Friends, back before 9/11, when I was dopey kid, I bought a plastic shiv at a gun show with my Dad. Why? Because back in the 1980s there was less fluoride in the water and kids generally didn’t bring guns to school. I don’t know. Apparently giving a 13-year-old a shiv back then was OK.

Anyway, this shiv was designed to get past metal detectors, just like these ridiculous looking Lexan knuckle-dusters. While the average person would say “Huh, that’s stupid,” Cleaveland reporter Douchey McUpinarms feels they are the dirty bomb of the West Market, making cole slaw of heads from here to Akron.

Kids and the criminal-minded will use anything to beat your head in. They’ll jab you with a pencil or beat you with a bottle. Just because it’s plastic and it looks like a weapon and you somehow ban it doesn’t make you any safer. Some kid will buy a plastic shiv and stick you and then you’ve got another issue to contend with… and another and another. Education not alarm, people. Education not alarm.

via BBG

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I may or may not participate when the tour comes to NYC. I’m still without axes for my copy of GH3. But I know some of you (Shanee) rock at GH so you better brush up and get ready to rumble. Winners will get prizes that probably aren’t that cool unless it’s free iPods, but I guess iTunes gift cards are okay. If you want to participate then you need to visit the participating stores and sign up.

Mall of America (Bloomington, MN), 3/1 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
San Francisco (Stockton St.), 3/15 2 p.m – 4 p.m.
Pasadena (Colorado Blvd.), 3/15 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
International Plaza (Tampa, FL), 3/15 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Crossgates (Albany, NY), 3/15 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
North Shore (Peabody, MA), 3/15 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Memorial City (Houston, TX), 3/15 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
North Michigan Avenue (Chicago, IL), 3/22 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Third Street Promenade (Santa Monica, CA), 3/22 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Fifth Avenue (New York, NY), 3/22 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Soho (New York, NY), 4/1 or 4/2 6:30 p.m. TBD

Aspyr

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What it does

While a handful of general professional networking sites may exist, Orglex caters to many very specific crowds- the website is a networking site for industry verticals. Industries range from media and advertising to financial services to automotive, and within each category are potentially dozens more subsections. Under each “hub,” as they are so called, Orglex aggregates the relevant headlines of the day, serves up new job postings in the industry, is a database for professionals in the field, and a publisher of industry-specific blogs. Featured employers include AT&T, citigroup, and Kaiser Permanente.

In their own words

“Orglex is a start up working on delivering relevant content about your industry or organization. Our technology scans the web and automatically delivers the appropriate content (news, blogs, jobs, people, buzz and more...) to your industry or organization hub.”

Why it might be a killer

Orglex is a site that is useful for everyone. It is a one-stop hub for daily news, and to search for jobs or communicate with others in the industry- across hundreds of fields. In the future, the site could be the go-to place for professionals in any of these featured industries.

Some questions

Can users set up a function so different but interrelated industries can be combined? (For example, a technology PR firm may be interested in “magazines” and “telecom.”) Also, how active is the social component of the site?

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Filed under: Cellphones

We'll be honest with you -- it's a bit disheartening to watch the (seemingly) inevitable happen to Helio. After all, it's managed to soldier on despite hordes of other MVNOs hanging it up here in the US of A. Nevertheless, data gleaned from EarthLink's most recent annual report shed some light on its deteriorating situation. Reportedly, Helio's net loss "widened by 41.3-percent to $326.6 million in 2007 compared to $191.8 million in 2006," yet revenues managed to grow 267-percent to $171 million from $46.6 million the year prior and subscriber growth rose 28-percent over last quarter to 180,000. Add those figures to the $42 or so million it lost in 2005, and we're up to a grand total just south of 560 million American dollars. Tough times, indeed.

[Via Silicon Alley Insider]

 

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PayPal, darling of the Internet, has warned its users to steer clear of Apple’s Safari Web browser because it doesn’t support anti-phishing technologies. (IE 7 and the upcoming Firefox 3.0 do, however.) Specifically, PayPal says Safari’s lack of support for Extended Validation Certificate, a technology that turns the address bar green when visiting a “safe” site. The Apple-created browser also doesn’t warn users when they’re visiting a potentially dangerous site (independent of the green bar trick).

Putting aside the whole “use common sense when you browse the Web” argument, Apple probably should include some form of anti-phishing in Safari; not everyone who browses the Web are as savvy we (I assume you’re all heavy users) are. Even though a joint Microsoft-Stanford study concluded that people wouldn’t notice the green address bar unless properly trained, what’s the harm in including it? Unless, I don’t know, that would open Apple up to some sort of lawsuit along the lines of, “Your anti-phishing technology failed to work properly, leading me to [something bad].”

And as long as we’re on the topic of Web browsers, I’ve started to use the nightly WebKit builds. It’s Safari, but with the latest rendering engine (WebKit) under the hood. Seems snappier than regular Safari. Give it a shot. The icon’s nicer, too.

PayPal warns: Steer clear of Apple’s Safari browser [InfoWorld]

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Microsoft has been in acquisition discussions with email startup Xobni, we’ve confirmed through multiple sources. The company, which launched at the TechCrunch40 conference last year, currently offers an outlook plugin for Windows users that significantly improves the desktop email experience (particularly search).

Microsoft may have first approached the company months ago and floated an offer of sub $20 million, which was apparently rejected. But the company, which recently hired notable Yahoo’er Jeff Bonforte as CEO, is now back at the table with Microsoft corporate development.

Xobni currently only works with Outlook, although the company has said they will extend to integrate with other email clients, instant messaging applications, and social networks in the future. The current product creates an information profile for each person you interact with, and surfaces historical information that is relevant to what you are working on. Xobni displays contact information, threaded conversations, attachments, related people, email usage statistics, and information from the web. See our post from January with a more detailed overview of the service.

The company was founded in 2006 by Adam Smith and Matt Brezina, with early funding from Y Combinator. Other investors include Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Ron Conway and Baseline Ventures, Atomico Investments, Paul Buchheit, Ariel Poler, Saar Gur, and Tom Pinckney.

Xobni has not yet responded to our request for comment.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

It’s always weird that a business can lose money during a year but still call it a success. Such is the case with MVNO Helio, which saw $327million go down the tubes in 2007. The thing is, that was less than Helio had forecast, as it stated losses in 2007 should be $340-$360 million.

The other good news is that it beat its own estimates in revenue, expecting $140-$170 million, but actually ending up with $171 million. It’s not much, but its the kind of things that point to a healthy growth.

Couple with the recent restructuring and attractive rate plans and value-added services, Helio’s well ahead of its own roadmap for growth. 2008 is looking like it will be good for the MVNO, and 2009 is going to be the make or break point, as that’s the year Helio has likely picked as its time to make a profit.

Helio: $560 Million In The Hole [Alley Insider]

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Twing is a new forums search tool that’s getting ready to officially launch next week. When I first read the email Twing sent over, I was immediately reminded of a forums search I covered a few days ago, Dipiti, though I must say there are a few notable differences between the two search engines.

Dipiti has a large focus on user interaction for the purpose of modifying the search results based on human feedback. Twing, on the other hand, is hoping to flex its algorithmic muscles and serve up he best forums search results on the web, with personalization options. With these personalization options, like email alerts and following options, Twing is inadvertently collecting data that can be used for improving its algorithm, but it appears that the new search site is decidedly avoiding the human-filtered approach.

That being said, I was happy to see a rather extensive filtering sidebar that’s present for narrowing down all of your search results. Modify existing searches by category, forum name, exact phrase inclusion or exclusion, and more. This is helpful in the sense that it lets you sift through the forums without having to read through all of them. I hate sifting through forums in order to find one measly answer, even with Google caching and Firefox’s “Find” function. That was one issue I brought up during my review of Dipiti, and it’s on I’m going to bring up again in regards to Twing.

Even with the filtering options that Twing provides, there are still no caching options once I make my way to the forum itself. I know that this is something most search engines don’t (and can’t) do, so I can only commend Twing on its filtering efforts pertaining to all searches performed on its site. There are some interactive forums you can partake in on Twing itself, but this is largely for Twing-related discussions. Otherwise, the ease with which you can personalize Twing could be improved on, but in all it looks like Twing is moving in the right direction.

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What it does

Do you want to gather more data on the visitors to your website or blog? Do you want to retain the control that is associated with open source projects? If so, then piwik is just the site for you. The application aims to be the open source competitor to Google Analytics, and has a variety of widgets to give the program a run for its money. In its basic format, there are four different categories- dashboard, visitors, actions, and referrers. Beneath each section are a variety of analytical widgets (that the administrator can delete, add, or create as they see fit) that can be listed in a variety of ways (bar graph, pie charts, simple writing).

In their own words

“piwik is an open source (GPL license) web analytics software. It gives interesting reports on your website visitors, your popular pages, the search engines keywords they used, the language they speak… and so much more.”

Why it might be a killer

piwik is informative and free. However, these characteristics could also apply to Google Analytics- the user control (and ability to improve the program) is the main appeal of the site. Beyond that, the program is intuitive and easy to use.

Some questions

At the moment, data tables are shown in sets of five. Can the lists be expanded?

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