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Posts Tagged ‘Leaves’

Pownce Founder Leah Culver Leaves Six Apart

In December 2008, Six Apart acquired Pownce, a microblogging service that never managed to attract a large following. Pownce was shuttered after the acquisition, but its two-person team joined Six Apart to help integrate the technology into Six Apart’s blogging services. Today Pownce founder Leah Culver has written on her blog that she’s leaving Six Apart, where she spent the last year working on its TypePad and TypePad Motion products. Culver writes that her next project is developing an iPhone application for Plancast.

Despite reports to the contrary, Culver isn’t joining Plancast full time (at least not yet). Plancast founder (and TechCrunch alum) Mark Hendrickson says that she’s joining on a contract basis to build the iPhone app, but that the long-term future is uncertain. Culver’s blog notes that she might continue working on Leafy Chat, a web based IRC client that’s in private beta.

One thing worth pointing out: Culver and Mike Malone were Pownce’s only engineers, and they were absorbed into the Six Apart team as part of the acquisition. Malone left Six Apart just over a year after the acquisition to join SimpleGeo, and now Culver has left just a few months later. It looks like they had a one-year post acquisition cliff, and given their departures soon thereafter, it’s possible the integration of Pownce’s technology didn’t work out as they might have hoped.

Image by hyku

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The BearExtender n3 gives you more Wi-Fi range at a low cost

Filed under: Hardware, Peripherals, Airport, Reviews

The box contains the BearExtender n3 along with two USB cables, one short and one long, and the software. The installer comes cleverly stored on a USB flash drive, so you MacBook Air users aren’t left out if you lack a DVD reader. You can place the BearExtender n3 on the side of your computer or attach it with a convenient clip to a laptop screen. It does have some heft to it, but clipping it to the back, as shown in the picture, doesn’t obscure any of the screen.

After plugging it into a USB port, installing the Railink driver software, rebooting and configuring a few settings, I tried it all around my house. In my highly insulated basement that needed four Airport Express units to get a signal from one side to the other, I was able to unplug two of them and connect just fine. Re-enabling the Airport card wouldn’t even show me a network. The BEn3 overrides the Airport card in your computer and increases your signal strength from the reported 20 dBw (which translates to 100 millwatts) in an Airport card to 700 millwatts. It also features a 2dBi gain antenna, which, though large, bypasses interference created by the Airport card living in an aluminum case.

The result is the best extender I have ever tried at the the best price ever. I’m sure there are others, but I found the closest competitor is the Quickertech Quicky which is rated at 500 millwatts and costs $US225. The BEn3 ups the ante by 200 millwatts and costs only $US44.97. The BEn3 is about five times cheaper while providing better range. Both units use the Railink chipset and require basically the same software.

The downside, and I really don’t consider this much of a downside, is that the BearExtender runs only on the 2.4GHz band; this doesn’t give you the option of a 5Ghz 802.11n network. This probably won’t be an issue for you if you’re in a relatively interference-free area as far as Wi-Fi channels go (2.4GHz requires more space between channels for uncluttered networking); if you have lots of neighbors crowding the spectrum, though, the lack of a 5 GHz option might cause some issues.

If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, it won’t work on a pure 5GHz 802.11n network since they both contain 802.11g radios. Additionally, Jason Opdyke told me in their testing they discovered that using a 5GHz network would have cut the range in half. The 2.4GHz band allows for backward compatibility with b and g devices as well as n, so regardless of what you have, you’re covered.

Even if your network is limping along just fine, the BEn3 will give you a better signal. In my testing I found that a device showing 57% signal strength using the Airport card became 100% using the BEn3. The further away devices are the lower the numbers get, but with some rare exceptions the BEn3 showed much higher signal strength than using the internal Airport card. The BEn3 also showed me more Airport Expresses, connecting to one or two more than were found by the Airport card.

Here’s another benefit I found. I really don’t understand why it happens (maybe some of you can enlighten me in the comments) but the Internet speed test found at Speedtest.net showed the BEn3 consistently coming up with quicker download and upload speeds; often by as much as a third. Another nice feature is that it can be used to extend your network with other nearby Wi-Fi users.

There are some other minor downsides though. The thing is pretty big and I can see it being a hassle connecting and disconnecting it each time you move your laptop. No big deal if you’re using a Mac Pro, Mac Mini or iMac. The software uses 32-bit drivers so it won’t work under Snow Leopard with the following computers:

• Xserve (Early 2008)
• Xserve (Early 2009)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008)
• Mac Pro (Early 2009)

It is compatible with Mac OSX 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 and 32 bit 10.6 Snow Leopard. 64-bit drivers are in the works.

I can see the BearExtender n3 solving a lot of Wi-Fi woes cheaply and well. The best recommendation I can give it is that, rather than send back the review unit, I bought it.

TUAWThe BearExtender n3 gives you more Wi-Fi range at a low cost originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Twitter for Zune coming tomorrow, @Facebook where are you?

Poetically enough announced via a tweet, the Zune team has given word that the long-awaited Twitter app is coming to Microsoft’s little media player that could. Coupled with November’s release of 3D games, by our count that leaves only Facebook left as the promised Zune app officially registering M.I.A. More details for tomorrow’s release in the morning, and with so many Twitter apps available on other platforms as case studies, we’ll be expecting some good things here, mkay Redmond?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Twitter for Zune coming tomorrow, @Facebook where are you? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jake Easton’s Better Mousetrap leaves no country for old mice (video)

If Cormac McCarthy was an inventor of gadgets instead of words then this better (measured in awesome) mousetrap might have been the result. Instead, honors go to Jack Easton, a man known to kill ordinary mice using compressed air. No, really. The device above feature a pneumatic cylinder that brings down the death hammer with a strike force of 102 pounds after it senses a nearby pest. Poor fake mouse: delivered a fortune that was not his own. See all the fun after the break.

Continue reading Jake Easton’s Better Mousetrap leaves no country for old mice (video)

Jake Easton’s Better Mousetrap leaves no country for old mice (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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$10 USB power outlet leaves no plug behind

Don’t freak out or anything. But all that time you spent building a DIY in-wall USB charger may have been for naught. Of course, you’ve gained a useful learning experience and potentially gotten a lesson in the dangers of electricity, but you could have simply ordered this TruPower UCS outlet from FastMac, which packs the same two USB charging ports as the DIY outlet, along with two standard power outlets for your other power-hungry devices. Best of all, it only costs the same ten bucks that the DIY option would have set you back, but it looks like it won’t start shipping until sometime early next year.

$10 USB power outlet leaves no plug behind originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Dec 2009 10:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell Mini 3iX shown off in Brazil, works on tan, leaves Android Market in the dust?

Hey, Dell: looking for the absolute quickest way to screw up your first entry into the dog-eat-dog smartphone industry? Well, removing the Market app from your Android load is a solid way to start. Yeah, you heard that right — according to Brazilian site Zumo, the all-important Android Market was nowhere to be found on the Mini 3iX it had an opportunity to play with, rendering software discovery and installation about as easy as a WinMo device from three years ago. It seems that Dell’s “strategy” here is to have users download apps directly from their sources — a practice that typically needs to be manually enabled on an Android device as a security override — and get the rest of their wares from proprietary stores, presumably operated by the carrier, Dell, or both. On the bright side, the 3iX includes the WiFi radio that its Chinese doppelganger lacks and features a generous 3.5-inch display, 3 megapixel camera, 3G support, and a completely button-free face that looks particularly sexy in this low-light shot. Dell’s apparently commenting that Brazilians can expect the 3iX in shops in 2010 — possibly in the first quarter — which should give ‘em just enough time to un-make that deal-breaking Market mistake prior to launch.

Dell Mini 3iX shown off in Brazil, works on tan, leaves Android Market in the dust? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now you can use Google Voice without switching phone numbers

Google Voice is one of the coolest new technologies to emerge in the last year or so, but it has one big drawback — you need to switch to a new phone number, which always involves annoyance and confusion. Except now you can skip all that, by enabling Google Voice with a phone number you already use.

So does that mean all those early Voice adopters who switched numbers are chumps? Maybe not. Vincent Paquet, one of the Google Voice product managers, says using Voice with an existing number means using a “lite” version of the service, where you mainly get to use Google’s voicemail service. Anytime someone leaves you a voice message, it gets stored in your Voice account, where it’s transcribed.

Using this stripped-down version means you lose some of the most impressive features, namely the ability to have one phone number directed to all your phones in a manner of your choosing. But I only have one phone that I use all the time (which is why it would be such a pain to switch numbers), so it’s the voicemail functionality that I care about.

Paquet notes that you can use this feature with an existing Google Voice account too, so if someone calls your old phone number, those voicemails still get stored and transcribed in your account.

All in all, this sounds like enough to make me a Google Voice convert. Except, unfortunately, this news doesn’t bring Google Voice to any new devices, which means I still can’t use it on my iPhone. Drat.

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HTC Leo benchmarked, leaves blisters

The HTC Leo has already got hearts-aflutter the world over with its high-end spec sheet and huge capacitive touchscreen, but now that some early benchmarks have hit we might have a full-on fanboy panic on our hands. That 1GHz Snapdragon processor isn’t just for show, people — you’re looking at least a 300 percent improvement over the Touch HD on every single 3D graphics benchmark with an astounding 1,822 percent improvement on one test, and raw CPU performance was nearly three times as fast. Yeah, those are some wild numbers — we’ll have to see what battery life is like when this thing ships, but for now we’d recommend hitting the read link and taking in the full set of benchmarks.

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC Leo benchmarked, leaves blisters originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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