Its amazing to think that kiteboarding kites could revolution the windpower future - but actually just a few years back when I was just learning how to kite, ant the kite went into the death spin - it was pretty clear to me how much power this kite technology is capable of. View the prototype test video.

Source: ( Kite Gen ) | Artist illustration out of scale (reduced altitude of the power kites and increased diameter of the lines).

Source: Kite Gen | Artist illustration out of scale (reduced altitude of the power kites and increased diameter of the lines).
 

Check out this post or visit Kitegen’s website for more videos and technical specificaitons.

TinEye

is an image search engine, still in beta & invite only. You are able to upload an image and find out who uses your image on the web. It is so accurate that it even is able to find images that are modified versions of the original one - pretty impressive.

Wow, I was checking today if YouTorrent was still up since I expect this search engine to be shut down any day now, and then I saw a post on their site announcing "300,000 searches/day" - impressive. They mention that they will 500,000 searches/day this month.

I understand how people think that everything should be free but at the same time I really don’t, specially when I see my own software being downloaded and cracked. What is this human notion that effort and ambition should be paid off by just stealing your results - this has nothing to do with freedom of speech or your rights.

Clearly some of you will put me against the wall and mention CherryOS, and say what about that incident - "cmon" I say! I wish I could give you all the facts and you would finally see more then some amplified facts that make up your judgement but I have not the right to do so, not yet.

What I am trying to say is that it is not responsible to create search engines or torrent engines that allow users to grab a hold of anything they want, even if it is possible. You think you are born with a right that people owe you something? Again, I just don’t get it.

Don’t understand me wrong, I like the fact that 3rd world countries have an option to utilize amazing software and content - but be realistic, how many of the 500,000 searches a day are them - would love to see those stats being posted by YouTorrent, give me some demographics please.

Why not unite and force the big Ms to agree to a deal - a deal that gives free licenses and access to the none privileged? Use our strength and power not to boost our ego (that’s what I understand from the post below), but to actually heal it.

From their blog:

1. We have passed 300,000 searches / day, we are on course to hit 500,000 by the end of February (thanks for your support guys!)

2. We have made the Digg front page three times:

http://digg.com/software/YouTorrent_Great_New_BitTorrent_Search_Engine
http://digg.com/tech_news/YouTorrent_Give_It_A_Shot_Before_It_s_Shut_Down
http://lifehacker.com/350405/top-10-bittorrent-tools-and-tricks

3. We made TechCrunch:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/19/youtorrent-give-it-a-shot-before-its-shut-down/

4. We made the top 10 alexa movers and shakers.

As you can see, this is very exciting news for YouTorrent! As far as new features go, we have now added engine customization and improved a few things. Soon you will be able to group torrents by hash, as well as do much more advanced searching. Stay tuned folks.

P.S. If you thought the news above was good, we promise you there is some even more incredible news around the corner

YouTube Blog:

We try really hard to make YouTube as open as possible…Nevertheless, we worried that we weren’t open enough. So, we pulled some all-nighters and added some powerful new ways to integrate YouTube content and community into other websites, desktop applications, video games, mobile devices, televisions, cameras, and lots more.

For users, the exciting news is that they will be able to actively participate in the YouTube community from just about anywhere, including the online destinations and web communities they already love and visit regularly. For partners and developers, YouTube has grown into much more than a website. It has become an open, general purpose, video services platform, available for use by just about any third-party website, desktop application, or consumer device. We now provide a complete set of (CRUD) capabilities for uploading, managing, searching, and playing back user videos and metadata from the YouTube “cloud,” managed by us. We do all of the hard work of trans coding and hosting and streaming and thumb-nailing your videos, and we provide open access to our sizable global audience, enabling you to generate traffic for your site, visibility for your brand, or support for your cause….

The number of possible new applications is endless. Electronic Arts has enabled gamers to capture videos of fantastical user-generated creatures from their upcoming game, Spore, and publish these directly into YouTube. The University of California, Berkeley is bringing free educational content to the world, enhancing their open source lecture capture and delivery system to publish videos automatically into YouTube. Animoto enables its users to create personalized, professional-quality music videos from their own photos and upload them directly to YouTube. Tivo is providing its users a rich and highly participative YouTube viewing experience on the television.

 

Specifically, the new APIs allow Web developers to:

* Upload videos and video responses to YouTube
* Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc)
* Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales
* Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales
* Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software

Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can help sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all directly-sold or network-based ad inventory.

Its sitll a soft launch and invite only access is allowed currently.

A british company called ThruVision has developed a surveillance cam that is able to detect weapons, drugs or explosives behind people’s closes from up to 80 feet (25 meters) away. The T5000 camera utilizes a method called the "passive imaging technology" to identify objects by the emitted natural electromagnetic rays known as Tera hertz or T-rays.

The cam is able effective even on moving subjects but at the same time is not able to reveal any embarrassing body details, also based on ThruVision the screening process is harmless.

This technology could be used in military and civilian applications, for example airports, sporting events, school or shopping malls.

Interesting but also scary, welcome to the surveillance society.

Crowdsourcing Sites, here is another wanna be entering the "crowded" space. crowdSRING is currently in beta and the "Spring" twist is that the first project they are posting is their own site, $5000 prize for the best homepage design submission. Sign up here to access the beta, otherwise wait till April.

The difference between crowdSPRING and other crowdsoucing sites like Kluster, FellowForce, and Cambrian House is that contributors have to put up completed work, not just concept designs. This way their work competes directly with everyone else’s, specially since everybody is able to view your submission. It avoids design by a committee, while it still allows one design to inform another - but it might also discourage more talented providers to spend yet unpaid time on a complete design without knowing if it will pay off.

Together no more?

Rumors are swirling around today over the future of Sprint & Nextel. Seeking Alpha is reporting that Sprint has hired Morgan Stanley for a possible spin-off of its Nextel brand. Sprint’s ongoing troubles has been creating positive and negative conversation material for the last few months now.

I never understood why the got together anyway, since both networks disapointed me as a customer:

Sprint | Their service can only be used with their proprietary cell phones - never liked the limitation, and after 1 year I canceled my servie and moved to Nextel

Nextel | I think people only stayed with it because of the two-way option - after just 6 months I switched to T-Mobile. Why? Well the customer service didn’t help my made-up mind, more the opposite.

Based on “the word” on the net 4 heavy hitters are currently on the line to aquire Digg - two media/news companies, and tow big internet companies - Google and Mircrosoft.

Microsoft already has an advertising deal with Digg since last year, so it will be hard to value Digg based on the revenue that they themselves supply. Only by terminating that advertising deal a true value can be set, which also means that Google isn’t valuating Digg based on current revenue either.

It is interesting to see how the bidding war between Mircosoft and Google over Digg develops, specially considering if anybody else raises their hand at the last minute.

Digg was founded in late 2005 and has raised $11.3 million in funding. The bids will likely be in the range of $200-$250 million based on the numbers mentioned on the net.

Amazon is starting to sell wine to US customers and according to FT.com, is currently trying to recruit a senior wine buyer who will be responsible for “the acquisition of the new massive product selection”.

In the US, online alcohol sales is a difficult market since there are a multitude of laws in different states. But maybe now is a time to jump on the train for a lot of wine retailers since the US Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that state governments are not able to prohibit residents from ordering from out-of-state wineries.

The Amazon giant invested $30 million into Wine Shopper ( 1999 ) - but the site only lasted one year ( autsch ). The current Wine Sales for 2007 totaled $30 billion in the US - I wonder how the gallon of gas compares to wine.

Download the Pandora Widget 1.0.2 here!

This tool allows you to listen to music on your OSX 10.4 system without the need to open up the browser. For everybody else: go to www.pandora.com and experience a new way of audio experience.