A team at Microsoft has developed a smartphone app that allows users to create 3D images in a virtual space. The user simply takes several photographs of an object at different viewpoints. Then, the photos are sent to a cloud server for processing. Afterwards, the app downloads a photo-realistic model of the object, which can then be viewed from any angle 360 degrees around.

For example, creating a 3D car requires the user to take 40 car photographs. The team also created a web browser plug-in that enables viewing on the Internet.

"You could be selling an item online, taking a picture of a friend for fun, or recording something for insurance purposes...These 3-D scans take up less bandwidth than a video because they are based on only a few images, and are also interactive."

Looking to further monetize their 500 million global users, Facebook intends to expand its Deal discount service into a full-blown rival to Groupon and Living Social. The new service will debut in Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco. Adding its own twist, Facebook states that they wish to focus on activities you'll want to do with friends...or with "Friends" as the case may be.

This video showcases the original Facebook Deals service.

College student Amanda Foote converted her 41 hour wait in line to buy an iPad 2 into cold hard cash, selling her 1st place spot to an app developer named Hazem Sayed for $900. This isn't the first time, people have paid top dollar to get Apple products. Back in June, spots in line to buy the iPhone 4 cost up to $1,200. She had to endure rain, ate donuts and only slept roughly 3 hours.

Standing in line has become a bit of cottage industry on Craigslist, where people offer to stand in various lines for you in exchange for payment. Amanda plans on using her new windfall to buy Lady Gaga concerts.

Well, technically it's not a submarine.  The EGO, built by South Korean manufacturer Raonhaje, is actually a boat with an underwater viewing dock.  Even so, the device looks awesome.  The new semi-sub will be all-electric and boasts extremely basic controls...a steering wheel, a standard throttle, a foot-pedal and a forward-backward toggle switch.

The EGO can run 8 hours at cruising speed or 4 hours at the top speed 4 knots.  The semi-sub requires 6-9 hour recharge time and will be available October 2011 at an unknown price.

Amazon wishlist!

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America have just released their finalists for 2010.  The novel finalists are:

Blackout / All Clear by Connie Willis - Historians travel back in time from 2060 to witness heroic events but discover that one, or all of them, have been changing history.

Echo by Jack McDevitt - Set in a distant future, an antiquities dealer investigates a mysterious tablet only to attract the attention of an assassin who doesn't want the mystery revealed

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin - After being named heir of a space kingdom, a princess finds she must contend with two deadly blood rivals to the throne. 

The Native Star by M.K. Hobson - Built on an alternate history America after the Civil War with steampunk, magic and zombie slave labor, a young witch struggles to lift a curse placed upon her. 

Shades of Milk & Honey by Mary Robinette ...

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Google penalized Overstock in its search rankings after discovering the company had encouraged backlinks from colleges and universities by offering the students/faculties discounts. Previously, Overstock had ranked #1 in many generic product terms such as "laptop computer" or "vacuum cleaner". Now they've dropped to #40 to #70 according to the WSJ.

One of Google's criteria in ranking any website is to look at how many times other people link to it. In particular .edu websites rarely link to commercial products and Google tends to weigh their links higher. Previously in the case of JC Penny, Google discovered thousands of inactive websites linking back to the retailer's website.  

Here with Overstock, the attempts to increase page ranking were more honest and open, but Google didn't like it anyway. The company prefers rankings to be based on organic traffic and linkage, and paying others (in effect) to ...

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Amazon released a new Movie/TV streaming service which will be completely free to customers who already pay $79 dollars a year for free 2-day shipping. To everyone else, that's the price to subscribe.  Customers can choose between 5,000 TV shows and movies.  This increases the number of serious Netflix competitors to 4...Apple, Google, Microsoft and now Amazon.

You may see the announcement on the Amazon homepage. Amazon's service can be run on a computer or on the Roku, which is a device that costs ~$199.

Netflix still ranks as number 1 though, offering access to 20,000 TV shows and movies for 7.99 a month, $5 more than Amazon's per year price. For now, the Amazon deal seems mostly a nice reinforcement for those already paying the free shipping charges.

I honestly don't see Netflix winning in the long run here. The ...

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This post is for Narv, our resident steampunk fanatic.  Now thanks to eBay, and an anonymous tinkerer, visitors had the opportunity to bid on an authentic steam-powered car for $1,500.  Alas, we're too late covering the topic, for the bidding has ended.

I'm sure this product has been out for a bit, but it was so cool I had to post it.  Touchscreen tables have long been a mainstay in museum exhibits or educational science centers.  However, now you can have one in your home thanks to the ingenuity of a company called Touchscape.

Naturally, it comes with a scratch-resistant surface that can be wiped clean.  The company new 47" display comes with the ability to display in HD 1080p and can be used to control various entertainment around your living room, such as speakers and television.  In fact, you can even watch television on it, too.  I imagine this would be a highly entertaining product for little children as well.

Amazon wishlist!

Smartphones apps that enable credit card use have blossomed in a huge way partly due to Square, a company created by one of Twitter's founders Jack Dorsey.  Earlier in January, we covered this topic, describing this new shopping trend as it sprouted up here and there. 

General media coverage since January has pushed the new credit card apps more into the public awareness...and its taken off. 

Square reports that 100,000 people signed up to use their app from October to December...3 months. Then, in January alone 65,000 people signed.  Square's COO Keith Rabois aims for the company to process $1 billion dollars in transactions throughout 2011.

Chicago-based Groupon appears to be preparing to open a Chinese subsidiary.  While there haven't been any formal press announcements, Internet watchers have spotted a spike in "Help Wanted" ads in China on behalf of Groupon. China remains home to the world's largest market of Internet users, boasting over 450 million citizens online.

In a bid to undercut Apple's digital distribution of subscription newspapers and magazines, Google has launched One Pass. The service will allow publishers to sell content that consumers can view on apps designed for smartphones and tablet PC's.  

Google will allow content creators to keep a whopping 90% of the revenue gained from One Pass, a direct counter blow to Apple's 70%. In another contrast, this time in Apple's favor, Google will allow publishers to demand personal data from subscribers. Apple places this choice in the hands of the customers.

Even so, it's hard to argue whose services will be more popular when your goal isn't to make money. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt commented in Berlin:

"Our intention is to make no money on it...We want the publishers to make all the money." 

The New York Times has an excellent article about JC Penny's attempt to manipulate product searches and what Google did in response. Over the last several months, JC Penny has appeared in the top position of rankings for a wide spectrum of brands, even appearing ahead of the product manufacturers. For example, Googling "samsonite" would give you JC Penny rather than Samonite's actual webpage. 

The company's search engine manipulation proved quite successful, since they were able to remain in the top spots during the lucrative holiday months of 2010.

"The company bested millions of sites — and not just in searches for dresses, bedding and area rugs. For months, it was consistently at or near the top in searches for “skinny jeans,” “home decor,” “comforter sets,” “furniture” and dozens of other words and phrases, from the blandly generic (“tablecloths”) to the strangely specific (“grommet top curtains”). This striking ...

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For the first time ever, more smarthphones are being sold than PC's. According to reports, 100.9 million smartphones shipped in the final three months of 2010. In contrast, only 92.1 PC's sold during the same span of time. This isn't a surprising development. Potential computer buyers often wait 2 to 5 years to replace their current computers. Meanwhile, phone companies offer incentives on a regular basis for users to upgrade.  Perhaps computer makes should offer similar incentive packages.

What do Justin Bieber and Ozzy Osbourne have in common with smart electronic purchases? Probably nothing, unless it's an endorsement deal with Best Buy.  Best Buy has created a curious refund program called "Buy Back" where, according to their trademark slogan, you can "future-proof" your electronic purchases by paying a new upfront fee. Looking over the details, I can't say I'm thrilled.

For those paying the fee, Best Buy will offer partial refunds on products out to 2 to 4 years after the purchase date.  Please note: the above links are not affiliate links. The "Buy Back" is free until Feb. 12th, after which the following scale will apply:

- Laptops, netbooks and tablets: $69.99.

- Mobile phones: $39.99 to $59.99 depending on the price

- TVs: $59.99 to $349.99 depending on the price

Then, depending on when you return the item, you'll be ...

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Murdoch's news experiment "The Daily" launched today. iPad users have the option to pay 14 cents/day, 99 cents/week and $39.99/year...the latter representing a roughly 20% discount. The new venture is considered a bellwether in the media industry whether people are willing to pay for news through a specific tablet. 

My guess is that the answer is ultimately "No."  The Daily might be able to build a brand and become successful based on iPad-customized news, but many others crowding into the market will find the waters cold. Bloggers may still find a way to aggregate the news again for free, in similar tablet presentations.

Also, success of The Daily seems dependent upon the continued dominance of the iPad and the ability of Apple to stay on top of the hyped tech market, which are things unrelated to the quality of their news products.

 

Photo by ...

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The Washington Post published an interesting article about a former potent force in American culture called Borders, now reduced to a mere shadow of itself.

(h/t Instapundit)

So, what's the difference between a credit card combined with a phone, and a phone that uses your credit cards to pay for various crap? Very little.

Welcome to 2011, everyone. As the world continues to awaken in the New Year, it's useful to see what kind of trends might continue or increase from the previous year. One such megatrend is the sale of "virtual goods" estimated to have reached 7 billion dollars in sales for 2010. Anyone who has played any MMO such as World of Warcraft, Aion or a any social networking game such as Second Life, Farmville and Mafia Wars knows what a "virtual good" is.  It's an XP boost, or an item for an RPG character, real estate in cyberspace or pretty much anything a software company or real-life person can get you to buy.  

We live in an age now where people can work, and make profitable, almost any past-time.  Who would've thought that a man named John Jacobs would sell imaginary real estate a few years ago for ...

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Last Monday, Google opened up its own e-book store using a portion of the 15 million printed books its scanned into computers over the last decade. 

Around 4,000 publishers are allowing Google to carry newly-released books, contributing to the internet giant's whopping initial 3 million e-book offerings.   Even millions more out-of-print titles will appear in store as well, pending a class-action lawsuit settlement which the Justice Department believes will violate antitrust and copyright laws.    Opponents fear Google will gain too much power to set book prices all across the industry.  Naturally, Amazon is fighting the settlement.

Google often takes a fairly cavalier attitude towards copyright, in my knowledge they treat a wide number of books to be in public domain that technically aren't, including "orphaned" books whose authors died leaving no heirs.