In reality, quite a bit of time has passed since we’ve heard of the next great leap in the (seemingly) never-ending journey towards quantum computing, but we’re incredibly relieved to learn that at least someone is still out there, somewhere, pressing on. An international team of researchers have reportedly shown that they can “control the quantum state of a single electron in a silicon transistor, even putting the electron in two places at once.” Essentially, the team is using tiny semiconductor transistors to “control the state of a quantum system,” but there is still a long ways to go before any of this is meaningful. The crew managed to discover a few things by chance, yet to create a quantum computer, they would need to “position atoms of arsenic (or some other material) in the transistors more reliably.” For those of you way too geeked out, fret not — we’ll let you know when all of this technobabble finally amounts to something.

[Thanks, Chris]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

The short answer is that they want it to fail. There seems to be an underpinning of glee to get to deadpool it, and no one has told them it’s no longer trendy to call podcasting a failure anymore.

The long answer has to do with a lot of factors.  The subject is brought to my attention by Ian Lamont, who’s written another weekend article that takes a hit out on podcasting as an industry due to the failings of a few. In an editorial published today, Ian talks about the black eye podcasting as a whole has recieved as a result of the failure of PodTech to sell for more than half a million.

Just as I predicted at the end of that article, the myopic analysis on the “death of podcasting” is beginning anew. Ian pontificates:

“…[M]y original thesis: Podcasting is failing as a business platform, and has failed to make a mainstream impact […] But even if the stars had stuck around to the end, and the management and board problems were addressed earlier, I have to wonder how well this venture would have done. This was a hyped business built on one of the most hyped technologies of 2005. Once the that faded, reality set in. As I pointed out in my original post, there are a lot of factors that are working against podcasting. Making programs is a labor-intensive process requiring special skills. In addition, there is no AdSense or AdWords equivalents for podcasts — advertising has to be sold, produced, and placed by humans.”

When it comes down to it, though, Ian only has a few points to prop up his diagnosis of podcasting: PodTech more or less failed in the end, podcasting was overhyped and his analysis of a podcasting survey from two years ago shows that there’s no growth in podcasting.

The problem is that his analysis has little basis in reality. Podcasting has evolved a bit since PodTech was founded, and those getting into it now have a much clearer vision of what it means to go about podcasting in a profitable manner. For those with established brands, it isn’t particularly difficult to make a profitable go of it (there are a number folks out there doing that, including us here at Mashable).

Even for those wanting to start from nothing in the business, there are a number of established podcast companies that are out there.  Some of them have some very impressive revenues, and some are squarely profitable. There are even a number of folks outthere doing a full-time living just with indie podcasting alone, many of which we’ve covered here at Mashable.

In case you need to review proof podcasting isn’t dead:

Wizzard has a great 2007, and a superb Q1 2008. In 2007, they grossed over $5 million, and in the first quarter of 2008, they increased revenues by 130%.

Leo Laporte hauls down a chunk of change.  In June, we reported that Leo Laporte landed a $100,000 contract with video streamer Stickam. Leo left us a comment to correct us - it wasn’t a $100k check, as we made it sound, but a revenue sharing agreement that he had hopes would bring down much more than that (this, of course, in addition to all the other money he brings in with his podcasting mini-empire).

BlinkX Hits $60 CPM on Video. Granted it’s a select segment of the market, but showing hard proof that podcasting can be big business is harder to better exemplify elsewhere.

Smartassed Ninja Makes $50,000 in Eight Months. Everyone’s favorite wise-cracking ninja made a nice chunk of change before going on to make the millions with official sponsorship and millions of video views per episode.

Podcasting isn’t dead, it isn’t a failure, and it isn’t impossible to build a business around.  It isn’t necessarily what we thought it was when we first started up with it.  A lot of us early adopters got stars and money signs in our eyes when we first started playing with podcasting.  PodTech did a lot of adapting to the realities of the business, and the VCs ultimately didn’t care to make those adaptations with them, which is a big reason why it failed.

Again, though, to say that PodTech’s ultimate failure is somehow an inherent failure to the concept of podcasting is about like blaming the hammer for fall of London Bridge and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

—
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

2007: ‘Twas A Great Year For Podcasting
Video Podcasting Coming to TiVo and Thus Mainstream Audiences
Wizzard Media Joins the Navy
TalkShoe Launches ShoePhone: Cross Platform VoIP for Unlimited Conference Calls
PodTech.net Gets Scobleized
Doppler Podcast Client Now Open Source
PodShow: There Are No Layoffs, Only Jobs You No Longer Have

Share This

Shortly after the Kohjinsha SC3 was removed from the comfy confines of its packaging and exposed for all to see, said UMPC has managed to get reviewed. Initially, impressions were quite positive, as the reviewer noted that build quality was “superb,” the size was adorably small and the display satisfied all expectations. As for sheer performance, the Menlow-based rig excelled as it churned through applications with no huge lag issues; however, all that computing made the unit exceptionally warm, though it did remain quiet even when breaking a sweat. Battery life was shorter than advertised (only 2.5 hours), but aside from that, there wasn’t a whole lot to gripe about. Think it’s too good to be true? Head on down to the read link for videos, benchmarks and impressions.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Sort of. Pwnage Tool 2.0 can’t handle 3G iPhone SIM unlocks just yet, and we’re also faced with the teensy little problem of the Dev Team’s server being totally destroyed by downloads already — mirror please? — but the friendly little jailbreak app has finally been unleashed upon the earth. We’d never suggest trying out software like this right out of the gate, but, um, let us know how it goes, yeah?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: We’re seeing mixed results so far in the comments, but no bricked phones to speak of. Always a good thing.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

If you’re educator near the middle of the K-12 curriculum, and you’re feeling a bit lacking in terms of online tools available to help increase your own efficiency in the case of schoolwork, this item may be worth a look. It’s called Lesson Writer, and it’s something that can aid you in cranking out a basic lesson (and plan) for particular course on a given day. If you’re short for time, or consider the lesson-creation element of your workflow best left up to a series of code to piece together, Lesson Writer may go far in getting you to crunch through your own set of tasks outside the classroom more quickly.

There isn’t too much that needs explaining about Lesson Writer. If you stumble across a website whose content you’d like to include in an agenda for a future day (or perhaps the very same school session that happens to call you to two or more places at once and leaves you with little time to manufacture papers for class), you can select any interesting text and paste it into a draft page for a new lesson. Once you’ve submitted said text to the Lesson Writer engine, you’re taken through a process of choosing any that Lesson Writer deems pertinent. This goes for things like vocabulary, grammar and so forth. You can add your own custom critical thinking queries for students at the final step.

There’s certainly a limit to what you can accomplish through Lesson Writer. Complex algebraic problems aren’t part of the package. The extent to Lesson Writer’s powers seems to be very plainly hinted in its title. It seems only some elementary Language Arts and perhaps some History and Civics lessons can be assembled through the service. And if you prefer to interact with lessons created by other teachers in well-engineered environment, you might do well to consult with the Yahoo Teachers beta program.

Yet, if you’re tasked with managing a variety of subjects in a given day as instructor/disciplinarian/mediator/etc., and are wanting terribly for a quick and easy backup lesson solution, and don’t happen have your own personal living and breathing teaching assistant, Lesson Writer could very well work to complement your grind if/when the moment requires it.

—
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Windows Live Writer Launches Beta 2
Yahoo Teachers: Social Network for Teachers
Learn Foreign Language for Free with Mango
How to Use YouTube to Learn English: FunTalk
Zoho Writer Gets Thesaurus And File Export Upgrades
The Del.icio.us Lesson - Putting Personal Value Before Network Value
Zoho Writer Gets More Professional

Share This

Rediff, one of the top online portals in India and one currently listed on the NASDAQ stock market, has evidently followed the past year progress of third-party developments within Facebook closely. Now it wants to stir a similar amount of interest in its own set of properties as well. Announced at Delhi’s Proto.in startup event, Rediff officially took the covers off its own developer program, called, plainly enough, The Rediff Platform.

The reason for the Facebook reference is simple. The company states that its properties are “being made…to support FBML,” Facebook’s markup language.

Indeed, Rediff is pushing an idea eminently synonymous with Facebook’s own. The phrase “apps economy” is writ large on the Rediff Developers page. But it’s also an effort that the company hopes will align with multiple pieces of the Rediff puzzle. To kick off the developer program, Rediff is first opening iShare, its music, video, and photo sharing service.

The company is promising grants to some students and entrepreneur developers through a basic submission program it is calling “Sociali.” The sum being touted by the company to fuel ideas thought promising ideas is 250,000 rupees, or US$5,800. A relatively small figure, it seems, especially if juxtaposed against Rediff’s expected revenue report for Q2 2008 (roughly $17 million). All may depend on the supply of developers Rediff finds enticing enough to fund in the weeks and months ahead.

The company states that developers ready to begin fabricating can now do so with data provided through its new website.

—
Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:

Google and Yahoo Looking to Acquire India-Based Rediff
iShare, The Indian YouTube
Yahoo Takes Large Stake in India’s Tyroo Media
The Daily Poll: Would You Build Apps for the MySpace Developer Platform?
LinkedIn Outlines Strategy for Upcoming Platform
Clearspring Opens Community Platform for Developers
The Daily Poll: Which Platform is the Best Opportunity for Developers?

Share This

It’s only been on sale for six days, but the pricetag on the Eee PC 1000H just dropped by $100, down to $549. We’re not sure if early buyers will get that extra Benny back, but it certainly can’t hurt to ask — and ASUS, while you’re at it, how about taking a little off the 901 as well?

[Via Mobile Stylus; thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

It’s only been on sale for six days, but the pricetag on the Eee PC 1000H just dropped by $100, down to $549. We’re not sure if early buyers will get that extra Benny back, but it certainly can’t hurt to ask — and ASUS, while you’re at it, how about taking a little off the 901 as well?

[Via Mobile Stylus; thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Share This

Want to read a wealth of magazines without spending a dime on subscriptions or one-time transactions? A website by the name of Mygazines is promising just that.

I for one can’t imagine the number of copyrights the site and/or its users have infringed upon. It must be many, no doubt. (depending on whether they’re considered independent items or part of publishers’ portfolios). But perhaps the concept of Mygazines itself, in some form or another, is something that will eventually become a sort of standard for the industry.

The way in which the website functions is quite user friendly. But even more important to note is that Mygazines’s idea of freely publishing any weekly/monthly/quarterly, irrespective of the source, will resonate with people. Simply put, the consumer space is driving in the direction of a mostly pulp-less new paradigm. And if you want to see where things are headed, Mygazines is perhaps the most overt example to date.

After all, subscriptions will either be acceptably inexpensive for the reader to consume, with, say, more than 9/10 lopped off the average annual mailer fee, or they will be entirely without cost to the reader other than time and the amount given for particular electronic device. Looking at what the daily news business is having to struggle with today (from subscriptions to ad-supported websites), it’s safe to say that the latter option will be the likely scenario to emerge - albeit with a select few holdouts dotting the landscape that manage to make do with reader contributions.

The delivery mechanism is the reason this movement toward free, of course. That and the fact that information today doesn’t play well with barriers. (Media in music and video form, as well as long-form books and perhaps some pre-eminent journals here and there, are an exception in my mind, because there’s really no easy way to maintain an appreciable experience and survive on a advert-content ratio of 50/50 or worse. Music and ads can be taken together sometimes. But all the time? That I strongly doubt. The same for some video productions. And things like The New Yorker and The Virginia Quarterly Review.) For the most part, the dead-paper publishing industry long imagined to be on an interminable course no longer seems to have the wherewithal to go much further. The tangible representations of the vast majority of newspapers and magazines are slated for fairly swift elimination. That’s the reality of it. Wireless, handheld technologies are only further goading the grim reaper at this point.

Now, it should be said that Mygazines isn’t the first digital magazine service to come about. There has been at least one name in operation that has delivered digital copies of subscriptions and single issues on-demand over the Web for years. Zinio is its name. I actually gave them a try some years back. The experience wasn’t excellent at the time, but it wasn’t terrible either. Anyway, Zinio’s basic premise is convenience, but with a cost. Like with its publisher partners, it operates on a paid-for platform.

Mygazines doesn’t. Sure, it will most likely have to contend with takedown notices and threats of legal action and possible destruction. (Unless it can do things like YouTube and pin any unsavory blame  on its users’ uploads.) But the way it works is free. People like free. Which means that, if anything, an actor like Zinio will look more like Mygazines than the reverse in relatively short order.

Mygazines isn’t perfect. That I can say with some certainly. Some things about it could use changing. Layout could be a bit better, perhaps. But the experience offered is, I think, what readers will want a lot more of. It would naturally be too much to expect publishers to jump aboard at this point. They’re more attuned to strike up opposition. Massive opposition, even. But where will the give-and-take eventually lead, do you think? In the vein of Mygazines, I suspect.

Share This