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Posts Tagged ‘famous’

Following the successful launches of Twitter in Spanish and Twitter in French, the service has announced native support for another new language today: Italian. This means that of the initial “FIGS” languages (that is French, Italian, German, and Spanish) that Twitter wanted to get done, only German remains. Given that Twitter is crowd-sourcing much of the work for these translations, the speed at which they’re adding new ones is impressive.

Prior to the Spanish and French roll-outs, Twitter was previously available in English and Japanese. As usual, Twitter has written the latest blog post on the matter in the native tongue, so we’ll (roughly) translate it below.

We’re excited because today with the launch of the Italian version of our site becomes even more a platform for global communication. As always, we wish to thank all the translators who have participated in the project and who have shown us their skills.

If you have not already discovered, here are some users who are particularly interesting Twitt in Italian:

You can follow the famous journalists like @beppesevergnini or @radiodeejay of radio Linus & C. Or even one of the most famous Italian singer, Laura Pausini (@officialpausini).”

Now that the conversations on Twitter are enriched with increasingly diverse viewpoints on a global level, the network information will continue to grow in every nook and crevice of the planet. More events will be shared more knowledge and awareness will spread and the millions of people that feed Twitter will affect millions of others with their tweet.

“And what better way to celebrate the launch of Twitter in Italy? A nice Tweetup-based pizza, friends, and tweet. Our friends @pizzatwit will be happy to organize a pizza party and if you want to meet lots of new friends and tweet all night, you should follow their account and help them to organize one of their famous Twitter Pizza Party! “

To use Twitter in Italian, go into your settings and select the language from the drop-down menu. Enjoy!

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yFrog, an image and video sharing site for Twitter, is furthering its mobile strategy by launching both BlackBerry and Android apps. Yfrog for Blackberry lets you Tweet text, images and video to Twitter, view tweets, search Yfrog, view followers and people you’re following, and view messages and mentions

The Android app is more feature-rich, and lets you Tweet text, images and videos, view Tweets, mentions and followers, and search Twitter. You can also download multiple files at the same time, and upload videos up to 15 minutes long with high quality video encoding. And, GPS location will be included with upload.

yFrog, which launched by ImageShack earlier this year, will face competition from the Twitter clients that have their photo sharing tool such as Seesmic’s BlackBerry and Android apps. yFrog also has an iPhone app that faces competition from Twitter image sharing rival TwitPic.

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

It’s freezing cold in San Francisco right now (which is to say, 50 degrees). As such, I’ve been using my heater like a madman trying to stay warm. I know that’s going to hurt when I get my electricity bill at the end of the month, but I have no idea how much it’s going to hurt. A Y Combinator startup, Wattvision, launching in beta today, wants to solve that problem.

The idea is simple: Wattvision wants to give you a realtime picture of your home (or office) energy consumption. But to do this, you need a device that can tap into your power meter. That’s where the Wattvision WiFi Sensor comes in. But the good news is that you don’t need an electrician to set this up for you. If you have a digital power meter, you can very easily attach the Wattvision Sensor and you’re all set. From there it will send your data wirelessly to the web, where you can monitor it. And if you have an iPhone, Wattvision has also created an iPhone-optimized version of their site so you can watch your home energy consumption on the go.

So the first big question is: How much does this cost? The Wattvision Sensor is normally $199, but alongside the beta launch, Wattvision is offering to give a $50 discount to the first 100 TechCrunch readers that use the coupon code “wvbetaTC“. In a world where many tech startups cling to the idea of “free,” $199 may seem like a hard sell, but this is actually very cool stuff. Take a look at Wattvision’s main page to see a realtime example of how easily you can monitor your power usage with this device. Done the right way, this could actually end up saving you more than the $200 you spend on the device. It’s interesting data, and you can compare it to data from others in your area. You can also tweet out your consumption results or send them to Facebook to enable some interesting social pressures.

There will also be a pricing model based on how much data you want to see. But for the beta launch, Wattvision isn’t focusing on that just yet. And if you order a sensor now, you’ll get the home standard plan (the 2nd-tier plan) for free for six months. The different plans mainly involve the speed at which the monitoring data comes in (15 seconds versus 8 seconds, for example) and how far back you can view your consumption history. Also in the higher tier plans you will have options to get alerts send to your email or phone, and the ability to have multiple accounts. More on these plans can be found here.

But the second, and potentially bigger question is: How can Wattvision compete with companies like Google and Microsoft which are also getting into this field (with PowerMeter and Hohm, respectively)? When I asked Wattvision co-founder Savraj Singh about that, he had a good answer:

We’re taking the bet that people and small businesses are interested in their live energy use–now–and they want something that works with their existing electricity meters.  The big players are taking the long-route — getting partnerships with power companies and banking on the coming smart grid deployments.  Unless your power company is on board, you can’t get those systems today.  And the fastest you can get data from the latest smart grid technology is, typically, every 15 minutes.  Wattvision updates every 10 seconds, and will also be compatible with the smart grid when it arrives. We’re also a for-profit endeavor, which means we’re hoping to stay sharply focused on customer needs, whether consumers or businesses, and excel at things like customer service and satisfaction.

Y Combinator’s Paul Graham goes on to note that he likes the idea of a small startup moving faster than the giants. “It’s like Apple back in 1976,” he tells us. That said, “we think those guys are doing great work and we’re keen to find areas where we can collaborate,” Singh also noted.

Find out more about Wattvision in the video below. And again, use the “wvbetaTC” code if you’re interested in getting your hands on one of the first devices at $50 off.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Most gadget do-it-yourselfers have stories of an idea that didn’t quite work out. Maybe the prototype never functioned properly.

See the rest here:
The Gadget Love of a Guitar God

MSI’s gone the AMD Neo route with the Wind U210, available now for $429 at Amazon and Newegg . The U210’s got a 12.1-inch screen with a 1366

If we’re being honest—and we always are here on CrunchGear, if nothing else—then I do have to admit that the Zune HD looks pretty spiffy.

Read more: 
The Xbox Series Zune HD slaps video game logos all over the damn place

You know the Google Maps upside-down teardrop shaped markers? It looks like they’re starting to appear in the real world, at various locations around the globe. You can see the locations that have them on this Google Maps Favorite Places page.

For example, there are apparently a bunch of these markers in San Francisco already. One (which happens to be in my neighborhood) has been caught on camera. As you can see, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has his own Google Maps marker indicating that he likes La Boulange de Polk, a restaurant in the area. Newsom’s marker features a painting of the Golden Gate Bridge, other famous people have their own markers.

The statue is listed as being for “Summer 2009″ which seems to indicate that it will expire in a few months, and Google may remove it. But for now, this looks like a very smart way for Google to promote Maps. It’s also a good way to ensure that businesses list themselves on Maps, for the possibility that they’ll receive one of these markers, which are basically a (presumably) free endorsement of the establishment.

There are plenty of other famous people participating in this program including a lot of famous chefs endorsing restaurants they like, Kevin Rose (the co-founder of Digg), musicians (Moby, the guitarist of the Decemberists), and a whole host of others around the world.

Perhaps these things showing up is like the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where it signals a shift in evolution.

Update: Here’s another market at Blue Bottle Cafe in San Francisco [photos: flickr/Jeremy Franklin]:

Update 2: Here’s another one via TwitPic:

Update 3: Google has now officially announced the feature and has release this video about it:

[thanks Matt]

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

After the jump you can find the latest Laptop Hunters ad in the famous series of video advertisements Microsoft is putting out there to make people proud of being a PC again (and at the same time attack pricing for Macs ). The latest ad features pre-law student Lauren and her mom, Sue, and these are the things they are looking for primarily in a laptop: speed, portability and battery life.

Read more: 
Laptop Hunters: “Lauren” is back with her mom

This is a scene from the movie Blade Runner rendered using CryENGINE 2 , the game engine that powers Crysis . And this is a scene from the movie I am Legend , also rendered using CryENGINE 2

More here: 
The Crysis engine does a pretty good job of rendering Blade Runner