Posted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments

GM Says The Volt Will Go 230 Miles Per Gallon

GM has either created a fantastic new electric car (and employed a wonderful PR firm) or they’re just a bunch of silly jokers.

Today they announced that they expect the upcoming Volt electric car to receive a rating of 230mpg from the EPA.  That’s an awful lot of miles per gallon.  No vehicle has ever received triple digit mpg ratings from the EPA.

And if it turns out to be true, then this thing sells itself.  I wants stock in GM.

If it’s all just a marketing ploy and hype, and the EPA ends up handing down a 60mpg rating… then I’ll be back on this blog crying “Foul!”

The Volt can go up to 40 miles on just the battery.  After that 40 miles, a small electric engine kicks in and can take you another 300 miles.  And you can recharge the battery from any standard home electric outlet.  Pretty sweet.

I really hope this isn’t too good to be true.  The market really needs an electric car that can change the game and tilt the industry.  Sadly, it will probably cost twice what a normal car does.

Posted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments

Facebook & FriendFeed Are BFF’s Forever

I don’t think we can call ourselves a technology blog if we fail to mention the recent purchase of FriendFeed by Facebook, even though every tech blog and his brother has already covered the story. I’m certainly not breaking any news here, but we have some readers who probably haven’t stumbled upon this news just yet.  Thought we’d give our two cents.

FriendFeed is a lot like Twitter, allowing users to share content and information across multiple platforms.  It has far fewer users than Twitter, but is run by some ex-Google engineers.  This is clearly another bold step by Facebook to compete with Twitter.

What Twitter does that has Facebook so scared is the real-time update/sharing feature.  FriendFeed will help them match the technology for real-time updating.  In fact, Facebook has already activated a new “real-time search” function just in the past 24 hours.

The price of the purchase is rumored to be around $50 Million in cash and stock.

Look for Facebook to roll the FriendFeed guys in with their existing real-time efforts to create something that not only matches Twitter’s capabilities and popularity, but aims to exceed them as well.

Posted by Angela | 0 Comments

Twitter’s Power Outage

Twitter has just recently reached 44.5 million users and the 52^nd spot on the list of largest Websites worldwide. It’s no secret that, despite Twitter’s continuously growing size, they have some serious security issues, security issues and other problems that should have been corrected much earlier.

Another problem to add to Twitter’s list of weaknesses is their susceptibility to a denial-of-service attack. This morning, all Twitter users were denied access to the Website because of an outside source hitting it non-stop until the entire system shut down. This all took place very early this morning, about 8:00 A.M., Central Time. By 10:15 A.M., CT, the site was finally back up. That was two hours where millions of people, including myself, were without Twitter! I’m surprised the sky didn’t fall too.

Anyways, after about an hour of the site being down, Twitter announced that the crisis had been the result of a denial-of-service attack, or DOS. And even now Twitter’s status update says the site will be running a little slow for some time until they have fixed everything and are “back to 100%.”

Posted by Angela | 0 Comments

Google Campaigns against Microsoft

Google has gone back to the basics to attract businesses to their new Google Apps. Billboards used to be dismissed, almost useless to larger companies. But Google is bringing the billboard back! They have selected different billboards around the country, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston, to display their new media campaign, “Going Google!”

Every weekday during August, Google’s billboards will display a new phrase or message promoting Google Apps. With sayings like, “Email, shared docs, and team sites? Nice. I want to go Google,” many believe this is a direct dig at Microsoft, like The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, Microsoft just struck a deal with Yahoo to combine the two search engines, Yahoo! Search and Bing, to have a legitimate shot at pushing Google out of the top. Google also created a “Join the Movement. Spread the Word. Go Google,” Website to try to stir up some talk about their new Google Apps, directed at business leaders and employees.

Communication, collaboration, and saving money are three advantages of Google Apps named on the Website. The Apps feature a combination of Google products within the workplace to maximize communication and collaboration ease. Email, calendar, and instant messaging apps will be better than before because of message threading and more storage. Collaboration will be made easier with a real-time application available. With all the applications running just on the server, no special software is required.

This may be a great new system for offices everywhere, or maybe just a great marketing scheme, but either way, it’s definitely a huge effort on Google’s part.

Posted by Angela | 0 Comments

Twitter in Patent Trouble

There have been many predictions of Twitter getting into lawsuit trouble as it continues to grow, but none have come true… until now.

The Texas based company, TechRadium, filed a lawsuit against Twitter for patent infringement just yesterday in Houston, TX.  TechRadium references three patents in the lawsuit that defend TechRadium’s mass notification systems called “IRIS,” or Immediate Response Information System. The IRIS system runs around the idea of an administrator sending out a single message to multiple receivers without having to send the same message more than once. The receivers can pick and choose what information they want to receive by subscribing to particular administrators… Sounds a lot like Twitter.

One of the only differences between the two systems is that “IRIS” can transfer across email, text messaging, and voicemail, while Twitter cannot utilize voicemail (yet). The concept being challenged is the basic idea of unifying different messaging systems. So Twitter may, in fact, be guilty.