Apple Talk

Flickr hit with Tuesday morning outage

An update on Flickr's official blog, timestamped at 9:51 a.m. PDT, says "all hands are on deck," and the problem will soon be resolved. That was followed shortly thereafter by a post at 10:05 a.m. PDT saying that that outage "shouldn't be too much longer!"

Flickr's last major outage, which took place back in February 2007, resulted in the company revealing some details about the immensity of the photo sharing site, which at that time was serving close to a billion photos a day.

More details as they come...

Updated 10:55 a.more

Jelli's crowd-sourced radio opens up to the U.S., Australia

Jelli.net, a Total Request Live-esq Internet radio station, is coming out of beta on Monday night and is expected to announce that it's inked a syndication deal with Triton Digital Media that will get it played in actual terrestrial FM radio stations across the U.S. beginning next year.

The service revolves entirely around a playlist of songs that's managed by users in real time. Users can vote songs up or down before they ever hit the air, as well as when they're playing. If enough people downvote a song while it's in the more

Sneak peek at Strings: A social tracker with a twist

In many ways Strings feels a lot like FriendFeed. For example, just like FriendFeed you're able to tie Strings into to various services you're using like Amazon, Netflix, and social-bookmarking tools so that it can implicitly share information about what you're doing on each of those services with others. And like FriendFeed, this information can be tracked and filtered depending on what type of content it is, and what group of friends it's coming from.

Where it differs though, is that this data feed begins with complete anonymity; nobody ever has to know it's you who is feeding the site. If and when you decide you want to start identifying data as your own, Strings has a very deep set of privacy controls to protect what other people can see.

250GB PS3 Slim coming in November for $350

Sony Computer Entertainment America on Thursday announced that a new 250GB variation of the PlayStation 3 Slim will be available beginning November 3 for $349.99. The PS3 hardware will otherwise remain the same as the 120GB flavor of the Slim, which costs $50 less. The console maker will also continue to sell the physically larger, previous model of the PS3 which comes with either an 80GB or 160GB hard drive.

The extra 130GB of storage in the 250GB model gives PS3 owners more room for downloaded movies, game installs/saves, music, and photos. According to Sony, "more than 600 more

Browse the news in tags with Zen News

The app makes use of the same tag cloud navigation found in Zensify, the company's social aggregation tool. This takes the most prevalent topics or keywords and organizes them by size, with the larger words being more important. Users can then drill down into each keyword, which filters the group of stories the app displays.

Once you find a story you want to read, the app gives you a quick summary, as well as the option to either read it in the embedded browser, or hop out to Safari proper. It also lets you "favorite" a post for reading more

Hands-on: Social networking on Xbox 360

Microsoft was expected to release Twitter, Facebook, and Last.fm apps for the Xbox 360 as part of a system software update that went out back in August. It was decided that the apps should be delayed for a fall release, but CNET got a sneak peek of the apps on Wednesday from Ron Pessner, Microsoft's general manager of games for Windows Live.

The company is still mum on an exact release, despite marketing materials on the U.K. Xbox.com site briefly pointing to a November 17 debut. Pessner confirmed that the new apps were indeed set for November release, but he could not provide a hard date. In the meantime the company is releasing a public preview ahead of time for a select group of users who sign up to be a part of the beta test (you can sign up here).

What we saw of the three apps was impressive but in many ways extremely limited compared with their desktop counterparts. Microsoft has had to shoehorn the three Web apps into a system with a control scheme that does not implement a mouse, keyboard, or Web browser. Instead, all three make use of the Xbox 360 controller and the on-screen keyboard, or an attached USB keyboard (or Microsoft Chat Pad accessory which you can buy for $30).

This lack of the usual top-to-bottom controls found on each service's Web sites changes each experience considerably from what users are familiar with on their computers and mobile devices. This is made even more noticeable by the fact that the Xbox 360 still does not have a built-in Web browser. Never before has this been an issue, but stop and think for a second: are Twitter and Facebook as useful, or as interesting if you can't click on any of the links? We don't think so.

That said, there are some definite things to look forward to when the software update drops next month. Read our early impressions after the jump.

Pretty Web journal tool Penzu goes pro

Penzu, the stylish Web word processor we checked out about a year ago, is ready to make a business out of its hosted writing tools.

The company on Wednesday introduced a professional version of its service that costs $19 a year and fixes many of the gripes we originally had about its very pretty, but feature-light, offerings.

A pro membership now gets you all kinds of goodies, including a rich text editor, tags for organization, image hosting, 256-bit AES encryption on posts that you've locked, and themes that skin the entire interface to your liking. Pro users can also more

Gmail gets another tool for dummies: Name check

Gmail's labs section is full of tools that help advanced users fine-tune the interface of the free Web mail service. What may be more impressive, though, are its tweaks for the not-so-advanced users, the kind who need a little hand-holding to keep them from firing off e-mails while intoxicated, or missives that they didn't mean to send in the first place.

To add to these two features, Google on Tuesday introduced "got the wrong Bob?", a very simple tweak that, based on first names, will give you a subtle nudge if it thinks you're sending an e-mail more

Viper's new iPhone app replaces your keychain

Car security company Directed Electronics is unveiling a new iPhone application Tuesday that lets customers control parts of their Viper SmartStart-enabled vehicle from their iPhone or iPod Touch.

The app, called Viper SmartStart, is quite similar toZipcar's recently released iPhone app, except it can work with your car, and not one you're renting for the weekend. It, too, creates a virtual keychain control module that can do things like lock and unlock your vehicle, open the trunk, and activate the alarm, getting rid of the need to carry around one of those keychain clickers as long as you've got your phone handy.

Coolest of all, though, there's a "Smart Start" button in the center of the screen that can turn on your vehicle. The company is promoting this as a simple way to defrost or cool off a car before you get in--that is, assuming you correctly set the climate controls the last time you were inside.

Since the app uses the iPhone's data connection to send the commands, you can control your car (or cars) from anywhere you have an EDGE or 3G signal. It also means you can use it on a non-cellular data device like the iPod Touch, as long as it's near Wi-Fi.

The app is completely free, but it requires you have Viper's SmartStart system installed in each car you want to take control of. This costs $499 for a new installation, or $299 for cars that already have a Viper alarm system, as well as an active subscription to Viper's Smart Start service. Buyers of the system get a year of the $29.99 service included when they get the service installed; then they have to pay after that.

I'm still waiting for a version that can give you live video and steering controls, like the ridiculous, yet awesome remote-controlled BMW in "Tomorrow Never Dies" Though something tells me that's not happening anytime soon.

You can watch the company's promo video after the break.

Correction 9:07 a.m. on October 13: This story initially misidentified the remote-controlled car and James Bond film it was featured in. It is a BMW, and it appeared in "Tomorrow Never Dies."

Gist's people organizer comes to the iPhone

Where users will spend most of their time though is the app's dashboard, which breaks down the latest news about people and companies they're corresponding with based on news stories, blog posts, and tweets. This screen doubles as a RSS reading tool too, since you can read small article summaries that your contacts have noted, as well as bookmark them and open them in Safari. It's not the best way to get news headlines on the iPhone, but it's nearly identical to how it works on Gist.com, which should help longtime users feel right at more