Updates improve Facebook and Twitter connections

Facebook members will soon be able to pipe their profile directly to a connected Twitter account.

The social networking giant said it was working on the feature in a document sent to developers about upcoming changes.

Before now linking to Twitter was only possible from Facebook pages which are meant for bands, public figures and businesses.

Facebook said linking was coming "soon" but gave no specific date.

The mention of the forthcoming connection to Twitter came as Facebook unveiled its "subscription" system which works in a similar fashion to Twitter's "follower" feature.

Those who subscribe to a Facebook page, and eventually a profile, will automatically be informed when its owner publishes what they flag as a public update.

The feature changes the dynamic of Facebook which before now has been about sharing updates with those a user deems to be their "friends". By subscribing, Facebook members will be able to see the public activities of almost any of its 600 million users.

Many suspect the feature that links profiles to Twitter will be formally unveiled at Facebook's F8 developers conference which starts on 22 September.

The move is widely seen as a response to a change made by Twitter. In early September, Twitter made it easier to send Tweets directly to a Facebook account.

Prior to the changes, many Twitter and Facebook users relied on stand alone applications or add-ons to link the two.

Both the changes are also seen as responses to the success of the Google + social network which makes it easier to send updates to other places.

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Google Wallet launching today? Signs point to yes

The pieces appear to be falling into place for the launch of Google Wallet today.
Last night, social-media blog TechCrunch posted an image purporting to be from Google Wallet partners, showing documentation on the service. That documentation says that "Google Wallet is launching September 19, 2011."

Earlier this morning, another blog, GigaOm, posted an image, taken by one of its reporters at a coffee shop in San Francisco, of a Google Wallet payment reader. The reader provides directions on it, saying users must "tap" their smartphone against the device in order to "pay by smartphone."

Google unveiled its Wallet service in May. The offering, which relies upon near-field communication to work, allows users to pay for products by simply tapping their smartphone against the Google Wallet-enabled reader.

However, there are a few barriers to entry to get Google Wallet running. For one, users need the Android-based Nexus S smartphone, which has an NFC chip in it. In addition, the service is only available with MasterCard's PayPass system. According to the Google Wallet site, the service will work with Citi MasterCard credit cards and the Google PrePaid Card. In addition, Google Wallet can store "gift cards from participating merchants," Google says.

Mobile payment systems are viewed by many as the next big thing in the marketplace. A slew of companies are vying to carve out a portion of the mobile-payment service in addition to Google, including PayPal, Visa, American Express, and others. There is also rampant speculation that Apple's iPhone 5 will come with near-field communications, paving the way for that company to also enter the space.

However, such fragmentation could prove troublesome for consumers. In order for mobile-payment services to work, several stakeholders need to be on-board, including merchants, credit card companies, and mobile device vendors. All the major U.S. wireless carriers are also planning to make a splash in the market, which could drastically alter which service comes out on top.

Regardless, it appears that companies see a bright future for people paying for products from their smartphones, rather than being forced to open their wallets and take plastic out. Google has been especially focused on driving home the value of a mobile-payment system. Last week, the company unveiled an ad for its Wallet service showcasing Seinfeld character George Costanza's troubles with his own, massive wallet. The ad ends with a simple catchphrase: "Goodbye, wallet. The phone will take it from here."

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How piracy ruins it for paid apps (Inside Apps)

Mounting piracy is the dirty little secret in the world of mobile applications.

Piracy isn't talked about a lot, but it has quietly grown into a major problem for many developers. It's more of an issue in Android because its open nature and loose authentication tools allow pirates to rip off and distribute paid apps.

"This is one of those problems that seem to have been running under the radar," said Carl Howe, an analyst at Yankee Group. "Every developer thinks, 'it must just be me.'"

Developers, you're not alone. A recent survey conducted by Yankee Group and location-based services and software provider Skyhook found that 27 percent of developers believe piracy in Android is a huge problem, with more than three-quarters saying that it's easy to copy and republish an Android application. Many point to pirate forums as the largest source of pirated apps.

The problem is actually causing a shift in business models. Instead of a one-off payment for an app, many are looking to give away their programs and make revenue through in-app purchases or advertisements. But for now, it's one of the primary reasons why the market for Android applications, which is expected to overtake Apple's App Store this year, doesn't yield anywhere near as much revenue.

"App piracy is extremely prevalent in the mobile phone industry, so we took an approach that circumvents it entirely," said Gary Gattis, chief executive of SpaceTime Studios.

Pirating an Android app is a simple matter of downloading a legitimate copy, breaking down its code, copying everything except the authentication portion, and posting it on another app store. Some pirated apps are put together in a bundle of programs sold to consumers at a discount. Because Android allows phones to download apps from any app store or site, savvy users can easily grab these apps. Many customers aren't even aware they are pirated apps.

Piracy hurts developers in several different ways. Most obvious is in the loss of sales for developers who rely on people making an upfront purchase for the program. But developers say they also must take on the burden of customer complaint and support costs when a customer's pirated app doesn't work. Because they think it was obtained legally, the customer will naturally go back to the developer to fix the problem.

Howe said developers have said that for every one app they sell, they get 100 questions from people who obtained a pirated version.

If the developer doesn't address the problem, he risks hurting his brand both for that app and for future projects.

Google, meanwhile, isn't doing enough to fight piracy, according to respondents. The survey found that 54 percent of developers thought Google was too lax on its app market policies. Developers have said they have asked Google for help, but have been disappointed with the results.
Google wasn't available to comment on the issue.

The problem is not all Android. When Anders Brownworth worked for an app development startup, he noticed that one his iPhone apps, which was designed to look at account balances, saw a huge spike in usage one day. He estimated that the number of users with a pirated copy of his app was 10 times the legitimate installed base.

Because his app relied on communication to a central database in Brownworth's office, he was able to shut off access to the pirated apps, essentially making them useless.
"It didn't hit us in the pocketbook," he said.

Brownworth said he recommended that all apps have some backend communication for situations like these, although he acknowledged it may not be practical for developers.

While pirates attacked his iPhone app, he said the process is even simpler on the Android side.
"It's exceedingly easy to pirate an Android app," he said.

So what can Google do to prevent further piracy? Howe said that the search giant should mandate a certification and badge program for markets, which gives them the authority to enforce transactions and provide a hurdle for pirates with unauthorized apps.

Google could also provide payment receipts that can be verified online, as well as build-in code that deters tampering in apps, which would make it harder for pirates to rip out and alter codes to make the programs free. While these are not hard countermeasures against piracy, they do throw up some roadblocks.
"None of these steps will significantly reduce developer freedom, but they will at least make piracy a little more difficult than copying and pasting code," Howe said.

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Samsung to seek iPhone 5 ban in Korea, report says

The iPhone 5 hasn't even been announced yet, and already Samsung is planning to ban its sale in South Korea, a new report claims.

According to the Korea Times, citing sources with knowledge of the matter, Samsung will file suit against Apple for violating its patents related to wireless communications as soon as possible after the Cupertino, Calif.-based company launches its follow-up to the iPhone 4. In that lawsuit, the Korea Times' sources say, Samsung will request the court ban all sales of the device.

"For as long as Apple does not drop mobile telecommunications functions, it would be impossible for it to sell its i-branded products without using our patents," a Samsung source reportedly told Korea Times. "We will stick to a strong stance against Apple during the lingering legal fights."

The Korea Times report is just the latest entry in the ongoing legal saga between Apple and Samsung. Over the last several months, the companies have ramped up their bitter patent battle, taking it all over the world. As of this writing, the companies are battling it out in the U.S., Australia, across Europe, and in parts of Asia.

So far, Apple has gotten the better of Samsung. In Australia, the iPhone maker was able to get Samsung to agree to show it three Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet designs before it sells the single version that Apple allows. Earlier this month, Apple successfully stopped the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany, following an earlier, overturned ruling by a German court that temporarily banned the sale of Samung's tablet across the EU.

But it's not just tablets. Both companies claim that the other's smartphones violate their patents, as well. And so far, neither side has budged.

Apple has been especially critical of Samsung over the last several months. In South Korea, Apple filed a complaint against Samsung, saying that its products have been copied.

"[Samsung's] products...blatantly imitate the appearance of Apple's products to capitalize on Apple's success," Apple said in its complaint in June. "The copying has been widely observed in the industry and has been mentioned in multiple articles reviewing Samsung products."

For its part, Samsung has left most of the talking for the courtroom, deciding instead to say publicly that it will "continue to actively defend and protect our intellectual property."

This time around, Samsung has not immediately responded to a CNET request for comment on its lawsuit plans against the iPhone 5. Apple has also not immediately responded to CNET's request for comment.
That said, there's no telling what either side can say. Apple has so far remained tight-lipped on the iPhone 5 and hasn't even acknowledged that the device will launch anytime soon. What's more, the rumor mill can't even keep it straight: some reports suggest the device will launch this month, while others say it won't happen until October.

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Facebook partners for easy song, film sharing--report

Following reports yesterday that suggested Facebook would use its upcoming F8 developers conference to announce some sort of music and/or video service, The New York Times says it has confirmed the service with anonymous industry sources, and the paper has provided some details on how the new service will look.
Yesterday, Dutch entrepreneur and developer Yvo Schaap spied a clue in the HTML for the Web sites of Spotify, Rhapsody, and several other major music services that pointed to some type of custom Facebook format. Meanwhile, The New York Post reported that Hulu and Facebook would announce at this week's F8 confab deeper integration of their two sites. Netflix was also mentioned in the Post story.

Now the Times is reporting that Facebook "will unveil a media platform that will allow people to easily share their favorite music, television shows, and movies, effectively making the basic profile page a primary entertainment hub."

According to the paper, Facebook users will be able to post links to the songs, music videos, or movies they're watching, and their Facebook friends will be able to click directly to the content and check it out themselves. The links will appear in a Facebook user's news feed, or on a tab or in a widget incorporated into user profiles.

The Times piece quotes David Hyman, CEO of music service MOG, as saying that the Facebook service is meant to do away with the "friction" involved in similar link-sharing arrangements, where, in the case of MOG, a nonsubscriber following a subscriber's link to a song would land on a page that urged the nonsubscriber to sign up and asked for a credit card number.

The Times article focuses on music services and talks of the linked-to songs as being offered for free to those who click the special links. But it says neither MOG nor rival Rdio would say how much free music would be offered.

The Times lists Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, MOG, French company Deezer, and music video site Vevo--all services mentioned by code-sifter Schaap--as being among the companies signing on to the arrangement. It also says about five other music services will be involved (Schaap mentions Soundcloud). The paper names no specific companies that stream movies and TV shows.

The Times said a Facebook representative declined to comment and that its sources cautioned that the plan's specifics could change.

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Former Samsung exec says he leaked iPad info

Do you ever wonder where some of those "supply chain sources" are really coming from when you read Apple rumors? At least one of them came from Samsung, it turns out. Former Samsung Electronics manager Suk-Joo Hwang has testified at an insider trading trial that he leaked confidential information about iPad components before the device made its public debut in early 2010.


The trial in question is for Primary Global Research executive James Fleishman, who is accused of helping to facilitate the exchange of confidential information between traders and employees at various companies. Hwang struck a deal in the Fleishman case in order to be granted immunity from prosecution, allowing him to testify about his information-leaking ways.

When testifying to jurors, Hwang explained that he had lunched with Fleishman and a hedge fund manager in order to pass on information about LCDs that Samsung was supplying for Apple's still-unannounced iPad. "One particular thing I remember vividly was that I talked about the shipment numbers of Apple, it was about iPad," Hwang testified, according to Bloomberg. "This is in December 2009, before it came out with the tablet PC, they didn't know the name then, so I talked to them about the tablet shipment estimates in that meeting."

Fleishman was reportedly paying Hwang a $200 per hour "consultation fee" for the secret information—an offer that was later raised to $350 after Hwang tried to end the relationship.

Hwang went on to explain that both he and the hedge fund manager were aware that they shouldn't have been leaking the confidential info, and even said he suspected that a nearby Apple employee might have overheard their conversation. ("The first thing I thought was 'Wow, I said it too loud' and then I really freaked out," Hwang said.) Soon after the meeting, he discovered that Apple had ditched a supply contract with Samsung, leading to his attempt to sever ties with Fleishman.

Apple deals with leaks coming from from all levels of the system, so Hwang's testimony probably isn't the first Apple has heard of it. Hwang no longer works at Samsung, either—he was canned in June of this year—so at least in this case, Apple's relationship with Samsung as a supplier is likely to remain unscathed, patent wars aside.

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Y Combinator-Backed SellStage Wants To Help You Better Showcase Your Products — With Video

If you’re advertising a product, would you rather simply have an image of that product, or have your consumers be able to watch a video of that product in action? Unless you’re sarcastic like myself, you probably answered with the latter, because the truth is that videos help products sell online. This is true even for those vendors that sell products that one wouldn’t necessarily assume would be made more attractive with video. Consider Zappos, for example, which currently offers over 50,000 product videos. Zappos also happens to do a pretty good business.

For SellStage, a startup from this summer’s batch of Y Combinator companies that is launching today, Zappos is the standard. But most big eTailers are far behind the shoe seller in terms of video content. So SellStage is launching a platform that is designed to make it easy for both big and small businesses to add video content to their websites to showcase their products.

Product videos tend to be different enough from other video content that it needs a specific, if not niche, solution. Videos also tend to be a pain in the ass to integrate with product pages, as you can’t just take your normal embed approach, because it will take up too much space, and may even displace the product images.
So, SellStage wants not only host and stream your product videos, but also play them in a lightbox. So after your product video plays, you want a call to action, not simply a replay link. Of course, SEO is critical eCommerce sites, and that most product videos don’t take this into account, so SellStage automatically generates sitemaps optimized for video search crawlers.

On the merchant side, SellStage offers great value proposition in that all you have to do is add one line of Javascript to the product page, and the startup handles the rest, the players, the hosting, and the streaming. You can then drag and drop your videos where you want them, all with a few clicks.

What’s more, SellStage videos work on iOS devices, which a lot of product videos don’t because they use Flash. The startup is also working on tools to make video production easier, including this forthcoming iOS app, and some “you shoot, SellStage edits”-type features.

The startup, while still in its early form, is going to be very useful to marketing departments who want to manage video on their eCommerce platforms, especially for those who have a large product catalog and want to add 500+ videos and not have those turn into 500 IT requests.
“Retailers who consider their expertise a competitive advantage need to find a way to use their greatest asset – their knowledgeable sales staff”, SellStage Co-founder Tom Saffell said. “To differentiate their online stores from everyone else. Video lets them do that”.

Retailars already have everything they need to make great video: The store is set, the sales staff are the actors, and the script is whatever you say to the customers in store — your sales pitch, says Co-founder Thomas Escourrou.

But how is SellStage going to monetize? The Co-founders told me that they are going to establish a tiered pricing structure that takes into account how many videos the company wants to make, host, and stream, and whether or not they want production assistance from SellStage itself. As the startup moves forward, it also will begin giving its customers more customization options.

SellStage is launching in private alpha today, but is making 50 priority invites available to readers. Simply visit the startup’s homepage and enter “concorde” for a sneak peek.

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RIM’s BBM Service Suffers Partial Outage In Canada, Latin America

RIM, to put it mildly, has been having it rough these past few days. Among other things, they’ve failed to hit their quarterly revenue goal, sold far fewer PlayBooks than they had hoped, and potentially let their market share slip into the single digits.

After all that, RIM didn’t need any more problems, but another one has popped up anyway: it seems that their BBM and email service is partially down in a handful of countries.

A quick Twitter search shows that subscribers in Canada and Latin America seem to be the most stricken by the partial outages, with the Financial Post reporting that pockets of users on three of Canada’s carriers (Rogers, Bell, and WIND) have been affected. Meanwhile on the southern front, NTN24 states that the partial outage has affected people in Venezuela, Colombia, Panamá, Chile, México and Argentina. The outage may even be more widespread, as the Huffington Post reports that sporadic tweets from the UK and Egypt indicate similar service issues.

RIM has acknowledged the outage on their official BlackBerryHelp account, but the feed has yet to offer any salient details. In fairness, this may not be an end-of-the-world scenario for BlackBerry users, but the timing for RIM is atrocious. While I’m sure they have teams fighting to find a fix, consumer confidence in the Waterloo-based company may dip even more as a result of today’s issues.

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Sprint Cancels Store Leave, Confirms iPhone 5 Launch Window

Remember when a company memo telling employees they can’t take any time off in a two-week period was an occasion for gloom? That’s certainly not the case with the leak of an internal memo from Sprint management, which seems to suggest the iPhone 5 will be launching — on Sprint, as well as Verizon and AT&T — in the first half of October.


The memo, obtained by SprintFeed, reads: “due to the possibility of a major phone launch in October we are blacking out September 30th through October 15th.” In other words, batten down the hatches. No Sprint employee is leaving the store in the first two weeks of October. Something big is coming down the pike.

Bear in mind that we’ve seen reports since late August that Sprint will be a launch partner for Apple’s iPhone 5. Best Buy inadvertently confirmed that last weekend, via a leaked document that claimed the Sprint iPhone 5 would be available in the first week of October. And early Friday came word that Sprint’s unlimited data plan would be available on the iPhone 5 as well as other Sprint phones — making the number 3 carrier a serious competitor in the iPhone 5 stakes.

Our best guess for the iPhone 5 launch date is still Friday October 7. That lines up with the Best Buy report, another leak from an AT&T executive, another report from 9to5Mac — and it’s smack dab in the middle of Sprint’s blackout period.

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Google Explains Its Google Docs Outage

Google Docs suffered an extended outage this week, which raised concerns, yet again, about the reliability involved with storing mission-critical documents in the cloud. Personally, I’d rather trust Google’s redundant server infrastructure than my own hard drive. However, for enterprise users, the problem with cloud outages is that local I.T. staff can’t do anything about the problem, unless they use a third-party backup service, for example.

Today, Google is sharing details on what happened to its Docs service, and what it’s doing to correct the problem in the future.

According to a post on the Google Enterprise Blog, the outage was caused by a change designed to improve real time collaboration within the document list, says Google. This change exposed a memory management bug which was only evident under heavy usage.
Writes Alan Warren, Engineering Director:

Every time a Google Doc is modified, a machine looks up the servers that need to be updated. Due to the memory management bug, the lookup machines didn’t recycle their memory properly after each lookup, causing them to eventually run out of memory and restart. While they restarted, their load was picked up by the remaining lookup machines – making them run out of memory even faster. This meant that eventually the servers couldn’t properly process a large fraction of the requests to access document lists, documents, drawings, and scripts which led to the outage you saw on Wednesday. 

The entire outage lasted around 30 minutes, with 24 minutes dedicated to rolling back the changes, and 5 more minutes for the normal functioning of the service to fully resume.

According to Warren, analysis of the issue has enabled Google to reduce the chances of future events, decrease resolution times if such an event was to occur again, and limit the scope which any single problem can affect.

Again, for most casual users of Google Docs, the outage probably went by unnoticed. It’s the affected Google Apps business users who are most concerned by cloud outages such as this. Transitioning to the cloud is not without its faults, but let’s remember: no system is perfect, not even the one your I.T. guy used to run for you.

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Ever-Popular iPhone Named Top Smartphone. Again

The iPhone undoubtedly is among the most popular phones ever, and yet another survey shows it continues resonating with consumers.

In J.D. Powers’ semi-annual customer satisfaction survey, Apple’s iPhone takes the top spot yet again, making it the top smartphone brand five years running. Apple scored an 838 on the survey’s measure of performance, ease of operation, features, and physical design. HTC scored second place with 801.
“Our results are based on consumer experience. The intuitiveness of the device itself and ease of operation are important factors, and are cornerstones to most of Apple’s products,” says Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power and Associates.

The online survey uses daily interviews to poll current owners of branded smartphones and people who don’t own a smartphone. The data is then collapsed into six month periods, so if you get a phone that’s well received, that manufacturer’s score rises accordingly.

“HTC and Motorola’s scores were closer overall to Apple last year than this year,” said Parsons.
“The iPhone is a beautiful jewel of a device, and it works just the way it should. It’s intuitive, and it’s dead simple,” says Leander Kahney, editor and publisher of Cult of Mac (and a former Wired.com managing editor and news editor). “It’s taken the pain out of personal computing in so many different ways.”

The iPhone has helped propel Apple to record revenues since its debut, breaking several sales records along the way. It was among the first smartphones to successfully implement a touchscreen and ditch the keyboard, making it utterly unlike peers like the first generation Sidekick phones, which featured QWERTY keyboards and no onscreen touch controls. With the introduction, and continued popularity, of the Apple App Store, the iOS solidified itself as a robust, capable platform on the iPhone.

Although the endless stream of rumors can get tiresome, the iPhone remains a buzz magnet because Apple’s upcoming products and technological developments are so closely guarded.

“Apple is so secretive. It’s such an aggressive company. There’s this great anticipation that they’re going to push the state of the art even further,” Kahney says. According to J.D. Powers and Associates, that certainly helps Apple stay at the top of the rankings.

“It’s not unexpected that satisfaction is higher for devices that have new technological advances or features,” said Parsons in the press release.

Or that consumer anticipation rises when those new technological advances get close to their release date.
For instance, reports of the iPhone coming to Sprint in October have persisted for the last few months, with analysts corroborating the move. But it now looks like Sprint not only will have the iPhone, they’ll be offering up unlimited data plans for the handset, too. Competitors Verizon and AT&T already have killed their unlimited data plans. Sprint currently offers a $100 unlimited data plan for BlackBerry smartphones and the HTC Evo.

Reports that ship times for the iPhone 4 were delayed, followed by the removal of shipping times on the Apple website’s product pages, the feeling that the next chapter in the iPhone saga is near has become practically palpable.

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Android App Lets You See Invisible Space

Well — invisible stuff IN space. Effusions of gamma rays, clouds of X-rays, “filaments, clouds, shells”, all known technically, if I recall, as space gush. Columbia Hubble Fellow Joshua Peek (almost certainly not the same guy as the rodeo Josh Peek) gets to look at these wonders through big telescopes. He collaborated with app developer Xperia to make an Android app, The Invisible Universe, so the rest of us could look at them with phones.

I don’t own an Android device, but now wish I did. No matter: this video about the project, a masterpiece of product understatement, leaves the app almost unmentioned as it chooses instead to simply Make Cool of Peek’s work. It nicely humanizes Peek, who seems hip and fun and smart, and the earthy attention paid to his office and lab — notebooks, drawings, lenses, stacked astrophysics journals — anchors us and the film. It’s gorgeous.

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LinkedIn Now Lets You Include Volunteer Experience in Your Profile

LinkedIn is adding a new “Volunteer Experience & Causes” field to profiles, the company announced Wednesday. The section will let users highlight and showcase their unpaid or charitable work experience.
Users can click off causes that mean the most to them, fill out an experience profile or add specific organizations — such as the American Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity — that they support.

Promoting your charitable experience will help get you a job, according to a recent survey by LinkedIn. The company polled nearly 2,000 U.S. professionals and found that 41% said that when they are evaluating candidates, they consider volunteer work just as much as paid work. Of the hiring managers surveyed, 20% said they gave a job based on a candidate’s volunteer work experience.

This is good and bad news. Of the 2,000 professionals surveyed, 89% had volunteer experience but only 45% included that information on their resume.

“A lot of people said, ‘I didn’t want to appear to be bragging, I see volunteering as something that I do on a very personal level and I don’t expect to be rewarded for it on a professional level,’” says Nicole Williams, LinkedIn’s connecting director.

Volunteering is a way of getting your nose out in front of other candidates, Williams says. It helps you meet potential employers or recommendations without having to search out paid work experience in a down economy.

“There are a lotof people that keep it private because they do it for themselves and i respect that,” Williams says. “But at the same time, I think there’s something to be proud of with your commitment to causes.”
What do you think of LinkedIn including volunteerism and causes? Will you add the section to your own profile? Let us know in the comments below.

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RadiumOne Gets Into The Group Messaging Game, Debuts App For iOS And Android PingMe

RadiumOne, an online ad network that aims to combine social and intent data to serve ads, is getting into the group messaging space today. The company is releasing a free, group messaging app for iOS and Android called PingMe Messenger that allows users to message each other in real-time, across platforms.

The app has actually come out of RadiumOne Labs, a division of RadiumOne, which incubates what the company calls ‘first-party products’ for the publisher community they serve. The first product to be released by RadiumOne Labs is PingMe.

Similar to other group messaging apps, PingMe gives users the ability to send realtime messages to friends and family without incurring text messaging costrs, similar to the act of sending a BBM on a BlackBerry phone. Once downloaded, the app allows users to connect with their friends through their telephone’s address book, Facebook, or the PingMe network. The registration process is fairly simple—your phone number is your user ID, and you don’t need a password or hard-to-remember PIN to connect with your friends.

With the app, which only cost $160K and took 4 months to develop, you can chat with friends in groups or individually with the same speed of messaging as BBM. And PingMe is free in the U.S. and worldwide and offers unlimited messaging.

Some of the more unique features of PingMe include an opt-in geo-location functionality that lets friends find each other based on their location, the ability to post status updates a news feed and PingMe tells you when someone sends you a message – even when PingMe is closed.

So why is a social advertising company getting into the group messaging game? Eventually, the goal is to offer a white label, skinned version of the app to publishers and advertisers that they can offer to customers, says founder Gurbaksh Chahal.

For background, RadiumOne mines social data and use this information to identify relevant consumers for brands. Through what Chahal calls “social retargeting,” RadiumOne analyzes how users interact with one another on social networks to find the consumers that identify with a brand’s current customer base, and then serves advertisements to this audience across the company’s network of publishers. The company just raised $21 million in new funding at a $200 million valuation.

RadiumOne Labs will be launching a number of similar white-label offerings for advertisers and publishers in the future for various products, Chahal explains. While PingMe will go head to head with GroupMe (recently acquired by Skype), Facebook, and others; Chahal doesn’t seem to be too worried about the competition and believes there’s still room for innovation in the group messaging space. RadiumOne will launch PingMe apps for BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 devices in the next few weeks.

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Former Xmarks CEO And Serial Entrepreneur James Joaquin Joins Catamount Ventures As Partner

Serial entrepreneur and former Xmarks CEO James Joaquin is announcing today that he has joined Catamount Ventures as a Partner.

Prior to Catamount, Joaquin was the CEO bookmarking startup Xmarks, which was acquired last year by LastPass. In the 80’s, he co-founded Clearview Software, a company acquired by Apple. After six years at Apple in engineering and marketing roles, Joaquin co-founded When.com, an internet calendar and events service that was acquired by AOL. He was also President and CEO of Ofoto and helped lead the service from its start through its acquisition by Kodak.

Joaquin has actually been a venture and angel investor working with Bridgescale Partners and Kapor Capital. He’s personally invested in a number of startups including Pixable, PixelPipe, AdRoll, and 20×200 .
In his new role, he’ll lead investment opportunities in the consumer internet and consumer packaged goods sectors.

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Reddit Evolves Into Reddit Inc., Begins Search For New CEO

Happy Tuesday after Labor Day everybody! In other news, beloved Internet hangout reddit has spun out of Conde Nast and will become its own independent entity, reddit inc., owned by Condé Nast parent company Advance publications.

In a blog post coincidentally enough entitled “Independence,” reddit General Manager Erik Martin implies that the organizational change was due to a combination of technical issues related to company’s ever-expanding growth and a culture clash with Condé Nast.

“When reddit was acquired in October 2006 by Condé Nast, it was receiving about 700k page views per day,” Martin writes. “Now, reddit routinely gets that much traffic in 15 minutes. This explosion in traffic created technical, cultural, and organizational growing pains.”

According to Martin, reddit Inc. will now directly report to a board, which will include co-founder Alexis Ohanian, reddit President Bob Sauerberg, Condé Nast CTO Joe Simon and  Advance VP Andrew Siegel. Martin tells me that the company, which employs eight people out of its SF office and two out of NY with another salesperson based in LA, is looking for a new CEO in the Bay Area.

“It’ll be a much more direct process now, we go to the board like any other company and say that this is the business case for why we’re doing XYZ,” comments Martin on what he thinks will change organizationally moving forward. “It allows us to operate more independently,” he says.

Contrary to (hilarious) reports, Gawker writer Adrian Chen is not in the running for Reddit Editor In Chief.

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Australian Judge Asks For iPad Sales Stats In Galaxy Tab Case

In its unending quest for tablet market supremacy (as if it hadn’t yet achieved such a feat), Apple has been asked by the Australian court to provide iPad sales data from the U.S. and the U.K. Samsung originally sent Apple three modified Galaxy Tabs with the hopes that the fresh “redesign” would coax Apple into dropping the case.

As we expected, that didn’t happen. A Galaxy Tab is still a Galaxy Tab, and Apple clearly wants to destroy it. No number of modifications seems to be changing that.

Getting the preliminary injunction in Australia seemed to be pretty effortless for Apple, but a permanent one requires more scrutiny from the court. Australian judge Annabelle Bennett has asked for sales data from the UK and the U.S. to ensure that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has in fact hurt Apple’s iPad sales, reports Bloomberg. The disclosure of those numbers isn’t mandatory, but since Samsung has vehemently denied claims that its tablet hurt iPad sales, Judge Bennett sees those figures as pretty necessary if Apple wants to walk away with a win.

Everyone already knows that the iPad is the dominant tablet in the market. Sales are up 183 percent in Q3 2011 from the same time last year, though Apple argues that those numbers would be higher if it wasn’t for the Galaxy Tab and its similar “functionality and appearance.” It may be difficult to argue that the GalTab hurt sales while simultaneously seeing such amazing growth out of the iPad. Especially since Samsung has been persistently arguing the opposite.

“People want an Android product, so they will buy an Android product,” said Samsung counsel Neil Murray. “This is not impacting the sales of Apple.” Whether or not that’s true remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure. No one in Australia will be playing with a Galaxy Tab 10.1 until Apple’s happy.

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LG will develop thinner Optimus 3D mobile phone, is expected to launch next year

LG's IFA 2011 and did not like with the blood brothers , as released amazing phone and tablet PCs , but low-profile 3.8-inch screen to show Optimus Sol , almost to forget it in the hands of the flagship phone Optimus 3D. LG engineers Dr. Henry Noh recent interview with Pocket-Lint site visit that the thinner they are developing a 3D mobile to ensure this new mobile phone market next year, when, to become one of the most attractive mobile phone. He did not specify the size, but he mentioned that next year's smartphone is about the thickness of 6mm, 7mm and 3D mobile phone in about. Therefore, we can expect the second generation of Optimus 3D may be greatly reduced thickness of about 4.9mm, and this will be higher than the current 7.9mm thickness of NEC MEDIAS WP N-06C thinner, enough to make consumers believe that 3D cell phone and no longer " thick "equate.

Google+ API Launch Still Months Away

Developers anxiously awaiting the Google+ API (application programming interface) will have to wait a little while longer, we’re told. Although Google is hard at work on building the tools which would enable developers to build third-party applications for the new social networking service from the search giant, the API’s launch is still “months” away.

The timeframe, amorphous and vague as it is, was revealed by a Google+ project manager to a Google+ developer, who has asked to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

And it’s certainly disappointing news for anxious Google+ enthusiasts and developers itching to launch or use apps that leverage the network’s unique capabilities, like Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Huddles.

Last month, for example, we had high hopes that an API was on the horizon, when Sully Taylor, Creative Director for Teens in Tech Labs and Founder & CEO at Sully Creative, released a basic Google+ application for Mac users. He had posted on Google+ that he had “access to private APIs,” which led to a firestorm of speculation about the status of the official Google+ API launch.

Sully later removed the comment from his Google+ profile at the request of Google, saying that it was “misleading.” In addition, Google also told us that no developer has private API access.
And it looks like no developer will for some time yet.

In the meantime, there are several unofficial workarounds available for accessing parts of the Google+ service, including this unofficial Google Plus API on Github and this Java object for accessing a few basics from the network, like profile details, friend lists, and posts, for example. The problem, of course, with using these unofficial methods is that they’re often difficult to build, prone to breaking as things on Google+ change, buggy and incomplete.

That said, given that Google+ launched in late June, an API launch by year-end would be a solid 6 months after the social network’s debut – certainly a reasonable timeframe (even speedy, perhaps) for an API of such scope.

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New Startup JPEGmini Reduces Photos’ Size, Not Their Quality

Photographers, take note. A startup called JPEGmini is introducing a new photo compression technology for JPEG photos which reduces the overall file size (by up to 5 times), while preserving the photo’s quality and resolution.

The technology is designed specifically with the Web in mind, as more photographers, both amateur and professional, use online storage for photo archival purposes. With JPEGmini, photos can be uploaded, emailed and shared faster, while saving on storage and bandwidth costs.

Sounds great, of course. But the question is: does it work?

According to the company, the JPEGmini technology works by analyzing the input image using a unique quality detector which imitates the human visual system. Based on this analysis, it applies the maximum amount of compression which will not cause visible artifacts. The second part of the system is a JPEG encoder, which adapts the JPEG encoding process to the original photos, creating the most compact representation of the photos that is possible under the JPEG standard.

So, to be clear: JPEGmini is not a new file format, it uses the JPEG file format.
And in some cases, it can achieve a recompression ratio of up to 5 times, or an 80% reduction.

The key phrase here is “some cases.” JPEGmini doesn’t always surpass the capabilities of current technology, it seems. Says San Francisco-based professional photographer Jim Goldstein of JMG Galleries, in tests, JPEGmini achieves greater file size savings on larger Web images than Photoshop did. But with smaller images, Photoshop’s “Save for Web” setting (at 60% quality) did better. (More details on the tests here).
This seems to confirm what JPEGmini itself says – the higher the original JPEG photo resolution, the greater the file size reduction it can offer. (Only photos 8 MP and higher can achieve the 80% reduction rate using this technology, for example).

As a professional photographer, Goldstein was also careful to read through the Terms of Service for JPEGmini, which says that if you choose to upload a photo to the site, they can use it to promote their service. This is overly broad, but could be ameliorated simply by adding the line “upon request.”
In addition, it’s worth noting that JPEGmini preserves all the photo’s metadata.

Still, for professionals, the best savings and balance of image quality would come from saving a JPEG for a RAW file, and ideally, doing compressions in batches, not one-by-one as with JPEGmini’s service, explains Goldstein. Correction: JPEGmini lets you upload folders. 

So perhaps professional photographers don’t have need of JPEGmini, after all. But other consumers might…especially those who don’t own a copy of Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, for example. The technology could be integrated into consumer electronics, like phones and digital cameras, too, as a way to save storage space and bandwidth when saving or sharing photos.

JPEGmini was developed by ICVT, an Israeli startup company based in Tel-Aviv. Its founder, Sharon Carmel, previously co-founded Emblaze, which developed the Internet’s first vector-based graphics player, preceding Macromedia Flash, and BeInSync, a P2P sync and backup company acquired by Phoenix Technologies in 2008. JPEGmini is self-funded.

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Hot, Flat, And Widescreen: The Rise Of The Minitabs

The past three days have brought us a trio of interesting “tabs:” the Samsung Note, the 7.7 Gal Tab, and (bear with me) the new, flatter iPhone. Sadly, two of those may not make it to the US of A (and one can’t even be shown in Germany), but it’s clear that there’s a trend. Wait a few months and we’ll see more new 5- to 7-inch tablets/phones on the market than, I’d wager, 10-inch tablets. But why the shrink? Who is clamoring for a flatter, bigger “minitab” about the size of a phone but just a hair bigger?

First, this trend is not new. It began with the HTC HD2 (and, going back further, with a few recent Archos tablets) and many Android phones have gone the “flat and big” route, creating phones that are more in line with widescreen media players than what we currently call candybar style.

Hardware designers run in packs. A few years ago, the hardware designers at LG, Samsung, and Apple all went for something they called piano black. Everything was piano black – phones, cameras, TVs, DVD players. You had some splashes of “color” in the trade dress, but glossy plastic a la iPhone 3G was all the rage.

The same thing is happening here – the running of the herd – but for a few interesting reasons. First, the 10-inch tablet market is tapped. There is nowhere to go. To build another one is folly and to many consumers to buy anything other than an iPad is moral failure.

Gadgets hold totemic significance and their shape is important to manufacturers. Shape allows for a level of differentiation that is immediately apparent to the consumer and allows the manufacturer to hide any number of sins. Chip speeds are stagnant and the physical limitations of a compact device are forcing manufacturers to rethink the size and shape of their devices.

Consumers, too, are looking for something new. The 10-inch tablet is boring and, more important (at least according to Apple) a patent violation. What better way to keep tab-like gadgets in the pipeline than to smoosh them down?

Additionally, big touchscreens are still hard to come by. With everyone focusing on glass that maxes at 10 inches and larger, manufacturers can reduce costs by hunting down smaller pieces.

In the end, the next tablet is the next tablet. There is a certain fickleness to hardware size and it’s based on fashion, manufacturing ability, and some designer’s whim. Whether we buy these things as they get bigger (or smaller) is a matter of taste and quality. Manufacturers are trying to figure us out while reducing costs and, for a while, we’re going to be saddled with some truly pocket-straining devices until the next technology comes along to replace this one.

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Zynga Co-founder Andrew Trader Joins VC Firm Maveron As A Venture Partner

Maveron, a VC firm with offices in Seattle and San Francisco, this morning announced that it has named Andrew Trader (who is often referred to simply as A.T.) as a partner. Trader actually joined Maveron back in 2010 as Entrepreneur-in-Residence, but is now taking on a more expanded role at the firm.

According to its website, Maveron’s portfolio includes companies like Groupon, eBay, Shutterfly, Drugstore.com and SAY Media.
 
In 2007, Andrew Trader was a founding member of Zynga, where he managed business operations including revenue management, marketing, user acquisition, business development, and strategic partners.
He was unceremoniously ousted from the company around March 2010.

Before Zynga, Trader was the CEO of Utah Street Networks, the operator of Tribe.net, one of the first social networking sites (acquired by Cisco in 2007). He was also the co-founder of Coremetrics, (acquired by IBM last year).

Trader recently joined the board of freshly funded game developer Kixeye. Ironically, Kixeye isn’t backed by Maveron (at least not yet).
Last but not least, he was also involved in a lawsuit. Last year, Abu Dhabi-based investment company Alpha Investments sued Zynga for restricting a share sale on SecondMarket.

Trader had attempted to sell close to $13 million in Zynga’s stock (1 million shares) to Alpha Investments, but the social games developer later said it would only allow the transaction if the firm agreed not to sell the shares until 180 days after an initial public offering.

According to some media reports, the attorney for Alpha filed to dismiss the case in June 2011.

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Today’s Top Headlines in Tech & Social Media

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on four particular stories of interest today.


Samsung Announces LTE Versions of Galaxy S II & Galaxy Tab 8.9

Ahead of the IFA trade show in Berlin beginning Friday, Samsung has announced LTE variants of the Galaxy S II smartphone and Galaxy Tab 8.9 tablet. The new versions of these devices will have fast wireless data transfer capability with download speeds as fast as 100 Mbps.

Apple Patent Claims Delays Galaxy Tab 10.1 Launch in Australia

The launch and advertisement of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet has been delayed until at least September 30 after Apple stepped up its patent infringement battle in Australia’s federal court.

Eric Schmidt: If You Don’t Want To Use Your Real Name, Don’t Use Google+

Google+ was meant to be an identity service, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said this weekend, shedding some light on Google’s reasoning behind Google+’s controversial real-name policy.

Social Media-Related Libel Cases Double in UK

According to research from UK legal firm Sweet and Maxwell, libel cases resulting from posts from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have doubled in the last year.

Further News

• Samsung is set to enter the mobile messaging market with ChatON, a free texting, group chat and video/image sharing app compatible with multiple smartphone and feature phone OSes.
• The City of New York has launched a Google Maps-powered application to help residents report on damage caused by this weekend’s tropical storm. 

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Samsung Announces LTE Versions of Galaxy S II & Galaxy Tab 8.9

Ahead of the IFA trade show in Berlin on September 2-7, Samsung has announced LTE variants of Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab 8.9. The new versions of these devices will have fast wireless data transfer capability, with download speeds as fast as 100 Mbps. 

The Android 2.3-based Galaxy S II LTE will have a humongous 4.5-inch Super AMOLED screen and an 8 megapixel camera. 

The Galaxy Tab 8.9 LTE will be one of the most portable tablets around, being 8.6 mm thin and weighing only 455 g. Both devices will feature a 1.5GHz dual core processor.

The price and availability for both devices is still unknown, but we reckon we’ll know more when the IFA kicks off. 

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Irene Looks Tame In NASA’s Latest Satellite Photo [PIC]

To the relief of everyone on the Eastern seaboard and the rest of the world, Hurricane Irene has now been downgraded to Tropical Storm Irene. Throughout the time the storm soaked the eastern seaboard with blustery winds and a deluge of rain, NASA’s GOES-13 satellite has been sending magnificent pictures back to Earth. This latest shot was taken at 8:32 A.M. EDT on Sunday morning, 28 minutes before Irene’s landfall near Coney Island in New York City.

Notice how the storm lacks the tight organization showed in the Hurricane Irene pictures NASA sent back to earth yesterday, with today’s Irene lacking that ominous eye that peered out from its center as it moved up the coast as a Category 1 hurricane. By the time it had reached New York City, its maximum sustained winds were a manageable 65 mph.

That’s not to say there wasn’t suffering involved in the enormous storm, where officials have attributed at least 9 deaths to Irene’s massive amounts of rainfall, wind, flooding and its associated calamities. Even though millions of people are without power today and flooding is a serious problem in numerous cities and towns, Irene didn’t turn out to be the monster most observers anticipated.

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Razer Blade: "the world's first true gaming laptop"

... Or is this self-styled Razer. The specifications for, Razer Blade is indeed very powerful way, in 2.24cm thick and weighs 3.16 kg of the body, the load of the 2.8GHz Core-i7, NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M graphics card (2GB video memory), 17.3 " The Full HD screen, 8GB RAM, 3 个 USB (one of the USB 3.0) and HDMI output. Indeed, these are good, but many gaming laptop probably has such a specification (even if not so thin), the pride that in the end Razer Blade in which the person? The answer is that it is to replace the trackpad multitouch vice 480x800 resolution screen and touch-screen above the ten keys that are displayed can be customized. 


And ten key touch pad is customized to run the Switchblade UI, like its hair on display at CES over from the Switchblade Concept 7-inch laptop, but play to master editing machines only run Demo movie, did not way to see the actual operation of the look. Touch Pan on the right is a rather strange configuration, but think about it is not surprising - the touchpad and below is easy to operate above the left-hand fight, in that case the right to go into more convenient. To increase the number of games or you can customize the screen buttons are not anything new (Logitech G15 keyboard and the Optimus Maximus is the most obvious two examples), the real key to success is to have support for software, games, will play their effectiveness. Razer Blade have a chance to do it? I am afraid that first breakthrough, the US $ 2,800 off the price of this bar! 

Olympus PEN E-PM1 value price listed in September!

Remember that the station in June released the M43 system camera? Yes, we have just received PEN E-PM1 will be listed in next month's news, and the price of the Mini also only US $ 500, about NT $ 14,500, HK $ 3,900. This includes 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 or the Kit lens group too! Olympus 12-megapixel this station M43 camera, positioned so that the user to easily shoot cameras started the "easiest to use PEN camera" (but small series of PEN film clearly remember clearly there is more "silly", and good friends ... not to mention the film ...), thanks to this easy to use with 23 scenes to choose a new interface. Not to mention E-PM1 is a lens can be exchanged for digital cameras (ILC), the lens Prodigalsupport absolutely is quite adequate! Although the mini size, but size can not be underestimated, with its 3-inch, 46 million points of LCD, 1080i for HD video recording capability, and can shoot in RAW image files up to the ISO 12,800 sensitivity of the realm, but also supports full manual exposure mode Exposure, Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority. Colors are purple, pink, brown, white and black, is really feeling the sea and cheap package hills and light it almost have it all! But do not know why seeing smaller units interchangeable lens camera, seems they want to give him the placement of a cannon to try ... (quickly fled).

ASUS MARS II gets reviewed, deemed the fastest single graphics card on the market

Well, that insane ASUS MARS II card we got to feast our eyes on back in June has finally started rolling off the assembly line. That means it's time for the hardware fanatics and gaming freaks to start putting them through their paces. HotHardware said the dual GTX 580-packing card was "quite simply the fastest single graphics card we have ever tested, bar none." And everyone else seemed to agree. Now, obviously there are drawbacks -- the 3GB card is an absolute power hog (requiring 600-watts all by itself) and insanely pricey at $1,499. You could even buy three separate GTX 580 cards for slightly less, use the same number of slots and get better performance, but the MARS II has one other thing going for it -- status. Only 999 of these beasts will be made. After they're all snatched up you'll have to head to eBay, and pay a hefty premium over it's already absurd price. But, if you absolutely have to have the best performance you can out of a single card solution, this is the clear choice. If you need more detail about just how badly this spanks the competition check out the reviews below.

Read - HotHardware
Read - PC Perspective
Read - techPowerUp
Read - TweakTown

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HP TouchPads Slated For Return To Best Buy?

It was widely reported that Best Buy was sitting on over 200,000 TouchPads before HP enacted their drastic price cut, but the fire sale has come and gone, and that would normally be that. Instead, a notice in Best Buy’s Employee Toolkit system shows that their contentious relationship with the TouchPad may not be over just yet.


The image, sent to Droid Matters by a Best Buy insider, indicates that Best Buy stores will once again begin to receive TouchPad shipments. Due to the swarms of bargain-hunters last time round, employees are being instructed to stick to a ticket system and take down the information of the interested parties that come their way.

While it’s possible the notice has been pushed out just in time to make a big splash on the front cover of the Sunday circular, you shouldn’t hold your breath. Different areas tend to have different shipping schedules, but if this holds true, it’s more likely that the units will begin trickling back into stores during the middle of the week. At this point, it’s still unknown whether the notice only applies to some stores or the whole lot of them, but thanks to a bit of corporate foresight, your nearest store may soon have a new recording in their phone system that could clear up the specifics.

It’s a bit of a surprise, to be sure: 16GB TouchPads are selling for nearly double the going rate on eBay, a testament to the fact that people have all but given up on more traditional sales outlets.


HP’s own site admits that they are only “temporarily” out of inventory, and that coupled with news of a major retailer suddenly receiving stock gives me pause: how many of these things does HP have left? And more importantly for some, how many are shipping with Android inexplicably preloaded? The answers, it would seem, may come later this week.

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DELL ALIENWARE MX11 GAMING LAPTOP

VERDICT: Serious gaming on a 11.6-inch laptop.

FOR: Great for gaming, excellent multimedia experience, extremely portable.

AGAINST: This model is exorbitantly priced, very little value for money.

Alienware gaming notebooks are known for their rugged build, powerful hardware, excellent performance, and exorbitant price tags. The new Alienware MX11 gaming notebook offers all of this, except for the high price. Let’s find out how. Gaming notebooks are a dime a dozen, and usually, they are large (about 15 inches), they weigh at least 3 kgs, and off ervery little battery runtime.

The Asus G51J and the previous Alienware models - M15X and M17X, are perfect examples, but the Alienware M11X has changed everything. It weighs almost half as much and is slimmer, hence easier to carry. So gaming is no more restricted to desktop replacements, but even ultra-portable laptops can handle serious gaming; that too at a good price.

This new entrant has a 12-inch form factor with a 11.6-inch creen and weighs less than 2 kgs. In terms of aesthetics, if there’s anything about this notebook that’s different from other Alienware gaming notebooks, it’s the size and weight. It is essentially a smaller version of the M15X. The lid and screen frame are thankfully the only parts on the entire unit with a glossy finish. Typical of Alienware notebooks, you’ll find lights all over, and the keyboard and power button are backlit. Then there are lights in the front and even underneath the unit. Speaking of underneath the unit, turn the laptop upside down and you’ll notice an inlet fan (with LEDs) on the bottom. This fan enables effective air circulation by pulling in air from below, which is then expelled from the side-vent.

Ergonomically, it matches up well with other Alienware notebooks. The entire wrist rest and the textured touchpad have a matte finish, and the mouse buttons are quite comfortable to use. All the ports are at either side and the only connection at the rear is the DC power connector. In terms of build quality, the overall package, including the chassis and hinges, is rock solid. This machine is built around an IGP chipset; an Intel G45, which features an Intel GMA X4500 HD onboard GPU. It also has a discrete GPU - an Nvidia GeForce GT335, so you can toggle between the two when required. Coming back to the low-voltage

processor; it uses an Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300, which is common to ULV laptops. The other hardware includes 4 GB DDR3 RAM, a 256 GB SSD, and a 11.6-inch glossy screen with a native resolution of 1366x768. If you notice the hardware, specifically the processor and the absence of an optical drive, it’s hard not to compare it with laptops belonging to the ultra-portable laptops category. But gaming,something that this machine is good at, has never been a forte of ULVs. And perhaps that’s the USP of the M11X.

The ports on this machine include VGA, three USB, FireWire, HDMI and a display port. Connectivity options include 10/100 Ethernet, Wi-Fi N and Bluetooth. The machine comes pre-loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium, and the bundle doesn’t include much side from an OS recover disc. It’s funny that they supply optical media, when the machine doesn’t have an optical drive to read it. Typical Alienware features BINARY GFX: Common to all Alienware gaming notebooks, this option allows you to manually toggle between discrete and onboard graphics, and it’s very useful, especially when you’re using the machine on the go and when you aren’t using it for gaming.

STEALTH MODE: This is another common feature, which puts the machine into a mode that helps maximize the battery runtime. ALIENFUSION: This is a separate interface for power management of the laptop. It offers the same features as those found in Windows’ power options. ALIENWARE ALIEN FX: This option let’s people who hate those light effects to turn them off completely using the AlienFX button on the top-right corner of the keyboard. Also, for those of you who love the lights, you can change the colors from the AlienFX control Panel. The Alienware Command Center lets you access these features. Alienware has smartly used a low-voltage (weaker) processor and a good discrete GPU, which is an ideal combination for gaming notebooks, while it also keeps the price in check. It’s very crucial that you configure this machine properly, to get the best value for your money. The M11X with a standard 500 GB hard drive costs Rs 70,000, which is a good price, considering the ultra-portable form factor,and, the gaming and multimedia experience.

However, the model we tested features an SSD that adds Rs 28,000 to the cost. So the total cost of this machine comes up to Rs 98,000, and this price tag forces us to compare it to a gaming laptop in the same price range, like the Asus G51J, which costs Rs 99,000, but off ers much more in terms of features. An Intel Core i7 QM (which is a powerful quad-core processor), 4 GB DDR3 RAM, two 320 GB hard drives and good discrete graphics are on offer in the Asus G51. Over and above, its screen is 3D compliant and the machine bundles with it Nvidia’s 3D vision kit.

So why should you spend so much money on the M11X? The standard M11X variant, which costs Rs 70,000, is not very bad, especially since it allows you to play demanding games on the go. It makes almost no sense to spend Rs 20,000 extra to get an SSD in this machine. To test performance, we started by playing a 720p HD movie on this machine and the playback was flawless and completely stutter-free. Although the sound wasn’t very loud, the clarity was excellent. Coming to games, we ran most of the game benchmarks at the native resolution and with some settings at high. This was mainly to see how the machine performs under stress. In Crisis Warhead, we got playable frame rates in the performance and mainstream modes, and the gamer’s mode was playable at lower resolutions. The same was the case with Left 4 Dead, where at 1366 x 768 and medium settings and no AA, we got over 40 fps, which is good enough.

This laptop targets a very specific audience. It’s only for someone who wants an affordable laptop that can handle demanding games and is extremely easy to carry around. But the M11X only meets those criteria if you opt for the Rs 70,000 variant. The Rs 90,000 machines, which we tested, is completely over the top.

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