and group presentations. Present.io requires no downloads or installs and pretty much instantaneously tracks whatever the presenter is doing on his computer with all of the watchers see on theirs. He can go through slides, open documents via a Scribd embed, play videos, show photos, play music, and move his cursor around, and everyone logged into the presentation sees the same thing. When he is going through slides, he can expand them into full-screen mode to show greater detail, and text chat is integrated into the app at the bottom so everyone can chime in. The service also includes a live conference call line. It looks pretty slick. Try it out here. One downside is that it appears to be a one-way tool. Participants can't take control of the presentation to add their own media or drive the presentation, unlike other free screen-sharing apps such as Adobe's Acrobat.com (which is my personal favorite). Unlike Acrobat.com or WebEx, you don't see the presenter's desktop, only the files he chooses to show within present.io. So this would not be something you would use to show something in a browser, which is unfortunate because demos often default to the browser when the presenter wants to go off on a tangent or forgot to add something to his deck. Other than those concerns, present.io is a solid addition to drop.io's ever-expanding set of features. Below is a demo video describing present.io. Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Here is the original post:
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| Here’s 9 minutes of BioShock 2 footage Posted: 14 May 2009 08:00 AM PDT
Tada! Here's nine minutes of BioShock 2 video. As a newfound BioShock fan (I just go to the garden level; my game time is split between Street Fighter and BioShock) I must say, "Boy, that looks a lot like BioShock." Which isn't a bad thing, I guess. Just don't feel compelled to make a BioShock 3. Nor everything needs to be run into the ground. Excerpt from:
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| ASUS Eee PC 1008HA Seashell: $429 from May 18th Posted: 14 May 2009 07:54 AM PDT ASUS have announced US pricing and availability for the Eee PC 1008HA "Seashell", first unveiled back at CeBIT in March. Measuring just 1-inch thick and tipping the scales at 1.1kg, the ASUS Eee PC 1008HA will be available to preorder from May 18th, priced at $429.
That gets you Intel's Atom N280 processor running at 1.66GHz, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard-drive, together with a 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 LED-backlit display. Connectivity includes WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and two USB 2.0 ports; there's also an ethernet port hidden behind a trick swivel-down cover. Since there's no room for a standard VGA port, ASUS fit a mini-VGA port instead; however, there's also a pull-out adapter hidden in the 1008HA's underbelly. Other connections include audio in/out, a two-in-one card reader and the power socket to charge the integrated battery which, ASUS claim, is good for up to 6hrs runtime. You also get a 1.3-megapixel camera, microphone, and Windows XP Home. As we've already seen, the ASUS Eee PC 1008HA "Seashell" is a slick looking netbook; we're also expecting reasonable performance from the N280 processor, though as with most netbooks it won't come close to a decent ultraportable. It's the super-skinny size and $429 price tag that gets the attention here; are you thinking about pre-ordering come May 18th?
Relevant Entries on SlashGear
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| Nokia using Synaptics capacitive touchscreen for upcoming smartphone? Posted: 14 May 2009 07:34 AM PDT
Nokia has been criticized for choosing resistive touchscreens for its 5800 XpressMusic and upcoming N97 smartphone, over the more fashionable capacitive technology. Its response - similar to that of Microsoft regarding Windows Mobile’s need for resistive panels - has been that capacitive displays do not allow for the on-screen character recognition desired by Asian markets. Given that Synaptics do not have a resistive range, however, it seems that distinction is now less of an issue for Nokia. According to the leaks, Synaptics will only supply the touchscreen panels, with related modules and glass coming from other vendors. The first Nokia devices to use a capacitive touchscreen are described as a “high-end handset and smartphone”. Touchscreen Nokia concept by Fabien Nauroy Relevant Entries on SlashGear
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| Samsung’s new N310 netbook reviewed Posted: 14 May 2009 07:30 AM PDT
Samsung's newest netbook, the $479 N310, features an elegant and thoughtful design accompanied by an excellent keyboard, according to LAPTOP. The 10-inch Atom-powered machine is equipped similarly to the other 10-inch netbooks on the market, although the N310 features a four-cell battery and relatively high price tag. Fashion-conscious users may go for the higher price, though, as LAPTOP calls the N310 "one of the most unique and chic 10-inch netbooks on the market." Its pebble-inspired design comes courtesy of Japanese artist Naoto Fukasawa and the body consists of a "slightly grainy, rubberized surface" instead of the traditional cheap plastic found on most competitors. The machine weighs in at 2.8 pounds with a four-cell battery that lasts about 3.5 hours on a single charge. Samsung will apparently be offering a battery capable of over 10 hours — presumably an eight-cell version. Screen resolution is the standard, dumpy 1024×600 although that's apparently expandable to 1024×768 via software. LAPTOP was able to play an HD video clip without problems, which is something that generally trips up many standard netbooks. Alas, the screen isn't hi-res enough to actually display HD content faithfully. Aside from that, the N310 appears to be a slightly-above average entry to the netbook market that'll appeal mainly to those concerned with form first, function second. The machine is apparently shipping in the UK and Korea already, but not yet in the US. Shouldn't be too much longer, though. A Review of the Samsung N310 [LAPTOP] [via CrunchGear.com]
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