[Download Show #21 as MP3]
News
- Apple Prepares for iPhone Launch
- Giant billboard put up, and then taken down at the 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York, NY. [Pics]
- Specs
- 3.5-inch 480 x 320 touchscreen display
- 11.6 millimeters thin
- 2 megapixel camera
- 4GB or 8GB of storage
- Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) and A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile)
- [Derek] Of course Bluetooth 2.1 is already out there, but with backwards compatibility built in to new protocols and the fact that the iPhone will be firmware updatable you may see support for that as well
- WiFi support that engages when in range of an Access Point (to save battery)
- Quad-band GSM with EDGE support
- Runs OS X with support for Widgets, Google Maps, iTunes (of course) with CoverFlow out the gate, and the Safari web browser
- [Derek] Not long before we see someone hack Firefox onto it I'm sure
- Partnership with Yahoo! will allow users to hookup free push IMAP e-mail
- Apple states it has 5 hours of battery for talk or video, 16 hours in music mode, no word on standby
- Proximity sensor that turns off the screen when its close to your face
- $499 exclusive through Cingular for 4GB and $599 for the 8GB and it ships in June
- Microsoft to launch the zPhone?
Crunch Gear is reporting that it has confirmed rumors of a Microsoft Zune Phone. Would that be a zPhone? According to Crunch Gear's Matt Hickey whose hook was a Microsoft filing with the FCC (all cell phone manufacturers must register their devices with the FCC):
….it looks like MS is working on a mobile WiMax-enabled Zune Phone, which would have download speeds of up to 2Mbps, fast enough for the Xbox-to-Zune streaming we’ve heard about, and fast enough for just about anything else the Zune Phone might be used for.
So now that we know that the Zune Phone is real, and that it’s in development, what else can we say about it? Tons.
The first real news is that we can expect to hear an announcement from Redmond about it before March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, at which time we should learn the name of the device. At the same time, we should also learn other launch specifics, and here’s where it gets incredibly juicy; our source says that, pending FCC approval, the specter-like Zune Phone will hit the streets sometime in May, a full month before the iPhone.
- A "source" tells us that it will use OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) wireless technology, A.K.A. WiMax
- A large-scale WiMax network would have to be rolled out
- As we all remember from the 3G rollout, these things take years usually
- Of course as far a slocal schemes are concerned like XBox connectivity, VoIP, or a PC in your home, that seems more practical
Software / Hardware / Power Web Picks
- [Koby] PicksPal
- In many places you can't legally gamble, but what about just for bragging rights?
- PicksPal is a free sports site where people “bet” on upcoming games.
- No money is involved.
- If you win, your point total goes up and you have bragging rights around the office.
- Since launching nearly two years ago, over 100,000 people have joined the site
- Lots make daily picks on just about every kind of sporting event in the U.S. - boxing, NFL football, pro football, bass fishing, ultimate fighting, basketball, baseball, etc.
- The site makes money from advertising.
- Tom Jessiman, the founder of PicksPal, stumbled onto something that could change the way we predict sporting event outcomes.
- Recently, however, the PicksPal team noticed that a very small percentage of users tend to be correct in their picks significantly more often that they should be statistically. When they grouped these special users they found them to be a powerful predictive force.
- Sports betting (both legal and illegal) is a massive worldwide business. Participants are always looking for an edge and are willing to pay for picks by “experts” (I know this from my extensive research watching Two for the Money).
- Tom and his team figured out pretty quickly that there was a potentially massive business here. And they have started tapping into that business by launching launching what they call “Genius Picks”.
- For $10, users can get access to the collective wisdom of the 30 best PicksPal players over the previous five weeks in a given sport, and get five predictions on upcoming games.
- Look for mainstream media to start covering this company in the very near future. PicksPal is based in Silicon Valley and has raised $6 million in venture capital over two rounds of financing. They are backed by Canaan Partners and Bay Partners.
- AutoIt v3.2.3.0 Beta
- Simulate keystokes, mouse movements and window commands (maximize, minimize, wait for, etc.
- Automate any windows based task (or windowed DOS tasks)
- Assist in automatically installing software
- PC rollouts with hundreds or thousands of client machines that need to be automatically installed
- It is not limited to software installation
- Can be used to automate most simple windows tasks
Penny Pinchers
Farecast uses millions of observations of past airfare prices to predict whether a ticket price between two cities for a particular date is expected to decline or increase in price over the next seven days. If the price is expected to go up, then Farecast recommends that you buy your ticket now. If it is expected to go down, then the service recommends that you wait for a lower price. The company currently offers predictions for flights originating in 75 US cities.
- 70% to 75% of the time the company is accurate in its predictions
- If Farecast tells you a ticket’s price is going to drop and recommends that you wait, you can pay the "Fare Guard" fee to lock in access to the lowest price of that day for the next week.
- If the price instead goes up, Farecast will send you the difference between what you ended up having to pay and the price you locked in with them.
- If Farecast’s prediction was correct and the price does drop, you can buy the ticket at the lower price and they make $10 from the Fare Guard service.
Will Fare Guard be a success with consumers? It may be a little difficult to explain clearly, particularly given that it’s only one way movement that will be guarded against. If Farecast predicts that a ticket price is going to go up, so I buy at the current price, and in fact the price goes down - Fare Guard does not offer to compensate me for the money I could have saved if I had ignored Farecast’s recommendation. That, according to the company, would be yet another product and this current one needs to be tested first. The current product will probably be much easier for users to understand than it is to explain in the abstract, sometimes you’ll be offered Fair Guard protection and sometimes you won’t. It’s fascinating to see what kinds of value added “products” can be placed on top of data mining.
Gamer's Corner
- You Don't Know Jack
- Free? WTF. Sweet!
- Published almost like a blog of games, Jellyvision has come back out of nowhere with the YDKJ series
- Gamervision
- Just Launched Social Network for...Who Else...Gamers
- Site layout is not overly easy to navigate. Not difficult just not simple.
- Flashy AJAX pages give the site a zing look and feel.
- The seem to cover all areas of gaming from PC, to Playstation, to the Nintendo DS
- Unfortunately open registration is currently closed and they are doing testers only. You can send an email requesting to a part of the test phase.
Editorial ("Power Up")
- Lip Reader combines Audio and Video written by Tracy Staedter from Discovery Channel and used by permission for The Power of Information
A lip-reading computer that could help solve crimes and assist consumers is the goal of a new project at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.When coupled with a speech recognition system, the technology could work to not only decipher the words of criminals captured on video but could also improve voice-activated computers in cars or mobile phones.
"There is interest in using lip-reading for all sorts of human computer interaction, particularly in noisy environments," said Richard Harvey, a senior lecturer in the University's School of Computing Sciences.
"Noisy" can mean that an audio signal is muddled by other sounds, for example from a car radio or a crowd. But it can also mean that a visual signal is fuzzy or unclear.
People overcome such communication obstacles by pulling information from various places — lip movement, facial gestures, body language — to piece together what's being said. But computers designed for speech recognition typically focus on speech alone.
In previous experiments, Harvey and his team found that accuracy was significantly improved when a noisy audio signal was augmented with visual information.
For example, some speech sounds that are easily confused in the audio domain — "b" and "v," or "m" and "n" — are distinct in the visual domain. Conversely, some spoken words look identical in the visual domain, for example, "bat" and "pat."
The researchers will be working over the next three years to find the best way to combine audio with video.
First they will work with researchers at Surrey University in Guildford to figure out how and when a visual signal goes bad.
Next, they will work on extracting information from the face, particularly the lips. One approach models the shape and color of the lips as they move; another measures the size of the mouth opening.
Lastly, they will find the best way to match the visual cues from the lips to the works spoken, so that "bat" is indeed recognized as "bat," and not "pat."
"The fact is that it works and gives good results," said Peter Robinson, a professor of computer technology at the University of Cambridge. "There are a number of clever techniques to get from the image...to what goes into the processing and then combine that with the results from the speech analysis."
In three years, said Harvey, the team could have a camera able to recognize simple words and phrases.
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