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Month: March 2009 (Page 7 of 11)

Two Sites to Check for Really Cheap Eats

lifehacker – Citysearch’s new food search site, 3 Buck Bites, has reach but sometimes confusing navigation. Cheap Ass Food is NYC-heavy, but really helpful. Between the two, it’s easy to find decent food at really low prices.

3 Buck Bites uses the reach and scale of Citysearch’s vast network of local food reviews to find cheap dishes across the U.S., and offers some pretty nice food porn shots as well. The problem is, Citysearch works you for your pageviews while you’re there, making you click through to a Citysearch review page to get the address, but then head back to 3 Buck Bites for the prices and specific reviews. Most of the detailed review is stripped down the right side, too—not a spot everyone looks for, and not mobile-friendly, to say the least.

Cheap Ass Food does what it sounds like, but tends to have sparse pickings outside the New York City metro area. Still, it does come up with a few winners in certain spots, and offers great Google Maps pinning and straight-up address/phone/price information for its picks.

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Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 Available for Download

lifehackert – If you’re eager to stay on the cutting edge of Firefox, head over to Mozilla to grab the newly released Firefox 3.1 Beta 3. As we mentioned last week, the next beta will be upped to Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 to reflect the many changes between Firefox 3 and this next major release. In the meantime, you can expect improved private browsing, JavaScript, and more with the latest release. (See the release notes for more details.) Been living the 3.1 beta life already? Share how it’s been working out for you in the comments.

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Is Windows 7 reliable enough to release now?

zdnet – Earlier today, I read about the latest leaked build of Windows 7 to appear on BitTorrent. The text on the desktop suggests that build 7057 is part of the release candidate branch. With the exception of some new wallpapers and default account pictures, it appears to be mostly unchanged from build 7048, which means most of the RC changes are checked in, and it’s now crunch time in Redmond.

Adrian has already reported on the impressive performance of this build Windows 7, even compared to XP. So how does it stack up in terms of reliability? That question is much harder to answer with hard data, but I can offer anecdotal evidence. I installed Windows 7 build 7048 on a Dell XPS 420 one week ago, and after a few hours of road testing decided to begin using it as my main production system. (I’ll have some more notes on that process later.)

So how’s that working out?

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Broadband Policy Plans Kicked Off in D.C.

gigaom – Today, the three agencies responsible for allocating the $7.2 billion in stimulus funds for broadband met in Washington, D.C. The bottom line appeared to be a lot of hot air, including FCC promises of an open process to deliver a national broadband strategy within one year, and a lot of unanswered questions, such as how to define certain terms in the legislation. But, of course, these things take time. For now, I can hope that an open process helps offset the influence that carriers have traditionally had in the legislative process.

For those seeking to offer an informed opinion on the nation’s broadband strategy, I suggest you check out Saul Hansell’s three-part series on lessons from other countries, started today over at the New York Times. This first piece looks at why the U.S. has slower broadband speeds than countries such as Japan and Korea. I have disagreed with him in the past, but he accurately lays out how the U.S.’s low population density plays a huge role in limiting our current broadband speeds. While I think slow broadband is a bigger problem than he admits, I can hope that in future articles he’ll talk about how policies and a lack of competition also affect those speeds. We welcome the conversation.

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First Look: IRL Connect Puts Facebook, Twitter on the Map

gigaom – When Google’s Latitude location service launched, one of the main problems users experienced was that the service only located users’ Google contacts — it didn’t include access to the most popular social networks, through which many users connect with friends. Therefore, it was only natural that someone would use Google’s Maps API and build a location service around social networks.

In Real Life (IRL) Connect, based in Amsterdam, opened a private beta this month that allows people to locate their Facebook and Twitter contacts on a map and interact with them on the social network from the map interface. I checked out the service, and my early verdict is that it has potential but maintains the same limitations as other location-based services — mainly, people need to opt-in in order to maximize its usefulness.

IRL Connect features an interesting location UI: Icons showing a user’s location aren’t defined by an avatar, but by their network first. If you have a friend on Twitter, her name will appear in an area above a Twitter icon on a map. When you click on the icon, a balloon-style app will pop out, and that’s where you’ll find her avatar, most recent Tweet, and can message her directly. Because Twitter is an active community, you’re constantly seeing Tweets ‘pop.’

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