link

Sony has just confirmed the rumor we all heard back in April: video downloads will be available on the PS3 this summer. Details right now are scarce, but we do know the service will first be rolled out in the United States, followed by Japan and Europe later in the year. As we mentioned before, we would like to see a service tied in with Netflix since everybody and their mother seems to use the service, or even a Hulu type service, which offers TV shows from Fox and NBC, broken up by short 15-second ads. Our best guess though: … Read more

Start your day out every morning by reading your favorite financial feeds? You might like Streetread, a relatively simple feed aggregator that pulls in stories from major financial publications. It also grabs live quotes from your favorite ticker symbols.

While you could accomplish a similar feat with services like Alltop, Original Signal, and Netvibes, Streetread's claim to fame is that it's constantly updating and will keep the page alive and scolling downwards as new stories pop up. You can preview each headline before you click, or just click it without getting lost--it'll simply jump you off site … Read more

Business-networking site LinkedIn announced on Tuesday evening that it had netted $53 million in a Series D funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures and with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and Bessemer Ventures. CEO Dan Nye wrote in a blog post that this values the company at a smidgen more than $1 billion.

Rumors floated this spring that the company was aiming for a billion-dollar valuation on a new funding round, rather than seeking a buyer. Previously, the company had raised $27 million. Chairman and co-founder Reid Hoffman has said that it'll likely go public … Read more

A group of investors has agreed to take over Philadelphia's Wi-Fi network, just as EarthLink was set to pull the plug on the network.

The group of investors, which announced their plans Tuesday, includes Boathouse Communications Partners, a private equity firm based in Philadelphia, technology entrepreneur Richard Rasansky and former Philadelphia mayoral candidate Tom Knox.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the group plans to change the business model. Instead of charging $20 a month for network access, the group will offer free Wi-Fi based on advertisements, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal.

The … Read more

Local investors have rescued Philadelphia's citywide Wi-Fi network.

Former Verizon executive Mark Rupp is part of an effort to complete and improve the $17 million project that was built but abandoned last week by EarthLink, according to a report Tuesday in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said during a news conference Tuesday that no public funds would be used to complete or operate the project, although no further financial details were released.

The group plans to create an ad-supported service that would be free to residents, but businesses would be charged, according to the investment group.

EarthLink, … Read more

Tired of spending hours frantically trying to get that projector connected to your PC before your guests become incredibly disinterested in your summer driveway movie party? Or maybe you're having flashbacks to that last presentation you gave. You know, the one that just wasn't much of a presentation. I mean granted, you had no charisma or stage presence, but that's usually nothing a 90-page PowerPoint slide show can't fix. No, your real problem was that your assistant working the projector didn't know his VGA port from his LAN port.

Even if you're like me … Read more

If you're the type to favor user opinions over editorials, the Firefox plug-in WOT may be the site-rating service for you.

Unlike Grisoft LinkScanner (Pro and Lite), McAfee Site Advisor (for Internet Explorer and Firefox), or the NetCraft Toolbar (for Firefox and Internet Explorer), this extension, published by Web of Trust (WOT), relies on user-generated ratings seconded by Web-gathered statistics to determine key factors of site safety. Trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy, and child safety are the four vectors of participant voting. A lengthened color gradient from green (safe) to red (unsafe) offers five shades of ratings levels instead of … Read more

Spickr is a strange take on the browser sidebar. These creations usually require you to install a small extension into your browser that will give you a new menu on the left or right side of your browser (see Yoono, gDocs Sidebar, et al). Instead, Spickr's solution is to run everything inside top and side IFrames that contain a slew of links to various news and entertainment sites. Clicking on any of those links will load it up inside your browser while the Spickr interface remains.

Built in are a few tools like a Delicious bookmark viewer that opens … Read more

When you want to convert a long link to a short one from your computer, all it takes is a visit to one of these 10 link-shrinking sites. From a Windows Mobile phone, prospects are much more limited. Thank goodness for ceSnipURL, a free, basic mobile application that threads your gargantuan URL through SnipURL's service and quickly returns a much shorter, more manageable bite. There are a few time-saving tricks packed into this link-swapping puppy, and they're all laid out in the video above.