The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘screenshots’

If you guys weren’t terrified of North Korea by now, here’s more evidence that the country is absolutely nuts: they’ve developed their own Linux distribution! It’s called Red Star OS , and we can thank a Russian student for unearthing it for us. I now fully expect to see knee-jerk reactions like, “Down with Linux!” even though that makes no sense at all

More here: 
North Korea develops its own Linux distro called Red Star OS

Got a MacBook Pro or iMac that needs a little customizing? Head over to this Etsy store for a bunch of lid and chin graphics.

Excerpt from:
A one stop shop for all your MBP lid and iMac chin decal needs

If I may, I’d like to play devil’s advocate to something I wrote a few days ago .

More:
Maybe Hulu is right to block Boxee?

Just a wanted to post a quick note here, congrats to @DStoneburner, the winner of the Tokyoflash wristwatch contest . So good for you, @DStoneburner. Don’t say we never gave you anything

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Congratulations to the winner of the Tokyoflash watch

Microblogging startup Plurk may not have become hugely popular in these parts, where Twitter rules the lands, but it has been making strides in Asia. Recently, the fledgling company has gotten a feared competitor in the space with the launch of MSN Juku in China by the local Microsoft subsidiary, in a country where Plurk has notably been blocked since April this year.

But the software giant may well have cut a few corners here and there to get their service up and running, and has seemingly turned to outright theft of code and design elements of Plurk to launch in a hurry.

The design of MSN Juku sure has the same looks as Plurk, as you can tell from the screenshots below. But according to a blog post by the microblogging startup, there’s more going on than just design inspiration:

- Microsoft China officially launched its own microblogging service, MSN Juku/Hompy/Mclub, some time in November, 2009.
- The service’s design and UI is by and large an EXACT copy of Plurk’s innovative left-right timeline scrolling navigation system. (see screen captures below)
- Some 80% of the client and product codebase appears to be stolen directly from Plurk! (see evidence below).
- Plurk was never approached nor collaborated in any capacity with MS on this service.

As a young startup, we’re stunned, shocked, and unsure what to do next and need your support and suggestions.

Piggybacking off a similar service’s design is one thing, but effectively going in and steal code? MSN Juku looks too similar to be a coincidence, and Plurk most certainly provides some really good evidence of code theft in its post to bargain.

We’ve reached out to Microsoft to get their side of the story and will update when we hear back.

If this is what we think it is, though, shame to Redmond.

(Thanks for the heads up, Amir)

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

Now this is cool. Some of the hype over Google Wave has died down over the last few weeks, in no small part because most people have absolutely no idea how to use it (no, the 80 minute long video demo doesn’t help). Now it looks like the Wave team has another idea up their sleeves to show people the power of Wave: they’re using it to recreate famous documents.

This time they’re reconstructed the Declaration of Independence, complete with edits and comments from the founding fathers. My US History is a bit fuzzy, but there are plenty of obvious jokes nestled in here, and I’m sure the Googlers have included a few more subtle ones as well. Unfortunately, it looks like you’ll have to have a Wave account if you want to witness the creation of one of the United States’ most important documents. But we’ve tried to grab a few of the key moments in the screenshots below.

As a demonstration of what you can do with Wave, the document succeeds in some respects. But frankly it can still be confusing to tell what’s going on. For example, when the founding fathers are casting their votes, the Wave only says something vague like “Thomas Jefferson edited this message” — it’s up to you to figure out what he did.

According to a tweet a few minutes ago from Wave team member Lars Rasmussen, the idea to create famous documents came from Tim O’Reilly. Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of these soon.

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

None of the companies involved will confirm the new Google Music service – we have “no comments” or absolute silence from Google, LaLa, MySpace and iLike. But the new service is all but confirmed. And we have the screenshots showing how the service, which will be announced on October 28, will look to prove it.

Matt Ghering, a product marketing manager at Google, has been one of the people talking to the big four music labels about the new service, we’ve heard from one of our sources. And he has supposedly sent these screenshots of the look and feel of Google Music search to various rights holders and potential partners.

The first screenshot shows how a search result might look on Google for a search for “U2.” A picture of the band is to the left of four streaming options for various songs, and the user has the option of listening via either iLike or LaLa. Click on one of the results, and a player pops up from the services that streams the song, along with an option to purchase the song for download.

We don’t know if this is the final look of the service, but it’s definitely something Google has been sending to people to show them what it might look like.

More thoughts on this later as we digest all the information coming in. But one thing is clear – this is a huge win for LaLa and iLike. Both will get massive flow from this deal. And as much as we criticize MySpace, their acquisition of iLike is starting to look sort of brilliant.

Search Results:

iLike Player:

LaLa Player:

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

Info about the Qualcomm FLO TV has been slowly leaking out the last few weeks. First we saw early concept art , then we released the first screenshots , but now it seems Boy Genius has a pic of the real deal

Go here to read the rest:
Qualcomm’s FLO TV spied, reveals little [update]

We just received an anonymous tip containing some supposed pictures of the interface for Apple’s forthcoming tablet computer. Are they real? Who knows. There are some peculiarities, like the keyboard jumping all over the place on the screen. And the menu system looks a little un-Apple for what is clearly a movie trailer section. Also, why is the play/pause area so transparent? I think I prefer this video still.

But again, who knows. Says our tipster, “this is very early stuff, and it is all about what Steve wants”. (At least, if these are indeed fake, the creators had the good humor to have a couple of the screenshots focus on the upcoming movie All About Steve). More importantly, is this what you want?

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In what looks to be an effort to be the one overall ad network that rules them all, Google sent out an email to AdSense publishers today letting them know that they would soon be opening up their accounts to allow for third-party ad networks to display ads as well. The catch is that it will only be open to third party ad networks that Google deems worthy of certification.

Right now, if you run AdSense on your site, you are seeing ads come in from advertisers who bid on certain keywords using Google’s AdWords product. But with the new more open system, if there is a better offer from one of these Google-certified third-party networks, Google says it will run those ads instead. You’ll be able to partially control these third party ad networks from within AdSense. For example, if you don’t like a certain network, you can block it. Or you can black all third-party ad networks entirely — obviously, Google would be just fine with that.

Here’s another interesting bit: Google says that the third-party ad networks that have tools to show more relevant ads based on the content on your site, won’t necessarily be allowed to do that through this program. Only the ones that adhere to Google’s privacy standards will get the contextual advertising privilege.

Basically, this kind of sounds like those Progressive Insurance commercials where they promise to show you the best quote for your insurance even if it isn’t their’s. The idea is that you’ll appreciate their honesty, but also that they feel good enough about their product and prices that you’ll stay with them. Of course the big difference is that with Google’s system you will still be remaining in their ecosystem, whereas with the Progressive system, you would have gotten to leave the Progressive site to sign up for a competitor’s insurance. Well played, Google, well played.

Here’s the full email they’re sending out:

We’re writing to let you know about an upcoming update in your AdSense account designed to help you generate the maximum revenue from your ad units. You’ll soon be able to allow multiple ad networks to show on your pages, which means that advertisers from external Google-certified networks will be able to compete with AdWords advertisers for your ad space.

If you’re unfamiliar with what ad networks are, they’re companies that partner with advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ads on sites they don’t own themselves, similar to AdSense. Ads from these networks will compete with Google ads to show on publisher sites, and the ad generating the highest revenue for publishers will be displayed.

To ensure the quality of the ads appearing on your sites, we’re certifying all participating ad networks for adherence to our standards for user privacy, ad quality, and speed. You’ll also have control over which networks can show ads on your pages — you can choose to opt out of receiving ads from specific networks, or all networks completely. This means you can continue to show ads from only AdWords advertisers if you’d like.

Finally, some ad networks use tools similar to Google’s interest-based advertising to show more relevant ads to users on the sites they visit. These ad networks won’t be permitted to collect data from your site for the purpose of subsequent interest-based advertising, but we’ll allow those who comply with user privacy guidelines to show ads using these tools. You’ll have the ability to opt out of showing ads based on user interests from these ad networks, and we’ve changed our requirements for third-party ad serving to reflect this. More information is available at http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=94230 .

These new capabilities will automatically be enabled for your account, and you’ll see a new section in your Ad Review Center where you can allow or block specific ad networks. Please note that we’ll gradually be adding new ad networks to AdSense accounts over the next few months, so you won’t see any immediate impact on your ads or your earnings.

To learn more about this launch and managing the ad networks appearing on your pages, visit the AdSense Help Center at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=13522 and watch our video demo at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HyJPOVLd3I .

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

[photo: New Line Cinemas]

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