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18 Jul 2011 14:19

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Tech: Smart idea: Amazon offers rental textbooks on the Kindle

  • before Amazon wanted the Kindle to be able to replace textbooks for college kids. They even made a model — the Kindle DX — to appeal to college kids more. But the problem was that the e-textbooks often cost about as much as a used copy of the book.
  • now Amazon has decided to fix this problem by allowing students to rent textbooks on their Kindle, and pay for how long they rent it. Not only is this really cool and a lot more practical, but it will save students money and seems like it could really take off. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Jul 2011 23:04

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Tech: New AIDS prevention drug shows promising results

  • Headway in the fight against HIV: A drug called Truvada is effective in preventing AIDS contraction up to 73% of the time, according to two new studies carried out in Africa. The drug has been tested before with less stellar results, but researchers now suspect the earlier study may have been flawed. The catch with preventative drugs, of course, is that you have to remember to take them before the risk presents itself, but still, this is great news. source
Posted by Seth Millstein • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Jul 2011 20:31

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Tech: Too soon? Netflix prices DVDs out of the equation

  • Many Netflix users got a rude awakening today when they got an e-mail noting that prices were going way up on their combined DVD and streaming plans. It led to huge amounts of rage on the Interwebs after the report leaked. While we think this particular bout of rage is a little much, the real problem here is that Netflix has misjudged its customer base. The thing is, lots of customers would probably love to stream all their movies instead of waiting for DVDs in the mail, but the company’s seemingly jumping the gun. This is a change you make when your streaming service is at near-parity with your DVD service — which isn’t the case at all. The problem we see here is one of a thousand small cuts — changing the API so that third-party apps don’t work, redesigning the first-party apps to discourage DVD queues — that have created the overall effect that feels like a betrayal to many. For movie aficionados, the long-tail value is still there. But for more occasional movie fans who don’t veer too far off the beaten path of Hollywood fare, Redbox may have just gained a huge leg up. (photo by Flickr user Jamiesrabbits) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Jul 2011 14:01

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Music, Tech: “New Pandora” does away with Flash and becomes more social

  • Pandora is getting rid of Flash. Their current site pretty much entirely runs on Flash, so a move to HTML5 is a big step for them, and as their site’s tech has gotten creaky over the years, a bit long-overdue. The moral of the story is that Pandora’s facelift looks really, really cool. Not to mention their renovations make the site more social, encouraging people to share music with their friends and making the entire process easier — it’s definitely something to look forward to, especially if you’re an avid desktop Pandora listener. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

07 Jul 2011 10:29

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Tech: More on “App Store” suit: Why Apple has nothing to worry about

  • 15 billion freaking downloads from the App Store; no mistaking it source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

05 Jul 2011 20:32

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Tech, World: Data roaming price caps in Europe don’t go far enough

  • €2.23 the average cost, per megabyte, of roaming data charges throughout Europe — $3.22 a meg!
  • €0.90 the price cap currently being proposed, also per meg, for data usage — starting in July 2012
  • €0.50 the price cap suggested after by 2014 … which is way lower only in context source
  • » To put this in perspective: If you hop on your iPhone and reload this page roughly 80 times, that’s about a megabyte. If you hop on Pandora and listen to half of a two-minute Ramones song, that’s about a megabyte. When AT&T implemented its capped data plan a year ago, many people were upset about the 2 gig data cap for $25 dollars. Doing the math, that plan is roughly 82 megabytes per dollar. If the half-Euro-per-megabyte roaming price cuts in Europe take hold, those 82 megabytes would cost around $59 U.S. dollars, considering current exchange rates. Now multiply that by 25. Exactly our point.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 Jul 2011 22:37

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Tech: Domain registar GoDaddy sells itself for a freaking lot of money

  • $2.25 billion to a private equity firm; whoa daddy source
  • » Big business in cheap domains: Why so much? Well, GoDaddy’s role as the most popular registar online means the company drives huge revenues — they’re expected to top $1.1 billion this year.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

01 Jul 2011 17:25

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Tech: Google’s eyeing Hulu, or reasons they might be getting too big

  • then Back in 2006, Google purchased then-fledgling YouTube for $1.65 billion — its biggest purchase ever at the time. The service has grown massive over the years but has struggled bringing major content creators like Viacom on board — a huge bummer for fans of “The Daily Show” in particular. In fact, Viacom sued YouTube to get them to remove the clips.
  • now Hulu, a service started in part as a major studio reaction to YouTube’s viral growth, is now in talks with Google, who may buy the company out — and in the process, get the lucrative content deals that have eluded YouTube over the years. (Microsoft and Yahoo are also eyeing the service, by the way.) Will we finally see “The Daily Show” on YouTube again? source
  • » We don’t know how to feel about this: While we appreciate the fact that Google might make “The Daily Show” happen on YouTube with a buyout like this (though Viacom has pulled their shows from Hulu in the past), if it actually happens, it runs directly into a wall of regulatory scrutiny — as Google’s been feeling the heat lately. While YouTube and Hulu aren’t the only games in town (hi Netflix and Vimeo), together they’re big enough that it would deserve some regulatory scrutiny if it actually happens.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 Jul 2011 14:29

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Tech: What combines alligator skin, titanium and Android innards?

  • If you said this ungodly-expensive phone, you’re right! Watch-maker Tag Heuer, known for its high-style time-telling machines a little more than its ability to make a phone you’d actually use, decided to make a phone that only Gordon Gecko would use. This $6,750 monstrosity of Swiss engineering, called the Tag Heuer Link, doesn’t even have decent specs for a smartphone — an outdated version of Android, just 256 megabytes of internal storage (most smartphones start at 16 gigs), an average camera and a fairly-standard screen. But hey, it’s expensive and stylish! And there’s not an similar iPhone 4 case available for purchase online! If we were Bud Fox, though, we’d probably just stick with a white iPhone 4. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

30 Jun 2011 13:26

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Tech: If you’re looking to join Google+, you’re out of luck for now

  • before People who were on Google’s new social networking site had the ability to invite their friends to join in. That’s good because it allows Google to test their new service on a smaller amount of people, but make sure that they still have friends to talk to.
  • now It should have worked, at least. Google had to shut down the invite feature because too many people were joining. That’s how popular Google+ is. If you’re looking to join, you’re going to have to wait for a little bit — they haven’t announced when invites will be back. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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