Saturday, 31 August 2013
Pebble Smart Watch Delivers on Kickstarter Promise and More
Cómics de aviación para dar y tomar
Mezek, Más allá de las nubes, El último vuelo, El Gran Duque…
Puede que tuviera mi afición a los cómics un poco al ralentí y que no me hubiera enterado de su publicación, pero en los últimos meses has caído en mis manos unos cuantos cómics relacionados con la aviación.
Y parece que no son más que la punta del iceberg, a tenor de lo que se puede leer en El sorprendente éxito de los cómics de aviación de Norma (y un repaso al género) y en Megapost: Recopilación de Comics de Aviación en español .
¡Cuidadito con esas tarjetas de crédito!
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/comics/comics-aviacion-para-dar-y-tomar.html
Alt-week 08.31.13: We're all Martians, Mega Drive music and reinventing the ruler
Un humano de 70 kg = 6,7 * 10^27 átomos
El físico Enrico Fermi, además de su contribución al desarrollo de la primera boma atómica, era conocido por su afición a plantear problemas que en principio parecían irresolubles pero que a fuerza de irlos descomponiendo en otros más simple a menudo era capaz de solucionar con una precisión bastante razonable, por lo que son conocidos como problemas de Fermi .
Un problema de este estilo es el de calcular cuantos átomos hay en un cuerpo humano, y a fuerza de calcular el peso de cada uno de los elementos que lo componen basado en su porcentaje y sabiendo cuantoss caben ese peso es posible estimar que un cuerpo humano está compuesto por 6,7 * 10^27 átomos de hidrógeno, oxígeno, carbono, nitrógeno, calcio, fósforo, cloro y potasio. [Fuente: El tercer precog.]
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/curiosidades/6-7-10-27-cuantos-atomos-hay-en-un-cuerpo-humano.html
McDonald's Turns Tables Into NFC Racetracks for Kids
ASUS teases new Transformer Pad coming September 4th, confirms it definitely has bezel
Alcatel quietly reveals One Touch Idol S, Idol Mini and Evo 8 HD tablet
Nikkei: KDDI plans 220 Mbps cellular network upgrade for summer 2014
6 Tech Relics Still Sold in Stores
Moto X could have price slashed to $100 by Christmas, $50 for wooden covers
Project Loon simulations test internet from above the clouds, virtually
HTC's exiting designers interrogated for expense fraud and stealing trade secrets
Facebook's Windows Phone beta updated to work on WP7 too
Friday, 30 August 2013
Samsung Galaxy Note 3 reportedly landing on Three UK September 16th, Sony Xperia Z1 coming September 24th
NASA Funds 6 Futuristic Space Exploration Tech Ideas
This is the Modem World: The brain modem is here
The Apple Store Just Offered Me $204 for My iPhone 4S
Let the god games begin: 22cans' Godus beta available on Steam Early Access September 13th
Editor's Letter: Color commentary
BlackBerry Beta Zone app released for early adopters on BB10
Strike Social Analyzes The Performance Of Your YouTube Videos For Free
A new startup called Strike Social says its tools give YouTube publishers a way track how their content is performing on the video site and on social networks, and at a pretty compelling price — free.
The first big piece of the Strike Social product is a number, called the Strike Score, that reflects the overall performance of your YouTube content. CEO Patrick McKenna said the company looks at “more than 100 datasets” from YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to calculate the score, and tracking that number over time should give you a sense of whether your performance is improving.
You can dig in to get more detailed data too, looking at the total number of views, engagements, and subscribers for your channel, and at the performance of individual videos. Publishers can also look at what people are saying about the video, sort those comments based on the size of each commenter’s social media following, and respond to specific remarks from within Strike Social — in particular, McKenna that the tools are “more actionable on the Facebook side” than the competition.
So why offer these tools for free? Well, McKenna wants to charge eventually for premium services, but he said everything that he showed me will remain free, and that the company will also be selling advertising tools. (When the company’s Frequently Asked Questions page addresses the free question, it says, “Strike Social is chock-full of YouTube marketing experts and we hope to earn your online video promotion business.”)
He acknowledged that paid products offer some features beyond what Strike Social can offer for free, but he argued that the product is competitive, with advantages like the Facebook engagement features mentioned above, and for that reason “it’s going to be tough” for competitors to justify their prices to clients.
(In that specific discussion, he didn’t mention a specific company, but vidIQ came up at a couple of other points in our discussion. When I asked about his pricing, co-founder and CEO Robert Sandie pointed out that vidIQ also offers a free version, while he said pricing for the premium plan starts at $2,000 a month.)
McKenna also described the current product as version “0.1″, and he said he wants to add features that give more insight into the distribution channels, geographies, and social networks where content performs best, and to provide more recommendations around publishing and advertising videos.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/92fWsr1CV1Y/
Augment Makes Augmented Reality Useful For Salespeople With Its New ‘Business Catalog'
While augmented reality has been around for a while, Augment is trying to monetize it with its platform. The company just released its Business Catalog feature, targeted toward salespeople. For $30 per month and per user, you can carry around all your catalog on your iPad and show how it would look like to your client. It makes sense for furniture, merchandising displays or even art prints.
“Our biggest competitor is choosing not to use augmented reality,” co-founder and CEO Jean-François Chianetta told me in a phone interview. “Thanks to our platform, you can upload and visualize your 3D models as augmented reality objects in minutes,” he continued.
With the business catalog, everybody on the sales team has the same 3D portfolio on their tablets and phones. Everything is downloaded to the devices so that they don’t have to worry about connectivity. Comparatively, the free account is much more limited as you can only see a few test models and upload your own models to your own account for testing purposes — you cannot deliver your models to your team and you need to be always connected.
The premium offering was already available in beta for a few months. More than 3,000 users tried it out. But, starting this week, they now have to pay the subscription fee.
When asked who Augment’s potential clients were, the answer was very straightforward. “We work with companies who already use 3D models,” co-founder and CMO Mickaël Jordan said. “We support 3ds Max, Maya or even SketchUp files,” he continued. So far, 8,000 users have uploaded 3D models to the platform.
Companies like Curioos use Augment for its digital art marketplace. Before buying an art print, you can figure out what print size you should order for your living room, and how it would look like over the fireplace.
There’s another part to Augment’s business. The company also creates advertising campaigns using augmented reality. For example, clients can create a booth to promote DVD sales in a supermarket and let anyone take a picture of his or her friend with a famous movie character. The character will be in 3D thanks to the Augment app. In many cases, companies need to hire an agency to create a special app — when you work with Augment it’s easier as you can build your campaign on top of its existing platform.
Back in April, the French startup raised $300,000 (€220,000) from multiple angels. It plans to raise more funding in the coming months. Now that the company generates revenue, it will be a compelling argument to convince VCs.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/RESH1QQnu2o/
Nokia Lumia 1020 coming to Canada through Rogers and Telus
MoPub's Optimizer Lets Mobile Publishers Automatically Prioritize Their Most Lucrative Ad Networks
MoPub is releasing a new tool called the Optimizer that should allow mobile publishers to take an entirely automated, hands-off approach to managing their ad networks — and increase revenue too.
The team gave me a demo of the new feature, saying the technology uses a “waterfall” approach, moving down a list of possible networks from which to serve an ad, starting with the one that had the highest estimated CPM (price paid per thousand impressions). Normally, MoPub prioritizes those networks based on CPM estimates provided by the publisher. The problem: Those estimates are often wrong. (MoPub has been trying to address the lack of transparency and data about the performance of individual ad networks with its new dashboard.)
Now, when publishers hit the Optimizer button, MoPub will automate that prioritization process based on its own data and the data it has acquired from various networks, so that it can predict the likely CPM, clickthrough rate, latency, and more on a given ad. Ideally, for each impression MoPub should be serving an ad from the network that’s likely to make the most money for the publisher.
“It seems like a really simple concept, but our publishers haven’t seen anything like it before and they’re basically blown away,” said Marketing Director Elain Szu.
The data used for prioritization is supposed to be as specific as possible. In other words, when possible, MoPub will calculate CPMs and so forth using data specific to that publisher and that geography, but when necessary it will use more general data, and in some cases, when there’s really no data available, it may just fall back on the estimates provided by the publishers.
Not every publishers is going to embrace this for all of their campaigns, Szu added. Instead, she suggested it could be particularly useful for small publishers who don’t have the resources to manage their ad networks in a very hands-on way, as well as for larger publishers who may have a number of geographic segments to monitor. Those larger publishers may want to pay close attention in more mature markets like the United States while taking a more automated approach in small-but-growing markets.
The MoPub team also showed me the results of some early campaigns, particularly how the share of ads from different networks shifted when the Optimizer was turned on, and continued shifting over time. (In some cases the Optimizer would even shift money away from the MoPub Marketplace to other ad networks.) In each case, the CPMs went up compared to past performance and compared to apps that weren’t using the Optimizer — you can see one example in the (anonymized) chart above.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/xEqJoEOzALM/
MoDaCo founder Paul O'Brien on console update woes and Glass envy
Skype's Journey to Connect 70 Million People at Once
Nine Inch Nails puts Kinect, various other gadgets to use on festival tour
Engadget's back to school guide 2013: docks
Carbon-Based Cellphones on the Horizon
Curiosity fotografía un eclipse anular de Sol
NASA Mars Rover Views Eclipse of the Sun by Phobos
Aunque el Sol se ve más pequeño desde Marte que desde la Tierra su luna más grande, Fobos, apenas mide 45 kilómetros de radio, por lo que aunque pase por delante del Sol* nunca llega a taparlo del todo y lo más que puede producir es un eclipse anular.
Estas imágenes fueron captadas por Curiosity el pasado 17 de agosto aprovechando que Fobos pasaba por delante del Sol al mediodía visto desde la posición del rover, con lo que el tamaño aparente de este es lo más grande posible y por tanto la porción del Sol ocultada es también lo mayor posible.
Par no perderse detalle del tránsito de Fobos por delante del Sol ese día Curiosity estuvo parado.
La NAC es el rectángulo gris de la izquierda, a MAC es el de la derecha - NASA
Estos tres fotogramas fueron tomados a intervalos de un segundo por la NAC, la Narrow Angle Cámera , que tiene un objetivo de 100 milímetros, pero hay más esperando a ser descargados, con lo que es posible que pronto la NASA pueda publicar una pequeña película del tránsito completo.
* Sí, Marte tiene un Sol.
via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/ciencia/curiosity-fotografia-un-eclipse-anular-de-sol.html
Three now lets travelers use their UK cellphone plans in seven countries
