title stringlengths 2 283 ⌀ | author stringlengths 4 41 ⌀ | year int64 2.01k 2.02k | month int64 1 12 | day int64 1 31 | content stringlengths 1 111k ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adaptly Raises $2.7 Million To Facilitate Cross Platform Social Ad Buys | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 18 | Social ad buying platform has a total of $2.7 million in seed and Series A funding from First Round Capital, Charles River Ventures, Kirschenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners and Lerer Ventures. Angel investors also include Gary Vaynerchuk, Invite Media founder Nathaniel Turner and Interclick CEO Michael Katz . Adaptly, which caters to clients like Pepsi’s Lipton/Brisk, makes it easier for brands to advertise across social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and Plentyoffish by thinking outside of the display ads box. co-founder Nikhil Sethi tells me. Adaptly has two components: A white-label ad platform as well as a fully managed service where a team member helps brands through the process, says Sethi. The ads space right now is dominated by Facebook specific-buying agencies like Blink, AdParlor and the companies that apply search metrics right next to social like Efficient Frontier. What Adaptly does differently than the other players is that it understands that integrating ads into a site like Twitter or LinkedIn is an entirely different process and extends beyond Facebook, Adaptly recently moved its headquarters to NYC, and currently operates with a team of seven who mostly come from engineering backgrounds. Sethi tells me he will use the $2.7 million in recent funding to and has as an overall goal to put the “tech” in AdTech by building a really strong engineering-focused company. |
New Contour "Plus" Helmet Cam Spied At Bike Race | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 18 | You guys may already be familiar with the ContourHD rugged sport-cam we and its . It looks like the family may be getting a little bigger over the next few months: spotted a new “Plus” variety of the device, which supposedly has a wider lens angle (170º vs 140º), an external mic port, and a few other improvements. Looks sweet; I can’t wait for the official announcement. [via ] |
Little Bets, The Book | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 4 | 18 | Google, Pixar, Twitter. All of them started as side projects or experiments which only later turned into big ideas. In a world of lean startups, the mantra is to get a product out there in the hands of consumers and keep making changes until something clicks. TechCrunch contributor ( ) has a new book out hat explains why little bets are more likely to lead to big ideas than big bets. It is called, appropriately enough, , and it is just hitting Amazon and the book stores this week. Sims, who is a recovering venture capitalist, recently offered TechCrunch readers a preview of his thinking in a which turned out to be very popular. He wrote: The truth is, most entrepreneurs launch their companies without an brilliant idea and proceed to discover one, or if they do start with what they think is a superb idea, they quickly discover that it’s flawed and then rapidly adapt. Of course, everyone wants to make big bets. That’s a Silicon Valley maxim. Go big. Be bold. But brilliant ideas are over-rated and people routinely bet big on ideas that aren’t solving the right problems, including and . Pixar storytellers must make thousands of little bets to develop a movie script, Hewlett Packard cofounder Bill Hewlett found that HP needed to make 100 small bets on products to identify six that could be breakthroughs. Just as Twitter went from a small bet to a big one, small bets are affordable and achievable ways to learn about problems and opportunities, while big bets are for capitalizing upon them. Put his book on your reading list. |
Chris DeWolfe's MindJolt Expands Gaming Empire; Buys SGN And Hallpass Media | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 4 | 18 | , the game distribution company that was by MySpace founder and former CEO last year, has made two significant acquisitions in the gaming space today— game developer (SGN) and game network The acquisitions were first reported by the Financial terms of the acquisitions were not disclosed. creates a number of for iPhone and Android devices and social platforms like Facebook. SGN’s hit online and mobile games (which have seen 30 million downloads to date), include Mini Tycoon Casino, F.A.S.T., and Skies of Glory. Founded by SGN has raised a total of in funding. Hallpass Media, which has raised $2 million in funding, is a online gaming network consisting of vertically focused casual game destinations. The acquisition brings over four million gamers and nearly 1,500 new
games to the MindJolt platform. So how does this fit into MindJolt’s strategy? DeWolfe said in a statement, MindJolt has a catalog of over 1,300 casual games, which it distributes across partner sites as well as its own game portal and a Facebook that had over 10 million monthly active users, as of December. Currently, MindJolt has seen 30 million mobile downloads of its applications and is reaching over 25 million users across the web. We had a chance to speak to DeWolfe about this strategic move. On the SGN side, DeWolfe tells us that the acquisition was partly a major talent grab and an IP acquisition. This expands our presence beyond just Facebook, says DeWolfe, and gives us a solid base in the mobile gaming arena. One area where DeWolfe will be focusing his efforts is partnering with with movie studios and entertainment companies to create branded, game titles on mobile, social and casual platforms. He says that because MindJolt is based in LA, the company has ties with networks and production companies to partner with them to produce and distribute these games. Whole he declined to give us financial specifics on the acquisitions, he did say that the deals were made from a combination of money raised from Austin Ventures last year, equity, and cash from the business. DeWolfe adds that the company will be making a number of smaller acquisitions in the near future and will be looking at larger acquisitions as well. MindJolt also a monetization product called AdJolt, which includes ads and a virtual goods system. Currently, the company is seeing $20 million in revenue and is profitable, according to the New York Times report. “We want to create hits on Facebook, mobile and the web,” DeWolfe explains. “That’s direction we’re going in.” |
RIM, Caught Between Work And Whimsy, Has Lost Its Way | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 18 |
I’ve been using the since Friday and I find it to be a unique and very usable device. The obvious problems aside – no native email client, poor browsing, wonky Flash support – it’s clear that RIM took lots of care to produce a device that would appeal to their core audience of crackberriers. Even the ill-advised Blackberry Bridge makes a certain kind of sense. Why? Because the removal of all points of security failure from the tablet gives the folks in IT a reason to OK the device on their networks. The same can’t be said of any of the other tablets, iOS and Android devices included. In fact, without the Bridge the Playbook is a simple and compelling media consumption device. But Blackberry is now trying to survive a period marked by a rapid and permanent change in smartphone usage. Back when Blackberries were pagers, the best a business user on the road could hope for was a fax sent to a hotel room. A few short years later and Blackberry ruled the mobile messaging space. Their email product and messenger allowed countless people to remain connected everywhere, at all times, an accomplishment that brought about a sea change in the way we interact online. The Blackberry is a unique artifact that defined how a generation lived and worked. Blackberries made it OK to be always on call, much to our own detriment.
Then came the Sidekick. That phone, and its successors, changed how a generation played. Email and messaging on a phone quickly became de rigueur and, ultimately, a non-feature. So now Blackberry’s most significant feature – email – is no longer very interesting. The squat, keyboard-centric devices are competing against devices of all shapes and sizes and Blackberry is losing. According , RIM shipped approximately 48.8 million units worldwide, followed closely by the Apple’s 47 million. To put this into perspective, Nokia sold 453.0 million phones (not smartphones in particular, but total units) and Samsung sold 280.2 million (same caveat). To put it further into perspective, Apple has only been selling iPhones since 2007 while RIM has been selling phones since 1999. RIM’s smartphone market share is . And even newer contender, Android, is also taking its toll, though tracking it and its effects isn’t as straightforward. When RIM CEO , you could see a CEO at wit’s end. His product is, at best, a strong but uninteresting runner in a crowded race. Rather than outpacing the competition, however, RIM is barely keeping in stride. His claim that the phone is popular with “businesses, leaders, celebrities, consumers, and teenagers” is, in one sense, true. But any phone manufacturer can claim the same thing and be perfectly right. There are so many phones sold daily that RIM’s products are now a drop in the mobile bucket. RIM is the next Nokia: an iconic company laid low by an unwillingness to adapt its products. It’s not pretty to see this happening to what is certainly a classic and influential device but even the Playbook, as unique as it is, won’t change customers’ perceptions of RIM. Claim all the brand loyalty you want here, but consumers have so much choice on so many fronts that even statistically RIM won’t be able to outsell their competitors. As Nokia learned far too late, it doesn’t make any sense to cling to old paradigms and rely on old strengths. Do I want RIM to go away? Absolutely not. They produce excellent products. I love the interface and the design. However, when their most interesting device, the Playbook, refuses to play to the simple needs of the general consumer and maintains a dedication to a shrinking business fleet base, it’s time to rethink RIM’s place in the mobile ecosystem. It is my honest fear that RIM, like so many companies before it, will find that ecosystem more and more hostile to their unique product. |
Triple-Booting Maestro S Tablet/Netbook Includes Keyboard, Case, Kitchen Sink | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 18 |
Although the trend here in the US is towards a streamlined, single-input (i.e. finger) tablets like the iPad and Xoom, intricacy and versatility are the word over in Beijing right now, where dual- or triple-boot devices like this Maestro S are (they hope) all the rage. I’ve heard that there’s a bit of a backlash against Google and Apple for not catering to Asian markets, and others are jumping at the chance to fill in the vacancy. While I’m not impressed with Windows 7 as a tablet ecosystem and MeeGo and Android are still in their infancy, I guess it might be nice to have a device that just does it all. Why not? The Maestro S (being shown off at IDF Beijing) has a new 1.5GHz Atom Z670, 2GB of RAM, and 32 gigs of SSD storage. Its built-in accessories include a full keyboard and trackpad, plus a big ol’ kickstand there on the left side. It looks chunky as hell, but they’re claiming hours of battery in Android and 10 in Windows 7. Will it ever come to the US? I doubt it. It’d be mighty expensive and it goes against what consumers are demanding right now. But just so you know, these things are out there. , along with a good round-up of the other good stuff they saw at the conference. |
Cardcloud wants to take business cards online by adding location and context | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 4 | 18 | launches (or relaunches) today as another take on the virtual business card. Its app, which runs and in the browser, is built on top of the vCard standard so enabling cards to be exchanged across multiple platforms – a bit like ‘beaming’ cards to a Palm Pilot back in the day – but it’s the bespoke features of Cardcloud that potentially make it stand out. In addition to standard contact details, users can visually customize their cards by adding profile pictures and/or their company logo, along with linking their account to over 50 online profile or social services, such as the usual suspects LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. So that’s social media covered. However, it’s the ability to add context and ‘memory’ to the exchange of business cards that has the most value. This is achieved through a mix of recording the date and location of when/where a card was first swapped, along with offering the option to write notes on the back of each card, virtually of course. These can then be referred to later either via the mobile app or on the Cloudcard website. Lastly, the contact details of a received card can be added to a user’s mobile phone address book or kept separately on their Cloudcard account or both. The app also supports multiple accounts or ‘cards’ for users who wear two or more hats as it were. Cardcloud is based in Amsterdam, having originally founded as a hardware company called ‘My Name is E’. It won The Next Web’s startup competition . from on . |
Lucasfilm's New Office Is Decidedly Sandcrawlerish | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 18 |
Just a little Star Wars to start your week right. Lucasfilm’s (technically their Animation sub-company, which makes the Clone Wars cartoon) are quite clearly an homage to the Jawa’s mobile homes in . Hey, it’s an efficient design. I don’t think it’ll roll around, though. [via and ] |
Report: Panasonic To Cut 40,000 Jobs | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 27 |
A little bird has told that earnings call, due to start shortly, will bring news of huge layoffs in the works. The company is expected to announce 40,000 jobs will be cut from its 380,000-strong workforce. The cuts, which would take place over the next two years, would be the result of continuing “streamlining” in the face of tough competition. Just a little bad news to end the night! : The report was updated; Panasonic will be cutting 35,000 jobs over two years, as a result of restructuring, competition, and quake-related earnings drops. |
PSN Breach: Credit Cards Encrypted, Other Things Not So Much | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | This information was in a I put earlier, but just so it’s clear: Sony states that all credit card information in their was indeed encrypted, though the “personal data” wasn’t. What does that mean? It means your name, password, and any information you gave Sony that a credit card number is now in the hands of our mystery hacker (who, Sony stresses, they are working with law enforcement to find). In addition, Sony says that they are “enhancing security and strengthening our network infrastructure” and moving their datacenters to a new location. Good news. But like with BP, the cleanup is only half the issue. Hence that alleging that Sony was negligent in security and notification. When the services come back, you’ll be needing to change your password. I’d change you password elsewhere as well, since who doesn’t use the same username and password on a few sites here and there? And watch your bank account carefully, just in case. Who knows but the hacker might have been able to snatch the decryption keys as well. |
Barnes & Noble: Microsoft-Patented Nook Features "Trivial," Licensing Fees "Exorbitant" | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | The licensing fracas Microsoft is whipping up around Android and, in particular, Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader gets another chapter today, as B&N submits its 50-page response to . Their position and language are aggressive out of the gate, accusing Microsoft of trying to “marginalize the competition” and describing the contents of the patents in question as “highly obvious at the time [they] were filed.” It’s a bold rebuttal, but not entirely convincing. Amazon and HTC, after all, didn’t find the terms onerous enough to object, and countless other companies great and small find licensing patented Microsoft software and patents no problem at all. But by attacking the patents themselves and Microsoft’s greater market-driven intentions, they might be able to poison the well sufficiently to make their case at least plausible. The most common response, even though I know it’s just legal boilerplate, just cracks me up: “Barnes & Noble is without knowledge or information sufficient to form a belief as to the truth of the allegations of this paragraph and, therefore, denies them.” I don’t know what you’re talking about, so I’m just going to say no. The meat of B&N’s “affirmative” defense is alleging that Microsoft ( at the time, and as I suggested were last year) is overextending the scope of outdated patents granted in haste in order to “dominate, control, and exclude” players like Android and Chrome. There are then many pages of B&N describing the slightly shady (but probably par for the course) methods by which Microsoft attempted to bring them into the fold. The licensing fees and terms are variously described as “exorbitant,” “unjustified,” “shocking,” “absurd,” and more. Again, other companies have thought otherwise, but it’s possible that B&N is standing up to Microsoft bullying, while the others thought it safer to just hand over the lunch money. Microsoft’s conduct is called into question at nearly every step, and yes, there is antitrust talk. B&N is attempting to take a shortcut by sidestepping the allegations and going straight to the root of the problem: a set of patents it sees as unenforceable. But is that really a shortcut? I think it was a mistake to impute Microsoft’s motives as malicious on such a grand scale. Why not say “these patents are not valid, we’re going to sue to have them rescinded” and leave it at that? Didn’t they hear? Demonizing Microsoft is so . In a case of this scale, however, there is no short road. We’ll be hearing about this later when Microsoft withdraws, B&N capitulates, or the USPTO withdraws their approval. I don’t know which of those is the least likely. You can read the whole response below: |
LetsLunch Launches in New York Today | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | , the service that helps you network less-awkwardly, is expanding from its comfy Silicon Valley confines and launching in New York today. We about the service here, and it’s gotten a nice niche following since then. People have scheduled more than 1,000 lunches through the service, and about 70% of the time people take time to write a testimonial of the lunch afterwards. I respect founder Syed Shuttari’s strict adherence to his vision. A lot of people have suggested he have the “commoners” bid for lunch spots with the more well-known investors and Valley personalities on the site. Shuttari is insistant that would create the wrong vibe, and that the key is the two people meeting on an equal footing. I couldn’t agree more. I want to lunch with people who are interesting, not people who can pay the most money. That’s just weird. I used LetsLunch once and enjoyed it. I met with a guy named Pat Kitano, who I probably never would have met otherwise. He’s a real estate consultant who’s cobbled together a fascinating local news and social media service to help real estate agents build a name in their requisite communities. I’m not sure I’d give up a lunch every week, particularly given my travel schedule, but I’d trust LetsLunch to set me up once a quarter. |
It's A Nintendo Controller Messenger Bag! | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | We’ve seen bags like this before — they’ve existed in one form or another for about 25 years now — but I believe is new. It looks decent, and it’ll hold plenty of swag if you bring it to E3 or PAX. It doesn’t look especially rugged, but the price is right, and it’s better than . |
Greplin: 1.5 Billion Documents Indexed, Six Engineers | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | Late last year we first mentioned Y Combinator startup – it’s a startup that indexes your social stuff in the cloud, making all your Facebook, Gmail. LinkedIn, Google Calendar, Evernote, Twitter, Dropbox and just about everything else searchable. The easiest way to describe it is They to customers in February. The company won’t talk about total user numbers yet, which isn’t surprising. But we have dug one interesting data point out of founder – They’ve now indexed some 1.5 billion documents. And they’re indexing about 30 million new documents per day. What this means – when you join Greplin you authorize it to index various social apps and services. A typical user may sign up and start off by authorizing Greplin to index Facebook, Twitter and Gmail, for example. Greplin then grabs everything in those services – all your Facebook messages and updates, all your Twitter updates and DMs, all your Gmail messages back and forth, etc. , and lets you search them. When you add up all those documents for all users, you get to that big number, 1.5 billion. To put this into perspective, that’s about the size of Google’s web-wide index in 2001. Or 60 times the size of Google’s original of 25 million documents. On the daily side, Greplin’s 30 million new documents a day is about 25% of Twitter’s (and Twitter gets off easy with 140 character documents). It’s not an apples to apples comparison, but it gives you some idea of the scale that they’re already reaching. And remember, they launched in February. And all that with just six engineers and one support person, says Gross. He has Amazon web services to thank for that, although the recent outage didn’t make him too happy. |
Chrome OS "ZGB" Netbook And Potential "Seaboard" Tablet Surface In Bug Reports | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 27 |
Recent bug reports within the Chromium testing community have turned up a couple new devices running . There’s the expected netbook from Acer, different from the we saw a while back, and a mystery device referred to as Seaboard that may or may not be a Chrome OS tablet. I noticed Seaboard when looking at the Chromium bug logs, and it seems that just noticed the exact same thing, and did a little digging. The device is Tegra 2-based, has an Atmel MXT touchscreen, has a gig of RAM, two USB ports, and HDMI. Sounds pretty tablet-ish to me, though there’s conflicting information elsewhere, such as “lid switch,” which is ambiguous, and references that seem to indicate a physical keyboard. Perhaps a “convertible,” then? Otherwise, why a touchscreen? At any rate it seems to be a real-life device, not just a spec. And as a quick note: Seaboard has been around for months, but I didn’t see much on it outside of the Chromium reports. It’s not new, but details emerging. We’ve already had a few false alarms regarding and Chrome OS — it’s made some promises, but no actual product has appeared. But that doesn’t mean their Chromebook doesn’t exist. We saw the ZGA model pop up in bug reports, but it hasn’t been seen in ages. It seems to have been replaced by… wait for it… the ZG . So what’s known about this new mystery machine? Not much. But a little bit of information has trickled out via the same channel (bug reports), giving it a 1366×768 screen (suitable for 12-15″ screens, roughly) and an Atom processor. This last based on the fact that the laptop has a separate HDMI controller, which wouldn’t be necessary on an AMD rig — and it’s not likely to be an ARM device. Nothing in the logs indicates an imminent release (though nothing expressly says otherwise, either), so for now let’s just consider this “beta” hardware, subject to change at any time. [via ] |
Flipbac Makes Your Compact Camera Grippable | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 27 |
If you’ve picked up one of the sweet little compacts out there (like the or Olympus ), but find it a bit petite for your mitts to hold onto securely, you might want to check out . They’re exactly what they look like: stick-on grips that add a little love handle to your point and shoot. [via ] |
Sony Shares More Details On PlayStation Network Breach | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | Yesterday Sony that some 77 million members of its Playstation Network had their personal information harvested by hackers, including name, address, and possibly credit card numbers in a massive security breach. Sony pulled down PSN as soon as it detected the breach, (we’ve been following the story since it first ), and it’s now regularly sharing more details to provide clarity to the situation. This evening Sony posted a discussing the security measures it had taken to keep user data in the first place. Among the answers: In an update last night, Sony also that while it detected the breach on April 19, it didn’t know the of the data that was harvested until April 25, the day before its announcement (Sony has come under lots of fire for apparently waiting a long time to disclose the information). However, Sony’s defense isn’t that solid — if it even thought there was a credit cards might have been taken, it seems like it should have given users fair warning. Here’s an excerpt from the Q&A — you can find the , and should check it out if your information was compromised. Q: Was my credit card data taken?
A: While all credit card information stored in our systems is encrypted and there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained. Keep in mind, however that your credit card security code (sometimes called a CVC or CSC number) has not been obtained because we never requested it from anyone who has joined the PlayStation Network or Qriocity, and is therefore not stored anywhere in our system.
Q: What steps should I take at this point to help protect my personal data? A: For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, social security number or other personally identifiable information. If you are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony is not the entity asking. When the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your password. Additionally, if you use your PlayStation Network or Qriocity user name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them, as well. To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to remain vigilant, to review your account statements and to monitor your credit reports. |
This Homemade Electric Bike Looks Armageddon-Ready | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 27 |
There are definitely some and bikes out there — but this ain’t one of ’em. On the other hand, it does look like something you could keep working in a Mad Max type environment. And in the end, isn’t really what it’s all about? This unnamed build by “Doctorbass” in Quebec uses 432 individual battery cells wired into a custom battery pack providing just over 24Ah at 100V. The top speed is around 50MPH, and it gets around 130 miles per charge. Plenty for getting around, if you ask me, and it charges in just two hours! The best part is the DIY control cluster: How cool is that? All those individual elements, wired together like something out of… I don’t even know. Just awesome. [via ] |
Cult Clothing Line Betabrand Pockets $1.3 Million From OATV | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | Home of the “ , the “Bike To Work” pants, the “Disco” shorts, the “Cornucopia” backpack, the “Vagisoft (yes)” blanket and the TSA-proof , is an online-only marketplace for unconventional clothes in the same eclectic e-commerce space as Modcloth and Threadless. The company’s emphasis on original in-house designs, in addition to its 100K-200K in monthly revenue, certainly piqued the interest of O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures which led Betabrand’s $1.3 million Series A round followed by Morado Ventures this week. Along with the recent financing, OATV’s Mark Jacobsen will be joining the Betabrand board. The San Francisco-based Betabrand has 12 employees who come up with the quirky designs and complete the production on items like “Sons of Britches” or the (launched today) in-house. The company releases between 4-6 designs a month, manufacturing locally and in small batches. Founder Chris Lindland likens the design process to a startup being in beta, hence the Betabrands name, Lindland plans on using the new financing to speed up the production process to 12-16 products a month and add a women’s line in the fall. He also wants to crowdsource more of the designs and expand on the “Model Citizen” program where customers send in pictures of themselves modeling Betabrand designs for use in actual campaigns. So what’s Lindlands take on a VC firm investing in what is essentially a clothing company, True. |
First Lawsuit Filed Against Sony For PSN Breach | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 27 |
There’s just no way around it. Sony really screwed up. And not just in the way they consistently have in the past. I mean big time. The that started last week and was finally yesterday is worse than anyone expected, and naturally, someone has already sued. The lawsuit alleges that Sony was both remiss in its security responsibilities and its duty to inform its customers of the problem. I think it’s got legs.
While the statement from Sony wasn’t as straightforward as we’d have liked, it’s not hard to see that this breach was serious from the very beginning and the extent of the information the hacker potentially had access to included passwords, credit card numbers, and everything else that should be near-impossible to access. If there was chance that a hacker had access to my credit card — even encrypted, as they mention the information was — Sony should have said that at the very first moment they knew. No doubt the various security, policy, PR, and other teams at Sony have been working frantically to come up with an official statement and damage report. But when very important details of some 77 million people are at stake, it’s probably better to overstate the danger at once to be safe. That way, people can make the evaluation of whether or not they are at risk. By staying silent, Sony has potentially given the hackers a week-long head start on using, selling, or otherwise abusing the customer data. They knew it was bad from the start — the total shutdown is proof of that. And they should have told us. Were you one of the people affected by this? Keep an eye on this one. Here’s the full text of the complaint: And although Sony’s responses have been somewhat restricted, you can keep track of official developments (like ) over at the . [via ] |
Yes! Eidos Ramps Up Production Of Thief 4 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | It’s a sad fact that a few of the most classic franchises of golden-age PC gaming (i.e. after the heyday of early consoles and before the 360 and PS3 ate its lunch) have been neglected and even abused. is one of them — after the first two critically-acclaimed games, a lukewarm third was released alongside a similarly watered-down . But now both these great games appear to be getting the attention they deserve: with finishing production (and ), it’s time for the team at Eidos Montreal to turn their efforts toward . who quotes people in the office saying how weird it is to be switching gears, but who also express optimism regarding the new team (though why wouldn’t they?). Chances are that they’ll be grinding away at producing a demo for an E3 debut; nothing is known about the game other than that it exists, although may be of an early build, and suggests a 3rd-person viewpoint and slightly more modern setting. My guess? They’ll be positioning it as an answer to the hugely successful franchise, perhaps by emulating its strengths but pushing hard at its weaknesses. |
null | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 4 | 18 | null |
X-Men: First Class Offical Trailer 2 | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | This should do it for you if disappointed. Yep, X-Men is back, baby. |
Lost In The iPhone Location FUD | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | Last week, I was on vacation and I promised myself that I wouldn’t do any work. I was still lightly browsing tech news just because I really enjoy reading tech news — yes, even on vacations. I came across the and started to read some of the commentary about the situation. Most of it was idiotic. Pure . It was really hard not to open my laptop and start typing — so I instead. But now I’m back. And now Apple has weighed in. It’s time to start typing. The situation is a joke. That’s not to say the actual issue at hand is a joke, but rather the coverage of the issue is. In that regard, it reminds me a lot of “Antennagate” last year. It was the biggest deal ever. It was the death of the iPhone. It was the end of Apple. …in the press. The reality of the situation was the vast majority of actual consumers didn’t give a shit — and rightly so. Apple sold more iPhones than ever last year — by a wide margin. The device is now the source of the majority of revenues for the company. But it’s a broken device, remember? As I maintained throughout the fiasco, the issue with the antenna was real, . The same is true here. Reading the press coverage this past week, you’d think Apple was watching your every move. You might think they were plotting to rob your home. Or at the very least, they were going to make it easy for criminals to use your iPhone against you to rob your home. If you carried an iPhone, you were going to be attacked by shadowy villains tracking you. That was the basic gist across dozens of publications. This fear mongering quickly spread to other companies in the mobile space. Google. Microsoft. They’re all out to get you. They’re all tracking your information to give to criminals. The motives weren’t entirely clear. But the intent was. Evil. And now that Apple has formally weighed in with (which into slightly easier to understand and humorous terms) of the issues, the FUD has slowed, but doesn’t appear to be stopping. “Okay, so Apple isn’t tracking you, but they’re tracking the cell towers you’re close to — which is the same thing.” That’s this week’s more convoluted variation of “Apple is tracking you.” The underlying FUD is the same. They’re out to get you. And they will! Let’s take a step back for a moment. What Apple is actually doing is collecting data points to build up their own location database, . Why? Because , in April 2010, Apple made the move to ditch former partners Skyhook Wireless and Google, who were previously supplying them with such a database — information necessary for all location services on the phone. And guess how those guys built-up and updated those databases? The same way (though as Apple briefly mentioned today, each company that collects such information has different methods for doing so). Previously, the iPhone was sending this same type of information to Skyhook. Now they’ve taken full control of that information. Apple likes to be in control of its own products. This should be absolutely no surprise. Building an all-encompassing location database is hard. Really hard. By far the best way to do it is to crowdsource the creation. And the best way to do that is to use the mobile devices that people have on them. Otherwise it would be back to using cars to drive around constantly getting this information (which I believe both Skyhook and Google have done) and the data is less consistent, less up-to-date, and harder to get. The alternative is to use GPS data. But that can take several minutes to get at times. Or if you’re indoors, it might not work at all. This means that location services, including many of the location-based apps that are now popular, would not work. So instead your mobile device is used to anonymously record, encrypt and send this cell tower and WiFi hotspot data to Apple. The keywords “anonymously” and “encrypt” are paramount here, yet both have been downplayed in nearly every story on the issue. Apple has no clue who you are based on this data. They have no way to know that. And they have no reason to want to know that. And anyone trying to snatch this data out of the sky would not be able to read it. The problem — that is, the actual problem — is the way each iPhone has been keeping these logs. That leads to three sub-issues, none of which are as big as the FUD would have you believe. But they do need to be addressed. And they are. The first issue is that the location log is really big. In fact, it could span years, showing your general movements throughout that time. That’s how behind this ordeal came about. Theoretically, someone could steal your phone, hack it, and get access to this data. This could potentially show them where you were up until the point they stole your phone. (Of course, given that they stole/found your phone, they would probably already know that.) But wait. If they stole/found your phone, couldn’t they also have access to information like your address, the addresses of friends/family, all your phone numbers, perhaps some passwords, maybe monetary information? Yes, but that’s not as sexy of a story. Oh, and if your phone had any app like Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, etc, they could just open those apps and get all your actual location information without hacking the device? Yep, but again, Apple has nefarious intent here, remember? Let’s face it, our phones have a lot of potentially personal information about us on them beyond just location. That’s why it really sucks when we lose them or they’re stolen. And just imagine when these devices all have NFC chips in them for easy payments. That’s really going to suck. I’m sure the FUD stories will start about that in the next year or so. But back to the issue at hand. Apple SVP Scott Forstall explains the log length mistake (and that’s exactly what Apple is claiming it is — and there doesn’t appear to be a reason to believe otherwise) pretty well in : We picked a size, around 2MB, which is less than half a song. It turns out it was fairly large and could hold items for a long time. Two megabytes does sound very small. But this data is very small, so the iPhone is holding a lot of it. Apple will be correcting this to make sure only roughly seven days worth of data is cached on the device going forward with a software update. Why cache at all? As Forstall explains and Apple hits on a bit in their statement, if they didn’t do this, they’d have to do location calculations on the server. Though not explicitly said, that would be both slower and potentially less secure. Also only briefly mentioned is that this anonymous data can help third-party developers debug when an app crashes. Another — again, real, but minor — issue is that when you backed up your iPhone, this location data log was transfered over to your computer. If you select to encrypt your backups as an option, it was encrypted. If you don’t, it was not (but still protected). Because of that, someone could technically steal or access the computer you sync your iPhone with and get access to this file(s). Of course, if they stole or accessed your computer… hopefully you know where I’m going here. Regardless, Apple has determined that they should no longer backup this location cache, and with the upcoming software update, they no longer will. The final — and actually most important — issue is that when you turned off sharing your location, Apple was still generating the anonymous logs for their location database. They shouldn’t have been, and they acknowledge that saying it too was a “bug”. Bug or oversight, they’re also going to correct this shortly. So that’s it. Three issues, each of which is being corrected with a simple software update. Were these mistakes? Yes. But they could each be easily chalked up to rookie mistakes in Apple’s first foray into location database building. What they cannot be chalked up to is evil intent. Further, the fear-mongering going on about these issues is just insane. These issues have persisted in iOS for a long time now. How many incidents have they lead to? Even if Apple didn’t fix them, what’s the likelihood that they would lead to any sort of incident? It would take a separate criminal act (stealing or illegally accessing/hacking your phone/computer) to even get to the point where a perpetrator could potentially do something with the data. And even then they would only know approximately where you’ve been in the past. Okay, well what about the police or government using this data to track you? If they really wanted/needed to, they would go to the phone companies and do it that way. They would not look at your WiFi triangulation logs. I’ve been sitting on panels about location issues for a few years now. The discussion always falls to the same place: privacy and security. But the funny thing is that increasingly, it’s not the “regular” users who take the discussion there, it’s those of us in the media who know this is the sexy thing to talk about because it sounds scary. This also extends to and other publications that range from oddly out of touch to wildly misinformed about technology, privacy, and security in general. (As a sidenote, isn’t it great when a company that makes money by dishing out subscriber data to marketers complains about privacy and security?) F U D Are there real issues to think about and debate? Of course. But there’s a way to do that without knowingly being an asshat in an attempt to drive fear. Guess what? The phone that you bought at least partially because it offers you access to cool new location services, needs location data for those services to work. How dare they! Let’s sue! Oh, you’re a Senator? Let’s attempt to make a name for ourselves in the press by leveraging this overblown controversy in the guise of protecting the people. Let’s be honest: no one is going to be talking about this issue in a few weeks. Why? Because it’s not actually a huge security issue and never was. It’s one that the press really badly wanted to be one. It generated hundreds if not thousands of widely read stories this past week. And it will generate more such stories for the next few weeks or so, depending on if and when Apple is actually called to Washington to testify about this. Forget about balancing the budget, Apple’s phones with location capabilities that need to collect locations to work are collecting locations! I just read about it in all the major papers! It’s a big deal. We’ll figure out why later. Then all of a sudden, everyone will stop talking about this issue. It will be completely forgotten. On to the next FUD. |
Xoom Soon To Get A Keyboard Case | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | Are you a proud, strong Xoom owner? Good for you! But one thing iPads have that you don’t is a case with a Buetooth keyboard baked right on in. You won’t be waiting long, though: has discovered a Verizon advertisement for an official keyboard case — price and date to be determined, but it’s on the way. Incidentally, I almost wrote “Keyboard Cat” in the headline. The internet is destroying my mind! |
Twitter To Hold Official #Devnest Developer Events | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | Sad that Twitter Developer conference Chirp its first birthday this year? Well Twitter’s Jason Costa has just given those anticipating the gathering a slight ray of hope by announcing an event to take place at Twitter HQ San Francisco on May 12th. For those of you unaware, was a Twitter Developer event out of London started in 2010 by British Twitter developer Jonathan Markwell and organized by Angus Fox. Looks like Twitter has now appropriated the successful event as its own, planning a Ooh. From : Costa is the Twitter Developer Relations manager, brought on to smooth over what have certainly been relations. Twitter developers straight out to stop building clients and focus on verticals, and then reportedly started a bidding war with Bill Gross’ Ubermedia for client Tweetdeck. Costa’s got a long row to hoe. |
Moleskine Extends Its Brand To New "Traveler" Line Of Bags | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 27 |
While Moleskine has been known for some time for their notebooks, they’ve been getting into other markets, from and to special editions (Star Wars, ) and . Now they’re going even further from their base and putting out . That aesthetic is, of course, an imitation of a number of ubiquitous travel-journals and sketchbooks produced in the early 20th century. And while the style lends itself well to a pocketable notebook, I’m not sure how it’ll fare as a bag. Check out the ad, though, which has some pretty slick stop-motion in it: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfNgTsKqMCw&w=640&h=390] The slick black purse, briefcase, messenger bag, and other formats (designed by Giulio Iacchetti) are a bit “Darth” for my taste, no color relieving their relentless achromatism. The material will likely have to be felt to be judged, but it’s not leather and it’s not nylon. It’s “Coagulated polyurethane on a woven support Molded base made from padded polyurethane,” which doesn’t quite roll of the tongue — but if someone gave the chemical name for what you’re wearing right now, you probably wouldn’t recognize it either. At least they’re maintaining that black, travel-orientated feel. A line of bags, whether I like them or not, is a fairly natural extension of the brand — as opposed to, say, putting out a netbook or a line of furniture. More pictures of the line can be found at , and you can order them if you live in Europe. They cost about what you’d expect: $100-$175. |
Contest: Win Qualcomm's 1.5 Ghz, 13 Megapixel Android Development Superphone (Worth $1,350!) | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | I get to give away lots of cool stuff on MobileCrunch… but this might be the coolest thing we’ve given away yet. This morning, Qualcomm began selling an Android device called the Snapdragon MDP MSM8660. This thing is, in a sense, a glimpse of the future. Built on top of a dual-core, 1.5 Ghz Snapdragon CPU, the crazy fast Adreno 220 graphics chip, and sporting a 13 megapixel camera, the MDP is primarily meant for developers to get a head start on the tech that’ll be hitting handsets later this year. As you might expect, this thing doesn’t come cheap. If you were to buy it direct from Qualcomm, it’d set you back $1,350. Win it from us, however, and it won’t cost you a dime.
See that big ol’ protective suitcase? You win that. Inside of it is the Snapdragon MDP, plus a handful of other goodies that we’ll let the winner find for themselves. As for what’s inside the Snapdragon MDP, check out the specs on this thing: (Note: This chipset inside this phone is compatible with both CDMA and GSM networks, and CAN be configured for use as an actual phone. With that said, some carriers don’t allow non-certified devices on their network, so getting it up and running might require some… convincing. Gettin’ things working on any given carrier is the responsibility of the winner, though we’ll try to point you in the right direction.) We’re doing things a bit differently than we usually might. In this contest, we’ve got three ways to enter. Two of the routes are worth one entry each, while the other will get you entries. Like buying five tickets for a raffle, it gives you considerably better odds than the guy who only entered once. We’ve got this fancy Hit the “Like” button, then dive into the photos section. In there will be a photo of the suitcase shown up above — tucked into the details of that photo will be a secret passphrase. E-mail that secret passphrase to greg+MDP1@crunchgear.com, and bam — you’re entered. The catch: if you didn’t “Like” the MobileCrunch page before you sent your email, your e-mailed entry won’t count (if you liked the page before the contest started, you’re good to go.) Get to liking! Worth one entry. Drop a comment on this page describing why you want the Snapdragon MDP, and you’re entered to win. Comment as much as you want, but each commenter will only be counted once (No trying to cheat! We’ll have the anti-cheat bots lookin’ for fishy details, and anything suspicious will be disqualified in a heartbeat). Worth one entry. This one might take a few minutes, but it’s worth up to three entries! Here’s how it works: It’s April, and there’s no better way to celebrate the fourth month of the year than a hunt for totally secular egg-shaped objects. We’ve hidden three “eggs” like the one below in MobileCrunch posts from the last 30 days (March 29th — April 27th). Find the stories with the eggs (not including this one) and e-mail each story’s URL to greg+MDP2@crunchgear.com. Send all the URLs you find in one e-mail. Each egg you find is worth one entry, totaling three possible entries. Happy hunting! |
Turner invests in TeePee Games, a Pandora-like engine for social games | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | There are now, by some estimates, 35,000 social games. Can you name the top five? I thought not. In other words, the sheer number of social games across the web, mobile and social platforms like Facebook mean they are now presenting the same problem as iPhone or Android apps: how do you discover the good ones? is a consumer portal that aggregates social games. It’s starting with Facebook but will soon extend to smartphones and other online games, allowing gamers to tailor games to their profile, cutting through the usual noise. So far so similar to a thousand other aggregators. The difference is that it’s built a discovery engine, not unlike the way Pandora or Last.Fm suggests new artists to you. A year in development, and despite still being in open beta, it plans to offer 300 Facebook, 2,500 Flash and 100 Android games – and it’s already signing investment. Today the startup, which already has $500k in Angel backing, has signed a ‘strategic partnership’ with Turner Broadcasting Europe (home to Cartoon Network, TNT, Adult Swim and others). The fact that Turner is ‘backing’ the development of TeePee’s games discovery platform is code for some kind of investment in the company, but so far both, including CEO/’Chief TeePee’ Tony Pearce, are coy about how much this amounts to. Still, not bad for a startup a few months old given that it’s unusual to get a large media company such as Turner to invest so early. TeePee, now with 25,000 players on its beta, is layering up its platform with social features, community, rewards and loyalty points. Competitors includes Miniclip, of Mindjolt in Facebook, but – as Pearce points out – none have a discovery engine, merely charts. Analytics are a core component of the startup. It’s discovery engine gives developers realtime social gaming data and analytics. Turner’s European operation does not appear to be shy about investing in startups. In December 2010, it took a significant minority stake in , an entertainment and celebrity news site for Europe. Aside from Pearce (formerly of Player X, acquired by Zed) the experienced team also includes Nick Alexander, ex-CEO of Sega Europe and Simon Jones ex-CEO of Game Jacket. |
Indian Stealth Startup Mojostreet Secures $350K From Former Microsoft VP, Others | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | Hyderabad-based , a location-based mobile gaming startup, announced today that it has received $350K in seed funding, led by , former Managing Director of Microsoft India and former Managing Director of India. Mojostreet will use its infusion of capital to ramp up hiring efforts and to assist in the startup’s beta launch in early May. Like a mix of its American counterparts , , and My Town, Mojostreet’s first product is a location-based app, which will allow users to check in at various point of interests in a game format. At launch, Mojostreet will be restricted to 5.5 million locations in India, but Founder and CEO Kalyan Manyam said that he hopes to launch Mojostreet in the U.S. and Singapore shortly thereafter. The startup has partnered with several major national retail outlets in India to provide real world offers to complement the virtual gaming experience. So, as users check in at various locations, they will be awarded virtual currency, or “Mojo bucks”. Gamers are pitted against their friends in a mobile scavenger hunt, unlocking special offers at check-in, and stockpiling virtual cash along the way. Manyam, who also founded — an Indian social network with more than 6 million users — said that mobile gaming is currently exploding among the more than 600 million mobile phone users in India. As a result, Mojostreet will be available on Blackberry, Nokia, IPhone and Android phones. Manyam said. |
VHX Wants To Be Your Video Dashboard For The Entire Internet | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | [vimeo http://vimeo.com/22054779 w=620] Launching in private beta today and founded by , part of the original Vimeo team and Know Your Meme co-founder is , a site that aims to But wait, haven’t we heard this like a bajillion times? Right away there’s something different about VHX as a video-sharing experience, namely that when you hit the service after initially registering and following other users, the videos in your VHX dashboard start playing right away, almost like you’ve turned on the social video TV. The site, which runs in Flash, is admittedly quite slow to load, but once it does the experience of watching videos in your dashboard stream (what your friends have decided to share), in your queue (what you have flagged to watch later) or in your history is pretty much the closest I’ve come to a non-fragmented experience on the web. This is great if you want to watch online video while folding clothes or cooking or doing exercise, and don’t want to click around aimlessly for the next distraction. VHX also lets you download a bookmarklet that lets you share or queue up videos from around the web, and the VHX browser extension tracks what videos you’ve watched on other sites, adding them to your history. You can share directly to Twitter, Facebook, Gmail and Tumblr from within the app, linking to the original video. And while VHX currently only supports Vimeo and YouTube, Wilkinson tells me he wants to add other formats soon, essentially becoming a video dashboard for the entire web. Working in the online video space is a hard row to hoe, especially when you stand in the shadows of YouTube, Vimeo and Boxee, and audience success is not necessarily matched by a viable business model. Wilkinson acknowleged. VHX is working on more-in depth features that would turn the service into where users would be able to create video playlists to share on VHX or embed on their own blogs. Wilkinson eventually wants to give the user the ability to edit the videos themselves. The team also has native iPhone and iPad apps in development, as well as a Boxee app for those not content with watching videos on a computer screen. The first hundred TechCrunch readers can get early access to the VHX beta |
Ask a VC: Bijan Sabet Returns to the Hot Seat. Send Your Questions Now! | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | This week, I invited of back to Ask a VC, because it’s been a while and there were a ton of questions we didn’t get to last time. Sabet is in the middle of some of the most interesting companies on the Web today including Tumblr, Twitter and Boxee. And as you can see from his last time on the show, he’s a . Last time we talked about everything from investing in Africa to why Boston is struggling to get its startup mojo back. What do you want to know? Send your questions to askavc(at)techcrunch(dot)com. Feel free to check out to come up with some good ones. |
Run iPhone Apps Directly From Your Browser With Pieceable Viewer | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | Part of first cohort, is launching its first product today, the . As you can see above with the app or with apps like or , the viewer allows you to run and test out embeddable iPhone apps from your web browser. Developers can publish their apps directly to the service and the Pieceable team will create a web page that displays a fully functional copy of the app. Developers or anyone who needs to share an app can then send a link to whomever they’d like to give the demo to. CEO Fred Potter tells me. Using Flash to simulate the app’s functionality, Pieceable Viewer works without any code modifications on the developer’s side, says Potter. But Pieceable Viewer isn’t Pieceable’s core product. The company itself, in the same space as and , aims to be a WordPress for mobile platforms, helping people write apps even if they don’t know how to code. Potter explains, The company should be fully launching in the next couple of months. Helping non-techies make apps is cool and all but I’m pretty satisfied with just the Pieceable Viewer, which should also support Android in the coming weeks. My grand vision for this is that tech reporters can use the service to include working app demos along with app reviews. Imagine how cool it would be if readers could actually try out the app while reading about it? Currently the Viewer has a tiered-pricing plan, with Free getting you 1 simultaneous viewer, 1 app and a link that expires, $30 getting you 3 simultaneous viewers and 5 iPhone apps, and $60 getting you 10 viewers, unlimited apps in addition to app links that never expire. |
Review: TDK 3 Speaker Boombox | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 11 |
Beautifully styled, modern, and very loud, but USB issues take this from a cool and functional device to a questionable one. ( : TDK released a firmware update the day after this review published which fixes the USB issues. I installed it myself and it works perfectly; devices will ship with updated firmware starting now, and owners should be able to download the update at soon. The review has been updated where relevant, but the portions relating to the issue left in for the record.)
The first thing that needs to be said is that this isn’t a question of value, exactly. Or rather, it’s not a question of whether you should buy this boombox or another boombox. Who even buys a boombox these days? Generally you have your computer speakers on your desk, and perhaps a surround sound system or hi-fi attached to a mixer/entertainment center. But a boombox? TDK is aiming at the nostalgia crowd, a group of people who used to have boomboxes but now have a little disposable income and a taste for design. So obviously the first thing you notice about this thing is the design. Portland-based Ziba design really did TDK proud here, creating an easily recognizable, almost instantly iconic look, and one that puts the most sound-related features forward: the speakers. They’re uncovered so you can better see them move, but it’s also worth noting that not putting a grill on them makes them susceptible to kids, pets, and feet. The design has an admirable symmetry, with the volume/power control on the left and navigation/adjustment on the right. There are little touch-sensitive buttons that appear when applicable and disappear at other times, which gives the device a nice minimalist look, though it slightly disrupts the symmetry. There are two displays, a one-line display on the left that shows song data and/or radio station name. The display on the right is used for navigating your directories on a drive, adjusting the station and EQ, and defaults to a spectrum display when not in active use. The volume dial (which goes to 11 — nice one) is weighty and feels good to spin. I love the finish, too: The color theme throughout is orange and white, and overall it’s very attractive. The piano black finish is attractive but attracts dust and fingerprints, as you can see in my pictures, and I swear I just wiped that thing off right before I took the shots. The two screens, however, could really stand to be quite a bit larger. Song data is almost always truncated and must be shown in several sequential screens. Not so much a big deal for song and artist display, but navigation can be troublesome if you have more than a few directories. Why not make them both the same size — about 1.5″x4″ would do it, and we’re not talking about some expensive touchscreen here, just a low-res, limited-color display. I know the attention is supposed to be on the industrial design, TDK, but let’s be honest, there’s bright, blinking info at all times and it really should be either bigger or smaller. You can’t make it smaller without making it non-functional — so make it bigger.
Despite the small screen size, navigation really isn’t that bad. Text is clear and attractive, and although I would have preferred it show ID3 tags instead of filenames, that’s really a matter of taste. It doesn’t really “accelerate” if you spin it faster, though, which feels like it would make sense. It’ll function plugged in, or with twelve D batteries. I guess boom boxes always needed that kind of power, but man, that’s rough. There’s a handle for carrying, which is convenient, and a little grippy rubber pad for you to put your MP3 player on. Good attention to detail all around, and the build quality is hard to fault. I would have liked an SD card slot, though. Why not? It’s cheap, makes your device more self-contained, and attracts techie types. Integration with over-the-air signals would have been nice, too, although you could easily rig something up through the analog in. The predominant sound of this boombox is big, warm, and loud. Wattage ratings aren’t anything to go by, by the way. These three speakers are more than enough to completely saturate a room with thumping bass and serious noise. Depending on your input (more on that in a second) you can really make this thing push air. We’re not talking or anything, but if you were worried that a (relatively) compact system can’t make enough noise, you can safely shelf those worries. It’s definitely aimed at booming sound, though: although it doesn’t distort or muffle something like unaccompanied piano, it does universally emphasize the lower end. Fortunately, the EQ (really only adjusting the treble and bass) is easily accessible at any time, and you can switch between party mode and Chopin mode with a couple twists of the wrist. EQ presets would have been appreciated, but it would also have complicated things for only a small convenience. It’s not a mixer or amp, it’s a boom box. Actually, speaking of amps, it’s also compatible with any instrument with a 1/4″ out. My disused electric guitar worked perfectly well with it, and while it’s no tube amp, it’s an easy setup for practice, though to be honest you might want to increase the single before it goes into the TDK, as the input level seemed pretty low. The following portion of the review described an issue with the USB input that caused it to clip. TDK has rectified the issue with a patch, and USB sounds fine now. The conclusion portion has been changed to reflect this as well. For that matter, the line in input level seemed low as well, while whatever controller handles music on USB drives obviously has the input set at maximum. I played the same song on my Zune and on a USB stick after noticing some clipping issues, and not only did I have to set the volume twice as high when using the 1/8″ in, but the sound was clear all the way through, while on the USB drive it clipped almost constantly. I tried a couple different drives, same result. TDK, you need to turn that sucker down. How about a firmware update? This USB issue seems to extend, unfortunately, to iOS devices, which it supports via the same port (it ships with a 30-pin connector). It’ll even charge your iPhone or iPod, though my iPad would play music but not charge. Conclusion So is it worth the money? If you plan on using USB media with it, I can’t recommend it. If this USB issue weren’t present, this would make a great sound system for a music-orientated small household or shared area where people are always plugging in their iPods or what have you to provide a collective soundtrack to a home. The sound is great for parties and general non-audiophile use if you use the analog inputs or radio, and the 1/4″ port is appreciated, but without USB it’s not really a complete product. If TDK addresses this issue (or if this review unit can be shown to be an exception) then I’d say get thee to the TDK-ery if you feel you can spend half a grand on a nicely-designed second sound system. Until then, though, hold off. (updated) Now that the USB issue has been fixed, there’s nothing to stop me from recommending this other than the fact that it’s rather expensive and not for audiophiles who value clarity over power. It’s well-designed, fun, and fairly versatile. Is it worth $500? That’s not something I can decide for you, but let me put it this way: if you think it’s worth $500, you won’t be disappointed with the performance. If you don’t think it’s worth $500, it’s not for you. |
This Is Acer's New Logo (Act Like You Care) | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 11 |
Acer is to become more like Apple. A fool’s affair, in my humble opinion. That’s like some random animation company — Dreamworks works well here — trying to become Pixar. There can only be one Pixar and there can only be one Apple. (thankfully) But I’m just a lowly blogger. What do I know. So instead of staying the course and competing against HP, Dell, and all the other beige box makers in the consumer and enterprise market, they’re changing course and chasing Apple’s tail. And so they have a new logo. It’s the one pictured above that happens to look a lot like the previous generation — just a bit more Apple-ish if Apple used diarrhea green and a sloppy typeface. [ via ] |
null | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 27 | null |
Amazon Announces Ad-Supported Kindle For $114 (That's $25 Off) | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | Amazon’s Kindle is about to become even more affordable. Today, the company announced that it’s releasing a new version of its popular eReader with a new feature that everyone will like: a price-tag that’s $25 cheaper than the Kindle Wi-Fi’s normal $139. But it comes with one minor catch: Amazon will be placing ‘Special Offers’ — also known as ads — into specific parts of the Kindle UI. But fear not, skeptical bibliophiles: Amazon says that the ads will only show up on the Kindle’s home screen and screensavers, and they won’t show up when you’re actually reading. For those of you who haven’t used a Kindle before, the home screen is, as you’d expect, the menu where you select what content you’d like to read (you don’t see it often unless you frequently jump between books). And the screen savers show up whenever you put your device to sleep (on current models these include portraits of famous authors and art). In other words, the ads should be pretty unintrusive. |
Video: Eddie Izzard Walks Us Through iTunes Software Update | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETBkBt_f9NQ&w=620&h=355] “But you you’ve read the terms and conditions… even God has not read the terms and conditions.” |
Mediastay raises €15 million to take its game monetization solutions international | roxannevarza | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | is a French company that kind of stands out from the rest – and not just because it was founded by a group of teenagers back in 2000 (co-founder Eric Bennepthali started back when he was 16). Today, the 60-person company specializing in online gaming payment solutions is announcing that it has closed a €15 million ($21.5 million) round of funding for further international development. The money comes from and (formerly AGF Private Equity). MediaStay publishes a number of games, including sweepstakes like , and . In 2010, the MediaStay also entered with the launch of – before its OfferMatch virtual payment solution later in the year. This -like virtual currency platform is used by MediaStay to fuel its own games – which count over 15 million players in 14 different countries – in addition to third-party partner sites and Facebook applications. Users are able to acquire virtual currency by signing up for various offers. OfferMatch is used in ‘s social games, ‘s OhMyDollz and to name a few. MediaStay is also currently the only French company to provide advertising solutions to app developers. This round of funding will allow the company to launch additional sites and applications, and to develop its international audience. The 60-person team currently has offices in Paris, Brussels and San Francisco and is considering additional international offices at the moment. While no announcements have been made, the company did launch Kingoloto in Brazil last week – so I wouldn’t be too surprised to find an office there shortly. MediaStay has also made some small acquisitions in the past, in 2008 – and Bennepthali definitely hinted at potential acquisitions to come… |
Shareport: A Cracked Version Of Apple's Airplay That Doesn't Discriminate | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | Just this morning I was sitting on the can — with my feet on a stool thanks to a life tip from Greg — and was staring at a Moto Xoom while fantasizing about how awesome my life would be if it supported Airplay. After all, my house is filled with A/V receivers and Android devices. But alas, Airplay is akin to a fancy waterfall feature if you subscribe to the Apple walled garden point of view. It’s just not something as an Android user I’ll be able to enjoy. But not anymore! The technology has been cracked wide open, allowing will eventually allow for all sorts of fun during my morning routine. Developer and probably all-around nice guy James Laird reversed engineered an Airport Express by physically taking it apart and search the ROM for the private key. Once found it was only a hop, skip and jump to crack the key and open it up for third party development. Soon, with software, non-apple devices can get in on the Airtunes fun with the ability to receive content directly from iTunes. A person could stream content to an Xbox 360. Or from one Mac to another. The only thing standing in the way is, well, the right software or hardware. Chances are software will come before hardware as manufacturers are likely not going to implant technology based on cracked Apple intellectual property. The possibilities are hopefully as promising as they sound. Until then I’m stuck play my music through the RDIO app on the Xoom — which works fine anyway. [via http://www.macrumors.com/2011/04/11/apple-airplay-private-key-exposed-opening-door-to-airport-express-emulators/] |
Location Discovery Service Scoville Lets You Find Hot New Local Spots | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | If you are a lover of spicy foods or hot sauces, you may be familiar with the , which measures the degree of spiciness of chili peppers and their many conveyances. Launching today in public beta is , a startup aimed at taking the temperature of local destinations. Taking a page from the Scoville Scale, the startup wants to help you record, discover, and share hot or trending destinations. Just as Twitter has its hashtag, in which users suggest their favorite people to follow every Friday, Scoville is employing to give locations their due. For the past month, Scoville has been in private beta, gathering data on Fourquare check-in habits. At the outset, only Foursquare users with 1,000+ checkins were accepted. The beta testers (which include uber evangelist , Foursquare Founder , and open web standards promoter ) were encouraged to log in at Scoville.com using their Foursquare account, pick the places they’d loved visiting over the past week, and to share them with their friends and followers. More than 5,000 people signed up for the private beta. Founded by entrepreneur and engineer and former product manager at Amazon and Visa , Scoville recently raised $400K in funding from , , and . The founders have been using the seed funding to grow Scoville’s engineering team, and Lesuisse tells me that the startup intends to launch “many new ways to share and discover places we love” — #toptuesday is just the beginning. Scoville is currently using the data it has collected from its private beta to feed its recommendation engine, bringing together the destinations you’ve “liked”, your social graph, similarities with other users, and reputation (Lesuisse says they are using API for the moment) to serve its users with a fully-personalized list of places each week. The co-founder says that his vision is to leverage the “small signals infrastructure” — or the many signals we send on a daily basis, like check-ins, messages, and images — to reinvent the way people explore cities. And to attack that much-coveted domain: The interest graph. , Lesuisse said. He also said that he sees Scoville becoming a crowdsourced version of magazine — a fullservice discovery engine for local fare. Sounds good to me. What’s more, Techcrunch readers can get an exclusive peak at the startup’s service by logging in using your Foursquare account. Unfortunately, non-Foursquare-ers will have to get on the waiting list, but Lesuisse said that Scoville will soon be extending its service to include the uninitiated as well. |
Adobe Unveils Creative Suite Subscription Editions: Photoshop For $50/Month | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 11 |
[chart: ] Adobe’s taking a pretty big step here, but a smart one. In order to fit in better with other cloud- and subscription-based services, they’re giving their Creative Suite (Photoshop, Premiere, Flash, etc.) an alternative pricing model: subscribe for a month or a year, but never buy. They also apparently lengthened their release schedule to 24 months, though I can’t find a source for that — which makes constant rental a slightly worse deal (over two years) than just buying the software. Having a flexible pay structure is a good thing all around. The thousand dollar cost for After Effects is prohibitive even for some professionals, when budgets are tight. Piracy is a serious issue, of course, but most would rather do their business on the up-and-up, and forking out $50-75 for a month-long license fits easily within existing schedules and budgets. Facilitating people paying for your software on their own terms is a recipe for sales, plain and simple. Do I wish I had After Effects or Photoshop every once in a while, when I need to do some heavy work? Sure. But 90% of the time, I can get away with using or the built-in tools in Premiere Express. The pricing scheme seems to show a significant break to “yearly subscriptions,” but displaying it as a monthly cost (as Adobe does, not the chart above) is kind of disingenuous. The monthly cost for Photoshop is $49. If you buy 12 months at once, it’s $420 — $35 per month. Unfortunately rental payments don’t go towards a purchase, but that would be a little bit good of a deal. Some will say “this is idiotic, renting software is absurd.” And indeed, it’s not the best choice for everyone. Are you a professional web designer, editor, effects artist, or some such? You probably should just buy it, especially if you plan to buy the next version (or upgrade) as well, since often there’s a discount. But not everyone is in your situation, and there’s plenty of precedent for subscription- and use-based payment systems for software tools. Cloud music services, Flickr (to Mike’s ), that sort of thing. Remember, the standard method of paying for software is based on . We can do better. All your questions are answered ; pricing and links to rent are . |
Amazon, Love The Kindle Ads Idea — But The Right Price Is $99 | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | When I first read the new that Amazon would begin selling an ad-supported Kindle, my heart sank. This is the beginning of the end, I thought. But that was only because the about the change left out one key detail: the ads will be shown during the reading experience. Jason dug up . Amazon will only be showing the ads on the Kindle home screen and on the screensavers, which is great. In exchange, people will be able to buy a Kindle for $25 cheaper — $114. An attractive price, no doubt. But it’s also ones that begs the question: why on Earth not go to the killer $99 price point?! Imagine a Kindle for $99. There would be a frenzy. Amazon would sell of them. Even though the $15 price difference may not seem like much on paper, the psychological importance of losing that third digit cannot be downplayed. It’s the very reason why many items are often sold for $9.99 instead of $10.00. And $0.99 instead of $1.00. And so on… Now you absolutely have to believe that Amazon knows this. They’ve been the leaders in selling just about everything for a long time now. So you have to think they simply could not make a further $15 price cut work. Amazon has always been cagey on Kindle sales, so there’s no way we can expect them to state their margins on the device. Others have estimated that the Kindle margins are likely “ ” based on component tear-downs and other Amazon stated financial numbers. And when you take into account patents, development costs, marketing, etc, there’s a belief that Amazon may actually be eating money on each one sold. So they must have looked over the potential numbers from advertising and determined that $114 was as low as they could go. But again, we’re just $15 away from the magical number! I would bet that many people would gladly accept a Kindle with get this — two ads — running simultaneously on the homescreen if it meant a $99 Kindle. Still, this is likely phase one of an experiment for Amazon. They’re probably eating money here to see how much a $25 price cut will jack up unit sales — and more importantly, Kindle book sales — and how much advertiser interest there will be. If either of those numbers are significant, maybe we will see the magical $99 Kindle just in time for the holiday season. Remember when the Kindle was $399? You should, it was only three and a half years ago. |
PSA: Some Nissan Leafs Are Randomly Not Starting | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 11 |
Although I’m excited about the and EVs in general, the launch hasn’t exactly been smooth. There have been shortages, range issues, and now some sort of bug with the AC unit that’s It’s unclear how widespread the problem is, or what Nissan intends to do, but the consensus seems to be “if your Leaf gives you a weird error on startup, don’t shut it down. Drive to the dealer ASAP.” [via ] |
China Is A Nation Of Fakery: Inside The Shanzhai Markets | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU82h-yxCJg&w=640&h=390] It’s hard to believe, but 1 out of 5 phones in the world is counterfeit and the vast majority come from Shenzhen. This ten-minute video explores the Shanzhai phenomenon and the “mobile phoney” market, a wild west sort of world where counterfeit iPhone 4s are hard to tell apart from their real counterparts. The Shanzhai market sees the sale of these phones as a sort of a system of liberation that allows items once owned by the elite to trickle down to the rest of the world. The obvious concern – that these are not the same quality as the “real” thing – is made moot by the fact that these things are so cheap and have such diverse features that you’re really talking about an entirely new device for an entirely new market. Check out the video and see for yourself how the Shanzhai phenomenon is changing the way we think about durable goods and the lengths pirates go to making things look like the real thing. |
BrightSource Nabs $168 Million From Google To Develop Ivanpah Solar Power Plant In The Mojave | Lora Kolodny | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | Developers of large-scale, solar power plants closed another $168 million investment, the company announced today — this time from Google corporate. The funds will go towards the completion of the humongous, Ivanpah solar power tower plant in the Mojave Desert now under construction (image, right). Three years ago, Google.org invested $10 million, and took an equity stake in BrightSource. deal hailed from Google’s Green Business Operations team, however, and the funds are to be applied towards the completion of the not Brightsource’s overall business, a Google spokesman confirmed. Google’s director of Green Business Operations, Rick Needham, wrote more about the company’s reasons for investing in this project in an today. He expressed hope that moving a solar project of this magnitude forward in Nevada, that could supply power to California, would reduce the cost of clean energy from renewable sources for Google, and the market overall. Google still buys most of its power from the grid. According to the , the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) is expected to be operational for 25 years after completion around 2013, and is expected to generate 392 gross megawatts of solar energy. BrightSource attained power purchase agreements with major utilities, including which helped it secure financing for Ivanpah. Conservation and Native American groups have recently filed lawsuits against BrightSource, expressing concern over the company’s , especially endangered tortoises and delicate habitat there. At least Google’s not — — investing in nuclear. BrightSource’s website notes that Ivanpah, when completed, is expected to almost double the amount of solar thermal electricity produced in the U.S. today. |
"Caoon" DSLR Is Actually An MP3 Player | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 11 |
Oh, knockoff devices. You never cease to entertain me. is actually a little MP3 player; the speaker is in the lens, and it takes USB, SD card, MMC, or 3.5mm in. Yeah, it’s junk, and at $67 it’s pretty expensive junk, but you have to admire the craftsmanship. |
How Many Mulligans Does Color Get? | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | WARNING: mixed sports metaphors ahead. How many do-overs does a startup get before users give up on it for good? As far as I can remember, the answer is zero. I can’t think of an example where a startup launched into the wild, flailed badly, and recovered (without completely abandoning the first product). There are lots of examples of flailing and relaunching (see Cuil, see Joost), but I can’t think of anyone that managed to pull out a win. By my count , the $41 million startup that promises to “transform the way people communicate with each other,” has already struck out. The first strike was a that left users confused, sharing photos with themselves and trying to figure out a user interface that seemed purposely designed to frustrate. . Strike two: pulling the Android version of the app from the market. And strike three: engaging in a big PR partnership with The Telegraph in the UK to get people all over the UK to post pictures during the royal wedding. Just , which isn’t much more than MG Siegler and friends during a bachelor party/iPhone fest in Mexico a few weeks ago. And The Telegraph promised that the best photos would be published. are those “best” photos. This third strike was particularly egregious. The color team knows that people are confused about what the app is supposed to do. It’s not supposed to be just another photo sharing app. It’s about the future of social networks. I’m fully on board with the social network stuff, and have been . So why in the world would Color, with a hamstrung app and a confused marketplace, pull a major PR stunt that’s all about showing off Color as exactly what the company doesn’t want Color to be thought of (another photo sharing app)? You got me. If anyone gets it, let me know. I want Color to succeed. I don’t hold their against them in any way. I love that they’re trying to solve a really big problem. And I like that the team is successful but still hungry. But Color shouldn’t have launched when they did. They knew the app was seriously flawed, and they should have known that they probably wouldn’t get another chance at a first impression. And with all the negativity, the last thing they should have done was push the app as is to tens of millions of people in the UK. Those masses have far less patience for the quirks of unfinished software than people like us do. The team here at TechCrunch will give Color all the mulligans it wants to get things right. They can swing and miss all day and we’ll still be here in the stands, rooting them on. But eventually the crowds, tired of boo’ing, will go home. And the stadium lights will go out. And then, even if Color hits one out of the park, we’re not sure there’ll be anyone around to see it. I say to Color, “SWING for the fences!” Just don’t keep swinging with your eyes squeezed shut. |
The Pitfall Of Twitter's 'Promoted Trends' #RoyalWedding | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | Twitter recently rates on Twitter Promoted Trends from $60K-$70K to between $100K-$120K which means the demand for the unique form of advertising is certainly there. But what are brands getting in return? As we’ve seen before with Skittles, , and even the #Dickbar, attempting to float a brand message over user generated Twitter content isn’t always a success. Case in point … For the past few days the chatter around the has been plentiful, but not necessarily all positive. Diet shake Slim Fast bought the #RoyalWedding Promoted Trends slot yesterday, and at some point had its brand message (and its inexplicable link to its Facebook page) associated with sundry undesirable content. While granted it is sort of funny, the relevancy of tweets like to Slim Fast’s admittedly inane message should be a serious issue for a company trying to monetize UGC. Companies who spend money on advertising tend to avoid the above sorts of associations, with good reason. What makes this specific instance of ad relevancy failure worse is that the #RoyalWedding hashtag is currently being highlighted on Twitter’s revamped homepage along with #STS134 and #NFLDraft — As things that presumably add value to new Twitter users. Right now all three are riddled with Twitter, which just , is currently averaging about new accounts a day. While this growth isn’t too shabby, it’s hard to picture the middle aged, middle American curious about Twitter landing on the above results and wanting to stick around for very long. Twitter did not have a whole server dedicated to today. That was a joke.
|
Nancy Conrad On Education Innovation: Turning Geeks Into Rock Stars Is A Game Changer | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | Last week President Obama , emphasizing during the townhall that the US needs to be bullish on Science and Math education if we are to pull out of the recession, he said. Taking off on that idea, Nancy Conrad, the wife of late astronaut , has founded the in the memory of her husband. Peter was expelled from one school in the 11th grade because he had dyslexia and then went on to graduate from Princeton and walk on the moon because he was taken under the wing of another educator who saw promise in the young man. Nancy Conrad wants to give other kids with a penchant for entrepreneurship their “moon shots,” or the opportunity to get funding and actualize their ideas; Because of this the Conrad Foundation puts on the and Innovation Summit annually, attempting to foster a love of innovation in kids between the ages of 13 and 18. To attend the , high schoolers across the country are invited to enter the three year old competition, which ends up flying in 27 finalists to NASA Ames to pitch their startups to judges in one of three categories: Aerospace Exploration, Clean Energy and Cyber Security. The winning team in each category receives a 5K grant to fund their project. While building the is an ambitious goal, after attending the extremely professional finalist presentations today it’s obvious that spotlighting kids who have a passion for innovation and technology is a fundamental step in turning our education system around. Conrad said emphasizing that you need to get kids excited about Science, Math and Technology in order build a viable workforce. Hmm … So maybe Intel ? |
Wine Sling For Your Bike Makes Riding While Romancing A Snap | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 29 |
Like the idea of that , but you’re more of a wine drinker? Son, you’re in luck. This hand-made, leather sling for wine bottles attaches to your frame and lets you cruise to your date or party — without having to steer with one hand or bring a nerdy bag to hold the wine. — at this point normally I’d make a joke about Canadian dollars, but our uppance has come on that account, so I won’t — plus $8 for shipping. I could really use this thing, actually. [via and ] |
Weekend Giveaway: A Mixtape Watch For You And Yours | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | It’s Friday Friday Friday and you need to get ready for some fun, fun, fun! What better way to prove you’re not a stuffy old accountant’s assistant (even if you you are, no judgment) than with a This EOS Mixtape watch comes courtesy of and they’ve offered for you lucky ducks. To win, simply comment below. I’ll pick five winners at random on Monday. They also offer the watch at a 50% discount on their deals site so you can get one if you… you know, don’t win. |
More PSN Developments: FBI, Credit Card Databases, And Hard Questions For Sony | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 29 |
The PSN debacle is continually evolving as the extent of the damage is made clear, though it should be noted that we’re still in the early stages and a lot of what’s out there is guesswork and hearsay. The good news is that the FBI is on the case, and a number of more local authorities are taking action as well. The bad news is that the hackers may in fact have the credit card numbers and, despite Sony’s claims, the CV2 codes as well. Speaking to Kotaku, the FBI confirmed that it is in contact with Sony and is reviewing the evidence. Connecticut’s Attorney General sent a strongly-worded letter to Sony evincing his concern over Sony’s (apparent) slowness to warn its customers they were at risk. It’s not just the US, either: announced it would be fining Sony if questions have not been answered satisfactorily within 10 days. Meanwhile, a rumor began spreading around the net that hackers were trying to sell a list of 2.2 million credit cards with CV2 codes included. However, there are a number of reasons these reports are suspicious. The hackers provided no proof they had the lists, for one thing. As to the CV2 codes, without which the cards are less able to be abused, Sony said the information was never collected. This was shown (the code is asked for when you join PSN) but Sony says the code wasn’t retained, as it is essentially a one-time authentication method. Furthermore, the cards are , though there’s no confirming whether that protection is intact. What should you do? It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have your credit and debit cards replaced, and to change your password on any site where you might have used the same username/password combo. If you sustain any financial damage, document it. Watch the for further updates and Q&As so you’ll be informed when new information is made public. has also been posting good roundups of data. But expressing your disappointment with Sony can wait until all the facts are in; right now they’re in damage control mode full-time, and complaints will just be added to the pile. |
Tiny Barebones Quadrocopter Is Adorable And I Want One | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRuWf2h7_5Q&w=640&h=390]
We’ve always liked the quadrocopter, and of course the four-rotor layout is among robocists everywhere — but this is something totally new. Weighing in at just 20 grams (that’s only slightly more than ), it’s basically just a PCB with rotors on it — and with the telemetry being handled off-device, it’s essentially a thin-client UAV. The “CrazyFlie” is made by , whose aim was to make pretty much what it is: a flying robot pared down to the essentials. They’ve been working on it for quite a while and this is its debut. Simple hardware means it’s cheap to make — I smell a promotion on ThinkGeek in a few months. [via ] |
Bose Founder Gives Away The Company – To MIT | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | Here’s an unexpected development. Dr. Amar Bose (founder of… you know, Bose) has , MIT — in fact, he’s essentially given away the company. The gift comprises a majority of the shares of the company, albeit in non-voting form, so MIT won’t be running the company. Instead, they’ll be raking in the dividends, likely to fund a few chairs, scholarships, and other recurring costs. Whatever you think about Bose’s sound, I think you have to agree this is a pretty cool move. |
Gigabyte's Touch BIOS Makes Changing Memory Timings Fun And Easy | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ozr7XDJ6IA&w=640&h=390]
If you’ve put together your own PC before, chances are you’ve had to dip into the BIOS to change a few things around, switch the boot priority, things like that. But as essential as the BIOS tools are, the UI has always been a bit daunting. Keyboard navigation of an 80s-style ASCII interface isn’t something you expect in this modern age. So Gigabyte has gone ahead and given their BIOS a shiny new touch-compatible layer, for those of you rocking all-in-ones or touchscreen monitors. Practical? Not really. But hey, why not? Interestingly, Gigabyte is among the few motherboard manufacturers which have not gone over to UEFI, the new mobo-level firmware interface. In fact, I have a P67-UDP4 sitting behind me that’s probably the last of the old-school BIOS breed — which was actually part of the draw for me, as the new UEFI boards are still working out the kinks, or so I hear. As for the touchscreen thing — it could be nice for helping people troubleshoot or get more out of their PCs, but I don’t think there’s really a big market for it just yet. Observe this powerful Venn diagram: See? The statistics show very clearly that this Touch BIOS has a hard future ahead of it. [via ] |
Is Creationary A Lego Boardgame? Yes. Yes It Is. | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | At first blush a game called “Creationary” may sound a bit anti-science but it is, in fact, just Pictionary with Legos. It costs $34 and is for ages 7-12 and apparently you can build your own die and then pick cards to tell each player what to build. You can make vehicles, buildings, or items from nature (there’s also a nebulous “things” category) and it’s for 3 to 8 players. UPDATED Lego bricks are included so you won’t have to go scrounging under the couch for the big green board and pull all the small two stud pieces out of the vacuum cleaner if you really intend to get into some serious competition. |
Can I Get Some Sustainability With That Shake? | Lora Kolodny | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued Energy Star ratings for . These appliances are used by high-volume dining establishments — like fast food chains, institutional cafeterias and full-service restaurants— to make french fries, hush puppies and anything else Paula Deen would promote, in bulk. Encouraging the industry to upgrade to more energy-efficient fryers could help reduce the overall environmental (if not health) impact of kitchens in the U.S. catering to the collective appetite for fried foods, an appetite that seems pervasive, and permanent here. One Texan cook, Mark Zable, has even invented a method to make . According to a press statement and calculations by the EPA: ” If every large vat fryer in the [country] met the new Energy Star requirements, energy cost savings would increase approximately $81 million per year and reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to the emissions from nearly 95,000 cars.”
The and footprint of goes beyond the electricity and gas that it takes to run kitchen equipment, of course. Certain vegetable oils are more sustainable than others. can become a pollutant unless disposed of properly. Many food businesses are opting to give or sell their spent grease to biofuel producers, these days, thankfully. Bon Appétit Management Company — which provides sustainable food in cafes at SF Giants stadium, eBay, Oracle, Google and college campuses including U-Penn, Duke and MIT — has been doing this for years, in collaboration with local biofuel companies like for example. This month (as Tilde Herrera reported for Greenbiz.com) U.S. Foodservice went so far as to acquire a company, WVO Industries. The foodservice business will begin to power its truck fleets with their own spent cooking oil, allowing them to avoid the here. Ultimately, foods that are sautéed, boiled, toasted, roasted or prepared raw will prove better for the body and planet than deep-fried with rare — no pun intended — exception. There is no official carbon footprint label for food here, but a sustainability blogger and small business owner in Germany, Peter Graf (not to be confused with Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer at SAP) has shared some rough calculations via his blog . He wrote: “The path from potato to french fry takes 9 steps.The potatoes are… Then, they’re fried in hot oil in the canteen and served. All this transforms a single kilo of potatoes (140g CO2) into a real climate-killer (5700g CO2).” |
null | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 11 | null |
Stolen Camera Finder Uses Metadata To Locate Your Property | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 29 |
This is a cool idea, though it requires a little luck to work. The gist is that you , it examines the EXIF data and looks for the serial number, then checks the web for photos with an identical SN. If your camera is lost or stolen, there’s a chance it could pick up pictures taken by the new owner, if they haven’t scrubbed the metadata. Give it a shot. It didn’t work for me, but the photo I used has been through several editing apps. [via ] |
Jack Dorsey Shares Some Big Square Numbers: 341,688 Readers Shipped, $137M Total Flow | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 4 | 29 |
Square founder and CEO Jack Dorsey just tweeted a photo of the company’s internal dashboard, and, aside from looking very sexy, it’s boasting some impressive numbers. Among them: Square has shipped 341,688 of its card readers to date and has 332,483 activated users. As Dorsey’s points out, Square is also showing some very impressive growth: on March 2, Square was processing per day. Now, less than two months later, it’s doubled that, with $2 million in processed payments today alone (and there’s still some time left on the clock). Other stats on the dashboard: Square’s total flow to date, which I believe means the total amount of transactions it’s done, is just shy of $137 million. Its revenue for today is $59,390, a 40% increase since last Friday. It’s unclear what drove the huge gain over last week — perhaps Square’s in Apple retail stores is contributing to the growth spurt. : More stats — it’s a little hard to read, but it looks like Square might have 23,630 ‘Card Payments’ (which might be the number of transactions today). It also looks like they had 9,078 active users today (again, it’s a little hard to make out). I’ve included an image that has gone through our special CSI:Enhance filter below.
|
Drone Ships To Run On Sediment Sucked From The Sea Floor | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | Drone warships may soon be sailing under their own power using sediment sucked from the sea floor. How does it work? Well, the batteries create current by using the natural fuel sources in the water and from sea bottom dwelling animalcules. Office of Naval Research just did a patent on making energy with a combination of seawater and organic material at the bottom of the ocean. If this can work in large quantities, you can see an unmanned vehicle out there simply burrowing down into the bottom of the ocean trying to recharge. … It’s unmanned systems [like that] that offer tremendous versatility and tremendous reach. These fuel cells convert naturally occurring fuels and oxidants in the marine environment into electricity making them a viable power source for long-term operation of autonomous underwater unmanned vehicles, in-water sensors, and devices used for surveillance and monitoring the ocean environment. Thus far they’re using the technique to power small buoys but with enough research and big enouch batteries you could potentially sail the ocean blue with the slush at the bottom of the sea. |
Strike A Pose, 'Cause Online Point Of Sale Systems Are The New Vogue | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | If you’ve ever worked in retail or the food services industry, you’re probably familiar with the Point of Sale (POS) system. It’s the software/hardware combination that most people would probably call a cash register, though there’s more to it than that: inventory tracking, coupons, exchanges, and pretty much everything else is done using one of these POS systems. And they’re often a total pain, with myriad options and interfaces that sometimes harken back to the Windows 3.1 days. is one company (among many) that’s trying to fix the POS. And instead of relying on a new hardware device, they’re turning to one you already have: your web-connected computer. Everything on Pose is web-based, so you can easily set up a new terminal if one computer starts malfunctioning, and setup is obviously cheap because you probably don’t have anything to buy. I spoke with CEO Guy Marcus earlier this week, who walked me through a demo of the product. As with other POS systems, you can enter products manually or using a USB barcode scanner. You can then flip into the cashier interface, where you can input what the customer is purchasing by tapping on photos or, again, using a USB scanner. Pose isn’t available to the public quite yet (they’re aiming for a June release), but from what I saw it looked solid — they’re putting a lot of work into making the interface usable and attractive. It’s also optimized for both desktop and tablet use. Businesses will pay for the web-based software as a monthly subscription. Pose isn’t the first company to have this idea — competitors include , , , and . But Marcus says that his company differs from the others because it also integrates marketing functionality — customers can opt to provide their email addresses to receive receipts and future correspondence from the business. Pose will also allow merchants to generate an online storefront (it uses the same inventory as your retail database) in a matter of minutes. Merchants are still responsible for actually shipping these goods, though. I also asked if Marcus saw Square —which has an iPad app that can be used to tally up a customer’s purchases — as a competitor. He says that he doesn’t think Square will be offering a deep inventory management system any time soon, and that he sees the payments company as more of a potential partner. Pose’s four-person team is based in Israel. The company has raised $300K.
|
When Will Microsoft's Internet Bloodbath End? | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | “Online Services Division revenue grew 14% year-over-year primarily driven by increases in search revenue.” That was Microsoft’s statement about the Online Services Division in their earnings yesterday. Growth! Yippee! The strategy is working! Right? Wrong. What they don’t bother to mention in the release, but they can’t hide in the actual numbers, is just how bad the quarter actually was for the division. While may have grown a bit year over year, — as in the money you actually get to keep — was an entirely different story. It was a bloodbath, really. Yes, again. Microsoft $726 million in the Online Services Division for the quarter. It was actually their worst quarter in two years in that regard. And it was their second worst ever, in their nifty chart perfect for showing such bloodbaths. And despite the year over year revenue growth, the income was actually year over year. As in, they managed to more money despite bringing in more. As in, the statement up top is total misdirection bullshit. And how’s this for a kick in the pants: if Microsoft had just scrapped their Online Services Division for the quarter, they likely would have beaten Apple in terms of profits once again. Instead, — behind, mind you, for the first time in a couple decades. Of course, Microsoft can’t afford to scrap the Online Services Division (well, figuratively afford it, at least). Like every technology company, they know this is the key to the future. And that’s precisely why they’re dumping so much money into it. But it that strategy actually working? Revenue is growing, but losses are mounting. Microsoft is having to spend $2 to make $1 — actually a bit than that ratio! Last October, I wrote that Microsoft was . This pissed a lot of people off, who thought the comparison was unfair. After all, Microsoft can afford to burn the money. That’s true, the quarter overall was for them (though because it wasn’t good enough). But if the two pillars of their business, Windows and Office, start to slip (as just about everyone believes they will sooner or later as we move into an increasingly mobile world of computing), these Online Services losses are going to become a big, problem. Fast. Maybe Microsoft can figure it out before that happens. But there’s just absolutely no data pointing in that direction right now. And there hasn’t been in the past . In fact, the numbers are actually getting worse! After a nightmare Q3 and Q4 in 2010 (fiscal, not the actual calendar quarters) with Online Services loses right around $700 million, it looked like Microsoft may be turning things around with loses of “only” around $550 million in Q1 and Q2 of 2011. But if you look at the bigger picture, you’ll see that those Q1 and Q2 loses were actually year over year. If you simply extrapolated that out, you should have been able to predict this quarter’s bloodbath as well. In the past year, Microsoft has now lost a staggering $2.5 billion in the Online Services Division. Think about that for a second. When I wrote the October post, the loss runrate was “only” $2 billion. The situation is getting worse. And so I ask, how long can this bloodbath last? When will it end? Or maybe more to the point: will it end? All the data we have right now points to a pretty definitive “no”. |
Speaking of… sex toys with Ethan Imboden from Jimmyjane [TCTV] | Cyan Banister | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | Vibrating sex toys have been around for over a century, starting out as crude and now resembling something very cool that you might pick up at an Apple store. Sex toys have been the source of giggles, controversy, pleasure and up until the last 5 years, were not a mainstream product. They were devices you bought and had shipped in unmarked brown packaging or slipped into a toy store late at night to buy, but were not something you’d ever imagine picking up at Nordstrom or your local . Millions of men and women use them every day and yet, it isn’t something we talk about much. Considering there’s a lot of tech that go into these devices these days, I think it is a topic worth exploring and definitely something we should no longer be ashamed of. Today’s episode of Speaking Of covers the journey of an amazingly brave entrepreneur, , Chairman of , who set out to design something meaningful that would change people’s lives. He’s not the first to create a stigma free product. Many cool products have been sold in stores like Good Vibrations for years, but he’s the first to bring a safe, non-toxic, sexy, virtually stigma free brand to the mainstream market. His efforts were what I consider truly disruptive and changed the landscape for the availability of pleasure toys for consumers everywhere. I’ll never forget the day I saw one of his products in a local lingerie store and how I started stumbling into them at mainstream stores everywhere. Seeing these products available to people in comfortable settings brought me so much joy and I’m excited to be able to share his journey into creating such a wonderful product with all of you. Ethan shares his journey of starting out as an electrical engineer, becoming a designer for Herman Miller and how he was encouraged to start revolutionizing the sex toy space. We learn about him as a DJ, world-traveler and the fact that his arch nemesis designer was the guy who designed Swingline staplers. At the end of the episode, we get a tour of some of his products that are quite stimulating to look at and at the time of the interview, he hinted at the launch of their new Form 4 product, which is now . We have one product giveaway for commenters. Best, most insightful comment on the sex toy industry wins one of Jimmyjane’s awesome products that they gave to us in the studio. The deadline is Sunday 6pm PT. You must be 18 years old to win. Congrats to Taylor Alexander and Kay Pamela Ray for winning! |
The Creepiest Royal Wedding Photo Ever, Courtesy Of Color | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | Well, the Royal Wedding is over. Wasn’t that wonderful? If you weren’t watching on TV, there were about a million ways to . Millions watched on YouTube, Livestream and elsewhere. And even those who were there uploaded their own photos and videos, including this guy. I’ll call him the masked Union Jack freak. Is that some sort of S&M suit he’s wearing? It doesn’t seem proper juxtaposed with the royal newlyweds. You can find pictures of him on a special created by people using the iPhone social camera app and sponsored by the British paper, You remember Color, the that created a huge in the press and some among consumers about exactly how to use the app. Yeah, well, even with the Telegraph pushing the app as some sort of crowd-sourced photo collage, only about 560 photos were uploaded to the album, and none of them are terribly interesting. But I guess you had to be there. |
Also, You Can Now Fabricate A Practice Brain Before You Operate On One | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 29 |
Not only can you print , as I just posted a few minutes ago, but now (if you’re a neurosurgeon) you can take a high-resolution CT scan and , so you can go hands on before cracking that skull open. I just thought I’d let you know that O HELLO FUTURE |
18 Hardcore Months In The Making, Glitch Is Ready To Roll | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 4 | 16 | Starting next week, there’s a new massively multi-player online game that you’re going to want to play. It’s called , and it’s been in the making for . From what I’ve seen, it will be well worth the wait. Over a year ago, Tiny Speck (the company behind Glitch) co-founder to go over some of the aspects behind the game. A few days ago, we caught up again to go over how far they’ve come leading up to the beta. “We’ve been going hardcore for the last 18 months,” Butterfield says of the Tiny Speck team. “But only in the last four months have things gotten much clearer,” he continues. While they initially expected to launch in beta late last year, it has taken a bit longer than anticipated. But now he feels they’re ready to roll, undoubtedly helped by a big new influx of funding and a lot of new employees (they’re up to 22 now — minus former design lead Daniel Burka who , but remains involved, Butterfield notes). For the past six months, they’ve been testing Glitch with a select group of users for about a day every week. At most, there have been about 250 people at any given time testing it out. But with the beta, Butterfield expects to ramp that number up to 1,000 quickly. And the virtual world will be open about half of the time. He expects the beta period to last anywhere from eight to fourteen weeks and over that time, they’ll let in the “tens of thousands” of users who have signed up to get early access (we have some cut-the-line invites below). They’ll be using a RockMelt-style invite system in which users are given invites and can easily see which of their friends want one. In terms of the technology they’ve built to power the game, Butterfield seems most proud of the fact that they’ve brought a web-oriented approach towards software development to the game. He walked me through a bit of the backend to show me just how easy it is to tweak elements of the game on the fly, and to add new things. A series of drop-down menus and pre-set data inputs makes this all possible. And it will allow Glitch to deploy in minutes what it has traditionally taken MMOs days or weeks to get out to their community. It will also allow for designers to push changes without having to bug the engineers. The game itself is running on Amazon’s EC2 system. Butterfield notes that the biggest issue with that is the inter-sever traffic, but he says his team has engineered around many of those issues. They plan to stay on EC2 indefinitely partially due to what Butterfield learned with his previous startup, Flickr. “As a team we previously had to deal with storage requirements. If that can be someone else’s problem entirely, it’s better,” he says. (He does acknowledge that at some point, assuming they grow quickly, it will make economic sense to have their own servers.) The game itself is built entirely in Flash, which Butterfield notes can be a pain at times. But to get the polished look-and-feel that Glitch has, HTML5 simply is nowhere close where it needs to be, he says. “Maybe a couple years from now, but not now,” he says. One of the most interesting aspects of Glitch is that they’ll have an API from day one that third-party developers can use to expand upon the game. In fact, some already are. Developers will be able to access Glitch characters that users create and do things such as modify them outside of the game, Butterfield says. Eventually, this API is going to lead Glitch’s mobile approach as well. Because of the reliance on Flash, a mobile version of the game is unlikely anytime soon, but developers can come up with mini-games using the API, he notes. Butterfield says they’ll likely commission outside developers to do cool things on mobile devices and split revenues with them. So where are the revenues going to come from? Glitch’s model is to be free for everyone, but they’ll have a subscription layer for the more hardcore players. These subscribers will have access to special features such as different character accessories. There will also be in-game purchase options. Using a system Tiny Speck has built, users will be able to buy credits for something like 5.5 cents to 7.5 cents each. These can be used to buy power-ups and do things like teleportation to other areas in the game. Butterfield is quick to say though that they don’t want to make it easy for players to simply buy success. PayPal payments should also be an option down the road. And eventually, Butterfield expects Facebook Credits to be a big part — Facebook still has to open these for use outside of their in-app ecosystem. One thing that has surprised Butterfield so far is that while males make up the vast majority of the early testers, it’s females that are the most active players. This may speak well to the game’s appeal to a wide-range of players, as some of the most popular online games have . Again, while Glitch will launch in beta in a few days, there will still be a gradual roll-out to begin with. However, we’ve convinced them to give us 111 invites to cut the access line and get in front. and enter your email addresses quickly. : And the invites are gone — in under 10 minutes, apparently there’s a lot of interest in this game. |
Now You Can Fabricate Your Own Strandbeest | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 29 |
3D printing service is useful for everything from to . But this time they’ve really outdone themselves. You might remember the , a set of sculptures/machines that “walk” under their own power due to clever design by their creator, Theo Jansen. The originals were large and hand-made from light wood so they could move easily — but Jansen collaborated with Shapeways to put together a version that they can just [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt8oHv09e_k&w=640&h=390] It won’t go in wind, of course, but you can see how it moves when pulled by a string in this video. Simultaneously creepy and amazing. They call it Animaris Geneticus Parvus, Isn’t it just shocking how cool of a world we live in? |
From the Teclosion 2011 Spring Event In Tokyo: 15 Demos From Japanese Startups | Serkan Toto | 2,011 | 4 | 16 | On Friday, I attended in Tokyo/Japan, a one-day web industry event (backed by , a media company in the UI/UX information and startup business) that was very much focused on the local startup scene. The largest chunk of the schedule was reserved for 15 Japanese start-ups, which presented their services onstage to a panel of judges and a crowd of around 300 people. Here are thumbnail sketches of all the services that were shown at the event’s so-called “Startup Battle”. [ENG] (winner of the Grand Prix)
Best of show went to , a location-based iPhone app that wants to help connect users in the real world based on their “inner tastes”, for examples through Likes pulled from Facebook and “interest tags” users can add themselves in order to create a social profile. The idea here is to visualize these items so when you start the app in a restaurant for example, you can scan what interests the guests there have and strike a conversation with people you wouldn’t have met otherwise. Wondershake is due out next month. [ENG] by
Tokyo-based startup , which develops “cloud enabling technologies”, pitched Midonet, the company’s virtualized networking platform. Midonet will soon become available through MidoStack, Midokura’s own distribution of OpenStack, or as a standalone product supporting virtualized and physical hardware. Midokura just $1.3 million in a seed-funding round from a number of big-name Japanese investors. [JP] by
Launched in December 2010, is a Twitter-based barter service: just log in with your Twitter account, list up the items you don’t need anymore and wait for other Livlis users to indicate what they want. The site now counts thousands of items, for example computer accessories, clothes, books etc. Livlis is free to use (more information on the service in English can be found ). [JP] by is a “digital” household account book that will soon be available in the form of an iPhone app (Android and web versions are planned to follow thereafter). Developed by the only individual taking part in Teclosion’s Startup Battle, zaim’s main selling point is that it makes managing money and expenses social, for example by letting users share (and compare) certain data points via Twitter and Facebook. [ENG] by is a free (and actually very popular) video editing software suite for Mac users ( ) that lets you create and share video in a hassle-free way. Pitched during Teclosion as a “social video communication tool”, the desktop app lets you record (through the web cam) and edit video in real-time, add effects (music, sound, graphics, text etc.) and then share your videos via Twitter, Facebook or YouTube (or save them on your Mac). A MoSo version for the iPhone is in the works. Here’s a “MoSo’d” Charlie Sheen video pulled from YouTube: Here are the nine services that didn’t make the cut at the event: Teclosion’s website can be found (it’s in English). |
Jack Dorsey Is A Real Man, For A Good Cause | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 16 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0gO4R4aSRI&w=630] , Demi Moore and foundation for sex trafficking awareness, has launched its social media campaign this week, “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls.” If you get past the absurdity of their ads (and they are absurd on so many levels) and visit the DNA you’ll encounter some shocking statistics about the prostitution industry. For example, over 12 million people are at risk for sex slavery around the world and the average age of entry into sex slavery is 13 years old. Moore and Kutcher’s solution? Raise awareness and take action, like reporting any suspicious ads you see on Craigslist or Backpage. In order to spread the word, the actress and actor/angel investor have leveraged their Hollywood connections to get Justin Timberlake, Sean Penn, Bradley Cooper, Jamie Foxx and even “Old Spice Guy” Isaiah Mustafa to make these silly silly videos. Notable personalities like media cyclone Arianna Huffington have also added their visages to the mix (she’s at the end of Kutcher’s video). Where Dorsey comes is in that DNA has with tech companies like Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft in order to come up with ways to reduce the 76% of sex trade transactions that take place online. Microsoft for example is working on something called Photo DNA, which identifies and tags pornographic images, allowing service providers to remove all their replications simultaneously. The initiative also includes a Facebook campaign which allows users to have their picture added to the gallery of “Real Men” and “Women Who Prefer Real Men,” as well as take part in the video. I really wish they would rig it so Eva Langoria would say my name though, just like they did with Dorsey. I’d love to hear her try to pronounce “Tsotsis.” Kutcher is an investor in Flipboard, Blekko, Path and Zaarly among other other things. |
Voxy Now Uses Your Location To Help You Learn Language | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 16 | [vimeo 22392011 width=”620″] TechCrunch Disrupt finalist a service that a language “from life” has just updated its iPhone app in the App Store, with one pretty disruptive difference; Voxy’s ESL app now uses your location to help you learn a language, presenting you with the related vocabulary, as well things you hear and things you say if you’re at a destination like a restaurant, for example. The app uses the platform to bring users context-based lessons for about 150 points of interest including barbershops, dentist’s offices, banks, grocery stores and more. Each lesson is built so a user can complete it in three minutes, so as not to detract from the actual experience of being in a restaurant or grocery store. ” says founder Paul Gollash. Voxy monetizes by a subscription model, at $2 a month for users that want added premium services like the ability to get lessons via SMS. The service currently has 100k registered users (75k active users) and is ranked #1 in the App Store’s Education category for over 8 countries. In Spain the app is #3 in overall apps. Right now Voxy is only available for Spanish speakers that want to learn English but Gollash plans on expanding to other languages soon, with a version for English speakers who want to learn Spanish now in An Android app should also be available in the coming weeks.
|
Square's Disruptive Payment Service About To Get A Huge Retail Boost From Apple | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 4 | 16 |
Mobile payments company has landed a big coup— And we’ve just confirmed with Square that the startup has a deal for in-store sales as well. Apple will start selling Square devices in all of its U.S. retail stores starting this week. Square offers both an iPhone/iPod Touch and an which allows merchants to process and manage credit card transactions with a handy little credit card swiping device that plugs into the headset/microphone jack. Apple has shown some love for Square lately, so it’s not entirely surprising that the payments startup has forged a deeper relationship with the Cupertino-based company. Most recently, Apple CEO Steve Jobs showcased Square’s technology at the debut of Apple’s iPad 2. But to be featured on Apple’s online store and in its brick and mortar operations is a big deal. This is Square’s first large-scale in-store retail promotion and it landed a huge fish. Millions of consumers visit Apple’s retail outlets each day, and this will certainly translate into more sales and exposure for Square. While display location may vary by store, we hear that Square will be included in the store area where main consumer-oriented accessories are displayed. Apple and Square will also be partnering to host educational seminars at the stores, where consumers can learn how to use the device. Square’s device is selling at the store for $9.95 but users get a $10 square credit when they sign up for an account and the apps are free. It’s important to note that when sign up for Square on its website, the device is free, and the company only charges merchants 2.75 percent per transaction. You can also purchase the device in black or white (previously the Square devices were only sold in White). Clearly Square is taking a bit of a bath on the device sales here. Apple is probably taking some sort of cut from the transaction, and Square is giving merchants a $10 credit, so effectively, the company isn’t really making any money. In fact, it appears that Square could be losing money on this. But an endorsement and placement from Apple could boost sales and usage for the payments device so perhaps all will even out in the end. Also, Apple managing distribution and shipping of Square devices means that the startup will be able to give users access to quicker and more efficient delivery operations. Interestingly, Apple doesn’t use Square in its stores for transactions but perhaps this could change as Square gains more traction and expand with international support. Apple also sells Square competitor VeriFone’s card reader in its retail stores. Square, which was co-founded by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, has been on a roll of late. The startup just raised in new funding, and is gaining a lot of most recently debuting a fairly large billboard in Times Square and announcing that it is processing in payments per day. Square also the $0.15 per transaction charge for businesses using the mobile payments service. COO Keith Rabois told us in January that the startup is expected to process $40 million in transactions in Q1 of 2011 and is currently signing up 100,000 merchants per month. That’s compared to 30,000 monthly signups last Fall. I think there’s no doubt that with its latest deal, those numbers should multiply pretty quickly. |
Mobli Aims To Give Mobile Photo/Video Sharing A Little Celebrity Flair | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 4 | 16 | Given the that is seeing, it should be absolutely no surprise the startups are rushing to the mobile photo/video sharing space. But is there room for more than one player? Probably, but again, there are dozens of other players who have already been working on building their user bases for months now as well. The new guys coming late to the game need a hook. hook is apparently going to be celebrity participation. Mobli is an Israeli startup that is preparing to enter the space in a few weeks with an iPhone app and website, followed shortly thereafter by Android and BlackBerry apps. “Smartphones are gradually replacing video and digital cameras,” Gil Eyal, Mobli’s VP of Strategy tells us. But we already knew that, a lot of people do. How can they differentiate themselves? Mobli’s plan is to be faster than the other players out there and to give you the most options for sharing. “By the time you take a video, within seconds, you’ve already uploaded it,” Eyal says. That’s smart, speed is one of the key factors for Instagram’s success (and they don’t do video). In terms of options, Eyal notes that content can be shared broadly or narrowly. They’re using the Twitter follow model, but you can also share things privately. They’re also playing up the Color-like aspect of it. That is, you easily create channels for groups to easily share pictures into. For example, if a bunch of people are at a wedding, everyone can share their pictures into a single album on the fly. And all pictures/videos are geotagged (and can be optionally tagged to a Foursquare venue) to further narrow collections. And these collections can be as broad as big news happening in foreign countries. All that’s great. But again, the space is already crowded, they need a hook. Right now, the thing Eyal kept pointing me to was how active actor is on Mobli. Haas is best known for his work in films like Inception and Brick — or if you want to go back to when he was a kid, Witness. More importantly, he’s bringing some other celebrity action to the site as well. Here’s . Here’s . Here’s . To take advantage of this type of usage, Mobli has created a “paparazzi” channel just for celebrity spotting. That could certainly be a hook if it becomes active enough. Though there they face competition from services like and even Instagram which counts . Mobli has raised $1.6 million over two rounds in the past year. Investors include Morrix Holdings and Mobili co-founder . And while they won’t confirm it, I have the sneaking suspicion that Haas may be an investor as well. The company currently has 13 employees working out of Israel, but they’re also setting up a New York office right now. Again, look for Mobli to launch in the coming weeks. |
Nicholas Says Adios! | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 4 | 16 | Real Madrid Barcelona later today in the first of I think to take place over the next few weeks. In other news, I’m leaving CrunchGear. Yup, my time here has come to an end. I’d be shocked if 90 percent of you who read this have any idea who I am, even so much as to recognize the name “Nicholas Deleon,” and I’d be equally shocked if the remaining 10 percent could give a toss, but there it is: I’m off. “What gives?” maybe three of you will ask. Well, next week I’ll be moving over to The Daily, the fancy iPad newspaper deal that launched a few months ago. Peter’s , too, so it’s sorta like a reunion. I’ll be writing about more or less the same topics, though presumably with less references sprinkled throughout. Incidentally, the News Corp. building in Manhattan is right next door to the building, so that’s sorta neat. We had some laughs (such as when I became the first person after the year 1999 ) and we had our fair bit of controversy—the was a particularly dicey situation—but the most important thing is that I helped you waste a few minutes of your day while fiddling about on the Internet. A fine legacy, to be sure. I do have a Twitter account, (mind the tricky “A” in the middle there), but I barely use the thing. In fact, wasn’t even in English, so I don’t know what to tell you. Follow it and see what kind magic happens. (Note: magic is not guaranteed.) So, yeah, that’s it. Adios~! |
The Real Reason Mike McCue Needs $50 Million: Google Is Building A Flipboard Killer | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 4 | 16 | When news came out the other day that just raised another $50 million at a $200 million valuation for its iPad news reading app, I gave CEO Mike McCue a on Twitter and here on TechCrunch. Does an iPad app startup really need $50 million, or is this yet another sign of a bubble? McCue responded on Twitter, but yesterday we spoke by phone and he went into great detail about why exactly he thinks he needs $50 million. He came up with the number a few months ago. It’s what he calculates he needs to get to cashflow positive, or at least pretty close (more on that below). Raising money is distraction, and his preference was to raise it all at once. But towards the end of our conversation, he also mentioned another concern which was a factor in taking as much money as he can right now. “I see a lot of competition down the pike,” he says. Rumors have been reaching him that there is a team of engineers at Google who are “saying they are building a Flipboard killer.” He adds quickly, ” I have no idea what it is,” but hearing about “this desire to kill us” is unsettling and it does add “a little concern about the unknown.” Could this product have anything to do with the magazine-like ? It is kind of clunky now, but something like that could be developed into a slick, HTML5 browser-based flip interface for news reading on tablets. Or maybe it’s a completely different project—an app for Android tablets. Or maybe it’s nothing. Setting aside the need to fend off both real and potential competitors flooding into the market, McCue has his own internal logic for why he raised so much money. “We want to build a large business here that has the ability to get into the billions of dollars in revenue,” he says. And to get there he needs to reach tens of millions of consumers and sign up 100 to 150 publishers from 17 today. I asked him if he plans on building his own ad salesforce, and at this point that is not the plan. He wants to keep partnering with publishers and let them sell their own ads. wants to hire engineers, and bring his employee count up from 32 to 50 or 60. At about $200,000 per employee (including salaries, benefits and other expenses), plus the network costs to support as many as 40 million Flipboard readers, his operating costs could easily get to $20 million a year. Here is what McCue told me in his own words: —————–
: We want to build a large business here that has the ability to get into the billions of dollars in revenue. What is the revenue model? You could charge for the app, charge for subscriptions, or you could do advertising. We decided the only way you could get to a multi-billion dollar business is through advertising. So given that, to build an advertising business, you’ve got to have a lot of scale. You’ve got to build a consumer brand, acquire tens of millions of users, and work with a lot of publishers to get there. You have to be international, and on multiple platforms. It is a big undertaking. : The next milestone is to be cashflow positive. I feel like I can get to cashflow positive with about 50 to 60 people. So our plan is to hire another 18 to 28 people, we have 32 now, then hover there and build out an advertising business with publishers. The bulk of those people will be engineers. Publishers will sell their own ads. . . . Assuming we can build an audience with a really good product, then we need about 100 to 150 publishing partners to build a really big business. We have 17 now. : I see a lot of competition down the pike. There’s talk that some people at Google are saying they are building a Flipboard killer, and I’ve heard those rumors. What I felt was a better approach was to build the best product no matter what the competition does. But this desire to kill us—a bunch of folks there have decided to build this product, I have no idea what it is—raises a little concern about the unknown. Anytime a company like that [might go after you], it certainly is the kind of thing I give a lot of thought to. : Another source says he too has heard about the Flipboard Killer project at Google. From what he can gather, it is a team of less than ten Googlers from the Boston/Cambridge area. Publishers who have seen demos like it so far, but its future is uncertain in the product reorg going on right now at Google. In other words the Flipboard Killer might itself get killed before it ever sees the light of day. |
TechCrunch Interview: FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 4 | 16 |
Earlier this week, FCC Chairman took the stage at the Computer History Museum in San Jose, CA for a special event moderated by Adam Lashinsky, Senior Editor at Large of . Their conversation touched on a range of issues related to the FCC, including net neutrality and AT&T’s of T-Mobile (which, unsurprisingly, Genachowski couldn’t comment on). Another big theme involved wireless spectrum — Genachowski says the current spectrum allotted to devices like tablets and mobile phones isn’t going to be able to keep up with rising demand. Which is why the FCC is hoping to launch incentive-based auctions to efficiently reassign spectrum (but it will need Congress’s support to do it). Immediately following the event Genachowski took some time to speak with us (he says he’s a big fan of TechCrunch). Check out the video above for our interview with him, in which we discuss why the FCC’s net neutrality rules are more lenient with regard to wireless than they are for wired Internet connections. We also briefly touch on that FCC inquiry into Apple’s of Google Voice back in the summer of 2009 (I ask him how he responded to Apple’s “pondering”). Also be sure to watch last month with Senator Al Franken, in which we discuss net neutrality. |
Gillmor Gang 4.16.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 4 | 16 | The Gillmor Gang — Dennis Crowley, JP Rangaswami, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — waxed prophetically in the social garden. Crowley has been the focus of some media attention about a slowdown in checkins, but he seemed more excited about his market position than worried. With good reason, as the Gang explained in a dissection of hyperlocal and personal data harvesting. Rangaswami sees the various outputs of these social tools as providing nuanced clues into the nature of what will get viral at Scoble scale, while Crowley demurred about the view of Foursquare as a media property only to describe just such a nextgen service. As we debated what media is becoming, the consensus emerged of a social landscape where each and varied signals provide a valuable composite sense of where we are and are going next. |
null | Thomas | 2,011 | 4 | 29 | null |
What App Developers Want: Letters To Steve Jobs And Larry Page | Jon Evans | 2,011 | 4 | 16 | The next smartphone wave is about to hit. There are that Android 3.1 (Ice Cream Sandwich) will drop in May, and iOS 5 in June. Greg already posted a pretty compelling for the latter, but what developers want is at least as important—because, as the -to- recent PlayBook reviews show, it hardly matters how great your hardware is. Nowadays success is all about the apps. Most users probably don’t appreciate that while both platforms have come a long way from their inglorious beginnings, both still have some painful, glaring flaws from a developer’s perspective. I should know: within the last six months I’ve been paid to write Android, Blackberry, iPhone, and iPad apps. I’ve also released my own pet-project on both the App Store and Android Market, so I’m all too familiar with those headaches too. Why should you care? Because these are (often) the main reasons why your apps suck, or crash, or both. Steve Jobs (and )
One Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA
USA 95014 Please give us garbage collection. Please please give us garbage collection. I know it isn’t sexy, or shiny, or bezelled. I know users can’t see any difference (except when apps crash, or take twice as long to develop as they should.) But while almost everything else about the iOS SDK—the editor, the libraries, Objective-C itself—is pretty wonderful, its memory management is straight out of the 1980s. As a compatriot recently said with horror, when he first looked at iOS development, “Wait a minute, what is this?” It’s like driving a Ferrari with brakes built by Lada. Memory management, for the uninitiated, refers to how a device shares its limited physical memory among its apps’ virtually unlimited desires. Every modern development environment has an automatic service—a “garbage collector”—which does most of this scutwork. You can still get into memory trouble, believe me, but at least you don’t have to painstakingly allocate and release every block of memory you might want to use beyond the current moment, lest you introduce a bug that is often devilishly difficult to find and fix. …Unless you’re writing an iOS app. . After all these years. W. T. F.!? Some claim that garbage collection is for the weak, but not Apple: OS X has had it for years. Others say it doesn’t work on mobile devices with limited resources. Or at least they did until Android and WebOS emerged; both have been garbage collected from day one. It’s a bit like the multitasking argument. : “Why doesn’t the iPhone multitask, like Android?” : “Because multitasking is bad, and evil!” : “Here’s iOS 4.0, with multitasking!” : “We have always loved multitasking!” Of course, purists would point out that iOS doesn’t actually have real multitasking, like Android. Please give us real multitasking, like Android. Please make it possible to develop iOS apps on something other than a Mac. Not for me; I am very happy with my shiny new MacBook Pro. For you. Because three billion people in the developing world will be buying smartphones over the next decade; they’ll want apps relevant to their culture and lifestyle, ie built by people from their culture and lifestyle; and if you’re a developer in a poor-but-emerging market, would you rather spend $200 to start writing Android apps, or $1000 to start developing for iOS? Exactly. I’ve been saying this for , Steve, but you haven’t been listening. Which is a shame, because I’d like for your (mostly) slick and elegant OS/SDK to succeed in the rest of the world, too. That said, I do have my doubts about your general hegemonic approach. I’m actually not going to complain about the App Store. Sure, it takes five to release an app instead of Android’s five , but that’s due to a philosophical difference which I can respect. (Though it’d be nice if you could cut it down to one day.) But could you please open up the parts of your system that are locked down so tightly that developers can barely touch them at all? Bluetooth, for instance. It’s nice that you let it be used under controlled circumstances for games. But how about letting us use it to send data to other devices? Which, you know, was kind of its whole idea in the first place? Thanks in advance, Jon. PS I’d really settle for just the garbage collection. Larry Page (and )
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA
USA 94043 We need to talk. Don’t get me wrong. On the whole I like Android even more than iOS. True, we have to write your apps in Java, not my favorite language. Yes, some of the tools (eg the debugger) are awfully crude compared to the slick, seamless environment that Apple gives us. I can live with those quirks, though, and otherwise it’s mostly a developer’s dream: powerful, flexible and open( ). But we need to talk about . Device fragmentation is bad enough. The layout system you’ve built so that one Android app can work seamlessly on devices with different screen sizes and configurations is clever – but it’s painful. Android UI implementation has become a kind of messy and complex voodoo. That’s why very few Android apps are as slick as their iPhone counterparts. It’s hard to make art out of Lego bricks that never quite seem to fit together seamlessly. And this is apparently about to get even worse, if it’s true that Android 3.1 is meant for smartphones and tablets and televisions. So, Please make it much easier to make attractive and responsive Android apps. Yes, it’s possible today, if you jump through a hundred hoops; but could you maybe cut that number down to ten? …That’s a minor complaint compared to the real fragmentation problem, though. By which I mean the operating system. By which I mean the carriers. When Apple releases a new OS, it’s immediately available for every Apple device that can support it. Why can’t Android work like that? Because carriers get in the way. They load devices with irritating, useless cruft, replace vital infrastructure with their own inferior versions (eg crippled Bluetooth stacks) and take forever to update their devices with new OSes. Why do carriers do this? Because, like the Taliban, they hate our freedom. As a result, according to your own chart, 33% of Android devices are still running Android 2.1 (which came out ) or earlier; so we developers are still reluctant to write apps that take advantage of the new features in Android 2.2, never mind 2.3 or 3.1. That isn’t good for us, and it isn’t good for you. Please set your people free. Thanks in advance, Jon. PS You totally should have gone with that . : Niccolò Caranti, |
Daily Crunch: Vintage Equipment Edition | Bryce Durbin | 2,011 | 4 | 16 | |
Kickstarter: TiGr Bike Lock Could Be Brilliant If It Works | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 28 |
Any cyclist in the city knows how essential a lock is for your bike, but they’re often bulky and heavy. aims to create a unique, lightweight lock that I would buy in a second. The TiGr is a titanium “bow,” perhaps more easily understood as a long U shape, that’s flexible and open on one end. You put the bow through your front wheel, around your frame and whatever you’re locking it to (up to 5.5″ wide, they say), and then put both ends into a locking cylinder at the end, closing the loop and making your bike secure. Supposedly it’s quite resistant to cutting, as well — although those of you in New York might still want to stick with that or a until this thing gets reviewed. The best part, in my opinion, is that the main part of the lock fits around the top tube and secures with velcro. I find the plastic lock mounts for U-locks chintzy and coiling one around the seat post is a pain. This one fits right around the tube and with luck won’t interfere with pedaling. You’ll have to carry the locking portion in your pocket or bag, though, so if you wipe out and lose it — tough. Though the same could be said for the key to any other lock. . Help make this thing a reality, [via and ] |
Redbox Expanding Game Rentals To 21,000 Locations In June | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 28 | We’ve seen games at some locations for a good while now, but it looks like the kiosk rental service is finally ready to throw down for realsies. Games will be coming to 21,000 locations starting on June 17, and they’ll be rentable for $2 per day. Sounds like a good deal to me — most single player campaigns these days can be finished in a couple serious sit-downs. And of course now when you’re picking up beer for the party, you can grab… I don’t know, or something. You’ll probably end up making out with your roommate. Just like the ads! 21,000 doesn’t mean everywhere just yet, but if you’ve got a Redbox in a well-trafficked area, it’s probably on their list. . Here’s the full press release, for people who collect such things: April 28, 2011 –Redbox, America’s movie rental destination, today announced it will offer video game rentals at more than 21,000 redbox locations nationwide beginning June 17, 2011. Top video games will join new release movies for only $2 a day complementing $1 DVD and $1.50 Blu-ray™ daily rental prices. The announcement follows a test of video game rentals in select U.S. markets that began in August 2009. “Redbox will increase consumers’ access to video game rentals by leveraging our incredible technology and business model to keep rental prices low for consumers,” said Mitch Lowe, president, redbox. “With more than 21,000 redbox locations slated to feature video game rentals alongside movies this June, redbox will be the one-stop shop for entertainment.” Redbox, a Coinstar, Inc. brand, has tested video game rentals alongside movies at 5,000 redbox locations. “Redbox has rented more than one million video games in less than two years at these locations, underscoring the popularity of video game play in America,” added Lowe. Today, nearly 64 percent* of people in the United States own a game console.
Upon launch, redbox will feature games across the three major console platforms: PLAYSTATION® 3, Nintendo Wii™ and Xbox 360®. Video game titles will range from top releases to popular family and kids titles. “Redbox will make discovering the latest games as easy as a trip to the local grocery, convenience or drug store,” said Joel Resnik, vice president, games, redbox. About Redbox
Redbox Automated Retail, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Coinstar, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSTR), offers new release DVD and Blu-ray Disc rentals through its network of conveniently located, self-service kiosks. Redbox has rented more than one billion movies and is available at more than 27,000 locations nationwide, including select McDonald’s restaurants, leading grocery, drug and convenience stores, select Walmart locations and Walgreens locations in select markets. For more information, visit www.redbox.com. |
Samsung Escalates IP War With Apple, Sues Over 10 Patents | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 28 |
The patent nonsense out there is very deep water for humble bloggers like ourselves, so we’re just going to point you in the right direction and wait for the dust to settle a bit before offering an opinion. It seems that Samsung has seen fit to on Apple, citing 10 patents it alleges are being infringed upon. It’s not much of a surprise, really — they filed lawsuits in other countries last week, but likely were taking a little extra time to harden the US case. has links to all the patents in question and some other useful information. |
Successor To Thunderbolt May Hit In 2015, Says Intel | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 28 |
The latest interface on the block, , is barely on the market and there’s already talk of its replacement. It’s a good four years down the road, of course (companies like have to think ahead), but there are already prototypes and Intel is already talking it up. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a cool code name yet, but they’ll fix that soon. The new tech uses (not to be confused with ), and we last heard from these guys when they hit the major milestone of using their prototype hardware last year. And they’ve had this project cooking long before then, too. So what’s new? Well, nothing they can really talk about. They’re showing it a bit more publicly now, and the is more concrete than the we got before. Intel’s Jeff Demain also notes that the new interface could live in harmony with Thunderbolt in some cases, though it’s definitely an advance. I suppose we’ll hear more from the team in another six or seven months. By then, we’ll be looking at widespread Thunderbolt ports and maybe even optical wires. So exciting! |
Square To Beef Up Card Reader Security This Summer (And VeriFone Wasn't So Wrong, After All) | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 4 | 28 | Yesterday was a big day for hot mobile payments startup Square. The company announced that it received a from Visa, giving the company a big stamp approval. And it also announced something that got far less attention: Square will be releasing a new card reader (the thing you plug into your phone) this summer, and it will use encryption at the read head. The news was with little fanfare by Square Security Lead Sam Quigley during a panel at the Visa Security Summit. But it’s important for a couple of reasons. First is the fact that just last month, rival (and much larger) payments company VeriFone : it said that Square should recall all of its readers because they didn’t encrypt credit card data, making it easy for thieves to skim the information. Square CEO Jack Dorsey , stating that VeriFone’s accusation that their reader was insecure was “not a fair or accurate claim and [that] it overlooks all of the protections already built into your credit card.” Dorsey also outlined all the ways that credit card fraud could still be committed, regardless of encryption, and explained that users aren’t responsible for fraudulent charges regardless. But now we have Square doing almost exactly what VeriFone was crying foul on. So what gives? In a that appears on the Visa Security Summit website, Square COO Keith Rabois writes that the company will be adopting Visa’s new set of mobile application best practices — which were also yesterday. From Rabois’s post: “The adoption of best practices will help increase trust in innovative payment solutions. Of course, Square complies with all current industry standards, and we are committed to meeting or exceeding industry guidelines as they evolve.” Square’s endorsement of the Visa guidelines the same day as the funding news is obviously no coincidence. And among these best practices is a requirement that these applications “encrypt all account data including at the card-reader level and in transmission between the acceptance device and the processor…”. Which explains, at least in part, why Square will be shipping a new reader. But what does that mean for the hundreds of thousands of existing Square card readers? When I spoke with him earlier today, Rabois said that Square is still more secure than the vast majority of card readers in the field, alluding to the additional features Square offers, like the ability to receive text and email notifications after each transaction. In other words, he’s still refuting VeriFone’s claims that Square needs to recall the existing reader. He also says that the new encrypted read head is just one of the new features that will be included in the new Square device this summer (which is actually the third iteration of the card reader). When I asked if this meant Square users would have to replace their existing readers, Rabois declined to get into specific details (it sounds like the plan is still being worked out). However, even if Square does wind up having to distribute a new batch of readers, the relatively inexpensive per-unit cost probably won’t have a major impact on them — though it could still be an inconvenience for users. In a statement CEO Jack Dorsey added, “Security and consumer trust are fundamental to our success. Square is committed to offering merchants a way to accept electronic payments that are secure, reliable and in compliance with the security standards for the global payments industry.” |
Honeycomb 3.1 Confirmed By… Adobe | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 28 |
While I think we all knew, deep down inside, that at some point there would be an Android 3.1, it hasn’t actually been mentioned by anyone except as a potential future upgrade. But Adobe let the cat out of the bag today with an update to Flash: the changelog to 10.2 includes a few features with “( )” on the end – or at least, it did until they fixed it. Luckily, . Not much else was mentioned; chances are, like the other X.1 releases, it’ll be mostly bug fixes, performance increases, and support for newer hardware. This accelerated Flash content will certainly be welcome; the 16:9 form factors are great for watching video, but decoding 720p Flash video with your CPU only is a tricky affair that, if it even works, tends to suck the battery dry. Hopefully this release will fix that. [via ] |
Cute Obituary For A Flip Accessory | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 28 |
After all, the Flip line of camcorders was popular and fun, and little doodads like Blue Microphone’s made it that much better to have around. RIP Flip, and RIP Flip accessories. |
Copycat Location-Related Lawsuit Against Google Filed | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 28 |
Ah, lawsuits. When it rains, it pours. One was filed hastily after the Apple tracking file was found, and now two women are for more or less the same thing, even using the other lawsuit’s language word for word. If there’s any wrongdoing here by either party, I don’t think these opportunistic lawsuits are going to be the vehicle of justice. [via ] |
Why Can't Anyone Make A Popular Tablet? | John Biggs | 2,011 | 4 | 28 | I’ve been thinking a lot about the popularity of tablets and the problems manufacturers face coming up against the . The devices that we see here at CG are all pretty amazing – even the was a cool, if flawed, device – but no one device seems to be able to grab any traction. In looking back, I see echoes of the netbook craze of the oughts, and the parallels with this “fad” (along with the distinct differences) are very telling. As you’ll recall, sat out the netbook race. Sure, they put one ultralight device forward, the Macbook Air, but it was a premium device, while the other manufacturers drove prices into the dirt and sent quality lower and lower. The result, if you’ll look at the blasted laptop landscape today, is a market full of an amalgam of mid-range fleet laptops for business travelers that have taken some design cues from higher-end netbooks and goofy art-themed mini laptops for students. The netbook – at least the small, squat, and compact devices so many claimed to love – has been abandoned for 13- to 15-inch models that are considerably thinner and lighter than they were a few years ago. Although my evidence is more or less anecdotal, I can assure you this is the trend I’ve seen in the the current crop of laptops coming up in the next few months and no matter how much you , you have to admit they got pretty bad near the end of the decade.
So how does the current tablet market compare to the long decline of netbooks? Well, I believe that the two markets are, in a sense, similar, but it’s the that are preventing any one manufacturer from gaining any traction in the tablet space. First, we need to make a basic supposition. We assume, for sake of argument, the is most popular consumer tablet thus far created (the sales numbers bear that out) and we need to assume that the popularity of the iPad is something to which all manufacturers aspire. I also posit that manufacturers are social animals. They see what their peers are doing in the space and then head over to Asia to have it manufactured. There are only a few major manufacturers and these factories offer fairly limited configurations from which OEMs can choose. Sure, guys like Dell and HP can order up their own silicon but they didn’t get their laptops below $500 by customizing the motherboard. They bought some standard boards, slapped in some chips, and created permutations of the same thing in different trade dress. As it once was with stereos – manufacturers would hide the extra features like EQ sliders inside the case and simply charge a premium to expose them – you were basically buying the same laptop with a different name. Essentially, laptop manufacturers saw a way to make a cheap buck with commodity hardware. They offered sub-par performance and non-optimal sizing to a world that was ready to buy into a lie that you didn’t have to pay for quality. The same consumers who lapped up netbooks in the hopes that they would make good “second computers” are now lapping up iPads – and, to a lesser degree, Android devices – and actually using them as second computers. In terms of manufacturing, the age of tablets is different from the age of netbooks mostly because there is no way to make a cheap tablet. You only have a certain, finite amount of space inside a small tablet case and, more important, tablet PC parts are expensive and often custom-built. Touchscreens are expensive because mother-glass manufacturers see Apple buying up their stock and they hope to make a killing. Flash memory is expensive because, well, Apple bought it all. And the tablets themselves are expensive because Apple set the prices. If Motorola could have gotten the Xoom below $250 I’m sure they would have but, given that there is a more popular alternative out there that costs twice as much, playing a scorched-earth pricing game would leave money on the table. But manufacturers can’t “beat” the iPad because they’re still playing by netbook rules. As said, there will soon be “200 tablets” on the market and only one clear winner. But hardware manufacturers are like sharks – they can’t sit still. They need to produce products constantly, no matter the popularity, and as a result, on the aggregate, no one device they produce out of the other 199 can touch the reigning king. It may sound hyperbolic but it’s true. However, they’ve been surprisingly reticent to produce many tablets. I’ve heard it said over and over: “If RIM had released the Playbook a year earlier, they would have owned the space.” Instead they announced early and hemmed and hawed and then released a device that is potentially superior to the iPad but, in practice, little more than a smooshed out Blackberry smartphone. Also, consider the reason carriers selling tablets with a contract: it’s the only way manufacturers can make a modicum of profit. Tablets are expensive to produce. Even at $499 they can’t make much out of a straight-to-consumer deal. There is no other way to explain why is more expensive than the presumably more fully-featured netbook other than the commoditization of parts. While margins are slim on both devices, I would wager Acer is making more on the Aspire One than the tablet. In the end, manufacturers must do what they know best in order to survive. They have to commoditize devices to reduce their price sufficiently and they have to drive down prices to remain competitive in a saturated marketplace. The current tablet market will not allow that for many of the reasons I mentioned above and also, simply, because no one wants a garbage tablet. In fact, a bad tablet is worse than no tablet at all, as evidenced by all the years Microsoft tried to flog their Tablet Edition software and hardware to an uninterested populace. On the low end the only tablet worth mentioning is the Nook Color, and anyone who tries to sell you a $99 tablet is out to steal your money. In the end, the netbook craze resembles but can never mirror the current tablet craze. Although I’m reticent to call this a “post PC” world, I think this is a bit more than a fad, though, and it seems that Apple is so far ahead in terms of sales, popularity, and usability that everyone else is, in a word, flummoxed. They just can’t fit a tablet into a global supply chain that rewards chintz. |
South Park Scares You Into Reading Apple's Terms And Conditions | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 4 | 28 | You know the drill … You open iTunes and there’s a popup that asks you to download a new version. You download the newest version and there’s another popup asking you to agree to Apple’s . But it’s over 55-pages long! You scroll to the bottom and hastily click “Agree,” because what’s the worst that can happen right? Well in South Park’s out-of-control genius premiere last night (which you’ve probably already seen but I’ll repost clips of for the two of you who haven’t) creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone took to the next level in a plot line that was a mashup of a and the horror film In the episode, Kyle, who apparently is one of the only people in South Park who didn’t read the iTunes TOS, inadvertently agrees to become the middle part of a Human CentiPad or a Hilarity ensues. |
Pixamid is what Color should be – agnostic about photo apps | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 4 | 28 | When came out with its $41m play, a rather lesser known startup had planned to launch around the same time – as these things go. How often does that happen? Pretty darn often no doubt. But while Color got all the press – not least for its funding – the lesser known has had to wait for its time in the sun. But while I have struggled – really I have – to get into Color, has given me pretty much exactly what I wanted out of this kind of app [ ] from the word go. Today at the (sixth annual) Next Web conference in Amsterdam, I met CEO and founder Bart Denny who demo’d the app to me. Whereas Color locates you via GPS, Pixamid pulls its location data from Foursquare initially – other location services are planned. Once checked in you can see the photos either from just your friends there or everyone at the location, at that moment. Pixamid thinks most people want more privacy on their photos, not less. So by default, Pixamid shares with only your friends at the same place as you – you can choose to share with everyone there too, via a simple switch. Although Color might be cool in a world where everyone uses Color, in fact there is a world of people out there using Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, Twitpic, you name it. So Pixamid wants to pull in your friends’ photos from any of these services, automatically. Here’s an interview with founder Bart Denny: |
eBay's PayPal Buys Mobile Payments Startup Fig Card | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 4 | 28 | In its in two weeks, eBay’s PayPal unit has bought mobile payments startup Terms of the acquisition, which was announced on the PayPal were not disclosed. Boston-based Fig Card allows merchants to accept mobile payments in stores by using a simple USB device that plugs into the cash register or point-of-sale terminal. All the consumer needs is the Fig app on his or her smart phone. The connection with PayPal is that when consumers setup their payment information, they could add PayPal as a payments option. You can see the video below for a demo of Fig Card’s technology This is also as much of a talent acquisition as it is a technology buy. The founders, Max Metral and Hasty Granbery (who will both join the PayPal Mobile team) are both seasoned technology execs. Prior to founding Fig, Metral was co-founder and CTO of Firefly, which was sold to Microsoft. He also went on to architect sign-on system Microsoft Passport. Metral and Granbery met at PeoplePC, which was sold to Earthlink. And so and so forth. Clearly mobile and online to offline is a big part of eBay’s strategy both for its marketplace and PayPal business. The company just bought location and advertising company Where, which will be housed within PayPal. In fact, PayPal will be integrated into Where’s mobile app as a payments mechanism for its local deals. It should be interesting to see how (and if) PayPal integrates Fig Card into its products. We know that the payments service is looking to connect with local merchants and bringing them a PayPal-focused point of sale system could help them compete with emerging technologies like NFC, Square and others. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCAQeHx8ryA&w=640&h=390] |
(Fly Or Die) Can TweetDeck's New iPhone App Survive A Twitter Acquisition | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 4 | 28 | new iPhone app came out a . It is completely redesigned from the ground up and looks more like it’s than the first TweetDeck for iPhone. Instead of cramming as much as possible into an iPhone screen, TweetDeck stripped everything out but the essentials. The result is a spare mobile stream reader that packs a lot of punch. We take a look at the new TweetDeck for IPhone in this episode of e, along with , and . As usual, the CEO behind one of these products appears as a surprise guest during the show. With Twitter rumored to be negotiating a of TweetDeck to keep it of Bill Gross’ UberMedia, it is not clear whether this brand new product will . After all, Twitter has its own iPhone client, among others. It doesn’t need two. |
The Final Shoe Drops: Apple Now More Profitable Than Microsoft Too | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 4 | 28 | Just about a year ago, when Apple Microsoft in market cap, the Redmond loyalists were out in full force: that means nothing — look at the revenues! When Apple Microsoft in revenues last October, it was: who cares — look at the profits! We were looking, and that this quarter just ended would be the one in which Apple Microsoft in that regard too.
Sure enough, they have. Easily. Microsoft has just their Q3 2011 results. The numbers appear to be good, beating analysts’ expectations. But with net income now at $5.23 billion, Microsoft now comes in well behind Apple, which had a net income of $5.99 billion last . |
Buzz Off, Google Buzz | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 4 | 28 | Two days ago, we removed the Google Buzz button from the top and bottom of each post on TechCrunch. No one noticed. Not a single person said a word about it. It wasn’t until earlier today when about it that we got some feedback on the change (most of it being: “oh, I didn’t even notice”). As I tweeted, that in and of itself says a lot. The issue of Buzz being a viable sharing platform used to be somewhat of a hot-button issue. When I wrote noting that traffic coming our way from Buzz appeared to be less than that of a dead man, FriendFeed, many folks got up in arms. It turns out, — but it wasn’t necessarily wrong. You see, since Buzz runs within Gmail, which defaults to HTTPS, it scrubs the referrer data before sending the traffic our way. So, conveniently, the only way to measure Buzz traffic was to infer it. Like a black hole. But I’m now pretty convinced that Buzz is actually much more like a black hole in another way: we were sending links there, but nothing was coming back our way — meaning traffic. When we had the Buzz button live on TechCrunch, I was sending every one of my posts to my over on Buzz. Mike was doing the same for TechCrunch posts to by way of the tweets he auto-imported into Buzz. Most importantly, the TechCrunch Buzz account was sending a link to each story to the that follow it. And yet, all but a very tiny amount of traffic is accounted for from the other major referring sites. Further, there were never any weird spikes in traffic sent by some unrecorded source. When a post is popular on services like Facebook, Twitter, Hacker News, Google News, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc, we often see big spikes. There was never once a sign of that happening with Buzz — inferred or otherwise. And so that led to us removing the Buzz button yesterday. And again, no one said a word. So it will remain gone. We are planning for now to replace it with the new (though a minor technical issue is holding up that deployment). That also says a lot. We will have Facebook buttons (the Like button being the other) on the site and zero Google ones. I suspect when Google rolls out , we’ll try that out. But that’s not really the same thing. Our data shows that the Facebook and Twitter buttons are being used a lot. And even the Digg button is every once in a while these days. But Buzz? More or less nada. And looking over my Buzz feed (which I haven’t done in months), it looks as if 99 percent of the content are tweets that are being auto-imported. And there’s basically no interaction on any of the items. A black hole. Remember when Buzz was supposed to get its own standalone site? What ever happened to that? It does exist in Google Profiles now, but I’m sure it gets even less usage there than within Gmail. Remember when Google that no one uses? That was just about a year ago. We’ve been hearing rumblings for months that Google was considering scrapping Buzz altogether at some point in the future. That still may be in the cards now that under new CEO Larry Page. As more of their social products begin to roll out, Buzz may in fact be . The upcoming Google I/O conference will be telling. If we don’t hear anything about Buzz, I suspect Google may soon be telling it to — forgive me — buzz off. Like we just did. |
With A New Suite Of Games, Arkadium Lets Gamers Play Right On Their Facebook Walls | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 4 | 28 | , the casual and social game developer, is announcing today the release of the , a suite of 12 Flash-based games that users can post and play right from their Facebook walls. Now you don’t have to deal with the hassle of playing the game in-app. I joke, but this functionality is very cool, as it allows you to quickly publish the game app to your profile, or your friends’ profiles and play right there. No fuss, no muss. Arkadium Co-founder and President told me that few gaming companies have yet explored this method of “wall play”, so through the Arkadium Stadium, the company hopes to begin setting the groundwork for people to be able to enjoy and share games like they would videos, photos, and links. Arkadium has been making casual games for the last 10 years, but has only moved into creating games for Facebook in the last year. With the growth in popularity of Facebook games (back in September on Facebook), the company’s transition made sense, Rovello said. And, while most Facebook games are currently played in-app, this functionality might signal a growing trend in social gaming, especially on Facebook. It’s a logical next-step, and will only make sharing and playing that much easier. The Arkadium games suite, which includes puzzles like Sudoku, a Tetris-like dice game, 52-card pickup, and other simple (and addicting), casual games. In fact, in writing this post, I was distracted at least once by the ability to post a game to my Facebook profile, play the game embedded-as-is in my wall, then pause and stalk a few ex-girlfriends. I have a feeling this functionality is only going to increase the potential of virality, which is of course exactly what Arkadium is hoping. Of course, if you’re not a fan or are a little sensitive to multimedia Wall posts, this is a great way to be bombarded by game-spam at any turn on Facebook. Though I think people are starting to let down their guard a little bit in terms of how willing they are to have content shared on their walls. And, hey, if it gets annoying, you can just remove the post, or play the game in-app. Whether or not it’s needed, this adds another layer to “Social”, considering I can now pop over to friends’ profiles to see if anyone else has taken the bait and is enjoying a little Sudoku during work hours. And if they’ve posted a game I happen to enjoy, but am a little hesitant to add the game to my own wall (I’m careful like that), then I can just roll a few dice right on their Facebook wall. Then leave them a message on their wall reminding them how much better I am at the game. At any rate, it’s kind of a neat feature, and I’ll be interested to see whether or not its embraced by fellow Facebook gamers. (And how well Flash holds up across browsers — in Chrome, it works like a charm.) I have a feeling it will be, if Zynga isn’t already planning to roll out similar functionality for their lineup. |
Xoom For Sure Coming To Sprint, Possible As Soon As May 8th UPDATE: Officially Official | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 4 | 28 |
The isn’t exactly off to that hot of a start, but maybe Sprint can push a few more out the door. The wireless carrier just posted on its website touting the Xoom specs and features. Curiously said fact sheet is void of anything pertaining to Sprint. There’s no talk about WiMax, the launch date, or the price (assuming it’s going to be different than VZW’s) Sigh. Spantechular.com found what they claim to be a Sprint advertisement flyer. It may or may not be officially from Sprint, but it does list the WiFi-only Xoom for $599 and launching on Sunday, May 8th. That happens to be the same day that as the PlayBook and Nexus S 4G’s launch. That could be a busy day as everyone rushes the store for the Xoom and PlayBook. Oh, yeah. Never mind. : Sprint the May 8th date and $599 price. It will be available in Sprint Stores, through the Sprint website and 1-800-Sprint1. |
SLG 3000 Gives Your HDTV The Old Scanline Look | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 4 | 28 |
I can’t be the only one that occasionally prefers the look of scanlines to the pixelated or filtered upscaling one sees on modern emulators and virtual consoles. I mean — think what you played on originally. It sure as hell wasn’t a 50-inch LCD TV upscaling using a proprietary algorithm and doing inter-frame interpolation. If you want that old look while playing your classic games, there are two options: get an old TV, or get . It’s a scanline generator, which means it takes an existing signal and just plain adds scanlines to the output. Here’s a video of the device in action (skip to 1:45 for the setup and 3:30 for a good close-up comparison): [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzPqwkREvKE&w=640&h=390] It uses VGA input and output, so you’ll need to keep that in mind, but it’s not all digital; there are potentiometers that adjust the scanlines and DIP switches to control their “power.” , so around $70. There is also a case you can order with for an extra €17, but only white ones are available for now. Man, this thing is completely backwards, ridiculous, and . [via and ] |
On Track To Make $8 Million This Year, Refinery29 Invades San Francisco | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 4 | 28 | Fashion news site is on a roll. The hyperlocal fashion site is expanding to today, its fourth city after New York, LA, and Chicago. The site covers high-end local fashion designers, and it a sister group deals service called Refinery29 Reserve last November. CEO Philippe von Borries tells me the company’s is on track to do $8 million in revenues this year, based on the first quarter run-rate. It ended 2010 with $2 million in sales, up from %600,000 in 2009. “Our formula is to engage users with content and convert them into shoppers,” he says. Still, he expects advertising to make up 75 percent of his revenues this year, and the commerce business to make up another 25 percent. The Reserve business is only in New York right now, but will soon launch in San Francisco as well. And the group buying experiment is doing well. “Last week alone we generated $100,000 in gross slaes from two offers,” he says. But ad sales are doing even better. Refineery29 is like a hyperlocal fashion blog that attracts exactly the types of fashion-obsessed shoppers high-end brands are looking to reach. The site gets 1.6 million monthly unique visitors, according to internal numbers, and 25 million monthly pageviews. It also has 350,000 email subscribers, with 25,000 of those already in San Francisco through a soft launch). Combining commerce and media is a new model for online publishers like Refinery29 and Thrillist (which ). These are like the new fashion magazines. Instead of just having an index of products at the back, now you can actually buy some of the products featured in the articles. There is still a distinction between the editorial and the commerce, but it is now only a click away. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.