Filed under: reader

This DIY Snow Machine Provides Fresh Powder in the Backyard On the Cheap [DIY]

If you're really serious about a White Christmas, this is how you do about it. Over at Instructables, user MakeSnow has a step-by-step guide to building your own backyard snow machine that will cover your lawn in fresh fluffy white stuff anytime the weather is cold enough to keep it from melting on impact. All you need is just over $100 in your pocket when you visit the hardware store, and the time to put it all together. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5869253/this-diy-snow-machine-provides-fresh-powder-in-...

It's Taking My Presents!: Cthulhu Tentacle X-Mas Tree

cthulhu-tree-1.jpg This is a Christmas tree with a Cthulhu plushie on top and a bunch of tentacles stuck on branches. Because why shouldn't Christmas be more about scaring children? "Who told you that?" The Santa at the mall with the evil clown face! Just kidding, it was at a rave and he told me he's not bringing anything but nightmares this year. "Jesus." WHERE?! Hit the jump for a couple more shots.

from Geekologie - Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome http://www.geekologie.com/2011/12/its-taking-my-presents-cthulhu-tentacle.php

New Online Business Network Allows People to Trade Favo.rs


San Francisco-based startup Favo.rs launched last week, offering an online marketplace where people can connect with and build relationships with business contacts. Users can request and provide help, negotiating with others for professional favors.

When you join the site, you can provide your profiles from social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, but you can interact with other members whether or not you’re connected to them.

Requests for help can be anything from a retweet to an introduction and they are tracked to reveal who you help and who helps you the most, causing users’ visibility within the network to rise. They gain a reputation by earning points for helping others and can achieve different status levels: rookie, participant, advocate and benefactor.

A recommended user list lets people easily find others to follow based on their industry, location, common connections in social networks, and social network influence. A relationship tracking feature shows users who helped them the most and who they helped the most in the past 30 days.

New Online Business Network Allows People To Trade In Favors

Image courtesy of iStockPhoto, simonmcconico

More About: Business, Favo.rs

For more Business coverage:

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/12/12/favo-rs/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed...

YouTube app for Xbox 360 rolls out to preview program participants

It's only available to those in the Xbox Live preview program at the moment, but you can officially add the Xbox 360 to the list of platforms that offer access to YouTube videos. Beta participants should be now able to download the app from the console's new Apps Marketplace, and find all the usual personalized features you'd expect from YouTube, plus the Kinect controls you'd expect from an Xbox app. Still no word about a roll-out to everyone else, nor is there any word on a firm release date for all those other new video services slated to hit the console (they're still just promised for "later in December").

[Thanks, Jack]

YouTube app for Xbox 360 rolls out to preview program participants originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 03:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceMicrosoft News, The Verge  | Email this | Comments

from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/13/youtube-app-for-xbox-360-rolls-out-to-prev...

NBC Maps the 2012 Election Campaign Trail With Foursquare


NBC and Foursquare are joining forces to map the 2012 U.S. presidential election. The “Campaigns Check-In” feature will be part of NBC’s new NBCpolitics.com, which launched Wednesday. The site serves as a hub for all the network’s political coverage.

Visitors are able to see where each of the GOP candidates are making campaign stops in real-time, and where they’ve been throughout their entire election campaign. Campaign milestones and other activity are also easily visible.

The candidates will be given access to unique widgets that track their individual campaign; these can be embedded on their website. Supporters will also be able to see exactly where their favorite presidential hopeful has been making appearances.

The site will also display checkins from NBC’s political journalists covering the elections. NBC News will offer Foursquare users unique, co-branded political badges beginning in 2012.

“Understanding where candidates go on the campaign trail and why they go there is a fascinating story that we wanted to share with consumers,” said Paige West, Creative Director of MSNBC.com. “Visually mapping the campaigns’ activities as we progress through each state’s nominating contest and the general election is the best possible way to bring that story to life. Without Foursquare, it wouldn’t be feasible for us to produce this type of content.”

NBC’s goal for its site is to unify all of the network’s TV and web political coverage and provide a unique interactive experience to visitors — one not possible through television alone. NBC White House Correspondent Chuck Todd told Poynter that NBCPolitics.com will include tools for visitors to do their own electoral vote tracking and other data analysis.

A complementary iPad app, similar to the one Todd uses on TV, is on the way.

Will you use NBC’s interactive tools to follow the campaign trail? Let us know in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, majana

More About: 2012 election, foursquare, nbc, Politics

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/12/14/nbc-foursquare-2012-election-mapping/?utm_sour...

Coming soon: pick airline seatmates via social networks

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines plans to launch a service in 2012 that will enable you to pick who you sit next to on an airplane by visiting their Facebook or LinkedIn pages. "Meet & Seat" will be an opt-in service (similar to that already toyed with by Malaysia Airlines), so you can still fly anonymously -- as anonymous as air travel gets these days, anyway. It could be great for making friends or developing business contacts on your next international flight, or it could make for some really awkward conversation too. "So, your Facebook profile says you like Justin Bieber?"

Coming soon: pick airline seatmates via social networks originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TechCrunch  |  sourceTnooz  | Email this | Comments

from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/16/coming-soon-pick-airline-seatmates-via-soc...

Gamers spending more time streaming video to their consoles, Nielsen finds

Nielsen, the purveyor of all things statistical and demographic, published a new study this week on game console usage within the US. According to the report, released on Wednesday, gamers this year spent notably more time streaming video to their consoles than they did in 2010, due in large part to the growing availability of services like Netflix, Hulu, MLB Network and ESPN3. Xbox 360 users spent 14 percent of their console time streaming video this year (compared with ten percent last year), PlayStation 3 owners devoted 15 percent (nine percent in 2010), and Nintendo Wii users spent a whopping 33 percent -- a 13 percent increase over last year's study. Each console, moreover, seems to appeal to different functions. Xbox 360 users, for example, devoted 34 percent of their time to online gaming, Wii owners spent 55 percent of their console time on offline gaming, and the PS3 was the device of choice for DVD and Blu-Ray viewing, comprising 22 percent of usage. Overall, Nielsen found that usage increased by seven percent over the last year across all three platforms, which suggests that streaming may be keeping us glued to our consoles for even longer. Read more at the source link below.

Gamers spending more time streaming video to their consoles, Nielsen finds originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 06:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceNielsen  | Email this | Comments

from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/16/gamers-spending-more-time-streaming-video-...

Apple Gives Media Executives Vague Hints about Its Television Plans

The Wall Street Journal provides some of the first hints about Apple's internal television project. While rumors of such a project have been ongoing for years, there has been a renewed interest in it since Steve Jobs described having "finally cracked" the TV interface in his recently released biography.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has been in ongoing discussions with media executives at several large companies about their vision for the future of TV. Apple's Senior Vice President Eddy Cue is reported to have outlined new ways Apple's technology could be used across phones, tablets and TVs. The overall concept, however, remains rather vague. It seems that Apple has discussed a number of possibilities with executives, but stopping well short of outlining their exact vision.

Of course, voice and movement controls have been suggested, though in a long term view:

In at least one meeting, Apple described future television technology that would respond to users' voices and movements, one of the people said. Such technology, which Apple indicated may take longer than some of its other ideas, might allow users to use their voices to search for a show or change channels.
Beyond that, Apple's TV plans seem to revolve around wireless streaming technology to access shows and movies. The use of Apple's AirPlay technology could allow users to control the device from their iPhone and iPad, possibly eliminating the need for a set top box. As an example, users could watch video on their TV and then move over to their iPhone or iPad seemlessly. Other sources indicate that Apple has worked on integrating DVR storage and iCloud into their future TV device.

The question of what content will be shown on the new device remains up in the air. Apple is not said to have pursued the necessary content deals at this time, though have considered the possibility of licensing content directly to create a subscription-TV service. Steve Jobs, himself, was reportedly part of these early talks as far back as 2010.

Apple's ongoing secrecy should come as no surprise. We've previously reported that competitors are already "scrambling" to react to Apple's rumored entry into the television market.


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
Wolfram Delivers Siri-Enabled Shopping Results From Best Buy
Ports of Sonic CD and Marathon 2 Make Their Way to iOS
iMessage Bug Sends Texts to Stolen iPhones
Apple Releases Logic Express 9.1.6
TeleNav Introduces Free HTML5 Browser-Based Navigation Service

from MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors - Front Page http://www.macrumors.com/2011/12/18/apple-gives-media-executives-vague-hints-...

20 TV Shows With the Most Social Media Buzz This Week [CHART]

Since we’ve published this social TV series, it seems that GOP debates consistently generate serious social media chatter. This past Saturday’s ABC Republican Presidential debate was no different. In fact, it was the most-watched debate of the 2012 campaign thus far, logging 7.6 million viewers total.

Social activity obviously followed suit, in the case of the debate as well as for other entertainment standbys (WWE Raw and The X Factor topped both charts last week as well). Newcomer Teen Mom 2 squeaked onto the cable chart this time — its premiere was last Tuesday. Let’s see what surprises us next week, shall we?

The data below is compliments of our friends at Trendrr, who measure specific TV show activity (mentions, likes, checkins) across Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue and Miso. To see daily rankings, check out Trendrr.TV.


Image courtesy of iStockphoto, narvikk

More About: features, Social Media, social tv, social tv charts, Trendrr, TV

For more Entertainment coverage:

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/12/13/social-tv-chart-12-12/?utm_source=feedburner&u...

Bottlenose Is a Game Changer for Social Media Consumption [INVITES]


Is reading your social feeds starting to feel like a full-time job without benefits? Bottlenose is launching a new service on Tuesday that aims to extinguish this common gripe — and it comes closer than any social media dashboard we’ve seen.

Bottlenose fights social media overload with flexible, granular feed customization options.

You can, for instance, follow just slices of Twitter and Facebook feeds, getting someone’s tech news while skipping their Foodspotting posts. It’s also easy to sort by author influence, trending in your network, your interests (it learns these based on your activity) and pretty much any other criteria. You can set up as many feeds as you want.

Any of these feeds can be viewed as a visual node map for quick browsing and have automatic actions such as “reply” or “send alert” attached to it. For instance, you could set up a rule that “for messages by people I have mentioned more than five times, show a desktop notification.”

Bottlenose’s biggest innovation, co-founder Nova Spivack says, is a new language analysis technology that is written in javascript and designed specifically for the short-form communication on social media, including shortcuts such as hashtags and @ signs. It enables the platform to develop a semantic understanding of information before sorting it however you’d like, and it’s turned heads from big companies. Earlier this year, Mashable reported that Twitter was interested in acquiring Bottlenose. Spivack says that the company has “turned down a big offer,” but didn’t confirm it came from Twitter.



Aside from this technology, there’s something unusual about how Bottlenose is sorting streams. Mainly, that it plans to allow third party developers add more default options for doing so. Through what it calls “assistants,” you can already add streams such as “suggested reposts” or “by influencers” or one of your own. When Bottlenose opens this “app store” to other developers, the library of instant feeds will grow.

“It’s just like Apple made the iPhone,” Spivack says, “but 99% of the functionality comes from Apple developers.”

Bottlenose may have Apple’s app store concept, but our one gripe with the product is that it doesn’t take the Apple route with regard to the rest of its design. They’ve given us everything, and we’re a bit overwhelmed.

The startup has the potential to avert what Spivack calls the Sharepocalypse. But in order to succeed, Bottlenose will need to convince users that its plethora of functionality is worth some initial learning investment.

1,000 Mashable readers can sign up for the Bottlenose beta using the code “mashable.”


"Sonar" Maps


from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/12/13/bottlenose-launch/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_m...