Category: Tech news

Ankur Shah was a co-founder of the Techlightenment company which was acquired by Experian, the credit reporting service. But he’s now onto new and interesting things. That project now launches as Opinsy, a new platform which, broadly speaking, enables people to build communities and followings around their opinions, beliefs and ideas. Opinsy breaks cover as an invite only beta today. The launch is ironically timed and ‘on trend’ – we saw the launch of Menshn only last week, and Amen is the hot mobile app around strong opinions right now.

Now, clearly it’s going to be hard to bring something new to this kind of party when Facebook and Twitter dominate public conversations so much.

But we’ve been given a sneak preview and the site is very visual and pretty social. The idea is to visualise the people that agree or those who disagree, creating a central place for those opinions, with active discussions and to share those on social networks. Opinsy is heavily integrated into both Facebook and Twitter.

Shah tells me that “We felt that places like Facebook pages and Likes weren’t, for example, the appropriate forum for global events like the Arab Spring, which needed a more focused place to express all the micro-views that took place during that immense time of change. … We’d prefer to be the YouTube of Opinions rather than a niche site of specific views. We’re about all opinions.”

Sites like Pinterest and Fancy have done this for imagery and products, Opinsy will do this for opinions and beliefs says Shah.

He says he plans to create the ‘opinion graph’ not the social graph.

Partnerships with media companies and an iPad app are also in the cards.

The team consists of about 5 people, is based out of London and is part of an ideas factory Shah is setting up called Wushi Labs.

In its effort to position itself as the UK’s “Etsy for foodies”, LoveYourLarder has launched a revenue share scheme allowing publishers to earn money by linking to relevant products, thus supporting the smaller independent food producers that the company works with.

Soft-launched in late 2010, LoveYourLarder can perhaps be best thought of as an online version of a farmer’s market, enabling foodies to discover and buy hard-to-find ingredients or “artisan” food and drink from independent producers in the UK.

Hence the reference to Etsy.

Since I last checked in with the company, the marketplace has grown from 70 producers to over 150 and now lists over 1,500 products, up from 500. In addition, the UK startup launched a subscription service in January called LarderBox — five site-picked items for a set monthly fee — of which it’s sold over 1,000 boxes.

Commenting on the new affiliate scheme, which is specifically aimed at food bloggers and recipe sites, founder Tristan Watson says that he’s “excited about how this can help content producers earn money without having to display AdSense”, which he notes, despite Google’s best efforts, can be poorly targeted, while CPC and CPM rates are dropping.

“We give each producer a 5% affiliate commission on referrals that lead to sales – so with an average order value of £25 they’ll earn around £1.25 – much better than they’ll get from AdSense”, he says.

Which may well be true, but depends on whether or not the click actually leads to a purchase. But if the links are in support of a recipe, for example, then the synergy is a good one and readers will be “highly motivated to make a purchase”, says Watson.

Zooming out a bit, Watson says that the food industry “has been late to adopt new technology” but sees the success of services like Housebites as well as the recent acquisition of Foodzie as evidence that there is a lot of potential to change the way consumers purchase food and, presumably, their eating habits.

LoveYourLarder’s subscription service is a curious example – I recently took delivery of my first ‘LarderBox’ and while I’m enjoying the cake, honey, artisan chocolate and other gastronomic pleasures, I’m not sure I can be persuaded to commit to a serendipitous purchase of this nature every single month. The broader marketplace in which LoveYourLarder acts purely as a middle person, enabling consumers to connect directly with and buy from producers, may be a better model. But then there’s still a need for discovery, which I think is the key to growing the artisan food industry online.

In terms of funding, LoveYourLarder is a graduate of the Difference Engine accelerator program, and has received a £150,000 investment from Northstar Ventures. The company says it’s in the process of raising their next funding round.

LoveYourLarder’s competitors include Virtual Farmers Market, Big Barn, BuyGB and Food Ado.

The curved aluminum back of Sony’s Xperia Ion handset. Photo by Peter McCollough/Wired

Sony has finally struck out on its own. The Sony Ericsson partnership is over — Sony bought out Ericsson’s slice of the phone-making venture earlier this year — and the first Sony-branded phone is the Xperia Ion, a new Android handset exclusive to AT&T’s 4G LTE network.

It goes on sale Sunday priced at $100 with a 2-year contract, much less than flagship devices like the iPhone 4S, the HTC One X and the Samsung Galaxy S III.

The Ion is physically modest, and it runs the outdated Gingerbread version of Android. But it has a nice 12-megapixel camera, a quality screen, and an HDMI-out feature that makes it a fine device for enjoying streaming media when you hook it up to your TV. For only $100, it’s not a bad buy, but it feels behind the times when compared to the latest crop of smartphones.

Just looking at the Xperia Ion tells you it’s no thoroughbred. The 0.46-inch thick body feels rather bloated compared to the sleek top-tier phones. With its chunky, flat edges and curved aluminum back, it looks more like a TV remote than a modern smartphone. Unfortunately, the rounded rear results in an unwelcome wobble when you lay the phone down, and it makes typing while the phone is laying on a table near-impossible. The glass touchscreen on the front is accented with four chrome buttons, which are needed to operate the Ion’s outdated Android Gingerbread OS. There is also a Sony and an AT&T logo, in chrome, on the front face.

At 4.9-ounces, the Ion isn’t heavy, and the aluminum back plate makes the phone feel tougher and sturdier than an all-plastic supermodel like the Galaxy S III. Underneath a plastic door on the phone’s left side is a mini-USB port for charging and a mini-HDMI port for connecting to a TV (more on that later). On the right side is a power button, volume rocker and a dedicated camera button.

A click of the camera button, even when the phone is locked, brightens up the Ion’s 4.6-inch, 1280×720 “HD Reality Display.” Ah, now we’re getting to the good stuff — hidden beneath the Ion’s outdated skin is some competitive hardware.

The camera is a 12-megapixel shooter that snaps impressively detailed photos with the ability to capture a wonderful level of depth of field that rivals the iPhone and HTC’s One X and One S. This camera will make plenty of Instagram addicts happy. It isn’t perfect by any means — the colors on the photos are noticeably brighter than what’s seen in real life — but it’s better than most smartphone cameras. The rear camera can shoot up to 1080p video, while the front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera can shoot up to 720p video.

The large, bright display is also better than what’s found on most $100 phones, with a pixel density of 342 pixels-per-inch. The screen amps up colors more than I’d like, but the crispness and detail are fantastic. While the display doesn’t look better, in my opinion, that those found on the iPhone 4S (which has a 326 pixels-per-inch screen and a 960×640 resolution) or the One X (which sports 316 pixels-per-inch and a 1280×720 resolution), it’s damn close to as pretty to look at.

A nifty feature that Sony included in the Ion is the ability to connect to an HDTV via a built-in mini-HDMI port. We’ve seen these ports on phones before, but while most phones with HDMI capabilities simply mirror what’s on the screen, Sony does one better. Plug in the Ion and it launches an attractive horizontal side-scrolling interface along the bottom. Swiping from side to side scrolls through a pared-down selection of apps for watching video, listening to music and reading books.

Connect the phone to an HDTV and get an alternate interface for browsing media. Photo by Peter McCollough/Wired

You can make any app on your phone appear in this view by pinning it. Once you tap on an app, you get a that actual app — no more special views, but the trick is a slick one, and it’s convenient for launching and browsing streaming videos.

The Ion is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, which is plenty of power for the games, apps, web surfing I tried. Even the camera snaps photos quickly, going from asleep and locked to a shutter click in about four seconds. With the phone awake and the camera app open, a photo can be shot in about one second.

This is also Sony’s first 4G LTE phone and AT&T’s 4G LTE service is fast if you can connect to it — it’s only available in a small number of cities right now.

It’s a shame Sony is launching the Ion with Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread on-board, because the decision keeps the phone from living up to its potential. For example, I can’t download Google’s Chrome browser, as it requires Ice Cream Sandwich. And Gingerbread’s navigation and messy user interface are subpar in comparison to ICS. Sony says an update to Android 4.0 is coming soon, but the company isn’t yet saying how soon — never a good sign.

The fact is, releasing a phone running Gingerbread at this point is unacceptable. Ice Cream Sandwich made its debut last November and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean could show up as early as this week. Granted, Sony has dressed up Gingerbread with a few alterations that make it look and behave closer to what a consumer can expect from ICS, and it runs fast despite what is certainly a heavy skin over the top operating system.

But no matter how much frosting you spread on it, Gingerbread is still Gingerbread. Sony (and every other company selling Android devices), it’s time to move on. Let Gingerbread die. Come join the Ice Cream Sandwich party. It’s so much nicer here.

Alas, the Ion ends up a mix bag: a phone with impressive internal specs, a top-notch camera and a beautiful screen, all wrapped in an outdated design and powered by an outdated OS. It isn’t a strong debut from the Japanese electronics giant, but it’s halfway there, and that’s at least encouraging. I’m optimistic about Sony’s next attempt.

WIRED Sony delivers a flagship-worthy CPU, display and camera at a mid-range $100 price point. Quality materials make the phone feel durable. Nice touchscreen display. Hooking it up to an HDTV launches a minimalist, big-screen-friendly interface.

TIRED Has all the personality of a Ford Taurus. Outdated, clunky design. It runs last year’s operating system (Gingerbread? Really?), making the whole experience feel behind the times.

There’s always someone who would rather watch an elephant dance than see Savion Glover on the stage.

Ford has clearly aimed the 2013 Taurus SHO at the elephant watchers. I’m not really sure who that target demographic encompasses, but based on my observations of SHOs on the road, its apparently limited to middle-aged men without sideburns. They’re the people who want a lumbering beast of a full-size sedan that’s been whipped into a relatively nimble corner-carver — a contradiction in turns, if you’ll allow the pun.

After a week driving a fully loaded SHO (pronounced how Carol Channing would describe what one does with a needle and thread), I was thoroughly impressed that such a car had been built, and completely unconvinced that anyone should actually purchase it.

First, though, the basics: The fourth-generation SHO debuted only in 2010, so the majority of the 2013 model updates are cosmetic. Most prominently, there’s a black, trapezoidal grill that echoes the 2013 Fusion‘s snout. The new, optional 20-inch blackout wheels look positively badass until you realize they’re essentially stylized hibiscus flowers. The sheetmetal is unchanged, and still as beveled and chamfered as an Art Deco chifforobe. Its slab sides have so many creases that I panicked every time I saw the rear quarter panel, assuming the car had been grazed in a parking lot. The Taurus’ nonexistent sightlines and uselessly overzealous parking assist alarms mean you’ll probably add some bevels of your own if you try to fit it in a tight space.

Step inside and you’ll find appointments similar to that of a fully loaded Edge. Leather, soft-touch plastics, plus some SHO-exclusive aluminum accents — you know the drill. The only thing that’s missing are buttons. From the completely flat Sony stereo to the sluggish MyFord Touch screen, everything is controlled by the graze of a fingertip. Unless you want to rely on voice commands or take your eyes off the road, be prepared to use dead reckoning to find climate and audio controls. The rear seats are spacious, but the back door openings are so small that it’s impossible to make a dignified exit.

You don’t buy a Taurus SHO for luxury or looks, though. On the contrary: It’s a sleeper, a family sedan with a bachelor’s brain. That’s where the 2013 model disappoints, not living up to the legend established by its Yamaha V8-powered forebears or even the full-size Panther platform Fords of yore. Yes, the SHO is impressive, but only as a technical achievement.

First off, Ford’s engineers somehow made the car both massive and quick. This Taurus is four inches taller than the 2011 Crown Victoria, and its wheelbase is only two inches shorter than that late, lamented barge. A two-ton SHO with an adult passenger tips the scales over a Grand Marquis. Yet thanks to its 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 and six-speed SelectShift automatic, just hit the gas and the car seemingly sheds weight faster than a housecat on a vegan diet. It’s a marvelously smooth and powerful engine, and the sound of those twin Garrett turbochargers spooling up is as beautiful as the growl of any V8.

Then, there’s the full complement of handling technology. From Curve Control, which gently applies the brakes when drivers understeer, to an enhanced stability control setup that brakes inner wheels on turns, it’s got more minders than a North Korean tour group. Even the old SHO’s miserable brakes have been addressed — though stopping still requires a heavy foot. The SHO-exclusive sport suspension does a good job keeping the giant car stable, but it can’t defy physics. On highway offramps, it feels more like a sporty crossover than a sedan.

It’s almost as competent as a car weighing hundreds of pounds less, but that doesn’t necessarily make the big SHO any more fun. For comparison’s sake, I drove one of the last 2011 Crown Vics that rolled out of St. Thomas, Ontario, a car so primitive that it very well could have been been built during the Reagan administration — and by the Soviets, no less. It wallowed, it shook, it lurched and it couldn’t get out of its own way. But it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had behind the wheel. Throw that column shifter into gear and suddenly you’re Mannix, sliding the tail out on turns, adrenaline matching the roar of the V8.

Compare that to the SHO. The big, powerful Taurus is several times faster than the Crown Vic, with quicker shifts and vastly improved handling. It’s quiet and composed, evolved beyond the reptilian behavior of the former full-size Fords. It’s also no fun: too composed for hooning, but still too large to be agile.

If my subjective argument doesn’t convince you, maybe a couple of numbers can. First, there’s the whopping $44,945 MSRP. There are a lot of stellar sedans in that price range that are more enjoyable and refined. (If you must go with one that’s also all-wheel drive equipped, the Volvo S60 T6 and Infiniti G37x come to mind.) The second important number is the 18.1 mpg average I got after 400 miles of combined city and highway driving, which made the “EcoBoost” label on the rear decklid look like an infuriating bit of greenwashing.

The Ford Taurus SHO is definitely improved for 2013. It’s a big car that moves like a slightly smaller one, and it does so thanks to a really impressive powerplant. But it’s a working vacation, a well-trained dog that won’t play fetch. It’s a feat of engineering that comes at the expense of driver enjoyment.

WIRED 3.5-liter EcoBoost is a turbocharged dream. Curve Control takes over when drivers get in over their heads.

TIRED Just too darn big. Lousy fuel economy. Handles like a crossover, not a sedan. Interior devoid of physical buttons. Almost $45K for a Taurus.

The Corkcicle. Photo courtesy of Hewy Wine Chillers

On a recent sweltering day, a friend and I were enjoying a refreshingly cool and pungent Pinot Grigio. We had chilled the bottle back at home, but the wine was rapidly getting warmer out here in the countryside, even though we were sitting comfortably in the shade of an enormous oak tree.

We weren’t about to plop some ice cubes into our glasses — what we needed was a way to keep the wine cold without watering it down. Yes, it’s a first-world problem, but now that summer has officially arrived, it’s one that’s certain to grow into a first-world epidemic.

Fortunately, numerous inventions aim to avert such a catastrophe. Here are three of them.

Corkcicle

The Corkcicle ($25) is the epitome of truth in marketing. It’s a cork attached to the top of a plastic, gel-filled icicle. To prepare it for use, you just stick it in a freezer for about two to three hours. The tapered cork fits snugly into just about any 750ml wine bottle, and there’s a plastic knob on top to make it easier to insert and remove. The Corkcicle kept our bottle of Pinot Grigio at the perfect temperature for more than 45 minutes. Of course, its use is not limited to white wines — when we moved to a light red wine (Pinot Noir, if you must know), the Corkcicle kept it at a pleasingly palatable temperature instead of matching the outdoor temperature of 83°F. There’s no imparted smell or taste of plastic. That’s great, because wine is a petulant beverage — too warm, and its flavor hides behind the alcohol; too cold, and the true flavors are masked. The device will work with any wine, and while it will not fit completely in quart-size soda, beer, or juice bottles, it inserts far enough to keep them cool. Of course, once the Corkcicle loses its chill, refreezing it takes another two hours. So, like camera batteries, it’s probably best to have a backup, or else that next glass of Pinot Grigio will taste like more like warm pee and less like frutto della vite.

WIRED Cleverly designed, freezing gel-filled “icicle” fits in a wine bottle. Keeps wine at the right drinking temperature for about 45 minutes even on a hot summer day. Looks like real ice — sure to spark a conversation.

TIRED 45 minutes might not be a long enough — you have to either get a spare, or wait two hours for it to refreeze.

Chillball

While it sounds like the title of a James Bond adventure set at a yoga retreat, Chillballs‘ mission is more prosaic. This Aussie invention ($20 for six) keeps your drinks cold without watering them down as regular ice cubes would. Dubbed “intelligent ice,” Chillballs (like sibling product Chillrocks) are translucent plastic balls with a nontoxic freezing gel inside. They include removable fishhook-like handles of varying lengths which rest on the rim of the glass and allow for mess-free insertion and removal from your stemware. Packaged in a six-pack egg crate plastic box, Chillballs take a minimum of four hours to freeze, but we found they take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to thaw once inserted into a glass of wine. That time depends on the air temperature, the wine volume, and the temperature of the wine when the Chillballs are first submerged. We experienced no plastic taste or smell, allaying our assumptions that we would. The Chillball gotcha is that it was engineered specifically to maintain the optimal temperature of pre-chilled wine (or other beverage, for that matter). So it will help cool warm wine somewhat, but naturally, not as well. Once used, your balls need to be washed, preferably by hand, and dried with a synthetic cloth to prevent scratching. However, returning them to their molded, form-fitted, egg crate resting place is a Tetris-like challenge.

WIRED Scentless and taste-free. Keeps wine cool for up to an hour per glass. Six balls is enough for a slow slog through a couple of bottles on a hot day.

TIRED Long freezing process. You have to clean them carefully. Storage system is needlessly intricate.

Metrokane Rabbit Wine Chilling Carafe

The foot-tall Rabbit Wine Chilling Carafe ($50) holds an entire 750ml bottle of wine and keeps it chilled longer than any of the other chiller solutions we tried. It also proved to be the most versatile and convenient beverage chiller, since the crystal glass carafe can be used for virtually any liquid — from ice tea to martinis. Integral to the Rabbit’s masterful cooling process is its bullet-shaped, stainless steel ice chamber, which hangs from the carafe’s top and extends in the middle down to near the base. We stuck eight large ice cubes into the chamber, sealed it with its tight-fitting rubber gasket and then secured it to the glass with its external black rubber sleeve. Because the ice chamber is metal, rather than glass, the ice cubes last longer and maximize the chilling speed. Like other wine-chiller gadgets, the Rabbit works best with pre-chilled wine straight out of the fridge. But unlike the others, it also chills un-refrigerated wine to drinking temperature effectively — albeit more slowly. Metrokane boasts that the carafe keeps pre-chilled wine cool for 90 minutes or more while waiting to be served. And sure enough, our Pinot Grigio was chilled just right for 100 minutes. Because it uses ice, reloads are quick and easy, unlike chillers that need to be refrozen for renewed use. Clean-up was a simple soap and water rinse, although the Rabbit is dishwasher safe, too. I can’t wait to do the martini test next.

WIRED Elegantly designed crystal carafe uses an inner stainless steel ice chamber. Chills wine effectively for up to 100 minutes. Easy to reload with ice for continuous use.

TIRED Sealing gasket clamps tight to eliminate leakage, but takes some effort to remove. Initial insertion of ice chamber takes some fiddling.

Chillballs. Photo courtesy of Makemyday Products

Rabbit Wine Chilling Carafe. Photo courtesy of Metrokane.

Facebook is finally working closely with Apple — on iOS 6 — but it’s also hiring away some of its design talent. The latest is Chris Weeldreyer, who has just left his position as a user interface design manager to become a product design manager at the social network.

What will Weeldreyer be working on? We don’t know for sure, and we’re asking Facebook to see if the company can explain in more detail, but one interesting clue is the description in his LinkedIn bio. It says that he’s a “[p]roduct designer with experience in both hardware and software product development.” That’s more than eight years of experience… right when Facebook is recruiting hard for a renewed smartphone hardware effort. Here’s some more detail about that, from Nick Bilton at The New York Times in late May:

One engineer who formerly worked at Apple and worked on the iPhone said he had met with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, who then peppered him with questions about the inner workings of smartphones. It did not sound like idle intellectual curiosity, the engineer said; Mr. Zuckerberg asked about intricate details, including the types of chips used, he said. Another former Apple hardware engineer was recruited by a Facebook executive and was told about the company’s hardware explorations.

….

Facebook is going to great lengths to keep the phone project a secret, specifically not posting job listings on the company’s job Web site, but instead going door-to-door to find the right talent for the project. 

There was no open position that Weeldreyer is filling, as Inside Facebook noted when it first spotted the hire yesterday.

Whether or not Weeldreyer is part of some smartphone skunkworks project, he’s also not the first Apple design-side person to go over to Facebook recently. There are only 89 former Apple folks at Facebook, according to available LinkedIn data, but another one of them is Sharon Hwang, who went from being a senior art director to a product designer in March.

The overall sense is that Facebook is trying hard to polish the rough edges of its products, and continues to be attractive enough as a workplace that it can get world-class talent.

Because investors sure are. Facebook’s share price  jumped up 3.8% to $33.05 today on news that it’s now showing its ads on Zynga.com in a revenue sharing partnership. Most amazingly, neither the press nor users seem to be freaking out that their private, personal data is now being used to target them with ads outside of Facebook.

That means Mark Zuckerberg waited just long enough, proving he’s even smarter than he used to be.

Once upon time, Facebook rolled out massive changes to all its users at once, and sometimes it pushed them too early. The news feed would eventually become one of Facebook’s most popular features, but dropping it onto everyone’s home page at once without warning caused uneasiness to snowball and produce “Students Against Facebook News Feed”.

And Beacon, often called Facebook’s biggest privacy blunder, is essentially back in the form of Open Graph auto-sharing and it’s helping apps like Socialcam pop up to 83 million monthly users. Oh what a difference a few years makes.

Pundits have said for years that Facebook should launch an AdSense-Killer offsite ad network, but it wisely delayed until now. Beyond the meddling of extremists like Europe vs. Facebook, a major privacy scare hasn’t rattled the average Facebook user in quite a long time. The company even emerged from privacy audits by US and European government agencies without having to make changes.

With time, many users have come to realize that personal data-targeted ads are actually less annoying because they promote things they might actually want to buy.  People are ready to realize that a lack of targeting data is the primary reason ads on the Internet are so annoying. Facebook’s ad network could make them relevant. It’s  the right time for off-site ads.

And Facebook didn’t suddenly roll out those ads to thousands of sites. It signaled with the Developer Agreement in its S-1 to IPO that it would show ads on Zynga.com, and it made a change to its privacy policy to give it the freedom to show more types of ads off-site.

Most importantly, it rolled them out first to Zynga and Zynga alone, a company hundreds of millions of Facebook users have already given their personal data while playing games like FarmVille, CityVille, and its acquired Draw Something. This is the right way to roll out off-site ads.

With this careful strategy, Facebook has prepared the world for seeing those little blue-boxed ads all over the Internet. It still might wait months or more to officially launch an ad network. You can bet when it does that first it will be with “trusted sites” — ones that are popular and uncontroversial, before opening it any wider.

Now that it’s a public company, Facebook can’t afford to ship something that causes massive backlash. That doesn’t mean it won’t keep innovating and iterating. It will just do it incrementally. Facebook want you to be more “open”. Open with friends and open to ads. But it’s done swinging the battle axe in the name of the future, waging a war on our ingrained behaviors. Facebook’s new strategy is social by a thousand cuts.

It’s been years since I’ve had to look for an apartment, but in that time multiple friends have sung the praises of PadMapper (TechCrunch alumnus Greg Kumparak is a fan too). Usually, they describe it as a mashup of Google Maps and Craigslist. Starting today, unfortunately, they’ll have to scratch “Craigslist” from the equation.

According to an account that creator Eric DeMenthon published on the PadMapper blog, and that he elaborated on over email, Craigslist’s lawyer sent him a cease-and-desist letter earlier this week, demanding that PadMapper take down any postings from Craigslist. The lawyer also sent DeMenthon a mobile license, so he could pay to use the postings in a mobile app.

“When I told him that the website was the most important part of PadMapper, and that many millions of people depend on PadMapper to find places, the lawyer said flatly that they don’t license to websites,” DeMenthon says.

As a result, DeMenthon is in the process of removing Craigslist postings from the PadMapper site. That’s seems like a pretty big blow, although PadMapper still includes listings from other sites like Apartments.com, as well as listings posted directly through its PadListings service.

I’ve contacted Craigslist for comment and will update this post if I hear back. In the meantime, DeMenthon also sent me a copy of the cease-and-desist, which seems to match-up his account. The letter says that DeMenthon is in violation of Craigslist’s terms of use, and it demands that he confirm in writing that he has “ceased and will forever desist from all access to and use of craigslist for any reason or purpose whatsoever, directly and through any other person or entity.” (I’ve embedded the full letter below.)

Obviously, I’m not a lawyer, but I’m sympathetic to DeMenthon’s position — which, actually, is more of an appeal to common sense than a legal argument. PadMapper, he says, “just acts as a search engine and sends all traffic back to the sites it searches.” In other words, it’s helping Craigslist by sending traffic to its listings, not hurting it or competing with it. DeMenthon says he’s hoping that if PadMapper fans reach out to Craigslist to try to explain that perspective, he might convince the company to change its mind.

Tesla Motors, the electric car company headed up by PalPal founder and all-around tech industry badass Elon Musk, today began shipments of the Model S, the electricity-powered sedan it first unveiled back in 2009. Above we’ve embedded a livestream of the event, being held right now in Fremont, California.

“There are a lot of people who said this day would never come,” Tesla executive George Blankenship said while kicking off the press event in Fremont this afternoon. “But at Tesla we don’t even think about them… we think about the people who made sure that we are here today.” According to Blankenship, chief among those people are the 2300 owners worldwide of the Tesla Roadster, the first electric car the company debuted a couple years back. “Everything they taught us is in the Model S.”

When Elon Musk took the stage at the event, he said that the Model S is mean to “break a spell” in the car industry. “The world has been under this illusion that an electric car can’t be as good as a gasoline car… the Model S is about breaking that illusion,” Musk said. “It’s about showing that an electric car can really be the best car in the world.”

According to Tesla, the response to the Model S, which has pricing beginning at $49,900, has been solid: The company has more than than 10,000 reservations placed for the car (it costs $5,000 to make a reservation for the standard Model S, and $40,000 to reserve a Model S Signature), and it plans to produce and deliver 20,000 vehicles per year beginning in 2013.

The specs on the vehicle are pretty impressive — zero to 60 in less than six seconds with instant torque (that’s a big perk of electric vehicles), an electric vehicle range of 265 miles (purportedly a new record for the industry), all designed and built in California. Its dashboard has a 17-inch touchscreen connected to 3G, which Tesla says puts “streaming radio, web browsing and navigation at the driver’s fingertips.” Not too shabby. It’s also a much more practical car than Tesla’s slick Roadster two-seater, as the Model S seats five adults and two children.

TechCrunch had its first hands-on look at the Model S this past fall — you can check out the full run-down of that right here.

We’ll be updating this story as the event in Fremont continues.

Here’s another chance for one lucky reader to win tickets to this year’s Disrupt in San Francisco! Congratulations to last week’s winner, Stephen Hsu. Last week, we asked everyone to let us know who they would like to see at Disrupt SF. The comments were tallied and Mark Zuckerberg was the chosen one. Our people have reached out to his people. We’ll let you know.

Disrupt SF is going to be a blast. Last year we had speakers that included: Reid Hoffman, Tom Conrad, Max Levchin, Dustin Moskovitz, Mayor Ed Lee, Ashton Kutcher, Peter Thiel and many more.

Want to come this year? All you have to do is follow the steps below!

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

– Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag)
– Or leave us a comment telling us again who you would like to see attend this year. Note: Mark Zuckerberg was already chosen.

The contest starts now and ends June 24th at 7:30pm PT. Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will make sure you follow the steps above and choose our winner once the giveaway is over. Anyone in the world is eligible. Please note this giveaway is for one ticket only and does not include airfare or hotel.

The best deal for Disrupt tickets are still on sale now, so grab them while you can. You can purchase tickets here.

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Gillmor Gang Live – Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, Keith Teare, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. Recording has concluded.

As a father it’s amazingly hard to play video games. First, I’m not good at them anymore – try practicing sniping n00bs when you’re trying to feed a 3-year-old something other than Goldfish crackers – and second I can’t play them in their full aural glory because they sound like WWII carefully mixed with a terrible accident at a jackhammer factory. In short, they’re too hard and too loud.

Obviously I can fix the “too hard” part by only playing Yoshi’s Story. But what about the “too loud” part? I’m glad to say the Turtle Beach XP500s have taken care of things.

These headphones are completely wireless and connect to a Bluetooth base station. You can route the audio into the box via an optical cable or RCA jacks and the headphones – large cans that fit the ears comfortably – are connected to the base with Bluetooth.

I’ve never really liked wireless headphones. Many required line-of-sight connections thanks to wonky IR sensors and the audio quality was sub par. This new model – based on Turtle Beach’s PX5 headphones – is much more impressive. First, it works with both Xbox and PS3 and an included 360 dongle allows for a direct wireless connection to the controller’s audio port.

The headphones also add a few interesting sound processing tricks to the mix. First, you can change the “sound field,” reducing the sound of explosions and bringing out small noises – footsteps, guns cocking – that could be missed while sneaking through a warehouse or a jungle.

The headphones also simulate full surround sound and offers in-game voice morphing so you can disguise yourself. After all, on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog – until you bark.

The XP500 is pretty cool, but I did run into a few problems. For example, in my setup the audio was very low, thus requiring me to turn most of the volumes up quite a bit. It was very specific to my receiver and I was eventually able to fix things by plugging directly into the TOSLink port, but it was a bit annoying at first.

Second, it’s a very complex pair of headphones and while there are loud voice prompts for nearly every action, it’s still a bit mystifying without the manual. All of its capabilities are hidden behind small, featureless buttons and it’s easy to press the wrong thing.

The price is a bit high, as well, especially for a gaming peripheral. At $270 you could probably just buy a pair of Sennheisers and a long headphone cord. However, the value added by the various DSP features as well as the microphone connectivity make things a little more acceptable.

Hiding your gaming from your children is hard work and anything that makes it easier is a boon to the young father. I, for one, welcome Turtle Beach’s innovations to the craft into my life and thank them for watching out for me. Now if I could only get past the weird baby creatures in Dead Space 2 without screaming obscenities, waking up my children and prompting them to ask what, exactly, a “c*nting f**kb**tard on warm toast” is.

Public airwaves may be one step closer to becoming an indecent wasteland of swearing, nudity, and violence—a victory for First Amendment-lovers everywhere. Yesterday, the Supreme Court unanimously threw out fines against Fox and ABC for airing brief expletives and nudity, arguing that the FCC’s rule against “fleeting” indecency was too vague. The narrow decision won’t change the content of broadcasting anytime in the near future, but it has given the FCC more latitude in what it considers indecent and renewed the conversation about whether indecency rules are relevant in a world of Netflix, Hulu, and 24-hour access to the pornographic universe.

In FCC v. Fox Television Stations and FCC v. ABC Inc, the Court decided in an 8-0 decision against a rule levying heavy fines for “fleeting” indecency between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

ABC, which briefly showed the buttocks of a saucy NYPD cast member, faced a steep $1.2 million fine (or $600,000 per buttock, for those readers who are still learning their fractions).

Fox was charged for failing to censor expletives uttered during the Billboard Music Awards. Cher, referring to her critics, exclaimed, “F— ’em. I still have a job and they don’t.” Just one year later, soon-to-be-forgotten Nicole Richie said, “Have you ever tried to get cow s— out of a Prada purse? It’s not so f– -ing simple.”

“The commission failed to give Fox or ABC fair notice prior to the broadcasts in question that fleeting expletives and momentary nudity could be found actionably indecent,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy. The decision fell short of deciding the constitutionality of fleeting indecency or the broader question of indecency at all.

However, the Court did leave the FCC free to revise its policy, under the direction of Chairman Julius Genachowski, who has not made the punishment of indecency violations a top priority for the agency. Not that the chairman would tip his hand, saying in a statement, “We are reviewing today’s decision, which appears to be narrowly limited to procedural issues related to actions taken a number of years ago. Consistent with vital First Amendment principles, the FCC will carry out Congress’s directive to protect young TV viewers.”

More importantly, the court did at least acknowledge the argument that indecency rules could be “overruled” because the once scarce public airwaves have been “overtaken by technological change and the wide availability of multiple other choices for listeners and viewers.”

While the language might seem inconsequential, the Court is a compulsively coy institution, and acknowledging an argument is enough for First Amendment and broadcast groups to start gearing up for a fight in the future.

Censorship over public airwaves draws its legitimacy partly from the fact that broadcast television is aired through publicly owned spectrum. However, now that services like Hulu and Netflix can show the exact same filthy material that broadcasters can show after kiddies go to bed, it’s nearly impossible to truly police material. The Electronic Frontier Foundation made the case to the court in a brief, ” Consumers now have unprecedented freedom of choice to avoid exposure to inappropriate content, and, thus, it is simply no longer true that ‘[p]atently offensive, indecent material presented over the airwaves confronts the citizen” like an “intruder’ in the home.”

For instance, consider this gem from Saturday Night Live‘s Andy Samberg’s “J*zz in my pants,” which finds its way to the Hulu homepage “popular” section on occasion. Hulu has graciously covered its legal butt with a warning at the beginning of the video “The following material originally aired at 12:40 am and might not be suitable for younger viewers,” but doesn’t require an age verification to stream.

Of course, the digital short would be hilarious were it not for its unequivocal powers to turn straight-laced honor students into heathens of the night. With material like this digital short and worse easily accessibly for common websites, the government may (gasp!) lose its powers to keep adult material from impressionable young minds.

While the Court’s decision this week didn’t give sensible speech advocates the victory they hoped for, it does set the stage.

Zappos left San Francisco way back in 2004, and since then it has become closely associated with its new home in Nevada — in fact, CEO Tony Hsieh is working to revitalize downtown Las Vegas, in part by turning it into a startup hub. At the same time, the Amazon-owned online retailer hasn’t entirely severed its connection to the Bay Area — in 2010, it reopened an office in SF, one that’s focused on experimenting with cool new ideas.

The role of the 11-person SF team is getting a little more official today, with its renaming from Zappos San Francisco to Zappos Labs. To be clear, that’s basically the role that the team was filling already, releasing products like a fashion magazine-style iPad app. And it was even called Zappos Labs unofficially.

Nonetheless, Will Young, who directs the local team, says the official change should make its mission of “disrupting online retail a lot more explicit.” He says that a lot of Zappos’ success is due to ideas that seemed innovative at the time, like free shipping, free returns, and great customer support through its call center. But e-commerce has been changed a lot since then, and the Zappos Labs team is trying to figure out the next wave of innovative ideas.

To coincide with the renaming, Zappos Labs is also launching its latest effort, What’s New. I don’t think you’ll too surprised to hear that What’s New is a page that highlights all the goods that have just been added to Zappos. There’s also a cool visualization showing the different categories of new products.

Zappos Labs products are also going to be highlighted more prominently on the Zappos site. Previously, everything the team launched was featured in a section called the Zappos Expo, but you had to know that the site existed in order to find it. Starting next week, Zappos will add a link to the Expo from its front page. Young says new, experimental features from other Zappos teams will also be included, as will innovative uses of the Zappos API.

He also wants to use the Expo page to feature research done by the Labs team. For example, Young says that they’ve been looking into the value of social sharing. It turns out that Zappos buyers are 13 times more likely to pin an order on Pinterest and 8 times more likely to share it on Facebook than they are to tweet it. However, it’s the tweets that are the most valuable, because they convert into more sales. Young’s team calculated that a pinned order is worth 75 cents, a Facebook shared order is worth $2.08, and a tweeted order is worth $33.66.

Google employee and creator of XML, Tim Bray, has proposed a new error message for the web. Rather than hiding censored websites behind a generic 403 error – “the server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it” – these websites would return 451 – “Unavailable For Legal Reasons.”

In his official proposal, released at the beginning of this month, Bray suggests that websites return detailed information about the particular censorship in play. For example:

He goes on to thank Ray Bradbury in the comments.

Moves like this are of vital importance to Internet freedom. When fools and potentates try to hide information, they should be held into account. That there is no “censored” bar already on the Internet is a testament to the network’s ability to self-heal and route around idiocy.

via Guardian