Archive for September, 2009
Phone calling coming to Twitter
September 16th, 2009 | 
Author: Twitter users on Thursday will, for the first time, be able to make voice calls directly to each other through the microblogging service.
A new third-party offering from Jajah known as Jajah@call is expected to go into beta Thursday morning that will allow Twitter users to initiate a two-way voice chat with other users by typing “@call @username”–where “username” is someone’s Twitter ID–into any Twitter client. During the beta period, the company said, the calls will be limited to two minutes, but the company will evaluate that length during beta. However, it sees the two minute period–after which the call will end–as “the verbal equivalent of a tweet.”
According to Jajah, an Internet communications provider with tens of millions of users, the service will allow a user to place a call to any other user, so long as the second person follows the first on Twitter and both have Jajah accounts. The service is free to use and is expected to work on any Twitter-enabled device, from PCs to smart phones.
One important element of the service is that users can keep their phone numbers private, yet be able to have voice chats with just about anyone on Twitter. To be sure, since the calls are initiated by one person, the recipient may well not be online, or may choose to ignore the call if they don’t want to talk.
There are currently several applications that allow users to create voice-to-text Twitter posts–known as tweets–but it does not appear that anyone has yet made it possible to initiate voice communications directly between Twitter users.
Coming on the heels of the announcement earlier this week that Facebook users will now be able to communicate with each other via voice–using a third-party application from Vivox–it’s clear that there is a strong interest, among service providers, at least, in taking leading social networks beyond strictly text communications. Whether large numbers of users choose to get on board is unknown at this point, of course. And given that neither the Facebook nor the Twitter voice services are being provided by the social networks themselves means that some users will choose not to get involved for fear of privacy, stability or other concerns.
Still, if these third-party services end up being successful, it would be natural to expect that Facebook and Twitter may decide they need to step up and directly embed such technologies into their offerings. And there is a precedent for such a move. After Vivox began offering Second Life users a third-party voice solution, the virtual world’s publisher, Linden Lab, decided it needed to take advantage of the technology. Today, thanks to a formal partnership, Vivox’s voice service is formally integrated into Second Life.
And while it may be some time before such a thing happens with either Facebook or Twitter, or any other major social network, one would have to think that it’s only a matter of time.
Source :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10355319-52.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Twitter to raise funding at $1 billion valuation?
Twitter is attempting to raise funding at a $1 billion valuation, according to a TechCrunch post Wednesday.
The blog cited unnamed sources claiming that Twitter CEO Evan Williams announced the valuation in a recent meeting. According to TechCrunch’s sources, Twitter plans to raise about $50 million during the financing round. The company has already raised about $55 million in funding.
Twitter hasn’t immediately responded to requests for comment.
In February, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced in a blog post that his company raised approximately $35 million in a Series C round of funding led by Benchmark and Institutional Venture Partners. At the time, it was reported that Twitter’s valuation for the round was about $250 million. Assuming that both reports are true, Twitter is contending that it’s now worth four times as much as it was just seven months ago.
Of course, determining the real value of a company is a subjective practice. And most times, those figures change rapidly as economic factors impact the company’s operation.
Twitter, which has yet to turn a profit, still hasn’t implemented a profit-making business model. That could have a major impact on its valuation, regardless of the figure.
That said, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an interview with VentureBeat last month that his company will implement a revenue model by the end of the year. He wouldn’t dig too deep into details, but he did say it would incorporate paid accounts for businesses that want to use the platform for marketing and customer relations.
But just how those paid accounts will impact Twitter’s growing user base is up for debate. Will companies go elsewhere to promote their brands? Will they pay Twitter’s fees? All that can impact the company’s real value.
So as Twitter possibly heads into another round of funding, it’s important to remember that valuations are fluid numbers that are easily changed. It’s also important to note that so far, Twitter hasn’t confirmed that $1 billion valuation. So maintain some skepticism, as we do, until we hear from Twitter.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10355207-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in Communication, Internet, Twitter | 
Tags: $1 billion, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, fund raiser, Twitter | 
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Wi-Fi flowers sprouting across U.S.
SAN FRANCISCO–A pair of Los Angeles artists have teamed up with Toyota on an usually functional art project: a set of large, colorful flowers that have been providing free Wi-Fi and power outlets in public places around the country.
Currently on display in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens, the flowers–the creation of a company called Poetic Kinetics and its principals, Patrick Shearn and Cynthia Washburn–are part of a campaign for Toyota’s newest generation Prius.
Brightly colored by day and lit up with LEDs at night, the flowers have been on tour around the country for several weeks. According to John Lisko, the executive communications director for Saatchi & Saatchi, Toyota’s ad agency on the project, the flowers have gone through Boston, New York, Chicago, Seattle and will shortly be departing for Los Angeles.
The Wi-Fi flowers are lit up at night, and provide free Internet connectivity as well as power outlets to plug cell phones or laptops in to.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)
Inspired, at least in part, by a set of giant, mobile flowers Shearn built for Burning Man in 2005 and 2006, Toyota commissioned the project to reflect the theme of the new Prius: Harmony between man, nature and machine.
Run on solar power, the flowers pull in an Internet signal via a 3G network, explained Washburn, and then convert it to Wi-Fi which covers a radius of about 200 feet around each flower.
For now, the project is no more than temporary art. But Lisko said that Toyota is “thinking through” the possibility of providing permanent versions, particularly because, he said, the public feedback has been so strongly positive.
Designed for Burning Man 2005 and 2006, these two art cars, a flower and a venus fly trap, were among the most popular pieces at Burning Man.
Source :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10354821-52.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in Communication, Internet, wi-fi, wireless |
Tags: art, Toyota, Wi-Fi flowers |
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Google acquires ReCaptcha as book scanning aid
With the ReCaptcha acquisition, Google can improve security on its sites and make its book scanning project smarter.
(Credit: Google)
Google has acquired ReCaptcha, one of those companies behind the distorted text boxes at the bottom of many Web site sign-in pages.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Google plans to use ReCaptcha’s technology both as a security measure within certain Google sites and to make its massive book-scanning project a little smarter, the company said in a blog post. ReCaptcha is an offshoot of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, and puts a twist on the traditional captcha: a string of letters in squiggly text meant to confuse spam bots and other nonhuman Web pests.
The idea behind a captcha is to confuse a computer, but computers are also confused by some words written in fonts used long ago. ReCaptcha offers two words, one of which is a captcha it already knows, and one of which is a word it doesn’t know. The thinking is that if you get the first word right, you’re likely a human and you’re also probably going to get the second one right.
It can then pool all the answers for the second word and declare with a reasonable amount of certainty that the second word is what most people think it is, thereby updating the vocabulary of participating book scanners. This is of obvious interest to Google, currently bent on scanning as many books as it can find.
Source :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10354717-265.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Snake Discovered With A Leg
A woman in China has found a snake with a single leg and a clawed foot crawling across her bedroom wall.
“I woke up and heard a strange scratching sound. I turned on the light and saw this monster working its way along the wall using his claw,” 66 year old Duan Qiongxiu told the Delfi.
Duan was so terrified by the bizarre creature she quickly killed it using the heel of a shoe and then preserved it in a jar of alcohol. The 40cm long reptile is now being studied by scientists at the West Normal University in Nanchang.
http://www.themorningstarr.co.uk/2009/09/14/snake-discovered-with-a-leg/