Month: March 2010

How a social media can be used to repair a big company’s image – TOYOTA on tweeter

Posted by ts On 03.03.2010

source – techcrunch.com by Leena Rao

Toyota has been dealing with negative backlash from the massive safety recalls of its vehicles; and is even suffering in terms of sales. So what does the company do to repair its image? Turn to Twitter, of course! The Japanese auto giant has launched a branded channel on TweetMeme, in partnership with Federated Media, which aggregates and organize Twitter conversations regarding Toyota.

Called Toyota Conversations, the site brings together the top stories being Tweeted about Toyota, from news articles to press releases. The site also shows visitors the most popular videos and images being shared about Toyota on Twitter. And the channel includes a Featured Tweets from Toyota’s Twitter account and press room as well as AdTweets, which are Tweetmeme’s retweetable ads for Toyota.

You may notice after taking a look at all of the top stories that are being aggregated on the site, that most of the news is positive. That doesn’t seem to match the general tone of the media writing about Toyota, which has been quick to criticize the car company for its manufacturing mistakes. If you take a look at Twitter sentiment app Tweetfeel, the sentiment of Tweets mentioning Toyota lean more negative. Tweetmeme channels can be set up to pick up only certain news sources. It looks like Toyota picked the friendlier ones.

That being said, it’s definitely interesting to see such a high-profile company taking to Twitter to try to reform its image by engaging directly in a dialogue with consumers. As we’ve seen with the recent Southwest/Kevin Smith incident, Twitter is influencing public relations in unprecedented ways. Now more than ever, brands are flocking to Twitter to not only monitor and track what’s being said about their company on Twitter but to influence and participate in the conversation.

Photo Credit/Flickr/JoelZimmer

ASUS makes DR-900 e-reader official

Posted by ts On 02.03.2010

source – engadget.com By Vladislav Savov

We’ve spent all our time hearing about a DR-950, but today at CeBIT ASUS has trotted out a DR-900 as its first 9-inch ebook reader. It doesn’t appear manifestly different from what we’ve heard and seenalready, with WiFi connectivity augmented with a 3G option, and a battery life rated to last a pretty radical 10,000 pages on a single charge. The interface on show clearly invites touch interaction, and we can fill in a few gaps with what we know of the DR-950, namely a 1024 x 768 resolution on a Sipix panel, 4GB of integrated storage, 3.5mm headphone jack, and support for PDF, TXT, MP3 and ePUB files. We’ll be tracking down an official price and release date shortly, as well as smudging a few fingerprints on these before the day is through.

Innovative Product Design

Posted by ts On 02.03.2010

Opera 10.50 for Windows

Posted by ts On 02.03.2010

source – techcrunch.com by Robin Wauters

Opera Software today released Opera 10.50, which it touts as “the fastest Web browser thus-far produced for Windows computers” (which, in turn, calls for a comprehensive speed test – anyone?). The desktop browser has also been given a completely new design, adopting some of the style elements Google Chrome users will be familiar with.

Additionally, Opera 10.50 comes with a private browsing feature that enables people to browse for porn surprise gifts for their partners without leaving any traces.

The desktop browser, which is free to use, lands on Windows at a time when Microsoft has just rolling out its ballot screen for European users of the OS, presenting them with a choice in browsers (supposedly random, but not in reality, as we pointed out last week).

The Norwegian software maker calls Opera 10.50 the fastest browser they’ve ever produced, courtesy of a brand new JavaScript engine (Carakan) and a graphics library (Vega). The browser is also said to include improved standards support for HTML5 and CSS3.

For Windows 7 and Vista users, there are some more goodies: Opera now fully supports Aero Glass, Aero Peek and Jump Lists. You can easily access your Speed Dials, tabs and more from the Taskbar.

Opera 10.50 is available for Windows in 42 different languages – Mac and Linux versions are “coming soon”.

Google buys Picnik – online image editing app

Posted by ts On 02.03.2010

source –googleblog.blogspot.com Posted by Brian Axe, Product Management Director

More than ever before, people are sharing and storing their photos online. But until recently, you had to edit your photos using client software on your computer. Today, we’re excited to announce that Google has acquired Picnik, one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud. Using Picnik, you can crop, do touch-ups and add cool effects to your photos, all without leaving your web browser.


We’re not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we’ll be working hard on integration and new features. As well, we’d like to continue supporting all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks.

We’re very impressed with the Picnik team and the product they’ve created, and we’re excited to welcome them to Google. We’re looking forward to collaborating closely with them to improve the online photo editing experience on the web. In the meantime, we encourage you to head to Picnik, import some of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Flickr or Facebook and try your hand at photo editing in the cloud!

21 Amazing Pool Ideas For Contemporary Houses

Posted by ts On 02.03.2010

source – freshome.com Author: Lavinia

In his incessant search for inspiring design ideas, Michael gathered a collection of 21 fabulous pools in order to boost our reader’s spirits. You can take them as beautiful ideas and you can appreciate their shape and style. But what we would like you to do is keep the designs in mind and consider these pictures as inspiring concepts for your future pool, whether its construction will occur in two weeks or ten years. They are all outdoor pools, some integrated in the house construction, others in the perimeter of the domain, close to the actual building. The ones that are located near the sea are particularly spectacular. We also like the wooden decks and the gazebos. Hope you will enjoy this display of elegance and design eccentricity and if you have any pool ideas you would like to share with us, don’t hesitate!

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Gigabyte T1000 takes a new twist on life with Atom N470 and a multitouch display

Posted by ts On 02.03.2010

source – engadget.com By Joanna Stern

Ever get the feeling that what you see on paper just isn’t going to be as good in person? That’s sort of how we felt today when we stopped by Gigabyte’s CeBIT booth to get a look at its newly announced T1000 netvertible. On the spec front the T1000 has everything we could possibly want in a netbook — a new 1.83GHz Atom N470, 2GB of RAM, a chiclet keyboard and a 1366 x 768-resolution multitouch display — but in our few minutes of use things were far from rainbows and butterflies. The resistive touch panel required a pretty firm press, and when in slate mode there’s no buttons (or accelerometer) for rotating the device. While we liked the chiclet keyboard, we’ll never understand why Gigabyte has kept the two mouse buttons on the sides of the touchpad. We realize that we may be jumping to conclusions too quickly here, so we’ll let you decide for yourselves with the help of a short video after the break.

read entire post with more images at engadget.com

LG’s 15-inch 15EL9500 OLED TV sets sail for Europe, scheduled to arrive this May

Posted by ts On 01.03.2010

source – engadget.com By Vladislav Savov

We’ve had only tantalizingly brief (or is it briefly tantalizing?) chances to see LG’s glorious OLED television, but each and every time it’s left us with the feeling that our lives are poorer for not having one in our homes. Sure, that says as much about our tech addiction as it does about the 3mm-thick displays, but at least the deep-pocketed among us won’t have to wait too much longer to sate the need for 10,000,000:1 contrast ratios and 0.001ms response times. LG has announced it’ll be bringing it’s 15-inch OLED panel to Europe this May (to be swiftly followed by summer availability in the US) with a hefty MSRP sticker of €1,999 ($2,725) for the Austrian market. Nobody ever said the cutting edge was gonna be a cheap place to live.

First Windows Phone 7 Series partner(LG) device unveiled (with video!)

Posted by ts On 01.03.2010

source – engadget.com By Nilay Patel

Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman just pulled off a little surprise here at The Engadget Show: he brought out LG’s Windows Phone 7 Series pre-production prototype! The QWERTY slider is the first branded Windows Phone 7 Series device the world’s ever seen, and while the hardware and software are both obviously early, we can tell you a few things about it: it’s just a hair thicker than an iPhone or Nexus One, there are dedicated hardware camera, volume, and power buttons in addition to the back, home, and search buttons dictated by Windows Phone 7 Series, and we noticed a five megapixel camera with a flash on the back, along with a headphone jack. Can’t say much apart from that right now, since things are so early and everything is subject to change, but things are certainly moving along. It’s all going down on the show right now — see it on video after the break!

see entire post with more photos at engadget.com

HP 2740p, the new Elitebook

Posted by ts On 01.03.2010

source –alltouchtablet.com author – John Pope

Untill yesterday, the 2740p was just a mysterious convertible tablet from HP, but now that it was presented to the press, I know what’s all about it and will share that info with you.

The HP 2740p is part of the Elitebook series and is a premium convertible tablet PC, with magnesium alloy rugged case and is compliant with military grade MIL-STD 810G standard for vibration, dust, humidity, altitude and temperature resistance plus has a chemically-strengthened glass display panel.

Live shot of HP Elitebook 2740p

From the loops of it HP Elitebook 2740p doesn’t look like a road warrior, but once you get your hands on it you get the feeling of strength and quality build. It’s what you would expect from atablet starting at 1599$, but you’ll definitely want to beef up the standard configuration with a normal voltage Core i7 CPU (default is Core i5), add some RAM, up to 8 GB, add a 320 GB hard drive, or 160 GB SSD, add another expansion battery or travel base that adds some expansion ports.

HP 2740p is really a nice tablet to have

You can even pick up a better screen specially build for outdoor use. Both options are capacitive screens, offer multi touch and pen input and offer 1280 x 800 pixels resolution. Connectivity options are also top notch: WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1, EVDO/HSDPA and even GPS. The whole package is 1.25 x 11.42 x 8.35 inches and weighs from 3.8lbs with the 6 cell battery that’s good for up to 5 hours of use (so expect 3 t0 3.5 hours with it). You can add another slim battery that’s attached at the bottom of the laptop which increases overall thickness by a few millimeters and also adds another 6 hours to the original 5 hours estimate. There’s even a LED on the screen that’s used to illuminate the keyboard.

HP 2740p can look like a laptop

If you’re crazy about connections you can add an Ultra-Slim Expansion Base that supports DispalyPort, an eSata port and includes a DVD+/-RW drive for 299$ but I bet you could live without those if you have a fully loaded desktop at home. Even if it weights 3.8 lbs it doesn’t seem that heavy, at least compared to the Lenovo X201T we’ve presented earlier. Below there’s a hands on video from Slashgear:

Source: Engadget, Ubergizmo

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