August 01, 2006, 7:56 PM PDT
Picture Cloud: poor-man's 3D photo rendering
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

While you wait for Microsoft to release its gabillion-dollar 3D photo research project, Photosynth, you might want to check out the one-person project, Picture Cloud. Photosynth will attempt to place all photos into a global context so that you can fly through them. Picture Cloud just uses pictures you've taken while walking around an object and mashes them together into kind of a poor man's QuickTime spinning view of an object.

It's a cool service for showing off things you're trying to sell, such as cars or clothes. Picture Cloud images look very easy to create--you just drag your images into the site. However, the service doesn't yet do any smart image processing. So if you take your walkaround shots out of order, you'll ruin the illusion.

There's a free version of the service as well as a paid option that gives you more resolution and longer storage life.

Seen at: New Tech Meetup

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• Read also: Web 2.0, Digital imaging
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August 01, 2006, 7:31 PM PDT
Posticky, an online corkboard
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

Right after I posted my last entry, about the Web annotation service Diigo, I got a demo of Posticky, another online "Post-it" service. This site isn't what I expected, though. It doesn't let you attach notes to Web pages. Instead, it's more like a bulletin board. You can create Post-it-type notes on your personal Posticky page on the site, and you can share the notes with others and view them on a mobile phone using a special mobile version of the site.

Posticky would be more useful if your notes were available in places other than the Posticky site. And you can't see your notes when you're offline. But it is a handy place to jot notes to yourself that you can later retrieve from any Web-enabled device. If that's what you need.

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August 01, 2006, 6:32 PM PDT
Diigo: bookmarking evolved
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

There's yet another new bookmarking utility live now: Diigo. This one is different. In addition to letting you bookmark pages and share those bookmarks with others, it also lets you highlight parts of pages (text or images), and store those highlights not only in your Diigo account, but also on the Web pages themselves (if you have the plug-in). You can also attach Post-it-like notes to your highlights on Web pages, and they can be private or shared.

Old-timers may recollect one of the first Web annotation services, ThirdVoice. That tool also let you mark up any Web page you visited so that other ThirdVoice users could see what everybody had to say. The service died in a firestorm of controversy, but we've evolved since then--what people used to call "graffiti" we now call "interactivity" and "community."

The annotation capability sets Diigo apart from Del.icio.us and makes it a more granular data-gathering tool, like ClipMarks. Diigo lets you take your clips and do useful things with them: you can publish them all as a Web page or directly to a blog, or you can send them in e-mails.

With the Diigo toolbar installed, you can also easily mark parts of any Web page and forward this directly via e-mail. It's a handy and universal "send this article" function, and the highlighting tool makes it much easier to add context.

It took me a while to grok Diigo, though. There's a lot going on here, and like a Swiss Army Knife, there are blades that new users will find confusing. What's a customizable search bar doing here? And why does Diigo act so much like a social bookmarking tool--do we really need another one of these? Diigo has very useful annotation and organizational features, though, and if you want a good way to mark up the Web for personal use or a fast way to send clips to people you know, it's worth checking out. See also Jeteye.

There's also a nice review of Diigo on Solution Watch.

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August 01, 2006, 4:00 PM PDT
Cingular starts surcharge for older phones
Posted by: Kent German

While it's still true (for the moment at least) that Cingular won't coerce former AT&T Wireless subscribers onto official Cingular plans, the carrier is starting to make it difficult for customers who use phones with older technologies. Beginning in September, Cingular will start imposing a $5 surcharge on subscribers who use TDMA and analog phones in an effort to get them to switch to the carrier's GSM network. Yesterday Cingular told the Associated Press that it decided to initiate the surcharge because "the cost of using [TDMA and analog networks] is increasing considerably." According to the AP about 4.7 million Cingular customers still use the older technologies and the charge is supposed to generate $23.5 million per month in new revenue.

The FCC requires cell phone carriers to provide analog service until 2008 as long as they still have subscribers using the technology. And while there are no federal requirements regarding TDMA service, Cingular has pledged to keep its TDMA network active until 2008, as well. Nevertheless, the carrier is saying that the older technologies leave less room in its network to connect calls and provide data for GSM customers.

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August 01, 2006, 2:52 PM PDT
Dell to add AMD chips to notebook lineup for Q4 2006?
Posted by: Andrew Gruen

Though Dell already broke up with Intel in the server market this May, Digitimes reports that the company is about to do the same for its notebooks. According to anonymous "sources at Taiwan-based notebook makers," Dell is set to launch a full range of AMD-based laptops based on the Sempron, Athlon 64, and Turion 64 X2 processors in the forth quarter of this year. AMD-powered Dell notebooks should mean less-expensive computers and more consumer choice--and of course, inexpensive, low-end notebooks hitting the streets during the holiday buying season.

Adding AMD Turion 64 X2 processors would also shake up Dell's high end. Using both the Core 2 Duo with EMT-64 and the Turion 64 X2 in, say, the XPS lineup, would give power users a choice of dual-core, 64-bit processors, which will be particularly useful when the 64-bit capable Windows Vista goes mainstream early next year. Digitimes thinks lower prices would also seriously heat up competition between Dell and HP--one of AMD's biggest customers.

So what would you call cheaper notebooks, more choice for high-performance machines, and more competition in the industry? A triple treat for consumers.

When (if) Dell does launch AMD-based notebooks, be sure to check CNET for full reviews.

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• Read also: Laptops, notebooks, computers
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August 01, 2006, 2:35 PM PDT
VisiStat makes Web analytics easy
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

You can't do business without a Web site these days. But how much business is your Web site actually doing? There are several Web analytics products that will try to tell you just what's up with your site, including a cool one I just scoped out, VisiStat.

VisiStat seems to provide just the right level of data on a site's traffic. Its main reports are graphical and easy to read. You get good information on traffic and where it comes from (both geographically and from which referral sites) and also excellent data on which search terms are leading people to your site.

Also, the reports are live. If you're looking at hourly traffic for the current day, the numbers on the page will count up as visitors use your site. It's sort of a gimmick, but it does telegraph activity. There's also a mini pop-up site monitor that shows you how many people are on your site and where the last person visited from.

On August 9, an upgrade to VisiStat will also allow you to track, in real time, what users are doing on your site. You'll even be able to select a user and watch as he or she navigates your pages (you won't be able to identify the user, though).

The site could have better graphical presentation of some of its newer reports. For example, while VisiStat will tell you which links on a page are generating clicks, it won't show you your pages and where people are clicking (competitor ClickTracks does this). CEO Stephen Oachs told me his team is working on refining some of VisiStat's features to make it even more usable.

It's easy to add VisiStat reporting to your site: you just insert a snippet of code in your site's global header or footer. All the heavy lifting is done Web 2.0-style, on the VisiStat servers. For use on a modest small-business site (traffic of less than 25,000 pages a month), the service costs $19.95 a month.

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• Read also: Web 2.0, Work
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August 01, 2006, 9:27 AM PDT
HTC Excalibur: Moto Q killer?
Posted by: Bonnie Cha

You knew it was just a matter of time before someone went after the Motorola Q. The supersleek Samsung SGH-i320 has already been spotted in the wild (though not on U.S. soil), and now HTC may be entering the fray with a device code-named Excalibur. Smartphone Thoughts has uncovered what could be a preproduction picture of the device. Frankly, I'm not too impressed by its looks so far, but it's not all about image, right? The quad-band smart phone is said to have integrated Wi-Fi and an innovative touch jog strip on the side for scrolling--interesting. Other specs are pretty light at the moment, but I'm sure that'll change soon, so stay tuned for more.

Update: Check out Engadget Mobile for the, now requisite, blurry camera phone picture of the Excalibur.

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• Read also: smart phones, cell phones, PDAs
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August 01, 2006, 9:19 AM PDT
Google: 1,000 pizzas; CNET: Zero
Posted by: Molly Wood

I just got through all 10 minutes of the Cambrian House video (released last week) in which they deliver 1,000 pizzas to the Google campus as a...well, sort of a publicity stunt-slash-massive kiss-up campaign. And despite still questioning the wisdom of spending that kind of cash on pizza, and still trying to figure out exactly what Cambrian House does or hopes to accomplish with this stunt...I must admit, the video of the huge gang of people storming the Google castle with giant piles of pizza boxes is pretty awesome. Not as awesome, however, as the fact that the ultimate pizza crackdown comes not from security, as you might imagine, but from a collection of cheesed-off Google chefs. No wonder those Googlers were so excited to get that pizza! They clearly live under a brutal cafeteria dictatorship!

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August 01, 2006, 8:17 AM PDT
Semiofficial thoughts on MCE for Vista
Posted by: Dan Ackerman

Microsoft Media Center team member Matt Goyer has a popular blog about all the latest MCE comings and goings, and he's just posted a FAQ about Media Center on Windows Vista.

Most of the interesting questions are about Open Cable Uni-directional Receivers, better known as OCUR, which in layman's terms is a CableCard reader, which will allow high-quality digital cable (including HD content) on PCs, replacing the current crop of TV tuner cards. From the blog post:

Q: Will I be able to buy a CableCard reader off the shelf, a video card off the shelf, and be able to play back [OCUR] content?
A: No.

Q: Can I stream that protected [OCUR] content to an Extender?
A: Yes

Q: When are you going to provide more information about OCUR?
A: Soon. I'm sorry that we can't provide a firm date.

None of this is really new news, but it reemphasizes that you (at least initially) won't be able to upgrade your current rig to take CableCard, but instead have to buy a CableLabs-certified system with the technology built in.

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