Commsday reports that they have heard from a source that Google is building its own transoceanic fiber-optic link between the US and Australia (via Guam and Hawaii) and should be finished with it as soon as 2009. The reports say, that construction for the Unity called project started a few months ago. Although this is still speculative, it has naturally evoked everyone to write about it. There are many different theories developing. True to their nature, Valleywag thinks that it is, together with Google’s wireless bids and phone business, all just a tactic to get what they need at a cheaper rate by scaring their adversaries. Techcrunch knows, that Google may have met with Telstra and Asia Netcomm last week in Sydney to discuss the plans. GigaOm’s article is, as always, very insightful and gives a lot of background information. Mashable, Engadget and others are reporting too.
I stumbled over the site reCAPTCHA today, which offers free CAPTCHAs for everyone. This in itself is not extraordinary, but the CAPTCHA offered by the site is quite special. It presents the user with words that could not be matched by OCR software. The source is the Internet Archive, which archives thousands of books and makes them available to the public for free. Solving (and offering) the CAPTCHA is therefore a kind of a noble cause and way more useful than just annoying the user with a colored, hard to read sequence of numbers and letters.
On the technical side it works as follows: The word that could not be read is taken as a picture from the book that is being digitized and is shown together with a random word from reCAPTCHAs database that is presented similarly so the user cannot distinguish between them. If the user matches the word from the database reCAPTCHA assumes that the user typed in the correct answer to the other word too and it is placed in the book.
I’ve found a great video on the 5min Life Videopedia, which by the way is a great place to waste your time, about Michael Schumacher’s driving style. The best Formula 1 driver of all times has a unique technique and showed everyone just how fast he was in every race when he was driving besides Barrichello, who drove the same car, but was always seconds slower.
The interesting part of the video is, when they really analyze Schumacher’s driving style scientifically and you can see the difference.
As Mashable (and just about everyone else) reports, Apple has sold 1 million iPhones in the 74 days since its launch on June 29th. This is a lot faster than the iPod sold in its beginnings. As Steve Jobs notes, “it took almost two years to achieve this milestone with iPod”. If the sales keep this speed, Apple will “only” sell another 6.5 million , for a total of 7.5 million until the end of 2008. 2.5 million short of its predictions of 10 million sold units. It is almost certain though, that Apple will sell a lot more iPhones with the new $399 price tag the device got just a few days ago.
Apple will obviously also enter the international market and if we can believe French site MacBidouille, the launch date for Germany will be November 12th. The supposed “leaked advertisement” also states that the device will be 3G capable and will therefore be able to access the internet at 3.6Mbit/s. This advertisement, which looks like a typical T-Mobile ad but most likely is a fake, also states that we Europeans will get a 16GB version, like the new iPod touch Apple released. All of this sweetness would come at a much higher price point though.
That Apple inked a deal with InterDigital about licensing 2G and 3G technology also hardens the speculations that they will soon release a 3G iPhone.
I think with international sales about to start, the nice price cut the iPhone got and the holiday season coming up, Apple can be quite confident about selling 10 million units of its wonder product, which turned the whole industry upside down and is covered by the mainstream media just as much as by the geeky blogging crowd, until 2008.
CNN Money reports that John Deere, the big tractor company, has found a way to make profits while developing rural America and producing green energy. They accomplish this by financing wind turbines in these areas.
A project with the size of about 5 windmills works as follows: John Deere pays about $4,950,000, the farmers pay $50,000 and another $5 million comes from a loan from a bank. John Deere gets all the revenue for the first 10 years or until their initial investment is paid off and they’ve made a profit. The farmers get $20,000 a year each for maintaining the turbines. After the 10 years, the farmers get all the revenue, which estimates to about $1 to $1.5 million plus another $500,000 federal tax credit. This results to a good profit for everyone that will help develop these areas drastically.
It is nice to see that with a good idea you can accomplish something valuable, in this example develop rural areas and protect the environment/produce green energy/reduce the dependence on foreign oil, and still make profits. Sadly good ideas don’t grow on trees and as long as one can make their profits easier without doing something good, people will go the easy path.
The Bahrain World Trade Center will be the first building in the world, that has wind turbines of a respectable size included in its structure and built in to support its aesthetics. News of this has been out for some time now, but lucky EcoGeek has received first hand pictures of the turbines getting installed and I have to say it looks as stunning as it did on the renderings from the architecture firm.
The three turbines, each measuring 29m in diameter, will produce approximately 11-15% of the buildings energy needs, which equates to 1100-1300 MWh per year. (This is about the equivalent of powering 300 homes for a year.) The buildings is facing the Gulf and is shaped aerodynamically so that the turbines fixed position is not a problem and they get enough wind.
It is kind of paradox that this is built with money that most certainly has its base in oil, but I am not complaining when something as nice as this comes out of it.
(For more pictures go right over to EcoGeek.)
Techcrunch brought my attention to this video, from The Meth Minute 39. It is a quite comprehensive collection of the fads that have (or have not) enlightened our lives during the years. It ranges from Andy Milonakis’ “The Superbowl is gay” over “All your base are belong to us” to the Star Wars kid. I don’t know of any collection that is (or claims to be) complete so I think we should try to start one. I will add links to the fads I remember in random order and would be very grateful if you would add your favorite fads in a comment. I will carry them over to the main post.
NBC did not renew its contract with Apple to sell and distribute its TV shows on the iTunes Store. The New York Times reports, that it is because of disagreements in pricing and piracy controls (which probably wanted a tighter DRM). Apple would have the right to sell the shows until the end of the year, but would then have to take them down from its store, mid season.
A spokesperson for NBC also stated “[The iTunes Store] is designed to drive sales of Apple devices at the expense of those who create the content that make these devices worth buying.” which basically means that they are not happy that Apple is making a lot of money with a good product. Of course it is true, that Apple mainly created the iTunes store for their iPods, but the reason was not, that their customers needed it. Most iPod users would be happy to continue filling their devices up with music from illegal sources or from their bought CDs. The iTunes store is more an excuse from Apple and an offering to the content companies, so that at least some content on the iPods is legally obtained.
As Techcrunch notes rightly, the content companies cut themselves with a strategy like this. Today everyone and their mom is able to download videos and music over BitTorrent. With sites like ThePirateBay, which adhere to Google’s no-frills strategy, offering a simple and easy to use way to get the newest content for free, why would anyone go through the hassle of fighting for their content? NBC does sell their content through Amazon now, but not giving the rights to Apple too was no smart move at all. iTunes simply is the one stop shop for digital media for most customers, especially because the main way to consume that media is Apple’s line of iPod (and now also iPhone) products. If people can’t get their content on their favorite device easy enough by paying, they will continue to get it illegally.
Although NBC’s content makes 40% of iTunes video sales, Apple made a bold “we don’t need you” move by not adding the new fall season of NBC’s show to their store. They said in a statement, that they don’t want their customers to be frustrated because of not being able to download any more episodes mid-season. Apple states that “ABC, CBS, Fox and the CW, along with more than 50 cable networks, are signed up to sell TV shows from their upcoming season on iTunes at $1.99 per episode,” so the video section of the iTunes store will go strong without NBC’s content. Maybe NBC just overreacted or someone ordered a wrong strategy because NBC’s own video startup Hulu is coming up, because the company is starting to think again. Cory Shields, exec VP-communications, NBC Universal said in a statement that NBC is “hopeful that we can reach a resolution” with Apple “before the existing contract expires,”.
I can only hope that the content companies will soon realize that to fight the extremely convenient way of illegally downloading their property, they will need to offer new and innovative ways that make the consumer want to buy it. The consumer does not want to pay more for online content, just because he does not have to leave his house. Apple is only trying to help these companies. While doing this, of course it has its own interest, but this makes sense because the iTunes store itself does not make a lot of profit.
Today Google Reader made a big step and is now, in my opinion, the best feed reader around. While it is still not very pretty (but simple), they added the possibility to search in your subscriptions and shared items. With regards to the fact, that Google is a search company, this is a feature that should have been ready since the products launch.
Besides the search box, there are several other features. The raised the bar for how many unread items it counts from 100 to 1000, which will make it a little nicer to catch up with all your feeds when you haven’t checked in for a while. You can also hide the sidebar, which gives you kind of a fullscreen view of the feed your currently reading.
They also moved the Loading box to the top and let the Google Labs icon vanish, which may be a sign that Google Reader will soon Google’s palette of non-beta products. (Or at least it graduate out of Labs.)
I’m sorry that you won’t even be spared with Apple news over here. Maybe we just have to surrender to Steve Jobs very good hand with marketing?
Wow! Today’s Apple event wasn’t hyped up as some others, but to me the announcements were far better than the ones on some of the other recent events. So not to let you wait, a short summary of everything that happened:
Customizable ringtones, 99 cents in addition to the song
iPod shuffle in all kinds of colors
New iPod nano (most notably a very different “fat” form factor)
“Normal” iPod now called iPod classic (80GB and 160GB)
iPod touch (basically the iPhone without phone capabilities)
iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store
Starbucks partnership
iPhone 8GB now only $399! (the 4GB will be dropped)
For me the two most exciting things by far were the price cut for the iPhone and the announcement of the new iPod touch that everyone was waiting for since the iPhone launch earlier this year.
The iPod touch is simply an iPhone with ripped out phone capabilities. As you can see the form factor is absolutely the same. The home button is there too, only the speaker hole is missing. Sadly, because is has WiFi like the iPhone, on the back there is the very un-Apple like black field again, that serves the good reception.
Now the announcement that the iPhone 8GB will be sold for $399 and the 4GB will be dropped and sold for $299 as long as supplies last is in my opinion, a real game changer. The iPhone has serious mass market acclaim, but with a $599 price point it was simply too expensive for anyone but the gadget lover and the business person. $399 is in a whole new price segment and will give a big boost to the iPhone sales, but it will also make many customers angry, because in their eyes it will look like they just threw $200 out of the window. This is for once, not the PR finesse we are used to by the company from Cupertino. It would have not been too bad for them in terms of market share to wait a little longer before dropping the price, but now their most loyal customers, the early adopter crowd, will not be too happy. At least those that bought their iPhones not more than 2 weeks ago, will be able to get a refund, as CrunchGear reports. (And AT&T has a 30 day return policy.)
Besides that, there is not much more to say. I personally think, that the new iPod nano (or “fatty”) is not as appealing as the previous version. They made a step backwards in terms of design, but obviously they pushed the technological boundaries a little bit further again, which is nice to see. The WiFi store is a very cool new feature too and is one step into the future. I think it won’t be long until we will also see videos appearing in the mobile store, but the bandwidth and ubiquity of WiFi will have to make a little jump before that.
Steve Jobs was as always in his speeches simply great and sympathetic. He couldn’t resist to pick on NBC again; while playing “Give Peace a Chance” from the Beatles he said: “That’s when NBC calls.”. He gave us some of his famous “boom”s and brought everything through without a glitch.
I still think Steve Jobs keynote to announce the iPhone was the most brilliant one he ever held. He surprised everyone with the way he announced it and showed everyone off. If you haven’t seen it, you can after the jump along with some more pictures of the new products and a guided tour of the new Apple iPod touch.
I stumbled over the site 
The Bahrain World Trade Center will be the first building in the world, that has wind turbines of a respectable size included in its structure and built in to support its aesthetics. News of this has been out for some time now, but lucky 
