RockMelt! A Mysterious Browser

Have you met RockMelt? Neither have most people, it seems -- but the Web is definitely a-buzzin' with word of the mysterious new browser. Thanks to a high-profile story in The New York Times , RockMelt's rapidly becoming the talk of the tech community.

So what exactly is RockMelt, and who's behind it? Most of the available info is sketchy at best. If you piece it all together, though, you can get a very rough picture of what the browser might be about. Here's a roundup of what's been revealed so far.

1. RockMelt's founders are two former Opsware employees.

The guys reportedly creating RockMelt are Tim Howe and Eric Vishria, both of whom used to work at networking company Opsware. Opsware was founded by Netscape creator Marc Andreessen and sold to HP in 2007.

2. Andreessen himself may be involved with RockMelt.

Andreessen is investing in RockMelt, according to unnamed sources quoted by The New York Times. Andreessen apparently alluded to the project in an interview earlier this summer as well, telling The Times he had "backed a really good team." Within minutes, The Times reports, Andreessen "appeared to regret his comment" and declined to elaborate any further.

3. RockMelt will be "different" from other browsers.

It's a vague statement, but Andreessen is quoted as telling The Times RockMelt would stand out from the pack of browsers currently on the market, focusing somehow on the "network of complex Web sites and applications" into which the Internet has evolved.

4. RockMelt may feature some kind of Facebook integration.

One of the areas of focus may involve some kind of social network integration. A Times reporter claims to have seen references to a RockMelt-Facebook relationship in a privacy policy once posted on the RockMelt home page. (The policy is no longer accessible from the site.) The reporter says the policy discussed the presence of features tied to a user's Facebook ID, including built-in access to Facebook updates and other content.

The idea of a Facebook relationship is echoed by materials published by tech blog ReadWriteWeb. The blog's lead writer, Marshall Kirkpatrick, says he obtained an early build of RockMelt. He calls it a "semi-independent desktop client for Facebook," offering a screenshot as an illustration.


Despite those reports, Facebook is denying knowledge of any kind of formal relationship with the startup. A Facebook spokesperson has gone on the record as saying the company is "not aware of any details about RockMelt and its product."

5. RockMelt may have its own URL shortener.

RockMelt has registered the domain me.lt as a URL shortener, ReadWriteWeb's Kirkpatrick claims. He says the domain was referenced on the RockMelt home page up until early this week.

According to DNS records, the me.lt domain was registered on April 16 of this year under the name "Klute-Thiemann Informationstechnologie GmbH & Co. KG." As of now, it points to a generic server landing page.

6. RockMelt's team is staying decidedly quiet.

The guys involved with RockMelt definitely don't want to say much about it. Eric Vishria tells The Times he and his group are "at very early stages of development," adding: "Talking about it at this stage is not useful." (www.pcworld.com)

Nokia Introduces Booklet 3G 'Mini' Laptop

Nokia rocked the world by introducing its spin on the laptop, called the Booklet 3G. If you're the rude sort (like us) you could call it a fancy netbook, what with its Atom processor and 10.1-inch display, but that screen is higher res than your average Eee, and it also sports integrated 3G wireless and a hot-swappable SIM card, so it's definitely trying to define its own niche. It looks to be running Windows 7, which isn't particularly netbooky, and also has integrated A-GPS with a copy of Ovi Maps, HDMI output, a rated 12 hour battery life, and the usual Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, all in a 2cm (.78 inch), 2.7lb aluminum body that's understated, sophisticated, and should make most Nokia fans very happy -- Nokia fans who are looking for a tiny laptop, anyway. There's a fancy promotional video after the break, and while we don't have any anticipated release date or price just yet, we'll be learning more at Nokia World 09 on September 2. (www.engadget.com)

Garmin's First Windows Mobile Phone

GPS device manufacturer Garmin teamed up with electronic vendor Asustek Computer to create their first Windows Mobile smartphone which launched earlier this week in Taiwan. The phone, the Nuvifone M20, features a 2.8-inch touchscreen, a 3.0-megapixel camera, 4GB of flash memory, QWERTY keyboard, a full web browser, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a Qualcomm 7200A 528MH CPU. The phone’s camera also automatically geotags photos with date, time, and location data.

Of course, the phone features Garmin software for turn-by-turn directions in addition to other pre-installed applications like Microsoft Office and a location-based social networking platform called Ciao!TM that integrates various social networks into one interface.

What’s really cool are all the included location-based applications that deliver info like real-time traffic updates, gas prices, flight times, weather, White Pages and local search.

The phone is currently available in Taiwan and Hong Kong and will soon arrive in Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, and then later this year in Europe. No word yet on the U.S. (www.on10.net)

Twitter To Add Geo-Tagging

Micro-blogging service Twitter adds features that to allow users to add their location to their status updates, adding to speculation about how the service will make money.

Twitter is adding the ability to geo-tag individual updates Twitter is bringing easy geo-tagging to the popular micro-blogging service, and it adds another possible way that the service might be able to make money.

Writing on the company's blog, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote:

We're gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won't be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.

As Stone mentioned in his post, third party developers like Germany's Twibble have already produced geo-location services for Twitter. They relied on information pulled from the location details in users' profiles or from location information in the form of latitude and longitude or hash tags in the tweet itself.

Twibble's mobile client was specifically designed add the location information by pulling the data from the GPS radios in smartphones. It is a relatively easy process, but it has its drawbacks. Updating my profile location took a few steps in addition to posting a tweet, which became cumbersome if I was moving a lot, and embedding my coordinates or a location hash tag in the tweet itself took up precious characters. Hopefully, the geo-location API will make the process much easier and embed the meta-data in my tweets in such a way as to leave all of my 140 characters. (www.guardian.co.uk)

LifeCam Cinema HD Unveiled

Microsoft just unveiled the latest in their line of LifeCam devices, the LifeCam Cinema HD. This is no basic webcam by any means as it offers 1280 x 720 HD resolution at 30 frames per second. That makes it the first consumer webcam support this level of HD, in fact. (It will also lead to some seriously high-quality Vimeo vids!)

The camera also features USB 2.0 connectivity, auto focus, a glass lens, a 4x digital zoom, a noise-canceling microphone, and a technology called “ClearFrame” which aims to deliver smooth and detailed video.

The new webcam is compatible with Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP out-of-the-box and also integrates with the Windows Live suite of tools including Live Messenger, Live Photo Gallery, and Live Movie Maker.

However, before you run out to purchase this hardware (which becomes available on September 9th), you’ll need to first check the hardware requirements. Since this camera does some heavy lifting, you’ll need at least a dual core 1.6 GHz processor in order to use it. However, a 3 GHz processor is recommended. You’ll also need 2 GB of memory.

The camera will retail for $79.99 here in the U.S. (www.on10.com)