Hasta La Gadget!

Since UNIQLO may well be the most web-savvy retailer around (see UniQlock, Uniqlo Calendar and Uniqlo Tunes), it might come as a surprise to some readers to hear that they JUST started Twitter and Mixi accounts for the first time on November 20.

Why so late to the grassroots level of social networking? While they were making innovative Flash sites (see their Premium Downs site!) and popular widgets, they didn’t get involved in any of the networks themselves, instead relying on the viral quality of their content to spread itself. Judging by how many UNIQLO pieces we’ve done on this site alone, that was a pretty good tactic at the time.

What made them change their mind and jump into the fray? One side must be a reluctance to jump onto passing fads and expend energy on them. That’s a lot to keep up on, even for a big brand, and doing it poorly could have worse effects than not doing it at all. Either way, in the time it took for us to post this piece, the UNIQLO Twitter account gained 3,000 followers.

Remember all those fantastic features that Microsoft promised were in the works for its Xbox 360 back at E3? Get ready folks, because they’re all arriving in five days. At an undisclosed time on November 17th, users will be able to login to Xbox LIVE and check out the totally bodacious new portals available to kill time and act social without actually combing your hair. As we’d heard, Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm (US and UK only) modules will all be featured, not to mention on-demand 1080p / 5.1-channel HD video through the Zune Video outlet. In case that’s not enough (and be honest, it’s never enough), users will also see a new “News and More” section in the “Inside Xbox” channel with streams from MSNBC, The New Yorker and Dilbert. Yeah, Dilbert. Hop on past the break for a few video demonstrations, and then get back to your Modern Warfare 2 binge before your teammates see you slacking off.

Continue reading Xbox LIVE gets 1080p Zune Video store, Twitter, Facebook and more on November 17th (video)

Filed under: Gaming, Software

Xbox LIVE gets 1080p Zune Video store, Twitter, Facebook and more on November 17th (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale already stands out in your bathroom: sleek, smooth and fully functional, the very opposite of the sagging meat sack you drag into the shower every morning. Now it can beam your insecurities to your poor Twitter followers, automatically, before you have even thought about brewing a wake-up cup of coffee.

The Withings scale, you may remember, records body mass, fat levels and other paranoia-inducing statistics and compiles them for presentation on the web or on your iPhone. Now, the $160 scale adds Twittering to its list of “encouragements”.

Set up your account details and the scale will reveal your weight to the world every time you hop on. It can be configured to Tweet daily, weekly or monthly and will post the amount of lard you have to shed before you reach your goal. The upscale scale has support for up to eight people and their accounts, making it easy to organize an ongoing bulimia marathon amongst housemates.

The most amazing part about this story, though, is that it features a weighing scale that can receive software updates over the air. We’re clearly living in the future.

Product page [Withings. Thanks, Jessica!]

See Also:

• IPhone-Connected Weighing Scale for Your iDiet

Talk about a fail whale. Withings today announced that its recently introduced WiFi Body Scale now works with Twitter. Users can step on a scale and have their weight displayed nearly instantly, all over the World Wide Web. Why would a company create such a thing? Because it can, apparently. Says the company’s general manager, Cedric Hutchings:

This social media feature was the next logical step in the evolution of the WiFi scale for our customers. Here at Withings we are committed to roll out new features and services on the field thanks to automatic updates. Adding this social functionality makes the WiFi scale by Withings the first true flagship of the Internet of Objects.

As the company is quick to point, results won’t be automatically posted to Twitter; you’ll have to enable that feature. Once enabled, the feature tweets your current weight and how much you’ve lost or gained. Ah, technology.

Quick, someone get Oprah on the phone.

I still can’t believe the TwitterPeek exists. It’s a portable device that only does Twitter. Seriously, who the hell would spend $200 on this? Am I crazy here?

The original Peek, which just runs email, is something I would never buy in a million years. But I could understand why some people might like it. It’s simple, its inexpensive, and it lets you run email without paying for a fancy smartphone plan. That’s fine. Email is important and universally useful.

But this? Twitter only? Twitter is something that you can do easily on a smartphone, yes, but it’s also something you can use easily on any phone. It’s a service based on text messaging, for god’s sake! In practice, you could use Twitter on your phone no matter what phone you have. Hell, even StarTacs supported SMS and could use Twitter, if you happen to still be using one.

Maybe they expect this to be used by people without cellphones at all? Why would anyone carry a device that does only Twitter instead of getting a basic free cellphone that can call friends and restaurants and companies with phones (all of them)?

And really, if you’re so hooked on Twitter than you want to have it on you at all times, the chances are good that you’re also hooked on email, IM, texts and probably the services that a few other apps would provide. This is a device built around an app, basically. The iPhone, BlackBerry, Pre, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android all have great Twitter apps. But do they deserve their own devices? What’s next, a dedicated Fieldrunners or Yelp device? How about a batman utility belt full of like 20 devices each doing the equivalent of one app, for seven bucks a month, each?

Sure, one could argue that it chooses to do one thing and to do it well, with simplicity and affordability. You could compare it to the Flip, for example, which makes shooting video easy and cheap. But the Flip does far more, for the money, and decent video isn’t something you find on most smartphones. The Flip beats camcorders by doing 90% of what they do for 20% of the cost. This does 1% of what smartphones can do for 25% of the cost. It’s just not a good value, despite it being cheap.

The real kicker? This thing has one single function, and it can’t even do that very well. PC Mag just gave it 1.5 stars! This is totally damning:

But as soon as I started handling the TwitterPeek, I knew something was wrong. This handheld is painfully slow. Scrolling through button selections or on-screen lists, the cursor is always a bit behind your trackwheel.

TwitterPeek also fails at the most basic function: reading tweets. The main list of tweets only shows the first three and a half words of each message; to read more, you have to dig down by hitting the ‘return’ key. Then you can step through tweets, slowly, one by one, with the ‘n’ (for next) and ‘p’ (for previous) keys, or jump back up to the unreadable full list of truncated messages. The whole process is slow and annoying.

Not everybody wants or needs a smartphone, such as the iPhone or Droid. They’re relatively expensive and cost more per month than a dumbphone. But the fact of the matter is, if you’re looking to have a lot of mobile functionality, it makes way more sense to consolidate your needs on one well-designed product than to clutter up your pockets with a dumbphone, a TwitterPeek, a digital camera and a GPS unit. This is a device that is built on flawed logic and executed poorly. I can’t think of a single person in a single situation where this would make sense.

I just can’t believe this thing exists.