Archive for July 20th, 2009

Microsoft is doing a lot of things right with Bing, the new search engine it debuted in late May. For one, the engine works quite well, including a number of subtle features like video previews that Google doesn’t have (yes, some of the improvements were introduced in Live Search, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t cool). Perhaps more important, the company is doing a good job with its marketing efforts, shedding its corporate monolith culture in favor of something that’s decidedly more.. Googleish.

Today Microsoft is launching a fun little contest for Bing that invites you to sing a a jingle about Bing (no more than 5 minutes long) and upload it on Bing’s YouTube Account (another good move here Microsoft — no need to make people upload through a proprietary site). You have up until July 31 to submit videos, and voting will commence today and continue through August 5. Be sure to watch the video above of some Bing interns introducing the concept (I’m currently harassing the TechCrunch interns to make one of our own).

Well look at that, Barnes & Noble is getting into the e-book game. Right now, there’s no stand-alone reader to go along with the company’s just-launched e-book store, but it’s not big deal; odds are you already have the reader. (A reader, created by Plastic Logic, is scheduled to go on sale early next year.) The store, which has “700,000 titles” on its servers, goes live alongside an iPhone (and iPod touch) and Mac/PC reader software. That is, as you fire up, I don’t know, iPhoto or Notepad, you could be reading The Beckham Experiment.

The store doesn’t look any different than the rest of BN.com, which I guess is what you want here. There’s an “eBooks” tab up top, and you’re greeted by all sorts of people having a good time reading books on iPhone and laptops.

Universal Studios announced today that they would be releasing the first iPhone app to control Blu-ray features in upcoming Blu-ray releases starting with the two-disc Special Edition release of Fast & Furious on July 28.

iPhone and iPod Touch owners will be able to control certain features over their local Wi-Fi network and in the instance of Fast & Furious, they’ll be able to control and navigate the Virtual Car Garage. Said feature will entail control of “360-degree views of the movie’s supercharged street-racers and instantly punch up exclusive technical specs for the film’s high-tech cars.” Universal has not stated whether or not this will be the only feature enabled on the iPhone app.

Details are a bit light on this one, but the Planet 5D blog has received an email from the director of photography on 24, who himself received an email from the DP of Dollhouse, who passed on a video of a Canon 5D Mark II helmet mount built by the folks at Panavision. The rig was apparently designed specifically for use in fight scenes and other instances where a very close camera point-of-view is beneficial, and of course for “parachute drops and the like.” The story also goes that the mount might have actually been used on Iron Man, although that’s yet to be confirmed. Hit up the read link below to check out the video for yourself, although it unfortunately doesn’t actually include any sample footage taken with the rig.

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Canon 5D Mark II helmet mount attracts Hollywood’s attention originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alright, I’ll admit upfront that I’m a little biased here. Pearl Jam was my favorite band growing up and retains a place in my heart. I like them so much, that they got me to visit the new social networking whipping boy, MySpace, today. Why? Because the band’s new single, “The Fixer” premiered exclusively on MySpace Music.

Now, I know Pearl Jam was one of the most popular bands on the planet during its heyday in the grunge-stricken 90s, but these days, they’re no match for the likes of Daughtry, and whatever else American Idol throws at us. So that’s why it’s fairly surprising to see that Pearl Jam’s new single has just about 100,000 plays in just a couple hours.

Ten days ago at our Real Time Stream CrunchUp, Justin.tv demonstrated a new beta product they are working on called CamTweet. It lets you launch a live video broadcast using your computer Webcam, Tweet it out to your followers on Twitter with a link to help gather an audience, and then keep the viral Tweets going by letting the audience sign into a chat box with their Twitter accounts so that each comment gets Tweeted out to their followers with a link back to the video.

It is a really simple, but powerful idea. So simple, in fact, that one of Justin.TV’s competitors, Livestream CEO Max Haot (who was watching the demo from New York via UStream, another live Web video competitor) decided to create the exact same product using Livestream’s new, yet-to-be released APIs.

The Rolex watchphone is neither a Rolex nor a watchphone — unless your definition includes handsets with a watch face embedded on the outside (and ours doesn’t). But either way, it’s probably safe to say that this bad boy does not sport a precision-made Swiss timepiece. Features include a 2.6-inch display, dual SIM, an FM radio, and presumably some sort of camera. Unlike the Swiss Rolex, the Shanzhai Rolex can be yours for the low, low price of 690 yuan (that’s about $101). More mouth-watering KIRFness after the break.

[Via Cloned In China]

Continue reading Keepin’ it real fake, part CCXXVII: Rolex watchphone is, in fact, neither

Filed under: Cellphones

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCXXVII: Rolex watchphone is, in fact, neither originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So this a little bit old, but we’re just seeing it after Twitter’s chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury (who came over in the Summize acquisition last year) tweeted about it last week. Check out the video at the bottom of this post for TwittARound, a new augmented reality Twitter app for the iPhone 3GS. It looks pretty damn slick.

While there are no shortage of Twitter iPhone apps out there, this one is different because it uses a combination of the device’s camera and the iPhone 3GS’s compass feature. Basically, you fire up the app and it opens your device’s camera lens, allowing you to see whatever you’re pointing the device at. Overlaid on this live image are icons of Twitter users to show those in close proximity to you who are tweeting. And below the camera is a Twitter feed of those people’s updates.

But what’s really cool is that when you move the iPhone around, the compass recognizes you’re turning and loads new tweets based on the direction you’re pointed in. It also shows how far away those people are.

Acquia, a startup that commercially develops and distributes open source content management system Drupal, has raised a whopping $8 million in series B funding led by North Bridge Venture Partners with Sigma Partners participating. This bring Acquia’s total funding to $15 million.

Acquia, whose co-founder and CTO Dries Buytaert created the Drupal platform in 2001, tells TechCrunch that the company will use the funding to help create and expand the market for Drupal in the enterprise world. Drupal hopes to expand its existing base of 200 subscription customers.

URC has rolled out some pretty impressive remotes in its day, and it looks like it now has another claim to fame with what appears to be the first universal remote control with haptic feedback. That comes in the form of the company’s new MX-5000 remote (pictured above with the touchscreen-centered MX-6000), which has a 2.7-inch touchscreen that URC says provides a “‘very satisfying sensation” when you press one of the onscreen buttons. Otherwise, you can expect it to pack built-in WiFi, narrowband RF and IR to let you control just about anything you can throw at it, along with an included base station to accommodate various IR and RS-232 components and, of course, a built-in rechargeable battery and charging base. No word on a price just yet, but URC says the MSRP will be “less than $1,500.” Yes, fifteen hundred dollars.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Peripherals

URC debuts MX-5000 universal remote with haptic feedback originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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