Digital cowbell: “Cory Doctorow:
The Rad Monkey VLC800 is a digital cowbell that simulates the sounds of 12 popular analog cowbells through a high-quality digital signal processor. Will Ferrel and/or The Moody Blues should pick one of these up pronto.Link
(via Red Ferret by way of Boing Boing.)
PSP firmware v2.0 available: “
The new PSP firmware with embedded web browser (no more need to hack WipeoutPure) is out in the wild now. If you keep up to date with these things then you probably already know about this; the PSP firmware v2.0 update has
been released. Currently it’s only available on the Japanese PSP site so unless you speak Japanese you’ll need to use a
web translator to find the right link. The US version should be out later in the day if you don’t want to take the
risk. One other word of caution – this will wipe out some capabilities for homebrew hacks. I’ll probably patch later tonight and update tomorrow.
Read (Original link)
Read #2 (English Translation)
(Via Joystiq.)
Hat tip to LostRemote.com this morning. Interesting stats on how much video is viewed on their service, and their newly announced extension to MSN Messenger.
Watch MSNBC Video On MSN Messenger: “‘Online video is becoming more and more mainstream,’ says Charlie Tillinghast, GM and publisher of MSNBC.com. ‘One out of every five visits to MSNBC.com includes a video play and we’re reaching audiences that traditional broadcasters are struggling to reach.’
Now the site ‘plans to extend those videos to users of MSN Messenger,’ WebProNews.com says. ‘While many users do not stay on a web site all day, especially at work, many do have instant messaging clients available.’ (Via Lost Remote)”
Yahoo has added another one of my favorite sites to their service – first Flickr, now they have announced the acquisition of Konfabulator. And best of all – it’s now FREE!
Konfabulator is a Windows/Mac tool to allow users to run small mini-apps (called Widgets). The company was created by former Apple employee Arlo Rose, and preceeded the Tiger Dashboard by several years. It remains my favorite over Dashboard – as it has a simply amazing catalog of user-created widgets, and best of all the apps remain on-screen at all times, easily accessible from a menubar icon or expose-like function key reveal feature.
Frankly, I keep one of my two office monitors cluttered with widgets. I’ve got several webcams on there, rotating through radar images, a local Atlanta TV station towercam (all via the WebImages widget). I have Hong Kong, San Fran, Denver, Atlanta and London wall clocks (WorldClockPro). I also have a minicalendar, a couple of spiffy uptime/cpu usage monitors, a weather warning widget, and a great widget called the iTunes Companion. If I play a song w/out album art, it fetches it and installs it in the MP3. Sweet!
I had paid for Konfabulator (it used to be a nag-ware product) for the Mac a couple of years back. When the PC version came out, I was bummed to discover that my existing SN wouldn’t work on the new version – I’d have to pony up cash for the PC independent of the Mac. This past weekend, I was actually considering a purchase for the PC – but Y! made that decision a bit simpler.
Anyway, it’s great news that Yahoo has seen this as a product to spread via their considerable market reach. The PR indicates that they saw value in using Konfabulator as a means to extend access to Yahoo’s APIs. Seems like another in a series of major portals buying a pay service and setting it free. Google’s Maps/Earth (Keyhole) and Picasa are just two examples…
Links:
Konfabulator’s letter to the community
Slashdot reports on the purchase
Om Malik breaks the news about Pixoria’s buyout
PaidContent.org on the new business model