The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘south’

Matt: “I see we just got the latest computer monitors. Take that, South Korea.” Devin: “Zerg him, comrade” John: “Our glorious gold farming initiative is the pride of the world.” Dave: “What?? Doug left CrunchGear ?” Greg: “Our screens may not be bigger, but they are deeper.

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Kim Jong-il caption contest

The story goes that a group of thieves cut a hole in a Best Buy roof, repelled down, snatched $26k worth of Apple notebooks, and climbed back up. They did all this without touching the floor or setting off any alarms, too. This isn’t the plot of Ocean’s 15 either

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Thieves use extreme measures to snatch 20 Apple notebooks

There’s an excellent how-to over in the MacRumors forums that details how an enterprising individual purchased a scratched up iPhone with a broken screen off of eBay and restored it to its former glory without sinking too much money into the project. The process involves dry sanding, wet sanding, polishing, and replacing the cracked LCD screen with a shiny new one. You’ll need some time and patience but otherwise, it doesn’t look too complicated at all—especially given all the money you could potentially save

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How to make a busted iPhone beautiful

The WSJ just posted a blind item about a killer phone Sony has in the works that is capable of downloading and playing Playstation games. It will probably just be a PSP Go with a phone inside. Shown here is an artist’s rendition of what it will look like.

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Snort! Sony is getting ready to beat the iPad with a new “gadget”

MacHeist is offering a bundle of five Mac apps – including the possibility of getting two more free – for $19.99. The even lasts for six more days and they’re raising cash for charity, as well, so that’s a good thing.

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CrunchDeals: MacHeist Bundle is up and running

Dear Sir or Madam, My name is Doug Aamoth. I’m a 30-year-old technology blogger originally from the Minneapolis area, now living in Boston. In May of 2009, I had my first pretzel dog in the Philadelphia train station while traveling for business

Excerpt from:
An open letter to the creator of the pretzel dog

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Executive in Residence at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

Are you an immigrant who is fed up with waiting for years for a green card which you may never get? Or a tech entrepreneur looking to dramatically cut costs? I’ve got a suggestion for you. Move South. No, I don’t mean to Los Angeles or San Diego, I’m taking about way down South in Chile. They’ll welcome you with open arms and offer you incentives which will cut your burn rate more than half. And you’ll get to live in a land which makes even California look drab.

I just returned from a fascinating trip to Chile. Their government invited me to view the progress they had made in becoming an outsourcing hub. I was impressed with their ability to grow outsourcing from nothing to close to $1 billion in revenue over a mere seven years. But I didn’t see how they could grow much more in the body-intensive outsourcing segment without choking off local industry by sucking all the capable engineers and scientists into relatively high paying IT jobs. I told them that they had as much of a chance to compete with India in outsourcing as India had in competing with them in copper exports. India has a billion people. Chile has only 16 million people, less than some Indian cities. But Chile does have 40% of the world’s copper, a magnificent inflation hedge.

Chile may not become an outsourcing powerhouse. But this South American gem could very well morph into the new land of opportunity for immigrants in general and export-centric tech entrepreneurs. The Chilean government has put together an incredible slate of incentives for technology-based companies that export their products. The government wants you to invest $500,000 over 5 years, but is pretty flexible about how you do this.

So what do you get for your $500,000? To start with, they’ll give you a visa. You can stay as long as you want – even permanently. You need to submit a business plan but you have a lot of latitude for what’s an acceptable business. Any type of high tech products, medical or biotech products, or green or cleantech products get the stamp of approval, as does software or even online gaming or social network software. Even if you want to set up a call center or technical support service that derives revenues from sales to foreign companies and they think you’re legit, you’ll get the visa.

But first, you want to check out the country, right? The government will give you 60% of your due diligence costs, or up to $30,000, to visit and explore Chile. And they’ll grant you another $30,000 to launch your company in Chile. If you work from one of their tech centers, the government will pay for 5 years of rent (up to $1 million) or split the costs if you want to locate elsewhere in this gorgeous country.

How about workforce incentives? Chile has you covered. The government will pay you (as an approved entrepreneur) up to $25,000 for the first year of “training costs” for any locals you hire. By the way, Chile has some excellent engineering schools so it’s not terribly difficult to pick up a good Java or C# programmer. They typically make $15,000-30,000 per year. Can’t find the local talent you want? Chile will subsidize your efforts to bring folks from Sunnyvale, Mumbai or wherever you may find them. And you can train these folks on Chile’s dime as well. And if you decide to buy some land and build your own labs or offices, they’ll give you 40% of your costs up to $2 million. How about for H-1B immigrants or other talented folks who want to move to Chile? Simple. Get a legitimate tech job and they’ll give you a visa, no questions asked. Are you starting to get my drift? (Note: If Chile took even one-quarter of all the H-1B holders current working in tech jobs in America, they would probably come close to doubling the size of their technology workforce).

But wait, there must be a catch. Not that I can find. I visited Vina Del Mar, a beautiful beach resort about an hour from Santiago. The weather and landscape is just like California (except they’ve got their seasons reversed – when its summer in the U.S., it’s winter down under). Vina del Mar is located right next to Chile’s wine country, boasts magnificent beaches and looks like a modern version of Miami. Guess what a fully furnished 2 bedroom apartment on the beach costs? $500 per month. Even the capital city of Santiago looks and feels like a new European city, with very low crime rates, great weather and friendly natives. For those true California boys, Chile even has great surfing.

To top this off, Chile is a thriving democracy with one of the most open economies in South America. In fact, if I was starting a new tech company and didn’t need to be in any particular area, I’d start it in Chile in a heartbeat. What really struck me was how many Chileans I met who boasted of their country being a “land of immigrants.” Everyone told stories about how Chile was built by immigrants and welcomed the world’s most skilled and most oppressed. This reminded me of how America used to be before the xenophobes started blaming immigrants for all their own shortcomings and misery. Seems too good to be true, doesn’t it? There are some downsides. Chile is a 15 hour flight from the West Coast. And if you’re going to stay long-term, you’ll need to learn Spanish. That’s not a big price to pay for all the benefits.

Yearning to be free of the costs and constraints of the tech landscape in North America? Go South, young techie.

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

Well, it’s all official now. The next moron to run South Carolina (current moron here) may well be Henry McMaster, the disgraced Attorney General of that fine state.

Yes, the man who took on Craigslist, declared victory and then ran away is now officially a candidate for the esteemed office of Governor of South Carolina.

The state that our readers determined is less important than Craigslist. And the residents of South Carolina agreed.

Links to the whole sorry mess are below in chronological order. In the meantime, watch his video, follow him on Twitter or check out his official campaign site.

If you people in South Carolina vote this man into office again you deserve all the humiliation that will continue to rain down on you.

May 5: South Carolina Gives Craigslist Ultimatum: Remove Prostitution Or Face Criminal Charges

May 13: Hookers No Longer Welcome On Craigslist

May 18: What’s More Important - Craigslist or South Carolina? A TechCrunch Poll

May 19: South Carolina Holds Its Own Poll, Still Loses

May 20: Craigslist Sues South Carolina Attorney General McMaster; Asks For Restraining Order

May 20: South Carolina Declares Victory, Runs Away

May 22: McMaster’s Final Humiliation: Federal Smack Down (Restraining Order Below)

June 24: Adultery Rampant Among South Carolina Governors. This Must Be Craigslist’s Fault

Bonus Post: Powerset Parses Miss South Carolina

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

Republic Project, a new startup launching out of beta, is allowing artists and labels to sell pre-orders of new music directly to fans and receive 100% of the revenue from the album.

Fans will have access to exclusive behind-the-scenes video during the pre-order period which can include footage from the studio, on the road, or elsewhere. Artists will receive an embeddable widget that can be placed on their website, blog and social sites like MySpace and Facebook. This widget will direct fans to the band page on Republic Project where sample videos of footage can be seen, and more.

Through the artist dashboard on Republic Project, the artist can name the album, the album price and the release date. Artists are also able to sell as little as three tracks and as much as a full album. They can upload an intro video explaining to the fans the pre-order and give them up to six sample videos. Minimum pricing is $2.99 and maximum pricing is $9.99. Fans are charged an additional $1.99 transaction fee for the pre-order experience.

Republic Project CEO Ryan Swager believes that nobody has really created a pre-order platform that provides value to the fans.

Why would they want to put down a credit card for a release that comes out in 90-180 days? So we are allowing the fans to be part of the creative experience and give them exclusive video footage.

Whether six sample videos will be enough to entice hardcore fans to pay $2 extra for the privilege of pre-ordering an album will depend on how good those videos are and how much they love each band, especially since you can usually pre-order an album on iTunes or Amazon. Those videos better be good.

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

Megapixels don’t “mean” anything until you’re the first company to reach a milestone.

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Samsung’s Pixon12 is the world’s first 12-megapixel camera-phone