10.31.06
Posted in Tech From The Net at 6:17 pm by Lee
We just received confirmation that Condé Nast, owner of Wired and other magazines/websites, acquired Boston-based Reddit earlier this morning, and will make the announcement later today. The price is not being disclosed.
All four reddit employees will relocate from Boston to Wired’s San Francisco office and become part of Wired Digital. Reddit, founded and funded in 2005, is a YCombinator company (see our interview with YCombinator founder Paul Graham here). The two original founders are Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, and they were later joined by Christopher Slowe and Aaron Swartz.
Reddit is a social news site that has always played second fiddle to Digg, although Reddit does have an active and loyal userbase. Users praise Reddit for having a very quick load time and no advertising. Like Digg, news stories on Reddit are submitted by users, and other users vote up or down on the story. When it gets enought “up” votes, the story appears on the home page.Wired will leave Reddit as a standalone site, and also integrate it into Condé Nast web properties.
Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Breaking News: Condé Nast/Wired Acquires Reddit
With this acquisation taking place and rumours surrounding digg, could digg be the next to go? I’m very surprised that they have been acquired before digg as I never particularly liked the site, but perhaps the price was more inviting.
technorati tags:reddit, web 2.0, digg, acquisition
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Posted in Theme Parks at 5:40 pm by Lee
After the inaugural Adrenaline Week last year, the park are repeating the event from tomorrow onwards.
14 rides will be open to guests: Nemesis, Air, Oblivion, Rita, Spinball Whizzer, Corkscrew, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Driving School, Ripsaw, The Blade, Duel, Enterprise, Frog Hopper and Gallopers Carousel.
The event will run from tomorrow until Sunday 5th November. The park will open between 12pm and 6pm, at a reduced price of £12 for adults and £5 for children.
It’s an excellent time to head to the park, as there are often no queues. And with all the major roller coasters and other rides open, it represents extremely good value for money. Plus, with the clocks having gone back today, it means you can ride the rides in the dark too.It’s also one last chance to ride the rides before the park closes for the winter.
Alton Towers Almanac: News: Adrenaline Week 2006 Begins
As mentioned in the article, its definately good value for money as in the peak season when paying the full amount, you’ll be lucky to be able to get on more than about 8 rides! It’s a shame I have college, otherwise being only a couple of hours away, I may have tried to talk a a few friends into heading down there.
technorati tags:alton towers, theme park, adrenaline
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Posted in Theme Parks at 5:28 pm by Lee
The Runaway Mine Train may get a makeover before it reopens in 2007.
It’s been rumoured that the ride, which has been closed for the past few months following a crash which injured several people, will be upgraded during the coming closed season.
Possible changes might involve speakers on the train itself, as seen on Rock N’ Rollercoaster at Disney Studios in Paris.
At this stage these are just rumours, so it may not happen – but if they go ahead it will be interesting to see how well the modified theme fits in with the existing one.
Alton Towers Almanac: News: Runaway Retheme?
It would be nice to see a slightly changed ride here and may help with people’s confidence with going on the ride if they feel it is changed.
technorati tags:alton towers, theme parks, rollercoaster, mine train
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Posted in Tech From The Net at 5:18 pm by Lee
More than one in five workers are tuning out of the workplace by listening to iPods and similar devices at their desks.
The increasing popularity of digital music players has led 30 per cent of British firms to ban them, according to a survey published yesterday.
It found that 22 per cent of employees used their MP3 music player for up to three hours a day in offices where listening to music has become a way of shutting out colleagues in open-plan areas.
Banking and legal firms were the least tolerant of iPods, while companies in the traditionally relaxed marketing and media sector were the most “iPod friendly”.
The research, by the design company Woods Bagot, also claimed that a wedge was being driven between older members of staff and younger workers from the so-called “iPod” generation.
read more | digg story
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Posted in Tech From The Net at 4:52 pm by Lee
Now, with the launch of the PlayStation 3 and Wii just a few weeks away, Xbox 360 gamers are in anticipation of a major update to Xbox Live, scheduled for some time in November.
Microsoft hopes that the changes will boost interest in the Xbox Live service, especially with Sony’s PlayStation 3 just around the corner. Sony has said that their online service will not require a monthly charge, which should put pressure on Microsoft to improve their service. Sony’s approach is to give the service away for free but then charge for more types of transactions for game (and other media) content while online—for example the infamous Gran Turismo pay-per-car model. Microsoft is sticking with its “Points” system for online transactions, where the player purchases points from Microsoft and then spends them on game rewards, whereas Sony is planning on making all online transactions display their real-world cost.
read more | digg story
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Posted in Tech From The Net at 4:51 pm by Lee
Christopher Soghoian, who created the Fake Boarding Pass Generator website, claims to have been visited by FBI agents this afternoon at his home in Bloomington, Indiana, according to a security researcher with whom he was instant-messaging at the time.This news comes just hours after Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) called for Soghoian’s arrest, and for the takedown of his website, which generates phony Northwest Airlines boarding passes to illustrate an airline security weakness documented on the ‘net since 2003.Calls and emails I made to the 24-year-old computer science student after learning of the reported FBI visit were not returned. An iChat transcript provided to BoingBoing shows Soghoian claimed the FBI was at his door between 345 and 350pm PST. He stopped responding to incoming IM messages at that time, and has not responded to other incoming messages since.FBI special agent Wendy Osborne declined to confirm whether Soghoian had been visited or if an investigation was taking place, citing FBI policy, but said “We will confirm that he has not been arrested.”
Boing Boing: Fake boarding pass guy reports he was visited by FBI
technorati tags:boarding pass, security, airport
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Posted in Tech From The Net at 4:25 pm by Lee
The growing popularity of online video has caught the attention of malicious hackers and hi-tech criminals.
Security firms are reporting more and more instances of booby-trapped Windows codecs – file compressors – required to play some video formats.
Some of the codecs let users play types of net-based video, but also have spyware and adware wrapped inside.
Others, say experts, are outright fakes that just want to infect victims with data-stealing programs.
read more | digg story
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Posted in Tech From The Net at 4:18 pm by Lee
While the launch of Brightcove has garnered no shortage of attention today, it wasn’t the only important video news of the day. Google’s first “Sponsored Video” had its debut as well. Titled The Domino Effect, it’s Diet Coke and Mentos part II from the guys in white lab coats – EepyBird. Sponsored of course by Coca Cola and Mentos. What portion of the ad money goes to the video creators hasn’t been disclosed.
The original Diet Coke and Mentos video that the pair made was much more entertaining and brought them a reported $35,000 when they posted that video on Revver. Reeling in viral video stars with promises of revenue sharing has been Revver’s strategy – apparently they got beat at their own game when EepyBird got this Coke, Mentos and Google deal.
The official Google Blog said today that this was just the first of what they hoped would be many Sponsored Videos. This is not a long tail approach that’s being taken so far to monetize Google Video content. People interested in participating in the Sponsored Video program are directed to a Google Video page that says it is for publishers with more than 1000 hours of video available. The advertising on the EepyBird video is a very produced post-roll. This isn’t massive upload of user generated video content with AdSense wrapped around it. Perhaps that will be the roll of YouTube and Google Video will be for relatively high-brow, formally produced video footage.
Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Google Video Goes High Brow with Revenue Split
technorati tags:google, video, coke, mentos
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10.13.06
Posted in Tech From The Net at 8:59 pm by Lee
It’s not long now till we will see the wii on our shelves. See some videos of the wii remote in action.
read more | digg story
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10.11.06
Posted in Tech From The Net at 6:55 pm by Lee
The popular online to do list, remember the milk, has turned one year old. Has some interesting stats on the service.
Wow! It’s hard to believe that it’s been a whole year since we launched Remember The Milk.
We’d like to say a huge thank you to all of our wonderful users (there are over 100,000 of you now!). Your valuable feedback has helped us to continually improve our service over the past year — thanks for all your support.
read more | digg story
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