Category: Tech news

Findery, the new location-based note sharing startup from Flickr and Hunch co-founder Caterina Fake, launched in public beta yesterday afternoon.

Findery lets you take photos and notes from specific locations and tag them on a map anywhere in the world for other people to see and discover. The public launch comes nearly eight months after it opened up in private beta in February, so the app is already well-populated with tens of thousands of notes and photos from around the world, all overlaid on a global map.

My first impressions are that it’s a beautiful and very addictive thing to browse through. In the “big map” view, you can click around for hours looking at people’s snapshots and reading their impressions of places. The closest existing thing that it reminds me of is the photos overlay on Google Maps enabled by its acquisition of Panoramio, but Findery at the moment feels much friendlier and more social, and it also seems to have a much stronger mobile web experience.

In a blog post announcing the public launch, Fake wrote that more features, including native mobile apps, are on the way:

“This is only the beginning. Maps for Notes that you can embed on other sites and video embedding within Findery are coming soon. You’ll soon be able to save the places that you’d like to visit. And yes, we continue to work on our iPhone and Android apps.”

The road to public beta

As with all startups, there have been a couple bumps in the road leading up to this public launch. Findery was previously called Pinwheel, but changed its name in July after a photo-sharing startup called Pinweel (that’s right, no ‘H’) was granted a court injunction on the use of the name.

Fake was determined to build her newest company as quietly as possible early on, but it is hard for a startup led by such a high-profile industry vet to fly under the radar for long. So it did not go unnoticed in the summer of last year when it filed regulatory forms to the SEC indicating it was raising $2 million from a group of investors that at that time included True Ventures, Founder Collective, SV Angel, Keith Rabois, James Joaquin and Shoshana Berger.

At the end of last year, Fake told me in an interview for GigaOM that her company (which at that point was unnamed) would be starting to make more public moves, saying:

“Next year will be about a change of focus, as we go from building stuff and being inward-facing to launching it and becoming outward-facing. 2011 has been about being heads down and working with the team; 2012 will be much more about going out and interacting with users. It’s going to be a gradual process — we’ll probably start off in a closed beta for a while — but it’s going to be a big change overall.”

And indeed that has come to bear. In February at the private beta rollout, Fake released some more details about her new venture, naming Redpoint, Betaworks, and Obvious as additional investors and indicating a bit more about what the app would do. This week, we are seeing the clearest and most complete look at what Findery is really about.

Big ambitions ahead

Fake also indicated in the GigaOM interview that she has big plans for her new venture, saying: “I want to build a community that’s as thriving as the one in Flickr.” It certainly looks like she’s off to a good start, and Findery will definitely be something to watch in the months ahead.

Facebook likes to test things out on the live site, getting feedback in real-time. Sometimes, things make their way to some of your friends, but not to you. Some would call this an “inconsistent experience”, but I actually like how Facebook goes about this. I would personally like to see all of the new stuff that the company tests, from a journalist perspective…but hey, you can’t have everything.

A few tipsters are reporting to TechCrunch that they’re seeing a brand new layout for the navigation bar on Facebook’s website. The new layout shows a complete swap for where the notifications, friend requests and messages sit.

Have a look:

The reasoning for this “A/B test” might be that Facebook wants to put more focus on the right-hand side of the site, which is the place that houses birthdays, engagement or marriage updates, gifts, and of course…advertising.

As a left-handed person, I tend to look for everything that’s important on the left, and have grown accustomed to having the navigation bar display things there. I could get used to this, of course, but I hope that if this is something that the social network is considering, it’s released as a user-decided option.

User experience is key for any site, especially Facebook. One tipster said very dramatically:

now the notifications are on the right hand side.

holy crap.

my life is terrible now.

While their life might not be “over”, it is difficult to learn new navigation for a site that you’ve used for years, every single day.

There’s no way to tell if this is something that might be rolling out worldwide, but Facebook has confirmed that this is indeed a test. Are you seeing this change? Let us know what you think about it in the comments!

[Pics of change: Flickr]

Photo courtesy of Sony Electronics

For television buyers who prefer LCD over plasma, few manufacturers are doing as much to earn their dollars as Sony. The company’s excellent HX929 Bravia series from 2011 is still one of the best LCD TVs you can buy, and we’re deep into 2012. And if you don’t want to lay out roughly $2,000 for the 46-inch Bravia, you can feel confident picking up the newer HX850 in the same size for about $400 less.

The HX850 is one of Sony’s premiere LCD panels. (Only the HX950 is spec’d higher.) It offers color depths and black levels that rival similarly priced plasmas, and it has a decent array of built-in streaming apps, so you don’t need to invest in an external streaming box. Configuration is complicated, but once you get it set up to your liking, you can forget about the adjustments and just enjoy one of the best pictures on the market no matter what sources you throw at it.

The design is really something. The panel itself is very thin (only 35mm deep), and it’s secured on a bowed stand with a pole socket that lets the TV spin on the center axis. So if you want to angle the screen to face different parts of the room, you just swing it from side to side. It moves about 15 degrees in either direction when you nudge it with a gentle push. The screen is one big edge-to-edge slab of almost completely unadorned Gorilla glass. True to the tradition of Sony televisions past, it’s a Meisian stroke of minimalist beauty. Furthering the aesthetic, the inch-thick bezel around the screen is capped by a barely-there aluminum ring.

The choice of Gorilla Glass here is a smart one. It’s presumably more durable and scratch-resistant (the terms of our loan agreement with Sony kept me from fully testing that part) but it’s also resistant to glare. I can’t say how much of this is Sony’s doing and how much is Corning’s, but the HX85 looks fantastic in all reasonable lighting situations. I tested it in a room filled with ambient daylight, in the same room with a couple of accent lamps, and in total darkness. It always looked amazing, and the glare from the lighting did very little to degrade the picture.

There was very little LED blooming evident from the edge-lit screen. It wasn’t even noticeable in anything other than a totally dark room. Much like Sony’s HX929 we reviewed earlier this year, the HX850 has a superior local dimming engine that’s remarkably consistent. It was certainly good enough to maintain absolute blacks in letterboxed pictures or when watching full-screen content with wide variations between light and dark.

Color representation is excellent as well, if a little saturated. But of course, you can fix this in the menus. And you’ll need to dig through them — one of the first things I did when loading up a Blu-ray of There Will Be Blood was futz with Sony’s picture-smoothing technologies to sharpen everything up and get rid of the soap-opera effect.

Once I had everything configured — I turned off most of Sony’s video enhancement engines, dialed back the brightness and color saturation, but left the dejuddering Motionflow setting on “low” — the picture was extremely sharp, bright and colorful. Just as impressive were the deep blacks. It’s cliche to talk about black levels on a TV by calling them “inky,” so pardon me while I qualify it: “none more inky.” I watched a variety of concert DVDs, Blu-ray features, and streaming HD clips from Vimeo, and both the colors and blacks were gorgeous in every case.

The layout of the ports on the back is a little weird, with an Ethernet jack, composite and component hookups and two HDMI ports along the bottom, then two additional HDMI ports along the side. Two USB ports are also on the side, about 8 inches from the top of the television. Putting the USB ports all the way up there doesn’t matter if you’re loading movies from a thumb drive, but if you’ve got a 1TB drive full of files, you’ll need a very long cable, or you’ll have to put a shoebox under the drive to keep it from dangling (like I did).

The full complement of big-name streaming apps come built-in: Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Amazon, NHL (sad trombone) and other on-demand options through the Sony Entertainment Network. All of these are accessible via the TV’s content menu, which, I’m sad to report, is inscrutable. This is sold as so-called “Smart TV,” but the thing is barely out of grade school. Even though the big appeal here is that you don’t need Roku or an Apple TV, I’d recommend plugging one in anyway just so you’ll never have to browse this bloated mess.

The good news is that Sony’s HX850 displays a uniformity of picture quality no matter the source — streaming, over-the-air HD, Blu-ray discs, and MKV-MP4 files from a USB hard drive.

One stumbling block: 3-D. It’s only so-so, and it requires a pair of Sony-made glasses, as the company doesn’t use one of the cross-compatible standards other manufacturers are relying on. Still, I’m not going to let the bummer 3-D experience sour me on this television. It does seem a bit small next to the 55-inch and 60-inch models common on store shelves these days, but it’s more than big enough for apartments and smaller TV rooms. And for the exceptional quality you get, it’s a great buy, especially if you can find it for a hundred or two less than the $1,600 advertised price.

WIRED Beautiful picture with excellent colors and the blackest blacks. Plenty of connection options. Simple design exudes grace and poise. Built-in Wi-Fi: Watch YouTube, Netflix, Hulu and Sony’s own Hollywood offerings without an external box.

TIRED Menus are a mess, remote is meh, and configuration requires R-ing TFM. Internet options (Yahoo widgets!) aren’t easy to navigate, but at least the remote has a dedicated Netflix button. 3-D glasses sold separately. It does Skype, but the camera is sold separately. Speakers don’t impress — hook it up to a dedicated sound system.

Think of every smartphone as an endless stack of interactive flash cards. Pick a free vocab tutor and you’ll be counting to dieci, dix, or juu by bedtime.

Babbel

This app is basically a loss leader for Babbel’s subscription-based online lessons (from $7.45 per month). Still, the lessons had us memorizing vocabulary — French, in our case — faster than either MindSnacks or 24/7 Tutor. There’s also clear, native-speaker pronunciation of every word and phrase.

WIRED Smart topic-based word groupings. Flash-card game mixes up cards after each turn.

TIRED Pacing is a bit slow. Free (iOS, Android) | Babbel

MindSnacks

Work through speed-based games that test your mastery of increasingly complex levels. (Three free levels, then $4.99 for 47 more.) And there’s no leveling up without mastering the previous group. The games we tried in the Italian version were surprisingly effective for both listening and reading.

WIRED 90-second sessions are perfect for studying on the go.

TIRED No grammar lessons. No custom word groupings. Requires Facebook or e-mail login. Free (iOS) | MindSnacks

24/7 Tutor

Flash cards, multiple-choice quizzes, and puzzles offer drills for basic vocab and phrases — $3.99 paid versions go deeper — with apps for the Romance languages plus Japanese (our sample), Chinese, Dutch, and German. But there’s little in the way of context and no grammar or theory.

WIRED Hear native pronunciation of every word. Prioritize troublesome words to hit weak spots.

TIRED Mostly useless unless you already know a bit of the language. Free (iOS) | 24/7 Tutor

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Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

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When Steinway & Sons first approached Peter Lyngdorf about creating a loudspeaker bearing the company’s famous name and logo, the venerable piano-maker and the Danish audio wizard agreed on one cardinal goal: Lyngdorf’s speaker had to be able to exactly reproduce the live sound of one of Steinway’s Model D concert grand pianos.

Lyngdorf relished the challenge. To test his creation, he demoed a pair of his bespoke speakers for Steinway’s instrument-makers. When the team was played a CD recording of two different Model D pianos, the engineers were able to tell which of the pianos was manufactured at its factory in Hamburg, Germany, and which was made at its factory in Long Island, New York — a detail they could previously only discern by hearing the instruments played live.

That was six years ago, and the speaker Lyngdorf created was named the Model D after the piano. Lyngdorf has built some new designs since then, and this is the latest speaker to be born of the partnership: the Steinway Lyngdorf Model LS Concert.

The LS stands for “line source,” which is a type of speaker array used in large theaters and concert halls. Each speaker houses 15 mid-range 5.25-inch drivers and eight AMT tweeters, all stacked vertically. The result is a speaker that’s over 8 feet tall and only 16 inches wide.

The finish is minimalist and tasteful — if you could use the word “minimalist” to describe a speaker packing 15 cones — with glossy piano-black side pieces and 24k gold accent work around the tweeters, both Steinway & Sons hallmarks. Instead of a traditional cloth grille over the speakers, the SL Concerts use a curved drape of super-thin bungee cords. It’s an open-baffle design (there’s no enclosure), so the bungee cords hang down the back as well, concealing the wiring.

Of course, even more striking is the sound. I got the chance to listen to these speakers in a private residence here in San Francisco, where they had been tuned to the environment using Lyngdorf’s proprietary RoomPerfect algorithm, a 3-D room correction system that evens out the soundspace. In the stacked line source design, the bottom speaker sits only three inches off the floor, and the top speaker is a foot or two over your head. Because of this arrangement (and with a little help from the room correction software) you can walk around the room, sit on the floor, or stand up, all the while hearing almost no variation in the sound quality or the volume. It’s impressive.

The setup was an all-Steinway rig: the stereo pair of Model LS Concert speakers plus six woofer boxes (two 12-inch drivers per box), all driven by five of the company’s A1 amplifiers and one of its P1 processors. The music was played through an Oppo Blu-ray player, chosen because it could handle all of the high-quality formats like SACD and DVD-A, and because it plugs into the processor with an HDMI cable to maintain a purely digital signal chain. There are no traditional digital-to-analog converters being used either (though that bit gets rather complicated, so I’ll refer you to the technology overview on the company’s website).

We started out with some live recordings of classical strings, and some reverby piano ballads recorded in a big room. The speakers were surprisingly responsive — the attack of the bow on the violin strings was crystal-clear, and the piano’s hammer strikes were perfectly distinct. We moved on to a Stevie Ray Vaughan slow blues, and the drummer’s rimshots sounded off like gunshots.

For most of the demo, we were running between 5 and 10 watts of power into the LS Concerts — all that’s required to drive the speakers this light and fast. Even at that level, they were loud. Like, really loud.

Keep in mind, this speaker design is basically a miniaturized version of those massive vertical stacks you see next to the stage at big stadium shows. To drive the point home, our host — Tim Johnson of Engineered Environments, a journeyman speaker designer and installation specialist — put on some Pink Floyd and cranked it even louder. We were pushing roughly 120 decibels out of the LS Concerts, and the sound was absolutely glorious.

After blowing through my favorite sequence on The Wall — “Another Brick in the Wall Part 1,” “The Happiest Days of Our Lives,” “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2″ — I was giddy with joy. We’re talking gig-level sound, perfectly distortion-free and purely electric. Tim reluctantly turned it down a few notches when a candle came tumbling off the fireplace mantle.

I’ve listened to a lot of these high-end audio installations, and all of them sound amazing. But this Steinway Lyngdorf rig is a step above. And it’s simple — no hulking monoblocks, no extra components, no massive cables. Just a small, 2-foot stack of amps, the woofers tucked away in back, and the gorgeous thin black lines of the speakers.

So what does it cost to deliver such an intoxicating natural high? The LS Concert speakers alone are $190,000 per pair, and the amps are $5,400 each. The woofer boxes are $4,200 each. One of the Steinway Lyngdorf processors will run you between $4,400 and $18,400.

That’s roughly $250,000 for the whole shebang. Tim Johnson, who installed the system, couldn’t recall the exact total. But as with anything else at the pointy end of stereo gear, if you have to ask…

WIRED Audio quality and clarity will cause immediate states of tumescence. Volume approaches the level of ultraviolence. Sound profile barely changes, no matter where you stand in the room. Deep digital tech in the amplification, the signal processing and the room-correction algorithms.

TIRED A full set-up costs as much as two Steinway & Sons Model D concert grand pianos. Your neighbors will HATE you. Your audio nerd friends will never leave.

Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

The new shoes from Olukai bring together two hot trends in the sports world: minimalist footwear and stand-up paddleboarding.

The Maliko is a split-toed design — the big toe gets its own sleeve, separating it from the other four piggies and giving your foot more flexibility than a traditional shoe. Think of it as a gateway for people who don’t want to commit to the FiveFingers cult. But like Vibram’s twinkle-toes, the Maliko bears all the hallmarks of a barefoot-inspired shoe: a zero heel-to-toe drop, low weight, and an extremely flexible sole.

And yes, this is also a water shoe, or an “aqua adventure” shoe, which is a fancy way of saying its powers are best experienced when windsurfing, paddleboarding, bounding across wet sand and rocks, or any other flavor of beach-combing shenanigans. (All of Olukai’s products are inspired by the Hawaiian lifestyle, and this is the company’s first foray into minimal footwear.)

The upper is made up of breathable, abrasion-resistant mesh (you know, for scrambling over sharp coral) and its slim outsole wraps up around the foot and toebox for a bit of added protection. Drainage ports in the arch help the shoe dry quickly if the waves creep up on you, and the insole is removable. The quick-release lace system lets you kick your shoes and shake out any sand you accumulate — an inevitability given the low cuff.

The split-toe design frees up your big toe to help you keep your balance on whatever slab-like, ocean-going vessel you’re using to get rad. During a few hours I spent stand-up paddleboarding while wearing the Olukais, the extra flexibility of the liberated big toe did indeed help me stay upright, while the slightly suction-cuppy tread held fast to the board. I experienced no slipping whatsoever, and the shoes dried off after about 10 minutes of walking around on the shore. They’re a bit snug with the insole attached, but they felt great without the insole, and they provided great traction and a good amount of protection (for a barefoot shoe) when navigating the wet rocks during an impromptu cliff-jumping session.

Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

Olukai is a premium footwear-maker that emphasises the craftsmanship and durability of its products, and the construction of the Maliko reflects this. The attention to detail in the interior stitching is exemplary — the insole is stitched to the outsole all around the shoe except where the drainage ports are, allowing water to escape that much faster. The stitching is tough, and I feel confident the shoes will survive years of hikes, waterfall leaps and paddle journeys.

They may not be for everyone. The shoes are snug, and the heel cuff rubbed up against my Achilles tendon. (The issue disappeared when I removed the insole.) And aesthetically, the split-toe pocket is an acquired taste. But if you dig the ninja look, these will be right up your alley.

WIRED Excellent drainage. Durable exterior protects against scuffs from rocks and coral. Removable half-length insole for variable support. Speed laces let you easily kick them off to knock out sand.

TIRED Tight fit with the insole. Low cut lets sand and debris in. The “camel toe” jokes get old in about two minutes, but you’ll hear them constantly.

Photo by Alex Washburn/Wired

Clip the nPower PEG to your backpack — or stuff it inside — and its internal battery will recharge as you hike using kinetic energy. Photo courtesy Tremont Electric

Here’s a familiar scenario: You’re walking somewhere, and you realize you’re going to be late. You reach for your phone to call, but your battery is as dead as Osama. You need some juice, stat. But with no outlet or charger nearby, you’re up the ol’ creek again.

I’ve just tested a device made for moments like these: Tremont Electric’s nPower PEG backup charger. It purports to capture the energy your body gives off just by just walking or cycling, funneling volts into your dead cellphone battery, and bringing the device back to life or extending talk-time into the great beyond.

PEG stands for Personal Energy Generator. The 10.5-inch plastic cylinder weighs just under a pound, and contains a 2,000 mAh lithium battery. It draws its power from kinetic energy — carry it with you as you walk, run, or bike, and the device will keep the battery within continually topped off. Alternatively, you can fully charge it in about 3.5 hours using the included mini USB cable.

Once filled, it holds a charge for around three months. Red and green LED lights alert you to the PEG’s charge level.

Kinetic power does not come cheap — the nPower PEG costs around $200. While it includes one interchangeable iGo.com mini USB tip for use with most non-Apple phones, other tips average an extra $10 each. With literally dozens of other recharging backup batteries available for as little as a tenth of the cost, the audience for the PEG seems to be limited to wilderness hikers, outdoor enthusiasts and “Be Prepared” survivalists. It makes sense, then, that the PEG just made its retail debut last week at REI.

It even works with your BlackBerry! Photo courtesy Tremont Electric

Of course, I discovered the PEG’s output varied based on the particular activity I was performing. Starting with a depleted PEG, I carried it on a ten-minute run. This yielded about a minute of talk time on a pre-3G phone. But it took over 25 minutes of brisk walking to get just a minute on a 3G smartphone. I didn’t test how much time it takes to power a short call on a 4G phone because I have a strict no-marathons policy.

The PEG can only harness kinetic energy as it moves up and down when positioned vertically. So to work properly, you have to use the carbineer-like loop built into the top to fasten it to something. This works in a backpack, a briefcase or a pocket — though the latter will surely prompt your friends to ask, “Is that a battery in your pocket, or are you just charged to see me?”

Of course, keeping the device in a bag has its limitations, too. The manual warns against positioning the PEG close to items that are attracted to magnets, as this will limit its amount of movement and thus reduce the amount of charge it can collect. What’s not mentioned is what the magnetic attraction will do to nearby credit cards (and their magnetic strips), or the data on your laptop’s hard drive.

All you non-calorie burners will be happy to know the PEG is still useable if you aren’t moving about. Keeping it in an upright position, you can manually move it up and down heartily for a few minutes. This is best done in private, as it is perhaps too reminiscent of the act of male self-love. But still, it’s just as effective when you need to generate some battery power.

WIRED Recharges cellphones with low or dead batteries using the kinetic energy of your bodily movements. 14 ounces and not too bulky, so you can carry it anywhere. Great for emergencies.

TIRED Only 5V DC, 500mA of output, so it will not charge a laptop or iPad. Innate magnetic activity may affect nearby credit cards, hard drives, and artificial limbs. Expensive compared to other available rechargers. You know why everyone laughs at the Shake Weight, right?

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When I first picked up Sony’s new NEX-F3, I could only wonder whether its sensors would be dynamic enough to capture the giant chip on my shoulder.

The camera is aimed squarely at what I think of as the purgatory market; “compact” with interchangeable lenses and mirrorless shutter. That’s all code for not big enough to perform like an SLR, but too big to conveniently tuck into a pocket. In other words, what’s the point?

However, after taking the NEX-F3 on a weekend hiking trip the Big Sur, my snobbish dismissiveness shifted to pleasant surprise. The pictures were sharp, balanced and colorful, and were captured with little effort. The light meter was sensitive and on the mark, and the lens and sensor proved capable of balancing a surprisingly wide range of contrasts, capturing the deep shadows of a redwood forest without blowing out its sun-drenched hot spots.

1080p HD video isn’t exactly rare, but the NEX-F3′s manual control of zoom and exposure while recording live footage turn it into a powerful, palm-sized legitimate movie camera. The swappable lenses — and their fully functional manual focus rings — were enough to quench the thirst left by even the best pocket-camera zooms.

I shouldn’t have been so surprised — on paper, the NEX-F3 has all the right credentials. It boasts a 16.1 megapixel APS-C sensor, which means you can order vacation prints wide enough to span your dining room wall and still get a decent sense of detail and sharpness. The ISO range maxes out at 16000 — more than you need unless you like to replicate the look of a closed-circuit security camera in a dimly lit hallway — and the digital shutter will close at a zippy 1/4000th of a second. It will shoots up to six frames per second, supports RAW files and weighs less than 14 ounces with the included 27-83mm-equivalent E-mount zoom lens.

As long as the basic parameters for an up-to-date, technologically capable camera are met, though — and they certainly are — none of that spec sheet stuff matters more than what the camera feels like to handle and to shoot with. Out of the box, the NEX-F3 was lighter than I expected, but a little awkward to hold. It’s got an articulated grip that’s too small to rest in my palm and yet too heavy to pinch between my thumb and fingers, especially when I mounted a longer, 80-200mm barrel zoom. When I found the right hand position, my thumb banged belligerently all over the array of controls on the camera’s back.

On the trail, this gave me trouble. I couldn’t stop hitting the sensitive joystick-like button, or forgetting which way I wanted to tap it for the desired effect. To go one step down in shutter speed, do I click to the right, or down? Oops. Suddenly, I was changing the shooting mode or trying to exit the auto-bracketed self-timer mode I had inadvertently selected. That’s the double-edged sword of having one unavoidably positioned button do everything, and it would have been prohibitively annoying if the pictures themselves hadn’t turned out so well.

Compared side by side with photos from my favorite semi-pro point-and-shoot, the Sony’s output was crisper and more saturated. When I used the flash — or automatic exposure — the NEX-F3 balanced color and tone better than any camera of its class. My preferred mode for capturing natural light, and for judging any camera’s true potential, is to shoot manually. The Sony’s manual mode was impressive not just for stills, but for the full control it offers when shooting movies, too.

I like the barrel lenses. They give a little of a feel of a solid semi-pro camera. But I found myself wishing I could adjust the aperture on the lens barrel, too, instead of flipping into the electronic menu on the joystick. Again, awkwardly straddling two worlds of photography. And though the generous LCD screen is great for previewing manual exposure experiments, in the brightness of day, it was virtually impossible to see. The electronic viewfinder — sold separately — proved essential.

I had the most fun with this camera’s bells and whistles. The flip-up adjustable display screen can be moved a full 180 degrees until it’s facing right back at you. When in this position, the camera automatically flips your image right side up, so it’s like looking in the mirror: easy for self portraits, which is why it’s been fondly dubbed the “narcissist effect.” The pop-up flash is also hinged, so with a little dexterity, I could redirect it for softer lighting or bounce-flash effects.

That said, other features of the NEX-F3 proved useless, or were downright goofy.

There’s an auto-panorama mode that should be cool, but it annoyingly makes repeated shutter sounds as if you’re running a motor drive. Also, I kept getting error messages warning me to pan the camera faster… er, wait, slower. Fail.

A series of funny filters can process images in camera. There’s a retro filter aimed at the Instagram crowd, and even a skin-softening air brush effect to remove pimples and skin creases like a Cosmopolitan touch-up job. I tried it on my abs, but still no six-pack. Another fail.

The bottom line is that the NEX-F3 is a superb entry-level camera for photographers looking to break out of point-and-shoot mode but who aren’t quite ready to splurge on — or shoulder the weight of — a more robust camera.

WIRED Lightweight. Excellent manual capabilities and good lenses that lead to sharp pictures. Surprisingly good for a $500 camera.

TIRED Flimsy-feeling plastic body does not inspire confidence. Anemic hand grip. Touchy joystick interface can get in the way of the camera’s best performance. No external battery charger, so you have to plug the camera into the wall.

An example of how it handles a dynamic lighting situation. Click for larger. Photo by Abrahm Lustgarten/Wired

I don’t always play social games, but when I do, I like them to help me pay for my education. If “The Most Interesting Man In The World” were to endorse Grantoo, this might be his conclusion. Grantoo is a social gaming platform that allows college students to compete against each other to win tuition grants and donate to charity in brand-sponsored gaming tournaments.

Grantoo launched in beta this spring, opening its platform to all students with an “.edu” email address. During its trial run, the company gave away over $30K in tuition grants and raised over $10K for charity, with institutions like Yale, Duke, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and USC participating. Beginning today, Grantoo’s games are available for everyone to play (for free). The startup has also increased the stakes considerably, as it plans to distribute over $100K in rewards this fall.

When it debuted this spring, Grantoo’s gaming platform was only available on the web, but since co-founders Dimitri Sillam and Mikhael Naayem initially dreamed up the idea for their startup in college, mobile has been an important part of their vision. To support its push into mobile gaming, the co-founders have recruited Alan Price to be Grantoo’s new CTO. Price joins the startup from EA Canada, where he was CTO and helped develop flagship EA titles like FIFA Soccer, NHL Hockey, FightNight, NBA Live and EA Sports Active.

When asked what made him decide to jump ship, Price said that, at EA, he felt there “was so much more we could do with games that would improve and help the world around us,” so he decided to join Grantoo because it presented an “opportunity to show that games and play can become a powerful agent for change in our world.”

Adding additional fuel to its mobile and social strategy, Grantoo is also announcing today that it has raised $1.7 million in seed capital from a number of European firms and angel investors, including Angyal Capital, Olivier Douce, Olivier Legrain, Daniel Hechter, Jacques Berrebi and Pierre Lavail.

But the cool thing about Grantoo is that its value prop is multi-fold. For starters, Grantoo hopes to provide a way to combat the absurd college tuition inflation that ravaged higher ed in the U.S. over the last decade and pushed over $1 trillion earlier this year. So Grantoo lets college students earn grants to help pay for those costly tuitions and, in turn, requires them to donate between 10 and 100 percent of their winnings to a charity of their choice (which includes The Hunger Project, Partners In Health, Pencils of Promise, MAMA and Engineers Without Borders, to name a few).

Under this model, students win, as do charities. While the overall impact on the colossal student debt problem is minimal at this point, but with Grantoo’s obvious no-brainer value for students, if it can encourage brands to continue signing by continuing to refine incentives, with scale that impact grows. And that’s not to discount the importance of building games that don’t suck. Without engaging gaming experiences, the heart-warming social good means little.

The other conspicuous value prop here, for brands, is that those sponsoring Grantoo’s tournaments get to participate in the charitable giving as well, as the money they put up is exclusively dished out to college students. This gives them serious brownie points with students who themselves are a much coveted demographic for many brands and can be vocal supporters — online and on social networks, if not financially.

Traditionally, brands don’t get much credit for the donations they make to academic scholarships and other charitable causes, say Grantoo’s co-founders, so the startup is working to provide them with ample branding opportunities on its platform, allowing companies to customize the tournament interface to reflect their brand’s ethos. To date, Grantoo has hosted tournaments sponsored by WePay, KRED, Grooveshark and AVG, and Sillam says that 10 Fortune 500 companies are currently in the pipeline to sponsor tournaments this year.

Because all of the sponsorship money is distributed to students, Grantoo uses its own advertising to cover operational costs, though it will likely have to construct another revenue stream if it plans to be around for the long haul. However, the co-founders did say they’re planning to raise a larger, series A round this winter, and it’s true that living at the intersection of student debt, unemployment, social gaming and the globalized workforce — some of the hottest topics of the day — could be a benefit to Grantoo. Especially if it can convince brands that it’s offering a “new” type of business model — sustainable charity that can help a company’s bottom line.

At launch, Grantoo is offering one trivia game to start on its web platform, with two new, original mobile games coming out on iOS and Android in November. In the long run, the co-founders say that they want to offer a variety of games — eschewing those based on luck to instead focus on addicting quiz and word games — and to get to a point where they’re hosting multiple tournaments per day. There’s a long way to go, but so far, Grantoo seems to be on the right track.

Find Grantoo at home here.

Google rolled out its own integrated, social review system for businesses with Google+ Local in May of this year. Not only was this a nice addition for Google+, but it finally utilized Google’s acquisition of Zagat. Having said that, I haven’t used the service all that much, because there are some usability issues there.

The team seems to be working on some of those issues and rolled out some changes to how it asks you to rate a restaurant, for example. Rating systems are a pain, because you never really know what to say. For a 1 to 5 system, I often ask myself “is 5 really super awesome, or just good enough?” These are things that cloud these final ratings, making them not so useful for those who come along and read them.

Google has decided to get rid of the number system for reviewing a venue and replaced it with a scale — ranging from poor to excellent — that makes a bit more sense. Google will then do the heavy lifting on calculating a useful score.

Here’s what Megan Stevenson from Google had to say about the changes:

Today it’s easier than ever to write accurate, useful reviews on Google+ Local, thanks to the updated rating scale we rolled out. If you want to rate the food at a restaurant, or the quality of a mechanic, just choose “poor – fair,” “good,” “very good,” or “excellent”. Behind the scenes, we’ll convert your ratings into numbers and factor them into the business’ precise 30-point score that shows up in Google+, Search and Maps.

Give it a try! Click on the Google+ Local icon in the left navigation bar, search for a local spot and click “Write a review.” Happy reviewing!

I’m really fascinated with sentiment analysis, and unfortunately there’s no way to really find out how people “feel” about something when you’re interfacing with the Internet. However, companies like Path do a really great job of that by offering up things like smiley faces and hearts. While Google isn’t going that route, I think that this is a huge upgrade:

The other nice recent addition is that you can see reviews that your friends have made by visiting their profile. It’s something that the team removed, but it has returned, luckily.

Seeing reviews that others have left, if they want to expose that, is a great way to find new places to check out, and also plants the seed that you should also review a place to help the next person out.

As far as ratings, or basically everything really, I don’t think in numbers, and I am more likely to rate a place that I’ve eaten at when presented with actual words to express my feelings. Unfortunately, there’s no option for “absolute suckage,” which is a phrase that I tend to use to explain a really bad experience.

Oh well, maybe next time.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

You can call Oyster the Netflix for books, but founders Eric Stromberg, Andrew Brown and Willem Van Lancker want to bring something more to ebook reading. The startup aims to be the first real subscription service for books. When it comes to digital entertainment content, you can either buy everything you want or subscribe to an unlimited service. Yet, ebook offerings are still behind. Oyster will fix that.

The New York-based company announced today that it has closed a $3 million round of financing led by Founders Fund with participation from SV Angel, Founder Collective, Shari Redstone’s Advancit Capital, Chris Dixon, Sam Altman and others.

When the service launches, it will go a bit further than a simple library by trying to select great books for its users and providing community features to increase user retention. Instead of focusing on the staid old publishing industry, Oyster is trying to improve reading in general.

“I initially became fascinated by the transition from the print book to digital while working on a research project at Duke,” said Eric Stromberg, CEO and co-founder of Oysterover, in a phone interview. “Our team loves to ask the question, ‘What will the future of books look like?’ We want to bring books to the center of your life, and inspire you to read all the books you wish you’d read,” he continued.

Focusing on reading means that a few innovative features will set the product apart. Oyster won’t carry the entire catalog of a publisher. “We don’t put every book on the platform. We say, ‘Look, here are the great books we want to put on the platform,’” Stromberg said. Books are curated algorithmically and by real people.

Of course there is Amazon’s lending library for Kindle owners. But you can only borrow one book at a time and many popular books are not available. Oyster should be more attractive, even though it remained very mysterious about its content deals.

“We have several deals in place with several great publishers,” Stromberg said. The startup will share its revenue with publishers based on the number of times their book is read.

Oyster is focusing on smartphone apps and wants to provide a better reading app on those devices than existing reader apps. For example, unlike Kindle’s app, readers will be able to start a new book from within the app, because there is no in-app purchase involved. Community features won’t be restricted to the website, either. When asked about potential tablet apps, Stromberg didn’t have anything to share… yet.

While we wait for the service to launch, you can sign up for updates and read the first blog post introducing the concept.

Telefonica today has announced a deal with Telenor as its first carrier partner to the BlueVia API platform — one of the Spanish company’s many efforts, via Telefonica Digital, to create new lines of revenue around its operator assets. In this case, it’s a platform that it opens up to developers to incorporate different carrier-based actions into their mobile apps, such as messaging and billing services, which they can in turn offer to Telefonica’s 311 million customers. (Think Twilio but run by a carrier.)

The Telenor deal will see the Norwegian telco — which has operations not only in the Nordics but in three other countries in Europe, five in Asia and a 48 percent share of Russia’s Vimplecom — share in the platform but contribute its own APIs and give its developers access to Telefonica’s APIs to use in apps for Telenor customers. The first APIs that the two will share cover carrier billing, which now can be offered to 460 million users worldwide.

It’s a sign of how telcos are trying, and trying again, to work together to squeeze more revenues out of their ageing telecoms assets in the face of falling revenues in voice and data. So far the track record hasn’t been great. “Don’t call this WAC!” Matthew Dicks, the new head of marketing for BlueVia, said with a little alarm when describing the service to me. WAC, for background, is the ill-fated Wholesale Applications Consortium operator alliance that got whacked in July when its operations were folded into the GSMA and its API assets got bought by Apigee.

Telefonica is now, perhaps, thinking that taking matters into its own hands and approaching the partnership concept with slow steps might be a better route to getting it to work. Dicks says that after Telenor, Telefonica expects to announce a few more carriers to the platform. It’s likely that they will be more along the lines of Telenor in terms of size and market cap rather than other big boys like Vodafone or AT&T.

And looking at BlueVia precedents, it’s likely that direct carrier billing will be the first feature to be rolled out with future carriers: other partners that Telefonica has added to BlueVia include Facebook, Google, Microsoft and RIM, which have all signed a framework agreement with Telefonica so that BlueVia developers can also incorporate Telefonica’s direct carrier billing into apps for those platforms.

But carrier billing won’t be the only thing BlueVia will be rolling into the partnership. “From the beginning, BlueVia’s aim has been to gather scale and experiment fast on API business, not sticking to Telefónica’s footprint but opening our vision to a pure global ecosystem,” said Jose Valles, Head of BlueVia, in a statement. “Telenor is leading the industry embracing this vision. We are glad to work with them, initially in mobile payments, but also exploring other innovative APIs.”

Why direct carrier billing first? Because carriers believe that this is one of their strongest weapons against the growing power of companies like Apple. Direct carrier billing means that users who, say, buy an app or make an in-app purchase put the charge for the service directly on to their phone bills, rather than route it through other platforms like iTunes.

That not only gives operators a potential cut of revenues, and a basis for further relationships with consumers (such as around data usage and using that data for other business ventures), but it also potentially spells better business. Research from carrier billing specialist Bango, which works with Facebook, Amazon and RIM for carrier billing services, has found that conversion rates on apps with direct carrier billing incorporated into them are around 77 percent compared to 40 percent that use other billing mechanisms.

But with all the fragmentation in the mobile world across carriers, apps, app stores and devices partnerships like the ones Telefonica is trying to build are important to get the right economy of scale into these services to make them worthwhile for developers to use.

So far Telefonica has provided little in the way of global stats about how well its BlueVia platform is being used, although it does note that in Germany it has already rolled out its direct-to-bill payments service, linking up all of the Facebook/Google/Microsoft/RIM partnerships, and there are now 400,000 people per month using those services.

Technologies used by BlueVia include RESTful APIs and OAuth.

Great design and developer talent is, as so many know, hard to come by. So online social club Grouper is launching what it calls a “Hackation” in which it plans to offer select developers a free, week-long trip to New York City. On this week-long trip, thanks to partnerships with Airbnb and Hipmunk, developers and designers will get the opportunity to visit NYC (which means free airfare from anywhere in the continental U.S.), free accommodations for six nights (from Airbnb), they get to work out of the Grouper offices and either hack on a Grouper project or one of their own. Oh, and they get to go on a free Grouper, too.

When I asked Grouper co-founder Michael Waxman why the startup was doing this, he said that there’s no reason why great hackers wouldn’t enjoy a week-long vacation in NYC, with the chance to take a break from the norm. For Grouper, they’re busy hacking away and building their own business, and Waxman said that for the team, it’s a great way to feed off the energy of great designers and developers and experiment with new ideas. As far as he knows, no one has done this before, but he thinks it can be a win-win for both.

This isn’t necessarily a covert ploy to hire new developers, he said, or steal ideas from indie developers, but rather collaborate on product development, and if they hit it off with the Hackation, they would be willing to talk more seriously about bringing them on board. Really, it just seems like a great way to Hoover up some new ideas and feedback without having to pay $150K/year for top talent.

Plus, Waxman says, the startup is “at an inflection point” and they just “need some extra hands on deck.” There’s nothing like a Hackationer (Zinc Oxide sunscreen on nose, “I love NYC” t-shirt on back”) to help your team iterate on those new matching algorithms. And to that point, what will you get to hack on?

From Grouper:

We’re tackling the hard and largely uncharted terrain of the online-offline divide: logistics optimizations, matching algorithms, a real-time CRM we built from scratch, never-before-attempted feats on mobile, and much more. Scaling a website to a billion impressions a month is boring at this point (we’ve been there), but solving these problems is not.

After launching a year ago, the Y Combinator grad is growing fast. Last month, Grouper expanded its unique spin on group, blind dating into 10 new cities. As you can tell by the “social club” moniker, it prefers not to be thought of as a dating site at all, but rather as a better way to get off your lazy ass and meet new people. Instead, Grouper uses Facebook and its own matching algorithms to pair groups of three friends at popular local joints where they can meet for drinks, dinner and riveting conversation. You pay in advance and Grouper takes care of the logistics. It’s a smart play, especially considering how many of us find ourselves spending too much time in virtual settings and working after hours.

Kickstarter today announced it will allow projects to be based in the U.K. on its crowdfunding site beginning October 31. This marks the first time Kickstarter projects will be able to be built around bank accounts located outside of the U.S., and in tandem with that announcement, the site also introduced streamlined international shipping options that make it easier and clearer for project creators to either collect additional funds for shipping out-of-country, or limit their projects to domestic backers only.

This is a move that should help Kickstarter grow its international user base (it actually already hosts projects based outside of the U.S.; funds just come through U.S.-based bank accounts for the projects in question), which in turn could help it make up revenue that may be lost in other areas of the site’s business. Recently, for example, Kickstarter introduced new, more strict rules around hardware projects. Now users have to have a physical prototype, and post an explanation of the possible stumbling blocks involved in bringing the product to market.

Gadgets represent a significant portion of Kickstarter’s overall revenue picture. Design, the category where most of the hardware products on the site resides, accounts for $55.51 million of Kickstarter’s total successful funding dollars as of this writing. That’s a big piece of the pie, and one that’s probably going to contract a bit, or at least grow at a slower rate compared to other categories now that anyone with a CAD render can’t just say they’re creating the next great iPhone dock.

A new international market could make up for any losses Kickstarter might encounter from being more cautious about, or even moving out of the gadget space. The U.K. is a first step, but expect other markets to come online in the near future, too, as Kickstarter looks to scale its crowdfunding model and stay ahead of competitors, while shifting focus away from accessories and doodads.

Swarm, a startup that helps retailers connect with in-store shoppers through their smartphones, has raised $1 million in seed funding from an … eclectic list of investors (more on that in a second).

Co-founder and CEO Rudd Davis says brick-and-mortar retailers don’t have a clear idea about who’s in their store, and they don’t have an efficient way to engage with each customer personally — giving them another disadvantage against e-commerce sites like Amazon. So Swarm provides those retailers with data about their customers and what they’re actually doing, so the store can then reach out with personalized deals and rewards.

To make this happen, Swarm offers free WiFi inside its partner locations, which is usually advertised through in-store signage. If a customer jumps onto the WiFi, their browser opens up in a special mobile website, allowing them to browse different products in the store, find coupons and deals, and also earn loyalty points for multiple visits.

The shoppers aren’t limited to the store’s site, but even when they go elsewhere, the retailer gets data about their activity, namely what websites they’re visiting and where they are in the store, and can tailor their messages accordingly. For example, if someone is comparing the store price to Amazon, the retailer can offer them a coupon for a better deal.

The WiFi- and browser-based approach means that there’s a relatively low barrier for customers, as opposed to convincing them to download an app. In fact, Davis says that in early tests, 30 percent of in-store traffic opts to connect to Swarm, and 65 percent of those people reconnect later on.

Davis, who was formerly a digital executive at USA Today (along with his co-founder Ryan Denehy), also says that the service has been rolling out slowly in order to work out the kinks, but he plans to be in 1,000 stores by the end of the year.

As for the seed round, investors include Brian Lee (who founded or co-founded LegalZoom, ShoeDazzle, and The Honest Company), Nasir Jones (he’s better known as the rapper Nas, but he co-founded 12Society and recently wrote a TechCrunch column about e-commerce), VICE co-founder Gavin McGinnes, sneaker retailer FlightClub, and ad agency executives Saxon and Sebastian Eldridge.

Swarm has actually been raising the seed round over the past year, Davis says, and only closed the round now because it’s preparing to raise a larger Series A.