Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots

Husqvarna’s plain old battery-powered Automowers have been available in the US for some time now, but it looks like the company’s solar-powered hybrid model is now finally making the trip across the pond as well. From the looks of it, the model is the same one we caught sight of back in March, with the 22-pound mower promising to handle lawns up to half an acre in size and not emit a single emission whilst it does its business. As with the regular models, it’ll also return to its base to speed up the charging process when it gets low on juice. Unfortunately, there’s no word on a price or release date just yet, though we wouldn’t expect it to sell for too much less (if any) than the £2,000 (or just over $3,000) it sold for in the UK. Husqvarna will apparently have more to say about that at the Green Industry and Equipment Expo that’s now getting underway in Louisville, Kentucky.

[Via The Raw Feed]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Filed under: Peripherals, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Sony Corp just announced its new “Designed for Walkman” accessory program in a bid to boost third-party accessory development. Under the terms, any vendor that signs up gets full access to the specs for Sony’s proprietary WM-PORT terminal… about 3.5 years too late. In return, licensees can prominently display this fancy, “Designed for Walkman” logo on their packaging and products as they grab for a slice of the meager accessory revenues made possible by the 4th place MP3 manufacturer owning just 2% market share. Hot Sony, hot.

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

fring is offering a limited number of “friends of fring” with exclusive access to news, and features before general release. I like to call fring the “Swiss Army knife of mobile VoIP” supporting SIP, Skype, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Twitter, and AIM. I have it installed on my Windows Mobile 6.1 phone. As a “friend of fring” you can also provide feedback. My first suggestion should I become a FoF would be DTMF support, which I wrote about last week. Anyway, check it out:

With your ongoing support, fring has developed into an award-winning, global leader in mobile internet communications, and we have done so by listening to guys like you telling us what you think, what works and what doesn’t, and developing our cool services and features accordingly.  We recognize just how important this has become, and want to take it a step further, by inviting you to join “friends of fring”, a small, exclusive group of fringsters which we will share information with, take inputs and insights from and provide products, features and other news of fring’s development before general release.

All we ask is that you continue to tell us what you think occasionally! Please note, there will be no obligation on your part to do so, but we will ask you to agree to keep confidential some of the developments we share with you.

As a  FoF (a k a friend of fring), you′ll receive a fringing welcome pack  J with some fun fring goodies , and access to a special password protected friends of fring web site where we′ll share the exclusive friends of fring info.  We′ll also be hosting friends of fring social events every so often (lot’s of free drinks and other stuff…), so we can say thank you and get to know each other in person. This will give us a chance to share with you the cool new stuff in the product pipeline, and hear your thoughts and ideas for future development.

Please note friends of fring is totally free of charge to be a part of.  Application is open to any fring user, but to make it manageable and to keep it exclusive, the final selection will be limited to only a few users per country.  So if you are interested in joining please apply now.

To apply, please send an email to friends@fring.com with your:

-          name

-          fring nick

-          fring ID (your mobile no. with its international dial code)

-          and a few short lines explaining why you’d like to join.

Applications are open until Fri 12th Sept and we’ll get back to you by Tues Sept 30th.

Hope to hear from you and make friends soon!

Cheers,

Tags: AIM, friends of fring, fring, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN Messenger, SIP, Skype, Twitter, VoIP, Yahoo

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Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Home Entertainment

We’re not sure who let Yahoo! into Intel’s party in San Francisco, but the two sure are getting along great. Much to the chagrin of Mark Cuban, these two actually believe that there’s a future in internet TV, particularly if you force it down people′s throats. Intel spent the bulk of its time talking up the Media Processor CE 3100 (formerly known as Canmore), which would theoretically be installed within HDTVs and enable users to access internet-based content without the need for an additional set-top-box (’course, the STB is still optional). That’s where Yahoo! comes in — it’s hoping that its Widget Channel will encourage users to utilize its services when watching re-runs or other lackluster material in order to get news, weather and other related information right on the living room set. Not that this is a totally new concept, but these two surely have the power to push it one step further. Lots more information and pictures in the links below.

Read - Intel / Yahoo preview plans for Widget Channel
Read - Images of the tech in action
Read - Gigabyte Intel box (first product to use the CE 3100)

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Original post by Darren Murph

Ian Lamont writes “The US Senate has been pushing American technology companies to work with rights groups to develop a human rights code of conduct, which would help to guide their overseas activities. Yahoo now claims that it has established the ‘core components’ of a global code of conduct, and a more complete version will be ready this fall. However, the Industry Standard notes that there’s a fundamental flaw with such efforts: US law is not world law. Following the local laws is a requirement of doing business in any country, and conflicts between corporate ethics and the law of the land in which these corporations do business are inevitable. The US Senate’s push for such a code was prompted by a number of incidents, including Yahoo’s complicity in the arrest of Chinese dissidents and a Chinese journalist.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

Yahoo has finally released Fire Eagle, their much-discussed location service.
Bloggers have been banging on about it for ages, which became all the more heightened after it was shown to the delegates by Tom Coates at eTech in March.

Original post by Simon Perry

Yahoo has finally released Fire Eagle, their much-discussed location service.
Bloggers have been banging on about it for ages, which became all the more heightened after it was shown to the delegates by Tom Coates at eTech in March.

Original post by Simon Perry

RomulusNR writes “Yahoo has stopped delivering This Is True, Randy Cassingham’s 14-year-old mailing list, because too many Yahoo readers have mistakenly or carelessly flagged it as spam. Yahoo readers make up over 10% of True’s readership, slashing the ad revenue that keeps it going. And Yahoo doesn’t negotiate with spammers. As Randy describes it: ‘The yahoos… ask to be put on True’s distribution, then confirm that request, and… then click the “This is Spam″ button when they don’t recognize the mailing or simply don’t want it anymore. Yes, those yahoos have screwed thousands upon thousands of others who really do want my newsletter. Too bad: Yahoo is listening to the yahoos instead: they′re blocking it. To them, we’re “spammers” and no protestations from “spammers” count.’ The irony is that This is True is one of the first profitable mailing lists, predating Yahoo! Mail by almost three years.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by kdawson

Filed under: Portable Audio

If you woke up this morning worried about what Yahoo! is planning to do for its Music Store customers who are about to be left in the lurch with its DRM server shut-down, have no fear. Yahoo! has announced that it will offer customers coupons or refunds for those songs you bought. Basically, you′ll get a coupon that you can use at RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody download service. Their songs, of course, are DRM-free. For those of you who have “serious problems with this arrangement” (their words, not ours), refunds will be available. The servers go down on September 30, so start combing your collections, kids.

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Original post by Joshua Fruhlinger

DrEnter writes “According to this article, Yahoo will offer some compensation after they turn off their DRM servers and Yahoo Music customers’ will no longer be able to access their music. The company said Wednesday it is offering coupons on request for people to buy songs again through Yahoo’s new partner, RealNetworks Inc.’s Rhapsody. Those songs will be in the Ṃ format, free of copy protection. Refunds are available for users who “have serious problems with this arrangement,” Yahoo said. Nice to see them step-up and do something, especially without trading one DRM scheme for another.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by samzenpus

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Sure, it’s all well and cute to think of “cloud computing” as being a magical data-fairy, but storing and processing all your fancy new CalDAV-enabled Google Calendar entries and MobileMe emails costs money, kid — and that means it’s hard for researchers to accurately simulate and build cloud research projects, since they don’t have the resources to build large enough data centers. HP, Intel, and Yahoo are teaming up to alleviate that problem, though — the three behemoths are going to build six cloud-computer research data centers around the world, stocked with anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 nodes each, with the goal of bringing them online later this year for pre-selected researchers to work on scaling, security, management, and new applications for the cloud. Three of the data centers will be hosted at HP, Intel, and Yahoo, and the other three will be at the the University of Illinois, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, and the Steinbuch Centre for Computing in Germany.

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Original post by Nilay Patel

With Yahoo Music shutting down its store and DRM licensing servers on September 30, anybody who ever bought music from the Yahoo! Music Store would no longer have a license to play their music.

Now, however, Yahoo has announced that it will issue refunds to its customers for the full value of their purchases. 

According to a report on CNet, Yahoo is also looking at making copies of the music its customers bought available to them as MP3s without any DRM.

Or just burn them to CD!

ReadWriteWeb. 

Tags: cnet, drm, mp3, yahoo music

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Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Portable Audio

Hey, both of you Yahoo! Music Store customers, listen up. Just hours after Yahoo! affirmed that it would be powering down its DRM servers, along comes a spokesperson to alleviate any worries that you two will get screwed in all of this. According to Carrie Davis, customers “will be compensated for whatever they paid for the music,” and she continued on to state that Yahoo “had not yet decided what exactly it would do, but it would take care of its customers.” Some of the possible options include getting cash back for the money spent on tracks or receiving Ṃ versions of the jams sans DRM (we’d take the former, thanks). Depressingly, there doesn’t seem to be a definitive time table laid out just yet for the restitution process.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Like pretty much every other Digital ELPH preceding it, Canon′s flagship SD1100 IS garnered nothing but the utmost praise in a recent Imaging-Resource review. Okay, so maybe critics did kvetch about slight noise at ISO 800, a somewhat confusing interface, and a not-particularly-useful digital zoom, but this point-and-shoot managed to get it right in the areas that matter most. Build quality and design were both smiled upon, the image stabilization performed as advertised and the image quality was deemed “excellent.” Of note, they did find very minor chromatic aberration in the wide angle shots, but considering the size of this shooter, results were seen as fantastic. Overall, it looks like Canon has produced yet another winner in the pocket-friendly camera department, but feel free to take a gander at the in-depth review waiting in the read link below.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio, Portable Video

We’ll make this brief. Orange spokesperson Therese Wenger told the SDA news agency that it has secured rights to release the iPhone (3G version, presumably) in Switzerland and more than 10 other countries — take that Swisscom! Other countries include Austria, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, and Romania. And France of course where it’s already on sale. See, that was quick and leaves room for a dozen or so other iPhone related announcements today.

[Thanks, Pascal M.]

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Original post by Thomas Ricker