Addoway Is Like eBay With A Social Streak

If you’ve ever gone shopping on eBay, you know how important seller ratings can be — take a stab with someone who has less than a 90-something approval rating, and you’re testing your luck. And even when you’ve found someone with a satisfactory rating, the descriptions left by other buyers tend to be mostly useless (A++++, anyone?), which makes the whole thing feel a little risky regardless. Oh, and sellers can always get scammed by buyers, which makes it even more fun.

Addoway is an e-commerce site that looks to help reduce these feelings of anxiety by using Facebook Connect to help you find sellers that your friends have had good experiences dealing with in the past. The site launched eight months ago, and is currently drawing 90,000 uniques a month.

The premise is simple: when you run a search on Addoway for whatever it is you’re looking to buy (say, an Xbox), the site will let you sort listings by your social connections. If you know someone who has interacted with a certain seller before, then they’ll show up at the top — and you can talk to your friends about their experience with that seller if you’re still hesitant.

Of course, in order for these social connections to be of any use you need to actually know people who are using the site to either buy or sell things. And right now it’s pretty unlikely — even if you have a few hundred friends, the odds that one of them is using Addoway to sell the item you’re looking for is very low.

CEO Fredrick Nijm agrees that it’s unlikely that the social connections will be much help at this point, but he believes that if the site grows in popularity, it will become much more useful. For the nearer-term, Addoway has a back-up plan in place to help make shoppers more comfortable: very transparent seller listings.

The site invites sellers to link up their blogs, Amazon accounts, eBay seller profiles, and YouTube videos, allowing visitors to quickly get a snapshot of who they are. Granted, reading someone’s blog or watching their videos doesn’t necessarily help you determine if they’re a reputable seller, but this kind of transparency can still potentially help instill a greater sense of trust. Maybe.

So far the site has over 400,000 listings, most of which have been sucked in from eBay (Addoway lets sellers connect with their eBay, Etsy, and Bonanza accounts). Nijm declined to say how many active sellers the site has, but says that most of them (including those who have linked their eBay accounts) are still active.

The site makes money by offering a premium account to sellers for $8.95 per month that gives them prominent placement in search results and Addoway’s social media presences. In the future the site will also add transaction fees, though existing users will have a window where they won’t have to pay them.

This is a very difficult market to crack into, especially given how much traction Addoway will need for its social connections to become useful, and Nijm knows it. Still, he says that this is the only service that uses Facebook Connect to help buyers pick out reputable sellers (as opposed to using it for product recommendations, the way Amazon does), and he says that Addoway has seen significant growth over the last several months, going from 60,000 uniques a couple of months ago to 90,000 today.

View the original article here

Windows and Mac OS X make it onto the Cr-48, look great in matte black

Google built the Cr-48 with hacking in mind, so it's no surprise that we're seeing other operating systems crop up. Still, it's fun to watch, and enterprising hackers have got most of the usual suspects up and running: first Ubuntu, and now Mac OS X and Windows. It sounds like a lot of work, and we pledged that 2011 was going to be the year we sat on our asses and didn't do anything hard, but you're welcome to give it a shot! Just hit up those source links below for instructions, and follow after the break for video of OS X in action.

[Thanks Damian W.]

View the original article here

WakeMate Warns Users Of Major Safety Issue With Product After One Bursts Into Flames

It was only days ago that we wrote that after nearly a year of delays, the first WakeMate units were finally shipping to customers. And now there’s some more bad news — really bad. Some of the initial units are apparently bursting into flames because of any issue with the USB charger included.

Repeat: Do not use the USB charger included with the shipping WakeMate units.

The company has just sent out the following notice to customers:

Hello WakeMate Customer,

We have just been alerted to a safety issue with our product. The black USB charger bricks that have been included with the product are defective. Do not use them.

The USB chargers were sourced through a Chinese vendor. We paid to have the proper certification and safety tests performed here in the U.S. for the chargers. However, tonight we were informed by a customer of a safety incident with the black USB chargers. Therefore, effective immediately we are recalling ALL USB charger bricks and informing our customers that it is not safe to use these USB chargers to charge your WakeMate.

We will continue to look into the situation but needed to email you immediately to ensure that you stop using and unplug the included Black USB Power Bricks.

We are extremely sorry that we sent a product containing defective components. However, we also want to stress that this issue is with the chargers only, and not with the WakeMate itself. It is still safe to use the included USB cable to charge the WakeMate, and it is safe to wear the WakeMate while sleeping.

I sincerely apologize for this mishap on our part. We are doing everything we can to prevent any further incidents with the USB charger bricks.

If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,
Arun Gupta
CEO, Perfect Third Inc.

While the notice isn’t specific about what the exact problem is, there is at least one report out there of a unit catching on fire. Jason Toff, a Googler, sent out this tweet tonight:

WARNING: my @WakeMate just burnt into flames, nearly catching my bed on fire. Do NOT use. Video of it afterward: http://twitvid.com/UBBWC

As you can see in Toff’s linked video, this looks really bad. He followed up to say he was fine, but that he was lucky he was around or his home would be on fire right now.

Obviously, this is yet more bad news for WakeMate, but they seem to have done the right thing in alerting customers as quickly as possible. It’s not yet clear if this is the only incident or if there have been others. Either way, WakeMate clearly feels this potentially won’t be an isolated problem.

Again, just to be clear, they’re saying the product itself is still safe, it’s just the black USB power adapter that is apparently defective. And if that’s the case, they shouldn’t have to do a full product recall — hopefully they’ll just have to send new USB adapters to all customers. The company says they’re still looking into the situation.

Update: There’s a bit more info in the Hacker News thread on the issue, including the company answering questions (they are Y Combinator-backed). Of note, the company says:

yes the batteries are safe. we believe that the chargers are spitting out a noisy electrical signal, which is causing the battery charger IC on the WakeMate to overheat, thus causing the problem. We have only seen any incidence when the unit is plugged into the black USB charger bricks we shipped with. To date we have logged over 20000 hours of sleep on our system, so we’re certain that sleeping with the Wakemate is safe, and that the batteries on the WakeMates are safe as well. This is in addition to the testing and certification we had done on the unit as well before we began shipping units.

and:

We sent this email tonight within an hour of hearing about the first issue. One of our goals as a company is to increase people’s quality of life — starting with sleep. It was immediately apparent to us we had to tell our customers, especially if their safety was at all at risk.

View the original article here

HTC HD2 gets a stable stock Android build for internal storage

By Chris Ziegler posted Dec 30th 2010 2:40PM Running Android on HTC's venerable HD2 is old hat -- but historically, you've had to run it off microSD storage, which isn't an optimal situation for an operating system you might hope to use as your primary. Now we've finally got what appears to be the first solution allowing you to drop a nearly stock build of Android on the HD2's internal NAND memory, freeing up external storage for your usual collection of family photos, showtunes, and PowerPoint presentations left over from your WinMo 6.5 days. We've no doubt that this hack is a little dicey -- especially considering the herculean level of hacker effort that went into making it happen -- but if you've got an HD2 lying around that needs a new lease on life, it might be worth a shot.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

View the original article here

Ask Engadget: best sound system / soundbar for around $100?

By Darren Murph posted Dec 30th 2010 10:33PM We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, here's the outlet to do so. This week's Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Colin, who needs his jams on the cheap. If you're looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.

"I have been looking for a decent set of speakers that can kick out fairly good sound. Ideally, I'd use these in a bedroom, mostly for television viewing and Xbox gaming. I don't need anything too powerful as I'm not filling a gigantic room with sound. I've heard good things about Logitech boxed kits, but have also heard that soundbars are great space-saving alternatives. I'm open to pretty much anything: HTIB, soundbars, etc, but am hoping to spend around $100 or less. Thank you!"

We know, you're looking to pinch pennies in order to take that special someone out on a fantastically fine date tomorrow. We get it. But these days, $100 can actually buy you quite a bit of sound. We'd echo those positive sentiments on Logitech's boxed kits, but if anyone has any other input, comments are open down below.

View the original article here

Engadget's biggest stories of 2010

By Paul Miller posted Dec 30th 2010 3:45PM
What a year it's been! It makes us dizzy just thinking about it, so we did what we do best: we made a list. It was a year of significant upheaval for the industry, with new categories blossoming and rampant obsolescence looming for everything else. Still, the usual suspects seemed to be to blame for most of the hubbub, with Apple, Google, and Microsoft dominating the headlines. Follow along after the break as we run you through what happened, just in case, you know, you just woke up from a 365 day coma. Or maybe you like lists. Or touching retrospectives. We don't care, just click.

The iPad arrives. The iPad would've been the biggest tech story this year even if it hadn't been a runaway success. No product has been more heavily rumored in the short history of gadget blogging, or in the slightly longer history of gadget punditry. Look, we even made a chart. What was perhaps more interesting than the fact that it actually launched, however, was the fact that consumers actually wanted to buy it. The iPad has been a major success, and has proved surprisingly difficult to replicate. Big challengers are on the horizon, however, so we'll see how long Apple can reign alone.
The PlayStation Phone leaks out. We've been waiting on a PSP 2 for a long while, but our first glimpse at a true PSP sequel (no, the PSP Go doesn't count), turned out to be an Android phone. We started out with a description and mockup of the slider handset, but before the year was out we had photos and video. The device has been all but confirmed by Sony at this point, and now all we have to do is wait.
The iPhone 4's rollercoaster of journalistic emotions. What might've been a "routine" iPhone refresh has been anything but. First we got pre-release photos of the phone, then Gizmodo got its hands on an actual device left in a bar, kicking off a volley of legal drama and espionage intrigue. Almost lost in the kerfuffle was the iPhone 4 itself, which turned out to be a pretty great phone. Then people started noticing antenna problems, which threw the tech world into another tizzy, and required another Apple press conference to calm everyone down. Both episodes of drama are hardly remembered by most iPhone users these days, but let the gadget world's penchant for hysterics never be forgotten. Also, we still don't have a white iPhone, and we're totally bitter.
Windows Phone 7: the comeback kid. Microsoft did it. After taking a long, serious look at itself in a cracked Windows Mobile 6.5 mirror, Microsoft threw everything out and started fresh. Its brand new phone operating system, Windows Phone 7, has received strong reviews and moderate early commercial success -- now we'll see if Microsoft can keep the momentum going and truly compete with the titans of Android and iOS.
The life and death of the Courier. Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away. After months of leaks and premature anticipation, Microsoft confirmed this year that it had been working on a dual-screen tablet project dubbed Courier, but that it wasn't going anywhere. And there was much weeping. Android takes off, the superphone cometh. Last year's Droid might've been the platform's first runaway success, but this year it seemed like every Android phone was a runaway success. "Superphones" like the EVO 4G showed the lust of the Android base for specs, and delivered a multitude of exclusive features (front-facing camera, 4G data, screen as large as a football field). Google also launched "Froyo," a significant update to the OS that really set Android apart. Sales followed, and Android's market share has ballooned to rival just about everybody.
Motion gaming goes next-gen. If you ask Nintendo, motion gaming is so 2006, but Microsoft and Sony finally got on board with their own competing products: Kinect and PlayStation Move. Both are system add-ons, and both have been selling great, though truly great games have still yet to arrive.
The internet TV box breaks through. The internet has been threatening to take over our TV viewing experience for decades, but this year it finally got a taste of victory. Thanks primarily to the ubiquity of Netflix, we've been watching a lot less cable this year. Of course, hardware helped as well, with Google TV, Apple TV, Boxee Box, and Roku products all making a bid for living room primacy. No one has the perfect box just yet, but it feels so close we can taste it.
The infamous rise and fall of the Kin. While Microsoft's cancellation of the Courier was a disappointment, the entire Kin saga is just plain embarrassing. Microsoft's splintered, competitive corporate culture pushed a sub-par product to market, and nobody but Microsoft's top brass seemed surprised that it was an utter failure at retail and as a product.
Foxconn and a little bit of perspective. While we got plenty of goodies this year, we also saw a bit of the "seedy underbelly" of how our $200 supercomputers get made. Reports of suicides at Foxconn (who produces most Apple products, among many other things) raised the issue of low wages, long hours, and difficult working conditions. After months of bad press (and innumerable "exposes"), Foxconn raised wages and improved conditions somewhat. It's still hard to feel fully satisfied with the results, but our prickly collective conscience seems somewhat sated for now.
Google's little Nexus experiment. When we scored the very first Nexus One review it was hard to tell where we were going with this phone: was Google really going to reinvent the phone distribution model and circumvent the carriers at last? Turns out, not so much. Google backed off its "experiment," and has been playing super nice with carriers ever since. Now the Nexus S is here, a T-Mobile and Best Buy exclusive, to show that Google isn't out of the self-branded phone game, it's just not planning on winning.
HP buys Palm, disinherits the Slate. HP has been chafing at its Windows bonds for a while now, and 2010 made the tension clear. After letting Steve Ballmer show off the Slate tablet at CES, in a weak sort of "we have a tablet, too" before the iPad arrived, HP ended up buying a struggling Palm and changing its tune entirely. The Slate turned into an enterprise-oriented device (after being shown displaying a copy of Twilight at CES, as pictured above), and HP started gearing up for webOS-based tablets. We're still waiting for Palm to build a phone that can fulfill the promise of webOS, and the jury's still out as to whether HP is a knight in shining armor, or a too-large, printers-obsessed millstone for this once darling of the industry. Android tablets crowd at the gates. Apple re-purposed its touchscreen operating system for use on the iPad, so it made sense that Android tablets would rise as a natural competitor. The story has been much more complicated than that, however, with a tension between manufacturers who are perfectly capable of building tablet hardware (and boy are they trying), and Google, who has yet to realize a tablet-specific version of Android. Caught in the crossfire was the Galaxy Tab, a good tablet that wasn't quite a great tablet. Next year will bring Motorola's first tablet and the major Android overhaul dubbed "Honeycomb," but for now the time of the Android tablet is not at hand.
The e-reader price war. While innovations like the Nook Color and the ever-improving Kindle did much to bolster e-reader sales, the biggest innovation was much more simple: price. Amazon and Barnes & Noble engaged in a bloody price war, and the consumers won. Amazon just announced that its latest Kindle (now as cheap as $139) has vaulted past the seventh Harry Potter book as Amazon's best selling product ever, a mark well into the tens of millions.
3D tries for the living room. This was the year that you thought about buying a 3D TV but didn't. Or, this is the year where you bought a nice TV and later found out it was 3D-capable. For the most part, none of us could afford the premium 3D models, or the 3D glasses necessary to enjoy them, but we all could've bought a 3D TV set, 3D Blu-ray player (like a PS3), and a set of glasses and gone to town if we'd wanted to. And that's gotta count for something, right? Nintendo's 3DS takes off the glasses. We might look back on 2010 and 2009 as the years that Sony and Nintendo lost their duopoly on the handheld gaming market, as iOS and Android entered scene, but Nintendo is hardly out yet. It unveiled the 3DS this year, a handheld gaming device with a glasses-free 3D screen. It was a sign of significant innovation and risk taking from a company that seems to do those things only a few times a decade.
4G and "4G." So 3D is a tough sell -- we have to pay for it outright -- but we've been paying carriers for years (in the form of big, hefty margins) to build out next-generation networks, and it really started to happen this year. Sprint launched its WiMAX network in a big way (including phones like the EVO and Epic), T-Mobile redubbed its HSPA+ efforts "4G," and Verizon just turned on some LTE. It's a whole lot of bandwidth, and we're finding plenty of use for it, trust us. Nokia stumbles and bumbles. If you took a cursory glance at our year in coverage of Nokia, you might think we have it in for the company. Unfortunately, it's really been that bad of a year for the Finnish giant, struggling to maintain mindshare in the smartphone market, even as it dominates the low-end. CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was pushed out, The Symbian Foundation failed in its shepherding of the OS, and Nokia's flagship N8 handset was received poorly by reviewers and consumers who wanted something a bit more modern. The great hope for next year is MeeGo, but Nokia has a lot of ground to cover in a smartphone market that already feels overcrowded.
Video calling is cool again. Just when we thought we were bored with video calls and the awkward faux-eyecontact they entail, phones started getting front-facing cameras and putting us back in the video call saddle. Sprint was at the forefront, with its EVO 4G and Epic 4G, while T-Mobile's MyTouch 4G joined in later on (all relying on Qik for service). Apple's lack of 4G kept the iPhone 4 to WiFi calls only (at least, unless you hack it), but Apple easily won the award for "most adorable video calling ad."

And that's it from us, but we're sure there's something you'd like to add. That's what comments are for! Let us know what stories made 2010 for you.

View the original article here