Dasher

I've been watching a google tech video about Dasher, which is described as an efficient text entry system and I think its has potential.

The video describes how keyboards have very limited movement (each letter is effectively boolean - up or down) while you finger has around 14 degrees of movement, making them very inefficient match.

Mobile devices (cell-phones/PDAs) generally have to deal with this trade-offs when determining the type of text input systems they implement. Full qwerty support makes the device larger than desired; using multiple letters on one key (typically found on cell-phones) irratating to use or using a gesture system (Palms graffiti), is small but effectively you need to learn a new way to write.

Dasher seems to address all this with word predictions. All this with a simple continuous one finger gesture or an eye-tracker version.

For those with a disability, I can see this a huge step in the right direction.

Here's the download link. Go check it out.

Eye trickery

I have no idea how this works, but its NOT an animated gif.

Apple at NAB

Apple is at NAB again this year and unveiled final cut server and final cut studio.

Apple have a setup with 2 demo theaters, lots of demo kiosks and a screaming octo-core bad-boy Macs Pros.

They also have a fairy impressive 40 Xserve RAID equipped media SAN. Yeah baby!

More pics here.

dodgeball on the dead-pool?

How long do you think before Google puts a bullet in the head of Dodgeball?

The 'net has been buzzing about how the founders (Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert) of dodgeball (which got acquired by google nearing two years ago) have quit google. They say that they were fed up of not getting enough resources from google to make dodgeball the best it could be.

Here's a 6 month, page views graph comparison between Twitter and Dodgeball. Twitter has exploding!

This is a little sad. Dodgeball had potential. I'm not sure how the company can continue without employee #1 and #2.

Red5 recruitment tactic

Red5 is a game studio thats packed with ex-Blizzard staff, decided they wanted the recruit the best people in the industry.

How do you think they went about doing this? Hired a crappy recruitment firm? Post a few ads on craigslist? Errhhh.. no.. they created truly creative personalized requests.

Heres the story from Red5's perspective. Heres from a recipient.

They got a 100% response rate, well above the normal 2% you can expect.

Whoa..

Google buys Doubleclick

Crikey! Google buys DoubleClick for $3.1B! and in cash!

I bet Microsoft and Yahoo are really annoyed.

Yeah.. MSFT has lost its teeth (from previous article). Tell me you aren't scared of Google.

Microsoft is dead.

Paul Graham has caused a nice little ripple because of his article labeled 'Microsoft is Dead'. He even wrote a follow up article to clarify his position because people got so upset. Have any of these people who are crying actually RTFA??

First of, I'm a big fan of his essays, they usually make a lot of sense.

I heard him speak recently in startup school. He gave the speech of Why to Not Not Start a Startup. It was educational, funny and motivational. I wanted to get out my macbook and start changing the world right there and then! :)

He's not a stupid guy, read between the lines. Microsoft isn't dead. It's not going to run out of money. Visual Basic will still be around, don't you worry!! :)

He's saying that the decline has started. MSFT have lost their teeth.

People are more scared of Google than the 800 pound gorilla that is Microsoft. MSFT doesn't innovate. They just copy 'n paste and are successful because of a very effective marketing department. Do the cool-kids developers that want to go change the world go work at MSFT? I don't think so. Even Scoble is going on a rant about MSFT. He says:

"This isn’t Netscape you’re talking trash to, Steve. Have you really studied Google? It doesn’t sound like you have.

Again, Microsofties, you’d be better served not to talk trash until you have something YOU CAN SHIP!"

Google is knocking out cool innovate things all over the place. Agreed they are only making money on one thing (and they are making a lot of it) but they are changing the industry. How is MSFT doing that?

I've read that when startups try and go get VC money the standard question is 'If Google enters this space how are you going to compete?'.

That's a hard question to answer.

Techcrunch

Michael Arrington from Techcrunch (a great blog of whats HOT in the valley that a LOT of people read here) decided to take a look at what we do and they really liked what we offer.

I still work for Powerreviews, but we have a just released a reviews-shopping portal site called.. drum-roll.. Buzzillions !

Techcrunch says:

"PowerReviews is willing to give away their software to merchants, but in return PowerReviews have the right to aggregate that review data and present it on their own consumer facing review site, Buzzillions.

Here’s the brilliance of the PowerReviews model. They then turn around and sell traffic from Buzzillions right back to their merchant network, on a CPC or CPA basis. I don’t believe I’ve come across a startup before now that manages to use data, created at a partner site, to generate traffic that they then sell right back to the partner."

This is ultimately what we do (and for free) and our merchants LOVE us because of this. We provide review content on their site and they WANT us to be successfull on Buzzillions as we drive good-quality traffic towards them.

Mac Pro

Apple releases a Big Bad Boy.

Meet the latest addition to the Mac Pro family: The world’s first 3.0GHz, 8-core Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro. Consider the bar officially raised.

This box is smoking. These Xeon's really fly.

DotNet developer comments on Apple Service.

I read an interesting post from Kevin Hoffman about his experience in dealing with Apple.

He was having some problems extending some example code and emailed Apple for some help.

They responded with help in reproducing his problem, gave some optimization tips and treated him like a real person.

I'm sure that there's lots of cases where Apple is like a black hole, but I like to think that the 'cult-of-the-apple' is because of this more human approach.

Maybe thats a lesson to us all.

CNN-Money

CNNMoney gives the startup I'm working for a mention today. An interesting read.