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Google's Contributor lets you crowdfund sites instead of seeing their ads
Banners, takeovers, pop-unders, interstitials -- there's no understating how important/valuable they are financially, but ads are still basically the bane of the modern internet. That's why it's a little heartening to see Google, a company that made a whopping $15 billion in ad revenue alone last quarter, is giving content creators another way to go. It's called Contributor, and the name really says it all: users can pay certain sites between $1 and $3 per month to be able to surf around without any of Google's ads blasting them in the face.
TUAW wishes you a Merry Christmas
From all of us at TUAW to all of you who celebrate it, our heartfelt wishes for a very merry Christmas. It's also Hanukkah this week, so best holiday wishes there too. Belated blessed Solstice? Early Kwanzaa & New Year's regards? We wish it all for you. In the holiday spirit, we'd like to take this opportunity to let you know about some of the other wonderful things that our contributors have been up to this year. Erica Sadun, Steve Sande, Michael Grothaus and Dave Caolo have all collaborated on various Apress books in the "To The Max" series, including the most recent title Taking Your OS X Lion to the Max. Erica and Steve also produced the ebook Talking to Siri, and Erica's iOS 5 Developer's Cookbook will be appearing in a revised edition in January. Mike Schramm's new short story & essay collection The Shape of Teeth is now available, and you can find him on Twitter as well. Mel Martin's biography of filmmaker Samuel Bronston is on sale at Amazon. TJ Luoma's essays and posts can be found on his site, and Megan Lavey-Heaton's web comic Namesake is also online. Richard Gaywood's other writing can be found at Action at a Distance and Objection: Salad! On the app front, Erica's apps are available in the iOS App Store. Michael Jones's Kiosk and Tremors are both in the Mac App Store. Brett Terpstra's Marked and his other projects like NValt are also downloadable. Thanks to all of you for reading!
Rumor: 360 wireless gaming receiver $20; wheel $130; headset $60; camera $40; Halo and Forza faceplates $20 [update 1]
Thanks to a reliable source from Microsoft, we've learned some important details about the new peripherals announced for the Xbox 360, including pricing and a few Halo faceplate (non)specifics. Check out the leaked info and prices below: 360 wireless gaming receiver (which enables wireless 360 controllers, headsets, and wheels on your PC): $20 Wireless racing wheel: $130 Wireless headset: $60 Xbox Live Vision Camera (with headset, one month of Live Gold, and one arcade -- presumably Xbox Live Arcade -- game): $40 New faceplates for Halo (with the Master Chief on 'em, but not Halo 3 specific) and Forza (no word on connections to the sequel): $20 each 256 MB portable memory unit (MU): no official price yet, but definitely not four times the cost of the older 64MB MU Besides acknowledging that the PC is "the biggest gaming device of all," MS appears to be setting an agressive price for its most relevant new PC accessory, the wireless gaming receiver (at least in comparison to the outrageously priced 360 wireless networking adapter). Unfortunately, no price was revealed as of yet for the USB-based HD-DVD add-on.We've speculated in our recent podcasts as to what would happen to the various 360 SKUs when price drops inevitably occur. An interesting theory bandied about by prolific Joystiq Contributor epobirs (on our earlier bump-to-256MB-MU post) was that a $20 price drop for the Core system, coupled with a $20 price drop on the 64MB MU, would finally allow folks to pick up a capable non-Premium bundle for the original $300 Core price point. (Not a bad way to undercut PS2 memory card prices, too.) We hope to get official confirmation on this info in the not-too-distant future.[Update: Sorry, had the camera price wrong in the headline; it now matches the price of the bundle listed in the body of the text below.]See also: 360's Mem Unit getting a bump to 256MB? (Comment from epobirs) Use 360 wireless peripherals with a PC Engadget & Joystiq's live coverage of Microsoft's Xbox 360 E3 event Joystiq / Engadget podcasts from Day One and Day Two of E3 2006
