Apple sells 100 millionth iPod, deems experiment a success

Apple sells 100 millionth iPod, deems experiment a success

Filed under: Portable Audio

Has it really only been five and a half years since the first iPod rolled off the assembly line and into the initially-skeptical arms of music-loving consumers worldwide? Well since that time we've seen an entire ecosystem of third-party and DIY accessories sprout up around Apple's ubiquitous little jukebox -- from the pretty handy to the just plain weird -- along with endless humorous anecdotes, an infinite number of knockoffs, serious political, legal, and environmental movements, and of course, an almost daily barrage of wild rumors the likes of which the world has never known. So it's with mixed emotion that we welcome the 100 millionth iPod into the world (enough for almost every man, woman, and child in Mexico): on the one hand, it gives us warm fuzzies to see perennial underdog Apple come out on top for a change, but we also hope that the company employs its leadership position responsibly, such as being a little less quick to sic the lawyers on anyone who dares use the "Pod" name in vain. And as for the next 100 million iPods? Is PC-less downloading just over the horizon? When will we finally see the move to an all flash lineup? Will Apple finally take the leap and merge its prize pig with -- gasp! -- a cellular telephone? As always, only time -- and Uncle Steve -- will tell.

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Top Twenty Sites: Most Downtime

Top Twenty Sites: Most Downtime

Pingdom just published a report measuring total 2007 downtime to date for the top 20 sites on the web as ranked by Alexa. Leading the list is Yahoo with zero downtime. Google’s YouTube and Blogger.com are the worst performers, with over 4 hours of downtime each (although Google.com is very reliable).

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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Zillow Relaunch - Adds Its Own Q&A Service.

Zillow Relaunch - Adds Its Own Q&A Service.

Zillow has been down this afternoon as the popular real estate site adds a number of new features.

They may have been taking a look at the runaway success of Yahoo Answers - Among the changes is a new product called Home Q&A, which allows users to ask and answer questions about any of the 70 million U.S. homes in the Zillow database. Answers are rated by other Zillow users.

Every home in the Zillow database has its own dedicated page. Any user can now also add photos and information about any home and its neighborhood to the site. Users can also indicate if a home is for sale, and the asking price, as well as additional information. This is an expansion on user-generated content features added last September. Previously only the 600,000 registered users who claimed their homes or over 150,000 real estate agents could list a home for sale or post photos of the home. Now any registered user can list a home for sale and post an unlimited number of photos for the home, although the prime real estate on the listing is still reserved for a certified owner or agent. Bad photos and information can be flagged by other users.

Zillow is moving beyond the general site wide advertising they got from brokerages and home improvement stores, enabling registered users to carry out targeted advertising campaigns for their home listing. The new ad units are called “EZ Ads”. Users will be able to target their campaign by zip codes and specify the number of view or bank roll their ad will run for. The effective CPM for these ads will be a penny per impression.

Zillow claims 4.1 million unique visitors came to the site in March (Comscore (U.S.) says 1.8 million, down from 2.3 million a year ago, and 33 million monthly page views). They say that 90% of visitors own a home, and 54% play to buy or sell in the next two years. The company has raised $57 million in venture capital.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Mozilla To Build Social Networking Into Firefox: Bad News For Flock

Mozilla To Build Social Networking Into Firefox: Bad News For Flock

Mozilla has released details on The Coop, a new product that will incorporate social networking features directly into the Firefox browser. This is not good news for the privately-backed social browser Flock (also built on Mozilla), which is yet to release a 1.0 version of its browser. Many of the proposed features and some of the mockups created by Mike Beltzner (see above) suggest a significant overlap in the two products.

In fact, Coop even has an example screen shot of Flock on the wiki page describing the product, along with the description “The design will likely resemble [formerly of Flock] Chris Messina’s mockup for “People in the Browser”, with a horizontal bar containing avatars for a user’s friends, and icons overlaid on those avatars to indicate the presence of new content.”

The Coop product will allow Firefox users to “subscribe” to friends in the browser, bringing those friends into a sidebar. Those friends can share content and web pages with you (receive content from you, and send content to you).

Adding a friend will mean getting access to a broad array of their published web content. Content will be pulled from that person’s Flickr photo feed, del.icio.us tag feed, MySpace status , YouTube favorites, etc. When you want to share content with that user, you simply drag it into their avatar (see mockups below).

As Larry Dignan notes, The Coop could also have an impact on social networks that depend on constant user page refreshes to maintain pageview growth. Having status information on your friends directly in the browser could significantly lessen the need to visit those sites directly.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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PC World’s 50 Best Tech Products Of All Time

PC World’s 50 Best Tech Products Of All Time

Incredibly awesome magazine PC World has come out with a Top 50 Best Tech Products of All Time list and boy is it full of nostalgia. Classics include 3dfx Voodoo3 at #16, the Motorola StarTAC at #8, Tetris at #10, and Napster at #4. The most recent item on the list is Blizzard’s World of Warcraft at #27, followed by the Canon EOS Digital Rebel at #44.

So who took the #1 spot? Was it Mac OS X? Perhaps the Nintendo Game Boy? Far from both, it’s actually Netscape Navigator. Yeah, that’s right. The 1994-browser you used back in school to visit LexisNexis reigns king over all gadgets and software. True, Netscape was the first mainstream browser to do it all, but the #1 spot on the 50 Best Tech Products of All Time? Psh. Way to blow it PC World.

50 Best Tech Products Of All Time [PC World]

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Annual H-1B Visa Cap Met In One Day

Annual H-1B Visa Cap Met In One Day

CNet is reporting that the door has closed on the H1-B visa application process for this year, one day after it began. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services said that it had received 150,000 applications as of yesterday afternoon. 65,000 H1-B visas can be issued for foreigners with bachelor's degrees. The USCIS will choose randomly from the applications to determine the winners.

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New coating may lead to fog- and dirt-free windshields

New coating may lead to fog- and dirt-free windshields

Filed under: Transportation

If you're like us and haven't washed your car since, like, ever, you're probably used to the windshield getting all fogged up (not in the good, make out point way, however) and habitually swiping at the glass with your sleeve while swerving between lanes and praying that your airbag still works. Well thanks to a new coating developed by researchers at Purdue University, your dangerous driving habits may soon be a thing of the past (well, except for those occasions when you're texting your buddies while eating a cheeseburger and fiddling with the radio), as this material has the unique ability to both prevent the formation of water droplets (no more fog!) as well as cause oil-based substances to bead up for easy cleaning (no more road grime!). The science behind this breakthrough is a little boring (i.e. we don't really understand it), but it seems that by covalently bonding a DuPont substance known as Zonyl FSN-100 to ordinary glass, the component polymers are able to change shape and react differently depending on the chemicals they come into contact with. After figuring out a way to apply the coating cheaply through spray or roll-on techniques, the next step for the Boilermakers will be to coax the material into repelling other nasty substances, making it suitable for use on the gadgets and glasses we geeks hold so dear.

 

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MIT gurus developing bionic feet / ankles

MIT gurus developing bionic feet / ankles

Filed under: Robots

Leave it to the brilliant minds at MIT's Biomechatronics Lab to crank out yet another bionic limb, as a newfangled mechanical foot / ankle combo is apparently on the minds of more than a few of its researchers. In a recent patent application, the team describes an "artificial foot and ankle joint" consisting of a "leaf spring foot member," flexible elastic ankle, and an actuator motor that applies force to the ankle. Aside from sporting a fairly intelligent system to improving one's gait, it also boasts a built-in safety feature that prevents foot rotation beyond a specified angle, and the internal sensors can also activate the motors at different intervals depending on the surface in which one is walking. The prosthetic feet join a horde of other bionic limbs and appendages meant to make life as an amputee a fair bit easier, and as terrific as this here invention sounds, we're betting the Olympic committee dashes your hopes of illegally obliterating a few running records by barring these from basic competitions.

[Via NewScientistTech]

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French train breaks rail speed record

French train breaks rail speed record

Filed under: Transportation

While the majority of world speed records we cover involve things like transistors, data transmission, and even the occasional text messaging attempt, we're not ones to pass up a good old fashion land speed record, which France's Alstom Technologies thankfully provided today. After months of working up to it, the company finally sent its V150 passenger train screaming through the French countryside, ultimately topping out at a breakneck speed of 574.8 kilometers per hour, or about 357 mph, easily besting the previous rail speed record of 320 mph. While it'll no doubt only make you jealous of not being on board (or at least nearby), you can check out a video of the record-setting attempt at the link below.

[Thanks, Antoine G]

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