Mar 15

Tech Companies Respond to Japan Quake With Resources, Support

Posted in: Apple, Games, Google, Microsoft, Miscellaneous, sony, Today's Chili

With widespread power outages and retail shortages, companies are pitching in to help Japanese residents in a variety of ways. In this photo, vehicles driving south out of Fukushima Prefecture, where a troubled nuclear power plant is located, make a traffic jam in Kitaibaraki, north of Tokyo on Tuesday. (Yuji Furuya/The Yomiuri Shimbun/AP)

After last week’s quake and tsunami struck Japan, destroying thousands of homes and leaving many without electricity, employees at Tokyo Apple stores brought out surge protectors, extension cords and power adapters for people to plug in gadgets and contact their loved ones.

Apple stores have been a central outlet for some Tokyo residents, because they’re some of the only locations to offer free Wi-Fi in Japan, explains a Tokyo Apple store employee.

“Even after we finally had to close [at] 10 p.m., crowds of people huddled in front of our stores to use the Wi-Fi into the night, as it was still the only way to get access to the outside world,” the employee e-mailed to Digg founder Kevin Rose. In response to the quake, Apple has also created a page in its iTunes Store for customers to donate money to the American Red Cross.

Several tech companies are responding to the Japan earthquake with plans to aid survivors. Microsoft has pledged $250,000 in cash and $1.75 million worth of software and services to assist people affected by the multiple disaster. The software program’s primary purpose is to help businesses get their operations back up and running with free incident support and temporary software licenses.

Social-networking giant Facebook set up a Japan Earthquake page for users to find information about disaster relief, and Google has set up a crisis-response project with a Google Person Finder Tool to help find victims, as well as links to disaster resources and news stories about the quake.

Also, NTT DoComo, Japan’s largest wireless carrier, has set up a database where you can enter the cellphone number of a person to confirm his or her safety, according to MSNBC.

Some game companies are responding to the quake with sensitivity. Game developer Irem has announced it will cease development of the PlayStation 3 title City in a Desperate Situation, a game with a disaster-related theme. Also, Sega has indefinitely delayed releasing Like a Dragon, a game that involves zombies swarming a ruined Tokyo, which was supposed to hit stores Thursday.

Meanwhile, game developer Square-Enix temporarily shut down its servers for the game Final Fantasy to conserve power.

A massive tsunami followed the 9.0-magnitude earthquake Friday. Police say 6,000 people have been confirmed either dead or missing, and analysis firms estimate the disaster caused up to $34 billion in economic damages.


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Mar 15

Zynga Games Raise Over $1 Million for Earthquake Relief

Posted in: Games, Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili, video games

Zynga - Aid for Japan

You have to hand it to Zynga: one moment they’re the game company you love to hate for selling all of your personal information, and the next moment they’ve managed to draw over a million dollars from their customers for charity. 
Facebook gamers who play titles like Farmville, Cityville, and Frontierville on Facebook have collectively donated well over $1 million to Save the Children through a partnership between the charity and Zynga to aid victims of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Zynga has expanded donations to its other titles and mobile games, like Words with Friends. 
The key to Zynga’s success here is that the company is using specific in-game items to fuel its charity and relief efforts. For example, in Cityville you can buy a sweet potato crop, and in Frontierville, players can add a Kobe cow to their farm. Daikon radishes have appeared in Farmville, and more depending on the game. 
When players buy items for their farms, cities, and towns with real money, they buyer is actually donating to charity. Zynga says that 100% of the money they get from the special in-game items will go directly to Save the Children.
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Mar 15

Facebook Tips and Tricks: The Ultimate Guide [Video]

Posted in: privacy, social networking, Today's Chili, top

You’re on Facebook. So is the guy sitting next to you on the bus. Your brothers, best mates, old classmates, demented neighbors, former coworkers, your grandma – they’re all on Facebook. The social networking behemoth now boasts over 500 million (active) members (that’s 1 in every 13 people on earth) and everything from your Mountain Dew Code Red to your sneakers has a fan page). Facebook is becoming an integral (and at times, claustrophobic) part of how we access the Internet. More »

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Mar 15

LikeLight lights up your likes with Legos, Arduino (video)

Posted in: arduino, diy, hack, lego, Today's Chili, video
Likelight lights up your likes with Legos, Arduino

How long has it been since someone lit up your life? Since someone gave you hope, to carry on? As it turns out all you need for that is a box of Lego, an Arduino board, and a bit of your time. Ad agency Redpepper has successfully proven its abilities to generate buzz by creating this “LikeLight,” an up-scaled version of the blue pixelated thumb that makes Facebook denizens get all in a tizzy. This bigger version is almost guaranteed to generate even greater tizzies, glowing blue thanks to a combination of clear bricks outside and four LEDs inside. Code is even provided that pulls data from the Facebook Graph API to light up those bricks — and your life.

Continue reading LikeLight lights up your likes with Legos, Arduino (video)

LikeLight lights up your likes with Legos, Arduino (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 15

Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Comcast, More Nominated for “Worst Company”

Posted in: Apple, att, Microsoft, Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili, verizon
wcia_bracket_header_2011.jpg
Watchdog blog Consumerist this week announced the nominations for its sixth annual Worst Company in America competition. The list, which is is broken down in full March Madness bracket-style, features a number of high profile tech companies. 
In the first round, Apple will be competing with Microsoft, Facebook will be duking it out with Time Warner, DirecTV and Dish Network will be going head-to-head, and Sony and Dell will be doing battle. Also on the list: Tickemaster v. Paypal, Verizon v. AT&T, Radioshack v. Best Buy, Comcast v. Charter, and GameStop v. Wal-Mart.
BP makes a notable debut on the list this year, after an oil spill that proved one of the biggest man-made disasters in U.S. history. The oil company will be facing stiff competition in this round from Toyota–the car maker recalled millions of vehicles in 2010, over pedal-related problems.
Not surprisingly, in light of continued economic woes, banks and credit card companies had a big showing on this year’s list, with Chase, Wells Fargo, American Express, Capital One, Bank of America, and Citibank all making the cut. Interestingly (also in light of the year’s events), the number of airlines dropped to two, with only Delta an United making the final list.
The 32 companies will begin squaring off tomorrow. 
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Mar 14

4Chan Founder Takes on Facebook Founder On Anonymity

Posted in: Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili
Thumbnail image for Mark Zuckerberg.jpg

moot and Mark Zuckerberg, shockingly, don’t exactly see eye to eye on the subject of online identity. 4Chan’s founder (known as Christopher Poole to his dentist) called the Facebook founder out over comments about anonymity at South by Southwest over the weekend. 

Zuckerberg has been preaching the importance of a “single identity” in recent years, with comments like, “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.” Essentially Zuck’s point is that you should be the same person online amongst your friends as you are online amongst your coworkers. Naturally, Facebook wants to play a major role in bringing this uniformity to the forefront. 
Of all people, the guy who started 4Chan–you know, that message board full of practical jokers hatching hijinks under assumed names–is taking Zuckerberg to task on this stance, arguing that the push toward single identities will be something of an end of innocence for the Web as we know it.
Being anonymous on the Web is like being the new kid in a neighborhood, Poole told a crowd at SXSW. It gives you a chance to experiment and try out new things. There are just too many consequences when you announce who you are ahead of time. “The cost of failure is really high when you’re contributing as yourself,” he told the crowd. 
Interestingly, moot seems to be splitting the difference with a new project called Canv.as, which uses Facebook Connect to identify users to administrators. For front-facing activities, however, users will still be able to post anonymously. “[Y]ou know that we know,” he said of the site identification policy.
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Mar 11

Charlie Sheen is Not Dead, But is a Virus

Posted in: Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili, twitter
Thumbnail image for charlie-sheen.jpg

The good news: Charlie Sheen isn’t actually dead. The bad news, he does want to infect your computer. But you knew that last part already, right? The one-man celebrity slideshow is the subject of the latest bit of nasty malware hitting sites like Twitter and Facebook.

The clickjacking scam is circulating around top social networking sites with the headline “RIP! Charlie Sheen found Dead at his House.” Following that link brings the user to a malware infected fake YouTube page. After infected, the scam then apparently asks you to fill out a survey–I mean, what else would you do with your time as malware eats infects your system with its dirty #tigerblood?
Just in case you didn’t already have enough reasons to ignore Charlie Sheen already.
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Mar 10

Gates, Ellison, Page, Brin Make Forbes Richest List

Posted in: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Miscellaneous Tech, Today's Chili

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Once again, the rich are getting richer. In spite of the massive economic crises that have plagued the world in recent years, the ranks of billionaires has increased by 199 members. By Forbes’s most recent count, there are some 1,210 billionaires in the world, right now, raking in a combined $4.5 trillion–that’s nearly a $1 trillion increase from last year’s combined $3.6 trillion.

A number of familiar techy names made the list, this year. Bill Gates at $56 billion, naturally, was pretty close to the top. This year, the Microsoft chief was in the second spot, behind Mexican telecom magnate, Carlos Slim (at $74 billion), thanks in large part the large chunk of his fortune Gates has given to charity over the past few years. Oracle chief Larry Ellison rounded out the top five, with $39.5 billion.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin also made the top 25, tying for the 24th spot, with $19.8 billion a piece. Also in the top 100, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos (418.8 billion, Michael Dell ($14.6 billion), Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer ($14.5 billion), Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg ($13.5 billion), and Microsoft’s Paul Allen ($13 billion) rounded out the top 100.

Steve Jobs and Google’s Eric Schmidt took the 110 and 136 slots, with $8.3 and $7 billion, respectively.

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Mar 10

Fusion-io IPO filing discloses list of prestigious clients, led by Facebook

Posted in: flash, SSD, storage, Today's Chili

Before last week, we’d gone well over a year without discussing solid state storage purveyors Fusion-io — and their extremely expensive and expeditious flash drives — but things seem to have been ticking along just fine behind the scenes. While the company’s unlikely to have sold many ioDrives to good old Joe Consumer, its upcoming IPO application features an impressive list of corporate clients, highlighted by Facebook, its biggest customer, IBM, HP, and Credit Suisse — the latter using Fusion-io technology to speed up the mathematical alchemy of making money where there was none before. Taken together with strategic investments from Samsung and Dell, these deals paint a rosy outlook for the Woz-employing startup, however it’s worth noting that profitability is still a decent way away. Fusion-io’s rapid growth is costing it more than it’s making at the moment, which is most likely to have catalyzed its current decision to go public and collect its biggest round of investments yet. Let’s hope the investor prospectus includes a forecast for when things like the ioXtreme might actually become affordable to non-millionaires, eh?

Continue reading Fusion-io IPO filing discloses list of prestigious clients, led by Facebook

Fusion-io IPO filing discloses list of prestigious clients, led by Facebook originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 05:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 09

New Poll: When will the Web 2.0 Bubble Burst?

Posted in: Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on August 28, 2007 by CyberNet.

Balloon_burstingA recent article posted at News.com talks about the deep interest that scores of investors have in social-networking web sites. There’s no doubt why there is such interest – many of these sites have proven to be extremely successful and experience continuous growth and support from venture firms. Facebook is one such example with a “year-over-year growth of 129 percent.” As they become successful, these social networking sites begin toying with the idea of an IPO as Classmates.com is currently doing, along with LinkedIn. While an IPO for any business signifies a certain level of prestige and provides capital for these companies to continue growing, it should be done when the time is right.

The problem that we saw during the dot-com bubble in the late 90’s was that companies sought after an IPO much too quickly which eventually resulted in the dot-com bubble burst. I’m certainly no expert, in fact, I’m far from it. But, I don’t think it takes an expert to see that at some point, we’ll see the Web 2.0 Bubble Burst. Venture Capitalists are forking out money left and right to companies that have a copy-cat idea. Very few of these companies will be able to stick around for the long-haul.

With all of the duplicate Web 2.0 sites, including all of the social networks who are seeking after an IPO or acquisition to cash-in big, it’ll only be a matter of time before the big burst. Those who take it slowly and wait it out will ultimately be those that land themselves on top as Google did when they held out offering an IPO until after the Dot-Com bust. Their IPO was extremely successful which is attributed to the fact that they waited for the perfect moment.

New Poll: When will the Web 2.0 Bubble Burst?

This leads us to our new poll: When will the Web 2.0 Bubble Burst? Go ahead and vote in the sidebar to the right.

It’ll burst…

  • By the end of 2007
  • Within a year
  • Within 3 years
  • In more than 3 years
  • A bubble burst is not likely to occur

Source: Thanks for the tip Curtiss!

 

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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