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- Fifth Gear: Mini Cooper S Cabriolet vs Mazda MX-5
- New Lost Planet 2 Screenshots
- iSaw: The World’s First USB-Powered Chainsaw
- Palm Pre official on O2 and Movistar in Europe, launch "in time for holidays"
- Video: Lenovo’s Atom-based IdeaPad S12 starts shipping with handling
- ZooLoo Is A Social Network That Basically Never Wants You To Leave
- GSM Palm Pre makes exclusive first appearance on Movistar
- What The Hell Happened To The Free Version Of Google Apps?
- No Second Life, Twinity Wins $6m For Real Worlds
- fOTOGLIF and the art of converting infringers into partners
| Fifth Gear: Mini Cooper S Cabriolet vs Mazda MX-5 Posted: 07 Jul 2009 06:00 AM PDT
 In this convertible showdown, Fifth Gear’s Jason Plato and Tiff Needell pit the all-new Mini Cooper S Cabriolet against Mazda’s MX-5, also known as the Miata in North America. Continue reading to see which vehicle came out on top. Go here to see the original:
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| Posted: 07 Jul 2009 05:30 AM PDT
 Set for release this fall is Capcom’s Lost Planet 2, which takes place 10-years after the first game’s events. The co-op campaign mode — up to 4-players — adds one new way to enjoy the game. Video after the break. Click here for first picture in gallery.
[via Kotaku] Read the rest here:
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| iSaw: The World’s First USB-Powered Chainsaw Posted: 07 Jul 2009 05:00 AM PDT
 At $59.95, the iSaw measures “no larger than the size of a regular computer keyboard; every effort has been made to ensure that proper grip – and safety – is not compromised.” Video after the break. Click here for first picture in gallery.
[via Gizmodo - Usbchainsaw] See the original post:
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| Palm Pre official on O2 and Movistar in Europe, launch "in time for holidays" Posted: 07 Jul 2009 02:01 AM PDT
 It’s official, Palm just kicked out a press release saying that the UK, Ireland, and Germany will have access to the Palm Pre exclusively on O2 while Spain will its exclusivity on Movistar. Unfortunately, launch timing was only narrowed down to “in time for the holidays.” Unfortunately, Palm doesn’t provide any prices and chose not to list the radio frequencies for the HSDPA/UMTS with EDGE/GSM version of the Pre. See the 1,260 word press release posted after the break that says almost nothing. Continue reading Palm Pre official on O2 and Movistar in Europe, launch “in time for holidays” Filed under: Cellphones Palm Pre official on O2 and Movistar in Europe, launch “in time for holidays” originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| Video: Lenovo’s Atom-based IdeaPad S12 starts shipping with handling Posted: 07 Jul 2009 02:00 AM PDT
 It’s 12-inches so technically you won’t find Intel calling it a netbook. But don’t let semantics come between you and Lenovo’s $499 IdeaPad S12. Inside you’ll find a very netbook-y 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor with GMA 950 graphics, 1280 x 800 resolution, 1GB of memory and 160GB disk, 802.11b/g WiFi, and 6-cell battery. Only the black model is shipping in the US while the white and VIA Nano editions are still tagged with that standard Lenovo “ships in more than 4 weeks” placeholder. Click through for a bit of hands-on video from a show that shall remain anonymous even from those in attendance. Continue reading Video: Lenovo’s Atom-based IdeaPad S12 starts shipping with handling Filed under: Laptops Video: Lenovo’s Atom-based IdeaPad S12 starts shipping with handling originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| ZooLoo Is A Social Network That Basically Never Wants You To Leave Posted: 07 Jul 2009 01:25 AM PDT
When you set up your ZooLoo account, you are given a dashboard which contains customizable widgets just like iGoogle. But you’ll see along both the top and bottom of the site elements that lead you to the more social aspects. Along the bottom, is your Facebook-style chat bar and options area. At the top of the main page you’ll find the tools to control your site and manage your media (pictures and videos). And the key two words in there are “your site.” ZooLoo clearly wants to give you everything you want, so you never have to leave your ZooLoo. You want to watch YouTube videos? You can browse and watch them from in ZooLoo. Hulu videos? Same thing. Maybe you want to go read some news on popular tech blogs like this one? Again there’s a series of widgets you can install so you can do all of that without leaving. Obviously, it’s a good idea in theory as users spending more time on the site means more ads that can be shown to them. And ZooLoo has plenty of those — big ones at the bottom and sides of the site. It’s the same line of thinking that Facebook has, in that it wants to be your central hub for everything on the web.
The problem with that for ZooLoo is that Facebook has about a 200 million user head start on their social graph. For a service like this, that is all that really matters. That’s not to say that ZooLoo can’t woo some of those users with some nice features, but it’s hard to teach 200 million users new tricks. And while it’s not a “there can be only one”-type situation, if ZooLoo is trying to do the same thing that Facebook is, which one do you think will win? And obviously it’s not just Facebook in this game as well, they’re just the big guys right now. But Google is still trying to get more social too, and continues to take iGoogle in that direction. Again, the choice between Google or ZooLoo as your main hub, doesn’t seem like too tough of one right now. But ZooLoo is smart to play off of the vanity URL thing. Its slogan, “Your name. Your domain. Your life.” doesn’t seem to be an accident. As we saw from the users flocking to Facebook on a Friday night to secure their own vanity names, users clearly want domains that are easy to remember. And ZooLoo offers that up with the slightly different XXXXX.zooloo.com naming structure. But its real hidden weapon may be letting users pick any domain to use with the service, not just a zooloo.com one. That’s an option if you sign up for the paid version of the service, ZooLoo Plus. For $29.99, you get to select a .com, .net or .info domain (.me names are available too for slightly more money). The freemium model hasn’t exactly taken off in the traditional social networking market. But ZooLoo gives you some things that are a bit more like an online office service, such as calendaring. There’s no shortage of options on ZooLoo, but you have to wonder if it can possibly meet such lofty goals with going up against Facebook and Google. Of course, they used to say that about Facebook going up against MySpace. And MySpace against Friendster, before that. ZooLoo should be live at some point later today.
Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Read the original post:
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| GSM Palm Pre makes exclusive first appearance on Movistar Posted: 07 Jul 2009 01:25 AM PDT
 There it is, the first official press shot (see that HSDPA icon?) of the GSM version of the Palm Pre. The “more information” link isn’t working at the moment but it’s clear that Movistar has exclusive rights to the Pre in Spain. Of course, Movistar, like O2 in the UK, is owned by Telefonica which so far seems to have clinched exclusivity throughout Europe. We’re still waiting for all this to get officially official sometime this week, if not today. [Thanks, Enzo] GSM Palm Pre makes exclusive first appearance on Movistar originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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| What The Hell Happened To The Free Version Of Google Apps? Posted: 07 Jul 2009 01:01 AM PDT
Earlier this year we reported that the usage caps were being squeezed by Google over time for Google Apps, from 200 users down to just 50. When the service first launched in August 2006 it was free and described as "a service available at no cost to organizations of all shapes and sizes." A paid version first appeared in 2007. Dave Girouard, Google's President of Enterprise, commented on our post that talked about the decreasing number of users allowed for the free version, saying that the cap reductions were needed to keep resellers happy, adding “There's no reason to believe that the cap will continue to "move down" – we have no plans whatsoever to do that.” I guess not. They didn’t move the cap down, they just killed the Standard product entirely. No mention of this change was made at a Google Apps press event held last month. You can actually still see the free version at this page. But it doesn’t appear to be linked to from any Google page at this point. We’re emailing Google for comment. The old version of Google Apps had a comparison chart of the Standard and Premier versions that looked like this:
Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. See original here:
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| No Second Life, Twinity Wins $6m For Real Worlds Posted: 07 Jul 2009 01:00 AM PDT
Twinity’s owner Metaversum, which has taken a totally different tack to the likes of Second Life, won the backing from existing investors. In Twinity, members use real profiles and realistic-looking avatars. A virtual Berlin has won plaudits from users, while more cities are planned. Original post:
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| fOTOGLIF and the art of converting infringers into partners Posted: 07 Jul 2009 12:01 AM PDT
What's interesting here is how fOTOGLIF confronts a problem common to copyright holders online. Just as it's relatively easy to find and copy media online, it's brain-dead simple for Web publishers to grab photos from around the Net and slap them onto their sites. Sure, there are companies such as Attributor that crawl the Web to search for unauthorized uses of copyrighted material, helping the owners of the material to identify infringers. But the scale of the infringing is vast, and it's not clear how much return a copyright holder might get from a big investment in enforcement. Instead of trying to track and stop infringers, fOTOGLIF's strategy is to offer online publishers something better than free…. Each image in its library — it receives 20,000 to 30,000 new news-related photos daily from such partners as Getty Images and Thomson Reuters, Betts said — comes with a display ad attached to the base. The ad generates revenue that's split between fOTOGLIF, the copyright holder and the publisher. To use an image, bloggers merely embed the code supplied by fOTOGLIF (it's JavaScript) into their post. The image and the ad is then delivered by fOTOGLIF's servers. The value proposition is simple for bloggers and other publishers: it is truly better than free. There are, however, some trade offs. The ads are chosen by fOTOGLIF, not by the publisher, although Betts said the company wants to develop a way for publishers to block ads from competitors. And at this point, the images are available in only three sizes. An example of the smallest format is shown to the right; the ad beneath the photo is the one supplied by fOTOGLIF. Those limitations may not matter to fOTOGLIF's target audience: bloggers and small Web publishing businesses. “We are not trying to market … photos to the Los Angeles Times or the New York Post,” Betts said. It's focused narrowly on the folks who don't have the wherewithal to pay the fees that the photo agencies ordinarily command — the ones who've been copying and reusing images without attribution or compensation. Nor is the revenue generated by the ads “terribly monumental,” Betts said. “At this point it's a small operation,” he added. The goal is to create broad networks of sites that use the photos, achieving the kind of scale that can attract bigger advertisers and larger payments. In short, rather than trying to sell its partners' copyrighted images to an audience that's reluctant to pay for content, fOTOGLIF is using that content to gain a presence in the blogosphere that it can monetize. It's not monetizing the photos directly, it's capitalizing on the activity around them — in particular, in the public's interest in news and commentary from sources beyond traditional media outlets. And having tried for several months to build support among bloggers just by offering them the free use of images, fOTOGLIF has upped the ante by promising to pay websites that use its ad-equipped photos a share of the revenue. Such an all-carrot, no-stick approach seems rare in the copyright world, and fOTOGLIF and its agency partners deserve credit for trying it. Photo: Joanelle Romero performs a sacred Indian traditional drum and song live in front of The Jackson family home in Encino on July 6. Credit: Giulio Marcocchi / Sipa Press, via Newscom and fOTOGLIF – Jon Healey Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division. Continued here:
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Since you see it every time you open your web browser, a good start page is key. Google has a pretty good option with iGoogle, which is highly customizable. But as social networking continues to rise in popularity, an increasing number of people just have something like Facebook as their main page. 
The free version of 
Virtual worlds can be pretty dull when nothing you see there is recognizable as anything remotely real-world, which is perhaps why | You are subscribed to email updates from FocuSoft Tech Blog To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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