19 March, 2009

Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com

ESPN.COM while collecting measurements on muscle mass, overall physique, daily

caloric intake, metabolic age, bone mass and visceral fat. From there, the
Rockets need 2OT to top unit can either send those details wireless to the aforesaid watch, or it
can beam them to any PC with an appropriate dongle. The device is
undermanned Pistons slated to ship this summer for $279.99 with a USB stick or $399.99 with
MAR 19, 2009 06:45A.M. an FR60 watch.

Visit ESPN.com for the complete story. Filed under: Wearables, Wireless

Tanita’s BC-1000 Body Composition Monitor wirelessly sends

embarrassing weight details originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19
ENGADGET Mar 2009 00:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Tanita’s BC-1000 Body Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Composition Monitor wirelessly

sends embarrassing weight NU.NL - ALGEMEEN

details Landelijke stakingsdag in

MAR 19, 2009 06:39A.M.
Frankrijk
MAR 19, 2009 06:06A.M.

PARIJS - Naar verwachting meer dan een miljoen betogers gaan

donderdag in Frankrijk protesteren tegen de manier waarop president
Nicolas Sarkozy met de crisis omgaat.

NU.NL - ALGEMEEN

Familiedrama in Duits dorp

MAR 19, 2009 06:04A.M.

LAMSPRINGE - Een man heeft in het Centraal-Duitse dorp Lamspringe

zijn vriendin en hun 8-jarige zoon doodgeschoten.

Remember all those ANT+ wireless peripherals that were supposed to

come flooding out after the introduction of Garmin’s FR60 Fitness
Watch? We suppose said flood has to start somewhere, and this is it.
Tanita‘s BC-1000 Body Composition Monitor is hardly more than a
sophisticated scale, designed to hold humans for just moments at a time

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

NU.NL - ALGEMEEN

Twintig mensen geëvacueerd uit

flat na brand
MAR 19, 2009 06:01A.M.

ZOETERMEER - Door een brand in een flatgebouw aan de Jan van

Beierenlaan in Zoetermeer zijn in de nacht van woensdag op donderdag
twintig mensen geëvacueerd.

ENGADGET

SwitchEasy’s ThumbTacks are

the cutest iPod mics you ever
did see
MAR 19, 2009 05:23A.M.

Filed under: Peripherals, Portable Audio

SwitchEasy’s ThumbTacks are the cutest iPod mics you ever did see
originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:23:00 EST.
SwitchEasy’s ThumbTacks are far from being the first third-party
Please see our terms for use of feeds.
microphones designed to function nicely with Apple’s iPod nano 4G and
second-generation iPod touch, but we’ll be darned if they aren’t the
cutest. Clearly designed to mimic the iconic thumb tack, these itty-bitty Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
microphones function with all third-party voice applications and can be
selected in black, white or red. Not too shabby for $15.99 shipped,
wouldn’t you say?

[Via iLounge]

Gallery: SwitchEasy’s ThumbTacks are the cutest iPod mics

you ever did see

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

ENGADGET

The Daily Roundup: here’s what

you might’ve missed
MAR 19, 2009 04:41A.M.

Popcorn Hour A-110 review

Video: iPhone OS 3.0 walkthrough
With HD media streamers being a dime a dozen these days, when one
particular one seems gain popularity we take notice.

Many of us — okay, a small handful of us — wouldn’t dream of putting

beta firmware on our day-to-day devices, so we wanted to treat that very
USB tethering, Publish Video and Find my iPhone found in OS
special group of safety-minded individuals to a once-over with iPhone
3.0
OS 3.0’s finer points on video.
Apple touted quite a few new iPhone features at yesterday’s OS 3.0 event,
Fujitsu melts faces and wallets with FLEPia, the first color e-
but now that the beta build is trickling out, there’s been a bevy of
book for general consumption
unearthed discoveries to further pique our interests.

• First unofficial PlayOn media server plugin caught in action

• Toshiba’s REGZA SV LCD HDTVs float to UK

• AT&T to offer unsubsidized iPhone 3G with no commitment

After years of teasing — FLEPia was first announced in April of 2007, required?
and first proven in 2006 — Fujitsu has at last released its color e-book
(or e-paper mobile terminal, as they’d like you to call it) to the masses. • Rumors of Sony Ericsson split heat up again
Apple Nehalem-based Mac Pro in-depth impressions
When Apple’s ever-so-slightly refreshed Nehalem-based Mac Pro • Keepin’ it real fake, part CXCI: Motorola Aura gets the fake Louis
showed up on our doorstep, we were understandably taken aback by the Vuitton treatment
enclosure. Other news of import
The Daily Roundup: here’s what you might’ve missed originally appeared
• Peek Pronto: is a new Peek device on its way? on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:41:00 EST. Please see our terms
for use of feeds.
• Is Office Depot taking care of business by screwing over
customers? Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

PAUL KEDROSKY’S INFECTIOUS GREED ENGADGET

Twist Again, Like We Did Last FCC approves LTE gear from
Summer LG, WiMAX says ‘welcome to
MAR 19, 2009 04:29A.M.
the party’
Today’s Fed announcement – buying Treasuries, shades of Operation MAR 19, 2009 04:07A.M.
Twist — will teach those amateurs around the world how the big boys
run down their own currency. The U.S. plays the dollar depreciation
game for keeps.

It’s not anything cool like a phone or a laptop, but LTE gear of any sort
operating on North American frequencies is pretty rare at the moment,
so we’ll take what we can get. LG has slid its LEO3 “user equipment”
through the FCC’s labs, talkin’ Long Term Evolution on the 1700MHz
AWS band and filed under the FCC’s Licensed Non-Broadcast Station
SLATE MAGAZINE
Transmitter category — in other words, infrastructure equipment that
Can the Obama administration none of us will ever see, but we’ll certainly be glad it’s there when we’re
clipping along at 50Mbps or so. Verizon, we know you’ve partnered with
stoke public outrage about AIG Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson, but is there any chance this is your stuff?

without getting burned? [Via Phone Scoop]

MAR 19, 2009 04:25A.M.

Filed under: Wireless

Everyone is outraged about AIG. The president is outraged. Press

FCC approves LTE gear from LG, WiMAX says ‘welcome to the party’
secretary Robert Gibbs used the word (or some form of it) 13 times in his
originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:07:00 EST.
briefing Tuesday. Mild-mannered budget director Peter Orszag told
Please see our terms for use of feeds.
reporters that among the White House staff, “the outrage is visceral.”
Members of Congress are competing to see who can be most outraged.
The fever could almost become stimulative: Think of all the economic Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
activity that would be produced if all 418 AIG bonus recipients
purchased home-security systems to protect themselves from the
advancing mob.

[more ...]

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

SLATE MAGAZINE SILICON ALLEY INSIDER

Why Congress’ confrontation Download Microsoft’s New Web

with AIG’s CEO was a failure. Browser Now
MAR 19, 2009 04:04A.M. MAR 19, 2009 03:38A.M.

The appearance by AIG CEO Edward Liddy before Congress on
Wednesday was billed as an epic confrontation between the angry
tribunes of a furious public and an arrogant Wall Street. Chris Matthews
hyped it on MSNBC as “Watergate Redux.” But the actual
hearing—Liddy’s appearance and questioning lasted barely longer than
the two-hour preliminaries—was disappointing and misguided.
[more ...]
Another early release from Microsoft’s (MSFT) MIX conference.
Just like the company made Silverlight 3 available the night before
Microsoft talked up the new tech, the company is doing the same with
the new Internet Explorer web browser.
Download Microsoft IE 8 here.
We expect lots more details tomorrow.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:
ESPN.COM
• Microsoft’s New Silverlight Already Out (MSFT, ADBE)
Celtics turn back Heat in OT
MAR 19, 2009 03:47A.M. • Microsoft Confirms: You Can Take IE Out Of Windows (MSFT)

Visit ESPN.com for the complete story. • Google Joining Europe’s Anti-Microsoft Antitrust Pile-On (GOOG,
MSFT)

SLATE MAGAZINE

Obama scores his first-ever 10

SLATE MAGAZINE
on the Change-o-Meter.
MAR 19, 2009 03:38A.M. When did drunk people start
putting lampshades on their
renderSwf(“http://www.slate.com/features/widgets/changeometer/deploy/changeometer_page”,
550, 315, “pageid=2214214”, “changeometer”,
“transparent”);200931863858PMWednesdayMarMarch183/18/2009 heads?
10:38:58 MAR 19, 2009 03:36A.M.
PM633729983380000000200931863858PMWednesdayMarMarch183/18/2009
10:38:58 PM633729983380000000 In a speech to Irish leaders on St. Patrick’s Day, Barack Obama jokingly
urged the audience to go easy on the spirits. “Stay as long as you want,
[more ...] try to avoid putting any lampshades on your head, because there are a lot
of photographers here,” he said. When did putting a lampshade on your
head become a universal symbol of drunkenness?

[more ...]

5
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

ESPN.COM Here’s a novel idea — turning one’s standard, non-tablet PC into a tablet
PC. Hanwha Japan has just introduced its incredibly useful Duo for
Sources: Floyd Mayweather Jr. Laptop device, which sits gently atop one’s laptop display and tracks
digital pen movements via Infrared and ultrasonic technology in order to
close to return to ring add doodling functionality to LCDs that were never designed to
MAR 19, 2009 03:29A.M. understand touch input. The only limitation — and it’s a big one — is that
this seems to only work with lappies possessing a 15.4-inch display. If
Floyd Mayweather Jr., who hasn’t fought since December 2007 and that’s kosher with you, you can snap one up for ¥9,980 ($101), or if not,
retired as the undefeated pound-for-pound king in June, is planning to you can just wait ‘til these are announced for netbooks, ultraportables
fight again — possibly as soon as July 11 — two sources with knowledge and desktop replacements.
of the situation told ESPN.com.
[Via Engadget Japanese]

Filed under: Peripherals, Tablet PCs

SLATE MAGAZINE
Hanwha’s Duo for Laptop lets you doodle on your standard 15.4-inch
The Washington Post fails to laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:11:00
EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
prove that PCP is making a
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
“comeback.”
MAR 19, 2009 03:14A.M.

Along with child molesters, Klansmen, and the 9/11 terrorists, the illicit GIGAOM
drug PCP occupies a space in the news culture so low that a journalist in
search of a crowd-pleasing story need not consult the facts or build a Microsoft Releases IE 8 to
compelling argument to write a crowd-pleasing story about it.
Combat Rival Browsers
[more ...] MAR 19, 2009 03:09A.M.

ENGADGET

Hanwha’s Duo for Laptop lets

you doodle on your standard
15.4-inch laptop
MAR 19, 2009 03:11A.M.

In exactly 14 hours, at 9 am PST, you will be able to download the

Internet Explorer 8.0 browser, Microsoft’s response to Firefox, Chrome
and Safari, from the company’s web site. The release is a tactical
acknowledgment by Redmond, Wash.-based software giant that it’s
locked in a bitter battle for market share with Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera,

6
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com
Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari browsers.
So far it’s been on the losing side of the equation, ceding market share to
its upstart rivals, all of whom are touting ease of use, simplicity, security
and speed. Microsoft’s browser chief, Mike Nash, thinks the new IE 8.0
has got all that and more. While many of the new features in this browser
are available to users of Safari and Firefox (via plugins), Microsoft is
offering a comprehensive package — sans download — for a majority of
the people that continue to patronize IE.
Nash was particularly excited about the new security feature of the
browser that protects browser users via a reputation system. Of course,
security is IE’s own Achilles’ heel, so this upgrade is just part of doing
business, in my view. IE8 also has a new featured called Accelerator
that allows you to select words on the web site and then get relevant
information from eBay, Facebook and various mapping services. Among
other features in the new release that are expected to appeal to the
masses: “save and restore” and “web clippings” functions.
Will that be enough for Microsoft to stop the bleeding? Yes. I say that
because the company has the distinct advantage of being able to push the
changes to its audience, as many of them are unwilling to consider
anything beyond the default “E” on their desktop. We all know someone
like that . To millions of Microsoft windows users, IE 8 upgrades will
come as a breath of fresh air and prevent them from searching for an
alternative. At least in the near term!
I think if Microsoft had to compete on an equal footing with, say, Firefox,
its market share would be much lower. IE’s share of the browser market
was down to 67.4 percent as of the end of February while Mozilla’s
Firefox had risen to 21.8 percent and Apple’s Safari to 8 percent,
according to web browser tracking firm Net Applications.
7
19 March, 2009
SILICON ALLEY INSIDER
Vivek Kundra’s Crime:
Shoplifted Some Shirts From
J.C. Penney
MAR 19, 2009 02:33A.M.
We’ve been wondering what happened with ‘America’s CIO’ Vivek
Kundra’s 1997 misdemeanor theft conviction, the one the White House
dismissed as “youthful indiscretion.”
Now we know: Vivek shopflited four shirts, worth $134 combined. From
J.C. Penney.
At an average of $33.50 a pop, they weren’t even nice shirts, even in 1996
dollars. (The crime was 1996, the conviction 1997.)
And then, when Vivek got caught, he ran for it. He didn’t get away.
Props to the Associated Press for pulling every thread. Via the AP’s
Michael J. Sneffen:
A 1996 Montgomery County, Md., police report obtained by The
Associated Press on Wednesday under a public records law shows Vivek
Kundra was observed by a security guard putting the men’s shirts into a
shopping bag and leaving the store without paying. Sgt. Tom Stanton
wrote that Kundra was arrested after a brief foot chase and the property
was recovered.
At this point, we wish Vivek and his White House handlers would come
forth with a full explanation. Was this a fraternity prank? Is there some
backstory about how Vivek was dead broke and needed a dress shirt for a
job interview? Because right now, we not only think Vivek is a petty thief,
we think he’s a petty thief with bad taste in clothes.
Image David Clow / Flickr
Join the conversation about this story »
See Also:
• White House Calls Vivek Kundra’s 1997 Theft Conviction ‘Youthful
Indiscretion’*
• Vivek Kundra Back On The Job
• Obama Puts New CIO Vivek Kundra On Suspension
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

ESPN.COM THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN

Chicago Cubs to retire No. 31 The Nature Of Hamas

MAR 19, 2009 02:12A.M.
worn by Greg Maddux,
Goldblog on the difference between Hamas and the PLO:
Ferguson Jenkins
MAR 19, 2009 02:15A.M. I would never predict that certain leaders of Hamas couldn’t
evolve and leave the organization to form new, more
The Chicago Cubs are retiring the No. 31 worn by both Ferguson Jenkins pragmatic organizations. And I would not say that there are
and Greg Maddux. no differences among Hamas leaders; much of the Gaza
leadership is tactically more pragmatic than the Damascus
leaders. But I believe that jihadist organizations are jihadist
at their core, and that it is theologically impossible for Hamas
ENGADGET to change. The PLO was never bound by these strictures. I
think the more relevant question might be: Will Israel wind
Modistech unveils flexible, up negotiating with Hamas, as it once negotiated with the
PLO? This, of course, is a possibility. By the nature of Hamas,
ultrathin OLED light in Korea of course, I don’t see much success for that route, either.
MAR 19, 2009 02:14A.M.

TECHCRUNCH

Early Beta Data From Microsoft

Adsense Competitor
Encouraging
MAR 19, 2009 02:10A.M.

We just heard that the OLED market was set to skyrocket in 2011, but
don’t tell Modistech. Said outfit has just revealed its own flexible,
ultrathin OLED light module in South Korea, which honestly looks eerily
similar to Samsung’s “flapping” OLED panels from last fall. Details are
pretty scant right now, but we’re told to expect mass production within
the next year, with public availability penciled in for — you guessed it —
2011. Hit the read link for a few more delightful looks.
[Via OLED-Display]
Filed under: Displays
Modistech unveils flexible, ultrathin OLED light in Korea originally
appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:14:00 EST. Please see
our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
We are getting reports that Microsoft’s PubCenter, a self serve thirty
party ad publishers platform through AdCenter, is doing quite well with
beta testers. Microsoft began testing PubCenter last summer.
One beta tester we spoke with said PubCenter is paying significantly
more than Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher. All three of these
programs let third part publishers add contextual ads next to their
content via a self-service format.
Google has dominated this space in the past (and all other contextual
advertising) because it offers publishers higher fees for ads. But this
might change when Microsoft unveils PubCenter to the greater publisher
community, particularly if Microsoft is aggresive in revenue splits to gain

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

market share.

Currently, PubCenter is being tested by a small subset of web publishers.

Our tipster says that he receiving from four times more in revenue
Microsoft than Google AdSense. And the money isn’t the only advantage
PubCenter has over AdSense. The advertisement themselves are are
higher quality than Google’s ads, he says, and equally as targeted
towards the content. He says that Microsoft seems to be more stringent
about letting advertisers into the program, versus what seemed like an
advertiser free-for-all though Google’s AdSense. Of course, with a
smaller inventory of advertisers, it’s tougher to provide contextual ads
for obscure content.

We also heard that Microsoft is allowing publishers to get creative with

ads by allowing them to set background images. Google AdSense only
allows publishers to change the color of the ads.

Microsoft is allowing test partners to publish Google ads on their site as

long as the publisher doesn’t have an exclusivity agreement with Google.
Third party ads are a controversial concept, since advertisers expect the
click throughs and conversions that they get from search. Google has
been sued for fraud because ads placed on parked pages weren’t
producing results. But if Microsoft is offering a better program, with
nifty, more targeted ads, then publishers and advertisers alike might
make the switch (or use both, if possible).

Microsoft recently enlisted digital media executives, including execs

from IAC, Wall Street Journal Digital Network, The New York Times Co.,
Time Inc. and Viacom Inc. to consult on next-generation advertising
platform.

Microsoft said this about PubCenter in February:

PubCenter will be built on the existing adCenter Publisher

architecture that is currently in beta and will include the
convergence of technologies and tools provided by the former
Atlas and Rapt solutions, as well as a self-serve offering. The
new platform will provide innovative forecasting and order
management solutions, advanced analytics tools, and
enhanced targeting functionality to enable all digital media
publishers to have access to the tools and technology they
need to provide valuable and relevant ad content to their
advertising partners.

Here are some screenshots of Microsoft’s ads on a publisher’s site and an

ad with an image in the background:

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications,

Delivered Daily.

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Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

ALL THINGS DIGITAL

Microsoft Ups Ante With New

Browser [Personal Technology]
MAR 19, 2009 02:02A.M.

The Web browser is arguably the most important piece of software on a

computer. No longer just a tool for perusing or searching for
information, it has become, for many people, their principal
communications medium, their photo album, their newspaper, social
club, bank and shopping mall.

And, among Web browsers, by far the most popular is Microsoft’s

Internet Explorer, or IE, which comes on every new Windows computer.
So when Microsoft changes Internet Explorer, those changes affect vast
numbers of people, and the Web itself. This week, Microsoft is changing
its browser in a major way. On Thursday, the company will release IE8,
the biggest overhaul of Internet Explorer in years.

I’ve been testing IE8 for months, first using its prerelease versions and,
more recently, the final version. I’ve found it to be a big improvement
over its predecessor, IE7, and a much closer competitor to its main rival,
Mozilla’s Firefox. IE8 is more stable than IE7, more compatible with
industrywide Web standards, and packed with new features that improve
navigation, search, ease of use, privacy and security.

Some of these features can’t be matched out of the box by its main rival
browsers. For instance, related tabs are color-coded, the search field can
show images along with text, you can get instant fly-out maps of place
names in Web pages, and you can easily hide your tracks online from the
prying eyes of advertisers.
But, in my tests, IE8 wasn’t as fast as Firefox, or two other notable
browsers — the Windows version of Apple’s new Safari 4 and Google’s
Chrome. IE8 loaded a variety of pages I tested more slowly than any of
the other browsers, and it grew sluggish when juggling a large number of
Web pages opened simultaneously in tabs.
The new IE8 lets you see images in results from the built-in search box
and quickly switch sources.
Microsoft is making IE8 available, free, at noon EDT Thursday, for both
Windows XP and Windows Vista, at microsoft.com/ie8. A version also
will be tailored for the forthcoming Windows 7, the next edition of the
company’s operating system. But that version won’t be available until the
next prerelease iteration of Windows 7 comes out. It will also be
automatically offered via the Windows Update system over the next few
months.

For that reason, I can’t say that IE8 dethrones my previous browser
champ, Firefox. If you’re a light-duty user and attracted to the new IE’s
strong suite of fresh features, you might prefer it to Firefox. But if you
would be bothered by the speed difference, or the slowdown I saw under
a heavy load, Firefox would still be better.
Unlike its competitors, IE8 won’t be available in a Macintosh version,
though I found it worked fine on a Mac that is running Windows
alongside the Mac’s own operating system.
Favorites and Tabs

This new Internet Explorer looks a bit different, right away. It finally
displays, by default, the old Links bar, now renamed the Favorites Bar.
This is a toolbar near the top of the screen where you can store your
most-used Web sites or folders containing groups of frequently visited
sites, for convenient access. It’s like the Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox or

10
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com
the Bookmarks Bar in Safari. This bar was available in older versions of
IE, but was hidden unless you turned it on.
And this Favorites Bar has a couple of nice features. There’s a one-click
button that will add any Web site to the bar, as opposed to adding it to
the longer Favorites list of less-frequently visited sites. And, to help fit as
many sites as possible on the bar, IE8 has a command that automatically
condenses the titles of the entries.
There are also big changes in the way tabbed browsing works. In IE8,
tabs you open from links on the same Web site are grouped together and
color-coded. And when you have too many tabs to see at once, you can
click on a button to see mini images of the pages they represent, or,
alternatively, you can get a quick text list of all of them.
In addition, when you create a new, empty tab, IE8 displays a number of
choices inside the page. These include the ability to reopen tabs you’ve
closed or to perform various actions on text you’ve copied, such as
emailing or blogging it.
There also is an optional Suggested Sites feature, which pops up a list of
other Web pages that might be similar to, or related to, the page you’re
viewing. This feature doesn’t always do a great job, but when it works,
it’s handy. For example, when I was reading the BBC’s Web site and
clicked Suggested Sites, IE8 listed a variety of other British news sources
I hadn’t bookmarked.
Addresses and Search
Like the other major Web browsers, IE8 now also makes smart
suggestions about what you might be looking for when you type
something into its address bar or its search box. In the address bar, these
are based on your history and your Favorites. In the search box, they are
based on suggestions from whatever search engine you choose to view in
the box, plus your history. All of these suggestions are organized nicely.
(If you are using Windows XP, you must install Microsoft’s desktop
search product for all of these features to work.)
But the IE8 search box does two cool things the other browsers don’t.
First, it allows search engines to show images in the search results that
drop down from the box, something Microsoft calls Visual Search. With
some providers, like Google, you don’t see images, at least not today. But
with others, such as Wikipedia and Amazon, images show up.
11
19 March, 2009
Microsoft’s new browser IE8 includes a feature called Accelerators,
which can perform specific tasks on Web pages.
Second, and more important, IE8’s search box lets you switch search
providers on the fly by just clicking on an icon at the bottom of the
results list. So, for instance, you could type in Red Sox, see the results in,
say, Google, and then without retyping your search term, almost
instantly get different results from Yahoo or from Microsoft’s Live Search
engine, by just clicking their icons.
Surfing Tools
IE8 includes a new feature called Accelerators, which can perform
specific actions on any text you select in a Web page, often without
taking you to a new page. When you select text, a light-blue icon appears
near it. When you click on that icon, you get a list of options. For
instance, you can translate the text to another language, email it, blog it
or, if it’s a place name, map it.
Depending on which company’s services your chosen accelerator is
using, these actions can happen right on the page you’re viewing, in a fly-
out panel. For example, I selected the word “Beijing” in a news story,
chose Map with Yahoo from the Accelerator list, and got a map showing
Beijing in a small window atop the same page.
When you install IE8, Microsoft suggests you use its own set of
accelerators, but gives you the option to choose from Google, Yahoo and
other competitors. A full list of accelerators, search engines and other
add-ons for IE8 is at ieaddons.com at the bottom left of the page.
Another nice feature is called WebSlices. This requires some effort on the
part of Web page publishers and is on only a small number of pages right
now. But it allows a user to add to her Favorites bar a constantly
updating section of a Web site, complete with graphics, by just clicking a
green icon that appears on the site. For instance, I added to my Favorites
bar a slice that shows the top stories on digg.com.
Speed and Stability
Microsoft claims IE8 is very fast, but in my tests, speed and performance
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com
were its worst attributes. Using two computers, one running Windows
XP and one running Windows Vista, I timed the loading of a half-dozen
popular Web sites, plus two folders containing numerous news and
sports sites. I repeated the test in IE8, and in Firefox, Safari 4 and
Chrome. In every case, IE8 loaded the pages and folders more slowly
than most of the other browsers, and in most cases it came in dead last.
In some instances, the differences were tolerable — a few seconds. In
others, primarily the folders containing nine or 21 sites, respectively, IE8
took two or three times as long as one or more of the other browsers to
complete the task. Microsoft conducted its own tests, which show IE8
winning similar tests, but I rely on mine, which I also use when
evaluating its competitors. You can judge for yourself.
IE8 never totally crashed on me. This is partly because when one tab
crashes, it’s designed to leave the others unaffected. However, in my tests
on both machines, I found that IE8’s general operating speed — things
like opening menus or switching among tabs — slowed down noticeably
when I had 15 or 20 sites opened in tabs, even after they finished
loading.
Security and Privacy
Color-coded tabs make it easy to organize searches.
By contrast, IE8 shines in the areas of protecting you on the Web. Like
other browsers, it warns you when a Web site you’ve reached might be a
phishing page, designed to steal your identity, or a page that’s known to
distribute malicious software. And, like others, IE8 allows you to conduct
a private browsing session that won’t leave any history or other evidence
on your own PC.
But IE8 also has a feature, called InPrivate Filtering, that the company
says will optionally allow you to surf multiple Web sites without leaving
the kinds of tracks on Web servers that allow advertisers and others to
know where you’ve been and what you did there. I was unable to test the
effectiveness of this feature, but assuming it works, it’s a step forward in
privacy.
Compatibility
12
19 March, 2009
IE8 had good compatibility with most Web sites I visited. But in some
cases, it didn’t render a page properly. This is mainly because some sites
were designed for older versions of IE, which used proprietary page-
rendering features that made some sites look good only in IE. With the
new version, Microsoft is moving away from those proprietary features.
To solve this problem, IE8 includes a compatibility button you can click
that will cause the browser to behave like older versions of IE and render
the page properly. You have to click the button only once for each page,
and IE8 will automatically do it for you on subsequent visits.
Bottom Line
Internet Explorer 8 is a well-done advance on an important product used
by most people to surf the Web. If it was faster, I would say it was the
best browser currently available for Windows. But even so, it will be an
improvement for current Internet Explorer users, and might even tempt
some folks to switch.
Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All
Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at
mossberg@wsj.com.
LIFEHACKER
A First Look at Google Voice
[Screenshot Tour]
MAR 19, 2009 02:00A.M.
Last week Google launched Google Voice, a new service that creates a
single phone number and inbox for managing all of your phones,
transcribing voicemail, and more. It’s in closed beta, but we’ve got a
sneak peek.
If you remember, Google Voice is the all-grown-up version of previously
mentioned GrandCentral, which Google acquired last year. Google Voice
boasts many of the same features as GrandCentral did, but it also adds a
few cool features, too. If you’re already a GrandCentral user, chances are
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

you’ll be joining Google Voice sometime soon (if you haven’t already).
Let’s take a look.

The Inbox Aggregates Your Voicemail and Text Messages

As you can see in the picture above, all SMS and voicemail messages all
come to Google Voice through the inbox. You can selectively filter calls to
view voicemail only, SMS only, calls placed, received, or missed.

Voicemail Transcription is Fast and Searchable

My test calls to Google Voice were very quickly transcribed (we’re talking
within two minutes), and the results were... not bad. One would only
guess that transcription will be improved over time, but it’s already been
decent in my tests. You should expect some gibberish to start out,
though. Google indicates the certainty of the transcription by the
greyscale text; the darker the text, the more sure Google is.
You can place any call or send a text message to any contact quickly and
easily with Google Voice’s quick Call and SMS buttons. At first blush
placing a call from Google Voice may seem like more trouble than it’s
worth, but if you think about it, the contact autocompletion makes
placing a call extremely fast.
Integration with Google Contacts

The coolest part about voicemail transcription is that it’s searchable,

allowing you to dig up a voicemail in Google Voice the same way you can
find an old email in Gmail. In fact, if you tell Google Voice to send you an
email when you get new voicemail, the transcription is included,
meaning that your voicemail actually will be searchable from Gmail.

Place Calls and Send SMS from Google Voice

If you’re using Google Contacts in Gmail, your effort will pay off bigtime.
Not only does Google Voice plug into the same contacts, but every box in
Google Voice sports contact autocompletion—from the search box to the
SMS or Call To: fields.

Group Settings Send Specific Calls to Specific Phones

13
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

You’ve also got awesome features like call recording:

One of Google Voice’s coolest features is the ability to send phone calls
and text messages to more than one phone based on rules that you set
up. For example, you can set all calls from your boss or co-workers to
only reach your work phone, or have calls from your significant other
ring every phone so you’re always reachable.

And Now for the Creepy Videos

Google Voice (like GrandCentral before it) has some in-call options that
are a little creepy, or at least for those of us who have gotten used to cell
phone etiquette as we know it. For example, there’s the Listen In
feature:

But there’s other really good stuff, like call blocking: ...and call switching:
Call switching could eventually come in extremely handy when Google
(inevitably) adds some sort of VoIP or integrates with Google Video Chat.

14
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com
Final Thoughts
Tin foil hats aside, we’re very excited and impressed with everything
Google Voice could mean to managing your phones and integrating
voicemail and SMS directly into your email. Whether you’ve given it a try
or gone full-on Google Voice, share your experience in the comments.
BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM
Bill would tax bonus cash
MAR 19, 2009 01:58A.M.
House Democratic leaders said they would introduce legislation
Wednesday night to try to recoup bonuses paid to Wall Street executives
with taxpayer money.
BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL NEWS - CNNMONEY.COM
App Store grows 60%
MAR 19, 2009 01:37A.M.
THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN
How Peak Is Our Oil?
MAR 19, 2009 01:31A.M.
A reader writes:
I am a well-site geologist and work on horizontal drilling
projects in NM and Colorado.
If you look at the rotary rig count – rigs around the world
actively drilling for oil and gas, there are about 1100 rigs
drilling in North America (US and Canada) and another 1000
rigs drilling in the rest of the world. Doesn’t this seem
surprising? That over half the rigs actively drilling wells are in
the US and Canada and there are so few, relatively, drilling
every were else. The reason is, I suspect, that drilling
technology has advanced so far that it is cost effective to drill
15
19 March, 2009
in aging and unconventional fields in North America, where
in the rest of the world there still drilling the “easy to get” oil
and gas. Eventually, the advanced technology learned here
will be applied internationally to further extract massive
amounts of oil and gas from all the fields around the world.
We might be at or near peak oil, but I think the curve will
remain a plateau before it plummets.
TECHCRUNCH
Y Combinator Demo Day Spring
2009
MAR 19, 2009 01:21A.M.
The 16 startups from Y Combinator’s spring session presented their ideas
and initial products at Y Combinator’s Silicon Valley office this
afternoon. Of the 16 startups in this group, 8 have already launched, 6
are in the process of launching and 2 remain in stealth mode. Most of
them have been in development for only three months. Y Combinator
celebrated some good news recently. They are raising $2 million in
capital themselves, from Sequoia Capital and a number of prominent
angel investors for a new entity, managed by Y Combinator, that will
make investments in new startups going forward.
Foodoro
Foodoro is an online marketplace marketplace where people can buy
specialty food directly from artisanal foodmakers. Launched a few weeks
ago, Foodoro aims to be an online e-commerce site for artisanal food
makers, exposing these vendors to a greater audience of food aficionados
than they would get from their own sites or selling solely to specialty
food stores and managing their e-commerce completely. We wrote a
review of Foodoro here.
Skysheet
Skysheet, not officially launched, is a web-based spreadsheets service
that has the speed and feel of Excel.
AirBnB
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com
AirBnB, a startup we wrote about a few weeks ago, is like the eBay of
space. Its an online marketplace for any sort of accomodation, including
hotels, extra bedrooms in peoples’ homes, apartments, and commercial
properties. We reviewed AirBnB here.
reMail
reMail is a mobile iPhone app that allows you to import your Gmail or
AOL mail accounts and then search conversations and emails by topic,
person or subject. The app also has built in folders that let’s you easily
access emails that pertain to certain subjects, like flight information.
Cloudkick
Cloudkick is a web-based
cloud management system of servers on Amazon’s EC2 or Slicehost.
Cloudkick allows you to manage all your servers in once space, letting
you set up new servers with the click of a button and also offers voice,
gives you easy to read graphs and monitoring of servers and email alerts
in the event of a server problem. We reviewed Cloudkick here.
Divvyshot
Divvyshot is a “dead simple” group photo sharing web platofrm where
people can upload hundreds of photos and then be able to share them
with anyone. The startup also has an iPhone app that lets users upload
and monitor event activity in real-time. We recently wrote about
Divvyshot here.
Echodio
Echodio syncs your iTunes libraries across multiple computers and
devices using Boxee. Using cloud sync, the Echodio lets you drop music
tracks into an Echodio playlist and then streams them to computers and
devices. We reviewed Echodio here.
Heyzap
Heyzap, sort of the YouTube for casual games, allows any website to
16
19 March, 2009
access over 6,000 games and then be able to embed the games into their
own blogs or websites through a widget. The games update
automatically, giving publishers fresh game content. We wrote about
Heyzap here.
Nambii
Nambii produces dating iPhone applications, including the Mobile
Dating, a Match.com-like dating app; Kiss or Miss, a kissing app; and
DateMap, a location-based date finding app that lets users find people
looking for dates by geographic location and availability.
Picurio
Picurio is trying to replace iPhoto. It’s a webased application that is made
to feel like a desktop app. You can drag and drop photos into albums and
then automatically sync them with Facebook, with virtually little to no
upload time.
Propable
Propable is a property management system that rest apartments from
property owners at market rate, then furnishes them, and rents them out
as rooms to young professionals. Propable charges a rent fee that
includes wifi, cable, maintenance, gas, and cleaning, clearing a large
markup for the unit and making property owners money.
thesixtyone
thesixtyone is the Digg for indie music. The startup has built filter for
rating music, while also being able to listen to tracks and albums, earn a
ranking reputation, and achievement badges for rating good music. Read
our review of thesixtyone here.
Voxli
Voxli is a simple web-based voice conferencing services for gamers.
Anyone can create a voice conference room on the Voxli homepage for up
to 200 participants. The startup is planning to expand beyond the
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com
gaming market, hoping to become a convenient replacement for Skype.
We recently reviewed Voxli here.
Wattvision
Wattvision makes it easy for you to monitor the power use of a home or
business by installing a sensor on your energy meter. You then get a live
view of your home’s energy use online, with fast updates and easy to
install sensors.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications,
Delivered Daily.
ENGADGET
Peek Pronto: is a new Peek
device on its way?
MAR 19, 2009 01:16A.M.
We don’t have much to go on here save for the image above (which a
tipster discovered on Peek‘s peekforbusiness.com page). If we had to
take a flying leap, we’d say that the company does indeed have
something on the way — perhaps a 3G device? That’s pure speculation,
but if anyone out there on the interblogs knows anything we don’t, feel
free to pass it along!
Filed under: Handhelds
Peek Pronto: is a new Peek device on its way? originally appeared on
Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for
use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments
17
19 March, 2009
GIGAOM
How Dell Will Respond to
Cisco’s Server Challenge
MAR 19, 2009 01:00A.M.
Dell, the world’s second-largest server maker, is responding to Cisco
Systems and its new blade servers by doing what it knows best: Taking a
neutral stance and helping to sell devices to customers that want a more
heterogeneous data center environment. That’s code for people who
don’t want to get locked into a wholly Cisco-centric solution. And when
that’s no longer enough, Dell will go out and acquire companies to
combat its rival.
Cisco caused some tremors in the typically staid server industry earlier
this week when it introduced a brand-new way of tackling the data center
infrastructure, one that treats compute resources as mere elements of
the network fabric. The company has dubbed this unique approach
“Unified Computing.” With this move, Cisco is challenging traditional
server makers, with Dell and Hewlett-Packard in its crosshairs. Of the
two, I think Dell is the most vulnerable.
Not so, according to Rick Becker, a V-P of software and solutions at Dell.
In a conversation yesterday, he argued that Cisco’s way of doing things is
not for everyone, that, “In many cases, blades are an overkill.” Dell, he
said, is confident that it can keep customers happy by building the
highest-performing, simplest-to-use servers that consume much less
power that the new devices from Cisco.
To be sure, Cisco’s new proposed solution is good for those looking to
solve problems involving large data sets in large data centers. Dell, on
the other hand, makes servers for the broadest customer base possible.
Or as Becker put it, “Dell has its own version of data center computing.”
(Related post: An Inside Look at Dell’s Cloud Server Lab.)
Becker added that while Dell appreciates Cisco “evangelizing a new
opportunity around virtualization,” the company has been down that
path already. Dell, he said, will give customers “the same value in
industry-standard equipment because customers want choice.” Which is
a very polite way of saying that Cisco’s margins are going to be its
undoing in these tough times.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

What Dell has in its favor, according to Becker, is its ability to work with
any and all comers to integrate best-of-breed solutions — including
Nexus switches from Cisco itself. That is something that would work
against, say, an HP, which makes multiple data center components.
When I asked Becker if Dell was willing to step up and acquire
companies to take the battle into Cisco’s camp, he said that the
company’s preference is to partner with others as that offers more
choices (it’s close relationship with eGenera is one example), but that it
was willing to acquire companies in order to grow. My advice to Michael
Dell and his crew: Start buying, and fast. There are lots of good
companies out there, starting with eGenera and Arista Networks. If Dell
doesn’t open its wallet, we’re pretty sure HP will.
about 120,000 articles a day right now and applying semantic tags to
each one. In the end it can categorize each article by business topic,
organization, place, person, and theme. When you type in a search term,
each of those columns gets filled in with associated keywords, allowing
you to drill down to exactly what you want even if you are not sure at the
outset what you are looking for. The back-end clustering is powered by
Endeca.
A search for “Sun Microsystems” brings up further suggestions for
refinement, including “IBM,” “Jonathan Schwartz,” and “market share.”
You sort of graze around, adding new keywords as they are presented to
you. Each keyword you select is added to your string, and corresponding
article results appear below. A sentiment pie chart indicates what
percentage of the stories are positive, negative, or neutral. Another one
breaks the results down by source (Online News, Magazines,
Newspapers, Blogs, Research). Clicking on any shaded area filters the
results further.

Searches can be saved, creating an interesting prospective news search

tool. You can create your own memetracker for any industry or topic. I
am not sure I would use Newssift every day to stay on top of the latest
news, but I can see it as a useful research tool when I have to really dig
TECHCRUNCH deep into a topic. It does better with business news than technology.
Still, it is worth checking out in that it employs several subtle
The Financial Times Launches navigational techniques that make it more of a discovery engine than a
search engine.
Its Own Business News Search
Engine (Newssift).
MAR 19, 2009 12:55A.M.

The Financial Times Group, which is owned by the British publisher

Pearson, is not exactly the place you’d expect to find the latest search
engine. But a startup deep within the bowels of the organization called
FT Search is launching one at 8PM ET tonight called Newssift. It is a
semantic search engine that sifts through business news, and it is not
half bad, especially for bigger companies and broader topics.

Robin Johnson, the CEO of FT Search, used to run the Financial Times
in the U.S. as its president. He’s been working on Newssift for the past
two years, and currently employs a team of 25 people. “The object was to
create a tool to allow a busy business person to assess what is the skinny
on a problem they do not know the answer to,” he tells me.

Newssift indexes about 4,000 business news sources, from online

newspapers and blogs to news portals and research sites. It is ingesting

18
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

SILICON ALLEY INSIDER

USA Today Ad Revenues Could

Fall 35% In Q1
MAR 19, 2009 12:50A.M.

• Counting Crows go label-free [CountingCrows.com]

• Firefox Mobile for Symbian preview video [Vimeo]

• USA Today ad revenues could drop 30%-35% in Q1 [paidContent]

• AT&T to offer contract-free iPhones for $600 [BGR]

• Pandora launches for BlackBerry [ZNF]

Join the conversation about this story »

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications,

Delivered Daily.
ENGADGET

Shuttle gets extra official with

luggable X50 all-in-one PC
MAR 19, 2009 12:44A.M.

ESPN.COM

Hurt Kevin Youkilis leaves

Team USA, to undergo MRI
MAR 19, 2009 12:52A.M.

When it seemed as though the injury news could not get any worse for
Team USA, manager Davey Johnson announced that Kevin Youkilis has
left the team because of a sore left ankle on Wednesday.

19
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com
Shuttle wasn’t exactly tip-toeing around this one at CES in January, but
the company has now gone the extra mile and gotten fully official with its
new X50 all-in-one PC, which takes square aim at the likes of ASUS’ Eee
Top and other Atom-based nettops. As with ASUS’ offering, this one
packs a reasonably-sized 15.6-inch 1,366 x 768 touchscreen, along with
the more nettop-minded Atom 330 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB
hard drive, a built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam and microphone, and a
generous five USB 2.0 ports, among other standard fare. Unfortunately,
it still doesn’t look like this one is available to order just yet but, unless
something major has changed since CES, you should be able to pick one
up by the end of the month for about $500.
[Via SlashGear]
Filed under: Desktops
Shuttle gets extra official with luggable X50 all-in-one PC originally
appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:44:00 EST. Please see
our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
20
19 March, 2009
THE DAILY DISH | BY ANDREW SULLIVAN
Don’t Blame China
MAR 19, 2009 12:42A.M.
Mark Thoma makes an important point:
...if you looked at the value of US manufacturing, it hasn’t
fallen nearly as much as manufacturing employment. Thus,
much of the change that has affected workers is due to
changes in technology, not the exporting of jobs (this comes
from a study [pdf] done by the Peterson Institutute, more
here). But from a worker’s perspective, it doesn’t matter all
that much whether it’s technology or jobs moving to other
countries, the job is gone either way. The key, then, is to have
good jobs waiting for workers when they are displaced due to
inevitable (and desirable) technological change or to jobs
moving overseas, jobs that are every bit as good or better
than the jobs they left. That is where we are falling short. The
new jobs we are creating are not as good as the jobs we are
losing, when workers are forced to find new jobs they don’t
tend to do as well as they did in their previous job, and that is
the source some of the stagnation we have seen in middle
class incomes over the last few decades.
ESPN.COM
U.S. Olympic Committee lays
off 54 as cost-cutting measure
MAR 19, 2009 12:40A.M.
The U.S. Olympic Committee laid off 54 employees Wednesday as a key
part of its plan to trim its budget by 5 percent to deal with rough
economic times.
ESPN.COM
Ray Allen of Boston Celtics,
Dwyane Wade of Miami Heat
out with injuries
MAR 19, 2009 12:33A.M.
Ray Allen and Leon Powe have joined the list of sidelined Boston Celtics,
and NBA scoring leader Dwyane Wade did not suit up for the Miami
Heat for Wednesday night’s game.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com
TECHCRUNCH
10% Layoffs At Ustream
MAR 19, 2009 12:15A.M.
Ustream, a live streaming video service based in Mountain View
California, has laid off 4 people, or about 10% of staff, we’ve confirmed.
At least two of the four staff let go were Director level or higher.
The downsizing has been added to the Layoff Tracker, which has tracked
over 300,000 layoffs since last year.
Ustream has been in the news a lot lately and continues to innovate on
the iPhone. The company has raised $13.1 million over two round of
financing. The most recent round was a year ago, in April 2008.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and
hardware.
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
Cisco: Skepticism Abounds
About Foray into Servers
[Voices]
MAR 19, 2009 12:12A.M.
Seems the more the Street thinks about Cisco Systems’s (CSCO)
announcement Monday that it will sell servers, the less the Street is
inclined to be enthusiastic. As I noted Monday, Cisco is expected to lose
current revenue from partners Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and IBM (IBM)
as it comes into deep competition with both. And the effort Cisco will
need to make to actually be successful in selling a server against both
vendors seems somewhat formidable–however enthusiastic Cisco is
about its server, dubbed the “Universal Computing System,” or UCS.
JP Morgan’s Ehud Gelblum sounds the most skeptical of the lot. His
colleague Mark Moskowitz, who covers HP and IBM, today put out a
note saying that it’s going to be pretty tough for Cisco to put together the
21
19 March, 2009
necessary software and services to match the top vendors of servers.
Gelblum agrees, but he’s more interested in what seems to be a rather
skimpy return even if Cisco does succeed.
Read the rest of this post
ALL THINGS DIGITAL
How BlackBerry Models Differ
[Mossberg’s Mailbox]
MAR 19, 2009 12:12A.M.
Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and
my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for
readability.
I get confused by all the different models of the BlackBerry — Bold,
Storm, Curve, Pearl and so on. Can you briefly explain the differences?
There are too many models to list here, because RIM, the maker of
BlackBerry, makes varying versions for competing wireless carriers, and
these may have different features, even if they look the same. However,
here’s a quick breakdown of the main flavors.
The Bold is the top-of-the-line BlackBerry, relatively large and costly,
with a wide keyboard and a big, vivid screen. The Curve is its little
brother — still sporting a good, full, keyboard, but lower-priced, smaller
and lighter. The newest Curve, called the 8900, has a beautiful screen
and is even sleeker than its predecessor.
The Pearl is a slimmer, low-priced, more fashion-oriented model with a
truncated keyboard that has two letters on each key and relies on
software to guess which one you meant to hit. The Pearl Flip is much like
the Pearl, except, as its name implies, it’s a flip phone.
The Storm is the BlackBerry line’s most direct competitor to the Apple
iPhone. It’s the only BlackBerry without a physical keyboard, instead
relying on a large, beautiful touch screen for typing and navigation.
Unlike on the iPhone, however, the Storm provides physical feedback
each time you press down on the screen.
I’d be interested in the new, tiny iPod Shuffle, except that I dislike
Apple’s earbuds. And, because they have now moved the playback
controls to the earbud cord, I can’t use my favorite third-party set.
What are my options?
Well, one option is to buy the old model of the Shuffle, which Apple is
keeping on the market. It’s larger, but still very small, and has the
controls on the player itself, rather than on the earbud cord, so you can
use plain old earbuds or headphones from other companies. Plus, at $49,
it’s $30 less, though it has only 25% of the capacity of the new one and
lacks the new model’s voice features.
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

Another, costlier, option is to buy better earbuds that have the new
controller built in. Apple sells a pair of $79 in-ear buds with a control
module on the cord. They were designed for the iPod Touch, but the
company says they work perfectly with the new Shuffle. Several other
headphone companies, such as Klipsch, have announced plans to offer
either headphones or adapters with Shuffle-compatible controls in
coming months.

Is it safe to upgrade my Vista PC to the beta version of Windows 7?

Since it is a beta version, there is always some danger of problems. But I

have upgraded a couple of Vista computers with no special tricks or help,
and with no significant problems. Still, there are a couple of caveats.
First, Microsoft will be replacing the beta with a more polished “release
candidate” that could involve a re-installation process, so you may want
to hold off. Second, Microsoft isn’t guaranteeing that every hardware
feature on every computer or peripheral will work properly under the
pre-release versions.

• You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online

free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site,
http://walt.allthingsd.com.

ENGADGET

USB tethering, Publish Video

and Find my iPhone found in
OS 3.0
MAR 19, 2009 12:04A.M.
Apple touted quite a few new iPhone features at yesterday’s OS 3.0 event,
but now that the beta build is trickling out, there’s been a bevy of
unearthed discoveries to further pique our interests. First up, the gang at
Boy Genius Report found an option to enable the “Find My iPhone”
service in the MobileMe settings. Unfortunately, that’s all we’ve got, but
we wouldn’t put it past Cupertino to build some me.com-linked location
tracker that’d be the envy of Orwell himself — hey, that’d be pretty useful
if you accidentally left the mobile in a taxi. Also in the MobileMe section,
it now says Publish Video when you go to publish an image. It’s an odd
typo, to be sure, and while video recording has been near the top of our
wishlist for some time, we’re not about to get our hopes up. Finally, Mac
Rumors is reporting that a hacker has dug up and successfully activated
the USB tethering capabilities. Apple’s Scott Forstall had mentioned the
devs were building it in, but were still in talks with the carriers. As to
whether any or all of these functions will actually end up in the final OS
3.0 build, your guess is a good as ours. For now, check out more pics of
the MobileMe additions after the break.

[Thanks everyone who sent this in!]

Read - Find My iPhone

22
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR infimate@gmail.com 19 March, 2009

Read - USB Tethering • Sort of a beginner’s guide to what we cover everyday, but for the
Forbe’s crowd. [Forbes]
Continue reading USB tethering, Publish Video and Find my iPhone
found in OS 3.0

Filed under: Cellphones

USB tethering, Publish Video and Find my iPhone found in OS 3.0

originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:04:00 EST.
Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

SILICON ALLEY INSIDER

LIFEHACKER Netflix Pays About A Nickel To

Remains of the Day: The Stream Each Movie Online
MAR 19, 2009 12:00A.M.
Vintage Web Edition [For What
DVD rental service Netflix (NFLX) has been one of the big recession
It’s Worth] winners. While the economy has tanked, Netflix shares have more than
MAR 19, 2009 12:00A.M. doubled since late December.

But what about the future when it’s streaming movie videos online
instead of mailing DVDs in red envelopes. Won’t that cost a bundle?

No, says streaming media analyst Dan Rayburn. He estimates that it

costs Netflix about $0.06 to stream a two-hour movie in standard
definition, and about $0.09 to stream a hi-definition movie. (Via its
partners like Limelight Networks and Level 3.) That’s very cheap
compared to the postage they have to spend on DVD envelopes, which
Rayburn estimates at $0.78.

What could potentially be more costly? Netflix’s licensing fees for online
content.

Rayburn: In other online video offerings I have seen content owners

Time for a quick look at a few of the other stories that hit our radar
today.
• The Vintage Web
• Appreciate just how far we’ve come (and enjoy what you once
loved).
• Pandora for BlackBerry finally launches
• Good news for the BlackBerry crowd. [Boy Genius Report]
• Country Of Origin Labeling Officially Begins Today
• COOL gives you a heads up on where your food is coming from.
[Consumerist]
• Use Technology To Spend Less Time Working
charge a one-time flat fee per video, a fee each time the video has been
watched, a one time licensing charge for a specific number of plays or
many various other licensing models. I’ve seen licensing costs as high as
$4 per movie, per play, and I’ve seen pricing on the other end of the
spectrum at a few pennies per play. That’s why many of the content
licensing deals Netflix has in place are a one time cost no matter how
many movies are watched.
Most of Netflix’s current streaming content is old, “catalog” content, and
some is via a deal with Starz. But very little is new-release content, which
would seemingly cost much more to stream than “Full Metal Jacket.” So
Netflix’s streaming rights costs could certainly go up as it adds more new
stuff: The company says it plans to “substantially increase” spending on
streaming content in 2009.
But it’s going to be a long time — several years, at least — before
streaming takes over DVD rentals as the bulk of Netflix’s business. So

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who knows what costs — or subscribership, or competitors — are going

to look like then.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Netflix Having Great Q1, Hits 10 Million Subscribers (NFLX)

• Netflix: 1 Million Subscribers Streaming Via Xbox 360 (NFLX,

MSFT)

• DVDs Still Crushing Digital Distribution (AAPL, NFLX)

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