buddy

In the middle of a night of heavy drinking is probably the worst time to judge if you've had too much drink to drive, or maybe even walk. Buzz Buddy for iPhone and iPod Touch is a good stand-in for your conscience--if you can remember to use it.

After entering your gender, weight, and whether you've already consumed alcohol, you'll tap the drink type you're about to guzzle. Buzz Buddy will keep track of your beer, wine, cocktail, and shots count. Using your weight and gender, it'll graph your estimated blood alcohol level over the … Read more

Instant-messaging service Meebo announced on Thursday that it has inked a deal with Hearst Magazines Digital Media that will bring its Meebo Rooms chat tools to the sites of glossies such as Popular Mechanics and Seventeen.

"Meebo is excited to provide readers of Seventeen.com and other Hearst Magazines Digital Media Web sites with a live forum to chat with people who share similar interests and differing opinions," Martin Green, chief operating officer at Meebo, said in a statement.

In tandem with the partnership announcement, Seventeen.com integrated Meebo's technology into its "Style Stars 2008" … Read more

Buddi is a finance managing program that's poised with potential. Open source and free, it offers an extensible experience for both Windows and Mac users that's wrapped up in a simple tabbed interface. As they say in the money biz, it looks great on paper.

The application can create new accounts from four credit types--cash, checking, investment, and savings--and five debit types--credit card, liability, line of credit, loan, and prepaid account. Users can create their own account types, too, and take brief notes on an account. Strangely, the notes don't seem to surface anywhere besides the window … Read more

Announced last month, the Averatec Buddy is now shipping. Averatec's first Netbook is listed on its Web site as being in stock. The specs and price are the same as those reported in September: $449 gets you 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and Windows XP Home. The 2.65-pound Netbook features a 10.2-inch display with a 1,024x600 WSVGA resolution. (You can ignore the erroneous specs on Averatec's site that state in some parts that it has a 12.1-inch display and a WXGA resolution.) Sadly, the Netbook features … Read more

This week's Netbook entrant? The Averatec Buddy.

Announced today, the 10.2-inch laptop costs $449 and features the 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and Windows XP. It's not yet listed on the Averatec Web site, but upon first glance, it looks like the MSI Wind with a VAIO-like round hinge. While the press release is light on product details (size of battery? Screen resolution? Draft N Wi-Fi? Solid-state-drive options? Bluetooth? ExpressCard slot?), the Averatec Buddy on the surface serves up a larger hard drive than the MSI Wind for less. … Read more

Here's a deal that never could've happened in the absence of the developer platform craze: SocialMedia, a media network that focuses on the fledgling niche of "engagement ads," is set to announce a partnership with BuddyMedia, which creates branded applications for clients.

More specifically, SocialMedia clients will have access to BuddyMedia's new analytics and research product, which it calls "BuddyBrain" and formally launched last week. BuddyMedia licenses BuddyBrain as part of a program that it calls "App-vertising Resellers," and the two companies have already teamed up on ad campaigns for clients … Read more

BuddyMedia, a New York-based start-up that develops social-network games as well as branded applications for clients, has launched a new product that tackles one of the challenges of social advertising: that it's just plain difficult to tell how successful it is.

The company calls the creation "BuddyBrain," and is gearing it toward clients who turn to BuddyMedia for "appvertising," or branded apps designed specifically for product marketing. The data provided to clients--yes, arranged in the shape of a brain--provides statistics on installs, usage, and time spent per user; a feed of news and blog reports … Read more

If you're not a fan of the preloaded ringtones on your cell phone, Verizon Wireless is providing an alternative way to get more catchy tunes on your mobile. On the eve of CTIA Fall 2008, the carrier announced Ringback Buddies, a Facebook application that lets you browse, purchase, and manage ringtones and "jukeboxes" from the social networking site.

You can install the Ringback Buddies application by searching for the word "ringback" on Facebook, and from there you can do a number of things. First, you can see what songs your friends like or want, purchase … Read more

Andrew Mager posted an illustrated play-by-play of Saturday's WordCamp, a conference devoted to the popular open-source blogging platform WordPress. According to Mager's report, the hosted version of WordPress has 2.3 million new blogs in 12 months and 35 million posts, and more than 6.5 billion page views.

Of particular interest for the WordPress crowd is BuddyPress, a set of plug-ins that brings Facebook-like features, such as friends, groups, private messaging, status updates, and extended profiles, to the blogging platform. (WordPress competitor Six Apart also recently introduced a social dimension to its Movable Type platform.)

As Mager … Read more