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Manhattan iPhone Watch: T minus 3.5 days

NEW YORK--They're heeeeeee-ere.

Actually, I owe you all an apology. When I first showed up at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store earlier this afternoon, I didn't spot anyone waiting in line yet. That's because I didn't spot the one person in line, who'd gotten there at 5 a.m. EDT. Security personnel for the building, however, have mandated that Camp iPhone be located off to the side of the building, out of sight of people who are approaching the Apple Store from 59th Street (the nearest subway stop). The Craigslist crowd was assuming that people … Read more

How to waste time at the office with Facebook Platform

In case you still haven't heard enough about Facebook Platform, well, here you go. CNET News.com has compiled a gallery of the best Facebook Platform applications for procrastinating at the office--you know, if it's a slow day, or if your boss isn't looking. Trust us, a lot of "field work" went into testing these out and making sure that they're really, really good for wasting a workday. Tons of fun! Loads of counter-productivity for everyone!

For the procrastination gallery, click here.

And for more about the developer frenzy surrounding Facebook Platform, click here.… Read more

Sneak peak at Mogulus: new live blogging platform

I got to take a sneak peak at a new video broadcasting service that opened its doors to a select few this morning. Mogulus is a live video broadcasting service the likes of uStream.tv, but with a twist: Multiple people can work on live video feeds at the same time. Each user can create their own branded channel, and fill it up with video content either from their hard drives or pulled in from YouTube. Each contributor can also command the broadcast using their Web cam, complete with customizable over-the-shoulder graphic overlays and a scrolling CNN-style news ticker. The result is a live blogging experience that's visually stimulating to the viewer, and completely customizable for the amateur content producer.

Mogulus is giving its producers two ways to share content--either embedding the live feed, or linking to their own custom URL. All public channels go into a listing for live feeds a la Kyte.tv, so casual users looking to tune into things that are live or interesting will be able to browse through and find something they like.

Managing broadcasts in Mogulus is handled completely inside of a Flash-based application. Content is clumped together in small management units called "storyboards," which can be inserted into any broadcast almost like video playlists. Producers queue up content, mix and match the order of video clips, and can break in at any time to broadcast live from their Web cam. Power users have a lot to play with, as it actually feels like a professional video-editing app with a ton of options for tweaking and fine-tuning.

Mogulus plans to roll out its service with two models, one free and one paid. The free version requires inserting a short advertisement for every 10 minutes of broadcasting, while the pro version lets producers go ad-free in exchange for paying a fee for every gigabyte of bandwidth transferred. My hunch is that many casual users will be OK with the advertisement model, with what Mogulus is tentatively planning to keep at around 10 seconds per ad.

More on Mogulus as it leaves private beta. Until then you can sign up and check out an explanatory video here. More screenshots of the interface after the jump.

A wall version of Tetris for the ultimate fan

The unrelenting ravages of time may have taken their toll on many of us aging Boomers, but one aspect of our misspent youth remains intact: the love for ancient video games.

The nostalgia is so strong at Spark Fun Electronics that a crack team of nine professionals came up with a "Picture Frame Tetris," a wall-sized version of the retro game using 720 colored LEDs and 16 microcontrollers. We're not Tetris experts (being of the Asteroids camp instead), but Technabob breaks down the technicalities in plain english: "The game features a unique interface that controls the … Read more

Gspell: using Google for smarter spell checking

Gspell is a great little add-on for Mac users to add system-wide spelling recommendations from Google search results. For 10.4 users, Tiger's had spell-checking from the New Oxford American Dictionary built in, but even that has its limits when it comes to brand-new words and company names. Gspell's solution is to search Google to find spelling recommendations based on top results. This comes in handy when typing in people's last names, or site names that are slight variations of real words, such as Digg, Yelp, and CNET.

Gspell does have a few limitations. For one, it … Read more

Will Do My Stuff get people to do your stuff?

Thrillist, a NYC-based e-mail list that features everything from bar picks to gadgets, has tipped us off to some pretty cool webware recently. (The site currently operates "everywhere," NYC, and LA versions with San Francisco coming soon.) They do, however, tend to be targeted toward Thrillist's key demographic of party-ready slackers. Like this one, for example: Do My Stuff. It's a way for you to find people to, well, do your stuff: lawn mowing, house painting, moving, posing for photographs (ahem), you name it.

The thinking behind it is sort of an eBay-Craigslist hybrid, with … Read more

Beware pretty Web 2.0 apps

On Tuesday I covered Scrapblog, a very impressive service for creating personal presentations. Scrapblog is one of those very rare online applications that almost makes you forget you're working on the Web and not a desktop. It's not as fast nor as capable as desktop applications can be, but it's close. And here's another service that aspires to the same thing: Glide 2.0.

Glide 2.0 is a great-looking and ambitious Web suite full of day-to-day applications, including a word processor, a site builder, a photo editor, and much more. Most of the applications are … Read more

CNET Live getting ready for Thursday debut

We just got out of our production meeting for CNET Live and things are coming together.

CNET Live will be a half-hour technology call-in show hosted by myself and Brian Cooley, along with the whole CNET TV crew. We'll be answering calls and e-mails and doling out tips, tricks, and picks, every Thursday at 4 p.m. EST, 1 p.m. PST, and 10 a.m. HST.

This week, we have Justin.TV confirmed as a guest, we'll show you a free way to play any video from the Web, and we'll take a look at a … Read more

Red charity not seeing tons of green

Remember Bono's (RED) campaign, the charity project that launched the red iPod? (And eventually a torrent of other crimson gadgets.)

Given all the publicity, we assumed that the initiative would have brought in truckloads of money for its stated purpose of helping fight AIDS in Africa. But according to marketing firm PSFK, the charity reported raising only $11.3 million as of the end of December, "a tiny fraction of the $6.6 billion funds the Global Fund has committed to 460 programs in 136 countries."

The campaign is still less than five months old, so it'… Read more

Google Premium: Don't get too excited

As reported on News.com last night and widely on the Web, Google has announced the business-class version of its application suite, Google Apps. It's widely seen as a serious threat to Microsoft's office suite, primarily since it costs $50 a year per user, which deeply undercuts the price of Office.

The free version is still available, but if you pay for the service you get 24/7 phone support, a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee for e-mail, more online storage space, and other business-friendly features. You also can make it appear that Google's services (like your … Read more