Techkicker.com

Universal Check-in App Confirmed: Brightkite’s Stealth Service

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:14:00 +0000

We write this for you, the tired, the weak and the weary, the dogged attendees of the South By South West festival in Austin this weekend. We know that you’re exhausted, but it’s not from the booze, the parties or the product pitches – it’s the endless location based check-ins

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Universal Check-in App Confirmed: Brightkite’s Stealth Service

Dell introduces $339 G2410H 24-inch 1080p LCD monitor, we go hands-on

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:59:00 +0000

Just over a year ago, Dell pushed out its latest and greatest 24-incher, the energy-sipping G2410 . Today, the Round Rock powerhouse has introduced that very unit’s successor (complete with a height adjustable stand), the G2410H

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Dell introduces $339 G2410H 24-inch 1080p LCD monitor, we go hands-on

Another optical wireless experiment shows us that LEDs will beam your future downloads

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:49:00 +0000

Beaming data with light is hardly a new thing , but lately we’ve seen a number of attempts at making it rather more usable and, more interesting, rather more speedy. We’re starting to get the feeling that those maybe/maybe not dangerous microwave-based systems have had their days numbered. The latest to beam bits with blinkenlights is a team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications in Germany, which will be showing its stuff at the always happenin’ Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition in two weeks.

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Another optical wireless experiment shows us that LEDs will beam your future downloads

Google Takes Small Steps for Buzz, Points to Big Solutions for Social Networking

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:15:04 +0000

Buzz , Google’s controversial attempt to unseat Facebook as the most mainstream of social activity stream readers, just made some much-needed changes that Facebook could learn from as well. Buzz users now have more granular control over what social interactions with content trigger an email sent to their email inboxes and explicit explanations for why each piece of content was sent by email to them.

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Google Takes Small Steps for Buzz, Points to Big Solutions for Social Networking

Small Business Web Directory Launches at SXSW

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:30:00 +0000

Upon first glance we were skeptical. Generally when someone says they’re launching a business directory it’s an SEO play with little value to users. Nevertheless, the small business web directory is a pleasant surprise.

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Small Business Web Directory Launches at SXSW

SXSW: Comic Bill Hicks Posthumously Rocks Austin

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:27:00 +0000

The North American premiere of American: The Bill Hicks Story delivers a biting dose of the late, great stand-up's routines. But that's just the tip of the iceberg: Fans who've memorized every word will dig the documentary's inventive animation sequences

Week in Apple: iPad day looms, Mac gamers rejoice, and more

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:00:00 +0000

As St. Patrick’s Day draws near, Apple fans are counting themselves among the lucky

Engadget Podcast 187 – 03.13.2010

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:00:00 +0000

How many SDK’s does it take to screw in a light bulb? You won’t find the answer in this week’s leaky edition of the Engadget Podcast Show, but you will get an exclusive chance to peer into the future of Paul Miller’s voiceover career

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Engadget Podcast 187 – 03.13.2010

In Pictures: GDC 2010, Day 2

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:50:00 +0000

Loyd's second day on the floor of GDC 2010 comes back to us in the form of a picture story.

TomTom iPhone app hits 1.3, gains real-time traffic and Google local search

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:22:00 +0000

Here lately, Navigon has been crushing it on the iPhone GPS front. Every couple of weeks, it seems that MobileNavigator is getting yet another fantastic update, all while TomTom’s lackluster offering hangs back in the land of complacency. Thankfully for us all, the outfit has just pushed out the v1.3 update, which adds real-time traffic (an unfortunate $19.99 add-on), Google local search, updated roadways, automatic music fading between text-to-speech instructions and the ability to add locations from other apps and websites.

Detect Duplicate Images With AntiDupl.net

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:11:06 +0000

If you store images on your computer chance is that you eventually encounter duplicate images. This can be because some have been downloaded from multiple locations, in batch where it was not enough time to check the pictures before downloading them or because of copying and moving them around on the computer system. A manual control of all images is not likely to yield the desired results, especially if the image count is higher than a few hundreds images

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Detect Duplicate Images With AntiDupl.net

Privacy Is Not Dead: Danah Boyd Talks About Privacy at SXSW

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:00:40 +0000

During today’s SXSW keynote , social media research Danah Boyd , who works for Microsoft Research New England and is a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, talked about online privacy. Specifically, she focused on how users can navigate issues around online privacy and how developers can help them to do so. Sponsor Boyd, who has researched how mainstream users use social media for the last couple of years, argued that developers have to focus on questions about privacy and publicity as they use and develop these new applications and experiences

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Privacy Is Not Dead: Danah Boyd Talks About Privacy at SXSW

What type of phone should a George Costanza buy?

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:00:10 +0000

As luck would have it, I’ll be in the market for a brand-new phone in the coming weeks. Terribly exciting, yes. But there’s a bit of a problem: the two “biggest” phones out there, the iPhone and all those Android-based ones , rub me the wrong way.

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What type of phone should a George Costanza buy?

Boo Hoo! SimplifyMedia dropping products and changing direction

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Multimedia , Internet Tools , iTunes , iPhone , Music The problem is, we just don’t know where they’re going. In a Saturday blog post, the company announced it is “…taking a new direction” and won’t be offering their current apps to new users

SXSW: Dynamo Takes on YouTube for Indie Film Rentals

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:51:00 +0000

Promising a mix of revenue and flexibility, the startup will offer independent filmmakers a direct route to movie fans.

Quick Look At The T-Mobile HTC HD2

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:37:35 +0000

You guys asked, and we delivered. Yup, that’s right, we’ve got some more exclusive T-Mobile HTC HD2 goodness.

Dead iPad battery? Never mind replacing it, Apple just sends another iPad for $99

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:24:00 +0000

Whoa, Nelly! Isn’t this something? Apple has just posted details on its iPad battery replacement service, which is really not a battery replacement service at all

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Dead iPad battery? Never mind replacing it, Apple just sends another iPad for $99

Graveck Discusses Using the Mac Exclusively for Game Development

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:23:06 +0000

While at the Unity booth, we ran into a few of the developers at Graveck games. You may be familiar with one of their popular iPhone games, Skee-ball. It hit the #1 paid apps spot during the holidays and is still hanging out in the top paid apps list.

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Graveck Discusses Using the Mac Exclusively for Game Development

Get to know Linux: shutdown, reboot, startx

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:15:45 +0000

If you use Linux long enough you are going to come face to face with a situation where you are in a GUI-less log in and you’re either going to know what to do or you are not. If you don’t know what to do, you will find yourself in a bit of a bind. You might find yourself face-to-face with a GUI-less server or have to reboot a machine remotely

Week in tech: ad blocking, whitelisting, and privacy

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:00:00 +0000

The biggest story this past week on Ars was ad-blocking. You may not have realized it, but blocking ads truly hurts the websites you visit

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Week in tech: ad blocking, whitelisting, and privacy

ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 13 March 2010

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:00:00 +0000

It’s SXSW weekend so you may be pretty burnt out on conferences – or just sick and tired of hearing about them – but if you’re in New York City this week, don’t miss what’s sure to be a profound and fascinating A Historic Conversation in NYC: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey & Richard MacManus On March 15, at the prestigious Paley Center in New York City, a conversation will take place between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei , Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey , and ReadWriteWeb’s Richard MacManus , ReadWriteWeb founder and editor in chief. The moderator will be Orville Schell , the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change.

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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 13 March 2010

BlackBerry Slider undergoes further undercover inspection, side shots emerge

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:29:00 +0000

We’re still no closer to finding out whether this is the next iteration of the Bold, Storm or some other BlackBerry line, but the unofficially coined BlackBerry Slider continues to pique our interest. Here in the third round of spy shots , we’re seeing the elusive RIM-branded device from a few new angles, namely a round of side shots and a side-by-side with Curve 8900.

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BlackBerry Slider undergoes further undercover inspection, side shots emerge

Double The Pleasure, Double The Fun

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:09:10 +0000

Well folks, it looks like T-Mobile Retail Stores will be offering yet another Buy One Get One Free (BOGO) smartphone promotion. Beginning March 15 through March 31 , all Even More postpaid customers on a 2-year service agreement with a $30 Unlimited Web feature will be offered a smartphone of equal or lesser value for free when they activate a second line of service and $30 Unlimited Web feature. In addition, the upcoming T-Mobile HTC HD2 is included as an eligible smartphone in the BOGO promotion. Hit the jump for the full details and a list of eligible smartphones

Add Shortcuts To Google Search To Search Faster

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 15:01:08 +0000

Most Internet users use the Google search engine when they need to search for something online. The results are usually pretty good but there are occasions where the results need to be refined to find the information the web user is looking for.

Google ‘99.9%’ Sure To Shut China Search Engine: Report

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:41:00 +0000

Talks with China over censorship have reached an apparent impasse and Google, the world's largest search engine, is now "99.9 percent" certain to shut its Chinese search engine, the Financial Times reports.

Ceton’s quad CableCARD tuner for Media Center available for pre-order

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:23:00 +0000

That’s right, you can now reserve your place in line to be the first to record four HD cable shows at once on your Windows 7 Media Center . The bad news is that ship date for the InfiniTV 4 is now May 31st. Ceton wasn’t willing to share a specific reason for the 60 day delay, but we suspect CableLabs is to blame — Ceton refuted this and insisted CableLabs has been very helpful, but we don’t buy it

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Ceton’s quad CableCARD tuner for Media Center available for pre-order

Week in gaming: Ubisoft DRM, PlayStation Move, and God of War III

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Those playing Assassin’s Creed 2 on the PC got a rude reminder of DRM’s pitfall s when the servers that authenticate the game went down. Many complained on the company’s official forum, and tempers ran hot

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Week in gaming: Ubisoft DRM, PlayStation Move, and God of War III

GDC 2010: Civilization V probably Mac-bound (eventually)

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Gaming , Software I’ve been working like crazy for TUAW here at GDC 2010 (and there’s a lot more coverage yet to come), but I did take a little time for myself this afternoon and go see the demo that Firaxis is showing off here of this fall’s Civilization V . The latest and greatest Civ is quite different from the past iterations. As you can see in the above photo, the squares have become hexes for the first time ever, units will no longer stack (I know!), and culture will grow only as you pay gold to grow it, one hex at a time.

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GDC 2010: Civilization V probably Mac-bound (eventually)

Lian Li’s PC-T1R Spider case crawls towards a release

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:42:00 +0000

Custom computer cases that look like spiders aren’t generally the sort of thing that are available to public, but Lian Li’s new PC-T1R case is one big exception to the rule, and it’s now edged a bit closer to a release. Previously only seen in a teaser video , a nearly final version of the case has now landed in the hands of the folks at techPowerUp , who have provided us with our first hands-on look at it

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Lian Li’s PC-T1R Spider case crawls towards a release

What Should I Read Next Suggests Books To Read

Techkicker — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:33:42 +0000

How do you decide what to read and what not to read? The decision might be influenced by past books that have been read (e.g. from the same author or same topic), friend, colleague or magazine recommendations, advertisements, related books that are shown on shopping sites or by simply stumbling upon interesting books online or in a book store.