September 08, 2006, 8:27 PM PDT
Brian's rules of order: CivicEvolution
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

Brian Sullivan believes that motivated groups of people can accomplish great things if they're only given the tools that encourage them to communicate well. So he's building an interesting wiki-like product, CivicEvolution, that will embody, and enforce, his rules of order.

CivicEvolution, still in development, is designed for political committees, nonprofits, and small collectives such as neighborhood groups and teams. Fundamentally it's a wiki, but unlike most first-generation wikis, it offers a great deal of structure. (This is an important trend in wikis, which I'll cover more soon.)

For example, on a CivicEvolution page, anybody can make a proposal, and all proposals are on a special part of a project page. Users can then endorse these proposals. When a proposal is endorsed by multiple people, its highlighting changes and it moves up in the section. If a number of proposals are in a project, this feature makes it easier for people to see which way the group is leaning.

Brian's rules of order are enforced in other ways, too: If a user group on a topic gets too big, it can automatically split into chapters, which can then elect spokespeople to the group at large. In other words, Brian can encode representative government into his wiki.

Some of the features of CivicEvolution transcend Brian's ideals. For instance, a CivicEvolution project site loads into the browser in one big chunk when a user first visits it, and clicking on links causes data to pop into a project page immediately, reducing the user's penalty for exploring a topic or a discussion--they don't have to wait for page loads, and they're less likely to get lost. That's an easy technological improvement for anyone to digest.

Brian says, "I want to get out of the technology and into the social engineering aspect." While I am sure there are groups and people who will feel at home in Brian's wiki utopia, I'm not so sure there's enough flexibility for the social makeup of all the groups Brian would like to serve. It's easier to engineer Web servers than group dynamics.

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September 08, 2006, 5:08 PM PDT
Flying-car company gives potential customers a virtual test-drive/flight
Posted by: Kevin Massy

News.com has a very interesting story on the Transition, a "roadable plane" being developed by Terrafugia, an M.I.T.-inspired company that is planning to bring its Jetsonian flying car to market in 2009. According to the article, Terrafugia has unveiled a simulator that will enable potential customers to test-drive (-fly?) the Transistion. For those who like what they see, Terrafugia is also taking deposits of 5 percent of the estimated $148,000 price tag.

Read the full story here.

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September 08, 2006, 4:15 PM PDT
HP iPaq hw6900 available for purchase
Posted by: Bonnie Cha

Well, well, looky here. We got a little tip today that you can now purchase an unlocked version of the HP iPaq hw6900 from the company's Web site, with an expected ship date of September 13. So does this mean it's finally headed to Cingular around that time? Not exactly. Neither HP nor Cingular would officially confirm the smart phone's release on the network (umm, hello, the product image has Cingular's logo on it) or a specific availability date, but it looks like there's a light at the end of this very long tunnel. Stay tuned.

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September 08, 2006, 3:54 PM PDT
Cardo updates Bluetooth motorbike headset with FM radio
Posted by: Kevin Massy

Cardo has updated its Bluetooth motorcycle headset to include an FM receiver, enabling bikers to listen to the radio while weaving in and out of traffic. The Scala Rider FM follows on the heels of the Scala Rider, which we reviewed last fall, and incorporates all of the Bluetooth hands-free calling capabilities of its predecessor. These include automatic volume adjustment, voice-controlled receipt of incoming calls, and a noise-canceling microphone.

Riding a motorbike looks challenging enough to us without the distractions of chatting or channel surfing, but, hey, hands-free talking is better than trying to negotiate a cell phone or an iPod while on two wheels.

Source: Telematics Journal

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September 08, 2006, 3:40 PM PDT
L.A., here we come
Posted by: Kent German

Though it feels like we just returned from Las Vegas and the annual CTIA cell phone blowout in April, the autumn version of the show is right around the corner. This second show is smaller than its spring counterpart and is less focused on new handsets, but that doesn't mean we won't see anything exciting. Last year at the fall CTIA in San Francisco, Verizon introduced the Palm Treo 700w, and Cingular said it would pick up the Nokia 9300.

This year we don't quite know what to anticipate, but our smart phone expert Bonnie Cha expects to scout out some new models at the Los Angeles Convention Center. In particular, she plans on stopping by HTC's booth since the company has kept itself busy lately launching new handsets in Europe. Also, you can usually count on Kyocera and UTStarcom to unveil a few new models. Othwerwise we'll check in with such companies as Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint, Symbian, and Microsoft. We'll start reporting live on Monday, September 11, so be sure to check back throughout the week.

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September 08, 2006, 2:28 PM PDT
Nokia to start naming phones
Posted by: Kent German

Nokia has never been a company to follow fads, but it appears that one of the latest trends in the cell phone world is rubbing off on the folks from Finland. Nokia said yesterday that it would start giving some of its handsets names instead of numbers. While the company dabbled with new naming conventions with its N series and E series, it has stuck with its somewhat confusing four-digit numbering system for the most part. Yet the recent success of such "named" handsets as the Motorola Razr and the LG Chocolate apparently has caused Nokia to shake things up. "What you will see coming from us in the future is not just a numbering system, you are going to start to see names that carry a meaning and are important to consumers," Nokia exec Keith Pardy said. Though he was mum on details, Pardy also hinted that Nokia is joining the flip phone craze very soon.

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September 08, 2006, 2:15 PM PDT
Speck's Made for Sansa cases
Posted by: Jasmine France

As I dug around for more dirt on all the upcoming Made for Sansa accessories, my contact at Speck shot off a quick e-mail reply to my plea for more info. So far, Speck has readied three cases for the SanDisk Sansa c200 series. There's the rugged ToughSkin--you can find some relevant commentary in our write-up of the iPod version. The Sansa version also includes the screen protector and the belt clip, and we expect that Speck will offer a variety of colors, though black is the only one listed now. Next, we have the Chuck Taylor-esque Canvas Sport case (James Kim already had a go at the iPod version). This case will be available in pink, black, and white models. Finally, Speck will offer a fitness-friendly armband, the Active Sport. This two-tone gray case is made of a breathable mesh material, and the strap features a Velcro closure. All three cases will retail for $24.95 and should be available by early October. Speck hasn't announced any cases yet for the other Sansa models, but I suspect it's just a matter of time. The company will continue to add more products to its Sansa Web page over the coming months.

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September 08, 2006, 2:13 PM PDT
Original Signal outdoes Digg--with Digg's own content
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

I like the meta-aggregators ("metagators," if you will) PopURLs and Original Signal so much that I've dramatically reduced the time I spend using standard RSS readers. But in a weird turn of events, the people behind the first Original Signal metagator site, which collates Web 2.0 blog headlines from more than a dozen sources, have released a new page that metagates (well, why not?) Digg exclusively: digg.originalsignal.com.

In many ways it's a better Digg front page than Digg itself. It displays more content than Digg's own site, and also has sections for top headlines from different time periods (recent, today, and the week).

What's unclear is whether this is good or bad for Digg, and if the Digg team will support it, turn a blind eye, or make an effort to shut it down and reclaim the traffic that Original Signal might be stealing from the site's front page. I think it's potentially good for Digg's overall traffic, but not so much for its front-page traffic or branding; Digg's reaction to the site will depend on what they think is more important.

There's also another new view of Digg, this one from Digg itself, and created for small-screen mobile devices. Point your cell phone or Treo at diggriver.com.

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September 08, 2006, 1:52 PM PDT
"Made for Sansa"
Posted by: Jasmine France

SanDisk recently announced that several companies will be offering a variety of accessories made especially for the company's Sansa line of MP3 players. The program, dubbed "Made for Sansa" (hmm, sounds familiar), will turn out more than 40 new products ranging from speaker docks to cases to FM transmitters. The collaborators in question include Griffin, DLO, and Altec Lansing, among others. The Altec Lansing inMotion iM510 is the only one of such products we've been able to get any real details about, and even these are slim. The speaker system fits SanDisk's Sansa e200 and c200 series, and it will charge the players and offer pass-through syncing. If you feel the bass is lacking, you can pick up the optional BB2001 subwoofer, which is compatible with the iM510. We're still trying to dig up more info on the other products, so stay tuned for some updates.

SanDisk also announced its own accessory: the Sansa Base Station. This product supports the e200 series as well as the just-announced c200 series. You can use the dock to charge the player as well as to sync it with your PC. It also features RCA audio jacks for outputting music through your home entertainment system, though it apparently is unable to pipe photos or videos (bummer). The Base Station, which will cost $69.99, includes a power adapter, a USB 2.0 cable, an RCA audio cable, and an IR remote control. (The dock has built-in slots for both the player and the remote.) It's expected to go on sale in the United States in October.

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September 08, 2006, 11:53 AM PDT
Live Documents puts old-school access control on Word docs
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

Web-based applications do great things for groups. For example, online word processors such as Writely store documents centrally and allow coworkers to collaborate on them at the same time, eliminating the common workgroup headache of keeping track of file versions and who has the latest revisions.

Some of this functionality can be had in standard productivity software, with an add-on product such as InstaSecure's new Live Documents for Microsoft Office. Live Documents puts access-control wrappers around your Word or Excel files. You can specify who can read, edit, or print a file, and even a date after which people can't access it at all. The tool synchronizes changes in files, and it prevents people from creating conflicting edits, since it locks all instances of a file for writing when somebody else has it open.

Live Documents looks useful, but in a pre-Web way. Multiple users can't simultaneously edit a document, as they can in Writely. And the product requires a 2.5MB download to work inside Office applications. Without it, people who receive your documents won't be able to open them. As TechCrunch notes, it would be much more useful to be able to create a document in Word, then allow others to edit it in a Web browser. I said this in my AllPeers write-up, and I'll say it again here: Requiring recipients of a file to download a permanent plug-in limits its acceptability, especially in a business setting.

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