Wednesday, March 01, 2006
New Google AdSense Layout and Features From the AdSense blog: You can now access all AdSense products from the AdSense Setup tab within your account — edit your color palettes, get code snippets, access your channels, and more. As we add even more products and features, they’ll all share a consistent style to keep AdSense easy [...]
Kodak teams up with Kwiat Diamonds to reveal Kodak V570 cameras decorated with 75 brilliant-cut diamonds. Kodak and Kwiat are giving a personalized Kodak V570 to each Best Actress Nominee at the Oscars. The initials of the actresses will be set in ...
Looks like after Sony Ericsson very much made the "Walkman" moniker mean something with impressive music handsets in 2005, the "CyberShot" moniker from Sony's standalone digital camera business is rearing its head on some new Sony Ericsson handsets for 2006 - and they look mighty impressive.
When you start seeing 3.2-megapixel imagers in 3G phones, along with the "CyberShot" brand, you know mobile photography has finally come of age. Long gone are the blurry, small and out-of-focus VGA shots from most other mass cameraphones - Sony Ericsson wants to take mobile photography to the masses in a different way. Rish Brome over at phonescoop. com has a great review of these new units from Sony Ericsson, which has been transforming their wireless game over the last few years to really nice, higher-end handsets (very few mass-appeal phones).
I came across Scottsdale, Arizona based Solomodels today. I’m writing about it because it has pictures of really attractive women on the site it is a textbook example of Ajax, search and social networking. It caters to models, photographers and agents.
Founder Hoss Etemad wrote to me to describe the service, and I must say I found it immediately intriguing. Participants can create profiles, upload photos, add members as friends, chat, etc. The search functionality is great - type in just about any physical attribute, from bust size to eye color, and get your model match.
They offer a seven day free trial for people interested in trying out the service. Solomodels is all business though. The site warns:
Our members are not here for dating.
Contacting our members for anything other than legitimate modeling related work is strictly prohibited and will result in immediate account cancellation. If you are looking for a date, please sign up for a dating site instead.
So don’t even think about it.
What a great site to demonstrate the awesomeness of web 2.0. 
Business 2.0’s Next Net 25 list is up. (I have been away and currently posting this from LAX, otherwise would have linked sooner.) The Next Net will encompass all digital devices and the Next Net is deeply collaborative.
Driven by ubiquitous broadband, cheap hardware, and open-source software, the Web is mutating into a radically different beast than it has been. And that is leading to the creation of entirely new kinds of companies, new business models, and oceans of new opportunity.
We have spliced this list into five categories - Social Media, Mash-Up & Filters, The New Phone, The Web Top and Under The Hood. The VoIP Companies we picked for this category include Fonality, SIPphone, iotum, Vivox with Skype (eBay) as the incumbent to watch.
PMA 2006: Yesterday we got our hands on the Lumix DMC-L1 and had a detailed discussion with Panasonic executives and product planners about their exciting new digital SLR. The DMC-L1 is Panasonic's first digital SLR, its design ethos is clearly clean, simple, functional and very 'Leica like'. There are lots of touches in the design of this camera which make it more appealing that most other digital SLRs, these include the shutter speed dial and aperture ring (on the lens) which give very quick access to manual exposure creativity and encourage the photographer to experiment more. We also got the low down on just how much of this camera is shared with the Olympus E-330.
Cingo is a suite of online tools to help you get your family organized.
We believe that consumers and particularly families are really struggling with the trash, clutter, adware and spyware they must sift through to get the information they want on the internet. With Cingo, it doesn't have to be that way. We built Cingo to help families make the internet work for them, not against them.
When you boot up your Xbox 360 today and log in you might notice your friends list has received a minor make-over. The new Xbox Live friends list includes the Gamerscore for each of your friends.
Major Nelson points out that this is an important addition for all of your Gamerscore whores out there. Man, how embarrassing. I don't think I've even cracked one thousand.
A little warning would have been nice Microsoft, this is like someone walking in on you while you're playing air guitar in the nude… not that I've ever done that or anything.
Updated Xbox Live Friends List [Major Nelson]
RSS bigwig Dave Winer has released a draft specification for OPLM 2.0, the second major milestone for the XML outline format. You can read the draft at OPML.org, and in his blog Winer has a podcast explaining "why the improvements in OPML 2.0 will help users." If you're into OPML, you can read the spec and then post your feedback at the OPML group on Yahoo!
Reuters - Cellphone and media companies expect to see a sizable market for advertising on cellphones in coming years, with options including advertising-subsidized video services, top executives said on Wednesday.
Blog: All geeks love a good freebie. Heck, our industry could practically keep the squishy ball industry in business singlehanded.But...
AndrewRUK writes "At 23:09 UTC, the one-millionth article was created in the English-language Wikipedia. The milestone was reached with the creation of an article about Jordanhill railway station in Scotland. Congratulations to all the Wikipedians, especially Nach0king who wrote the millionth article and Mészáros András who in November 2004 correctly predicted that it would be created today
Opinion: OK, maybe not dead bunnies through rusty tailpipes suck, but I, for one, don't see how Vista tomorrow equals the Linux desktop today.
An encyclopedic knowledge of pop music, a soothing voice and plenty of hip-hop sidekicks make this podcast a cut above others in the field. In Listening Post.
If you were Google, where would you store your Chinese search data these days? As just about everyone knows, Google made the move into China recently with a somewhat scaled down (read: censored) version, leading to a bit of controversy. With Yahoo getting slammed for giving up info to the Chinese government, leading to the arrest of some political dissidents, it would appear that Google has begun to rethink where they should keep their Chinese search engine data. It looks like Google has gone with a compromise route, and is moving all of its Chinese search data out of China and into the US -- which still raises some questions. After all, it was just this week that the US Department of Justice claimed that no one should worry when it subpoenas search terms from Google here in the US -- something Google has fought vehemently. Perhaps the next suggestion would be for them to move the US data into China. Then everyone can subpoena whoever they want, and Google can claim the data is out of the country and they can't do anything about it. Wouldn't that solve everything?
Somebody got his hands on one of these beasts and has loaded up the unpacking pictures for the world to see over on Flickr. Check out the linkage for the full photo shoot.
iPod Hi-Fi Unpacking [Flickr]
March 1, 2006 Sony Ericsson takes digital imaging in camera phones to new heights today with the launch of the K800 and K790 phones, the first handsets to carry the Cyber-shot name known throughout the world as Sony’s digital still camera brand. Both are highly capable mobile phones with integrated 3.2 mpx digital cameras with autofocus, Xenon flash and BestPic, a completely new feature developed by Sony Ericsson which ensures that you never ‘miss’ an important picture. Press the shutter button once and the camera takes nine full quality 3.2 megapixel pictures in a time sequence – four pictures before and four pictures after the actual image you captured. ..
[via Engadget]
