Oh my God, it's full of stars!
Archive for January, 2010
Julia Knows What Men Want!
Jan 31st
Boobs!
During a press conference for the upcoming film, Valentine’s Day, one woman tapped Julia Roberts for relationship advice.
The woman questioned Roberts on how to “make him make me happy [on] Valentine’s Day,” and Julia had a spot on answer:
“Make a nice dinner reservation now, because that’s the biggest night out of the year – says the former hostess – have a nice glass of wine, and take your top off.”
And that’s how women get what they want!
[Image via WENN.]
Via | Perez Hilton
Popularity: 1%
Verizon’s New VZ Navigator 5 Lets You Send Your Location To Facebook
Jan 31st
Back in October, Google changed the mobile navigation space when it launched Google Maps Navigation for Android. While the product itself is solid it also has one killer feature: it’s free. This has forced the makers of other non-free navigation tools to scramble to convince users their products are still worth paying for. Verizon is the latest to do so with its VZ Navigator 5, launching tomorrow.
So what would make it worth paying for? Verizon has a few new features in this latest update, but one of the ones they are touting the most is social media integration. Specifically, you can now update your Facebook status by way of VZ Navigator. This in and of itself isn’t that interesting, but you can also send out your location to Facebook with this feature, apparently.
While Facebook has yet to launch any major location functionality itself, a few third parties including Yahoo’s Fire Eagle and Nokia have leveraged the network for their location-based products. But VZ Navigator’s Facebook integration might be the most meaningful yet, as we could actually see people who use the service sending their location to their friends on Facebook. In other words, customers could start using this integration to make Facebook more like the popular location services such as Foursquare.
Of course, unlike the popular location services, VZ Navigator isn’t free. Using it will cost you $9.99 a month or $2.99 for 24-hours of usage. But with that price you also get other features, namely turn-by-turn navigation. With this new version, Verizon has also added new “enhanced” points of interest that show up on their maps with details about the place. There is also now crowd-sourced traffic information that Verizon claims will make traffic reports more timely and accurate. Overall, the look and feel of the application has been updated as well.
Another nice feature is that if you need roadside assistance, you can send your location and number with the click of a button.
VZ Navigator 5 will be available tomorrow for the BlackBerry Curve 8530, the LG enV Touch, the HTC Touch Pro2, and the Samsung Omnia. The plan it to roll it out to other smartphones on Verizon’s network in the coming weeks, we’re told. Verizon builds VZ Navigator in association with TeleCommunication Systems.
Via | TechCrunch
Popularity: 1%
Current Crop of E-Readers Compared: iPad vs. the Rest [Infographic]
Jan 31st
Developer and blogger Darren Beckett rounds up a crop of five e-readers and gives them a short price and feature comparison with the newly released iPad—and rolled the results in to an eye-friendly infographic.
(Click the image above for a closer look.)
We may have our problems with the iPad, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t interested in buying it. This comparison pits the iPad against other similar devices, highlighting price, screen size and type, storage, input, multi-tasking, multi-function, and connectivity. The charts not perfect (it only compares the bottom-of-the-barrel iPad, so when it says the connectivity is only Wi-Fi, keep in mind that more spendy iPads also have 3G), and it’s not as detailed as, say, this excellent comparison of the current crop of smartphones (which includes monthly fees for a true cost of ownership), but it still offers a nice overview of the market if the iPad’s piqued your interest.
Most e-reader enthusiasts would likely point to the iPad’s lack of e-ink as a pretty big red mark—and that because of that the iPad maybe isn’t something you’d even want to compare to an e-reader. But convergence devices like the iPad are certainly attractive when they can swallow the functionality of other devices (like e-readers) and offer a lot more at a similar price, so you can be sure that a lot of people interested in buying a Kindle will also be considering the iPad.
Give your thoughts on the matter—especially if you’ve got experience with any of the other readers listed—in the comments. (Note: The JooJoo is still an unreleased product but is, in theory, more like the iPad.)
Does the iPad Cost Too Much? [Darren Beckett]
Via | Lifehacker
Popularity: 1%
TC50 People’s Choice Winner YourVersion Comes To The iPhone
Jan 31st
Last September, YourVersion took the stage at TechCrunch50 as the DemoPit People’s Choice winner, after receiving the most votes from conference attendees. The startup’s goal is fairly simple: to help you find content that you’re interested in, in real time. And now it’s bringing its application to the iPhone. You can download the free app here.
The app is pretty straightforward. First, you enter some topics that you’re interested in. Every time you launch the app, you’ll be presented with a list of these topics. Clicking on one will bring you to a list of recent blog posts, tweets, and other content that contains those topic keywords. You can also filter through this content by source, allowing you to see only content from Twitter, news sites, and so on. If you’ve already set up an account on the YourVersion website, you can sync that with the app (any items you bookmark or share from the app will be reflected on the site as well).
Of course, there are plenty of other applications out there that let you search for news stories by keyword. YourVersion tries to go a step further than basic keyword matching by adding some intelligence to its story recommendations. In the current version, the app will track all of its users’ attention data, which includes the stories they’ve click on, shared, given thumbs up/down to, and a handful of other metrics. YourVersion then uses this data to generate a weekly Email digest, which includes the week’s top stories from each of your YourVersion topics (it will omit any stories that you’ve already read).
This is only the first step, though. In the next month or so, the site plans to roll out a feature to both its website and the iPhone application that will use this attention data to enhance the “Discover page” (the section of the app that presents you with recent stories), so that you don’t have to wait til the end of the week to get smarter recommendations.
YourVersion still has a lot of work to do — in its current form, there isn’t much to differentiate it from the countless feed readers and news apps already out there. The app needs to implement more robust algorithms that can provide story recommendations that are both more timely and accurate than its competitors’.
Information provided by CrunchBase
Via | TechCrunch
Popularity: 1%
Winter sports across the Commons
Jan 31st
![Skieurs, posé par Paul Tapie [de dos], Luchon,](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3001/2513844230_ee253e9667.jpg)
See more winter sports in The Commons, the world’s public photography archives on Flickr to which you can contribute information and knowledge.
Photos from the Nationaal Archief, Library of Congress, Oregon State University Archives and Bibliothèque de Toulouse.
Via | Flickr
Popularity: 1%
