FAN

AUSTIN, Texas--Despite the success of Spotify and its competitors, music sharing still hasn't caught up to what Napster offered before being neutered by the courts, that service's founders, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, said today.

During a on-stage discussion at South by Southwest here, Parker and Fanning argued that though new technologies and licensing models finally allow music lovers to legally access and discover vast collections of songs online, even the best new services are still philosophically behind what Napster originally offered its users.

Parker, who appeared earlier this week alongside former U.S. vice president Al Gore … Read more

Facebook is expected to launch an upgrade next week to its premium ads program that will target the friends of advertisers' fans.

The new ads, which will launch February 29, will be created from content posted organically to pages, according to a purportedly leaked document (see below) obtained by GigaOm.

"Anything you can post to on your page, you can turn into an ad," the document says. "Upgraded ads can be targeted to anyone you want."

When the users seeing the ad are friends with fans of the page, Facebook will automatically expand the ad and … Read more

Standing over a hot grill isn't a bad place to be, especially when faced with your own personal fans.

The powerful scent of barbecue wafting through the air is a surefire way to attract the attention of anybody and everybody within a reasonable distance. Adding a little breeze to a cookout has an additional effect aside from being able to easily meet the neighbors.

Directing smoke toward where it's desired, the Sharper Image BBQ Grill Light & Fan attaches to the grill, making life easier for the grill-master. Designed to not only cool down the cook but also … Read more

YouTube adds a built-in video editor to the site, Dyson releases a room heater called simply Hot, and Facebook's new subscribe button makes the social network more like Twitter and Google+.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

In the tech world we're always talking up hot new products, but this is the first time we've gotten to report on a new product that actually is Hot--as in, that's its name.

Yes, Dyson's new bladeless heater fan is simply called Dyson Hot and it uses the company's Air Multiplier technology to push a steady stream of warm air into a room, heating it to temperatures of up to 99 degrees. … Read more

You already knew your iPhone could take the place of your camera, calculator, alarm clock, stopwatch, and e-reader. But did you know it can pull fan duty as well?

Without a doubt, the wackiest iPhone accessory I've seen this month (and possibly this year) also has the wackiest name: Newest Cool Dock Fan Gadgets Cooler.

The Newest Cool Dock Fan Gadgets Cooler (or NCDFGC for not-so-short) is a portable fan that plugs into your iPhone's dock connector. It's available from PandaWill for $6.99 shipped. According to the vendor, it's compatible with the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod Touch.

Based on the pictures (there are more on PandaWill's site), it appears the fan can rotate a full 90 degrees, pointing straight down from your iDevice or off to one side. In other words, it can blow cool air onto your lap or the person sitting to your right. Anyone sitting to your left is outta luck, cooling-wise.… Read more

I like working at home. It's quieter than the office. It'd be near silent if were not for this noisy computer under my desk; the fans make a racket. But a new line of fans using technology from the Swedish company RotoSub could cut down on the noise a lot, and for not much additional money.

All fans make noise, and there are many solutions to damping that down. There are low-noise fan blades, there are muffled enclosures, and there's active noise cancellation, in which a sound signal that's the exact opposite of the offensive noise … Read more

As a product category, CPU cooling hardware tends to offer few worthwhile developments, but a new heat sink concept from Sandia National Laboratories seems to offer tremendous promise for computers, as well as cooling appliances. Designed by researcher Jeffrey Koplow, the new "Sandia Cooler" does away with a separate fan component, and instead relies on the heat sink itself to disperse heated air.

If you're familiar with traditional CPU heat sink designs, they usually feature a metal heat sink and a fan working in concert to siphon off the heat generated by CPU, graphics chips, and other computer parts that draw, and therefore emit, energy. The problem with that design is what's called the boundary layer of air that hugs the heat sink. That boundary layer retains heat, which the fan is then supposed to disperse. Because of the power necessary to drive the fan, as well as the fan's proximity to the boundary layer, that design is inefficient. The Sandia Cooler eliminates the fan, replacing it with a finned heat sink that can disperse the boundary layer far more efficiently since the two are in closer contact.… Read more

With DealExtreme.com's latest handheld fan, shutterbugs can cool off in style. Powered by two AAA batteries, the handheld fan mimics the design of Canon's 70-200mm EF telephoto lens, albeit in a miniature, palm-size version.

All you need to do is uncap the top cover to reveal two fan blades, flip the switch, and voila: instant coolness. The device is made entirely of plastic and claims to feature low power consumption for extended use.

Available in black and gray, the SLR zoom lens-shaped handheld cooling fan even comes with a free carrying strap. The unique gadget costs $5.60, including shipping.

(Source: Crave Asia) … Read more