Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom is hot on the book trail these days, with both a stop on The Colbert Report and a release party hosted by San Francisco titans Gordon and Ann Getty.
About 200 guests gathered at the Getty party to celebrate the release of “Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government,” a book about new approaches to government in the digital age.
While the crowd at the release party was all smiles, Stephen Colbert was a harsher critic.
T-Mobile has announced a new service that gives users access to inexpensive unlimited prepaid plans. Call the GoSmart Mobile plans, they start at $30 a month, and are aimed at those who don’t want to be locked into a contract, and who want to avoid high monthly costs without sacrificing in their mobile usage. According to the Seattle Times, this is the first time T-Mobile has unveiled its own separately-branded service.
The service is aimed at consumers who make annually between $30k and $40k, as well as the younger consumer crowd that spends most of their mobile usage texting and checking Facebook. GoSmart’s marketing director Shailendra Gujarati said regarding the service, “We are looking at customers whose predominant needs when it comes to wireless are talking, texting or entry level data services.”
The service was already launched in nine markets in December, during which time it was tested. Today, however, the carrier has launched the service nationwide. Needless to say, it runs on T-Mobile’s own network, and two handsets are being offered under the service – a $49 cell phone and a $99 Android smartphone, in addition to an $8 activation kit and SIM.
The cheapest plan is $30 per month, which offers unlimited text and talk but no mobile data, while the best plan is arguably the $35 plan, which offers text, talk and unlimited data access at slower speeds for things like checking email. The most expensive plan is $45 per month, and is the same as the $35, except that web access is high speed for those who want to watch videos and stream music on the go. There’s a 5GB cap, at which point the speeds are throttled.
As beer becomes increasingly popular around Asia, the demand for better quality, premium beer is likely to rise. Our friends over at COEDO have done an incredible job pairing great beer with modern Japanese design and getting global accolades, so it’s great to see more of it coming out of Japan.
Recognising this trend Nippon Craft Beer began offering Kagua, a luxury craft beer; is actually brewed in Belgium by the Japanese creators, but infused with Japanese herbs and special yeasts, designed for high-end dinning.
Launched in March last year (2012) at Toyoda and Gora Kadan in Tokyo’s expensive Ginza quarter, Kagua is now sold in over 170 haute-cuisine restaurants and bars across Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
After restaurant dinners requested to buy the beer to drink at home or to give to friends as gifts Nippon Craft foods began selling the beer at Matsuya department stores in Ginza and then offered limited quantities of Kagua online in cases of six, which all became sold out after just a couple of weeks. From March 2013, Kagua will also be sold in cases of twelve to celebrate the first anniversary of the beer. One 330 ml bottle of Kagua costs 630 Yen (US$6.8).
In an interview with Nikkei’s Trendy magazine, Mr Shiro Yamada of Nippon Craft Beer commented that the growth in demand for craft beer is extremely fast paced and overtaking the boom in popularity for traditional Japanese shochu and sake. The Video bellow features a presentation by Mr Yamada in English.
Kagua’s unique taste is supposed to derive from the mixture of Japanese herbs such as yuzu citrus and sansho pepper, which are seldom used in beer production and the use of high quality yeasts specially selected from some of the world’s best beers. In order to ensure smooth production, Nippon Craft Beer teamed up with an experienced Belgian brewer as (according to Nippon Craft Beer) there are no facilities in Japan which can accomodate Kagua’s original recipe.
There are two varieties of Kagua beer; Blanc and Rouge (pictured bellow).
In Kagua Blanc (above left) , flavour is dominated by the yuzu citrus and yeast. Kagua Rouge (above right) is a mix of spicy sansho papper and roasted malt.
To fully appreciate Kagua’s original taste, it is recommended to drink it from a wine glass.
In Japan’s highly competitive beer market, Kagua has differentiated itself as exclusively a luxury, high-end beer suited for restaurant dinning. As the beer was only launched a year ago it will be interesting to see how the popularity for the beer develops in Japan and across Asia among the wealthy who’s tastes and demand for beer becomes more sophisticated.
Guy Fieri, the food personality who spikes his hair with french fry oil, has a new-ish restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar in Times Square, that was brutally eviscerated by food reviewers. That’s probably not good when you’re trying to launch a restaurant. What’s also not good is forgetting to lock down the website domain of your restaurant’s name. Apparently, somebody bought the rights to Guysamericankitchenandbar.com and posted a fake menu that’s sure to excite all of Middle America. More »
Having a hard time coming to grips with the GoPro Hero3’s permanently affixed wide-angle lens? Perhaps an interchangeable optic is within your field of view. The Novo Digital Camera, designed and painstakingly assembled by View Factor, is a Hero3 with a new custom housing, offering compatibility with C-Mount lenses while providing additional functionality, such as exposure control, digital zoom and customizable buttons. Unfortunately, due to the complex assembly, Novo won’t be available for sale. Instead, Radiant Images in Los Angeles will offer the rig as a rental kit, including a variety of lenses and accessories. Pricing and availability has yet to be announced, though we should have a better idea of when you can (temporarily) scoop one of these up “in the next couple weeks.” For now, the mass-market Hero3 will have to do.
Dospara has dropped another gaming PC, the Galleria HX ‘WRC3′. This WRC 3 FIA WORLD RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP certified gaming PC is equipped with a 3.40GHz Intel Core i7-3770 processor, an Intel H77 Express Chipset, a GeForce GTX 660 2GB graphics card, an 8GB DDR3 RAM, a 2TB hard drive, a DVD Super Multi Drive, a 550W 80PLUS BRONZE power supply and runs on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS. The Galleria HX ‘WRC3′ sells for 99,980 Yen (about $1,065). [Product Page]
ASUS has introduced their latest motherboard, the TUF Sabertooth 990FX/GEN3 R2.0. Based on AMD 990FX/SB950 chipset, the board supports for AM3+ processors and features four DDR3 DIMM memory slots (up to 32GB RAM), three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, one PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot and one PCI slot. In terms of connectivity ports, it has eight SATA 6.0 Gbps, six USB 3.0, twelve USB 2.0 and Gigabit Ethernet. The TUF Sabertooth 990FX/GEN3 R2.0 will start shipping from the middle of March for unannounced price yet. [ASUS]
Evergreen offers you their newest mobile charging stand ‘DN-84259′ which is designed specifically for your Galaxy S3 smartphone. Measuring 82mm x 67mm x 44mm and weighing 48g, this charging stand comes with a micro-USB 5V/1000mA output port and is backed by a 6-month warranty. The DN-84259 retails for just 999 Yen (about $11). [Product Page]
AT&T subscribers who venture overseas to the UK can now utilize a free gigabyte of roaming data thanks to a deal with The Cloud. By downloading its Wi-Fi International app, those who have the right International data package through the carrier can authenticate to 16,000 wireless Internet hotspots located throughout the United Kingdom. Check out the particulars, as well as a few screenshots, after the jump.
The deal allows AT&T subscribers who have Data Global Add-on with Wi-Fi to download the Wi-Fi International app and use it to connect to compatible wireless hotspots. The app is available for both Android users via the Play Store (version 3.2 or higher for tablets and 2.2 or higher for smartphones) and iOS (version 4.3 and higher) users via the App Store.
The obvious issue here is that those without the International add-on will have to subscribe to it in order to take advantage of the free 1GB of wifi data, something that doesn’t seem worth it for such a relatively small amount. The most appeal then will likely fall to those who travel to the U.K regularly and don’t want to be dependent entirely on mobile data connections.
Those who download the Wi-Fi International app will be able to connect to hotspots without having to deal with usernames and passwords. A notification will be given when a partner hotspot is within range of the user’s device. And, of course, users will be able to search for nearby networks based on the country and city they are located in.
Here comes a new gaming PC case from Spire, the X2.6018. This steel case supports for both ATX and micro-ATX motherboards, and features a top-placed I/O panel with 1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0 and 2x audio ports, a fan controller on the top, four 5.25-inch external drive bays, one 3.5-inch external drive bay, four 3.5-inch internal drive bays, seven expansion slots, a side panel window and has two fans (1x 120mm blue LED Nano-bearing fan – front, 1x 120mm black Nano-bearing fan – rear). The X2.6018 is available now for $63.99. [Spire]
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