29 June 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Roughly a year ago we reviewed the Asus Crosshair II Formula, based on the Nvidia nForce 780a SLI chipset. This board provided those who were brave enough to pick up a Phenom processor with a stable platform that sported a number of impressive features such as Triple-SLI. At the time we said the Crosshair II Formula was a well designed motherboard that was let down by a power hungry chipset and su…
29 June 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
TechSpot announcement We are running a short reader survey that will be closing in the next few hours. For instructions please head over here. Those who fill out the survey are eligible for winning an Asus Eee 9″ netbook.
29 June 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
If you were reading a major paper this weekend, you’d notice a striking ad. There’s the Palm Pre resting against an apple core with the words:
The Palm Pre does things the iPhone can’t. Run multiple applications at the same time with real-time updates and even save $1200 over two years. It’s the perfect time to join the Now Network, America’s most trusted 3G network, bringing you the first and only 4G network from a national carrier.
The real call to action was to iPhone users with lapsed contracts – presumably iPhone users who bought the original iPhone two years ago and never upgraded to the 3G – a cohort that I suspect consists of perhaps five Palm engineers and maybe our tech-savvy grandparents. It’s a small number, friends. A small number.
29 June 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
There has been no shortage of talk about the apparent demise of Userplane, the text, voice and video chat software provider that was acquired by AOL in August 2006 for around $40 million (the exact price was never disclosed).
Venturebeat ran a story on the property last May, citing sources and Userplane clients as saying the service had been “neglected if not abandoned by AOL”. Yet this morning, I exchanged some e-mails with Darin Ohlandt, General Manager of Userplane, and he responded to the rumors saying they are definitely not shutting down and will continue to offer the existing chat and IM services to third-party sites.
However, some writing on the wall suggests he may not be painting a complete picture of what is going on.
A recent thread on OnlinePersonalsWatch (which covers the online dating industry, where demand for Userplane and other similar services has always been high) suggested that the site would be deadpooled by its owner soon. A developer commented on the thread claiming he had tried to contact Userplane for weeks through e-mails, voice calls and social networks and received no response, and ultimately went to their offices only to find all doors were locked with no one in sight (Ohlandt suspects the latter may have had something to do with the move to a new office in Santa Monica). And in that very same thread, former senior developer at Userplane Nick Schneble touted his new startup TopicFox, an alternative to the service (although it seems to be offline now).
Meanwhile the Userplane website still lists Michael Jones as the company’s CEO. That’s remarkable, because Jones left the AOL executive team to pursue a new startup called Tsavo back in August 2008, and has since signed up as the new COO at MySpace.
A month ago, Time Warner announced that its Board of Directors has authorized management to proceed with plans for the separation of AOL from the company. This would likely result in a massive restructuring of AOL, and could have a major impact on non-proven acquisitions made in the past. Other reasons why Userplane is on deadpool alert: AOL is placing much focus on lifestreaming and chat service SocialThing, which recently spread across 75 of its properties, and then of course there’s those other instant messaging services in their portfolio (AIM and ICQ).
There are more signs. When Ted Cahall was named new president of the product group at AOL back in January 2009, his memo – which we published in full here on TechCrunch – states that Userplane would be moved into the People Networks business unit under former Bebo President Joanna Shields. But at the end of last month, Shields resigned from her position as Executive VP for People Networks and to our knowledge has not been replaced to date.
It’s not surprising that many startups with competing solutions are taking advantage of the rumors about Userplane’s impending shut-down. Toksta is the most outspoken one, having set up a special page for Userplane clients who are looking to switch to an alternative provider. Other competitors in the field who are likely paying a lot of attention to what is going to happen to Userplane include Meebo with its Community IM product and ekkoTV.
To be continued, no doubt.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
29 June 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
As Twitter becomes the default conversation spot on the Web, we’re going to start to see tools which combine site-specific conversations with Twitter. One example is Tweetboard, which creates a Twitter-powered forum for any site. Once a site adds the Tweetboard code to their site, a site-wide tab appears which allows visitors to have forum discussions by simply logging into Twitter (via OAuth). All the conversations are threaded, and comments appear on Twitter as well, potentially drawing in a larger audience into the specific conversation.
One of the difficulties of following a conversation on Twitter itself is that replies to particular threads aren’t threaded together. On Tweetboard, all the discussions are threaded and nested together, similar to what you’d find on FriendFeed or Facebook. Site publishers can choose to set up a Tweetboard using their personal Twitter accounts or create a new one specific to each Tweetboard.
Packaging conversations and presenting them in a forum place extends any particular site’s forum content to the Twitterverse. The next step is to turn Tweetboard into a commenting system for blog posts and the like. Right now it works only as a site-wide tab, but developer Juan Carlos Muriente says he is working on another version which will be page-specific and could be used as a commenting system.
Tweetboard is the first project to come out of Muriente’s startup 140ware, and is currently in open alpha.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
29 June 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Supposedly, the The Pirate Bay guys were found guilty in their recent trial in Sweden, and, supposedly, they got sentenced to a year in prison and had to pay $4.5 million in damages.
But back in the parallel universe which happens to be the real world, they’ve appealed the verdict and could probably keep doing so for the next few years. So in the meantime they need to keep busy, and what better way to do this than start a new user driven video portal to take on YouTube, called, predictably, Video Bay, allowing users to post and share video clips without having to worry about copyright violations. Seems reasonable. It’s not like they need to attract any more legal interest or anything.
29 June 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
The pictures of the Sony Walkman in this BBC Magazine article made me feel strangely nostalgic – the actual text of the article made me laugh out loud. The Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell to trade his iPod for a Walkman for a week, and he recounts his experiences with the device, which was launched 30 years ago this week.
Campbell, apart from being amazed at the blandly colored portable music player, correctly points out that the Walkman is much bigger, heavier and generally more clunky than the digital media players he’s accustomed to seeing within his social circle.
On the upside, he writes, the ‘monstrous box’ comes with a ‘handy belt clip screwed on to the back’.
Update: ha, Campbell is one of our interns at CrunchGear!
The funniest part of the story:
It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.
Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly – effective, if a little laboured.
Campbell goes on to speak wise words (”portable music is better than no music”) and lists the pros and cons of the portable cassette player compared to its latter-day successor. Go read it here.
Anyone else felt a bit nostalgic about the good old cassette tape after reading?
(Picture from BBC)
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
28 June 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Microsoft is reportedly considering offering Windows 7 on USB thumb drives so that netbook owners can upgrade their machines. The company had planned to offer Windows 7 via DVDs and download, but the proliferation of these optical-drive-lacking machines apparently has Redmond looking for alternative means of distributing its operating system.
28 June 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Asus has unveiled two gaming laptops stamped with the well-established Republic of Gamers (ROG) seal. When the company first began using the ROG name, it was mostly imprinted on gaming-oriented motherboards. It is now seen on notebooks and a few other products, to highlight their intent for gamers.
28 June 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Despite a pretty successful launch, Palm’s Pre arrived too late to pull the company out of the red. The Sunnyvale-based company posted its fourth quarter fiscal earnings yesterday, reporting a net loss of $105 million – or $.78 per diluted share. This continues an unfortunate trend for the company, which saw a $43.4 million loss in the year ago quarter.
