Thursday, April 9, 2009
Smarty Pig Can Fly and Bluetooth 3.0

The current economic downturn is the perfect opportunity for this social banking service to go mobile.

SmartyPig's accounts are securely held in West Bank, they get a 3.05% interest rate and customers can get discount on their purchase from top retailers such as Best Buy or Amazon. If you are one of those who already uses some sort of financial management system for other things you don't have to worry. Integration is easy peasy. You can integrate your SmartyPig account into your preferred financial money management site like Mint, Geezeo, Wesabe, Rudder, Yodlee, Buxfer, and Expensr.

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TunesBag is essentially a social music player that can best be compared to the likes of Lala, imeem and Anywhere.fm in the sense that it allows you to upload your entire MP3 collection, stream it from anywhere over the Internet and share it with your friends. It's completely free and claims to be perfectly legal under Austrian law. I imagine if they were able to outsmart of the rippers from getting their hands on those files it would remain legal since it's a stream and not something anyone could actually burn and download and sell, right?

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We've seen no official word from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, but phonescoop has it that the Bluetooth 3.0 specification is just about ready for prime time. Reportedly, the spec will feature "dramatically increased speeds, allowing for the transfer of large video files, music collections and photo libraries wirelessly within seconds."

Bluetooth 3.0 will reportedly transfer files at rates of 480 megabits (60 Megabytes) per second in close proximity, and 100 megabits (12.5 Megabytes) per second at 10 meters. At those speeds, high-quality streaming video is a definite possibility, along with a host of other applications that are simply impractical with the current transfer rates.

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Will Wright, the lead designer behind the phenomenally successful Sims franchise, announced today that he has left EA Maxis to start a new project that isn't directly attached to game development.

The Spore designer will instead be heading up a new entertainment think-tank called Stupid Fun Club which, though it has the backing and support of Electronic Arts, does not seem to be directly linked to the publisher.

According to Wright the purpose of Stupid Fun Club will be to develop new ideas and IPs that can used across all forms of entertainment and interactive media. While one application is obviously the creation of new video games, the group will also look at movies, TV, books, comics, internet sites and physical toys.

"The entertainment industry is moving rapidly into an era of revolutionary change," Will said in an announcement. "Stupid Fun Club will explore new possibilities that are emerging from this sublime chaos and create new forms of entertainment on a variety of platforms. In my twelve years at EA, I've had the pleasure to work alongside some of the brightest and most talented game developers in the industry and I look forward to working with them again in the near future."

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  • Written by: Christy"
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