Those diminutive Raspberry Pi computers are finally set to launch later this month — if you absolutely can’t wait to get your grubby paws on one, however, good news: you can pick one up early at auction, if you’re willing to pay a little extra. The foundation behind the ultra-budget educational computers is giving buyers a head start, listing beta boards up on eBay. At present, the top spot belongs to beta board number 10, which is currently cruising at around £2,100.00, with about two days left at auction. If you’re lucky, however, the low-end number five, which is currently priced at around £620, shouldn’t increase too much in the next four days or so. And look on the bright side, all the money is going to charity here, so you can’t feel too bad about yourself. Right?

Beta Raspberry Pi computers fetching exorbitant sums (for charity) on eBay originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How would you change Apple’s iPhone 4S? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Revamped Xbox 360 dashboard to launch on December 6th, Microsoft confirms originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EBay, which owns RedLaser, last week showed off how a consumer can scan a product, find the lowest price from retailers from participating businesses, and then buy the product right through the latest version of RedLaser using PayPal. The implementation is still limited with Toys-R-Us being one of the few retailers to partner with RedLaser on the service. But eBay expects to get more retailers to sign on. Users can’t buy things on eBay or through the eBay app, just though RedLaser.

Now ShopSavvy, which competes against RedLaser and has just raised million, is bringing similar functionality with ShopSavvy 5, the latest versions of its iPhone and Android apps. Users scan a product and see a better deal from retailers like Walmart.com, Target.com, BestBuy.com and BN.com. Then they can buy that product directly through the ShopSavvy app, which is due out Thursday, and have it delivered to them. If customers have set up a ShopSavvy wallet, they can make a purchase with one tap. ShopSavvy introduced this scan-and-buy functionality earlier this year in a limited beta but the service is now expanding nationwide. ShopSavvy 5 also brings a bunch of other improvements like better keyword search, improved comparison shopping and more local deals highlighted on its deals tab.

The rise of instant scan and buy raises the stakes for retailers. They have always had to worry about their prices relative to the competition, but now the consequences of being overpriced can be felt instantaneously. For retailers who integrate with these tools, there’s the opportunity to pick off a consumer instantly right from the aisle of a competitor. They don’t have to lure them over to their own mobile site or into their store. They can seal a transaction immediately. But they do have to price aggressively. Retailers who stand to lose a sale can also respond by price matching.

For consumers, scan-and-buy is another sign of how smartphone apps are making shopping even simpler and how it’s empowering users to always find the lowest deals from retailers. As Om wrote, consumers are becoming smart buyers who are armed with a wealth of data at their fingertips. Now, the next step for mobile commerce is to remove any remaining hang-ups in the buying process. If people want to buy, especially quickly, purchasing through these apps can be a big help.

This comes at a perfect time for the holidays when shoppers will be stressed and short on time as they look for gifts. As we’ve written, mobile shopping is going to be big this holiday season and the addition of instant scanning and buying will only add to that.

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We first got wind of Sony’s PlayStation Suite SDK back at the Tokyo Game Show in September, but the company just opened up the application process for a closed beta test, letting Windows XP and Windows 7 users in the US, UK and Japan submit their credentials for early access. Those getting the nod from Sony will be able to develops apps for use on the PS Vita, which is set to hit in February, along with the PS Suite — that “hardware-neutral” framework that’ll allow access from non-PlayStation branded products, including the Xperia Play, Tablet S and Tablet P, with the potential for third-party devices to come as well. The SDK uses the C# programming language, and doesn’t require devs to have access to actual Sony hardware — so don’t expect a Vita to show up at your door anytime this year. Think you have what it takes to be a Sony dev? Hit up the source link to send ‘em the word.

Sony opens registration for PlayStation Suite SDK beta, lets devs build apps for Android and Vita originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 09:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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But one of the most interesting trials could be a new hyperlocal service called n0tice that the company is putting through its paces.

The site, which is currently running in invite-only beta, is an attempt to create a publishing platform based on location — and it uses the metaphor of a community noticeboard to get there. People can sign up to create their own board, customize it, leave messages, place small ads, anything they like. In a way it harks back to the days of BBS, but with all the bells and whistles you might expect from a website in 2011.

Testers, mainly in the U.K. where most of the focus is, are starting to use it for a range of different things: whether it’s existing local bloggers giving it a trial run, people selling items, listing events in their community, reporting road closures, and so on.

And there’s a business model too: while small ads are free to run, companies that want to target users pick a location and pay depending on how far they want their message to spread.

It’s certainly a departure for The Guardian, which has largely focused on content over platforms — and the end result is a hybrid with some serious potential. It’s part blogging platform, part Craigslist, part communal Twitter stream, part forum, part event listing. Work clearly needs to be done on some areas, and the emphasis is likely to shift over time, as more and more users come in and shape it — but the real question is whether it becomes more than the sum of its parts, or less.

Hyperlocal has long been something media companies have talked about as a way to save themselves, yet in reality it has struggled to really make its mark. On a micro scale, a number of local media properties have done this very well over the years — sites like McKinney, Texas’s Townsquarebuzz or Howard Owens’s The Batavian, say — but in order to be sustainable for a large media organization, hyperlocal needs to scale. That’s part of what convinced MSNBC to buy and relaunch EveryBlock, a data aggregation service that promised to make important local news available to you.

But where EveryBlock was all about data, n0tice is about people.

“I love Everyblock, it’s a real inspiration, actually,” explains Matt McAlister, who is running n0tice from his lofty perch as director of digital strategy for The Guardian‘s parent company, Guardian Media Group. “But I wanted to go as far in the opposite direction as I could in terms of aggregation, at least at the start. We may be wrong about that choice, but I’d like to think that people will be interested in participating on n0tice in part because it’s their space to make.”

He adds that it’s also different from other services that it shares similarities to, such as AOL’s often-derided Patch.

“It’s different from Patch in lots of ways, but one significant difference is that anyone can own a noticeboard, kind of like WordPress. It’s totally open that way. It’s different Craigslist in that it feels like a more holistic view of what’s happening the local area, not just things that people are trading.”

Still, with The Guardian behind it, a lot of people are going to be watching n0tice to see what happens. There are a few things that are worth thinking about that should be taken into account, though.

First, the UK classifieds market is far more disjointed than, say, America. Craigslist — so often invoked as the scourge of the U.S. news industry — is not just weak, it’s more or less non-existent. Sites such as the eBay-owned Gumtree are more powerful but not entirely embedded.

Second, the idea that newspapers have failed to compete with Craigslist — as posited in this piece at the Nieman Journalism Lab — also carries less weight in the U.K. Britain’s Daily Mail, for example, has been active in the small ads online for years with the likes of loot.com and has a growing property website empire.

Third, the real competition for a service like n0tice may ultimately be from social networks like Facebook or Twitter, where communities of interest already coalesce. McAlister’s argument here is that n0tice doesn’t have to beat social networks, it just has to be open enough.

“We haven’t really viewed what we’re doing in a competitive landscape, but rather approaching a common real world problem that doesn’t seem to have been solved yet. Given the open nature of the platform we’re building, I imagine we’ll be able to do a lot with WordPress and Twitter and Foursquare and any other open platform.”

Some seeds of where this thinking might go can be traced through his own work. Before being catapulted to run group-wide digital strategy, McAlister helped architect the Guardian Open Platform system — which attempts to turn the news into an API. Prior to that he was director of the Yahoo Developer Network and at the intersection of publishing and the web with The Industry Standard and Infoworld.

He confirms that combining with other services will be important as n0tice grows. A read API is about to be launched and they’re working on a write API too. Meanwhile, it will be important to connect to existing social networks and sources of activity. “We have done some lightweight hooks so far, but clearly there will be some fun things we can do with Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook et cetera,” he says.

Staying power needed

Still, even if n0tice gains traction, the longer term issue may be whether it has support. After all, The Guardian‘s approach to the local market and small ads has lurched one way and then another over the last few years — it sold off its regional news operation for £44m, sold half of its sizeable classifieds business Trader Media, and launched and then closed a series of local blogs.

It’s not the only one: large news organizations including the New York Times and Washington Post have launched attempts at hyperlocal platforms or services, only to shut them down soon afterwards. Even with support from the top, does the company really have the willpower to get stuck into hyperlocal and stay there?

“My hope is that the advertising model we’re working on will support the investment people make in n0tice,” says McAlister. “If that’s the case then it will at least be sustainable, if not actually a generative platform — something that gets stronger the more people use it.”

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The iPhone 4S’ Siri integration may be a potential game changer, but she’s not quite the world traveler some of us would like her to be. In fact, it seems she’s as lost outside of US borders as any unprepared tourist. Looking for a pub in London? Better find a traditional map. Need to know the time of day in Canada? Siri admits she has no idea, go buy a watch. Business search (via Yelp), directions, traffic data, and Wolfram Alpha search all appear to be US-only features for now. The automated assistant’s international failings aren’t too big of a surprise, however — Apple’s own Siri page outs the service as a beta, noting that some features may vary by area. Stuck with sub-par international support? Sit tight, it’s coming: Apple’s Siri FAQ states that additional language support (including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Italian and Spanish), maps and local search content are set to go international in 2012.

Siri gets lost internationally, promises to do better next year originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Oct 2011 20:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There has been a frenzy of recent reports about the user base of Google’s new social network, Google+, and how it has allegedly declined by a massive amount since it opened to the public several weeks ago. As it turns out, much of that is likely a normal cooling-off period after the initial explosion of interest in the former invite-only beta, and Google+ numbers are still substantially higher than they were before the beta wall came down. That said, however, the new social network has a substantial mountain to climb in terms of gaining a broad user base; it’s the third entrant in the race with Facebook and Twitter, and it’s still not clear what Google has to offer that is radically different from its competitors.

The initial report about the gigantic decline in Google+ user numbers came from Chitika, an ad-tracking service, which reported that the traffic to Google+ had dropped by more than 60 percent from the levels seen immediately after Google opened the network up to the public. This report was picked up by a number of blogs, which speculated about the reasons why Google’s offering might not be gaining widespread acceptance, but others noted that while Chitika’s figures (the methodology of which hasn’t been made clear) showed a dramatic falloff in usage, Google+ has still shown strong growth since it first launched in June. When measured from that initial launch point, the service’s user base appears to be up by almost 500 percent.

In fact, as we’ve reported before, Google+ hit the 25-million-user mark faster than almost any other social network in history, including Facebook and Twitter. While those numbers may pale next to Facebook’s 800 million users or even Twitter’s 200 million, there’s no question that Google is already a strong third in the category, thanks in part to the fact that Google+ is embedded in most of the company’s other services — along with the toolbar that constantly prompts users to check their accounts. And recent comments by director of product Brad Horowitz made it clear that Google’s new social network is going to become part of everything the company touches.

What is going to compel users to spend time on Google+?

We know why Google wants Google+ to succeed: because it needs to capture those social signals in order to enhance its search. But is there anything compelling enough to convince large numbers of people that they have to use it? I’m not so sure. In looking at my own usage of the network, and that of some close friends and members of my “social graph,” I can see a lot of dabbling in Google’s service — and the occasional flare-up around a specific post, usually a strong opinion or a photo — but not much sustained usage, apart from people like Robert Scoble (and even Scoble says he’s still using Twitter a lot). In a recent post, he listed a number of reasons why he prefers Google+, including:

1. The length of Google+ posts means “I can have a complete thought,” while Twitter is much shorter (obviously), and Facebook doesn’t really cater to longer posts.
2. The way that Google’s service allows comments means “I can have a REAL conversation THAT STAYS BUNDLED TOGETHER here,” unlike Twitter, which is fragmented.
3. The fact that Google+ is part of the world’s largest search engine means that “the search here is very good,” unlike both Twitter and Facebook.
4. According to Scoble, photos and videos are “MUCH BETTER displayed” on Google+ than they are on Twitter, which has tried to upgrade its hosting of images.

But even Scoble’s list of benefits only highlights the challenges that Google+ has ahead of it, particularly since Facebook has launched some competitive features that duplicate some of the service’s features — including the use of “Circles” for specific user groups (Facebook added smart lists) and support for an “asymmetric” following model similar to that offered by Google+ and Twitter. So what are the things about Google+ that make it unique, or are going to make it so compelling that people will take time out of their day to engage there, instead of just using the networks they already belong to?

Is it longer posts and conversation, or photos, or search?

Is it about longer posts? Because Facebook now also offers support for longer posts, and since most people already have a well-established social graph on the giant network, those posts are likely to get far more interaction from people who really matter than on Google+ — where much of the response I get is from people I don’t even know. While valuable in many ways, that’s a different experience. So is Google+ about filtering via Circles then? Because Facebook’s smart lists actually do a pretty good job of that, at least in the short amount of time that I have used them (although I wish they were supported by Facebook’s new iPhone and iPad apps, which so far they are not).

So is Google’s big advantage photos and videos, as Scoble suggests? I’ve seen lots of activity around images and video on Google+, which makes it very easy to share and comment. But I’ve also seen plenty of activity around that kind of content — in some cases much more — on Facebook, which is also pretty good at displaying photos and video. And when it comes to pure information delivery, about news events or items of interest, I agree with Scoble that Twitter is almost unparalleled, which is why I don’t think Facebook’s launch of a “subscribe” feature is likely to harm the service much. In my usage at least, Google+ hasn’t proven to be much of a competitor in that department either.

So what is Google+ offering that users can’t get on Facebook or Twitter? I can’t put my finger on anything, with the exception of search. Although it didn’t launch with search initially, Google added it to Google+ before it opened to the public, and it is a great way to find content — something notably lacking at both Facebook and Twitter. The latter still has a pretty terrible search experience, and users can’t find older tweets or context without using third-party services such as Topsy, or find trends and other activity easily. This is something Google is (not surprisingly) pretty good at.

That said, however, is good search enough to build a compelling service that hundreds of millions of users will feel they need to engage with on a daily basis? I’m not convinced.

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The Model S Betas got buffed between rides.

Electric car maker Tesla has reached a milestone. It’s developed several Beta versions (the production-ready final version) of its second electric car the Model S sedan, and the Valley auto maker is now giving test rides of the Betas to potential customers and the press. For our latest Green Overdrive show we ride in one of the Betas (a burgundy/red beauty) around a closed track at Tesla’s Fremont factory, and we show you how an electric vehicle designed from the ground-up handles. Because the Model S was designed with the car-length flat battery on the underside of the car, it’s center of gravity is low and we took the turns at the track at a blazing speed. Check out our ride and our interview with Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen.

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Love the ocean, but hate holding your for breath for extended periods? Good news: a team of software engineers, composers, Oscar-winning animators and more have come together to recreate Davy Jones’ locker in the cloud. Wemo Media is looking for a few thousand good artists for the project, to help create a massive simulation of life under the seas built on its Maker Platform. The project has been around for a bit, but is still in closed beta, making it a private development beach of sorts. You can watch an introductory video and request an invite at the source link below.

Oscar winners crowd-sourcing the ocean with The Blu originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Sep 2011 02:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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