Nokia to open Ovi Map Player platform to developers
Nokia said today that it’s sharing its mapping technology with developers who want to create their own personalized map applications.
This move represents a shift for Nokia from offering its own services to becoming a platform for third-party location-based services. By layering services on top of its phones, and copying Apple’s strategy of connecting services to e-commerce on the phones, Nokia hopes to steal some of the iPhone’s thunder.
The shared platform could generate a … Continue Reading
Google PowerMeter lands partners, preps for roll out
Earlier this year Google made its presence in the smart grid space known with the unveiling of PowerMeter, a Google gadget that lets users view how much electricity they’re using on their home computers. The service depends on data collection from smart meters, and now Google’s announcing that it’s landed 8 partnerships with smart metering utilities — a very important step toward a wider rollout.
Ranging in size and geography, these partners include San Diego … Continue Reading
Video: How can business-to-business services benefit from social networking platforms?
Social networking platforms have created lots of new opportunities for consumer entertainment, like casual games, but what about the opportunities for businesses that serve other businesses, like Lexis Nexis and its data services? Earlier this month, I moderated a panel with a few people working on that problem at the SIIA NetGain conference, a trade conference for professional service and content companies.
Watch the video below for more. Salesforce social networking director and author Clara … Continue Reading
Socializr integrates Twitter as alternative to Facebook events
Socializr, the events-oriented social network founded by Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams, doesn’t get as much play as Evite and Facebook Events. But as VentureBeat editor Matt Marshall recently wrote, Socializr offers a more organized approach than Facebook, yet integrates very well with Facebook accounts. For me, Socializr is less annoying to use than Evite, which always seems to want to send me to another page, show me another ad, and send me emails about events … Continue Reading
New Facebook app directory looks great (if you can find it)
Having redesigned nearly every other part of its site in the last couple months, Facebook has now redesigned its directory of third-party applications and launched the new interface today.
It features Facebook employee’s own favorite applications, as well as “Apps You May Like” — apps that have been “verified” as being high-quality by Facebook through a special, long-awaited program. The new directory also has a section where you can see a reverse-chronological stream listing the … Continue Reading
Craig Barrett bows out with wisecracks at his last Intel annual meeting
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Bringing an era in Intel history and a storied career in the chip industry to a close, Craig Barrett (above) retired as chairman of Intel today at the company’s annual meeting in Santa Clara, Calif.
The 69-year-old spent 35 years at the company and rose in the manufacturing ranks under the leadership of Intel leaders Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove. Barrett succeeded Grove as chief executive of the world’s biggest chip maker … Continue Reading
BlackBerry apps four times as pricey as iPhone, Android software
BlackBerry users pay more for their apps. Lots more. That’s the finding of a new report from Skyhook Wireless, maker of location-based service software. Skyhook’s study found that BlackBerry apps average around $12 each, compared to the popular $2.99 price for an iPhone app and Android apps that average less than a dollar. Most Android apps are completely free.
Skyhook’s study also confirmed the conventional wisdom that users are cycling through apps, buying new ones … Continue Reading
Craigslist strikes back at attorney general, seeks restraining order
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster hit Craiglist with an ultimatum earlier this month: “Remove the portions of the Internet site dedicated to South Carolina and its municipal regions which contain categories for and functions allowing for the solicitation of prostitution and the dissemination and posting of graphic pornographic material” within ten (10) days.”
“If those South Carolina portions of the site are not removed,” McMaster said, “the management of craigslist may be subject to … Continue Reading
Facebook's application profile pages might give brands a boost
In the coming weeks, Facebook plans to convert applications’ static “about”-style pages for applications to be more like its existing public profile pages. Some brands are already using these pages to interact with their fans. This change will help brands on Facebook that have applications but not pages build community on the site.
How are pages valuable? Similar to users’ own profile pages, these public pages feature a stream of information about the brand, including … Continue Reading
Find a faster commute with mobile application Waze
I’ve become pathetically reliant on my iPhone for finding my way around, but there’s one thing that online mapping applications don’t prepare me for — traffic. Even when applications include traffic data, the information isn’t provided in real-time, or it isn’t accounted for when calculating driving directions, or both. Enter a new service called Waze, which is beginning a private alpha test in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Waze takes data provided by the applications’ … Continue Reading
Second Life generates 15 billion minutes in web voice calls
When you think of phone companies, Linden Lab‘s Second Life virtual world doesn’t come to mind. But the company is announcing today that its users have used its web-voice calling feature to talk to each other for a total of 15 billion minutes since it was introduced 18 months ago.
The voice-over-Internet-protocol web calling service inside the virtual world is now being used at a rate of 1 billion minutes per month, said Mark Kingdon, … Continue Reading
Elemental Technologies' super-fast video processing could slash costs of video web sites
Web sites such as YouTube get so much traffic for their videos that the processing load can be crushing, leading to huge server and bandwidth costs.
To deal with that, Elemental Technologies is announcing new servers today that take advantage of the computing power of graphics chips in order to process lots of video simultaneously. The result may be much lower costs for video sites and a better viewing experience for consumers.
The Portland, Ore.-based … Continue Reading
Earthmine lets you splash graffiti on virtual cities without getting arrested
Earthmine is unveiling a 3-D mapping application today that captures the real world and then lets artists draw graffiti all over it.
Wild Style City is a kind of 3-D recreation of the world that faithfully reproduces every street in cities such as San Francisco, much like Google’s StreetView application. But Earthmine’s twist is that it adds a virtual layer on the buildings upon which users can draw legal graffiti.
This app is a good … Continue Reading
Movie fans to get a TV-friendly Netflix experience on Windows Media Center
Microsoft is announcing today that its Windows Media Center can now show more than 12,000 movies and TV shows from Netflix’s library of online video rentals.
The videos are now available to watch instantly for users of the Windows Vista Home or Ultimate operating systems, as every copy of those operating systems has Windows Media Center software. The move follows a deal between the two companies to make Netflix movies available on the Xbox 360 … Continue Reading
New version of Google Reader continues Google's data fetish
Google just released a new version of Google Reader, its service for subscribing to and reading RSS feeds. Most of the new features announced (such as the ability to add notes in the mobile version of Reader) amount to nice little tweaks, but the biggest addition, a chart of “Friends trends,” is worth pointing out for being kind of cool and kind of weird.
The chart presents details about your friends in Google Reader — … Continue Reading
Signostics wins FDA approval for portable ultrasounds
Signostics Medical, maker of more affordable, compact and portable ultrasound devices, announced today that it has gotten the stamp of approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., the company says the price and convenience of its palm-sized product could disrupt the current ultrasound market as soon as it’s released.
Weighing only half a pound, the device appears to be particularly well-suited to active medical environments like emergency rooms, pediatric facilities, … Continue Reading
Flock browser beefs up Twitter, Facebook support
Flock version 2.5, released on Tuesday by Redwood City, Calif.-based Flock, is designed to let social network addicts spend their entire day in a single browser window.
Flock, an enhanced version of the open-source Firefox browser, streams status updates from Twitter and Facebook in a sidebar that can be popped open or shut without shuffling windows around a computer screen.
The most impressive enhancement is drag-and-drop support for posting multimedia content to Facebook. The browser … Continue Reading
Twitmatic version 2 takes Twitter video search seriously
Many applications, websites and services are adding Twitter search features. Twitter content is both popular and technically easy to handle. But not all applications create a value-add beyond “Hey, you can search Twitter.”
Twitmatic, created by San Francisco startup Ffwd (pronounced “fast forward”) debuted a Twitter video search in March. Twitmatic makes it easy to call up the videos linked from Twitter posts. The application creates automatic channels based on Twitter’s “trending topics” links, and … Continue Reading
Tweeting Too Hard: A site for shaming the twitteringly self-important
For people like me who were raised to believe that being shamelessly self-absorbed is a bad thing, we finally have a site. For Twitter (many self-important types’ new platform of choice). Maybe.
It’s called Tweeting Too Hard. The concept is simple. You submit and vote for the most blatantly self-absorbed tweets that you see on Twitter. The most popular recent tweets get voted to the top. Like the million of other web sites that offer … Continue Reading
RoamBi rethinks corporate data display on the iPhone
It’s now a given that many sales people, bizdev managers, and other road warriors want to use their iPhones for work, rather than toting a company-issued handset they don’t truly love. Many are leaving their laptops behind, using the iPhone as a pocket Mac. But how do you look at spreadsheets on an iPhone’s smaller screen?
RoamBi is an iPhone app that includes four new ways of displaying complex data in a simplified, easy-to-parse, prettier-than-Excel … Continue Reading
