Many of you may remember Ma.gnolia—the nifty social bookmarking tool that unfortunately imploded at the beginning of this year. Founded by Larry Halff almost 4 years ago, the site had a different aesthetic and attitude toward sharing information. It was one of the more community-minded tools I remember from that era, offering features like the ability to “thank” the sharer of a useful link, for example. It also possessed clean design and careful site organization. In my opinion, its take on sharing data really differentiated it.
Like many great things, Ma.gnolia didn’t start out to be big, but rather started out to be good—and it was. And, as is often the case with things that are good, Ma.gnolia become big by virtue of that goodness. Ironically, even though the membership of the service reached hundreds of thousands of account holders and tens of thousands of regular users, the infrastructure supporting the site was still incredibly small. It was run almost solely by Larry and the hardware and bandwidth he could support by himself. Unfortunately, there were some technical limitations to the honorable yet fragile DIY set-up running behind the scenes that ultimately led to the site’s premature demise. I was really bummed to watch the VOD-cast explaining the catastrophic nature of the data loss back in February and have thought about the site often, since that time.
I was able to catch up with Larry a while back and talk with him, not about what went wrong with Ma.gnolia 1.0 but rather what is in store for Ma.gnolia 2.0, if anything, and also pick his brain about the future of social bookmarking. If you were a fan of Ma.gnolia in the past, you will be happy to know that it is scheduled to relaunch September 22, by invite only.
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Avid, makers of a wide range of digital video/audio software and hardware have a couple of new product updates coming your way mid-September. The first to note is an updated version of their consumer-friendly family of products know as Pinnacle Studio.
The new Pinnacle Studio meets the needs of a wide range of consumers, from novices to video enthusiasts and semi-professionals. The family of products includes Pinnacle Studio HD, Pinnacle Studio Ultimate and Pinnacle Studio Ultimate Collection, which offer a complete HDV & AVCHD workflow and allows consumers to export movies to Flash, QuickTime, PS3, Nintendo Wii, Xbox, Apple iPod and more. Pinnacle Studio Ultimate and Pinnacle Ultimate Collection also offer Blu-ray authoring with motion menus.
Other new features include:
- A stop-motion capture for animated and fast-motion effects.
- New content and enhancements for Pinnacle Montage.
- Dynamic Motion Titler tool that includes a number of new templates.
- A new stabilizer effect – leveraging the same technology used in Avid’s professional editing products to fix shaky camera shots.
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Toobla.
Say it five times fast. Tooblatooblatooblatooblatoobla. There, that was easy wasn’t it. No? It wasn’t easy, you say? Well, repeating the memorable name is the hardest part about using this nifty new visual bookmarking/content sharing web site whose public beta comes to you September 14, straight outta my home town in the heart of “Sili-Corn Valley”—Columbus, OH.
Toobla.com, initially at least, has two main functions: collecting linked content and sharing it with others, visually. In my brief beta test of the site it accomplishes these tasks very well. I know what you are thinking…whoop-dee-doo, there are a million ways to share content these days, right? Probably too many? (YALST—yet another link sharing tool). There most definitely are, but Toobla has a bit of a different paradigm for organizing collected content and it’s worth mentioning it twice—it collects content visually.
Note: Toobla was in the DemoPit of TC50 in 2008
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Of course, nothing can really ever compare to the two bowling extravaganzas forever etched into my memory. These would be Shawnee Lanes and the inconceivably named Mr. Bill’s Bowling Center. Edificial landmarks that stain the Midwestern memory of my youth. I was no bowling champion. I was no bowler at all really. In fact, I don’t even like bowling. So when I was asked to review Skyworks Interactive’s Ten Pin Championship Bowling for iPhone/iPod Touch as part of my Gaming on the Throne series, the only real alley experiences I had to lean on were foot fungus fears from borrowed bowling shoes, dusty hand dryers and a bout of food poisoning. That’s not a happy place to start thinking of descriptors for a review yet “Ten Pin” brought me new light and actually made me want to brave the bowling underground again (from the safe distance of my couch). Such was their little game; the Pip to my Miss Havisham, the Winston Smith to my O’Brien, the Roy Munson to my Ernie McCraken… you get where I’m going with the histrionics? Ten Pin Championship Bowling is a great game! This is no surprise, considering that the braintrust behind Skyworks is David Crane—a gaming industry vet with old-school cred and some decidedly new ideas and leadership.
Squash The Street by Last Legion Games, is the latest iPhone/iPod Touch game to be chronicled in my “Gaming on the Throne” series at CrunchGear (see explanation).
Initially when I played STS I was a little underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, the execution was solid, but it seemed kind of repetitive to me. Then something happened that changed my mind and ultimately led to me giving it a thumbs up. We’ll come back to that. First let’s look at the game synopsis, directly from Last Legion’s website:
Financial Crisis? Let your rage rain down on the crooks and swindlers who caused it.
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Griffin Technology released a new iPhone app today called iFM Radio Browser that works like a search engine for radio stations. The essence of the app is that you can search for local radio stations (with the help of the iPhone’s built in GPS capability) and view what is currently spinning on any of the stations it finds in your area.
This is a new paradigm in station-flipping for sure.
So I’m going through my twitter stream a while back and I see several links from some former colleagues of mine, pointing to a new iPhone app called ColorSnap, by Sherwin-Williams. So what right? There are a million (ok, fifty thousand) iPhone apps out there—what’s so interesting about this one?
Well, two things. One, it was developed by my former employer, Resource Interactive, for whom I have the utmost respect and must also disclaim. Two, it is a tool of sorts, which I seem to be more interested in these days rather than just games or social networking. I wanted to check it out.
How it works.
You use ColorSnap to take a picture of anything (a room, an object, whatever). After the image is selected and zoomed in to the right spot in the application view finder, you move your finger over that image and a small square-shaped magnifier follows your finger around and shows a detail view of the color in that part of the photo. Once you find a color with which you are satisfied, you press the “palette” button and it identifies the primary paint color you have just selected and offers two secondary colors that go with it. For example, if you have a dominant object in a room, like a giant red leather couch, you could use this tool to find some supportive secondary colors for the walls and furniture surrounding it.
I recently had the opportunity to have a phone conversation and Q&A session with JAGTAG Founder and CEO Dudley Fitzpatrick. JAGTAG, for the unfamiliar, is a company that specializes in the creation of proprietary two dimensional bar codes, or JAGTAGs as they are called. These special “tags” are encoded with a variety of information—everything from URLs, to coupons to contests. JAGTAGs are similar to standard open source QR (Quick Response) codes and/or Data Matrix variations, however unlike their open source brethren, JAGTAGs require no software to be downloaded in order to decode them. You simply photograph the code with your camera phone and send it to the JAGTAG server, via MMS (or via email if you have an iPhone), where it is processed to return specific media or info directly to your mobile phone. It is a major differentiator for the company that prides itself on offering extended user reach and technical know-how. But JAGTAG also prides itself on its extensive advertising agency background and its ability to offer a more comprehensive approach to helping brands market with their technically savvy solution.
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My initial thoughts upon receiving the Griffin Technology AirCurve to review were, “Great, a speaker that requires no power. That’s cool.” I thought about it some more and began to feel differently though. I came to a new conclusion that for all the coolness and “green-ness” of its lack of power consumption, that it may not be as realistic or as practical as it seems for repeated use. I mean, we know that the battery life on the iPhone is not that great right? So anywhere I would be away from a power source long enough to require the benefits of an “un-powered” speaker would be too long for the iPhone battery to sustain as your sole sound system provider for very long in the first place—like if you were camping for 3 days or something. And if you are at home or at the office, where electricity is abundant, why not just plug in some regular powered speakers and get more volume and bass response?
I am the kind of guy who can appreciate damage. It is the way of things. Entropy is part of the natural order of events—an unstoppable phenomenon. For some, it is hard to accept this after forking over $400 for a fancy Smartphone. I mean, you don’t want the thing getting all scratched up right? You don’t want it subjected to the elements, right? You want it to look good!
For me, this is not really an issue. Maybe I’m just a slob, but when my iPhone gets yet another scratch on its side or back, it doesn’t really bother me. It’s kind of charming really. It signifies to me that “this thing is getting some use” and that “this is a tool, and I am getting my money’s worth”. I know I am this way and because of it, I have never really wanted to get a protective case for the device. That is until now.
Griffin Technology has a new protective case for the iPhone called the Clarifi and I am smitten. Why? Because the case itself offers at least one extra feature that makes it stand apart from others I have seen and that feature is unique enough to make me want a case whether I care about scratches or not.
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What else have you got going on while you’re “taking the Browns to the Super Bowl”, if you get my meaning? A Newspaper? Popular Mechanics? Why not multitask and play some mobile games! And what better way to start my “Gaming on the Throne” review series than to mention two future mobile football classics for iPhone, brought to you by Skyworks Interactive: QB PASS ATTACK and X’s & O’s FOOTBALL.
Joel over at BoingBoing Gadgets posted his thoughts on his latest vintage electronics find, The Bynamics Desk Director System Six Hundred, which originally sold for nearly $900.
It looks like a calculator, a phone, a volume pedal and a digital clock glued to a piece of cardboard, yet it is a gestalt artifact and somehow seems more important than that. Just what exactly was it a “system” for, though? I’ll tell you. Obviously, it was a “system” for getting corporate boo-tay back in the 80s. A status marker to symbolize that you made so much dough-re-mi, you could afford to have a $900 phone, that would look good on or off the Death-Star. Clearly it established “Player-ship”, back in the day. End of story.
These days, it’s even cooler than it was during the era of Savings & Loan meltdowns and Joel has done it proud by even putting the little glass of Scotch, exactly where it should be in any corporate situation—smack dab in the middle of things!
comScore reports that totals for mobile game downloads in November 2008 were up 17% from the previous year. They also noted that 34% of all game downloads that same month were downloaded to a Smartphone instead of a regular mobile phone. Interestingly, the Smartphone stat represents a 291% increase from the previous year—no small affair.
It’s a pen. It’s a knife. It’s a pen. Relax, it’s both a pen AND a knife.
Cold Steel, makers of fine instruments of death and dismemberment, are offering up a new line of, um… pens. The Pocket Shark (no relation to the Pocket Rocket) is a must have item for, you know, seriously injuring someone and then signing autographs afterward. Or on a slow day, you could just use it to sign checks or documents at the day gig.
