Author: Serkadis

Copia is an open platform that wants to help you share with the world world exactly how you rate the entire Norah Roberts oeuvre. It’s like Goodreads on steroids, and it’s paired with two new lines of eBook readers.

First, the platform. Copia is a social networking platform that lets you set up a profile, rate and buy books, and share recommendations with your friends. You can also form and join discussion groups, both public and private, and gives you personalized recommendations based on what your friends have been reading. It has a web presence at thecopia.com, but will also be a platform hosted by various hardware partners to be named later.

So as not to depend entirely on those partnerships, parent company DMC Worldwide will also be producing two lines of eBook readers: Ocean and Tidal. The readers range from 6-inches to 9-inches, and include both capacitive touch displays and QWERTY keyboard models as well as black and white ePaper and color TFT screen options.

The private beta for Copia begins this month, with the public beta launching in March. The readers will be available online beginning in April, with prices ranging from $199 to $299. It’s a slow roll-out, but probably necessarily so: social platforms like Copia require a a robust audience to be effective, and at the current levels of eBook adoption it’s hard to see there being enough of a network presently.

DMC Worldwide Unveils COPIA:

An Open Platform for Delivering eBooks, Entertainment Content and a Collaborative Social Experience

TheCopia.com Combines Content, Community and Commerce through Social Networking and Shared Discovery; Broad Lineup of Wireless Devices Introduced to Further the Experience

NEW YORK, Jan. 6, 2010 – DMC Worldwide (DMCWW), a leading enterprise and consumer technology company today introduced COPIA, an open platform that combines content, social networking and e-commerce with an array of wireless e-readers to deliver an experience around shared discovery. The COPIA platform reinvents the way consumers experience content.

The COPIA platform is a hybrid solution for consumers of all ages to experience a completely new way to discover, enjoy, share and purchase books, newspapers, magazines and a wide variety of digital content and a software application engine for OEM brands looking to deliver content across their digital devices including e-readers, notebooks, netbooks, tablets and smartphones.

“Today, eBook content is delivered across one of two typical business models: a vast online store or a social networking service,” said Anthony Antolino, SVP, DMC Worldwide. “The COPIA platform is the first of its kind to combine content, collaboration, social networking and e-commerce together to connect people through a collaborative experience. We developed COPIA to allow users to discover and connect to each other through meaningful content regardless of the digital devices they are using. We also created the flexible COPIA engine that enables third-party device manufacturers to awaken existing and new devices to a wide variety of collaborative entertainment possibilities – reading and beyond. The COPIA experience will have a lasting influence on how people engage with and consume content.”

In addition to launching COPIA, DMC Worldwide today also unveiled a diverse lineup of e-reader devices. The product offering includes both monochrome e-paper-based touchscreens and advanced color devices designed for rich color content. The devices are designed to extend the collaborative COPIA experience to readers across all genres of content and meet the needs of channel partners including mass market, entertainment, K-12 education as well as higher education.

“No single device on the marketplace today can adequately serve the consumer’s ferocious appetite for content consumption,” said Ben Lowinger, EVP, DMC Worldwide. “DMC’s lineup of devices powered by COPIA matches perfectly to the experience of reading in black and white e-paper or rich media. We’ve developed the devices after carefully analyzing the needs and expectations of our audience and believe that we’ve developed both an online and hardware platform for delivering and sharing meaningful entertainment content now and in the future.”

TheCopia.com provides its community with a compelling set of intuitive features, including:

* Social Networking Compatibility – Community profiles are linked to existing Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts enabling users to easily share content across social media platforms.

* Collaboration Tools – Students, as well as book groups, can highlight, annotate, and share reading content with those who are important to them. In addition, users can access the most useful annotations from the entire community.

* Multi-Dimensional Browsing Experience – Real-world book browsing simulates how people typically view and select books in a store. Relevant eBook content can also be displayed in various ways for users to browse and find what’s most relevant. Content can be browsed by community rating, tags from users or publishers, notations, popularity and price.

* Intuitive Search and Display Features – TheCopia.com makes it simple to find meaningful reading content by offering multiple paths to discovery. Users can easily filter search criteria to pinpoint what they’re looking for. Search results are provided in dynamic content views, enabling users to toggle between list views to expanded views, to easily compare across lots of content.

* Personalized Home Dashboards – Each user connects to others via a home dashboard that displays consumed content and personalized reading recommendations from friends.

* Unique Book Profiles – Books are given a social meaning by a community value score that connects to user ratings and reviews. Social recommendations are powered by user feedback and a proprietary numerical system.

* Book Clubs Re-Envisioned – Users can create book groups to discuss and share reading experiences. Users can also set personal data metrics for reading goals, create milestones and set challenges amongst friends to further reading as a social experience.

COPIA will begin its private, limited-invitation beta in Jan. 2010. The public beta will launch in March 2010. The site will offer a compelling array of content relevant to a wide range of ages, interests and genres across best-sellers, popular titles, textbooks, public domain titles, with new content being added daily.

The e-readers will be available for purchase online in April 2010 and at retail by June 2010.

The Denver Public School Board this week gave the go-ahead to plans for the development of photovoltaic (PV) solar energy projects on 16 school buildings throughout the school district. The projects are the result of planning and coordination with Oak Leaf Energy Partners with the School District and the Denver Green Print Council.

XsunX Inc. said that it has completed a fully-functional CIGS (Copper indium gallium diselenide) thin-film solar device. The company is developing a hybrid solar cell technology that adapts manufacturing processes from the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) industry to produce CIGS solar cells deposited onto stainless steel substrate with “pseudo square” configuration.

American Superconductor Corporation’s AMSC Windtec subsidiary has signed a follow-on contract with Dongfang Turbine Co. Ltd. to design and jointly develop 5-megawatt (MW) full conversion wind turbines for the offshore wind power market.

There have been plenty of stories over the years of mispriced goods being found on various e-commerce sites. In the past, I recall stories about airline flights for $10 or computer monitors for $1. All of them were typos, and often the company behind them would deny the sales even as thousands rushed to buy. I never had a problem with companies denying such sales, but many insist that they should be enforced at the stated price. Last year, Taiwanese regulators forced Dell to live up the $15 price it accidentally posted on monitors to the 140,000 people who bought them. Whenever we write about these things people insist that, like in Taiwan, companies should be forced to honor the price.

So I’m curious what people think when the situation is reversed. In an extreme example, a guy bought an obviously mispriced $3 billion CD-ROM on Amazon. Well, the full price was actually $2,875,934,133.57, but amazingly, it did not include shipping (and handling) which added an additional $3.99 to the bill. Of course, it didn’t take long for Amazon to alert him that it was unable to complete his order and that he was not charged for it. But do the people who support forcing the retailer to honor the deal in the first case support it in stories like this as well?

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Let’s appreciate for a second that this future Croatian stadium looks like a city fit for a Lando Calrissian. The thing will have a CLOUD suspended above that can display in-game action or information—all while harvesting solar power.

Referred to as the “Blue Volcano” (proper name: Za(breg)), this njiric+arhitekti-designed stadium will sit in the heart of Zagreb, Croatia, and will be constructed of steel, recycled rubber and polycarbonate materials, giving it extra green-cred.

In addition to its teched-out features, the cloud is also intended to provide protection from rain and snow without requiring an all-out dome design. njiric+arhitekti expect the stadium to be completed in 2012. It has even been suggested that the stadium’s exterior could be used for skateboarding and free climbing. Sigh. If only there was a stadium like this in the Bay Area.

Be sure to check out Arch Daily for more images. [Arch Daily via Inhabitat via Fast Company]

Don’t ever say Boxee is  to be a little different.  The Boxee team has taken it’s XBMC beginnings, private equity money and bold thinking to shake up the somewhat geeky tech media market with their Boxee product.  This week the Boxee Box “aka extender” gets priced and today they announced a unique remote control to go with it.

Boxee Box Gets Spec’d at CES

The Boxee Box is already a mostly-known entity after it’s unveiling last month.  But this week we get the rest of the details – in particular pricing:

• D-Link is the hardware manufacturer
• It’s pretty small and a little unusual looking
• Cost will be under $200 (read $199.99 MSR)
• Format Support = DivX, VC-1, H.264, WMV, MKV, Flash 10.1, Mp3, WMA, AIFF, FLAC, AAC, DTS, Dolby, Ogg Vorbis, Jpeg, TIFF, BMP & PNG
• Integrated Online Services include: Pandora, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, Picasa
• Add-on apps bring many other niceties including Hulu
• Remote will be different – read below for more

via Engadget

Boxee Box Remote with QWERTY keyboard

Now Boxee is showing off their new remote with a keyboard.  It certainly is functional, but to me is like holding a calculator upside down and using it as a remote control.  I mean I’ll be hitting text keys constantly when I pick up the remote – it’s bound to happen!

I might be in the minority on this view as Mrs GeekTonic whom I expected to agree with me thinks it’s a great idea…  She did say it would be nice if the keyboard were hidden with a slider-type covering since it isn’t needed most of the time, but she (and I) like the idea of being able to easily type in text for searches and the like without pulling out a full-blown keyboard.

What do you think of the handheld keyboard er remote?

More on the Boxee Remote at the Boxee Blog

Darksiders may not yet be out, but it’s very clear that the buzz is reaching out far and wide, even to Hollywood. Joe Madureira, comic legend and the creative director behind the game, revealed in a recent

Washington D.C. is famous for it’s politicians and powerplayers, but there is another side to it…a creative side teeming with scores of artists, musicians, models and designers who are meeting incredible success in their respective professions.

Take for example Wale, who has had an incredible ride, landing Lady Gaga on an song BEFORE his first major album.  Tabi Bonney is another rapper putting Washington DC on the map with his incredible lyrical skills while honing his design skills with his own clothing line, Bonney Runway.

On the fast track from video vixen to self proclaimed actress, Angel Lola Luv a.k.a. Angel Melaku Fershgenet is making strides in her modeling career.  Nunu Wako, Jamati Online’s African Heat Sexiest Woman of 2009 is actively modeling and actively working on making a difference through different charities. Grammy-nominated Wayna has been thrilling audiences in the D.C. metro area for years and is finally getting noticed outside of the local area. Cote Minou, a hot African design house based in the DC metro area, got noticed by Korto Momolu.

The scene is definitely heating up!  Is it possible that Washington DC could be the next Atlanta/ New York/Hollywood?  Only time will tell.

The best advice we can give you is to know your audience. You don’t try to sell booze to pregnant women, you don’t make God-jokes in Utah and you don’t get a term sheet without tailoring your pitch. Investors are already blogging about what they want from potential portfolio companies, so if you’re looking for funding you should be reading their blogs. While we know there are plenty of useful investment-related blogs, here’s a list of five to get you started.

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1. BOTH SIDES OF THE TABLE, @msuster: Investor, entrepreneur and blogger Mark Suster is a partner at GRP VC and recently created Launchpad LA – an incubator for Southern California-based companies. Suster has an 11 part series on what makes an entrepreneur successful and it’s a great primer for first time startup founders.

2. PAULGRAHAM.COM: Best known as the co-founder of YCombinator, Graham and his partners revolutionized the investment model. The entrepreneur popularized both the incubator-style program model and the term ramen profitable to describe lean startups. To look at what Graham is interested in, YCombinator publishes Requests for Startups on an ongoing basis.

3. A VC, @fredwilson: Perhaps one of the most well-known blogger/VCs, Fred Wilson is a principal with NYC-based Union Square Ventures. He has a 15-year track record and some of his investments include Twitter, Disqus and Etsy. Wilson is an avid blogger and offers insightful commentary on emerging tech trends as they happen.

4. VENTURE HACKS, @venturehacks: Run by startup advisors Babak Nivi and Naval Ravikant, Venture Hacks offers great advice for early stage startups. The two have raised more than $100 million dollars for companies like test prep site Grockit and open source music company Songbird. With connections to major firms such as Sequoia, Benchmark and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, the duo’s blog also features guest posts from top-tier VCs.

5. VENTURE BLOG, @ventureblog: August Capital’s David Hornik is a former lawyer who has celebrated successful investments in Evite and PayCycle. During the winter of our financial apocalypse, Hornik was one of the first investors to offer a hopeful message to startups. Entitled Innovation Doesn’t Take a Vacation in an Economic Downturn, Hornik’s post inspired many to continue in their pursuit of great products.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Alistair and Andrew Magill

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In November of last year, more than 50 people came together for Startup Weekend Los Angeles. They pitched 45 different entrepreneurial ideas, eventually narrowing them into seven teams. They spent Saturday and Sunday working around the clock to create working prototypes of these ideas with help from an expert panel of mentors, speakers and even lawyers.

Then they voted, and the top vote-getter – Mingly – was born, and has since been invited to Twiistup, a showcase for hot upcoming startups in Los Angeles at the end of January.

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Mingly, a self-proclaimed “social CRM,” is a universal address book for your various networks of contacts the helps your prioritize and follow up on important relationships. It works with Facebook, Twitter, Google Contacts, and LinkedIn and allows you to create groups and set up alerts.

The idea was the side project of founder Tyler Koblasa before he decided to pitch the idea to the crowd of entrepreneurs and coders at Startup Weekend.

Their response? “I need that, I love it, let’s build it,” says Koblasa.

“I had no expectations,” Koblasa tells ReadWriteWeb. “I did think that in a perfect world, we would end up with a working, more advanced product – which we did.” After the event, he not only had a product, he had a company name and a team of developers to go with it.

Now, two months later, the small company forged in 48 hours has been chosen to participate in the upcoming Twiistup event, a much coveted invitation to startups because of the event’s exposure to media and investors.

Twiistup organizer Francisco Dao was one of the guest judges at Startup Weekend Los Angeles and rewarded Mingly with a free application to his event, and he’s not surprised the judges accepted it.

“It blew me away! I just love that these guys built a prototype in two days,” Dao tells ReadWriteWeb. “And now they’ll be on stage with these larger groups that have funding.”

Mingly is a great example for entrepreneurs-to-be that starting a business doesn’t always mean quitting your job and spending lots of money. In this case, the Mingly founders spent $75 to attend the Startup Weekend event, and soon they will be “in front of a lot of media and a lot of money,” as Dao puts it.

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The only thing preventing Google’s Nexus One phone from supporting multitouch features might be Apple’s patents.

Allow me to explain: There is nothing in the hardware of this device to prevent multitouch as evinced by Google’s comment this morning at their press conference. When asked if the Nexus One would one day support multitouch, a Google rep responded, “We’ll consider it.” In a word, this means that the hardware is ready for users’ pinching and zooming, but the current iteration of Google’s software is locked to prohibit multitouch for legal reasons. We give the hackers of the mobile world a couple days to hack the device – after all, it’s already been done on the Droid.

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Here’s a video showing multitouch on a Droid:

And here’s how that was accomplished. European hackers figured out how to jailbreak the device a scant month after its release. In the States,the folks at AllDroid sussed out how to port the web browser from the Motorola Milestone – which does support multitouch – over to the Droid. Granted, the hack only works for web browsers, but it’s a significant improvement for those who can live with a bricked phone.

The hack requires the would-be multitouch hero to get root access to the phone and install and delete certain components. Clearly, this user runs the risk of breaking the device and may violate Motorola’s TOS and void the warranty.

All of the above applies to the Droid. However, the same stipulations that prevent multitouch on that device also apply to the Nexus One: It’s not a hardware issue; the software is simply locked. So, we’re likely looking at a wait of a few days to see who wants to risk a $500+ device in the quest for an Android-powered multitouch mobile via TOS-violating hacks.

Apple’s involvement with the stalling or prevention of more and better multitouch devices has been a topic of speculation in the mobile gadget press since last year, when a group of several key patents for specific gestures were published. Since then, several multitouch devices, such as Palm’s Pre, have been released without legal fanfare. Still, some speculate that Google’s holding out on multitouch for legal reasons.

“I think at this point that’s more of a legal consideration than a technical one, since many phones that run Android have the capability of supporting multitouch on a hardware level,” wrote Jason Chen of Gizmodo when he toyed with the device last month.

And Chris Ziegler of Engadget said, “This is still very much a sensitive subject – but at least we have some confirmation that it’s a software limitation alone… there’s definitely some logic (probably legal logic, but logic nonetheless) behind which devices are getting it in which markets.”

What do you think – is this a patent issue? Or is the software simply not ready for public consumption yet? Better yet, if you had one of these devices, would you jailbreak it for multitouch capabilities? Let us know in the comments.

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Iomega’s iConnect turns thumb drives into NAS drives, puts it all online originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iHome always does it big at CES, and while we’ve yet to see everything from the company, the first two products showcased are already looking mighty tempting. The first is the iP2 (the obvious followup to the iP1), which touts Bongiovi technology, a 50-watt amplifier and support for dock-connecting iPods and iPhones. You’ll also get individual bass and treble adjustments, an AC output, line-in jack and a bundled remote. The iP39 is an interesting beast, as it’s designed mainly for use in the kitchen. Yeah, the kitchen. Designed to fit the decor found in the modern cooking palace, this timer / iPod alarm clock sports a slide out drawer for docking your iDevice, an FM radio tuner, a device-time sync function and a typical alarm clock — too bad it’s lacking a coffeemaker, huh? The iP2 is expected to make landfall this summer for $199, while the iP39 should start sashaying into domicile in the Spring for $99.

Continue reading iHome introduces iP2 iPod / iPhone sound system and iP39 kitchen gizmo

iHome introduces iP2 iPod / iPhone sound system and iP39 kitchen gizmo originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading ARM demos the Cortex-A9’s web browsing skills on video

ARM demos the Cortex-A9’s web browsing skills on video originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kool & the Gang’s eclectic mix of funk, disco, jazz, soul and R&B was hugely popular in Cuba, especially with those growing up in the 1980s.

The crowd knew the words to most of their songs, as well as many of the disco dance moves.

Forty-eight-year-old Asi Dominguez had arrived early with her husband and daughter to ensure they got a place at the front.

“We listened to them at home, at school, at parties, at discos, everywhere”, she recalled with enthusiasm.

“It’s just fantastic to be able to listen to them live here. It’s better late than never.”

Her husband Frank recalls on their first dates dancing to Kool & the Gang’s music.

“It was a great time for us. We were all 15 or 16 and that was our music.”
The group’s main members over the years included brothers Robert Bell (known as “Kool”) on bass and Ronald Bell on tenor saxophone; George Brown on drums; Robert Mickens on trumpet; Dennis Thomas on alto saxophone; Claydes Charles Smith on guitar, and Rick Westfield on keyboards. The Bell brothers’ father was an acquaintance of Thelonious Monk and the brothers were friends with Leon Thomas.
The visit made by Kool and The Gang to Havana has been very important. Several exchanges took place with Cuban musicians and Cuban art students and they were given the Cubadisco 2009 Honor Award.

Calle 13 is expected in Havana

René Pérez, the Residente from the frequently awarded Puerto Rican duet Calle 13 has been informing for several weeks to several press media on their possible visit to Cuba and he has also communicated this through the social network Twitter.

They were even ready to reach Cuba within the international movie festival which took place in Havana, in which was screened the documentary Sin Mapa on their trips around Latin America. But they were unable to come because they didn’t get on time
the permit from the US State Department.

Recently in Mexico, René Pérez said that his trip will take place in March and that his project in our country is not a concert for peace as was that of the Colombian Juanes, but simply a party for which some musicians will be invited.

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Biggest Loser Winners will not be with these forty former contestants of the show, stated sources. It has also been reported that he has put on the more than hundred pounds after leaving the show and now weighs over three hundred pounds. Benson’s regaining of extra pound popped up the question whether the contestants follow the diet chart after leaving the show.

Regaining weight is not the only reason for which he is kept out of the show. The relation between the ‘Biggest Loser’ organizers and Ryan C. Benson deteriorated after Benson made a public statement that he had reduced weight by dehydrating himself and fasting for considerable period. He also said that extreme dehydration made him urinate blood. This statement of the former winner creatednegativeimpact onthereputation of the showandraised a question in people’s mind whether Biggest Loser Winners practice proper exercises to reduce their extra mass.
The offiical Biggest Loser store now lists items like Biggest Loser Protein, the Biggest Loser Bath Scale, the Biggest Loser Cookbook, and The Biggest Loser Workout DVD Set. But it’s important to note that these Biggest Loser products aren’t always easy on the pocketbook. For example, the BodyBugg calorie counter is listed at the price of $199 at the 24 Hour Fitness website .

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Biggest Loser Winners will not be with these forty former contestants of the show, stated sources. It has also been reported that he has put on the more than hundred pounds after leaving the show and now weighs over three hundred pounds. Benson’s regaining of extra pound popped up the question whether the contestants follow the diet chart after leaving the show.

Regaining weight is not the only reason for which he is kept out of the show. The relation between the ‘Biggest Loser’ organizers and Ryan C. Benson deteriorated after Benson made a public statement that he had reduced weight by dehydrating himself and fasting for considerable period. He also said that extreme dehydration made him urinate blood. This statement of the former winner creatednegativeimpact onthereputation of the showandraised a question in people’s mind whether Biggest Loser Winners practice proper exercises to reduce their extra mass.
It’s no surprise that products like the bodybugg get a boost from The Biggest Loser. The show’s weight loss results are simply inspiring – and viewers want to know how they can also drop the pounds. (See before and after pictures from last season here.)

The offiical Biggest Loser store now lists items like Biggest Loser Protein, the Biggest Loser Bath Scale, the Biggest Loser Cookbook, and The Biggest Loser Workout DVD Set. But it’s important to note that these Biggest Loser products aren’t always easy on the pocketbook. For example, the BodyBugg calorie counter is listed at the price of $199 at the 24 Hour Fitness website .

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1. Body Bug, Body Bug Biggest Loser Biggest Loser Winners will not be with these forty former…
2. Flat Belly Diet, Flat Belly Diet For Men The flat belly diet is not a cure-all solution….
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