November 2008 Archives

Nimbuzz is a free app that lets you call (VoIP), chat, message, and send photos, music and video on your iPhone, which was recently made available on the Apple App Store. Using a centralized contact list you can connect with all your buddies on Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, GoogleTalk, AIM, Gadu-Gadu, StudiVZ, Hyves, Jabber and Twitter, plus popular social networks including Facebook and MySpace. It features presence (who's online and where), group calling, chatrooms, and more.

If your buddies are offline, let them know you're trying to get in touch by sending them a "Buzz". It will start Nimbuzz Mobile on their mobile phone. Nice feature.

Nimbuzz is pretty similar to fring, which I've used extensively. One thing Nimbuzz has up on fring is that it supports regional social network support including German StudiVZ, Dutch Hyves and Polish Gadu-Gadu.

Go download your copy on the Apple App Store today!

It's been called both "vampire power" and "phantom load" -- likened to the power-hungry HAL 9000 computer (at left) in Stanley Kubrick's classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It's the little unblinking red light on the television set that is silently drawing energy from the grid; studies have shown it can add 10% or more to a household energy bill.

Now Spanish entrepreneurs claim to have invented a way to end the problem that has bedeviled energy regulators, environmentalists and appliance manufacturers. They have patented an algorithm that can detect when an appliance is in standby mode and automatically switch it off completely.

The standby-mode killer has yet to be proven commercially and must contend with other new products designed to tackle the same problem. But, despite some doubters, the Spanish inventors say theirs is the only product able to completely do away with a large, and growing, world-wide problem.

Now how about that!

Get more at the Wall Street Journal.

Yes, Black Friday it is!

(And did you know about Black Friday the movie?)

And gadget retailers (and all others, too!) are looking for you to make your contribution to their coffers!

Now, I know it may have been hard (very hard), even too hard, to get up before the rising sun to hit those eager merchants at 5 AM when the best (very best) deals could be had, but there is still plenty of time today to either hit the pavement for a real physical visit or simply click the keyboard to do some stylish online shopping.

Whatever your choice, get out there and do it!

You know I scoured all of the flyers and online ads to put together a great list of Black Friday deals,  but seems Gizmodo has just plain beat me to it!

So just like last year, they have rounded up and sorted through all of the real deals for you, broken down by category and merchant.

If you know how to survive, this is the only Black Friday deal list you need.

Get it all here. 

Looking for a faster, bigger hard drive this Christmas? (Two days till Black Friday sales by the way) Well, I came across this funny Youtube video of the day - filmed at famous Mac Store Tekserve in Manhattan, New York and paid for by drive manufacturer Seagate. It's a tad long, but it features a hip-hop office drama and the desire for "A new disk drive. 1.5 Terabytes...." (don't let that little jingle get stuck in your head) Just in time for the Christmas holiday season.

Via 9to5mac.com

HTC's Touch HD is arguably the best touch-screen Windows Mobile-based phones you can buy. In fact, even before the HTC Touch HD, I always felt HTC mobile phones were the best Windows Mobile phones you could buy. I own an older HTC-based "Apache" XV6700 Windows Mobile with a cooked ROM upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.1 and I'm still pretty happy using it. I still consider my xv6700 one of the top 5 Windows Mobile phones available. Installed on it I have a standalone Youtube player, TCPMP Media Player, Opera Mini, HTC Streaming Media Player, Java (Jbed), Skyfire browser, and more. It does the job and I especially like the slide-out keyboard. I'm not into the iPhone touch-screen's keyboard or the new Blackberry Storm for that matter. I find tactile keyboards work best for typing lengthy emails.

Comparisons between the new HTC Touch HD and the Apple iPhone will no doubt be made, since they both offer large touch-screens. In fact, the Touch HD beats the iPhone's screen with it's 3.8" WVGA (480 X 800 pixel) screen vs. 3.5" (320 x 480) for the iPhone. It beats the iPhone in size and resolution! In addition, unlike the Apple iPhone, Windows Mobile apps can run in the background, which is important for IM & VoIP apps like Skype. You have to jailbreak your iPhone if you want to enable background processing. What's up with Mr. Steve Jobs? He can be anally retentive sometimes when it comes to "controlling" Apple products.

VoxOx just released a new version of their "Universal Communicator", which aims to combine VoIP, video, and social networks. VoxOx aims to take on Skype by offering more social networking features. Last year, I wrote an article titled Skype Could Trump Facebook in Social Networking, but Skype still hasn't added social networking functionality.

In any event, today version 1.0.1 was released, less than a month after their initial launch. I was never able to get the Facebook integration to work, but it was a beta release, so I'm hoping they worked out the kinks.

Here are some new features:

New Additions
• Status field set to your auto-response message when away
• Facebook icons link out to friends' profiles so you can write on their wall, private message them, etc
• View Facebook contact photos from their VoxOx Profile
• Text Message window remembers Mobile Numbers
• Chat to Email window remembers emails addresses

Bug Fixes
• Call-Back (Web and SMS) fully functional
• Fixed Crash bug when ending calls
• Added default group for new contacts to be saved
• Login screen text updated to "Login Automatically"
• Web Portal login back online

Some of the major updates they are working on include a new and improved user interface, more efficient memory utilization, smoother and faster SMS functionality, enhanced Facebook integration, MySpace integration, and Outlook & Mac address book integration.

 For Sony, Home is where the future of gaming is -- or where they would like it to be.

In its battle for the hearts and minds of gamers, Sony is developing a robust social-networking component to its PlayStation 3 console.

The new element, to be called Home, has been in beta testing for weeks and allows users to explore an online world with avatars that can travel from one virtual place to another.

While it's not exactly a world like World of Warcraft or Linden Labs'Second Life, Home is the most ambitious push by any console maker into creating a virtual world for gamers.

It will live or die on whether it's simple, fun, and deep enough for gamers who have plenty of other things they want to do -- like play games. And the price is right: free for those who have a PS3.

The New York Times/VentureBeat.

When the National Football League broadcasts next week's San Diego-Oakland game to theaters in three cities, it will mark the first time that the league has used 3-D technology during a live event.

The game will be shot using special cameras and broadcast via satellite to theaters in Los Angeles, New York, and Boston on December 4.

The event will be a demonstration to show how the technology can be used to provide a more realistic experience in a theater or in the home.

Now remember when heavyweight boxing matches used to be show in theaters in the one of the first applications of pay-per-view?

More at CNET.  

Making its first foray into on-demand video, Blockbuster has started offering customers a small box made by 2Wire that, when attached to a TV set, can play the company's videos once they've been downloaded the movie over a broadband line.

The move is an attempt to blunt the success of such competitors as cable companies, with their vast on-demand offerings, and Netflix.

If you do it, let us know!

More at The Washington Post/The Associated Press.

Gamers: Power down consoles when not in use to save cash!

National Resources Defense Council and consulting firm Ecos have found that gamers could save $100 a year if they turn off their consoles when they are not in use.

That means you guys in the photo!

The pair also recommends that game console manufacturers look to include power management features in their next generation of consoles.

The authors said the industry should adopt automatic power-down features and make it easier for consumers to locate these features. Idle machines consume nearly as much energy as when machines are turned on.

The XBox 360, for example, has a power-down feature, but it's turned off by default and is hard to activate because its buried deep in the menus. (For instructions on how to find existing power-down features, click here.)

In terms of energy consumption, the XBox 360 is in the middle of the pack, consuming 119 watts in active mode, more than many desktop PCs.

The Nintendo Wii, meanwhile, consumes just 16 watts -- less than most laptops -- and the Sony PlayStation 3 burns through 150 watts in play mode. PlayStation 3 can update its software to add a power-management feature, but it's disabled by default, too.

More at CNET.

The Friday after Thanksgiving is the day that all retailers look forward to -- known as Black Friday, it's the day that retailers sell so much stuff that they get into the black and are now profitable for the year. (Or at least they hope to be.)

With this awful economy, retailers are going to all kinds of extremes to entice shoppers into their stores and move those goods and gadgets.

Are you willing to get up early -- really, really early -- and be in the store at 5:00 AM to get the best deals?

And what will that be?

And will that price be a "Crazy Eddie insane price"?

We really want to know!

At a moment in time when smart phones are one of the few hot tech products, Palm, the industry's pioneer, appears to be dying.

This morning, Global Crown Capital analyst Pablo Perez-Fernandez cut his rating on the company to Underweight from Neutral, setting a $1.50 price target, well below the current level.

Perez-Fernandez provides a damaging list of factors now facing the company and the stock, all of which add up to a deteriorating position in a market where competition is heating up considerably.

In the debate over whether to buy an Apple iPhone or a Research in Motion BlackBerry Storm or Bold, does Palm's name even come up in conversation? Alas, no. 

And that makes me sad as a long time Palm user -- back when the Palm Pilot was as hot as the iPhone ...

Read more of this sad story about an industry pioneer at Barron's.

FOX News Channels' Alan Colmes is leaving Hannity & Colmes (H&C) at the end of this year. Well there goes my 9 o'clock nightly timeslot. What the heck am I going to watch now? Reality TV? Ack! Well, the good news is that not watching the at-times heated debates should be good for shaving off a few points off my blood pressure. So you're probably wondering if Sean Hannity finally got under Alan's skin, he got tired of debating Sean and he quit as a result. Well, according to the newswires, it was an amicable departure.

Alan Colmes said, "I approached Bill Shine (FNC's Senior Vice President of Programming) earlier this year about wanting to move on after 12 years to develop new and challenging ways to contribute to the growth of the network. Although it's bittersweet to leave one of the longest marriages on cable news, I'm proud that both Sean (Hannity) and I remained unharmed after sitting side by side, night after night for so many years."

Colmes will continue to have a presence on FNC as he will serve as a liberal commentator on a variety of FOX News programming, including Foxnews.com's The Strategy Room and continue hosting his radio program, The Alan Colmes Show on FOX Talk, a division of FOX News Radio. He will also begin developing a weekend program.

It's too bad Alan couldn't have the 9pm timeslot currently occupied by H&C, since then he'd be going against Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. It would be a lib-on-lib ratings deathmatch!

Shine said, "We're very sorry to see Alan reach this decision but we understand his desire to seek other creative challenges in his career. We value his incredible hard work in making Hannity & Colmes the most successful debate program on cable news and we're going to miss him on the show. Thankfully, he will begin developing a weekend pilot for us."

FOX News Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Roger Ailes added, "Alan is one of the key reasons why FOX News has been such a remarkable success. We're sad to see him leave the program but we look forward to his ongoing contributions to the network."

Hannity & Colmes is the only FNC program which has remained in the same timeslot for 12 years, catapulting to number one in 2003 and never relinquishing the top spot. The second highest-rated program in cable news behind only The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity & Colmes averaged 3.3 million viewers nightly for the Nielsen month of October and is poised to mark 60 consecutive months at number one at the end of November.

Hannity added, "Not only has Alan been a remarkable co-host, he's been a great friend which is rare in this industry -- I'll genuinely miss sparring with such a skillful debate partner."

Throughout his 12 year tenure on Hannity & Colmes, Colmes has interviewed numerous key political figures, including: President Elect Barack Obama, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), DNC Chairman Howard Dean and former Vice President Al Gore.

FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour general news service covering breaking news as well as political, entertainment and business news. For nearly seven years, FNC has been the most watched cable news channel in the nation. Owned by News Corp., FNC is available in more than 90 million homes.

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Toktumi recently announced a partnership with Dell to distribute its small business VoIP service through a co-branded site on Dell.com (www.dell.com/voip), which also features Fonality, Nortel, and Bandwidth.com. So what's so special about Toktumi, (a word play on 'talk to me') and it's USB-based plug-in device? Well, Toktumi is very similar to the popular Magicjack, which also uses a USB connector for connecting an analog phone. However, Magicjack is only $19.99/year (first year is $39.95) for unlimited U.S. calling while Toktumi is $179.40/year ($14.95/month) for unlimited dialing inside the U.S. and Canada. So what does this extra cost get you?