You may have noticed that Twitter has started hyperlinking hashtags. Those are words preceded by a “#” which denote what the Tweet is about and makes it easier to search for Tweets about specific topics and events. For instance, try searching for #realtimecrunchup. Now that they are hyperlinked, when you click on a hashtag, you are led to the search result page for the specific hashtag. Others have been implementing this; FriendFeed (big surprise) has been doing this for awhile. Some of the Twitter clients, including the desktop versions of Tweetie and Seesmic Desktop also provide hyperlinks to hashtags. For Twitter, search is a navigation tool, and this functionality is yet one more way to allow people to easily discover new Tweets outside their group of followers. This trend started when they added the search box to everyone’s home page last April.
You may have noticed that Twitter has started hyperlinking hashtags. Those are words preceded by a “#” which denote what the Tweet is about and makes it easier to search for Tweets about specific topics and events. For instance, try searching for #realtimecrunchup. Now that they are hyperlinked, when you click on a hashtag, you are led to the search result page for the specific hashtag. Others have been implementing this; FriendFeed (big surprise) has been doing this for awhile. Some of the Twitter clients, including the desktop versions of Tweetie and Seesmic Desktop also provide hyperlinks to hashtags.
For Twitter, search is a navigation tool, and this functionality is yet one more way to allow people to easily discover new Tweets outside their group of followers. This trend started when they added the search box to everyone’s home page last April.
Real-time search is heating up. Just earlier today, FriendFeed launched its own real-time search. By linking to hashtags, Twitter is giving people another entry point into its existing search. Now, if you could only track mentions of specific hashtags over time.
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From the “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic file”: The new MySpace exec team has promised changes (”we have…laid the groundwork for an exciting new chapter of innovation for MySpace”). And they’re delivering. A couple of hours ago they changed the MySpace logo. No longer does it say “MySpace.com - A Place For Friends.” Now it simply says MySpace. The old logo is below. We’ve confirmed that the change just occurred this evening, although MySpace PR is as usual not responding. They refuse to confirm that the logo is new, or say why they changed it. It sure is absurd to have a conversation that goes something like “So it looks like you’ve changed your logo this evening? No Comment. Uh huh. Ok, so any official reason why you changed it? No comment.” Trade secrets, I guess. And heck, I’m just happy someone still works there to pick up the phone. MySpace is also on the warpath to get more users. At login they now strongly suggest you log into your email and invite friends (hopefully they’ll avoid turning this too spammy). And they’ve also added a “people you may know widget” that shows friends of friends. We’re also hearing that MySpace will be removing some of the ugliest ad units that adorn the site today. Whether that’s an effort to clean up the user interface or simply a sign of slowing ad sales, we’ll probably never know.
From the “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic file”: The new MySpace exec team has promised changes (”we have…laid the groundwork for an exciting new chapter of innovation for MySpace”). And they’re delivering. A couple of hours ago they changed the MySpace logo. No longer does it say “MySpace.com - A Place For Friends.” Now it simply says MySpace. The old logo is below.
We’ve confirmed that the change just occurred this evening, although MySpace PR is as usual not responding. They refuse to confirm that the logo is new, or say why they changed it. It sure is absurd to have a conversation that goes something like “So it looks like you’ve changed your logo this evening? No Comment. Uh huh. Ok, so any official reason why you changed it? No comment.” Trade secrets, I guess. And heck, I’m just happy someone still works there to pick up the phone.
MySpace is also on the warpath to get more users. At login they now strongly suggest you log into your email and invite friends (hopefully they’ll avoid turning this too spammy). And they’ve also added the “people you may know” feature as a widget to all logged in profile pages.
We’re also hearing that MySpace will be removing some of the ugliest ad units that adorn the site today. Whether that’s an effort to clean up the user interface or simply a sign of slowing ad sales, we’ll probably never know.
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By Andrew Liszewski Instructables member ‘laxap‘ has posted a relatively painless tutorial on how to turn an actual cigar into a glowing, fully functional USB flash drive. The most involved part of the build is trimming, boring and then completely sealing the cigar inside and out using a wood primer, but there’s also a bit of [...]
By Andrew Liszewski
Instructables member ‘laxap‘ has posted a relatively painless tutorial on how to turn an actual cigar into a glowing, fully functional USB flash drive. The most involved part of the build is trimming, boring and then completely sealing the cigar inside and out using a wood primer, but there’s also a bit of wiring and soldering involved in order to replace the cannibalized flash drive’s read/write LED with one that will cause the tip of the cigar to light up while the drive is being accessed.
By Andrew Liszewski Everything I know about golf I learned from the movie Caddy Shack, so while inclement weather can possibly lead to the best round of your life, there’s also the very real chance of something terrible happening while wandering around with what is essentially a bag full of lightning rods. So before you head [...]
By Andrew Liszewski
Everything I know about golf I learned from the movie Caddy Shack, so while inclement weather can possibly lead to the best round of your life, there’s also the very real chance of something terrible happening while wandering around with what is essentially a bag full of lightning rods. So before you head out on the links, you’ll want to make sure the weather’s going to play nice for 18 holes, and that’s where the Bushnell Golf FXi enters the picture. It receives constant weather updates for over 16,000 golf courses in the U.S. via a wireless USB transmitter attached to an internet-equipped PC, and displays them on its monochrome LCD.
The weather data itself is provided by AccuWeather.com and includes everything from current, RealFeel and forecasted high and low temps, morning, afternoon and evening forecasts for up to 3 days, the UV index and even wind speed and direction. And as an added touch, the backlight on the display changes color to reflect the current temperature of your selected course so you can easily get an idea of the conditions at a quick glance. It’s a nice gift idea for a golf nut I suppose, but for $124.99 it’s kind of an expensive unitasker.
By Andrew Liszewski So apparently Sega’s got a new projector coming out sometime in August, but according to their website they’re unfortunately they’re not releasing a heck of a lot of information about it until July 25. We do know that it will project a pre-programmed fireworks show on the ceiling or walls of your home, [...]
By Andrew Liszewski
So apparently Sega’s got a new projector coming out sometime in August, but according to their website they’re unfortunately they’re not releasing a heck of a lot of information about it until July 25. We do know that it will project a pre-programmed fireworks show on the ceiling or walls of your home, and that you’ll be able to design your own show from a library of 55 different virtual pyrotechnic displays. It will be powered by 3xAAA batteries so the projector is most definitely portable, and it will retail for about $160.
By Chris Scott Barr Most average computer users don’t worry too much about how hot their computer gets. That’s because they aren’t pushing their machines to their limits. Gamers on the other hand, well we tend to squeeze every drop of performance we can out of each and every part. This means keeping a careful eye [...]
By Chris Scott Barr
Most average computer users don’t worry too much about how hot their computer gets. That’s because they aren’t pushing their machines to their limits. Gamers on the other hand, well we tend to squeeze every drop of performance we can out of each and every part. This means keeping a careful eye on the temperature, so as not to burn up our precious parts. NZXT has provided a nice piece of hardware called the Sentry, which not only displays the temperatures of up to 5 different areas of your computer, but also allows you to control the speeds of 5 fans to compensate. Today they announced the Sentry 2, which improves upon the original design.
The new Sentry 2 has the same basic features of the original, but this time around simplifies things by integrating a touchscreen. This should make adjusting fan speeds and checking temperatures a little easier. It’s also smaller, taking up only a single 5.25” bay, as opposed to two. One of the best changes comes to the price, which will be only $30 when it goes on sale later this month.
Bet you didn’t see this one coming. Back in 2007 we wrote about a service called Dial Directions which lets you call a special phone number and verbally ask for directions, which are immediately sent to you via SMS. Today comes news that the company has been acquired by Sakhr Software, a development house specializing in Arabic natural language processing (NLP). And with their powers combined, they’re building a real-time voice translation service that will allow users to translate phrases from their mobile phones on the fly. It’s a better fit than it sounds. Dial Directions has spent the last few years building mobile applications (it has an app for the iPhone on the App Store), and has also built out the technology required to efficently transfer voice input to servers, where it can then be processed (this server-side processing is also used by Google Voice Search and a number of other apps). Once it makes it to the cloud, this speech will be routed through Sakhr’s software, which is capable of translating English to Arabic and vice-versa. Translated audio and text are then sent back to the mobile phone, all within a matter of seconds.
Bet you didn’t see this one coming. Back in 2007 we wrote about a service called Dial Directions which lets you call a special phone number and verbally ask for directions, which are immediately sent to you via SMS. Today comes news that the company has been acquired by Sakhr Software, a development house specializing in Arabic natural language processing (NLP). And with their powers combined, they’re building a real-time voice translation service that will allow users to translate phrases from their mobile phones on the fly.
It’s a better fit than it sounds. Dial Directions has spent the last few years building mobile applications (it has an app for the iPhone on the App Store), and has also built out the technology required to efficently transfer voice input to servers, where it can then be processed (this server-side processing is also used by Google Voice Search and a number of other apps). Once it makes it to the cloud, this speech will be routed through Sakhr’s software, which is capable of translating English to Arabic and vice-versa. Translated audio and text are then sent back to the mobile phone, all within a matter of seconds.
The companies have jointly produced a beta version of the application for the iPhone and BlackBerry, which you can see in the video below. The application is currently in testing with select enterprise customers, with plans to release a consumer version around the end of the summer.
Sakhr’s customers include the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the technology makes its way out to defense personnel. A Dial Directions spokesperson says that most translation devices in the field abroad rely on a set library of phrases, and says that the new Sakhr translation software should be more flexible. That said, it sounds like this will come with one significant drawback — if your phone can’t reach the network, the software won’t work.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Dial Directions intends to keep its service running for now, though it may not be indefinitely.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
If information is power, the first step to gaining power is to get the right data. The Obama administration is a big proponent of opening up government data and making it digitally available. Today at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City, the government’s new chief information officer Vivek Kundra announced USAspending.gov, a new site which launched today that tracks government spending with charts and lists ranking the largest government contractors (Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, etc.) and assistance recipients (Department of Healthcare Services, New York State Dept. of Health, Texas Health & Human Services Commission, etc.). There is also the Data.gov project, which is attempting to digitize government data and make it available in its raw form for citizens and companies to sift through. While Kundra agrees in principle that all public government data should be online, he also cautions that the reality is government data sits in more than 10,000 different systems, many of them written in COBOL or are still locked in dusty paper archives. But at least the government is starting to tackle the problem. The government collects a wealth of data, and the more accessible it becomes the more transparent government itself will be (not to mention the opportunities to startups which can tap into this data to offer new services). The State Department is also using the Internet, and Youtube specifically, to reach out directly to citizens of other countries every time Obama or Hillary Clinton travel abroad. They record video messages to citizens of other countries, which are distributed in multiple languages. Call it YouTube diplomacy.
If information is power, the first step to gaining power is to get the right data. The Obama administration is a big proponent of opening up government data and making it digitally available. Today at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City, the government’s new chief information officer Vivek Kundra announced USAspending.gov, a new site which launched today that tracks government spending with charts and lists ranking the largest government contractors (Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, etc.) and assistance recipients (Department of Healthcare Services, New York State Dept. of Health, Texas Health & Human Services Commission, etc.). There is also the Data.gov project, which is attempting to digitize government data and make it available in its raw form for citizens and companies to sift through.
While Kundra agrees in principle that all public government data should be online, he also cautions that the reality is government data sits in more than 10,000 different systems, many of them written in COBOL or are still locked in dusty paper archives. But at least the government is starting to tackle the problem. The government collects a wealth of data, and the more accessible it becomes the more transparent government itself will be (not to mention the opportunities to startups which can tap into this data to offer new services). The State Department is also using the Internet, and Youtube specifically, to reach out directly to citizens of other countries every time Obama or Hillary Clinton travel abroad. They record video messages to citizens of other countries, which are distributed in multiple languages. Call it YouTube diplomacy.
In addition to releasing government data in digital form, the Obama administration is learning to listen to direct feedback from citizens through its Open Government initiative where people can suggest and vote on policy initiatives. These are then further refined and discussed on the Open Government blog and using tools such as wikis. Beth Noveck, the United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government, says the administration has gone from using the Internet to broadcast and amplify its message during the campaign to the realization that it can get information back as well, which it is trying to fold back into policy. She says, “What we’ve seen is enormously thoughtful suggestions that no small group of people in the White House could have come up with themselves.”
Digital tools are bringing participation back to democracy, or at least that is the idea. But once all of this data becomes free and new modes of influencing government policy are deemed to be effective, attempts to manipulate the data and game the system will emerge. Well-funded lobbyists and special interests will descend on these nascent institutions of “open government” like SEO consultants on Google. People from both sides of the aisle will also participate. Todd Herman, the GOP’s Director of New Media, admits as much. The GOP has learned from how the Obama campaign “changed the way community organizing works,” he says. The GOP’s failure in the last election was because “we did not use the tools” of digital organizing and outreach.
Speaking of SEO, Herman suggests that Democratic political activists are better than Republican ones at using SEO techniques to promote stories on Google News. He uses the example of the American Medical Association opposing Obama’s healthcare proposal and shows a screenshot of a Google News search where you wouldn’t know that was the case by scanning the headlines. He shows that as proof of the left’s SEO tactics, without really explaining how they are manipulating Google News. The problem with his example, is if you go to Google News right now and search for “AMA Obamacare” the top result is a Forbes story with the title “Will Doctors Buy Obamacare?” So maybe the Republican SEO experts are fighting back, or Google News is self-correcting.
What his comments reveal is the lengths to which political operatives and activists are going already to shape public opinion and policy online. They will do the same with open government because they are the most motivated and the most organized. The lobbyists and political parties have never suffered from a lack of data. The new open data initiatives will arm them further, but they will also arm regular citizens. If information is power, we might be about to see a leveling of the playing field.
Except there is one big problem: indifference. Most people will not do anything with that data. The ones who are most motivated to use the data about to be unleashed are exactly the special interests who run Washington today. They will use any new data or two-way policy mechanisms to further their own interests or those of their well-heeled clients. Do the rest of us stand a chance? Just because government is edging towards more openness doesn’t mean it can’t still be gamed. People will try.
Will the rest of us let them?
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
The wave of investments in “realtime” is continuing with today’s announcement from Cognitive Match that it has raised Series A investment from Dawn Capital. Terms were undisclosed but it’s understood the figure was in the £1m+ ballpark, in tranches. The UK company applies artificial intelligence, learning mathematics, psychology and semantic technologies to match content to individuals in, you guessed it, realtime. This content can be product, offers, editorial or advertising of course, making it a very interesting prospect for an outfit like Twitter. The wave of investments in “realtime” is continuing with today’s announcement from Cognitive Match that it has raised Series A investment from Dawn Capital. Terms were undisclosed but it’s understood the figure was in the £1m+ ballpark, in tranches. The UK company applies artificial intelligence, learning mathematics, psychology and semantic technologies to match content to individuals in, you guessed it, realtime. This content can be product, offers, editorial or advertising of course, making it a very interesting prospect for an outfit like Twitter.
By Evan Ackerman I’ve got portable chargers for my cell phone, portable chargers for my iPod, portable chargers for my little video recorder, portable chargers for my AA batteries… The only thing I don’t have a portable charger for (besides my laptop) is my DSLR, because it takes those annoyingly square 7.4 volt battery packs that [...]
By Evan Ackerman
I’ve got portable chargers for my cell phone, portable chargers for my iPod, portable chargers for my little video recorder, portable chargers for my AA batteries… The only thing I don’t have a portable charger for (besides my laptop) is my DSLR, because it takes those annoyingly square 7.4 volt battery packs that require their own special charger. Energizer is about to solve this problem with a little clip that has teeth to attach to the contacts of battery packs of any size. The other end can be plugged into a USB port, and if I may say, props to Energizer for not making it some kind of proprietary plug.
Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that you can’t charge a 7.4 volt DSLR battery out of a 5 volt USB port, which means that you’ll have to instead use one of Energizer’s new line of XPAL universal power packs (out next month) that come with 8.4 volt outputs. Nothing wrong with that, though… The battery packs looks pretty useful, and some of them even come with solar chargers. We should be seeing a review unit sometime in the near future, and we’ll keep you updated.
You may have noticed that Twitter has started hyperlinking hashtags. Those are words preceded by a “#” which denote what the Tweet is about and makes it easier to search for Tweets about specific topics and events. For instance, try searching for #realtimecrunchup. Now that they are hyperlinked, when you click on a hashtag, you are led to the search result page for the specific hashtag. Others have been implementing this; FriendFeed (big surprise) has been doing this for awhile. Some of the Twitter clients, including the desktop versions of Tweetie and Seesmic Desktop also provide hyperlinks to hashtags. For Twitter, search is a navigation tool, and this functionality is yet one more way to allow people to easily discover new Tweets outside their group of followers. This trend started when they added the search box to everyone’s home page last April.
From the “
From the “
Bet you didn’t see this one coming. Back in 2007 we 
Bet you didn’t see this one coming. Back in 2007 we 
If information is power, the first step to gaining power is to get the right data. The Obama administration is a big proponent of opening up government data and making it digitally available. Today at the 
The wave of investments in “realtime” is continuing with today’s announcement from 
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