Back in November, at our Realtime CrunchUp event, I sat on the geolocation panel with members of Twitter, Foursquare, SimpleGeo, GeoAPI, Hot Potato, and Google. At one point, I raised the question if location was going to be the next battleground between startups large and small, much like social identity plays (Facebook Connect vs. Google Friend Connect) and status updates (Twitter vs. Facebook). All of the panelists indicated that it wouldn’t be, because they could all get along. How sweet. Sadly, I don’t believe them. I believe they might think that right now, because it’s still very early in the game. But it’s still a game, and people are going to play to win.
I’m sure some of them would counter that because location data is fairly standard right now, and moving easily between services, all of them will win. But that’s not true either. While location, as a whole, will win, there will be individual companies that end up ahead of others in the space. More to the point, there will be one or two services that people will go to for their social location data. That’s what we’re moving towards. And the bigger companies are starting to realize it. That’s why today we saw what may be the first maneuver in an upcoming rush to secure the location landscape, with Twitter snatching up Mixer Labs, the team behind GeoAPI.
Evernote for iPhone [Free, iTunes Link] has received a major update to version 3.2.0, which went live late this evening in the App Store and should be arriving in App Store updates soon. According to our contacts at Evernote, the new app is much faster, with speed improvements in launching, searching, syncing, creating new notes, and browsing.
As TUAW heard during a November interview with Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, the updated app provides local caching and searching. Any note that is created or viewed on the iPhone is cached locally for viewing and searching, even when offline. Premium users can choose to have any or all of the notebooks they’ve created fully downloaded to their devices, once again enabling offline usability. Rich text notes can be converted to plain text for editing, and a copy of the original note is moved into the trash for future recovery.
The drumbeat for HD 3D continues to pick up the pace, and with broadcasters around the globe pushing forward 2010 plans to bring 3D home HDMI has updated the course of its latest 1.4 spec to ensure compatibility between displays and boxes. Quite simply, existing cable and satellite hardware isn’t going to be held to the same requirements as Blu-ray and videogame equipment rocking the 3D sticker and expecting compatibility with displays on the way, since they won’t be passing the same high quality, high bandwidth dual-stream 1080p images anyway. Additionally, some broadcasters are pushing for HDMI to officially support “Top/Bottom” 3D transmissions they plan to use, which sacrifice resolution while saving bandwidth by shoving left/right images into a single frame. While that should add an entirely new angle to the line counting and claims of “HDLite” (get ready for 3DLite) all viewers can do is wait to hear when or if their hardware will get a software upgrade to 3D (like the one we expect will allow the PS3 to play 3D Blu-ray discs) in the months and years to come, once there’s a standard everyone can adhere to of course.
Looks like Amazon has decided to go on holiday vacation early, and invited all of its customers to go along with it. Amazon and Amazon Web Services seem to be down, and people are noticing it.
This is bad news for any companies relying on Amazon’s cloud services. Many startups use Amazon Web Services to host files in the cloud including images and other key content. And it isn’t the first time this has happened (though its competition isn’t much better).
If there is one near universal gripe folks have with the Kindle, it’s the DRM-laden files. It’s no wonder, then, that the thing has been a lightning rod for the “information wants to be free crowd,” almost since the beginning. Sure, we’ve seen Mobipocket, .epub, and .pdf files used on the device, but if you really want to bedevil Bezos the thing to do would be to altogether circumvent the DRM from your Amazon e-books — and it looks like an Israeli hacker named Labba has done just that. For the time being, the hack, which allows you to convert your legally obtained e-books to unencrypted PDF files, is available as a Python script. We’re sure that the process will be streamlined for us civilians soon enough — let’s just hope that it happens before the hole gets plugged and your e-reader auto-updated. This is one way to keep hold of your legally purchased Orwell, eh?
Personal genomics startup 23andMe has recently raised another $14.2 million to close out its $27.8 million Series B round, according to regulatory filings with the SEC. The filing indicates that the new funding is an amendment to the company’s previously reported raise of $11 million in May, which was followed by an additional $2.6 million in June. We’ve reached out to 23andMe to confirm the funding amount, and to also determine if there are any new investors. Update: 23andMe have confirmed that they’ve raised funding, but have not yet confirmed the amount.
The last few months have been rocky for the company. In September, co-founder Linda Avey left 23andMe to start a foundation dedicated to studying Alzheimer’s disease. In late October, the company laid off a substantial chunk of its workforce, but declined to comment on how many people were affected.
This should come as a relief to all you anxiously awaiting your Barnes and Noble Nook pre-orders. We’ve received a statement from Barnes and Noble affirming that all pre-orders which had an original pre-holiday ship date will be fulfilled, and that the rest of the orders will be filled starting in Friday. Here’s the full, reassuring statement:
“We’re happy to report that all customers who pre-ordered nooks and were given a pre-holiday estimated shipping date will be sent their nooks in time to receive them by Christmas. As you know, there’s been an overwhelmingly positive response and unprecedented demand since Barnes & Noble announced its new eBook reader on October 20th. Customer demand continues to be strong and new orders will be fulfilled beginning February 1, 2010. ”
We’ve written about the social city and nightlife mobile app, buzzd, which pulls its data from Twitter and other buzzd users, for a bigger picture of the places that are hot in a given location. The mobile app, which has been available for iPhone and BlackBerry users, is launching an Android app as well as rolling out new versions of its existing smartphone apps.
The buzzd network compiles information from its base of over a half-million users, Twitter, and other real-time sources to provide users with activity updates for almost half a million venues across the United States and Canada. You download the app and it will bring up a list of venues close to you that are currently popular based on people talking about them on Twitter and Buzzd. Using Twitter’s new Geolocation API, the app can even pull the exact locations of your friends on Twitter.
It’s been awhile since Lenovo last updated its IdeaPad line, the S10-2 dropping over the summer, but we’re hearing that the third iteration of the platform is set to be unveiled in the very near future. The model we spied at the FCC last month is confirmed to be the S10-3, possessing Atom N450 (Pine Trail) internals, a 10.1-inch screen, WiFi, 3G, and integrated GPS. More interesting is that there is an S10-3t model coming as well, a convertible tablet version which you can see the underside of above, thanks again to the FCC. It will feature a multitouch screen to make the most of its Windows 7 install, and hopefully won’t be crippled by Starter Edition like another tablet we know.
Sick of Motorola meting out Android firmware updates when it chooses? Trust in The Dude — TheDudesAndroid, to be specific, a user over at ModMyMoto who has posted The Dudes Root for Cliq (following up an earlier and similarly unkempt version for the G1). The install process looks about as complicated as you might expect, so make sure you keep Walter away while you’re re-flashing lest your handset go all nihilistic on ya. At this point it’s just another 1.5 ROM being installed, but the hope is for a 2.1 port coming in the not too distant future. Unless you’re really pining to get full control over your handset we’d go ahead and wait for that version of the Dude to preside.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]