Evsion Lab

Hey Twitter I Have A Few Questions Too

Posted by Michael Arrington under 1

Lately Twitter has been cleaning house, raising money, doing interviews and actually talking to users. In a blog post last week they did a Q&A session, directly answering questions about Twitter’s architecture.

So I have a couple of questions, too, based on a couple of discussions I’ve had with people who say they’ve seen Twitter’s architecture.

• Is it true that you only have a single master MySQL server running replication to two slaves, and the architecture doesn’t auto-switch to a hot backup when the master goes down?
• Do you really have a grand total of three physical database machines that are POWERING ALL OF TWITTER?
• Is it true that the only way you can keep Twitter alive is to have somebody sit there and watch it constantly, and then manually switch databases over and re-build when one of the slaves fail?
• Is that why most of your major outages can be traced to periods of time when former Chief Architect/server watcher Blaine Cook wasn’t there to sit and monitor the system?
• Given the record-beating outages Twitter saw in May after Cook was dismissed, is anyone there capable of keeping Twitter live?
• How long will it be until you are able to undo the damage Cook has caused to Twitter and the community?

Update: Twitter continues to be annoyingly and constructively responsive to criticism. They respond to this post here. Kind of takes the air out of the balloon when you can’t get them riled up.

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FreeHand puts a pocket on your wrist, L on your forehead

Posted by Darren Murph under 1

Filed under: Wearables

This day and age, there's really no excuse to have too little room in your average pair of cargo shorts for all the gadgets needed in a day. Convergence and shrinking PCBs have left us with do-it-all handhelds that can fit in the rear pockets of size 2 jeans on a size 4 gal, so really, you have exactly zero reasons to actually buy that abomination pictured above. If you must know, the FreeHand is a wearable neoprene pocket that keeps your keys, flash drives, RSA token and chump change within easy reach, and if you're lucky, you may be able to convince the boss it's being worn to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. Folks who haven't listened to a word we just said can ignite a Jackson right now -- or spend $19.95 on this, same difference.

[Via Coolest-Gadgets]

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LaterLoop’s New Airplane Mode: Zipped Bookmarks On The Fly

Posted by Paul Glazowski under 1

It was only ten days ago that Mashable first offered a brief peek into LaterLoop, a bookmarking service created by the Greg Hochmuth, founder of Mento and zoo-m.com, which offers easy online/offline access to pages saved for later reading or referral through the use of a FireFox add-on. Users can also integrate the service with an devices called ScrapBook, or even employ a very basic bookmarklet, sans extensions. If you happen to hold a Google account, you can literally be complete new to LaterLoop and begin bookmarking in seconds.

Today we receive word from the company, featured this past week at the Google I/O conference, that it has launched yet another option to users, something it is calling Airplane Mode. Simply put, users can download bookmarks in three varieties - 30 newest, 30 oldest, or 30 shuffled - as a zip file. Once stored locally, users can open the package, click on the front-end HTML page, and and start browsing.

A word of warning. Some pages may prove visually accurate, while the formats of others are horrendously botched. We suggest sticking to fairly simple sites, where text fonts are reasonably large-sized. We tested pages from The New York Times, Wired.com, and Digg. The NYT went into zip format rather nicely (be sure to save from URLs that show stories as a single page, and not those divided into two or more), while the Wired link didn’t fare quite so well when pressed down into Airplane Mode. If you don’t mind stories delivered in bareboned, Google cache style, reading Digg stories and comments won’t bother you terribly.

LaterLoop does note on its website that the new feature is “still experimental and in testing,” so one would gather that formatting issues will soon be remedied. Let us know how your downloads come out.

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Computer designed to read thoughts from brain scans

Posted by Darren Murph under 1

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Frighteningly enough, this isn't the first (or second) time that we've seen scientists pat themselves on the back for creating a mind-reading machine, but a dedicated team from Carnegie Mellon has just announced a computer that "has been trained to read people's minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words." In a completely unsurprising move, gurus familiar with the development are suggesting that the breakthrough could be used to better understand how the brain organizes knowledge, and eventually, treat language disorders and learning disabilities more effectively. That's all gravy from here, but when this stuff starts passing as evidence in court, you'll know it's time to seriously investigate a relocation to Mars.

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SongCast Now Serving Indie Music To Five Top Web Outlets

Posted by Paul Glazowski under 1

Updated (Bottom): If you’re part of the indie music scene, you’re often likely to hear that one of the best ways to get your digital media out to the virtual shelves of stores on the Web without much initial investment in distribution is to seek the services of CD Baby. The halfway house built to serve the long tail of the musical landscape represents a great many groups and solo artists and sells albums and singles through venues like iTunes, eMusic, Napster, and Rhapsody. All it requires is a $35 setup fee, plus 9% of any earnings from digital downloads. (CD Baby, as its name suggests, began its life selling CDs to various shops, which it continues to do and takes $4 per disc sold.)

Now, however, there’s a new distributor of digital downloads in the running. Called SongCast, it promises to deliver artists’ songs to a quintet of services. Indeed, that clearly results in far fewer consumer channels than are available through CD Baby. Yet it seems that SongCast is offering a connection to one reseller in particular that CD Baby does not list : AmazonMP3.

Of course, many independent musicians may find that CD Baby’s ties with iTunes plenty active. And some many even see SongCast’s limited reach as inhibitive, and thus not worth paying a $25 setup fee and a $5.99 monthly fee. (SongCast artists purportedly maintain 100% of royalties, and the service asks nothing for a UPC code, which CD Baby does to the tune of $20.)

But if AmazonMP3 is the primary market one is looking to serve more than any other, SongCast may be worth one’s serious consideration. It’s not a especially cheap option, relative to CD Baby. And music may not be served to dozens of unique channels. But each middleman has his strength(s). And competition has no downsides in the sales arena.

Update: Thanks to Mashable readers Ryan and Jamie for refreshing our memory about Tunecore, another player in the digital music distribution space.

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Giant bunny formed from GPS path

Posted by Darren Murph under 1

Filed under: GPS

First things first: considering the huge amount of press garnered by a recent position art scam, this here could indeed be just another spoof to get your hopes up. That being said, we’re pretty sure no one with any level of decency would do such a vile thing on Easter Sunday, which is precisely when the above bunny was purportedly created from waltzing about with a Magellan GPS and a digital camera. The artist himself admits that what you see above is a slightly cleaned-up version of the actual path, but we’re told that any edits that occurred had no huge bearing on the outcome of the piece. You be the judge.

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Google To Launch Large Scale Geo-Services

Posted by Nik Cubrilovic under 1

Our sister publication Techcrunch UK noticed that a Location services API had been added to Google Gears. The developers behind Gears have been plotting out future API additions for a while, and those plans have included having Geo-data available to mobile app developers (see the spec here). We found out today that Google is backing up their Location API with a large effort to map out cell-phone towers and wifi hotspots, so that a user’s location can be pin-pointed more precisely.

While some cell-phones have an internal GPS, the data is inaccurate indoors and not available on all devices. The other non-GPS method for accurate location data is to use the location of cell towers. Google can store the lat and long of a particular cell tower in their database, and when their software in the future sees that cell tower on a phone, they know exactly where the phone is. To boot-strap the database, both Google and Apple have been using a company called Skyhook, who drive around pin-pointing the location of cell towers. By using this method Google bypasses the need to have deals in place with network providers for positioning data. In addition to cell-phone towers, Google is also mapping out Wifi locations to form a large rogue base station almanac, which is used for both additional accuracy in location calculations, and also to point users to the nearest available access point.

Once the database has been boot-strapped with initial data and launched to developers via an API, users of the service will further refine and improve the service by having devices submit information on towers and signal strength (along with location) back to Google. This means that over time, the service improves itself and will be able to work almost anywhere in the world, regardless of local regulations, network providers or restrictions.

It is expected that the service and associated data will be made available for free to developers using Google Gears (specifically the new Windows Mobile version). For developers of mobile applications, it means that they now have a very accurate way of not only calculating a users position, but also an easy way to pinpoint other locations as a basis for a location-based service. There is also an effort to develop and define a standard API for accessing Location data and services in the browser. As with local browser storage, Google are leading the way here by implementing first and then working with other browser developers on a standard.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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Prototype iControlPad proves itself on video

Posted by Darren Murph under 1

Filed under: Cellphones

Hah, did you really have the nerve to doubt CraigIX? The iPhone gamepad add-on that we heard about just last week is already inching closer to reality, and there's a video to prove it. In the somewhat unexciting clip posted up after the jump, you'll see a PCB mockup of the device doing its thang, though it's quite inelegant in its current form. If you just needed one more something to boost your interest / confidence that this critter was real, you know where to head.

[Via zodttd]

Continue reading Prototype iControlPad proves itself on video

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People Of New York: Shop Today, Because Tomorrow You’re Taxed

Posted by Paul Glazowski under 1

Do you recall that tax bill sent into law in New York State which requires some Internet retail businesses to require customers to fork over some cash and coin? It received the designation of “the Amazon tax” as a result of sheer caliber of business conducted by the online sales giant. Oh, and the fact that Amazon pledged to fight the state on the issue. That raised the profile of the story quite a bit.

Well, the law hasn’t been reversed since it was passed, and it turns out that anyone shopping from within the empire state have a mere eight and a half hours left before the tax is officially enacted. As mentioned by Allen Stern at CenterNetworks, starting June 1st, companies like Amazon and NewEgg will have to levy taxes on customers’ purchases if they opt to continue to have direct or indirect affiliation with New York based entities. Amazon in particular is known quite well as having prolific ties with affiliate sites.

Amazon is not the only Web-based retailer to feel the measure unjust. Overstock has also seen itself fall squarely under the new ruling. It announced two weeks ago that it would cut ties with partner sites based in New York, and, according to Anne Dujmovic of CNET News, announced just this past Friday that it had filed a suit with the New York State Supreme Court against the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, New York tax commissioner Robert Menga, and the state governor. Overstock’s argument falls precisely in line with that of past opponents of the revised tax law. The company’s general counsel, in referencing a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling titled Quill v. North Dakota, said in defense of its case:

“The applicable United States Supreme Court cases on the question of whether the state can collect taxes under these circumstances make it clear that New York cannot constitutionally require Overstock.com to collect these taxes.”

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MSI Wind gets terse pre-release review

Posted by Darren Murph under 1

Filed under: Laptops

It’s pretty tough to wrap your melon around, but MSI’s Wind has not yet officially launched per se. That being said, it has still managed to end up in the hands of quite a few eager subnote lovers, and Laptop Mag is no exception. Shortly after the UK branch of CNET posted up their initial impressions, along comes yet another mini-review to get you even more worked up about June 3rd. Here’s the skinny so far: the screen is amazing, keyboard is as well, the trackpad is simply too cramped and the port assortment is very respectable. All in all, critics were left “seriously impressed,” and they even threw together a video and image gallery for checking out afterwards. Head on over, alright?

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@MarsPhoenix Twitters From Foreign Soil. Sort of.

Posted by Paul Glazowski under 1

There are a number of technologies whose origins could be found in NASA’s history books. But microblogging most definitely is not one of them. Still, the space agency has developed its own little fascination with Twitter, and Veronica McGregor, the news services manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is spending her evenings channeling the Phoenix Mars lander to speak to 10,565-plus followers, 140 characters at a time, according to Kenneth Chang of The New York Times.

What does she - ahem, Phoenix - speak of, you ask? Stuff. Facts. Humorous notes. Anything short and simple, really. Just a few minutes ago this message was delivered:

“Descent thrusters moved the topsoil during landing, uncovering the ice table. The pic was taken for engineers to check my legs, and voila!”

While NASA covers its missions to quite a detailed degree, sharing photos, videos, logs, educational materials for the perusal of just about anyone outside Mission Control, it hasn’t been known to take up “the tweet” in any official or semi-official capacity. Alas, there’s a first time for everything.

@MarsPhoenix has been actively chatting with Twitter folk for some weeks now, well before touchdown on the red planet. Yet, in that time it’s amassed a five-figure following. More interesting, perhaps, it follows nobody and no thing. Zero. Nada. Is this a play at the age-old “lead, don’t follow” mantra? Or is it Phoenix’s polar solitude amid ice, sand, and dust? But hey, distance shouldn’t stop the lander from making friends. We’re a wireless people now. At the very least, the solar-powered sampler should add a little one-two for its fellow Earth-born inhabitants, Spirit and Opportunity.

We at Mashable wouldn’t mind a hookup either, of course. If you’d like to follow what we here on Rock #3 are saying, these are the links.

Mashable Feed + Pete
Adam Ostrow
Adam Hirsch
Alana Taylor
Kristen Nicole
Mark Hopkins
Paul Glazowski
Sean P. Aune
Stan Schroeder
Tamar Weinberg

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Creative’s Vado Pocket Video Cam unboxed on video

Posted by Darren Murph under 1

Filed under: Digital Cameras

There's honestly not a lot of mind-blowing material in the video posted up after the jump, but it definitely delivers as advertised. You see, you've got Creative's Flip Video-combating Vado cheapcorder all wrapped up, and over the course of 317 seconds, it manages to slip outside of its shell and get handled. Initial impressions are dished out too (hint: they're surprisingly positive), so don't skip out on hitting the read link while your cursor is down in the general vicinity.

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YouTube Soon Bound For Bigger Returns? Maybe. It Depends.

Posted by Paul Glazowski under 1

YouTube may be dominating the Web video world in traffic - hugely so - but it hasn’t yet been made into the moneymaking heavyweight its parent company, Google, wishes it to be.

That may be changing, say Quentin Hardy and Evan Hessel of Forbes.com. Though the company - or, more specifically, its proprietor, Google, isn’t one to share numbers as to the its precise revenue stream, the site is purportedly en route to bag $200 million in revenue by the end of the year, and may increased that figure by 75% or more in 2009. That would amount to $350 million. Small change? According to Google’s overall annual returns, yes. Still, as Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt has said in weeks past, one of the company’s primary focuses now is to tap much more heavily the advertising potential of the video site. And the area it undoubtedly recognizes as more financially effective today than any other is premium content laced with in-video advertisements. (eMarketer says industry wide spending on Web video advertisement will reach $1.35bn this year. Google serves a rough 38% of video streams, no other site taking north of 4%, according to comScore. Do the math. Room to grow its bank account? Absolutely.)

So far, however, YouTube hasn’t been met with gratifying critiques of its efforts to present marketing spots within clips, so it cannot satisfy its want and need to make more dough. My own assessment of the reasoning for the collectively negative response given to in-video advertisements is that the size of the distraction relative to the video itself is simply too imposing. The video window is small in and of itself. To diminish the viewing area with an ad overlaid on the bottom third of the clip, regardless of its transparency, is to cause frustration on the part of the viewer. If YouTube were to expand the default dimensions of its window whilst maintaining general site performance, viewers would likely be more accepting of such marketing efforts. What’s more, if Google so chose, premium content providers (television studios and podcasters) could arrange to have pre-roll, mid-roll, and/or post-roll video advertisements shown within the confines of custom pages created for their YouTube based video catalogues, increasing considerably Google’s per-playback net return.

Google is reported to have closely analyzed responses to its in-video advertisements and had found that banner ads displayed in the bottommost portion of the video window proved the most popular of the variety trialled (or least unpopular, depending on one’s perspective), with pre-rolls being the least promising. I’m one to suspect that antipathy for pre-rolls is conditional on both the type and technical quality of content delivered to viewers. If, say, a full 22-minute sitcom from CBS were to be laced with a couple of 15-second advertisements, a la Hulu, and presented in window generously sized, viewers might show to be surprisingly accepting.

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RIM’s BlackBerry 9500 “Thunder” captured on camera?

Posted by Chris Ziegler under 1

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

A retailer taking pre-orders for phones that haven’t even been announced is considered business as usual, but there’s something just a little out of the ordinary with Horizon Wireless’ listing for the alleged touchscreen superphone outta Waterloo, the BlackBerry 9500 “Thunder” — it’s accompanied by a somewhat believable picture of the thing. Extreme blur always adds a healthy dose of credibility (we kid), but more importantly, the picture shows no telltale signs of being a render and looks essentially like what everyone’s expecting it to look like. BlackBerry addicts who’ve been desperately fighting the urge to go to the dark side, consider this your shot of willpower for the day.

[Thanks, Yasim M.]

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RhythmFish concept enables Dory to create trippy visuals

Posted by Darren Murph under 1

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Wait, you did name your guppy Dory, right? Whatever your household fish is named, you can certainly give it a fresh purpose in life with the RhythmFish — if it were more than a mere concept, of course. The setup surrounds your fish with webcams and monitors its movements via sensors in order to translate all of that data and put forth a visual interpretation. In all honestly, it’s probably just some sort of randomizer hooked up to a Windows 95 screen saver, but a boy can dream, can’t he?

[Via OhGizmo]

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Opera Bringing Support For Google’s Gears Utility To Desktop, Mobile

Posted by Paul Glazowski under 1

Though Opera may only see iterations of its mobile browsers maintain a truly popular presence among Web users, while its standard desktop-based client holds a significantly smaller portion of its respective market, the company is pressing forth with development across its entirely lineup. This week marks Opera’s pledge to support Google’s increasingly useful Gears engine, which helps to bridge and synchronize software created for both online and offline use.

While Gears, which recently celebrated its first anniversary in public operation and had its name changed to Gears only, has been available for many months as a desktop offering for Firefox and Internet Explorer users on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms alike, only in early March of this year did Google make Gears available for mobile use. And Opera seems to be wasting little time in capitalizing on that newly available development. The company says it intends to make the next release of Opera Mobile, designated version 9.5, compatible with Gears. Its soon-to-launch desktop offering of Opera 9.5 will provide similar support as well.

Naturally, Opera hopes that developers will see the upcoming Opera Mobile 9.5 browser as further incentive to create applications fitted for use on Symbian- and Windows Mobile-enabled devices installed with the browser. Given Opera’s strong adoption numbers in the handheld space, both for its particularly popular Mini build as well as its increasingly attractive smartphone-specific Mobile provision, it seems sensible to assume a number of engineers of Web applications will find Opera’s newfound support for Gears worthwhile to harness to better serve their own user bases, whether they be at home, in the office, or on the go, and perhaps grow their ranks considerably more as a result.

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