Friday, October 29, 2010

19 new stories on The Next Web today

19 new stories on The Next Web today

Link to The Next Web

Without hesitation one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. [TNW Shareables]

Posted: 29 Oct 2010 02:22 AM PDT

I posted this to my own blog last night but just had to share it here on Shareables too because it’s easily one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen. Watch and when you’re done, watch this too.



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New Police Recruits To Get Facebook And Twitter Training [TNW UK]

Posted: 29 Oct 2010 12:36 AM PDT

UK police forces are to begin training new detectives on how to track criminals using social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter, it emerged yesterday.

The new police training will teach recruits how to gather information and user data from personal computers and mobile phones, allowing detectives to investigate the increasing level of “honour” crimes, domestic violence and rape.

According to The Guardian, 3,500 student detectives take the course every year. Nick Gargan, head of the National Policing Improvement Agency believes the new programme will allow recruits to deal with sensitive issues where limited insights were provided previously.

The introduction of new training demonstrates the shift in modern policing, just a few weeks back the Greater Manchester Police force began broadcasting every 999 call the force receiving to specific Twitter accounts, allowing users to follow just how much work police forces now have to undertake.

As online bullying, domestic abuse and the use of social networks to arrange fights between rival gangs continues to rise, the realisation that detectives need adequate training to track crime using social networks like Facebook and Twitter will provide the public with a certain reassurance that local forces can deal with a new wave of online crime.



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Facebook Already Using Places For Check-in Deals? [TNW Location]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 06:57 PM PDT

Just yesterday, we asked if geolocation wasn’t just about money, but Facebook has decided on that route to jump start its Facebook Places check-in service by offering “Social check-in deals”.

The service is already being tested, according to an email obtained by All Facebook that shows an approved “Social” check-in deal (note that “Social” seems to be a category, it will certainly be interesting to see what the others are) that was approved today and ends at the latest on Sunday as it gives a (partially black-out by All Facebook) October ending date. Here’s the email:

Deals are seemingly run through the Pages dashboard interface, and the service will be run at http://www.facebook.com/deals (right now it would only seem to be available to participating brands/businesses). It would seem that brands/businesses can set the terms of their own deals but then Facebook has to approve them (they have a similar procedure for other promotions). Also, according to the email, brands/businesses will be able to monitor redemption rates in some kind of timely fashion, as it says “While your deal is running you can review your deal activity…”

Right now this really all we can gleam from this email. However, here are our main questions:

  1. Is Facebook charging for this service, and if so, how much?
  2. How do brands/businesses get in on this program?
  3. When will it launch for everyone?
  4. Will users see anything different when they check-in? Push notifications on the iPhone app perhaps?

Even though this has seemingly rolled out rather soon after Facebook launched Places this summer, we should note that Facebook took a long time to build Places in the first place, so it could certainly be that it had this built out long ago, and are now just starting to roll it out.

Maybe even more than the immediate monetary gains that Facebook could get out of this service, probably the longer-term gain right now is simply getting users aware and using the Places feature to start with. Incentives – while not the only way to go for sure – can work in getting people interested in a service, and it the more people that are using Places, the more valuable deals will become. Interesting development, though really not that unexpected.

We will email Facebook for comment (and include the questions above) but as it is the evening already, we’re not expecting any response until tomorrow.

Update: Facebook got back to us, and had the same response it gave Read Write Web: ”As a matter of policy, we don’t comment on speculation. We have nothing to share at this time.” Honestly, usually when a blogger finds something new on Facebook, Facebook will often reply that it is always testing things, so this is actually an unusual response from the social network. For now, we seemingly only have the email above as evidence, and we’ll update if we find any more. That said, it does make perfect sense for Facebook to be doing this, be we can’t be 100% sure right now if/when this will roll out.All Facebook, Techmeme



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Even time travelers to LA in 1928 couldn’t stop talking on their cell phones [TNW Social Media]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 05:04 PM PDT

Just in time for Halloween, a spooky, science fiction, conspiracy theory is taking the Internet by storm today: video of a purported time traveling old woman on a cell phone outside of the Chinese Theater in Hollywood in 1928, on her way to see a Charlie Chaplin movie apparently.

The video has already been viewed over 1.6 million times.

The footage – supposedly in an extras section of a Charlie Chaplin DVD box set – was found by Irish director George Clarke (he seems to direct B-movie zombie movies), who showed it to a live audience and has watched it over and over again for a year he says. Finally, he decided to show it to the world in the video below. More than one reviewer is asking for other people that own this box set (the movie is “The Circus”) to also find this footage in case it is a hoax, but for now, we’ll go with it and say that this is actually form the premier of the movie (to Clarke’s credit, he does ask viewers to also confirm that he doesn’t have a unique copy).

If so, what could she (or as Clarke mentions a few times, possibly “he” – i.e. a man in drag) be doing? Clearly, the person is holding something, and is talking. MSNBC talked to historical experts that say it could be an old-fashioned hearing aid, but they can’t really say why the person would be talking the way she/he is.

Could the person actually be yelling at the someone, maybe the guy in front of her? Doesn’t really seem so. Could the person just be holding something and talking to herself? Maybe a little not all there? We’ll leave it to you to decide – watch the video and then leave us your theories below. Is it real? Is it a cell phone? Do you believe in time travel?

MSNBC



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Is Google a Monopoly? [TNW Google]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 04:47 PM PDT

Google.  Google dominates internet search.  Combined with their other product offerings is it possible for them to remain impartial when peddling their other wares?  Governments are the arbiters of what constitutes a monopoly and through investigation of past companies deemed monopolistic, and what ultimately became of them, one is better equipped to make an argument for or against Google being a monopoly.  Scores.org examines this issue with the infographic below.

What do you think?  Is Google a monopoly?  If you believe they are, what should be done to promote greater competition in the areas Google currently controls in a monopolistic fashion?

For a larger view of the graphic click here.

Image Credit : Scores.org



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The Next Web Podcast – Episode 32: Take Two [The Next Web]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 03:43 PM PDT

Array

Sometimes things go right. This isn’t one of those times. We lost people, we had to record twice but you get to have the blessings of our voices for about 45 minutes as we ramble on about tech.

Thanks for joining us for TNW’s podcast. We love doing it and we hope it brings you a few minutes of fun every week.

itunesSubscribe to The Next Web Podcast on iTunes!
If you prefer the good-old XML feed, we’re at http://feeds.feedburner.com/TNW

On this week’s show: Brad McCarty (Nashville),  Alex Wilhelm (Chicago), Chad Catacchio (Los Angeles)

Download / Listen:

In this week's episode:

The 25 Largest Brand Facebook Pages With Most Likes
Apple to Invest in Facebook? Facebook says "No"
Compared to you, most people seem dumb


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Viewing the US through Taiwan’s eyes [TNW Media]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 03:31 PM PDT

Last November, a few days after Tiger Woods drove his 2009 Cadillac Escalade into a tree near his home, a video was uploaded to YouTube that explained the incident. The video depicted a computer animated Tiger Woods entering his car and driving away while his wife chased behind with a golf club (there’s little evidence that the golf club scenario actually happened). Despite the fact that it added little to the story that hadn’t already been reported widely by other outlets, it has received over 2.5 million views.

The reason for this lies with the narration and subtitles, both of which are in Chinese dialect. For many Americans, the video is a rare glimpse into how a foreign country views us, a perspective that exists from outside the fishbowl. Its success rests, in part, with its hilarity.

It was created by Next Media Animation, a subdivision of Next Media Limited, the largest media company in Hong Kong. It owns Apple Daily, an anti-Communist newspaper that is blocked by the great firewall of China. Since the popularity of the Tiger Woods video it has released dozens more, adding in English subtitles and even the occasional English narration. Recent videos include “Lindsay Lohan out of jail, heads to rehab” and “Brett Favre’s pecker the talk of the town.” The latter shows an animated Favre opening up his cell phone and then sticking it down his pants.

“Animation was basically an offshoot,” Mark Simon, the company’s director of business development, told me in a phone interview. “We're a tabloid style newspaper. The problem we have is that you just can't tell the story completely. And so this is seen as a competitive advantage in our market to other newspapers. And that's how it started.”

Simon told me that Next Media Animation traditionally puts together a 14-minute video every night, comprised mostly of local Asian news. Only about three to four minutes focus on the outside world. The goal is to eventually syndicate the content. Simon said that such animations could stand in for B-roll footage for AP, Reuters, and other wire content.

But most Americans who watch these videos don’t do so for the news value, but rather for the unintended humor. Are the animators aware of this?

“I do think there's something that Americans need to understand, and it's that there are 1.4 billion Chinese, and they call it the middle kingdom for a reason,” he said. “Basically they consider themselves the middle of the world. A lot of times Americans are used to people looking at them through what we call the reverse telescope … Our guys just don't have this special reverence for America that people think they should have. I think they're very aware that Americans find this funny, but I don't think my guys wake up every morning and go 'oh my god, I'm not going to get a Pulitzer Prize or some award from the Rotary Club. They don't worry about that.”

Simon said that the animation — which is typically done by Chinese-American females — has been improving over time and that the monetization of the segments is “easy.” But what happens when the novelty wears off? When your popularity is based in large part on your unintended hilarity, will it continue once Americans move on to the next curiosity? Or will a Taiwanese summary of, say, The Social Network, never get old?



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Blippy releases the oddest promotion we have ever seen, free nail clippers [TNW Social Media]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 03:23 PM PDT

Phillip ‘Pud‘ Kaplan is a mixture of sordid internet legend and brilliant hacker, so whenever he is involved in a new project you can expect something out of the ordinary to pop up. We say that with complete respect, any man who invented F*cked Company is an ace in our books.

Pud is working his magic again, this time for Blippy, and he has outdone himself. He caught my eye today in Tweetdeck with the oddest of tweets:

I thought that his account had been hacked. To the contrary, Pud is serious, he wants to give you free nail clippers. Check out the site, wow, right?

Well, not completely free, you have to tweet out something similar to what he tweeted (their example is: “OMG FREE NAIL CLIPPERS (pass it on)”), and then ship them your Blippy username and address to get your clippers. See what they did there? You have to have a Blippy account to get the free stuff.

Aha! It is always so odd to see a viral project before it finds any legs. Judging by how ugly the free clippers site is, Pud hacked it together as an idea that could, but probably won’t, take off. By the looks of it some people are doing the task to save $1.29 on their next shopping trip. Not too many, but it is a start.

Then again, Pud was probably looking for any coverage to promote Blippy in any way, so I guess we fell for it. Anyway, I stand by my original thoughts on Blippy, whatever Louis Gray says.

Oh, and if we just got trolled, well done Pud, well done.

Update: Louis Gray has proven that the Blippy nail clippers are real. In fact, he took this picture for us to share:

Image Credit



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Microsoft and Pixar Team Up To Bring RenderMan On Azure [TNW Microsoft]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 03:23 PM PDT

Pixar Studios took stage at Microsoft's cloud focused Professional Developer Conference 2010 to talk about their animation application RenderMan being available on Windows Azure.

Pixar uses RenderMan for their CGI-animated movies, with Azure, users can scale computing resources required with a slider. As presented, if the time needed to render was a priority, more computing could be immediately used and if cost was a concern, the number of processors could be easily reduced. A few screen shots:

So whenever you see a Pixar movie, remember that there’s some Windows behind it.



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Electrostatic feedback: how future touchscreens might shock us [TNW Apple]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 03:10 PM PDT

Toshiba and Senseng have developed a prototype of an electrostatic variant of vibrotactile feedback for touchscreens – in other words, they’ve developed a way for users of smartphones, tablets and other touchscreens to get tactile feedback from their devices using static (not that we’d be shocked or electrocuted of course).

Here’s how HowStuffWorks describes vibrotactile feedback:

What we’re talking about here is electrotactile stimulation for sensory augmentation or substitution, an area of study that involves using encoded electric current to represent sensory information — information that a person cannot receive through the traditional channel — and applying that current to the skin, which sends the information to the brain. The brain then learns to interpret that sensory information as if it were being sent through the traditional channel for such data.

Senseng and Toshiba demoed the technology back in August in the video below. What do you think about this for your future phone?

HiZook, HowStuffWorks



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Verizon to pay $25 million fine on top of $52.8 million in repayments to customers [TNW United States]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 01:15 PM PDT

The government is not content to just force Verizon to repay its customers that it overcharged, the company has been fined a sharp $25 million dollars by the FCC that is to be paid to the U.S. Treasury.

That fine, a record topper for the FCC, comes on top of $52.8 million dollars in repayments to customers that Verizon, to put it bluntly, took advantage of.

Verizon called the over charges “mistaken,” putting a coat of British understatement onto the situation. The repayments will come in the form of account credits. Over 15 million Verizon subscribers were impacted.

All of this comes at the same time that the FCC is looking very strongly at so called ‘bill shock,’ when customers open their monthly statement with surprise, not sure how their bills shot up so high so quickly. As we reported before:

The FCC is mulling over regulatory changes that will force carriers to let their customers know when they are near the limits of their allowed voice minutes, text messages, and data usage according to their current plan. Consumers often lack simple ways to stay up on their current usage versus their total allotments.

As part of Verizon’s settlement, the company will set up a ‘data charge’ task force that will report to FCC and cover the company’s compliance with the terms of the settlement, and explain the current status of customer repayment.

Verizon is the US’s largest mobile carrier, something that actions like this will not let it keep.BroadcastingCable, Image Credit



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Google Maps for Android gets a refresh, enables real-time Latitude updates [TNW Mobile]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 12:52 PM PDT

Google has just announced a new set of features for Google Maps for Android, allowing smartphone users to search for Place reviews, change specific filters on search results and update their Latitude locations in real-time.

In Google Maps 4.6, Place pages will now display the new design for reviews as its desktop counterpart, showing “Reviews from around the web”, the highlighting of reviews of places from around the web and “Reviews from Google users”, reviews submitted by users directly to Google Maps.

Improved search filters will give Android smartphone owners the option to narrow down specific Place page reviews, adding places that are open at that specific time, in the neighbourhood and related searches.

Google Latitude can be updated in real-time but comes as an experimental feature, giving the option to toggle the feature on friends to get a quicker and clearer picture of where they are heading, perfect if you are looking to meet up (you could always ring the person).

The Google Maps update can be downloaded via the Android Market as of now.Image Source



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Video call from the roof of the world: 3G comes to Mt. Everest [TNW Asia]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 12:28 PM PDT

Planning to climb Mt. Everest next spring? Well, you can now update Twitter, Facebook, check-in on Foursquare and anything else you normally do with your smartphone, because now there is 3G available at Everest basecamp (5,200 meters).

FaceTime too, when Apple enables it over 3G, or you know, you could use Qik if you’re on Android or you just jailbreak your iPhone 4 – if you’re resourceful enough to climb Everest, jailbreaking your phone should be easy. Also, if you’re climbing Everest, you can probably afford the data charges too.

TeliaSonera, the Swedish telecom, beat out Nepal Telecom and India’s United Telecom as well as China Mobile on the Chinese side of the mountain. The 3G base station cost four times what a normal base station would and runs on solar power.

The signal does not yet reach the summit though, so climbers will still need to use a satellite phone to make calls from the top of the world.

According to the Financial Times,

Three years ago China Mobile erected a voice-only transmission station on Everest, which straddles Nepal and Tibet. The high-altitude station made it possible to make calls along the climbing route. TeliaSonera had to overcome a harsh environment of freezing temperatures and no electricity supply [to erect the base station].

So the real question is: when Apple does enable 3G Facetime, how long before we see a FaceTime commercial featuring a climber on Everest talking with his kids back home?

Along with partner Ncell, TeliaSonera is investing heavily in mobile coverage for Nepal, and hopes to have 90% of the country covered by the end of 2011. Here’s a video of Veikka Gustafsson, who has climbed Everest without oxygen, talk about the importance of having wireless in the Nepalese mountains.

Note: There is nothing in the press release that mentions the type of 3G signal, though most likely it is a tri-band signal.Financial Times, Press release



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Twitter unveils official app for Windows Phone 7 [TNW Apps]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 11:51 AM PDT

Windows Phone 7 has hit the market and there exists no shortage of thought on the new lineup of phones running Microsoft’s mobile operating system.  But what of the apps?

Today we know what Twitter has in store with respect to their app on Windows Phones.

In a blog post Twitter just gave a glimpse of what its official app for the Windows Phone 7 lineup will look and feel like.  To be honest, it sounds pretty grand.

According to the post:

“Twitter for Windows Phone. This Twitter client is available now for all Windows Phone 7 devices. We want you to be able to get Tweets quickly and easily, no matter what device you're using, and the clean design of the Windows Phone platform is particularly great for this…  As with our other mobile clients, Twitter for Windows Phone includes all of the features that you'd expect from Twitter – your timeline, suggested users, messages, lists, and a great way to explore Twitter without even logging in. You can sign up for an account right from the app as well. The app is really fast, and we think you'll enjoy the experience….  The platform's design and user interface, which is called Metro, is especially great for Twitter users because it's simple and easy to use. It also provides a different way to look at information on a phone's screen through Pivots, which are sort of like pages of the app. Pivots allow you to swipe left or right to view different categories or types of information within a single application. For example, in Twitter for Windows Phone, you can swipe left or right to move from your timeline to mentions to direct messages.”

Here’s a peek at what the app will look like:

Your thoughts on the design and functionality as explained by Twitter?  Are you going to get a shiny new Windows Phone?  Why/why not?



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OpenStudy. The Match.com of student study help [TNW Apps]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 11:30 AM PDT

With the first semester of classes at many schools reaching their half-way point, that means mid-terms have arrived, some students are furiously seeking others that not only went to class, but who also attempted to learn something while there.

That said, doing so can be difficult for several reasons.  First, your friends may not be taking the same classes as you, leaving that option closed.  Second, if you have not attended the class you now face an upcoming exam for, how will you know which individual(s) are available to assist you?  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, if you do have a contact from the same course, you may find their willingness to assist you is non-existent given your penchant for laziness and their desire to actually get something out of the class.

Be you the individual who needs copious amounts of assistance in a particular field of study due to your lack of class attendence, or the individual who wants to increase the level of knowledge already gained, OpenStudy is for you.

OpenStudy began as educational research out of Georgia Tech. The research led Ashwin Ram and Preetha Ram and their former student Chris Sprague to found OpenStudy with the financial support of government grants from the National Science Foundation, Georgia Research Alliance, and National Institute of Health. In January 2009, Phil Hill joined OpenStudy as CEO.

The site, recently open to all, has partnered with MIT OpenCourseWare to provide additional assistance to students.  Moreover, in just a few short weeks since its public launch, OpenStudy features users from over 1,500 schools in 138 countries. 90% of questions asked have already been answered, with an average of over 5 collaborators per question.

OpenStudy has matched MIT engineering majors with high school students aspiring to be engineers in addition to connecting people learning English in China with people learning Chinese in England, and more.  The site’s biggest study group is MIT’s Introduction to Computer Science, with over 3,000 members. So if you’re interested in learning programming (hand raised), you’re no longer alone—you have one of the world’s biggest classrooms to turn to—any time, anywhere.

Getting started with OpenStudy is simple.  One can elect to sign up manually or login via Facebook.  Once that’s complete, one can select study groups to follow:

The next step is finding people with like minded interests, or inviting your friends, classmates and/or colleagues to OpenStudy via email:

That’s it!  Now you can view your home page where you can pose questions, get updates from groups you’ve joined, create your own group and more:

So where does OpenStudy go from here?  According to Jon Birdsong at OpenStudy:

“We are partnering with content providers and offering them social learning communities. This gives their students/users an environment to connect with each other, get real time help, and join a community of students already assembled who are studying similar material.”

Unlike Q&A sites such as Quora, OpenStudy is geared more towards a specific type of individual, those currently in school, or those wishing to further their education through interactions with those associated with educational institutions.

Much like Chegg, which aims to save students money on textbooks, and schools using the Kindle to make learning more interactive and fun, OpenStudy is another example of technology’s positive impact on education.

OpenStudy is a grand service and one that yours truly wishes existed when he was in school.  If it had, that GPA might have been a tad bit higher.

Want to more?  Check out this slick video put together by the good folks at Open Study:



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Friendly, the best Facebook app for iPad just got a whole lot better [TNW Apps]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 11:14 AM PDT

With still no formal Facebook app for the iPad, independent developers continue to work on third-party creations to bring the popular social network to your slate computer.

One of the best known, Friendly, just released its third version, bringing updates that finally make the app worth your time.

The application can now support multiple accounts, photo uploading, birthday reminders, and now launches more quickly and crashes less often. However, what matters more is what is going on behind the scenes, Friendly is finally a full application.

Before – and Friendly took some rather unfriendly fire for this – the app was more of a restyled version of the Facebook website than a complete application. In this version three release, Friendly actually pulls data from Facebook Connect meaning that it now is, at long last, a real app.

Friendly costs $0.99 can can be found on iTunes here. In our testing the application had some loading and login issues, but apart from that lived up to the internal hype. Here are some screens of the app in use, via our friends over at MacStories:

The last question on our minds is just when will Facebook bring us a real iPad app?Image Credit, MacStories.net



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Video: Kindle for Windows Phone 7 demo, has unique functions [TNW Media]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 10:44 AM PDT

Saying that the Kindle App, “will be the first major eBook application available for Windows Phone 7,” Amazon announced the new app during Microsoft’s Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC). Of course, Amazon and Microsoft are both located in Seattle, and with Microsoft seemingly not in the eBook race itself, turning to Kindle as its primary reading software makes a lot of sense.

The app will be “available later this year” and will feature new functionality according to a press release:

…personalized book recommendations on your Kindle app home screen and the ability to send a book suggestion to a friend from any book in your library without leaving the app.

The WP7 app also features:

  • customized reading
  • choose from five different font sizes and three background colors
  • ability to read in portrait or landscape mode
  • turn pages by tapping on either side of the screen or flicking
  • receive personalized recommendations on the home screen of your app

We took a video at PDC of the Kindle app in action, take a look:

Press release, Techmeme, Image credit, Image credit



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Friendship Pages come to Facebook; more privacy concerns follow [Updated] [TNW Social Media]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 10:33 AM PDT

Updated at the foot of the post

If you’ve ever wanted to see what your friends are doing together, or what you’ve done with them, now you have your chance. Facebook is introducing a feature known as Friendship Pages that will act somewhat like a virtual scrapbook that documents the interactions you’ve had with your friends.

Though there’s no link in the Facebook Blog post to where you can view the pages, we’re agreeing with All Facebook in the idea that they’ll probably roll out to the majority of users in the coming days. According to Facebook, here’s the content for the new Friendship Pages:

They contain the public Wall posts and comments between two friends, photos in which both are tagged, Events they RSVP’d for together and more. You’ll be able to see a friendship page if you are friends with one of the people and have permission to view both people’s profiles.

There’s an interesting privacy twist in here, though. In order to view the Friendship Page between two people, you only need to be friends with one of them. The non-friend party needs to have their profile page publicly visible, but you’ll be able to lurk to your heart’s content.

There are a couple of unanswered questions here. From how it’s described, the third party would be able to see all interaction between the two other parties. However, if I have my wall posts (for example) marked as private, would they still show on the Friendship Page?  To us, this feels like a misstep on Facebook’s part. Unless you’ll need to opt-in to being visible in Friendship Pages, it’s a pretty strange ordeal.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment on this, and we’ll let you know when we hear back. In the mean time, the idea is still pretty slick, if a bit concerning. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Update: We have a response from Facebook, however it still doesn’t answer all of the questions, nor the questions that I posed in the email.

My email to them -

Noticed in the Friendship Pages that you only have to be friends with one person involved to view the interactions. That opens a pretty nasty door to lurkers. Any chance that you’ll have to opt-in to have your interactions viewable on the Friendship Pages?

Thanks

And the response, from Facebook -

Hey Brad,

Friendship pages aggregate information into a single place but do not not surface any new information.  Anything you can see through the friendship page is content you could previously see.

Thanks,
Meredith

With any luck, someone from Facebook will let us know the answer to the opt-in or opt-out question soon.Post Image



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Microsoft unveils new IE9 Developer Preview and Test Drive site [TNW Microsoft]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 10:16 AM PDT

Microsoft is continuing to push on its Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) project, hoping to continue early momentum that has brought some new sheen to the venerable brand.

Today the company is releasing a new Developer Preview, the 6th for IE9, and a new Test Drive website to allow the masses to interact with the underlying technology of the browser without committing to using it.

If you not a developer, please note that the Developer Preview does not contain a user interface, so if you were hoping to start cruising the internet in a shiny new IE9 car, we apologize. You can download the preview here, and find the new Test Drive site here.

These releases come just a day after Firefox announced that their next full number release, Firefox 4, will be delayed until 2011. It also comes on the heels of the news that Chrome is pushing its ninth version to early users. Internet Explorer 9 and Chrome 9 might find themselves launching in the same one month time frame, putting the new old and the new new together on the same stage for consumer choice.

Have you tried Internet Explorer 9? Do you still use it?Image Credit, DownloadSquad, Techmeme



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GetGlue gets spooky, sporty, and more social with new partnerships [TNW Apps]

Posted: 28 Oct 2010 10:03 AM PDT

GetGlue, the media check-in service which recently announced major new growth and exclusive new rewards for users, has even more goodies in store for fans of  shows on certain networks, and more.

The first new partnership is with USA Network.  GetGlue has partnered with USA Network and as of today, fans of USA’s top shows will be able to earn exclusive rewards for checking-in via GetGlue. In addition to branded fan and superfan stickers for Psych, Burn Notice, White Collar and Royal Pains, there are secret stickers to unlock and fall premiere stickers to earn for Psych and Burn Notice (Nov 10 and 11, respectively). Characters are also welcome to unlock the USA Network fan sticker.

Next up is a partnership with 20th Century FOX. GetGlue users will be able to earn exclusive stickers for upcoming movies Unstoppable and Love and Other Drugs. Fans can collect three stickers for each movie: a trailer sticker, available before the movie hits the theaters; a special sticker for those who watch the during its opening weekend; and a sticker that rewards fans for watching the movie in theaters after the opening weekend.

For those who are sporty, in particular fans of the ESPN E:60 program, launching today is the app’s first sports network partnership. GetGlue will be working with ESPN to provide exclusive rewards for their primetime newsmagazine show E:60. Fans of the show can climb their way through the ranks, first becoming a Rookie and then earning the respected All-Star title before working toward the elusive Hall of Famer moniker. Additionally, there are secret stickers related to favorite segments from the show.

To round it out, GetGlue is getting spooky just in time for Halloween.  Syfy is doing a live event for Ghost Hunters this Halloween. This six-hour Syfy-exclusive special is sponsored by Dodge. Jason, Grant and the rest of the TAPS crew will meet the apparitions and spirits in the halls of the Buffalo Central Terminal. In addition to the Syfy television broadcast, Syfy.com will deliver the event online with four exclusive video feeds, live chats and special reveals about the location during the hunt!

Syfy is setting up a special interactive page for fans to participate in the event in real-time. Part of the page will be exclusive GetGlue integration, including stickers and check-in widgets. Ghost Hunters fans will be able to check-in to the show right from Syfy.com and will be able to interact with other GetGlue users. The set of the exclusive stickers will include the sticker for the infamous Panic Button, and a special reward for fans who check-in to the show between midnight and 1 am.

After announcing their social network saw 10 million unique check-ins for the month of September, a more than 600 percent growth rate since January, GetGlue shows no signs of slowing down in the race to dominate the world of media check-ins.  If you don’t have GetGlue, pick up the app for your device here.  If you are a fan of GetGlue, what do you enjoy most about the service?



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