Hands-On With The Verizon iPhone

Earlier this morning Verizon announced the long-anticipated debut of Apple’s iPhone on its network. In the photos and video below, Mobilized’s Ina Fried shows off the device and discusses how it differs from the one on AT&T’s network.

How to Convert MPEG2 to AVI

Step by step guide:

1 After downloading MPEG2 to AVI converter, install and run it until you see the easy-to-navigate interface as below:

2 Add the MPEG2 video files you prepare to convert

3 Click "Profile", select AVI as output format, then click "Browse" to select a destination folder in the window that opens and click "Open folder" to find your target folder and check the converted files.

4 Click "start" to rip MPEG2 to AVI. As you see, just 1-2-3-4 step to convert MPEG2 to AVI. It's so easy to use.

Note: Rich editing functions such as merging several videos into one file, trimming any clip of video, cropping playing area, changing video effect and so forth are allowable. Try them one by one if needed. This is a Crop editing window below:

Want to learn more details? Go to How to convert MPEG2 to AVI right now.

Verizon Event Set for Tuesday–iPhone Time

And there it is: Verizon will hold a special event at New York City’s Lincoln Center (Frederick P. Rose Hall) on Jan. 11–next Tuesday. No details on its focus, but sources close to the company tell me this will indeed prove to be the long-rumored Verizon iPhone announcement. Question now is will Apple CEO Steve Jobs join Verizon President and COO Lowell McAdam onstage to make it. Remember, while there’s an enormous amount of interest in the Verizon iPhone, this really isn’t much more than a carrier announcement — for last year’s iPhone. If it were more (e.g., a hardware announcement), you can bet the event would be in Cupertino or San Francisco.

Below, the event invite, which I’m posting here despite Verizon’s mandate not to. Just hope it doesn’t result in a personalized data cap.

How to Convert WMA to MP3

The instructions of how to convert WMA to MP3 as follows:

Step 1: Free download this powerful and easy-to-use Aiseesoft Audio Converter, install and launch it.

Step 2: Use "Add File" button on the main window or "Add File" in the "File" menu to select your original WMA file first, and then open the folder where.

Step 3: Select a file or several files. The file(s) you highlighted will be loaded after you click "Open". And choose your output files as mp3 format.

Step 4: You can adjust some special setting for your conversion by clicking "Settings" behind the "Encoder" combo-box, such as "Bit Rate" and "Sample Rate".

Step 5: To set the folder that you want to save your target file, you may select the Output folder by clicking "Browse..." button or directly enter a path in the "Destination" box. "C:\temp" is set as the default destination folder.

Step 6: Start your conversion just click “START” button.

What an excellent WMA to MP3 Converter. If you still don't know how to convert WMA to MP3 file, why not try this professional WMA to MP3 Converter, and then converting WMA to WAV will become an enjoyable thing. Enjoy your MP3 ASAP.

Goldman-Facebook Investment Vehicle Already Full; SEC Eyes Disclosure Rules

Goldman Sachs has already received “several billion dollars” worth of commitments to its “special-purpose vehicle” for investing in $1.5 billion worth of Facebook stock, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Goldman is asking Facebook to expand the number of shares available through the deal, which may depend on the amount of interest among Facebook employees in selling their personal stock at this time. (Before the Goldman deal, employees were prohibited from selling shares, though they were able to do so for a short time last year as part of a deal with Digital Sky Technologies.)

Goldman plans to stop soliciting interest in the project on Thursday, according to the Journal. Only wealthy individuals and a few hedge funds and private-equity firms have been asked to participate, with a minimum investment of $2 million for people who do not work at Goldman.

Meanwhile, the interest of the Securities and Exchange Commission has been piqued by the Goldman deal, which was structured to avoid adding shareholders to Facebook’s fastidiously maintained count. The company has carefully avoided having more than 500 shareholders to avoid SEC disclosure rules.

It had already been reported that the SEC was looking at the recent growth of secondary market trading of shares in private companies, with some assuming that such an inquiry could lead to the practice being shut down.

However, The Wall Street Journal now reports that the agency is studying whether the 1960s-era disclosure regulations for private companies need a rewrite. That has some on Wall Street wondering whether the SEC inquiry could “open the floodgates” for similar deals, where “hybrid” companies are private yet have their shares traded in a limited way.

The idea that wealthy Goldman clients are the only ones able to invest in Facebook, a company with some 600 million users, doesn’t sit well with many people. BoomTown’s Kara Swisher yesterday described the Goldman-Facebook deal as “sneaky,” “elite” and “opaque.”

Some Goldman clients complained that they were given too little time and information to evaluate the Facebook opportunity, which only emerged this past weekend. Apparently enough of their cohorts did not feel that was the case.

How to Open a Beer Bottle With a Magazine. Is That a Web Ad Worth Saving?

It’s not just me! News that AdKeeper, the start-up that wants Web surfers to save ads they like, has raised $35 million has lots of people scratching their heads. You can see a pretty enlightened debate about the company’s chances over at Quora (first time I’ve ever typed those words in a post, so that’s interesting, too).

But I’ll take one more crack at it here, anyway.

Almost everyone ignores almost every Web ad they see, which makes AdKeeper’s mission pretty tough: Who’s going to save an ad they’re not going to pay attention to?

But AdKeeper says that advertisers will learn to create more engaging and relevant ads. Okay. Let’s say that happens. Why do you need a Web locker to store them?

Here, for instance, is a cool, novel ad that’s worth looking at. Not just the video below, but the entire Web page where the ad resides, which includes a beer-opening schematic that you can print out if you’d like.

But even so–do you really need to save this one? Or are you happy to watch it once and perhaps pass it along to a friend?

Carlsberg could make it more save-worthy, I suppose, by attaching a coupon or some other kind of offer to the ad. But even then, I’m not sure how many people would be interested in collecting the ad–and more important, remembering to check back and look at it again.

But again, we’ll see. AdKeeper CEO Scott Kurnit says he’ll launch this thing by mid-February, and sometime after that, we can come back and see who’s saving what and assess this again.

WakeMate Issues Recall of Chargers After Wrist Unit Catches Fire

WakeMate, maker of the sleep-tracking cuff we wrote about last week has issued a recall of all chargers after one of its wrist units caught fire. WakeMate Chief Technologist Craig Lewiston said WakeMate is continuing to investigate the issue.