Nintendo Introduces Wii MotionPlus

July 21, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

Sweeeeeeet! 🙂

Here is a picture of the MotionPlus, and what Nintendo says about it:

Nintendo’s upcoming Wii MotionPlus accessory for the revolutionary Wii Remote controller again redefines game control, by more quickly and accurately reflecting motions in a 3-D space. The Wii MotionPlus accessory attaches to the end of the Wii Remote and, combined with the accelerometer and the sensor bar, allows for more comprehensive tracking of a player’s arm position and orientation, providing players with an unmatched level of precision and immersion.

I really love Nintendo for innovating in the field of interface design in gaming and technology. Looking forward to checking this out and all the new possibilities this is opening up, to further spur game design.

Games publishers: Bring ’em on!

MacFUSE: Mount remote server dirs over SSH protocol on MacOS X

July 19, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

I just installed a program and kernel extension which allows me to mount a remote server over SSH as a “normal drive” under MacOS X. Nothing brand new, but I did some research and thought I share what I found out to speed up other people who might need this.

Here is a description of the project and what you can do with it from the project’s page:

MacFUSE implements a mechanism that makes it possible to implement a fully functional file system in a user-space program on Mac OS X (10.4 and above). It aims to be API-compliant with the FUSE (File-system in USErspace) mechanism that originated on Linux. Therefore, many existing FUSE file systems become readily usable on Mac OS X. That said, MacFUSE has numerous user- and developer-visible interfaces that are specific to Mac OS X. The core of MacFUSE is in a dynamically loadable kernel extension.

Although MacFUSE has a completely different kernel-level implementation from Linux FUSE, it supports the FUSE specification well enough that many popular FUSE file systems can be easily compiled and made to work on Mac OS X–often out of the box. Examples of file systems that are known to work and were once tested (to varying degrees) include sshfs, ntfs-3g (read/write NTFS), ftpfs (read/write FTP), wdfs (WebDAV), cryptofs, encfs, bindfs, unionfs, beaglefs (yes, including the entire Beagle paraphernalia), and so on.

Do get you going you need to get three things: MacFUSE, SSHfs (to mount an external server over SSH) and the GUI for MacFUSE called MacFusion.

What is MacFusion?

MacFusion brings all sorts of information to your Mac in the form of files and folders displayed as just another “Volume” on your Mac desktop. Right now you can use this software to show a Secure Shell or Secure FTP share from another computer on your macs desktop, letting you manipulate the files on it as if they were on your own computer. MacFusion can also do the same for any File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server, giving read/write FTP in the finder for the first time!

First you have to grab the installer and the SSHfs from from the Googe code page at: http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/ , actually this page.

After installing MacFUSE and SSHfs all you need is the GUI called MacFusion from here and you are all set.

There is a newer version of MacFusion under development (at the time of the publication of this post still beta!):

Macfusion2 project

Some other resources are:

FUSE and sshfs in OS X
Antoher GUI is called SecureRemoteDisk
Lifehacker – Geek to Live: Mount a file system on your Mac over SSH
Encrypted FS and file voult: encfsvault, ikrypt

Recession advertising: Is your startup on the right track?

July 17, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

Are you a startup in the Online advertising business? The econnomy is in a very shaky state and many companies think about their future.

This is what the Google Trends graph looks like for the search term “recession”:

Google Trends: term “recession” in searches and news.

I found a great article on “Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen” called Online advertising during a recession: 5 key trends for ad-based startups

Ultimately, the dynamics here are complex and uncertain, but here some of the key trends worth watching if you’re an advertising-based startup:

Accelerating movement of offline to online ad spend

Brand areas weak, direct response will be less affected

Weak areas to watch: Video, social networks, communication, etc.

Rise of direct-to-consumer revenues?

Timing is everything

A very interesting read, lots of good facts and links to other articles in there. Another good source with tips and advices is the article on folio called Selling Advertising in a Recession – How to convince marketers now is a good time to buy.

There could be a recession coming—or not—but some advertisers are behaving as if one has already started. Responding to media buyers looking to cut ad budgets has become a priority.

Let me know what your strategy is and if you have other great articles covering this topic.

World of Warcraft: New potential through tapping Offline world

July 16, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

Jusr saw this over on GigaOM and I have to say I really love this great post titled: Real World of Warcraft: Is Offline Part of the Plan?

A real-world MMO has one more advantage: Revenues. The opportunities for sponsorship, or for driving players to real-world locations to make real-world purchases, make Blizzard’s current revenues look tiny by comparison.

I think the Offline world is often overlooked when it comes to Online worlds and social media sites and the fact that it is very impotant to link the On- and Offline worlds together, let them interact.

Some of this is certainly happening with e.g. Facebook, Google, Yahoo! [… you name it] dev events, but why not for “everyone”, the normal user?

feedalizr: micro-blogging & read updates from friends – Adobe Air app

July 13, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

In my previous post I wrote about ping.fm and their service to send notifications out to many social and business network/apps.

Feedalizr Screenshot A different approach is used by the Adobe Air based app called Feedalizr. It lets you share your texts, photos, videos, etc. as well, but also allows to read and interact with posts from friends. All of this on your local desktop, no web browser required (although you need to have Adobe Air installed on yout computer.)

This is a very interesting approach and they try to be your central application to post AND read (and interact), resulting in less application switching between your different websites and services. They currently support Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr and Jaiku.

The software just came out off public alpha and is now available as a beta version. Go, check it out and respond in the comments if you use the app or know of other cool apps helping you with keeping up with your social network buzz.

Ping.fm: Keeping your social networks in sync

July 12, 2008December 16, 2012 marco 3 Comments

Ping.fm is currenly in beta and trying to help you with kepping ALL your friends, followers, business contact (etc., etc.,…) up-to-date!
On the website the services describes itself as:

Ping.fm is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.

Use AIM, GTalk, iGoogle, WAP, iPhone/iPod Touch, SMS or E-mail and let Ping.fm relay your message to a multitude of social networking sites.

Available social networks and services are: Twitter, jaiku, Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Tumblr, Pownce, Brightkite, Xanga, Plurk, Plaxo, Linkedin, Mashable, identi.ca, more coming…

The latest additions of supported services and functionality are mentioned in their recent blog entry entitled More Features, More Awesomeness:

Alas, we bring more gifts from the Ping.fm laboratory. We have added a Yahoo! Messenger bot to our bot arsenal. So, for those Yahoo! users who were without GTalk and AIM, you now have the power of Ping!

Also, we’re proud to announce our custom URL posting capability. Now you can have ping messages delivered directly to your website! This will encourage developers to write incoming-bound scripts that will do cool stuff with your Ping messages. Just another way we’ve put the power in your hands.

Last but not least, we’ve enabled support for picture uploading.

Check them out! Use this beta code to get in: pingbewithyou
Leave a comment if you need a (current) beta code and I will update the post with the latest one.

Radiohead Part 2: IN RAINBOWS FROM THE BASEMENT – Live Video Recordings

July 1, 2008December 16, 2012 marco Leave a comment

Radiohead pic After Radiohead released their Album on this (inrainbows.com) site, full album download available for an amount of your choice (from free – x), they are now making Live video recordings available as well. You will got them on iTunes first but the live recordings also aired on VH1.
It will be bery interesting where they want to take it from here.

Below you’ll find the full email from them:

RADIOHEAD IN RAINBOWS FROM THE BASEMENT

Exclusive Live Videos Set Available on iTunes June 24th
Radiohead are releasing ten live performance videos recorded at The
Hospital studio in Covent Garden, with the team from the band’s
longtime producer Nigel Godrich’s ‘From the Basement’ TV show
(http://www.fromthebasement.tv/).

The collection will debut exclusively through iTunes beginning today,
June 24th. The videos feature live renditions of songs from ‘In
Rainbows’ and its bonus CD included in its deluxe discbox edition.
The full track listing of video performances is:
.
Bodysnatchers
House of Cards
Nude
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
15 Step
Reckoner
Go Slowly
Videotape
Bangers & Mash
All I Need

Captured in a day, with direction by David Barnard and sound by Nigel
Godrich, the videos represent the best recorded representation of
Radiohead’s live performance to date.

The recordings were also aired on VH1 and the videos are available on the site here: Radiohead – In Rainbows – From the basement
More great artists and recordings (White Stripes, Beck, Sonic Youth, etc.) are available at From the Basement as well. Check ’em out.

What I find very interesting is the fact that they chose iTunes to publish their recordings and did not make them available on their original site, were they also released the album. What do you think of all this?

—- Update —

And they are now featured on Google Code with their video / making of: RA DIOHEA_D / HOU SE OF_C ARDS