30 September 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Most people sleep better at night knowing their PC is well equipped to thwart oncoming malware attacks. Out of paranoia some actually install multiple antivirus programs — even though that’s overly counterproductive. Indeed, with everything that you do on your computer and the information that resides on it, the safety of your sensitive data should be top priority. That said, with a little experi…
30 September 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
YouTube and Warner Music are getting chummy again, according to an unnamed source who said a deal between the two is imminent. According to the source, the agreement — which is supposedly in its final stages — would once again allow YouTube to feature music videos from popular artists like Madonna and Green Day.
30 September 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Keeping its promise, Valve has pushed out new downloadable content for its popular zombie shooter, Left 4 Dead. Called “Crash Course,” the update brings a new campaign, which falls between the events of “No Mercy” and “Death Toll,” and features fresh locations, dialogue, refined item spawning and more. As we’ve noted in the past, the DLC is available to PC gamers for free via Steam, but owners of …
30 September 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Ultra-thin notebooks are in for a performance boost next year, when Intel begins introducing dual-core CPUs for a variety of models. Currently, Intel’s ultra-thin lineup is mostly composed of chips like the Core 2 Solo SU3000, Pentium SU2000 and the Celeron, all of which are based around a single-core design. The demand for more performance in tight environments has been increasing, and as a respo…
30 September 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
The European Commission introduced new volume standards for MP3 players yesterday, which will supposedly help prevent music lovers from damaging their hearing. The new standard requires devices like Apple’s iPod to be tweaked so they play at a safe volume by default, and it there will be a health warning when users attempt to override this setting.
30 September 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Shownotes:
You know when I love a product? When it simplifies a process that has historically been complex by just working. The iPhone does that for mobile phones. Drobo does that for redundant storage. The 5D Mark II does that for shooting photos and video without great lighting. The PogoPlug does that for sharing a hard drive, and now the Vue Personal Video Network does that for home surveillance.
Believe me. I was nervous when I ordered my Vue kit from Amazon
because I’ve tried other wireless camera systems that were a pain in the butt to set up, worked intermittently or didn’t work at all, unless the camera was with in a few feet of the receiver.
The kit comes with two wireless cameras. Four ingenious magnetic mounts, four CR123 batteries, a receiver and an ethernet cable. The battery cover opens with the twist of a coin. My guess is they include two extra batteries because they aren’t quite as common as double AAs or triple AAAs.
I climbed a ladder to get to one of our routers. I plugged in an ethernet cable, plugged in the power and within about 10 seconds I got a flashing blue light to indicate the network connection was active.
To activate the wireless connection between the two cameras and the receiver I pressed a sync button on the receiver. A camera has to be within 12-inches of the receiver during that activation process. Right after I pressed sync, lights started rapidly blinking on the two cameras and I was done.
I created an account on my.vuezone.com. It took less than three minutes to enter my details, create a password and boom! There were my two cameras. I renamed them, dragged them into the view screen. Press play the same way you start a YouTube video and the live stream begins. I can choose to record and my account includes 2000MBs of storage that I can watch later and choose to share online. The share feature is cool because I can add my neighbor as a friend and activate his ability to view the cameras when I’m out of town. If the alarm goes off, he can hop on and see what’s happening without putting himself in danger.
I like the Vue Personal Video Network because it works as well as they say it does and it couldn’t possibly be simpler to set up. Image quality is perfectly acceptable. Of course my eyes are used to HD so I expect that to come in the future. The magnetic mounting system is brilliant. You stick it to a wall and then move the camera around to get the best shot. Wireless range is excellent. I carried a camera throughout my house and all around my yard and never lost the signal. This blew me away. You can add up to 50 cameras!!! Now, that would be expensive because extra cameras are $100 a pop. I won’t be adding 50, but I already ordered 3 more cameras for full coverage around the house. This is far and a way one of my favorite products released this year.
Brief 636 was brought to you by AngiesList.com/geek. Kind of relevant to this whole surveillance theme, I used angieslist.com to pick our alarm monitoring service. My promo code GEEK will save you 25% when you join AngiesList.
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30 September 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
30 September 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
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iMeem may go down in the history books as the little company that could. The service morphed from an instant-messaging centric social network into a widget service to a full on music streaming service (read an early post by us on iMeem here). Over the years they’ve been close to shutting down more than once. And yet, they’re still here, and still fighting.
In May news broke that iMeem may have found a lifeline with new funding and a new business plan, although there was still an issue of $4 million owed to Warner Music.
Now we’ve been able to confirm some of the rumors around that financing. As suspected it was a recapitalization, which means that earlier investors were mostly wiped out. A recap is a difficult pill to swallow, but once it’s completed a company can get a fresh start. And, importantly, current employees get refreshed stock options and an incentive to continue the fight.
The company raised around $6 million in fresh capital, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Most of the new cash came from existing investor Morgenthaler Ventures. Sequoia Capital and other early investors declined to participate, and so their ownership percentages dropped to miniscule levels. Warner Music also participated in the round, we’ve confirmed, likely by dropping in cash that was immediately returned to them for past debt or future royalty commitments.
The company was valued at around $6 million prior to the funding, meaning new investors took 50% or so of the company in the round. That’s a highly dilutive funding, but it gives iMeem a new lease on life. And if rumors are true, the company may have found a business model that works for them (we outlined that business model here). Profitability, albeit at a low burn rate, may hit sometime next year.
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30 September 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
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I knew the glory days of Friendster were behind them, but I didn’t know things were this bad. The company is proudly announcing a partnership with Washington based people search company Intelius this evening. The goal, they say, is “to provide a more robust and comprehensive user search experience on Friendster and to power people searches originating on Friendster with results from across the web.”
What Friendster isn’t saying is how they’ll monetize this search, and whether Intelius’ scammy privacy services will be offered to Friendster users. Earlier this year we wrote again about Intelius and the myriad of lawsuits and consumer complaints that the company was fighting.
To summarize those posts, Intelius has been accused of tricking users into long term credit card subscriptions via a third party for worthless privacy protection products.
The Friendster press release doesn’t talk about how the service will be monetized, but it looks like the integration may be through a recent Intelius acquisition, Spock.
I’ve emailed Friendster for clarification on whether or not they plan on exposing their users to Intelius’ very questionable monetization practices. Because if they are this desperate for revenue, it’s a sign that Friendster is in very serious trouble indeed.
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30 September 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Earlier tonight, Xobni quietly released, at least to some users, a new version of its Outlook plug-in that brings Twitter streams into your email in an intelligent way. Instead of acting like any other Twitter client and showing you the full stream of everyone you follow, it shows you only the recent Tweets of the person whose email you are reading, whether or not you follow them on Twitter. (A Xobni blog post went up briefly about it and then was taken down, but not before I was able to grab the screenshot at right).
Instead of replicating Twitter outright, it shows you the Tweets in the context of an email to help you learn more about the person with whom you are communicating. This is consistent with the way Xobni brings up similar information about a contact from Facebook or LinkedIn or Skype. If you don’t know the person, it gives you some more context. If you do, it gives you something personal to talk about. (Threadsy, which launched at this year’s TC50, also shows Tweets in context alongside emails).
With both the full Facebook stream and now Twitter built into the product, chances are you’ll see what each contact has been doing recently. Xobni also lets you reply via Twitter, and follow a contact from within its application.
One of Xobni’s investors is Vinod Khosla, who told me a few weeks ago that Xobni is getting “great traction.” I’ve since heard that the product is approaching 3 million downloads.
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