Aug 02

Groupme 3.0 goes international and cross-platform, questions everything

Posted in: Android, app, apps, BlackBerry, Google, ios, iPhone, Today's Chili, update, upgrade, web, windows phone 7, WindowsPhone7, Wp7
Groupme 3.0

Groupme, the little group messaging service that made a bit of a splash at Google I/O, turns 3.0 today. There are some shiny new features on board, including a simpler way to exchange private messages and “Questions” for sparking conversations when you’re not sure who to talk to. But, the big news — Groupme 3.0 is now platform and nation agnostic. With the latest update, the service will be available in 90 countries and add Windows Phone 7 to its list of supported OSes, alongside iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android. Even if you’re sitting in front of your desktop you can still take part in the mass messaging fun. The website has been overhauled and now sports all of the same features, like photo-sharing and group management, as the mobile apps. Check out the source link to get the latest version for your handset of choice — provided you’re not a Symbian fan — and don’t miss the gallery below.

Gallery: Groupme 3.0

Groupme 3.0 goes international and cross-platform, questions everything originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceGroupme  | Email this | Comments

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Jul 29

Google wants to speed up your site, while resisting the urge to sell you stuff

Posted in: Google, Today's Chili, web

Google has plenty of things going for it, but patience has never really been high on the list — not surprising, really, for a company that employs scooters to get around the halls of its offices. The search giant has taken a similar approach to the web, offering up a number of services to help speed things up around the old tubes. Page Speed Service is the latest simply named initiative on that front, which has apparently offered up speed improvements of 25 to 60 percent in its early testing phases. How does this magical quickening work? Google grabs content from your servers, rewrites pages with performance best practices, and sends them out through its own servers. The service has raised a few eyebrows, but Google insists that Page Speed Service is all about improving performance, not collecting information for future advertising opportunities.

Google wants to speed up your site, while resisting the urge to sell you stuff originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink All Things D  |  sourceGoogle  | Email this | Comments

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Jul 26

Website Enables Japan to Thank the World

Posted in: Today's Chili, web

Today we bring to you a new campaign website created by an anonymous non-profit organization to express Japan’s gratitude towards countries from all over the world which made donations and offered their support following the March 11 disaster. “Arigato From JP” is a web project that involves a collection of user generated 3-5 second “thank you” clips from people in Japan that are posted on the website’s homepage for entirely non-profit purposes.

Arigato From Japan Movies

Whats interesting is that the site contains a list of other countries and the forms of contribution (monetary donations, food, supplies, etc) they have generously made to support the Japan relief effort. With approximately 120 to choose from, users pick a country and the site teaches them how to say “Arigato,” or “thank you” in that country’s language. They then record their message of thanks via their smartphone or webcam and upload it onto the site.

As visitors are brought to the website, a random collection of thank you clips are played along with an introduction of the campaign and its purpose. By clicking on the tiles on the homepage, people from around the globe can view these messages, which are refreshed every couple of seconds.

Arigato From Japan Movie Collection

We see a tremendous amount of effort put into reconstructing Japan and lifting the spirits of those who have lost so much, and its heart-warming to see that even at times like these, there’s a way for people to say thank you in a small way.

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Jul 21

Acer buys iGware, makes a $320 million bet on the cloud

Posted in: cloud, Software, Today's Chili, web

There’s no question that cloud computing has hit the mainstream — even the US federal government, which isn’t typically a front-runner when it comes to tech adoption, has taken the plunge. Now, Taiwanese hardware maker Acer, the world’s second largest PC manufacturer, has just joined the ranks of the sky-high elite, purchasing Silicon Valley-based iGware for $320 million. Acer’s acquisition of the little-known cloud computing firm will reportedly allow it to launch a cloud product next year, and is seen as a long-term strategic move for the tech giant. Despite its limited name recognition, iGware provides services that support more than 100 million consumer devices, including Nintendo gaming systems — the two companies are reportedly in talks over potential cooperation after the acquisition is complete. iGware may be a major player in the cloud computing space, but its single-page Microsoft Publisher-designed website doesn’t exactly scream nine-figure acquisition — we hope the company at least tied a pair of mylar balloons to the mailbox before Acer came knocking at Suite 100.

Acer buys iGware, makes a $320 million bet on the cloud originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceReuters, iGware  | Email this | Comments

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Jul 18

There’s a web browser hiding inside the iriver Story HD, but it’s pretty shy

Posted in: e reader, e-book, e-books, e-readers, Google, hack, navigation, Today's Chili, web, web browser, WebBrowser
Looking for a way to surf the web on your new iriver Story HD? The Digital Reader‘s got you covered, with a nifty, albeit not totally satisfying hack. As it turns out, the Story HD’s much-ballyhooed Google eBookstore operates as a mobile version, rather than an app, meaning you can use it to access other pages — if you know the trick. All you have to do is navigate to the first Help page within the eBookstore, where you’ll see a list of links running across the top. The Books link leads to books.google.com, from which you can jump to google.com, effectively putting the internet at your fingertips. The major downside, however, is that iriver’s hidden browser won’t give you an address bar, though it does offer basic refresh and page-flipping capabilities, located within the options menu. It’s certainly not as fluid as the WebKit-based browser you’ll find on Amazon’s third-generation Kindle, nor is it as straightforward as that experimental feature buried within the Nook WiFi — but at least it’s there. If you’re interested in digging it up, hit the source link for more details.

[Thanks, Nate]

There’s a web browser hiding inside the iriver Story HD, but it’s pretty shy originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceThe Digital Reader  | Email this | Comments

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Jul 15

Microsoft leaks Tulalip internal project, planning to launch social search… thing?

Posted in: Google, leak, Microsoft, search, social networking, SocialNetworking, Today's Chili, twitter, web
Google’s Social Search may have to make room for an extra guest at the table, now that Microsoft has leaked the homepage for what looks like a new social service — of some sort. Fusible first discovered the page sitting at socl.com, a domain that MS recently purchased. Known as Tulalip (also the name of a group of Native American tribes near Redmond), the project promises to help users “find what you need and share what you know easier than ever” — which, at this early stage, is pretty difficult to do, considering that the page’s search field is non-functioning. The platform also features sign-in buttons for Facebook and Twitter, the latter of which leads to an authorization page explaining that Tulalip is an “experimental app,” and that it will be able to “update your profile” and “post tweets for you” (see the screenshot, after the break). It’s too early, of course, to say whether or not the service will launch as a direct competitor to Social Search, or if it’ll even get off the ground, though Microsoft insists that it didn’t mean to tip its hand so early. The Socl.com welcome page now reads: “Socl.com is an internal design project from one of Microsoft’s research teams which was mistakenly published to the web. We didn’t mean to, honest.”

[Thanks, Brian]

Continue reading Microsoft leaks Tulalip internal project, planning to launch social search… thing?

Microsoft leaks Tulalip internal project, planning to launch social search… thing? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jul 2011 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink It’s All Tech, Search Engine Land  |  sourceFusible  | Email this | Comments

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Jul 05

Google temporarily suspends Realtime search, thanks to expired Twitter deal

Posted in: business, deal, Google, search, Today's Chili, tweet, twitter, web
If you noticed a distinct lack of tweetage in your Google search results yesterday, you weren’t alone. Turns out, the company has temporarily suspended its Realtime search feature, as part of its ongoing Google+ launch. El Goog made the announcement, ironically enough, in the form of a tweet, explaining that it needs time to integrate Google+ within its social network-based search tool, but without offering a specific time frame. Mountain View later revealed further details with the following statement, provided to Search Engine Land:
Since October of 2009, we have had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results through a special feed, and that agreement expired on July 2. While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google.
Twitter offered a similarly curt explanation, saying that it would continue to provide tweet integration to companies like Microsoft and Yahoo, while adding that it still works with Google in “many other ways.” Google’s Social Search, meanwhile, continues to function, but has been stripped of all Twitter data. No word yet on whether the two sides have entered negotiations, but when they do, the fate of humanity will certainly be hanging in the balance.

Google temporarily suspends Realtime search, thanks to expired Twitter deal originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Search Engine Land  |  source@GoogleRealTime (Twitter)  | Email this | Comments

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Jun 29

Visualized: a zettabyte

Posted in: cisco, network, networking, Online, Today's Chili, web

Remember the good old days when a gigabyte was considered a lot of space? Improvements in hard disk technology have allowed the humble magnetic drive to reach the dizzying heights of multiple terabytes of storage, but Cisco foresees a future that’s a few orders of magnitude more impressive. Pinpointing 2015 as the commencement of what it calls the zettabyte era, the company has put together a handy infographic to show us just how much data can be fit into one: you can alternatively think of it as the equivalent of 250 billion DVDs, 36 million years of HD video, or the volume of the Great Wall of China if you allow an 11oz cup of coffee to represent a gigabyte of data. So “zetta” must be Greek for one hell of a lot, but what Cisco expects is that we’ll be pushing that much information around the web each year by 2015. Any bets on how many exabytes of it will be to stream videos of cats diving into cardboard boxes?

Visualized: a zettabyte originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Trusted Reviews  |  sourceCisco Blog  | Email this | Comments

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Jun 29

Skype gets Congressional approval, will help Representatives stay in touch with the common people

Posted in: Online, politics, skype, Today's Chili, us, usa, web

Look, Capitol Hill is a nice place to be, okay? There are interns eager to please, lobbyists keen to buy you dinner, why would you ever want to leave? Unfortunately for US Congressmen and women, the schleps who elected them insist on getting face time with their supposed representatives, which means a regular schedule of commuting getting in the way of some critically important foot massages and aromatherapy treatments. Never fear, though, Skype has come to the rescue. Microsoft’s latest acquisition has scored a stamp of approval from the House of Representatives, permitting Congresspersons to use it to interact with constituents, attend virtual town hall meetings, and collaborate with other members of the House. All fun-making of lawmakers aside, this strikes us as a step in the right direction and Skype promises that it’s done its homework on keeping communications secure. Let’s hope so.

Skype gets Congressional approval, will help Representatives stay in touch with the common people originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Jun 2011 03:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink ExtremeTech  |  sourceSkype  | Email this | Comments

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Jun 28

World of Warcraft Starter Edition lets you reach lvl 20 for free, Night Elf Mohawk still only available to Mr. T

Posted in: free, Games, gaming, Online, Today's Chili, video games, VideoGames, web

If there was one thing, one thing, keeping humanity safe from total enslavement to the grind of World of Warcraft, it was the fact that you have to pay to play the game for longer than a couple of weeks. Well, now we’re all doomed. Blizzard is replacing its 14-day WoW trial with a so-called Starter Edition of the massively multiplayer life usurper, which lets you reach level 20 without shelling out a penny. Of course, like any good gateway drug, this freebie is capped at the thoroughly insufficient 20 number and is sure to agitate folks into buying the full product. One small step for a software company, one giant leap forward for global obesity rates.

Continue reading World of Warcraft Starter Edition lets you reach lvl 20 for free, Night Elf Mohawk still only available to Mr. T

World of Warcraft Starter Edition lets you reach lvl 20 for free, Night Elf Mohawk still only available to Mr. T originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Joystiq  |  sourceBattle.net  | Email this | Comments

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