Common Paradox Tech Blog

Whoops! These photos of ad agency Crispin Porter’s Job Manager shows dates for Windows Phone ad campaigns as going “live” January 4th and 8th.

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Crispin Porter Co-Chairman Alex Bogusky (profiled here) posted the shot to demonstrate CP’s massive real-time job management system, which clearly lists two ad campaigns, on January 4th and 8th, for “Windows Phone,” first as “Windows Phone Q3 Media Refresh” and second as “09 Windows Phone Banners.” So who knows what the actual timing for these ads will be, but its a safe bet that ads will be previewed at CES in some way. (Crispin Porter, by the way, was responsible for the Seinfeld Ad campaign).

One lucky guy in the UK found himself on the receiving end of a very cool Nokia promotion, where he had to hack open a PC-controlled box, revealing a shiny new N900 inside.

Utku, a Product Manager at web design agency Mint Digital, managed to get a Nokia N900, copy of Modern Warfare 2 on the PS3, and a few other presents out of the box by following the commands at hackerbox.co.uk, which was printed on a card on the box, dropped off at his office this morning.

They plugged it into a MacBook via USB, but couldn’t get any joy. After connecting it to a Windows machine, they followed the commands, and judging by the photos, the sentence “connecting people” worked like magic, and the box opened with a cloud of smoke.

Corny, yes. Promotional propaganda, true. But it sure does makes me smile. [Nokia Hackerbox via Utku via SlashGear]

Re-enactment of the box hacking, below:

You know what commercial I can’t get out of my head? The Amex commercial the one where faces are found where they shouldn’t be. That’s the Shooting Challenge for this week. Make inanimate objects animate.

The rules:

1. Submissions need to be your own.
2. Photos need to be taken the week of the contest. (No portfolio linking or it spoils the “challenge” part.)
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings and technique used to snag the shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com.
5. Include 800px image AND something wallpaper sized in email.

Send your best entries by Sunday at 6PM Eastern to contests@gizmodo.com with “Anthropomorphism” in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs at 800 pixels wide, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) in the body of the email. ALSO, AND THIS IS SOMEWHAT NEW, ATTACH A 2560×1600 JPEG AS WELL FOR PEOPLE TO DOWNLOAD AS WALLPAPER. [Image]

And for a little inspiration/free product placement:

Nsyght, a real time social aggregation service, went live last night at our Realtime ChristmasCrunch event in London (#XmasCrunch), and it’s a tantilising service. The startup has also raised $200,000 in Angel funding from a group of private Angel investors lead by Shawn Kernes (CTO/co-founder of Stubhub) and Jerome Touze (CEO/co-founder of WAYN) who will also act as advisors. The company has been bootstrapped for the last 10 months, but will start rolling out more advanced features over the next few months.

What’s most interesting about Nsyght is that instead of just indexing a user’s own data, the product retrieves information from their entire social graph. So using nsyght means you don’t have to re-discover friends you are already are already connected with. It currently integrates accounts from Twitter, Facebook, digg, Vimeo, Stumbleupon, Flickr, Delicious, and Last.fm – with other networks planned. I like the ability to filter a Twitter hashtag by photos or video only, which is very useful.

Even in beta, we highlighted Evernote as one of Android’s 30 essential apps. It takes notes, recordings and photos and syncs them online instantly, so they’re available anywhere. It’s final, and should be showing up in the Marketplace later today.

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Unlike most Android apps that have iPhone counterparts, you won’t feel like you’re getting the short end of the app stick, with full features like location-tagged notes. Like we said before, Android needs a note-taking app—you might as well get one that creates notes that are backed up online and that you can access anywhere, for free. [Evernote]

Evernote, the popular tool for taking, saving and sharing notes across multiple platforms, recently raised $10 million in funding. It looks like the first thing they spent that pile of cash on was getting a full version of Evernote onto the Android app store.

While Evernote has had an impressive iPhone app out for quite a while, there hasn’t been an Android equivalent. The service has been in need of one, especially with the rise of Android smart phones such as Droid and the Google Phone. Later today, Evernote will hit the Android app store, filling this hole. We have the screnshots below.

From what we know about the app (it’s been in beta for a while), it has almost all of the functionality of its iPhone counterpart — you can create and save notes, attach photos and search your archives. It also sports a simple and clean interface.

One of Evernote’s biggest draws was its portability across platforms. Being able to clip web pages, record voice notes on the desktop, take photos of receipts while on-the-go and access any of this information from any of these platforms has being central to Evernote’s rise in popularity. Now millions of Android users will get its full benefits.

Screenshots: Evernote for Android

Reviews: Android, Evernote

Tags: android, evernote

Digital memory aid and note taking service Evernote already has mobile applications for the iPhone and BlackBerry, among others, but so far it wasn’t part of the now more than 20,000 applications for the Android platform.

Expect that to change real soon, because we hear the startup is making the app available in the Android Market in the next few hours.

(Update: it should be available now)

A photographer strapped a Canon Rebel XT to his helmet while skydiving, but instead of capturing some great airborne shots, it fell off his helmet and plummeted 3,000 feet to the ground. Unbelievably, it survived.

According to a friend of the photographer:

Amazingly, the Rebel survived the fall and my friend is still using it to this very day. It has a crack in the plastic body and the kit lens is a little jerky when zooming, but functional. I’d like to know if there is a similar story or something close to this but I doubt. It might be a world record indeed (for the height of a camera drop which survived).

Photos show that the camera is remarkably intact—the viewfinder is still functional, both the camera body and lens are pretty much fine. Not that we recommend you heave your DSLR out of a low-flying plane, but it’s nice to know that if you do, there’s a chance it’ll be just fine. [FredMiranda via Canon Rumors via Crunchgear]

Nic H tells us that this is how his Xbox was returned after being sent to Nurse Microsoft. If that’s really true, then it looks like Microsoft is getting brutal on Xboxes that dare get an RRoD.

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Geez. What the hell is Microsoft using to punish misbehaving Xboxes? This thing looks worse than the one attacked by a crazy chick and a golf club. But we’re certain that if Nic contacts Microsoft and shows them these photos of his naughty Xbox, they’re sure to send him a replacement. Possibly even one that works. (Provided, of course, that this damage wasn’t caused by Nic when he got the unit back, unrepaired, or by yet another nutty girlfriend.) [Flickr via Nic H]

Ah, crisp, high resolution display. Side shot after the break!

Thin is in, folks.

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