General

Sony Retires the Cassette Walkman After 30 Years

After retiring the floppy disk in March, Sony has halted the manufacture and distribution of another now-obsolete technology: the cassette Walkman, the first low-cost, portable music player.

The final batch was shipped to Japanese retailers in April, according to IT Media. Once these units are sold, new cassette Walkmans will no longer be available through the manufacturer.

The first generation Walkman (which was called the Soundabout in the U.S., and the Stowaway in the UK) was released on July 1, 1979 in Japan. Although it later became a huge success, it only sold 3,000 units in its first month. Sony managed to sell some 200 million iterations of the cassette Walkman over the product line’s 30-year career.

Somewhat ironically, the announcement was delivered just one day ahead of the iPod’s ninth anniversary on October 23, although the decline of the cassette Walkman is attributed primarily to the explosive popularity of CD players in the ’90s, not the iPod.

Google Celegrates Dizzy Gillespie 93rd birthday

Dizzy Gillespie, the seminal American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer and composer born John Birks Gillespie, would have turned 93 today.

Google are celebrating his birthday by featuring a Google doodle image of the jazz pioneer on their homepage.

Ubercabe – The future of Online Taxi Ordering?

UberCab is an on demand car service that allows you to request, track and ride with ultimate convenience. Payment is cashless and hassle free.

Genius Idea: It’s not as if urban cities such as San Francisco are ever devoid of cabbies or car service drivers — they’re out there, just never when you really need a ride. And then when you do manage to hail a ride, you better be carrying cash lest you want to get the evil eye from the driver.

Young startup UberCab has set out to tackle these transportation travails one city at a time, starting in San Francisco.

UberCab is equal one part iPhone app, one part web service and one part SMS command-driven operation. Once you register for the service, you can then use either option to request car service, get a speedy turnaround pickup, track the progress of your pending ride and automatically pay via the app with the credit card you have on file.

UberCab rates are typically 1.5 times the cost of taxi fare, but the service guarantees prompt arrival within minutes and delivers a much more luxurious vehicle so you can ride in style.

What’s interesting about UberCab is that the iPhone application [iTunes link] More >

Create an Instant SMS Chatroom on Your Phone

Name: GroupMe

Quick Pitch: GroupMe makes life easy for you and your groups with free group texting. It’s your real life network, in your pocket.

Genius Idea: There are plenty of mobile applications that support group texting — even the once location-focused Brightkite (Brightkite) has entered the space — but GroupMe’s approach is by far the simplest. The SMS-based and device-independent service also has the most potential to connect real life friends and family members through group texting.

You can use GroupMe to start a private chat with groups of up to 25 people. Enter your name and phone number on GroupMe’s website to get started. The service will follow up with a text message from a unique phone number — that phone number will serve as your group’s number for texts and conference calls. You, and all other group members, can then add group members via SMS using the syntax “#add name phone number.”

Other SMS hashtag commands include #list to see a list of all group members in the chat, #name to set or change your name and, most importantly, #mute to mute or unmute the texts.

iPhone (iPhone) users can optionally download the GroupMe iPhone app to manage their groups and add More >