Month: November 2010

We first covered Scvngr a couple of months ago. They are a location-based service that is doing things a bit different. Rather than simply earning badges for checking in, their making the road to rewards a little more challenging.

One company that has partnered with Scvngr is Tesla Motors. They’ve set up a challenge that requires users to visit one of Tesla’s eight U.S. showrooms, and snap a photo of a Roadster to earn three points. Or, players could figure out how many battery cells power each Tesla vehicle for another two. Players who complete the Tesla challenges will unlock a limited edition Tesla badge.

Sounds kind of like Amazing Race. The problem is that SCVNGR was working off of a limited database. If you’ve used any location-based service, the most annoying thing you have to go through is manually entering information for a venue.

Today, users worldwide will avoid this annoyance as Scvngr switches to a database pre-populated with data from Google Places. Google has decided to give SCVNGR access to a developer preview of the Places API, which should make the service much more interesting. It’s no surprise that Google would give SCVNGR a nudge, it was one the first investments made by Google Ventures.

SCVNGR already has partnerships in place. Foursquare and Gowalla are both involved with Facebook Places while also diversifying beyond the simple check-in game. Maybe we will finally see some interesting things happening in the location space.

via TechCrunch

Talk of a PlayStation Phone is still going strong and Sony isn’t doing much to kill the rumors. It started back in August and was reignited last week when Engadget showed up with photos. During two separate conference calls for investors last Friday, Sony was asked to comment on the alleged PlayStation Phone. One call was in Japanese and later translated. The second was directed at US investors. The results don’t necessarily prove the existence of a PlayStation Phone, but they aren’t denying anything, either.

The initial comment, translated from Japanese, is especially vague:

“It’s not that we are not looking into those markets as well. We will look into those markets in trying to develop strategy for the future. Of course, we can’t talk about specific products, but smartphones and tablets… it is difficult to tell you how we can put the games on them, but they are not going to be planned in different parts of our company,” the unidentified Sony executive said. “When we organized ourselves last April, we introduced network services, and within that umbrella, network services, all of these products are handled. Therefore, the planning and the prototypes for various content [are] all carried out within this… one umbrellas. So we are trying to figure out what we can do as Sony in this market. I think this is as far as I can tell you regarding these products at market.”

During the second call, Sony executive vice president and chief financial officer Masaru Kato,, and senior general manager of investor relations Gen Tsuchikawa, were present on the call. The actual speaker didn’t identify himself, but he was slightly less vague:

“Now, PSP being a proprietary platform, was more concentrated on, how do you say, [the] core gaming segment rather than the light gamer,” the executive added. “But now we are addressing that market as well. I cannot be specific as to how we will introduce new product to address these markets, but one thing I can say is that we have those markets addressed, and we will come out with products and services to capture the broader gaming market.

“I know this will not be a clear-cut answer, but please wait until we are ready to announce what ever products and services that we may come up with,” the Sony executive said.

Based on their remarks, Sony is definitely working on something to address the “light gaming market.” They specifically mention smartphones and tablets and we can assume this “light gamer” would be someone who just plays games on their smartphone during downtime. By that ingenious logic and combined with the leaked photos, it’s obvious Sony is working on a smartphone. It’s also possible they are looking into a tablet device with gaming abilities, much like the iPad.

What do you think they’re working on?

via PCMag.com

Most would assume that Chrome, backed by a company pushing hard for HTML5, would be the browser that best supports HTML5. Most would also assume that Internet Explorer, the bane of most web developers, probably doesn’t support the proposed standard well at all. Most people would be wrong on both counts.

The Worldwide Web Consortium has the numbers and Internet Explorer 9 puts the competition to shame. Seven aspects of the spec were tested: “attributes”, “audio”, “video”, “canvas”, “getElementsByClassName”, “foreigncontent,” and “xhtml5.” The rankings came down as follows: IE9 beta release 6, Google Chrome 7, Firefox 4 beta 6, Opera 10.6, and Safari 5.0.

We’ve talked about Microsoft‘s change of philosophy a few times. They are definitely updating their image and embracing the latest technologies across all of their products, including Internet Explorer. The Register puts it best:

Yes, the HTML5 spec has yet to finalized. And yes, these tests cover only a portion of the spec. But we can still marvel at just how much Microsoft’s browser philosophy has changed in recent months.

via The Register

We reported last week that Google and Samsung might be launching the Nexus Two. This seemed highly unlikely given what Eric Schmidt said about the Nexus One, but the tech world is still buzzing about about a second iteration of the Google phone. According to BGR, Samsung has flat out denied these rumors.

Remember that Nexus Two handset rumor that caught fire late last week? Well, according to Korean website danawa.com the report was a false alarm. The site is quoting a Samsung official who claims that the reports — which really took off after Gizmodo published the above mock-up — are “simply not true.” via BGR

There is definitely something brewing for Samsung’s November 8th event, though. Between Gizmodo and Android And Me, there are multiple sources confirming the existence of a device that could be the Nexus Two. Samsung could be flat-out lying, or this mystery device may just go by a different name. We can be pretty certain in saying that there will be an Android device of some kind launching.

What do you think is going on here?

Firesheep is a Firefox plug-in that makes it simple for the average Joe to hack into your account. Basically, if you’re on a network with someone running Firesheep, they will be able to see and probably access your login sessions. This means not only seeing what you’re doing on Facebook and Twitter, but also posting messages to your friends, family, and followers. The developer, Eric Butler, explains it best:

It’s extremely common for websites to protect your password by encrypting the initial login, but surprisingly uncommon for websites to encrypt everything else. This leaves the cookie (and the user) vulnerable. HTTP session hijacking (sometimes called “sidejacking”) is when an attacker gets a hold of a user’s cookie, allowing them to do anything the user can do on a particular website. On an open wireless network, cookies are basically shouted through the air, making these attacks extremely easy.

The most important point to note here is that Firesheep is simply a tool. It only highlights how insecure standard security on the web is. VentureBeat makes an interesting analogy to the whole fun debate: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” The tool itself isn’t the danger.

Packet sniffers have been around for years, but now we can all see just how easy it is for someone to get into our accounts if we use public Wi-Fi or don’t bother to secure our own networks. While The NextWeb offers some hints to avoid getting fleeced by firesheep, Computer World asks if this plug-in is even legal. Check the Firesheep blog for more info and tips on protecting yourself.

via Firesheep – codebutler

Today, Blekko opens up to the public. They’ve been in private beta since July and are finally opening the doors to the masses. Of course, just because Blekko is a search engine, comparisons are immediately being drawn with Google. In reality, it’s like comparing apples to oranges.

blekko is a better way to search the web by using slashtags. slashtags search only the sites you want and cut out the spam sites. use friends, experts, community or your own slashtags to slash in what you want and slash out what you don’t.

The primary problem that Blekko addresses is the amount of spam and irrelevant results you get when searching on a specific topic. SEO is somewhat complicated, but it’s not rocket science to get a relatively useless site ranked in Google. Many topics you might want to search for are dead from the start because of this (anything health/fitness, for example). Blekko not only cuts through clutter, but also allows you to do things with search that just aren’t possible with keywords.

Blekko accomplishes all of this by allowing users to create vertical search engines (search engines focused on a specific topic or group of sites). Google is a horizontal search engine, pulling results from sites across the web that have nothing to do with each other. Blekko’s more focused and crowd-sourced approach is what has many interested.

Will it challenge Google? I doubt it. I think they are tools for different jobs. While Blekko allows you to go through the web with a fine-toothed comb, sometimes you just need a pick with a fist on the end.

Five use cases where slashtags shine

1. Verticals with just YOUR favorite sites:
   u2 /music, iphone reviews /tech, wine /buy, 2010 season /steelers, American Idol /tv
2. Search you can’t do with keywords:
   global warming /conservative, ufos /paranormal, congress /humor, Kim Kardashian /gossip
3. Slash through heavily spammed categories:
   avoiding swine flu /health, iphone 4 reviews /techblogs, Aruba /travel, low calorie /diet
4. Access to recent material and web data:
   Obama /date, Mel Gibson /rank, cnn.com /seo, techcrunch.com /links
5. Direct access to 3rd party api’s:
   US Open /youtube, Twilight /twitter, Moby Dick /amazon, sports car /shop

blekko: how to slash the web from blekko on Vimeo.

via Search Engine Land, Blekko, WSJ