17 new stories on The Next Web today |  |
- Apple launches Support Profile website, personalises future technical support
- Twitter isn’t the new Cronkite – it needs the new Cronkite(s)
- Job description? I make videos on YouTube, full time.
- What do you get if you mix a Segway with a motorbike? The world’s first real transformer
- What Happened to CES? Is the era ending?
- CES 2011: Polaroid’s GL30 Instant Digital Camera
- Does Want: The Tron inspired “Ring” lamp
- CES 2011 Video: Girls…never run out of batteries again with vibrator that charges from USB port.
- CES 2011 Video: Earn gift cards for liking Facebook pages and downloading apps with JunoWallet
- App Store Classics: Sweeter dreams with Sleep Cycle.
- How to write ‘good’ code [cartoon]
- Myna Music’s smart mixes take recommendation to the next level
- Apple pulls VLC from the App Store
- UK Government urges Apple to ease iPhone charity donation restrictions
- SoundCloud announces big-name investment – “The Web should not be mute”
- Nvidia announces Tegra Zone, highlights games for dual-core Android handsets
- Volunteer Work Made Easy in Arabia by Nakhweh.com
- Get your own free, delicious and gorgeous ‘bloggable’ sticker!
| Apple launches Support Profile website, personalises future technical support Posted: 09 Jan 2011 12:49 AM PST
The site asks existing Apple customers to log in using their Apple account details, immediately listing products that have been bought and registered using those credentials. Users can check on the registration of their products but also the warranty status, providing an easy way to check on a repair or support issue should a customer have contacted Apple. When I logged in, I was presented with the details for both my iPhone 4 and my Macbook Pro. Serial numbers were listed, as was a field allowing me to enter a nickname for my devices, enabling Apple’s support teams to better identify your product from a long list of Apple products you may own.
There are options to register and add additional products that are not listed, the system will auto-detect the serial number of different Apple devices. Listed on the left hand side of the portal is a VoicePass option, currently only available to U.S and Canadian citizens, which provides fields for customers to enter their current contact details. This is designed to enable Apple support technicians to recognise who is calling and tailor their service to the caller, bringing up the customers details to enable fast and efficient support. You may not experience any issues but it’s always a good idea to be prepared for when you should need technical support. Apple’s Support Profile website might save you those all-important few minutes when your computer crashes and you need to get that video render back.MacWorld, Image Credit |
| Twitter isn’t the new Cronkite – it needs the new Cronkite(s) Posted: 08 Jan 2011 06:31 PM PST  Editors Note: Today was a horrible day in Tucson, Arizona, and as far as the shooting itself, the criminal investigation and any political ramifications, we are not here to discuss any of that, and our condolences and thoughts go out to all those killed, injured and to their families. We are here to discuss Twitter and breaking news. Twitter needs an anchor – or perhaps hundreds, thousands or millions of them. A while back – specifically when the world was transfixed by Tiger Woods crash on his lawn, an event that in really no way compares to the outcome of today’s events, though if you remember, the first (mistaken) reports were that Woods had been seriously injured – MG Siegler over on Techcrunch wrote a seminal piece saying that Twitter was the new Walter Cronkite, i.e. it has become the place that we all turn to get the most breaking of news. I thought a lot about that post during todays events, and I now feel that while the point that Twitter is the place to go for breaking news is beyond question, I think that saying that Twitter is the new Cronkite is going a bit too far – I think that Twitter actually needs it’s own Cronkite, either standing alone or preferably with the aid of crowdsourced volunteers. If you were not following the days events in real-time on Twitter today, then I’ll give a quick recap of the roughly two hours on Twitter preceding the press conference at hospital where the victims were sent:
The conflicting reports upset many people, blaming Twitter/reporters/people sharing the news that they messed up. That, to me, wasn’t the case – news organizations were doing their best to get the story as straight as quickly as possible, and many on Twitter were also doing their best to constantly pass on the correct and most up-to-date information. In fact, if anything, it reminded me that news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination was handled in quite a similar fashion by Cronkite – trying to sort through all of the conflicting reports as an anxious world watched in the real-time of the day. It was a kind of crowdsourced editorial effort that has happened in some ways before on Twitter, but today seemed to me to be the starkest example of this I’ve ever seen – and that includes personally doing the same through multiple natural disasters – including the Haiti earthquake nearly a year ago to the day. If you were helping to find and pass on the most accurate information of the moment, you were part of one giant newsroom today. However, there was one issue that keep coming up to me today, and it had to do specifically with some of the changes that Twitter has made over the last year, specifically the “Top Tweet” distinction on search. If you don’t know what a Top Tweet does, basically, it is “sticky” at the top of the search results because it has had so many retweets. In most cases, this is perfectly fine. However, for a long while today, there was a Top Tweet by a CNN Political Director Sam Fiest (since deleted, I just found out, almost certainly by himself) that had both sides of the story, saying Giffords was taken the hospital and that a sheriff had said she was already dead. That tweet was stuck up near the top of Twitter search for awhile, even after it was becoming very clear that Giffords was in fact alive. While it’s impossible to tell if there was any kind of negative effect from the spreading of what turned out to be false info (though I of course Fiest was hardly the only one tweeting it out and I don’t blame Fiest if that is what he was informed) that tweet had while millions of others were flying around Twitter, it opened up to me a need that I hope Twitter address – adding some crisis situation editorial. Twitter has stated quite clearly that it embraces its roll as the place that breaking news and indeed entire movements can take place on its service, but with that commitment has to come some kind of responsibility. There is a large difference between someone (or a news organization) tweeting out something that turns out to be untrue, to continuing to highlight that misinformation simply based on the number of times it has been retweeted (just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that Twitter just delete tweets – that would be censorship – just removing the ‘Top Tweet’ distinction, which can give a lot of weight to a tweet, regardless of its factual accuracy). No algorithm can fix this – only human beings can. As crowdsourcing projects such as CrisisCommons have shown (disclosure: I’m an active volunteer with CrisisCommons), human “gardening” is very important to getting the story straight. In the worst-case, unattended misinformation could lead to obstructing official responses to crisis, including getting the most up-to-date and official news to everyone. During today’s crisis, NPR’s Andy Carvin put up a Storify about the event, which was much appreciated, but Storify can only be used to collect, not to actually affect the news editorially on Twitter. So here’s what I’m suggesting for Twitter to at least consider: either hire an experienced editorial staff that can quickly make changes to direct people to the most factual/official account of what is happening during a crisis, and/or develop a mechanism where Twitter users can vote up or down tweets (or perhaps flag in a way?). Of course, a retweet itself is a kind of vote up, but there is no way to vote anything down… Yes, that sounds a lot like Quora, doesn’t it? Somewhat surprisingly to me, Quora wasn’t used this way today (I set up an experiment after the news had settled a bit even so). If Twitter doesn’t do this, I can see citizen (and actual) reporters using Quora or a similar service in the future to get the story straight and spread the correct word. That said, Twitter has proven itself as the platform for this new generation of news, but we’re still waiting for old Walter to take his seat. |
| Job description? I make videos on YouTube, full time. Posted: 08 Jan 2011 06:07 PM PST If there’s one thing I’m hearing over and over again here at CES it’s content, content, content . Weather it’s Apple, Google or Yahoo, TV is going to be social; a mix of traditional and user generated content where viewers interact in real-time. And now users’ who generate content are becoming just as influential as corporate media providers and the money is their to prove it. Making videos on YouTube is increasing becoming a viable career choice for videobloggers who not only get paid a percentage of the advertising revenue through Google’s Partner Program, but also make money from sponsorship and advertising. Brands are now jumping on the band wagon and paying a fraction of the costs partnering with YouTubers who are getting the same amounts of hits as a cable network. I bumped into a couple of YouTube’s most popular videobloggers who told me how making YouTube videos is a full time career. |
| What do you get if you mix a Segway with a motorbike? The world’s first real transformer Posted: 08 Jan 2011 05:35 PM PST The Uno III is an electric motorcycle that drives on one wheel driving at slow speeds balancing like a Segway, and upon speeding up transforms to two wheels allowing for speeds for up to 35MPH. The electric powered transformer is the brainchild of Benjamin Gulak who designed the bike in high school after taking a trip to Asia and seeing the pollution bikes emit. The compact ability of the bike enables you to easily fold it up and take it into your home for charging. |
| What Happened to CES? Is the era ending? Posted: 08 Jan 2011 05:33 PM PST
In 2011, we saw so many companies doing the exact same thing (and many of them doing it poorly) that it’s hard to even view this year’s CES in a positive light. Is the innovation gone? Has the consumer electronics market become so single-minded that there’s simply nothing left to do? I don’t think so, but it sure looked that way. Tablet TerrorOf course, in 2010, one of the biggest stories of the year was the iPad. It truly was the game-changer that showed the slate to be a viable format both for consumption and production. But what we saw at CES was that everybody seemed to be making one, yet very few were actually making anything we’d use. The notable exception? The Xoom. The Motorola project, while still in early stages, appears to be very promising. However, even though the hardware is important, the real story is in the Android 3.0 operating system. This OS change didn’t require CES in order to be a big deal. The fact that we first saw it at CES just means that more people saw it at the same time, but it would have been a big deal even on any random Tuesday. What’s worse? Some of the manufacturers who came to CES didn’t even have a prototype. Apparently gone are the days when we could walk into the Las Vegas convention center and drool over things that may or may not appear while we at least got to see a physical representation of a final product. It seems that now it’s perfectly acceptable to show up with just an idea or a drawing and talk about what could be rather than showing us. For those of us who have become addicted to the bleeding edge of gadgets, this is unacceptable. Forget About Phones
The real story, and the one that took over CES without even being there, came from Apple with its iPhone release on Verizon. But even that isn’t some technological change from the norm. It’s simply a CDMA version of an already-released phone. While this is neither the time nor place to talk about what the next big things in mobile might be, it’s certainly the place to express disappointment in the fact that we didn’t see any of them this year. Robot Rhumba
From everything that we saw this year, it was like a re-hash from years before. When the most exciting robot that we’ve seen thus far in 2011 actually got announced before CES, it’s like our childhood gadget dreams have just gone down the drain. Window WashingSo Windows will eventually run on ARM processors. This actually is exciting, but only for a very small segment of the population. The rest of what we saw from the Microsoft camp, excluding the incredibly cool new Surface 2 table, was met with a pretty large amount of “meh” across the Internet. Where is our completely connected house? Why are refrigerators suddenly a bigger deal that the things that we can actually play with? Let’s face facts a second time — technology and gadgets are supposed to be fun! Nobody actually needs these things in order to survive, we simply raise their necessity value in our own minds in order to justify our love for them. Microsoft, for years, has led the pack in providing us with eye candy that we’d love to own but can’t just yet. This year, aside from the Surface 2, that desire factor just wasn’t there. Remains of the RestWhat’s really unfortunate about how things went down this year is that there are some incredibly cool, useful products out there. Things such as the iHealth system seem, at this point, to need a show of their own in order to really stand out. Yes, they’re still consumer electronics, but they’re electronics that make a difference in people’s lives instead of just being fun. It gets more and more difficult with each passing year for products such as the iHealth to gain air time. Why? Because we’re constantly being inundated with bigger and “better” versions of products that already exist and so it’s hard to get face to face with those ones that don’t. So that makes me wonder — is the era coming to an end? Are so many companies worried about keeping up with the proverbial Joneses that it has stifled true innovation? Let’s hope that’s not the case. Maybe between now and CES 2012, the tablet wars and 3D mania will die down and companies will be forced to truly innovate in order to impress the gadget-worshiping masses. For now, if you want to check out all of the things that we found cool at this year’s CES, make sure to take a browse through TNW Gadgets.CES Image, CBM Robot |
| CES 2011: Polaroid’s GL30 Instant Digital Camera Posted: 08 Jan 2011 04:37 PM PST
Digital Retro? This camera pretty much captures it. This year at CES, Polaroid teamed up with none other than Lady Gaga to unveil its new GL30 Instant Camera. I’ve never heard point and shoot photography sound so confusing as I did when listening to Lady Gaga demo the camera. Fortunately the simplicity and beauty of the camera speaks for itself. The boxy, tapered shape of the digital incarnation shares a similar aesthetic to the much-loved Polaroid cameras from the 80s. The digital camera has an adjustable display and of course, being a classic Polaroid, it even prints 3×4 inch photos. You can even add in the white border around images. While it’s certainly a step in the right direction for Polaroid (maybe not the Lady Gaga part), I’d still like to see them revive Polaroid film sometime in the not too distant future (pretty please!) via @Gizmodo |
| Does Want: The Tron inspired “Ring” lamp Posted: 08 Jan 2011 04:03 PM PST
Has Clu finally stolen Kevin Flynn’s disc? No! It’s just the latest in Tron inspired trends, the “Ring” lamp by Italian designer Loris Bottello. The rotating disc lamp is lit by bioluminescent polymers with adjustable intensity levels and the energy is transferred by brush contacts on the outer copper ring. This would look so, so rad in my apartment. Via @Gizmodo |
| CES 2011 Video: Girls…never run out of batteries again with vibrator that charges from USB port. Posted: 08 Jan 2011 11:04 AM PST My laptop never leaves my side, I love it so much I married it last year. I also love that my iPhone charges from a USB port so I don’t have to travel with clunky plugs and when I came across the LELO MIA pocket vibrator, that charges from a USB port, I fell in love again. Retailing at $64 it’s a bargin for the pleasure it will surly provide. They are sending me a couple to review next week and no, there won’t be any video accompanying that post, that’s for sure! |
| CES 2011 Video: Earn gift cards for liking Facebook pages and downloading apps with JunoWallet Posted: 08 Jan 2011 10:17 AM PST If there’s one thing that’s always left in my wallet at the end of the year, it’s that $50 gift card from Aunt Dora that I forgot to spend and now I never will spend because it’s expired. Silicon Valley based startup JunoWallet aims to solve that problem enabling to not only keep your gift cards digitally on your iphone or android, but they also give you gift cards or Juno credits for doing tasks like liking Facebook pages or downloading apps. Brands are currently offering consumers discounts at nearby stores when checking in on location based apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, but JunoWallet’s offers consumers credits/gift cards for doing tasks upon checking in which you can spend at other retailers or give to your friends as a giftcard to spend at the retailer of their choice. JunoWallet are to announce a round of VC funding at the end of January and also a deal with one of the US’s biggest grocery stores converging the offline/online giftcard market. |
| App Store Classics: Sweeter dreams with Sleep Cycle. Posted: 08 Jan 2011 09:48 AM PST
The app uses the iPhone's accelerometer to measure your movement during the night and wakes you up during a light sleep phase rather than a deep phase, since waking from a deep sleep is quite unpleasant for most people (well – me anyway). When you're fast asleep you don't move so much and this enables Sleep Cycle to figure out a good time to get you up. When you first use the app, it asks you to place your iPhone face down under the sheet at the head end of your bed and lie down. You then need to turn over a couple of times to calibrate the app. Once you've done this, you're ready to go – set your alarm time and type and pop your phone face down under the sheets. Just make sure your iPhone is plugged in otherwise you might get an unexpected lie in.
The difference with this app compared to a regular alarm is that you won't necessarily get woken up at the exact time you set – the app will wake you sometime within a half hour window which ends at that time. So for example, if you'd like sleep timer to wake you at eight thirty, it will wake you any time between eight o' clock and eight thirty, depending on how deeply asleep you are. Once you have grabbed your iPhone in the morning to turn the alarm off, you can review your night's sleep in the form of a graph which shows your sleep patterns throughout the night. This is a really cool feature but it can make you feel even worse after a bad night's sleep. It's one thing to feel as though you've had a bad night, and another to see the proof!
After using Sleep Cycle for a while I can say that it works very well, and although I don't exactly leap out of bed grinning from ear to ear, I do seem to wake up in less of a strop which can only be a good thing. I quite often wake up naturally five minutes before Sleep Cycle's alarm goes off – I think this is a result of me looking at the alarm's 'window' right before going to sleep which again is no bad thing. I still find it weird slipping a phone under my sheets whilst it's plugged in to the wall though. Perhaps the iPhone 5 will have enough juice to do away with this necessity. Ah, a man can dream eh?Post Thumbnail |
| How to write ‘good’ code [cartoon] Posted: 08 Jan 2011 08:29 AM PST |
| Myna Music’s smart mixes take recommendation to the next level Posted: 08 Jan 2011 07:14 AM PST
Bearing in mind the vast amount of choice in available digital music these days, it’s not surprising that tools that are appearing to help navigate all our favourite tracks, artists and genres (or suggest new ones) and are starting to look quite attractive to large media organisations that provide this content en masse. Myna Music from New York based Orpheus Media Research is one such solution and interesting because it uses parameters such as mood, sound and texture when analysing music rather than metatags such as genre or artist which can be somewhat restricting and at times create some fairly inconsistent results. The solution is even able to look at each individual track at an instrumental level, allowing you to create something along the lines of the “bassline playlist” in the video below. When you look at the way that Myna works, it’s no real surprise that the people behind it are musicians themselves. Its developer Greg Wilder originally envisaged a solution that would allow easier discovery of production music for theatre, essentially background music which is dictated more by specific moods rather than genres or musical styles. Over the past six years this solution has evolved into one that can now be used by everyone from TV production companies to games developers, essentially providing the information needed via an API that can feed a whole range of platforms and services. Orpheus Media currently has 10 organisations trailing the solution, including leading players in the streaming, aggregation and production music spaces and will also be at the MIDEM music industry conference this year presenting Myna Music to us lucky Europeans. I personally think its inevitable that this solution will eventually form a key part of many music services and its potential, especially combined with the power of other API’s around music data out there, is huge. |
| Apple pulls VLC from the App Store Posted: 08 Jan 2011 06:28 AM PST
VLC for iPhone and iPad gained approval back in September, existing as a side project from the official desktop application by VideoLAN. After months of contention between the app developers, the creators of the desktop application and Apple, the app was removed at VideoLAN’s request because Apple’s App Store contravenes various parts of the GPL license under which it was released. The official statement came from Rémi Denis-Courmont, posting on the Planet VideoLAN website:
There you have it. It’s quite evident the iPhone app was not supported by the VideoLAN community. When software uses a GPL license, any third-party revisions must adhere to them also. In the case of the iPhone app, you can see it did not. To reiterate, Apple had nothing to do with its removal (other than to physically pull it from the store), the beef was between the respective developers. Were you a user of VLC on your iPad or iPhone? Have you found a decent alternative? Let us know in the comments.Image Credit, TIPb |
| UK Government urges Apple to ease iPhone charity donation restrictions Posted: 08 Jan 2011 05:47 AM PST
Hurd, who feels Apple should be “more constructive”, has pledged to write to Apple to understand the company’s refusal to allow donations. Apple recently blocked app charity donations processed via online payment service PayPal – the company offered “one-click” donations in August and was used to raise over $10,000 in donations before it was blocked in October. Hurd said:
It is believed Apple restricts charity donations because it does not know how much of the donation actually makes it to the charity, app developers have come away from offering in-app payments to charities because they would have to give Apple a cut. In some cases, payments would have to be referred to a browser. Cellular News points out that a recent online petition urging Apple to review its charity policy has attracted more than 10,000 signatures from around the world.Image Credit |
| SoundCloud announces big-name investment – “The Web should not be mute” Posted: 08 Jan 2011 05:24 AM PST
The value of the investment hasn’t been revealed but the deals see Union Square’s Fred Wilson and Index Ventures’ Mike Volpi join the company’s board. In a blog post, just published, the two companies speak out about the reasons behind the funding. Fred Wilson of Union Square, whose portfolio includes Twitter, Foursquare and Zynga among other well-know web tech names, says “The web should not be mute. It largely is today. That must change…. Audio is the one media type that doesn't have an obvious platform for posting and sharing… I've been looking for that platform for years. And I think I've found it at SoundCloud.com.” That well-respected names Wilson and Volpi are joining SoundCloud’s team is significant for the Berlin-based company, which initially targeted itself at musicians but is now expanding to aim at a wider audience. Having influential American figures working with them will help the company expand into the US. Soundcloud explains “(The investment) will allow us to grow faster, be more present in the US and build a lot more nice things for you”. SoundCloud explains that the investment actually took place last year but that it was “too busy building new awesome apps at the time” to announce it. SoundCloud recently launched iPhone and Android apps, as well as a desktop app for OSX, which launched at the same time as the Mac App Store. |
| Nvidia announces Tegra Zone, highlights games for dual-core Android handsets Posted: 08 Jan 2011 04:43 AM PST
Not content with partnering with a number of manufacturers to power new ranges of powerful Android handsets, the company has announced a new mobile app for Android devices called Tegra Zone, an app that highlight and deliver the best games available for its dual-core processor. The app will complement the Android Market, redirecting Android users to the marketplace if a user decides to download an app found via Tegra Zone. It will also provide “professional game reviews, high-res screenshots, HD video trailers, gameplay videos, and behind-the-scenes featurettes”. Tegra Zone will launch with featured games – Dungeon Defender, Monster Madness, Fruit Ninja, Backbreaker THD, and Galaxy on Fire. Dungeon Defender is also the first Android mobile game to be built with Unreal Engine 3. The app will launch soon on the Android Market, we will of course let you know when it does.Image Credit, Vasile Surdu |
| Volunteer Work Made Easy in Arabia by Nakhweh.com Posted: 08 Jan 2011 04:41 AM PST
When it comes to physically lending a helping hand, it can be a challenge sometimes. That can be said about the world in general, but when you consider the Middle East things get even more complicated. Because most regimes in the region have a stronghold on all and any kind of mass gatherings, young men and women coming together for a cause can be easily misunderstood. So unless it’s the government that’s asking to get the job done, chances are it won’t any time soon. That side of the debate was likely to hold water before the Internet revolutionized the way we communicate. Today it’s not only frowned upon, it’s simply unacceptable. With that in mind, the good people from Jordan based Ideationbox have taken it upon themselves to “enhance the volunteerism and social entrepreneurship culture in the Arab World by serving those committed to social change from youth and nonprofit communities” by building us Nakhweh.com. The meaning of the Arabic word ‘Nakhweh’ although hard to translate, is similar to the meaning of chivalry (not in it’s women related meaning) combined with courage, helpfulness, and an overall good disposition. Thus the name is very appropriate for what the platform aims to do. Co-founder of Nakhweh Kamel Al-Asmar says “Nakhweh.com was presented by the Ideation Box team as a simple volunteer matching website that helps in connecting volunteers to volunteering”. The platform is simple, if you have something you need volunteers for you register, post how many volunteers you need and wait for the magic to happen. With already 3 major in house initiatives 2 local and one global, Nakhweh aspires to build, donate blood or start any number of initiatives for people and NGOs using a simple (although not the most polished) and easy to use interface in either Arabic or English. Its scope includes Jordan only, but plans on branching out to most of the region during 2011 with Egypt, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine and UAE on the top of the list. Nakhweh.com relaunched today adding social networking integration that automatically posts an initiative to Facebook and Twitter, and a profile page that includes their twitter stream and current volunteering opportunities. If you’re in Jordan and willing to donate some of your time, or are simply interested in social entrepreneurship news from around the Hashemite Kingdom you can check out the Nakhweh blog. Who knows, maybe you want to be a person others perceive as high on ‘Nakhweh’ too. |
| Get your own free, delicious and gorgeous ‘bloggable’ sticker! Posted: 08 Jan 2011 04:41 AM PST
We came up with our ‘This object has been marked bloggable’ idea. Unfortunately we didn’t know how to spell bloggable at the time so the stickers said ‘blogable’. Turns out most people don’t know either since we barely got a complaint and people loved the stickers. We put them on cars, laptops, chairs and people. Especially on people really as you can see on iJustine on the right here (that guy is Ernst-Jan, an early TNW Editor) . Then we ran out of stickers and sorta forgot about the whole thing. But now they are back! New and improved (new design by Frank Slangen) and if you want a few I’m happy to send them to you, no matter where you are in the world. And they are cheap too! In fact, better than cheap: all FREE!
All we ask in return is that you use the stickers, preferably on your forehead, or on your laptop where people can see them. So, enter your address in this form and I will make sure you get the sticker sent to you: Some examples of our bloggable stickers in the real world:
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Apple has launched a new 
Months of speculation preceeded the action but today Apple officially pulled the popular media streaming app VLC from its App Store.
Nick Hurd, Civil Society Minister for the UK Government is to contact Apple with the intention of getting the company to reverse its decision not to allow charity donations via iPhone applications.
Nvidia have enjoyed some very positive press since it released its dual-core Tegra 2 processor, rightly so.
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