Spigit, the platform for smart social interaction used for businesses and enterprises, is holding its first Entrepreneur Challenge, which is a collaborative competition for seeking out innovative ideas and startups. Keiretsu Forum Social is the primary sponsor of this challenge, and Mashable is a co-sponsor along with Sun Microsystems and Southwest airlines.

Spigit’s platform will be utilized for the Entrepreneur Challenge, as it enables conversations, the ability for submission and evaluation of business models, and the option to invest in these companies with Spigit’s virtual stock market, which takes advantage of another of Spigit’s tools for the improvement of business concepts.

To join the challenge, submit your business or idea on Spigit and begin participating on the site. The top 6, based on site activity and interest from the community, will be chosen to present to Keiretsu Investors for funding opportunities. Get started here.

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Welcome to Bizarro World, people. In the land of the rising sun, the Wii is undisputed king. Well, the DS is really, but we’re talking consoles here. Apparently some kind of Star Trek-type time-space continuum warp has resulted in a distortion of reality, and 183,217 PS3s were sold during November, topping the 159,193 Wiis sold during the same month. Gentle reader, I am as shocked as you are. Shocked and appalled! Of course, inter-dimensional hijinks aside, the long-expected releases of such games as Assassin’s Creed, Uncharted, and Need For Speed: Prostreet might have had something to do with it.

PS3 tops Wii in Japan for first time [Yahoo! News]

Filed under: Handhelds

What is it with this sick pleasure we derive from watching beloved devices torn to pieces by ruthless uber-nerds? Who knows, but it certainly isn't getting old just yet. Amazon's Kindle got just such treatment at the hands of RapidRepair, and if you're one of those doubters that was never quite sold on the Kindle's quirky 90's aesthetic, maybe this will change your mind. Or not.

[Via The Raw Feed]

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Three years ago, Google announced an ambitious effort to scan millions of book in order to create a search engine that would do for books what the original Google search engine did for the web. The debate quickly ran into criticism from publishers who claimed the program was an infringement of Google's copyright. Others pointed out that Google's activities were well within the bounds of fair use. The debate has continued on and off ever since. Ars Technica points us to the latest round of this debate. On one side is economist Paul Courant, who was the provost of the University of Michigan when the University became one of Google's first library partners and is now the University's librarian. In his newly created blog, he vigorously defends Michigan's participation in the Google project, pointing out that Google will have the entire seven-million-volume collection digitized within six years, for free, while the competing Open Content Alliance charges "thousands of dollars to digitize books at a rate of tens of thousands of volumes a year." The University of Virginia's Siva Vaidhyanathan responds with a number of criticisms of the deal. In addition to copyright concerns, he's got a number of concerns about what Google will do with the digitized books. He worries about whether Google's search results will be fair, whether Google will promptly correct scanning quality problems, and whether Google will do a good enough job of preserving the files over the long term, and so forth.

These are somewhat puzzling concerns to raise at all given that Google has historically been absolutely obsessive about improving the quality of its search results and archiving useful data. But it also ignores a more fundamental point: Michigan, and Google's other library projects, aren't granting Google exclusive access to anything. Under the terms of the Google-Michigan agreement, Google returns each book after scanning it, and Michigan is free to sign up with other scanning projects, including Google's competitors. It's true that Michigan has agreed not to share the Google-created digital files with others. But the important point here is that those files wouldn't exist at all if not for the agreement. It would hardly be reasonable to expect Google to spend tens of millions of dollars to create digital files that would immediately be available to Google's competitors.

In short, Google is anything but a monopoly. There are already competing book-scanning efforts under way, and if Google's project is a success we can expect more such efforts to be launched in the future. And because Google isn't a monopoly, it doesn't make sense for universities to treat it like one by trying to micromanage every aspect of the service it ultimately offers. In the unlikely event that Google Book Search turns out to be a lousy product, consumers will punish Google by switching to the competing offerings of Microsoft, Yahoo, or others. It's pointless to try to force Google to produce a high-quality product when its competitors already give it plenty of reasons to do so.

Vaidhyanathan also characterizes the Michigan scanning program as "massive corporate welfare," but this, again, doesn't make a lot of sense. The vast majority of the books Google is scanning spend most of their time sitting on shelves unread. In principle, Google is no different from any other library patron: it checks out books, reads them, and returns them. The only difference is that it's doing it on a much larger scale than a normal library patron would. But there's no evidence that Michigan has been playing favorites. If another company approaches Michigan seeking to scan its books on the same terms, and is turned down, then people would have strong grounds for criticism. But that doesn't appear to have happened. Google's just made the best offer so far. The "corporate welfare" label just doesn't fit.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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U.K.-based peer to peer lending startup Zopa is gearing up for their U.S. launch. Reports of the launch have been circulating for some time (WSJ), but now it seems only days away. The service will be available at us.zopa.com, but is currently under password protection.

Zopa’s peer to peer lending service differs from U.S. rivals by working with credit unions to offer person-to-person loans instead of a loans coming directly from lenders on the service like Prosper and Lending Club (works through Facebook). GlobalFunder.com is a yet-to-launch competitor. With Zopa, lenders will place their money in Zopa branded CDs that are then loaned out online. Borrowers apply for loans through their online community by posting their case for the loan and filling out relevant details about their credit risk. Interest rates on five year loans can range from 8.75% to 16.99%, depending on their credit risk.

It’s worth noting that Zopa’s investor, Benchmark also invested in Prosper. The lending market is anticipated to be very large. According to the research firm Online Banking Report, around $100 million in new P2P loans will be issued this year, mostly by Prosper, with new loans growing to as much as $1 billion in 2010 and $9 billion in 2017. Prosper already registered an S-1 with the SEC and reported $96.4 million in loans.

Adding further details to the launch, Allen Stern received an email outlining some differences between the U.S. and U.K. (which TCUK covered) versions. The key differences listed are:

• No risk for investors.
  Your funds will be federally insured. No more worrying about whether your borrowers will pay your loan back.
• Pick who you want to help.
  Investors will choose exactly who they want to help.
• Set your rate.
  Investors will choose how much they want to earn, up to a ceiling.
• No waiting.
  Borrowers will get their loans immediately upon approval.
• Lower your monthly payment.
  Borrowers can actually reduce their loan payments after they’ve borrowed. They’ll do that using rich profiles…

cb_widget_report_widget("cb_widget_1196448181"); cb_widget_report_element("cb_widget_0_1196448181","prosper"); cb_widget_report_element("cb_widget_1_1196448181","zopa"); cb_widget_report_element("cb_widget_2_1196448181","lendingclub");

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Filed under: Gaming

Doesn't Nintendo know we've got a bit of a weight problem going on over here Stateside? The company just released its highly-anticipated Wii Fit in Japan today, which will most likely sell like gangbusters, while simultaneously symbolizing the death of the hardcore gamer in Nintendo land to a small portion of the faithful not completely won over by Miyamoto's latest charming contraption. Unfortunately, the Wii Fit won't crossing any oceans until early next year. Nintendo's official Japan street date for Wii Fit was December 1st, but it seems that at least a few online shops are disregarding that pesky fact.

[Via Wii News]

Read - Buy at Play-Asia
Read - Buy at Amazon Japan
Read - Buy at Success-HK

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

I’m not going to get into the details of this story, it’s best if you just click the link and read. Pay attention, because after the part where the 35-year old guy pretending to be a 20-year old guy convinces the college girl to have sex with the real person to get back the video tape of her doing college hockey players earlier, it gets weird.

Local man charged with blackmailing woman for sex [The Press Republican]

Another company leaves the grip of Apple’s iTunes, though this time it’s not a record label. It’s Pepsi. After running a Super Bowl promotion for free iTunes downloads in 2004, Pepsi is gearing up to dole out more free music next year–with Amazon. Another promo that will be announced at the Super Bowl, the deal between Pepsi and Amazon has a few implications on the larger music industry and how it’s treating downloads.

Pushing for Sony and WMG to go DRM-free

EMI and UMG content will be available for DRM-free downloads on Amazon, but not Sony BMG or WMG. Should Pepsi’s promo with Amazon be successful, it could further influence Sony and WMG to adopt DRM-free downloads in mp3 format. And with reports of Wal-Mart planning to pull all Windows Media compatible downloads while requesting music labels to provide DRM-free downloads, the pressure on the record labels is coming from all sides.

One possible hold-up on any brash decisions made by Sony and WMG could be the still-pending status of UMG’s decision to permanently adopt the mp3 format for download distribution of its content. So what we’re left with is the usual: everyone but the record labels is pushing for change.

Accept Alternative Sales Options from Advertising, Already!

The success of Pepsi’s promo with Amazon could hint at some alternative ways to leverage advertising to supplement music downloads. According to reports, this still isn’t good enough for the record labels, as the price paid per download for the promo would be about 25-30 cents less than a regular download from a consumer. With the upcoming promo maxing out its free downloads at 1 billion, why the hesitance from record labels to agree to bulk rates? Just take the money and find more ways, like Pepsi’s promos, to get your content downloaded!

[via billboard]

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Good afternoon. Hey, what ever happened to riding your bicycle like a normal human being, using it as a method to get you from Point A to Point B and, on the weekends, Point C? I don’t know and I don’t much care. If loading a 20-pound bike up with 200 pounds of stereo equipment brings joy to someone’s life, I say GO FOR IT! If your hundred-some dollar bike has $4000 worth of gear strapped to it, I say YES!!

More information and photos (some of which are truly amazing) at the link below.

Bicycles That Carry Powerful Beats, and Even a Rider or Two [New York Times]

Filed under: GPS

The European Union's next generation satellite navigation system has finally gotten to green light from all involved parties... except Spain. As we reported in July, the project had gotten the high five from US interests, but the works had been stalled as Spain fought to maintain a control center in Madrid. In the end, 26 of the 27 member states of the Union decided to move forward with the project, declining Spain's request, and leaving them to bow out of the agreement. As of now, there will only be control centers in Germany and Italy, but the project will begin to move forward once again, with a launch slated for 2013. Says EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot, "Galileo will become the spearhead for European technology." We're all for the new system, but we hope a few satellites don't spark another Thirty Years' War.

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!