The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘dell’

Consumer Reports has a new report on which computer company has the best tech support. Apple wins! That’s what happens when the same company controls the hardware as well as the operating system (and several of the most prominent pieces of software). The highest ranking PC manufacturer is Dell for desktops and Lenovo for laptops.

After shopping itself around to all the major search engines, Radar Networks finally found a buyer in another semantic search startup. Today, Evri is announcing that it will be acquiring Radar Networks, along with its core technical team and its main product, Twine. Rumors surfaced yesterday on ReadWriteWeb that Evri was being acquired, but that is not the case. Evri is the acquirer.

I spoke with both CEOs this morning. They would not disclose the terms of the deal, but it is safe to assume that it was largely an equity-based transaction. Both Evri and Radar Networks share Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital as their largest shareholder. Radar has raised $24 million in total capital, while Evri has raised $8 million. (At least that is what has been publicly disclosed. Paul Allen has poured much more money into Evri almost single-handedly, perhaps even more than Radar raised). Radar was unable to raise more during the recession and kept pushing out the release of its next product, T2, an ambitious project to create a semantic index of the Web. Using this semantic index, T2 can do a better job understanding what each Web page it indexes is about.

Evri, on the other hand, has been focusing more on filtering the realtime Web and then creating a semantic index of those pages based on matching similar content. One of the big drivers of the deal was the promise of combining Evri’s realtime filtering with T2, which is ideal for more evergreen and authoritative content.

“We had to find a home,” explains Radar CEO Nova Spivack. “Fortunately, we had T2 and a portfolio of fundamentally valuable IP. And user growth is holding steady even though we are no longer working on Twine” He also confirmed that he was “in discussions” with larger companies. Why did he choose Evri? “At the end of the day, not only was it a better offer, but Evri is more compatible with our team. Joining one of the larger players was a possibility, but it meant we would not get to work on T2.” Spivack will be an advisor to the combined company. He wrote a blog post about the deal.

Semantic search is still in its infancy. Consolidation among startups could give the acquirers more firepower, but eventually the bigger search engines are going to start getting serious.

Fits.me, a virtual fitting room for internet clothing retailers based on robots (yes really) has won the European startup competition in Brussels, Plugg.

It’s actually even cooler than it sounds. By creating robotic shape-shifting manakins and testing how people reacted by seeing clothes on the robot with their dimensions, sales actually went up.

Only 7% of all clothing is sold online today, a $36bn market It’s $20bn for computers), because you can’t see how the clothes look on a human body. The fits.me trial with partners showed these pictures of adjustable manakins wearing clothes increased sales three times and dramatically reduced returns by 28%.

Let me catch you up. We received a tip back on Monday indicating that the Adamo XPS had disappeared from Dell.com. This of course caught our attention as the super-thin Dell was just announced back in late October and only available for purchase since December.

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The Dell Adamo XPS really is discontinued even though it’s still available for purchase

Who would have thought that all that practice blowing on NES games would pay off? Now all I have to do is learn how to play the harmonica really well, and I can finally quit this blogging business and begin the exciting and lucrative life of the hobo! There are three harmonicas and three harmonicas only, people. Choose from Super Mario Bros 3 , a gold Legend of Zelda , or Dick Tracy .

Originally posted here: 
NES game harmonicas let you blow on your cartridges for fun and profit

The Alienware M11x is a fascinating modern notebook. May I say that it probably took “out-of-this-world technology” to pack so much power into a little kit? Get it

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Alienware M11x autopsy photos

Got a hankering for Alienware’s 11-inch ultra-portable like everyone else? Well then head over to Dell’s site where you can spec out your very own M11x right now with your choice of Core 2 Duo CPUs, up to 8GB of Dual Channel DDR3 memory, Verizon or AT&T mobile broadband and either a spinning hard drive or a 256GB SSD

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Pre-order your Alienware M11x right now

The Dell Mini 5, Dell’s Android-powered Snapdragon slate, popped up at CES this year but we never got a clear look at it. However, when the CEO of Dell rolls into the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he can show off anything he wants and our boss got a quick hands-on in the Swiss slush

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Michael Dell shows off the Mini 5, confirms US arrival?

Not to be left out of the deluge of new releases at CES, Dell is giving us a sneak peak at their new 5-inch tablet concept and Android-smartphone for AT&T. There’s also some new laptops and things, you know, if you’re into that. Unfortunately, these pictures are about all we have on the tablet concept so far.

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New things from Dell: Tablets, phones, laptops

John is down at the Palm press conference, and we’ll be going live in just a few minutes. Keep your eyes open, we’ll see what they might have up their collective sleeves

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We’ll be live with Palm in about 5 minutes