, after rebate, for $0.00. You need to get a new service plan, but that’s a small price to pay for FREE. Product Page → Read More
Nintendo released an update for the Wii today, that gives users better control of the parental options available on the console. There’s still no news on when the channels are coming (news, weather and more) or when we’ll see the Opera browser. If you do decide to update your Wii, take into account the browser exploit that’s been available for the Wii probably won’t work anymore. A few users are also having trouble loading certain games. Looks like I’m going to have to go an update my console so no one can use it but me. Nintendo Refines Options For Parents [destructoid] → Read More
Sony Computer Entertainment of America head Kaz Hirai will be replacing Ken Kutaragi as president of Sony Computer Entertainment. Kutaragi has been promoted to become chairmen of SCE and Jack Tretton, executive vice president of SCEA, will be taking Hirai’s place. Kutaragi will continue to oversee the entire SCE Group as chief executive officer, and will fully exercise his power to reinforce and further accelerate the development of the PlayStation business – Sony Though Sony didn’t state why it decided to promote Kutaragi, it’s more than likely it was due to problems with the PlayStation 3 launch. Under Kutaragi, North America received a very limited number of PS3 consoles, and once the console released, it has had nothing but bad press. Sony needs to make some changes, and hopefully we’ll start seeing them soon. Sony Gets New President [game industry.biz] → Read More
Update (Dec. 1): “Kevin” is Kevin Hague, the co-founder of Knowesys. CEO Kathleen Romano ends the conspiracy theories in a comment here. Update (Nov 30): JotSpot Founder Joe Kraus reponds in the comments. Sometimes it isn’t until a blog post gets deleted for one reason or another that it grabs people’s attention. That happened today when a relatively new blogger named “Kevin” deleted a blog post titled “The JotSpot Google Merger,” where he complained that JotSpot left them stranded as a partner after Google acquired the company last month. Blog posts are cached upon posting by a number of search engines, so the text of the original post is easily recovered: The JotSpot Google Merger So I’m finally at a point where I need to blog about the JotSpot (http://www.jotspot.com/) merger and how it was handled. The company I work for builds custom JotSpot Wiki’s for enterprise class companies and “was” JotSpot’s first Partner. We were JotSpot’s only Gold Partner and were evangelist of the technology during the last two years. We made a massive investment in JotSpot, learning new API’s, developing Wiki converters and custom applications for use with JotSpot. To preface what I’m about to say, I am very happy to have worked with the JotSpot people, I learned a lot about new technologies from AJAX, XML, JSON and Wiki technology in general. I congratulate everyone at JotSpot and wish them good luck at Google. Unfortunately, my company was one of the few (many?) who had a negative impact from the merger. Besides us, it is the other JotSpot Partners and customers who are now “left holding the bag”. What is truly interesting from our perspective is that no one at Google cares about the people who helped build the JotSpot product. Or if they do, it is through the rose colored glasses of lots of money. I guess that cures everything. Here is what I’ve learned from this experience: 1. If you sign a partnership agreement, get some kind of notification clause that gives at least thirty days (preferably more) notice before any party terminates the agreement. We were notified of the merger on the same day it was announced and had to play fire control with our customers. 2. Look for signs of impending trouble. Before the announcement, we noticed everyone at Jot acting strange. Upgrades were being posted quickly and these changes were causing problems → Read More
Or maybe to you, if you go to the site and enter. The computer and electronics e-tailer is giving away 20 Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles, 20 Nintendo Wii game consoles, and 20 Microsoft Zune music players. There’ll be one winner for each product daily from now until December 20th. What’s the catch? Well other than having to supply your contact info, the three daily winners’ names will be posted on the company’s site each day for a 24-hour period, and you’ll need to check back daily to see if you won and claim your prize. TigerDirect.com Gives Shoppers A Chance to Win one of 20 Sony PlayStation 3’s, 20 Nintendo Wii’s, and 20 Microsoft Zunes over the Next 20 Days → Read More
Best Buy announced today a partnership with U.K. retailer Carphone Warehouse (CPW) to develop a mobile phone-exclusive store concept at nine locations throughout Manhattan. (And yes, I know this info was sort of announced earlier this month, but this is the official deal.) Branded Best Buy Mobile (Genius!) the stores will give customers a choice ofseven carrier brands, including Cingular, Verizon, Sprint and Amp’d Mobile, as well as pay-as-you-go options from Virgin Mobile, Boost Mobile, Verizon InPulse and Cingular GoPhone. (Sorry, but does someone know why there’s no floor space for T-Mobile?) Best Buy says they’re using non-commissioned personnel trained by Best Buy and CPW to match mobile handsets and accessories with carrier plans for an individualized offering. I like this. This is good. No arm-twisting like you might experience in a carrier’s store or in places like Radio Shack. Not that Radio Shacks are loaded with a bunch of Sprint/Cingular henchmen. Oh yeah, the phone selection is crazy big of course, with more than 80 handsets available from all the major manufacturers. Hit the jump for locations. → Read More
Due to a dearth of workable Wi-Fi (damn BT Openzone!) TechCrunch UK&I has been unable to do much of a live blog from MediaTech 2.006 but here are some random-ish quotes (treat them as paraphrases/commentary, we aren’t quite up to verbatim typing yet) from the day so far. And if you want to text a question to the panel organisers text “MT” followed by the question to 80003. Morning session: Russell Buckley – Managing Director Europe, Admob: AdMob delivered 40% of the traffic to a unammed mobile ad campaign. Why? Because it was easier to click an ad than it was to get consumers to type in a long url on their mobile. More and more brands are waking up to the mobile web in the same way they did ten years ago to the Web. But this time, it’s not a big mind shift for them. The fact that there were 130,000 registrations for .mobi inside 2 weeks means lots of brands are registering defensively. There are more web enambled mobiles than there are PCs. Especilly in BRIC markets. The PC is being leap-frogged, bypassing the PC. Michael Bayler – Director, The Rights Marketing Company: Are consumers consuming content? Yes. They already have the content. They are finding it already. People buy ringtones not for the music but to define themselves. It’s a digital T-Shirt. We look for return on attention. But the media industry looks for ROI. Media companies capture value by charging a toll – an oversimplication but true. But the media doesn’t exist until people pay atttention. The winners in the space will be those who create a ‘dashboard’ to the ecosystem. [Ed - Sounds a little like Google's strategy?]. Gurprit Singh – Director, Emerging Technologies, Microsoft EMEA HQ: [Ed - This was the Standard, "Microsoft Live" presentation. Move along people. Talked about convergence. Strange slide with 'me' in the middle surrounded by PCs, mobiles and Xbox, but no TV. Dodged a question about why the Media Centre had bombed, saying it was 'early days'. This feels like a fig leaf to cover the fact that Microsoft doesn't know what to do.] More to follow when we get Wi-Fi working again….. → Read More
It’s not an iPod Mini, it’s a possible rendition of the elusive iPhone. These drawings are from a patent filing from Apple on Aug. 7 for a radio-transparent communications device combined with a media player. That spells iPhone to us. This is by no means the final iteration of the infamously absent phone, indeed we’re unlikely to know its final form until the day His Steveness decides to debut the device. In reality, this thing has become the Bigfoot of the gadget world: all signs point to it existing, but somehow there’s never physical proof. We’re calling these patent filings footprints (and copyrighting the expression). → Read More
Well they’re calling him Sam, but I know Beethoven when I see him. And no I’m not saying all St. Bernards look alike. Anyway, here is the commercial for Samsung’s Q1 UMPC. Intriguing product, but I’m not sure about the commercial. What do you all think? → Read More
Nokia and Yahoo! have teamed up to integrate Yahoo! personalized content (mail, messenger, contacts, useless personal ads, etc.) into its Series 40-powered smartphones. Currently, there is user-installable software that enables your handset to access most common Yahoo! features, however this is the first time a device maker is including all of the features at the OS level. While this will mostly be of interest to our readers in Europe for now, we see this feature moving across the pond as Symbian makes headway in the US of A. If the image search is working on its UMTS/HSDPA handsets, we’re happy campers. You know what we mean (porn, we mean mobile porn). Nokia + Yahoo! [Nokia Press Release] → Read More
We just got in the Insignia 2GB Sport video player. An interesting beast. It’s branded with Best Buy’s music store and plays MP3s and WMAs as well as some video formats – not DivX, apparently, because a movie I just dragged over didn’t play. I’ll take a closer look tonight. It also has and audio in jack and FM tuner and is considerably lighter – but not smaller – than the nano. → Read More
Entrance exam preparation is costly and not exactly what I’d call fun. A company that launched on Monday called Grockit is dropping costs and making the process a bit easier to get through. Grockit was started by Farbood Nivi, who has been teaching exam preparation since 1998. He worked for Kaplan and was Teacher of the Year for The Princeton Review in 2002. Just a few months ago he decided to start his own prep school where students can attend WebEX classes. Grockit is significantly cheaper than the major review schools but Nivi says his profit margin is bigger. “The other guys tend to be enormously bloated as far as companies go,” Nivi said via IM on Thursday. “They have very inefficient operations. They spend $1.5 million to generate $1.4 million. The virtual world is cheaper and more pervasive.” To start out, Grockit is offering 16 90-minute sessions plus the official GMAT review text books for $399. Kaplan online is $1,249, The Princeton Review is $899, and Manhattan GMAT Prep is $990. Nivi says that the Grockit price may go up a little within the next year but he doesn’t have actual plans to increase it. “One student has dropped the course with a competitor and decided to buy a laptop with the money he is saving by taking Grockit instead,” Nivi said. “Taking one of the big guys means that just applying to a hand full of MBA programs is a couple of thousand dollars out of your pocket.” For now, Nivi is satisfied using WebEX where students and teachers can chat and interact. In the future he hopes to develop his own software for interactive classes. He also hopes to branch out from solely GMAT prep and start ACT courses next year because he believes that the ACT “is going to eat the SAT.” To promote his service, Nivi and his staff of teachers have signed up as experts on BitWine. They are also banking on word-of-mouth marketing, hoping that saving money is a major incentive for hopeful students. The obvious question here is if Grockit is a get-what-you-paid-for type deal. Having not taken entrance exams in six years, I couldn’t think of appropriate questions to quiz Nivi with but his experience is impressive enough to say his school is worth serious consideration. Especially for anyone considering dropping major ducats on an MBA. → Read More
I’ve used a pair of Sennheiser headphones since my gaming days (long time ago), so I can attest to their awesomeness. And as someone who exercises a lot, I’m always in the market for a good pair of sports headphones. Well these MX75 might be just the thing. Using a convenient twist to fit technology, the MX75′s provide a snug fit for athletics. It also has various ear piece attachments for different settings. The system includes a clip for snapping the cord to your shirt, keeping it from flopping around wildly. → Read More
HP’s new IQ770 PC (aka Crossfire) is looking incredibly powerful now that some specs have gotten out and details are emerging. Slated for a January launch, this 19-inch touch screen behemoth comes with Vista and is ready to roll with a slew of features and is packed with goodies. The specs include an AMD Turion 64 X2 dual core TL-52 CPU (Christ that’s a long name), 2GB of RAM, 320GB of storage, Geforce Go 7600 graphics, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 1.3MP camera built-in, FM and ATSC HDTV tuners, DVD burner with LightScribe, wireless keyboard and mouse, card readers, remote control, 5.1 digital out, six USB 2.0 ports, two Firewire ports, and about 2037490720374 other things. Man do my fingers hurt after typing that! So how much would you expect to pay for a monster of a machine like this? $4000? $3000? Nope! The Crossfire will range from $1799 – $1899 and though not as pretty as some other all-in-one PCs, this baby offers some serious competition. HP IQ770 “Crossfire” 19-inch touchscreen Media PC revealed! [Engadget] → Read More
…Our latest CrunchGear reporters. Seth is a former Men’s Health writer who will be focusing on the future with a new column launching next week, Mike worked at PC Mag until they stopped caring about audio and he will now care about audio for us, and Peter Suciu is a gaming guru with enough pull at Nintendo to get his face superimposed on Bowser in Super Paper Mario 2. For reals! Read on for their full bios and don’t forget Bryce, our crack squid illustrator who is looking for freelance work. → Read More
Apple has filed a new patent application for a method of browsing podcasts. It’s patent 20060265637, Utilization Of Podcasts on Portable Media Devices. ZDNet has a bunch of pictures of arrows and squiggly lines if you want to go check them out for yourself. → Read More
AOL Video has decided to spread some holiday cheer by giving away over 30 free movie downloads for one day only on Saturday. Several of the titles are, appropriately, Christmas movies such as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Jack Frost, but there will be some non-spirited ones available such as Spiderman 2 as well. The free offering begins at 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time and customers are limited to one movie per person, but not one per computer. Normally, movie downloads from AOL Video are priced from $9.99 to $19.99 per title. We reviewed AOL Video in October and found it to be lacking in selection and high in price compared to the other movie downloading services. But on Saturday, we would argue that it will be one of the better ones. After all, who can argue with free? → Read More
The word “audiophile” gets bandied about so much that it seems in danger of losing its true meaning as a descriptor for a grade of products that is of such high quality that most of us can’t hope to afford then. But this year saw quite a few items blurring the line between audiophile and consumer audio, as higher-end components are finding their ways into almost-affordable products. The eight deliciously designed audio toys below are my favorites of 2006, and while they’re not exactly cheap, you don’t have to be Paris Hilton to get one in your holiday stocking this year. → Read More
Mobility Today has a video demoing the beta functions of Windows Live Search for Mobile. The video showcases many of the cool features the service will offer. Features like directions and traffic information. It’s still in beta, of course, but it looks promising. Be sure to head over to Mobility Today to read the rest of their comments on it. → Read More
Now this is what we call a sexy MP3 player. Pictured above is the YP-K3, the successor to Samsung’s YP-K5 audio player. This bad boy has a great design and is supposedly Samsung’s thinnest player to date. Slated to debut during CES 2007, the YP-K3 will not feature a built-in speaker like it’s older sibling. Also, the display is now 1.8-inches and no one really knows how good it looks just yet. Judging by these delicious photos though, this is one MP3 player I’d actually buy that isn’t the iPod (which says a lot). When CES 2007 rolls around in January, we’ll definitely give you an update on this one. Samsung YP-K3: The K5′s Little Brother, Sans Speaker [Gizmodo] → Read More
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