HP TouchPad Goes Up For Pre-Order Starting At $500, Will Be Available July 1

It's true, the TouchPad, HP's inaugural webOS tablet, won't go on sale in the states until July 1, but that doesn't mean you can't claim yours pronto. She's up for pre-order at a long list of retailers that includes Amazon, NewEgg, Best Buy, Walmart, Staples, Radio Shack, J&R, Office Max, Office Depot, Costco, Sam's Club, PC Richard & Son, Micro Center, and even Nebraska Furniture Mart.

You'll see it listed on HP's site, too, but the company's only accepting orders for businesses at the moment. As expected, the tab comes in two flavors: a 16GB version for $499.99 and a 32GB model that'll set you back $599.99. Both of 'em pack a dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, stereo speakers, Touch-to-Share, a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, and, of course, a gussied-up version of webOS optimized for that 9.7-inch display. Intrigued? Hit the exhaustive list of source links below to scoop one up for yourself.

Intel’s New Campaign: You’ve Never Seen YouTube Quite Like This

We previously wrote about Intel turning your Facebook into a museum piece and now they’re back with an impressive interactive Youtube video experience called ‘The Escape’. It works by bringing the user completely into the story, with the option to connect with Facebook to further personalise the video and bring your friends in to help you save the femme fatale.

This is a YouTube experience quite unlike any other, as they have turned the takeover into a complete gaming experience, adding in user interaction along the way such as firing at assailants, combining keys to unlock a door and lots of other cool content that we’ll let you discover for yourself. This is certainly the most complex YoutTube takeover I’ve come across, and the most engaging, interactive experience offered to the user. One downside is that the channel is incredibly slow to load and seems to buffer quite a lot during gameplay. This is to be expected with something of this scale and as it’s so newly launched you would expect them to iron out these few bugs over the next few days.
Commenting on the campaign, Stephanie Gan from advertising and digital at Intel Asia Pacific says, “We wanted to connect with consumers in a personal, engaging and interactive way while demonstrating the visual capabilities of the 2nd Generation Intel Core processor family. While YouTube offered the perfect stage for creating this experience, it was important to make some of the interactions social with Facebook integration. Just as Intel’s 2nd Generation Core processors transform your computing experience, this campaign will transform the way you look at the YouTube platform. You’ve never seen YouTube quite like this,” she added.
You can access the full video experience here.

Via: TheNextWeb

Just in Time For The Election, President Obama to Begin Tweeting Personally.

The Obama campaign is about to get a lot more aggressive in its use of Facebook and Twitter to help bolster the incumbent candidate’s efforts for reelection. One of the most interesting changes to the way that the staff handles the social media updates is that President Barack Obama will begin tweeting (on occasion) from the @BarackObama account personally.
The announcement was made in a blog post on the Barack Obama 2012 campaign site.

Obama for America staff will now be managing both accounts, posting daily updates from the campaign trail, from Washington, and everywhere in between. You’ll be hearing from President Obama regularly, too; on Twitter, tweets from the President will be signed “-BO.”

In addition to the more frequent Twitter updates, the staff will also be more frequently updating the President’s Facebook page. The staff say that they are going to be using the social networks not only to report on what the President is doing, but also to ask constituents for their feedback and ideas. The staff says that they may even be retweeting your messages to the Presidential twitter account as well.
President Obama has widely been credited as a technologically savvy candidate who was elected in part because of his aggressive stance towards using the internet and technology to reach voters.
Twitter and Facebook are two of the largest ways that people share opinions online and it would be foolish for any future candidate to ignore these platforms.
Do you think that every candidate from this point on will have to make an effort to communicate via social networks, or is it still just for the tech savvy? What about President Obama, do you think that using Twitter and Facebook to communicate directly with voters is a valuable use of his time?

Yahoo Shutters its Maps API, Points Devs to Nokia’s Ovi Maps

Yahoo has found itself once again floundering with trying to figure out exactly what it is. This time, developers who have used its Maps API are in for an unpleasant surprise as the company plans on shuttering the service completely on September 13th of this year.

As part of Yahoo!’s commitment to creating deeply personal digital experiences, we have been reprioritizing our current portfolio of mapping products to refocus on a great consumer Mapping and Local Search experience.

In short, if you were using any of the following, you’ll need to make some changes to address the closing:

• ActionScript 2 & 3 (Flash APIs)
• AJAX Maps 3.6, 3.7, 3.8
• REST API (Map Image API)
• Simple API – (No coding)
• GeoRSS – Version 2

Yahoo does extend the olive branch somewhat, stating that its Placefinder API for geocoding and the combination of Placemaker and Local Search API will remain alive for geocaching. Interestingly, instead of pushing abandoned developers toward Microsoft’s Bing Maps, Yahoo is ushering them toward Nokia’s Ovi Maps API.
The “even worse” news? If you’re hoping to use Nokia’s product for navigation right now via a Yahoo product, you’ll have to wait a while — “This work is in-progress and we plan to have something to announce later this year.”

Spotify Closes $100 Million From High Profile Investors at $1 Billion Valuation

Spotify‘s $100 million funding round, which began in February, was just officially reported as final by AllThingsD. The investment round included DST Global, the Russian investment firm that has also taken big stakes in Facebook and Groupon, as well as funding from Accel and Kleiner Perkins.  
The funding round gives Europe’s favorite streaming music service a valuation of $1 billion.
Spotify’s existing investors include Sean Parker of Napster and Facebook fame, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing and firms Wellington Partners and Northzone Ventures. The new money will likely be used for Spotify’s much anticipated U.S. launch. According to AllThingsD, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has U.S. licensing deals with three of the four big music labels, and is in advanced talks with holdout Warner Music Group.
Spotify’s valuation and the fact that it will likely be in the U.S. and on Facebook within the year does not bode well for the USA-only Pandora that announced its IPO and whopping $3 billion dollar valuation this week. Pandora is already down to $2.1 million after getting slammed in the markets yesterday and its future isn’t looking any more promising.

Via: TheNextWeb