Saturday Morning Reading
For a few weeks you've been hearing about the Gizmodo Gallery in NYC, catching plenty of teasers for the cool stuff—contemporary marvels, homemade wundergear and pieces of history—we're showing down at the Reed Annex on Orchard St. from today 12 noon through Sunday 4pm. Now, for the first time, we're revealing the whole list. And it's annotated, for your pleasure.
5 Things to Consider Before Buying a Netbook
A netbook as we’ve come to know it is a small laptop that is cheap. That’s about it, although the term can be confusing, as larger notebooks are sometimes called netbooks, since that is currently the hot buzzword. So you want to get a small, cheap notebook (or netbook) if you will, what are the five things you should know before plunking down your cash?
Smartphones: Symbian sinks under 50% share, Apple races past Windows Mobile
A few months back, we looked at the worldwide smartphone market numbers and watched RIM jump past Windows Mobile. Mac OS X handset sales, i.e.: the iPhone, more than doubled year-over-year and perennial market leader Symbian was in danger of dipping below the 50% line. Fast forward to today thanks to Gartner's 3rd quarter numbers and you can see that the trends are continuing. For some that's good, while others were already declining in market share and they keep sinking. Note: while other similar research came to light this week, I'm focusing on Gartner's numbers simply for consistency because I used them a quarter ago.
Truphone enables WiFi phone calls on iPod Touch
We've talked about Truphone before. They offer low-cost and free voice calling over WiFi for handsets like BlackBerries, Nokia devices and Apple's iPhone. Can you believe they now offer their service on a non-phone? Yup, as of today, Truphone enables an iPod Touch to be a voice communications device with their free client application available in the iTunes App Store.
Looking Forward to 2009 with Whrrl
Whrrl, a social discovery network developed by Pelago, not only lets you stay connected with friends, but also to discover places and events. Whrrl was the first iPhone application to receive an investment from Kleiner Perkins Caulfied & Byers’ iFund for iPhone developers. It has also received hefty sums from T-Mobile and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. So why am I bullish? Because chief executive and co-founder Jeff Holden was the senior vice president of online consumer services for Amazon.com prior to co-founding Pelago. He was one of the developers of Amazon’s prediction system that analyzes consumer behaviour, and, based on a user’s previous searches, delivers other products that may be of interest. In a chat with Holden, he told me he has the know-how to transfer this type of system to the Whrrl platform. Judging by Amazon’s success in delivering appropriate product matches to users — if you don’t know what I mean, try it out — Holden and his team could likely develop a similarly effective geo-targeted advertising platform for Whrrl. He didn’t disclose too much to me when I talked to him, so I’m not sure if this will roll out in 2009, but he did reveal the company will attempt to monetize the platform by selling virtual goods.
Status Check: How is Your Home Wi-Fi Network Performing?
Have you taken a look at the speeds you’re getting with your home Wi-Fi network lately? Many web workers work out of their homes, and if that’s you and you work wirelessly, it makes a lot of sense to do a checkup. There are some free tools you can turn to for doing this easily and quickly.
Prashanth Rai
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