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Posts Tagged ‘Abundance’

XPAL’s Solar Egg charges to 90% in four hours of mild sunlight

Unlike many solar devices that require an abundance of intense sunlight to be useful, XPAL’s new Solar Egg does its thing even in “medium levels of natural light.” The magic SunBoost solar conversion technology is supplied by a company called Intivation from The Netherlands, a country that’s not exactly know for its tropical weather. XPAL claims that the internal 500mAh battery can be charged at over 90% capacity in just four hours of average sunlight exposure and can detect a “wide range of devices” like MP3 players and digital cameras to provide the appropriate level of power for charging. It’ll ship next month to select regions — where that is we can only guess for now.

Continue reading XPAL’s Solar Egg charges to 90% in four hours of mild sunlight

XPAL’s Solar Egg charges to 90% in four hours of mild sunlight originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone Developers Get An Open Ad Management Platform From .App/Ads

As the ecosystem around iPhone apps continues to explode, the opportunity for advertising and monetization grows simultaneously. There are been an abundance of mobile and specifically iPhone centric ad-networks that have emerged, like AdMob (which was acquired by Google a few weeks ago), Greystripe, InMobi and others, to help developers make money from advertising on aps. And ad exchange startups such as AdWhirl (acquired by AdMob a few months ago) and MobClix help developers optimize ad placement by dynamically choosing so serve ads from ad network that bidding the highest to reach the users of that particular app. A new kid, .app/ads, has stepped onto ad network block today, hoping to provide the most open, and appealing ad networks for iPhone developers to optimize their app ads.

While .app/ads serves a variety of purposes for developers, one of the startup’s primary functions is as a completely open iPhone app ad exchange. Like the other players, .app/ads provides a uber-simple dashboard for app developers to create mutiple ad slots within their apps, list their apps, and implement advertising through a variety of ad-networks/exchanges. But what makes .app/ads different is that its fully open to developers can run any ad network or any ad exchange whenever they want. And developers can pick and choose to integrate the ad code they need from the companies they want vs. a pre-selected loaded SDK. And there’s no limit to the number of SDKs developers can add. It’s like ordering from an a la carte menu.

Apple recently rolled out the ability to implement in-app purchases for free apps, which was a boon to developers. .app/ads will power in-app purchases for developers for free, allowing developers to run in-app purchase ads easily. Once a product is setup, developers can create an add with text and images, and simple add the advertisement to the rotation. The site will automatically rotate in the in-app purchase add with other ads.

.app/ads also lets developers tweak the content of ad slots. For example, developers can import Twitter feeds to fill an ad slot. When an app user clicks on a particular link in the Tweet in the feed, he or she is taken to the source of the link within the app. So if the link was from TechCrunch, the user could browse TechCrunch from within the developer’s app. .app/ads also will allow developers to import RSS feeds into the slot as well as promote other apps, contests, updates and more. While this content will be mixed in the rotation with ads, the basic idea is to give developers the option of engaging with their users in other ways besides advertising. And the platform lets developers set the frequency of appearance of certain ads or content.

Another compelling feature of .app/ads is a developer to developer marketplace where developers can barter with each other for ad space, set pricing terms and eventually sell ad space directly to each other. Currently this is the only feature where .app/ads. is monetizing; the platform is taking 10 percent of each transaction on the marketplace.

As of now, .app/ads caters solely for iPhone developers and apps. The startup’s founder Evan Rifkin told me that the open platform has been optimized for the developer, and aims to level the playing field for developers to have a fully transparent app ad management platform. Openness on ad exchanges has been an issue in the past, when AdMob announced its decision earlier this year to cut off ad network aggregators like AdWhirl and Tapjoy, claiming it had been hearing of complaints of technical glitches related to ads served by such “ad net mediators.” The company later announced a delay in this decision in August.

Of course, the ad network and exchange place is crowded and .app/ads will now count Google as a competitor thanks to its recent acquisition of AdMob. But the newly launched startup has experience on its side. Rifkin is a seasoned entrepreneur, who sold startup Flux (formerly Tagworld) to Viacom last fall. He also co-founded Adconion and ad network Traffic Marketplace (sold to Uproar/Vivendi Universal).

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Microsoft makes a funny with Marketplace ‘apps lab’

It’s another Microsoft video, another few minutes of hilarious, unintentional pain. This time Microsoft is tackling the topic of apps, riffing on the abundance of gimmick apps for the iPhone. Unfortunately for Microsoft, we’d think the last thing it would want to do is draw comparisons between Apple’s App Store and the company’s freshly minted Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Video is after the break.

[Via TUAW]

Continue reading Microsoft makes a funny with Marketplace ‘apps lab’

Filed under: Cellphones

Microsoft makes a funny with Marketplace ‘apps lab’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HP Envy, dv8 Quad, Mini 311, and numerous other Windows 7 machines now available to order

Since today really needs a good heap of news to somewhat balance out yesterday’s glut, HP has updated its online store to give it an abundance of new and revised Windows 7 machines, including the Envy series (Beats edition and all), Pavilion dm3 with AMD Neo or Intel CULV chips, Core i7-packing dv6t/ dv7t / dv8t Quad editions, and the not-so-netbook CQ61. We’re still not seeing the previously-leaked dm1 ultraportable anywhere, but the Mini 311 and a slightly updated Mini 110 are, with the option to jump from Windows XP to 7 for a cool $50 / $30 respectively. Most everything in the store, desktops and laptops, has been updated to at least include Windows 7 as the standard shipping OS, and while all claim free 2-day shipping, estimated shipping dates begin sometime the week after 7’s Oct 22nd launch — no early chances here, folks. Browse the read links and keep an eye on the shiny red “new” icons (no flashing GIFs, we’re afraid) for the entire revised lineup.

Update: As a number of you have pointed, the Envy product page is a bit, well, sloppy. Typos and missing commas notwithstanding, it seems to biggest laugh is the cost of customization, i.e. $800 more to downgrade from a 500GB HDD to 320GB or 250GB (same price), or $900 more to downgrade from 6GB or 4GB of DDR3 memory. Yeah, it might be best to hold off on that one until HP get the kinks worked out.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Read – Desktop lineup
Read – Laptop lineup
Read – Envy series lineup

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

HP Envy, dv8 Quad, Mini 311, and numerous other Windows 7 machines now available to order originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dead Time Capsules can hang out together

Filed under: Accessories, Peripherals, Bad Apple

We reported on the abundance of Time Capsule failure-to-boot after 18 months in September. A new site has emerged from the mist to help Time Capsule owners who are struggling to get Apple to acknowledge the issue. TimeCapsuleDead.org exists as a register for the owners of dead Time Capsules and has links to self-help discussions as well as the Apple Feedback page. Of the devices that have been registered thus far, the average time until ports-up is 17 months and 29 days — eerily close to the estimated 18 month mark.

We’d like to give you a friendly reminder that our own Lauren explored the AppleCare agreements, and found that any computer-centric AppleCare agreement that’s in force should cover this Time Capsule failure (as it’s considered a peripheral used with the Mac). That does not mean that our readers who don’t have a current agreement should be left begging on the streets by Apple. This is something that needs to be addressed. Hopefully this new site will be a good resource for all of our readers.

Thanks, Pim and KB!

TUAWDead Time Capsules can hang out together originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Viewsonic VOT130 and ION-based VOT132 nettops handled in the open

Continue reading Viewsonic VOT130 and ION-based VOT132 nettops handled in the open

Filed under: Desktops

Viewsonic VOT130 and ION-based VOT132 nettops handled in the open originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon Applying For In-Book Advertisement Patent
Before everyone gets in a huff, let’s consider Amazon’s intentions with these patent applications. Surely they would never allow advertisements to be placed in books which you have purchased legitimately at full price, so let’s put that out of our heads. But what if you could take a few bucks off the cover price at the cost of a few contextual ads relating (if possible) to the book’s content? Personally, I wouldn’t mind — partially because I don’t use a Kindle or intend to any time soon, but more because it’s a no-lose situation. Amazon wouldn’t risk alienating its loyal Kindle base with dirty tricks like this, so it’s safe to assume it’ll be at least somewhat opt-in.

An abundance of free or reduced-price content would widen the appeal of the reader — I imagine many people are put off e-books by the idea that they are not getting their money’s worth. As offensive as the idea of inserting ads into a book is to me (and surely to the average reader), it’s almost certainly part of a value proposition which increases the utility of these expensive little buggers.

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