Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft just released — or should we say, Apple just approved — version 2.0 of the Bing search app for iOS devices. In addition to several other new features including integrated Facebook Likes on search results (really!?) and in-app checkins to Facebook and Foursquare, Bing now comes packing Streetside, something that first blew us away as Street Slide when it was still in the labs at Microsoft Research. Unlike Google’s Streetview that requires a lot of forward- and back-clicking and turning in order to get a feel for a location, Streetslide provides a more comprehensive view of the shops and businesses in an area by letting you strafe down the sidewalk while zooming in and out of the buildings located on each side of the street. We took it for a brief spin (literally) and came away impressed. You won’t find Streetside implemented for all locations yet (for example, San Francisco’s Make-out Room was found on Streetside but the Slanted Door restaurant wasn’t) but they do seem to have large swaths of major cities covered based on our brief testing of Chicago, Seattle, New York, and San Francisco. Sorry, nothing yet in London and Amsterdam but maybe you’ll have better success searching your own neighborhoods. See the full list of what’s new after the break in addition to a Streetside demo from Bing’s architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas — unfortunately, we’re not seeing the impressive Panaroma feature he mentions in this release.

Update: We’ve been told that Facebook Likes, like Panaroma, like totally didn’t make it into the app release. It’s a web search results feature only for the time being.

Continue reading Bing 2.0 brings better Facebook integration and the impressive Streetside to iPhone (video)

Bing 2.0 brings better Facebook integration and the impressive Streetside to iPhone (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TechTrends  |  iTunes  | Email this | Comments

That movie about what a big jerk the guy who founded Facebook is has been nominated for an impressive six Golden Globes, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Jesse “Mark Zuckerberg” Eisenberg), Best Director (David Fincher), Best Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin), Best Supporting Actor (Andrew Garfield), and Best Original Score (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross).

The Social Network has already nabbed a bunch of awards, including Best Picture from The New York Film Critics Online, The Los Angeles Film Critics Association, The San Francisco Film Critics Circle, and The Boston Society of Film Critics. The film has done pretty well commercially as well, pulling in $184 million.

The Golden Globes are set to air January 16th. They’ll be hosted by The Office‘s Ricky Gervais.

If you’ve ever wondered what a map drawn entirely of Facebook relationships would look like, wonder no more. A Facebook intern by the name of Paul Butler has put together the above image by feeding in location data for pairs of friends, with the white lights representing cities, towns, and hamlets, and the blue streaks between them identifying relationships linking them. It’s fun to see large swathes of Australia and South America devoid of Facebook activity, but check out the bit on the map where Russia and China are supposed to be — is Facebook the most capitalist social network ever or what? Hit the source link for the full-scale image, it gets prettier the closer you get to it.

[Thanks, Ian]

Visualized: Facebook’s global reach originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 06:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Facebook  | Email this | Comments

Remember the massive patent lawsuit leveled at Apple, Google, AOL, Facebook, ebay, Netflix, and a number of other companies by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen? Well, it’s now hit something of a snag — a federal judge dismissed the case on Friday, stating that Allen’s suit “failed to identify the infringing products or devices with any specificity,” and that the court and defendants were basically “left to guess what devices infringe on the four patents.” For his part, Allen apparently plans to persevere with the patent fight, and said through a spokesman that the dismissal was merely a “procedural issue,” and that “the case is staying on track” — Allen now has until December 28th to file an amended complaint.

Judge throws out Paul Allen’s massive patent suit, Allen plans to continue originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 12:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Computerworld, InformationWeek  | Email this | Comments

How do you start a net neutrality debate without ever saying “net neutrality?” If you’re a European wireless carrier like France Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, or Vodafone, you do it by just getting straight to the point: you say companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook need to start paying for continued network access because their devices and services use too much bandwidth. Yep, that’s a straight-up network neutrality issue, but the carriers are framing it like it’s an accounting problem — and they’re not being shy about wanting more cash to even out the books as they invest in next-gen networks. “It’s necessary to put in place a system of payments by service providers as a function of their use,” says France Telecom CEO Stephane Richard, while Telefonica CEO Cesar Alierta says that Google and Yahoo’s free use of his network is a “tragedy” that “can’t continue.” (No, we’re not making this up.)

In addition to shaking down service providers and device makers, European carriers are also following AT&T and Verizon to tiered data plans — France Telecom is will move from unlimited pricing to something “more sophisticated,” and the other networks expected to follow. What’s most interesting to us is that the carriers are appearing to conflate bandwidth-heavy services like Facebook and YouTube with devices that customers use to access those services — does it really make any sense to charge Apple or Google a fee for making good phones that encourage more network use, on top of charging users for tiered data? That’s an unexpected — and unfortunate — twist on the standard net neutrality debate, and we’re not so sure we want to see where it’s going. Read the whole article at the source link, it’s a good one.

European carriers want content companies and smartphone makers to pay network usage fees originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Daring Fireball  |  Bloomberg  | Email this | Comments