Ajax Girl

At the D: All Things Digital conference Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will unveil Microsoft Surface, the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that will “break down traditional barriers between people and technology”.

A Surface computer is able to recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a dynamic surface that provides interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects.

The new product is aimed directly at hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues and should be commercially available towards the end of the year.

It’s an interesting product in that it’s completely out of left field. Microsoft gives examples of ordering a beverage during a meal with just the tap of a finger and quickly browsing through music and dragging favorite songs onto a personal playlist by moving a finger across the screen. Build this into a bar and you’d get one-touch beer service although I’m not sure if they’ve found a way to work out when your beer glass is empty so replenishment becomes automatic, maybe in a later version.

The practical uses for Surface at the point of sale are broad. This is touch screen point of sale technology at a new level.

Initial launch partners include Harrah’s Entertainment, Starwood Hotels and T-Mobile. Coverage at CrunchGear here.

Update: Channel 10 has a great first look video here.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/120684227/

Screencast-o-Matic from Big Nerd Software brings the creation of screencasts to the web browser.

Screencast-o-Matic records audio and screen activity through the use of a Java applet. The result can then be displayed on the site or exported to Quicktime.

There are various screencast software applications, both free and paid that deliver similar functionality however Screencast-o-Matic is the first I’ve seen that is strictly browser based and by nature works across various platforms.

As a service it’s easy to use. A frame is displayed that can be moved over the appropriate window for capture. Mouse movements can be tracked by a red dot and recording is a simple as hitting a button.

It feels a little clunky, visually it won’t win any beauty awards and the display options are limited. There is no obvious embedding code provided and integration that would support direct uploading of screencasts to YouTube or similar video hosting sites is not provided.

Issues aside, for casual users Screencast-o-Matic is a handy tool that is bound to be copied by others in the future.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/120679213/

One of the more ambitious entrants on the social music scene, Slacker, has released the second piece of their three-part music personalization suite, a desktop music player.

Slacker’s player shares a lot of the core functionality of MyStrands and Last.fm. Users create a personalized radio stream by entering a keyword into the player. There is no rewind and specific songs can not be played. Users train the player on personal music preference voting for and against tracks played. Each song also features album art and a short synopsis of the band, but Slacker lacks the personal and band wiki pages users have gravitated toward on the other services.

Unlike Last.fm, iLike, and MOG, Slacker doesn’t track music you play in iTunes. Instead Slacker functions as a stand alone player that manages personal music libraries and delivers cool music visualizations.

The lack of iTunes integration is likely due to the expected release of Slacker’s own portable music player, which will integrate with the desktop player. Users will be able to push songs, playlists, and preferences to their portable player from their desktop. Eventually, Slacker’s three parts will work in sync, each updating the others with your latest preferences.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/120678084/

Web messaging services company Userplane has launched a new revenue-sharing program that brings monetization to online instant messaging and web chat

Userplane Money serves ads in instant messaging, web chat and other widgets. The new program is said to be the first of its kind amongst community platforms.

Userplane CEO Mike Jones sees what he calls the “Platform Web” as the next area of online monetization. ” Userplane Money offers rich application experiences that increase user engagement on our clients’ websites, and provide them with a new revenue channel and increased site usage”.

Userplane was acquired by AOL in August 2006 and the new program is linked into AOL’s larger advertising strategy. “AOL has a rich offering of ad solutions for advertisers, including internal advertising within the AOL network, 3rd party publisher relationships through advertising.com, and a longtail ad offering through the Userplane network” said Jones.”Userplane Money grows the Userplane longtail ad network and gives advertisers access to users and inventory they had not had access to previously on smaller, targeted niche web communities”.

Jones sees Userplane Money as a way to reward users and position the service as a key revenue driver for smaller up and coming web communities.

The combination of Userplane’s technology with a revenue-sharing program is sure to drive future growth to what is already a very smart offering.

Previous TechCrunch coverage of Userplane here.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/120673083/

At their peak, rock legends “The Grateful Dead” attracted an estimated community of 40,000 self-proclaimed “Deadheads” trailing them as they toured the country. The movement had originally spawned from fans meeting at concerts and networking on mailing lists. Mailing lists turned digital with the launch of Dead.net, which will relaunch in the next 24 hours as a full blown social network.

The new version of Dead.net was created on the Drupal content management platform and features extensive archives cataloging Grateful Dead history, songs, photos, memorabilia, and shows, indexed and searchable by tags. Dead users will be able to participate in forums, upload their own photos, and bookmark concerts and shows they have attended. Fans will also be treated to exclusive free mp3 show downloads.

Exclusive screenshots as follows:

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/120671176/

If you’re into Frank Lloyd Wright and the old-timey direct interview style of Mike Wallace, this two-part interview (that’s an iTunes link) may interest you. I found it fascinating.

In 1957, at the age of 90, Frank Lloyd Wright was in New York to supervise construction of his final masterpiece—the Guggenheim Museum. Mike Wallace invited him to be a guest on the TV show, The Mike Wallace Interview. Rarely has a figure of such historic importance been so revealingly captured. Guided by Wallace’s questioning, America’s greatest architect emerges as a wise, idealistic, nonconformist, and uniquely self-confident man. This is the complete soundtrack to that legendary interview.

If you have RealPlayer installed you can watch some clips from the interview on PBS.org. The entire interview is available on VHS from Amazon.

Also highly recommended is the two-and-a-half hour Ken Burns documentary on Wright.

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/435-mike-wallace-interviews-frank-lloyd-wright

Next up in our regular series about high tech gear that is made for the assumed-luddite older generation: Jitterbug. Promising “24 hour operators,” “large, backlit buttons” and a “soft ear cushion,” Jitterbug promises to be the perfect phone for old, blind, hard of hearing folks with fat fingers.

Business Week has a long story on the phones, which I must say make a heck of a lot more sense than Presto, the company that makes special printers for old people.

Still, I asked my dad what he thought (and he’s older than God and blind as a bat), and he said all he wants for his birthday is an iPhone.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/120587004/

Google has will be announcing a new 360 streetside view for Google maps at Where 2.0 today, says O’Reily Radar. The 360 views are a better version of Amazon’s A9 static panoramas. Google’s views let users virtually stand in the middle of any street, able to look in a full circle around the location, giving a better feel of the place you’ll be going. It will reportedly be available in Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and San Francisco.

The imaging used in the new feature was collected by a company called Immersive Media, whose vans throughout these cities to collect the photos. You can see a demo here.

Top map competitors Google and Microsoft have both been experimenting heavily in enhancing their mapping applications. Microsoft has a similar streetside view for New York and 8 other cities, which we reported on back in February of las year. Other map visualization innovations have been birds eye view and emerging 3D products. Microsoft launched a 3D product last November. Google has since licensed 3D mapping technology just this month.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/120568175/

When I first saw the new Street View functionality that has appeared in the Google Maps preview I was obviously impressed.

We have seen other companies taking photos of the content, but being able to walk around the Map was very cool. If I am visiting a new building, or area, I find myself checking out the area before I drive there, as it is a lot easier to find the end point if you have seen it, and walked around the outside.

There was also a release of Mapplets, which are embeddable Google Maps mashups. You are able to overlay multiple mashups onto the one map, which means that you can combine the old favourites: HousingMaps.com and ChicagoCrime.org to make sure you get your new home in a decent area!

What is exciting about these new features is that we have more tools to play with (writting Mapplets), and a nice showcase of using Flash within an Ajax application (Maps).

Source: Ajaxian
Original Article: http://ajaxian.com/archives/google-maps-street-view-and-mapplets

Wilco
Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy on the internet:

Internet is radio for a lot of people. It’s a place to get music and hear music, and no amount of clamping down will change that. And anybody who’d expend energy preventing people from hearing music seems not to understand the basic principal of making music in the first place. It’s so antithetical to being a musician.

On not trying to make everybody happy:

My question is: Could anybody imagine the Wilco record that would make everybody happy? I can’t imagine it. So you’re confronted with that reality—anything you do is going to be a disappointment to somebody. We just have to do what we do, and that’s make a record that we fuckin’ like. [Laughs.] We really don’t have any other options.

Lyrics from “What Light” by Wilco:

And if the whole world’s singing your songs
And all of your paintings have been hung
Just remember what was yours is everyone’s from now on
And that’s not wrong or right
But you can struggle with it all you like
You'll only get uptight

The White Stripes
The White Stripes are now on Warner Brothers and Jack White recently recorded a Coke commercial. White on indie cred:

Maybe we were stupid with this naive thing about if artistic freedom and business collide, something bad happens.

And here’s White on embracing limitations:

The idea of wearing just these colors, having just the two of us on stage—these are just boxes that we’ve cooked up to put ourselves in so that we can create better. If we had five people on the stage, all the opportunity of a 300-track studio, or a brand-new Les Paul, the creativity would be dead. Too much opportunity would make it too easy. We just don’t want to be complicated, it seems unnecessary.

Lyrics from “Little Room” by the White Stripes.

When you're in your little room
and you're working on something good
but if it is really good
You're gonna need a bigger room
and when you're in the bigger room
You might not know what to do
You might have to think of
How you got started sittin' in your little room

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/434-jeff-tweedy-and-jack-white-on-the-web-business-creative-choices-etc