Friday, October 2, 2009

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Avatar Toys Go Augmented Reality, Courtesy Of Mattel And Total Immersion Top
This is a crazy fun demo of the new Avatar toys by Mattel. Each toy includes a little card that is scannable via webcam and creates an on-screen augmented reality robot or character. While this is old hat for most of us, Mattel is quite proud of being ahead of the curve and for good reason. You can see more demos at AvatarItag.com . Total Immersion made the technology and even added a little “button” system to the cards. When you touch a spot on the card, the onscreen character pulls a knife, shoots a gun, or recounts part of the story. The added information and data will change over time, up to the release of the movie on December 18. Obviously this requires a computer and a patient kid but it’s still an exciting addition to an already interesting movie. We’ll have some of these toys in next week and we’ll stage mock battles for you all. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could put two cards on the table at once and have them fight? OMG! Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Microsoft's Silverlight Helps Winchester Sell Silver Bullets Top
Here’s a bizarre use for Microsoft's "Flash-killer" Silverlight—a ballistics calculator. Yes, Silverlight is being used to build an application that lets shooting and hunting enthusiasts “customize shooting conditions” while comparing Winchester-made bullets. Winchester’s Ballistics Calculator lets gun users choose their type of ammunition and then compare up to five different bullet types with charts and graphs. You can enter specific conditions like wind speed and outside temperature, maximum range, direction, speed and height. The application will then display charts and graphs that visually lay out the point of impact, drop and trajectory of each type of bullet. According to Microsoft, Winchester chose Silverlight because it is a “cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in” that allowed the ballistics maker to create an app that doesn’t have to be downloaded (but you have to download Silverlight). Silverlight 3 launched this past summer, with the hopes of making inroads against its main competitor Adobe Flash. It looks like Microsoft is going after gun enthusiasts first. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Video: 3.5% Of Google Wave Explained Top
So now that some of you have your Google Wave invites (I know not all of you, I don’t even have one for my personal account yet, if it’s any consolation), and we’ve gotten some of that inevitable backlash out of our system, it’s time to figure out just what Google Wave is. And more importantly, what it will be used for. I tried to answer that on TV the other day, but the truth is that as a new communication medium, it’s hard to describe exactly what Wave is. It’s kind of like email meets instant messaging meets real-time sharing and collaboration, but even that description is lacking. Eventually, if Wave takes off, it’s probably one of those things that will just be understood for being what it is, even if no one can really describe it by relating it to something else. That said, the video below does a pretty good job explaining a potential use case for Wave. And what’s most impressive is that this video wasn’t created by Google, but rather by a third-party, Epipheo Studios . If you have no idea why you would want to use Wave (at least 3.5% of it), or what you could use it for, this is worth a watch. [thanks Ben] Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Yahoo Kills Xoopit For Gmail Top
Yahoo is killing support for a popular Gmail plug-in from Xoopit , a startup it acquired in July . An email was sent out today to Xoopit users on Gmail tited, “Xoopit for Gmail is closing. Here’s the info you’ll need.” It details different ways users can export their files, photos, videos, and other attachments which may be stored on the service. From the email: We will be officially turning off Xoopit for Gmail on November 13, 2009, to focus our efforts on making My Photos for Yahoo! Mail an amazing product and bring those features to all Yahoo! Mail users. Given our focus, we decided we cannot adequately support the Xoopit for Gmail product and give you a great experience in the future. Here are some details to guide you through this transition. Xoopit is a handy email plug-in that works with both Gmail and Yahoo Mail, where it powers the My Photos feature. In Gmail, it creates a strip across the top which shows you images of all recent attachments, making it possible to visually scan email for their contents instead of by subject lines. You can also click on the Xoopit thumbnail strip so that it takes over the whole screen with a grid of photos, images,videos, and docs. Back in July when Yahoo bought Xoopit, we wondered why Google didn’t buy it instead. Now at least we know why Yahoo bought it—to take it away from Google (and it’ also a really cool feature). Yahoo certainly has the resources to keep supporting the Gmail plug-in, which is very popular Shutting off support is a small gesture, but it shows that Yahoo is starting to play for keeps. And it doesn’t want to share its toys with Google, despite all of that talk about how open it is. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Easy Does It: Google Friend Connect One-Ups Facebook Connect's Install Wizard Top
The battle over your online identity rages on. Google Friend Connect, the search giant’s platform that lets you accept Google and OpenID accounts on your site, has just made implementing the service about as easy as it could be. And it did it exactly two days after Facebook released its own streamlined install process for Facebook Connect. Except Google’s is better. Up until now the install process for Google Friend Connect hasn’t been too difficult — the site walked you through a handful of steps, asked you to upload two files via FTP to your webserver, and you were done. Up until very recently Facebook Connect’s install process was significantly more confusing, but two days ago they updated it to closely match Google’s flow (though you only have to upload one file instead of two). Today Google has managed to one-up Facebook once more: Friend Connect’s new install flow doesn’t require any file uploads, which opens the door to an entirely new set of users. Now all you need to do to implement Google Friend Connect on your site is visit this page , enter your site’s name and URL, and you’re done. Google will present you with a gallery of HTML widgets that you can copy and paste into your site. Aside from making things easier, this opens the door to a new set of users. Namely, people who either don’t know how to use FTP, or who run their sites through hosted services that don’t grant FTP access — and there are a lot of them. Looking at raw numbers, Google Friend Connect appears at first glance to be besting Facebook Connect by a large margin: Google reports over 5 million sites using Friend Connect, while Facebook Connect has around 15,000 . But those figures are misleading. In terms of mind-share, Facebook Connect is running circles around Google Friend Connect — just look at how many mainstream sites use Facebook Connect but not Google. Facebook has made it clear that it’s trying to attract more small sites that don’t have development teams, so don’t be surprised if it strikes back with its own super-streamlined install process in the next few weeks. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google Fixes That Pesky "Let's Stop Facebook's Growth In India" Bug Top
As expected , Google is calling new feature that blocked users from exporting their Orkut contacts a “bug.” An update today on the Data Liberation Blog (the group we specifically called out last night when wondering what was going on) notes that while Google was in the process of “adding additional security measures to Orkut Friends Export” it inadvertently broke the entire functionality. If that’s actually the case, here’s what I love about this: 1) Google says it was trying to add security features to improve Okrut Friends Export, yet it apparently didn’t bother to test the functionality after adding said feature. If they had, they would have immediately realized it was broken, like so many users did immediately. Google is a company meticulous about its testing of things, so that seems a bit odd. 2) The fact that Google would add additional security measures immediately following the revelation that Facebook had a tool it was promoting in India to allow users to easily import their Orkut friends is interesting. And by “interesting,” I mean suspicious. Does Facebook’s importing tool still work? Anyone in India, feel free to let us know in the comment. I’m not saying this wasn’t, in fact, a bug. I’m just saying that the timing of said bug was interesting to say the least. And it certainly doesn’t seem like the usually careful Google cared very much about creating a bug that stopped the hemorrhaging of its Orkut users over to Facebook in India. Sometimes “bugs” are convenient until you get called out on them. Just sayin’. [photo: flickr/ the consumerist ] Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 

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