Category: Tech news

Salesforce just released Q2 financial results today, posting record revenue of $394 million, an increase of 25% on a year-over-year basis. Q2 GAAP diluted earnings per share decreased 35% year-over-year to $0.11, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was flat year-over-year at $0.29. Net Income came in at $14.7 million, down from $21.1 million in the same quarter in 2009.

The company added 5,100 paying customers during the quarter, 500 of which came through the acquisition of Jigsaw earlier this year. Salesforce says that it currently has 82,400 paying customers in total.

Let’s just pretend for a second that Facebook Places aka Facesquare is a charitable attempt on Facebook’s part to quell check-in fatigue by making nice with Foursquare, Gowalla, Booyah and Yelp (and not another attempt by Facebook to turn the world into this).

Because Booyah always throws people for a loop (“Who the hell uses MyTown?”) and Loopt’s 4 million users statistic always seems to shock people, we’ve posted this handy LBS comparison below. Water cooler tech forecasters should take note of Facesquare’s current lack of game mechanics.

As a wise TechCrunch commenter once said, “Just because you don’t use it, or have never heard of it, doesn’t negate its market share.”

Note: Data for all platforms except Facebook Places was last compiled in July 2010. Booyah has just released figures that sets their user base at 3.1 million.

For a hi-res image: Fidelman via Techpp.

Projector technology has really come a long way from the days of lugging 30 lbs projectors around. In recent years we have seen the advent of some really small units but nothing that was ever affordable, until now.

Claimed as “the world’s smallest LCOS pico projector” the P1 Jr comes with it’s own battery, external AV connectors so you can hook up a DVD player or iPhone and it has an SD card slot so that you can use it’s built in mp4 player to watch some video.

With it’s 10 lumen LED light source you are only going to be using this thing in a very dark room, but for $119 you really can’t ask for much.

[ AAXA Technologies P1 Jr Pico Projector ]

Affordable P1 Jr Pico Projector originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/08/19.

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During the recent QuakeCon festivities id released something that should make the modding community super happy; source code. People can now access the source to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Return to Castle Wolfenstein via id’s FTP.

The code is being release under the GNU license which allows for both free and commercial use as long as credit goes to id and no one tries to claim it as their own.

I wonder how quickly we will see some awesome game modded off the source.

RTCW Open Sourced originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/08/19.

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During the recent QuakeCon festivities id released something that should make the modding community super happy; source code. People can now access the source to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Return to Castle Wolfenstein via id’s FTP.

The code is being release under the GNU license which allows for both free and commercial use as long as credit goes to id and no one tries to claim it as their own.

I wonder how quickly we will see some awesome game modded off the source.

RTCW Open Sourced originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/08/19.

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This real life house looks like something straight out of the Flinstones. The house which is located in Portugal uses two gigantic stones for it’s main structure linked with a concrete mix.

I’m sure it has an awesome insulation value since this boulders are ridiculously thick, but on the flip side, home renovations on this unit would be a bitch.

Real Life Flinstones House originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/08/18.

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Remember the good old C64, the home PC that was all enclosed in a keyboard? Kinda like the first laptop sans screen. A crafty hacker has done just that. By using the guts of a MacBook Air, a thin Mac keyboard and Apple’s new trackpad he has created an all in one keyboard based Mac.

Not ‘quite’ there yet with the case. I have to add some small mounting points for the keyboard and trackpad to rest on and attach the left hand side of the case where the USB ports are. However everything is in its place, the motherboard is bolted down so it can’t move about and everything else is held in place in the most hack friendly method ever….black duct tape.

If you interested in the project you can visit the modder’s site here

All In One MacBook Air originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/08/18.

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As a father of a small child I know all to well who Thomas the Train is. My little guy has a really cool train table with 100′s of trains (I step on the stupid things all the time). Although I do enjoy the morals that the show teaches my child, I often wonder what ever happened to the awesome violent cartoons of my childhood. Show’s G.I., Joe, Thundercat’s and Voltron?

Well, now you can mix the two and enjoy play time with your kids.

This awesome Chinese knockoff brings the joy of Thomas and mashes it with the awesomeness of Voltron. I’m sure if you head on down to your local Chinatown you’ll be able to pick one up.

Transforming Thomas originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2010/08/18.

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Product: Evoke Flow

Manufacturer: Pure

Wired Rating: 7

One day a boom box made sweet, sweet love to a lunch pail and this designer-sleek internet radio with a fancy OLED display was born of that union.

And it’s one bouncing baby of an audio device. First off, it’s beautiful. The four touch-sensitive buttons that adorn its handsome face glow green like props from Tron Legacy; in fact it’s almost impossible to walk past without tweaking them.

It’s also a great entertainer. Pure gives you access to a collection of over 15,000 stations from all over the world, working together with their website. After connecting it to Wi-Fi, I quickly found myself head-bobbing to Punjabi folk music and trying to decipher community news in Thai.

Did we mention it’s also annoying? Those gorgeous buttons are horribly underutilized. There’s no pause/play button to turn off the music; you need to shut down the radio itself. Plus the learning curve is steep — navigating through the radio’s overcomplicated menus is like playing Pictionary in the dark.

But once you learn how to properly operate the Flow, you’ll have an impressive amount of audio options at your disposal, including seamless streamed songs from your laptop’s iTunes or by directly connecting your iPod. There’s also a robust list of preloaded soothing sounds that can appeal to just about everyone ranging from a human heartbeat (you’re welcome mommy’s boys) to the roar of a 1979 Ferrari (hello gearheads).

Honestly, the best alarm clock is the one you hate. (Personally I need one that is the audio equivalent of a punch to the face.) But the Flow is a bit too polite for my taste. It begins with a whisper of “psst, please wake up” and progressively gets louder, but never reaches banshee decibels on maximum volume. Hitting the snooze button is satisfying but it presents a small target — nailing a bull’s eye in darts after you’ve had a few dozen beers presents about the same level of difficulty.

If you want a stunning clock-radio with great sound that also doubles as a conversation piece, the Flow is actually a decent choice. Especially if you’ve already transformed your bedroom into the interior of an art-deco space capsule, this pricey box will look great next to your sleeping pod.

WIRED Sleek and sexy touch-sensitive buttons and OLED face. Gives you a huge library for your ears, including podcasts, relax-sounds, Wi-Fi and FM stations and access to your iTunes. Better sound quality than most bedside devices.

TIRED Wonky interface takes time to master. Only portable with the proprietary ChargePAK E1. Alarm clock a bit too mild for our tastes. Static noise is pronounced when the volume is at max and the radio is on.

It’s a deal a month for Zynga, which announced its fourth acquisition in as many months today. They’ve acquired Boston-based Conduit Labs.

Conduit Labs has raised $8.5 million in venture capital from Charles River Ventures and Prism VentureWorks. The size of the deal isn’t being disclosed, so we don’t know how well the investors did. Their recent acquisition of Challenge Games wasn’t much of a payday for investors, we heard. They also acquired XPD Media back in May, and Unoh earlier this month.

Press release below:

ZYNGA ACQUIRES CONDUIT LABS

SAN FRANCISCO – Aug. 17, 2010 – Zynga today announced it has acquired Boston-based social games company Conduit Labs. Effective immediately, the Conduit Labs office will become Zynga Boston, a new game studio focused on new product development. Today’s announcement expands Zynga’s studio operations adding to locations already in San Francisco, Austin, Baltimore, Bangalore, Beijing and Los Angeles. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Conduit Labs’ CEO, Nabeel Hyatt, will become head of the new Boston studio. The Conduit Labs team will be immediately integrated into Zynga’s workforce. Conduit Labs, founded in 2007 and funded by Charles River Ventures and Prism VentureWorks, has developed several free-to-play social games for the web.

“Boston is an epicenter for technology and has a strong talent market, making it an ideal location for us to expand operations,” said Mike Verdu, senior vice president of games at Zynga. “As one of the most prominent social game companies in Boston, the Conduit team shares a similar culture and drive with Zynga, and together we anticipate great successes from our new studio.”

Today’s acquisition, along with the recently announced joint venture with SoftBank for the launch of Zynga Japan, continues to extend the company’s footprint worldwide, creating more opportunities for Zynga to connect the world through games.

About Zynga
Zynga is the world’s largest social game developer. More than 215 million monthly active users play its games. Zynga’s games include FarmVille, Treasure Isle, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars, YoVille, Café World, FishVille, PetVille and FrontierVille. Zynga games are available on Facebook, MySpace and the iPhone. Through Zynga.org, Zynga players have raised more than $3 million for world social causes. Zynga is headquartered in San Francisco. For more information, visit www.Zynga.com or www.Zynga.org.

Facebook recently launched a marketing campaign around their 500 million users milestone, called Facebook Stories, which is a collection of tales from members that used the social network to find love, happiness and more. Google followed suit, launching Google Stories, which is essentially the same thing, except the search giant collects stories from users sharing tales about how Google effected their lives. Today, Twitter is launching a similar marketing campaign, called Twitter Tales, that showcases ways in which users interact with the microblogging platform.

Twitter Tales range from and Indian member who uses Twitter as a form of self therapy to the Caltrain account, that notifies users of delays around the commuter train service. Tales will be posted as Tales.Twitter.com, and you can email Twitter to submit your own Tale to be featured on the site.

Last year, Twitter launched a business destination which includes case studies of organizations and companies that have used Twitter as a social media and marketing tool. Tales seems to take a for consumer focus

Considering that we now have Facebook, Google and now Twitter spreading stories as a marketing tool, I’m sure we can expect other tech giants to start encouraging consumers to share their own “tales” of use. Who’s up next? Zynga? Foursquare?