Daily Bits

Crunchpad Renamed Joo Joo, Launching this Friday

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Nevermind if the name is weirder than the previous Crunchpad. And nevermind if it will no longer be released under TechCrunch Michael Arrington’s tutelage – but the controversial tablet PC, now christened Joo Joo is definitely coming out on Dec 11.

After last week’s announcement by Arrington that Crunchpad was already dead, its manufacturer Fusion Garage finally came out to clear things out and officially announced that they will push they will release the controversial Tablet under the new name – JooJoo.

Fusion Garage promises that JooJoo will get users connected to the Internet in 9 seconds.  How is that possible?  That’s because  Joo Joo will boot directly to the Internet instead of going through the usual OS boot..

Other features of the Joo Joo include Wi-Fi  and full HD video capability as well as  built-in e-book capabilities. The Joo Joo will still have a 12.1-inch touchscreen. Pre-orders will commence on Friday and the Joo Joo is expected to hit the streets at around $499.

The question now, is whether the Joo Joo will be as successful now that it is no longer connected with TechCrunch? Does Fusion Garage have the marketing arm to properly and effectively sell the Joo Joo?

Spread the Joys of Christmas with CardFunk’s Greeting Cards

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If you don’t feel like making a fool out of yourselves and other people are using JibJab, you might want to try out CardFunk.com instead. Like JibJab, CardFunk offers several Christmas-related interactive greeting cards which you can try out for free.

Just a brief backgrounder, CardFunk is a site where you can transform yourself into dancing characters by using your own photos. It lets you select different Christmas tunes as a music backdrop, add personal messages and then share your greetings via email, or social networking sites and even on your blogs.

Just in time for Christmas, CardFunk has launched several Christmas-inspired themes – Dancing Christmas Toys, Christmas With the Stars and Wild West Christmas.

Christmas with the Stars spoofs Holywood icons and legends including Elvis, Marilyn and Bob Marley. Dancing Christmas Toys lets you spoof other movie characters including Jack Sparrow, Betty Boop, Wonder Woman and more while Wild West Chistmas lets you create dancing cowboys or cowgirls complete with country music in the background.

Twitter’s New Mobile-Optimized Site Might Kill Third-Party Apps

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A post at the Twitter blog  has just just revealed a surprising fact – there are still many Twitter users who access their account on their mobile phones using Twitter’s mobile site.  So, to make their experiences more pleasant Twitter has just revamped its mobile browser-optimized site. m2-medlyIt was really surprising that there are still many Twitter users who access their account through the old mobile site despite the fact that there are several third party Twitter apps available. Whether you are using an iPhone, Android phone, Nokia S60 and Palm Web OS phones, you will surely find one or two Twitter apps that you can download for free or for a minimal fee.

Anyway, the new Twitter mobile browser-optimized can be found by pointing your phone’s browser to http://mobile.twitter.com. And one thing I can say about this new site is that it’s an all new look – almost similar to how Twitter apps look and feel like.

Feature-wise the new mobile site offers just about the basic stuff that you can do on Twitter – post tweets, view DMs, Retweet tweets and more. What it won’t allow you to do is to access multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. But if you’re just using one Twitter account, the new mobile site has enough features to please you.

This made wonder whether Twitter is hitting on the third-party apps that have kept the interest of mobile users into using Twitter on their mobile phones? Like I said, the new Twitter mobile site is as good as what you can get from those third-party apps.

So, if you haven’t downloaded any third-party Twitter app, would you be using this new mobile site instead?

Coke Takes Facebook App for a Spin, Launches Own Facial Profiler App

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Coca-Cola is testing the effectivity of social media anew when it comes to establishing a branding campaign. And their latest foray? – none other than a Facebook App called Facial Profiler which could either rock on to your senses and make you believe that it’s actually cool to drink Coke Zero or simply annoy you out of your wits for adding to the Facebook noise. [Read more…] about Coke Takes Facebook App for a Spin, Launches Own Facial Profiler App

New York Times Brings Newspaper-Like Reading via Times Skimmer

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In a galant effort to bring in renewed interest to newspaper service, at least via the online platform, New York Times has launched its Times Skimmer application. Ironically, this new application will remind you of how it feels to read daily news as if you were reading the traditional newspaper.

[Read more…] about New York Times Brings Newspaper-Like Reading via Times Skimmer