[photopress:2297941649_5b4c534052_o.jpg,full,pp_image] We first saw Tannoy’s i30 iPod dock back in January at CES and now we’ve been able to play with it for an extended period of time. Yeah, I know you’re thinking it’s just another iPod dock among the sea of thousands of iPod docks available now, but this UK-engineered dock is much different. It’s leaps and bounds above the rest. Miley Cyrus never sounded so good. → Read More
Dan Hesse, Sprint Nextel’s new CEO and the man in charge of turning the troubled company around, said in a conference call yesterday that Sprint’s still exploring the possibility of a WiMAX partnership with Clearwire. “Sprint has an enormous asset—nearly 100 megahertz of un-utilized spectrum—and we have the opportunity to have a three-year head start with our Xohm service, true wireless broadband with multi-megabit speed,” he said, according to a mocoNews.net article. “We have had wide ranging discussions with Clearwire on potential relationships but no final agreements have been reached.” → Read More
I wondered if people might enjoy a nice little CrunchGear-themed crossword puzzle. You can find the answers to the clues spread throughout the last few days of posts. If you enjoy this, leave a comment and I’ll keep trying to set these up for Friday mornings if it seems like enough people are interested. CrunchWord Puzzle for Friday, February 29th → Read More
[photopress:iview.jpg,full,center] A man with a stunningly Portuguese name (Nuno Teixeira) has designed an iMac with a curved screen. Called the iMac iView, the concept uses a curved screen because such a screen is better suited to the curvature of the human eye. If the idea sounds familiar, that’s because Alienware demoed a similar display at CES earlier this year. Biggs poo pooed the idea of such a monitor: No availability or release date, but listen, kid. You have a long life ahead of you. There are girls to meet, beaches to hang out on, things to learn. Don’t be the guy with the big weird three-foot surround monitor. Just don’t do it. The iView also has an LCD on the back along with two built-in Web cams. Again, she’s just a concept, so don’t get too worked up about it. Curved iMac has your back… [Yanko Design] → Read More
Matt was impressed by the Surface back at CES so I’m inclined to go along based on his judgement. The Sarcastic Gamer gets up close and personal with the Surface’s first game called Firefly. Check out the video and see what it’s all about. It looks really neat. → Read More
Power suit, power tie, American Express card, neck-mounted Bluetooth headset. That’s the ticket right there, folks. The RoadRunner Bluetooth headset with larynx microphone suppresses noise harder than a Fortune 500 company suppresses its cube-dwellers into a life of mundane paper shuffling and mandatory happy hours. Your voice is transmitted directly from your voice box so the headset is a great fit for convertibles and motorcycles. Good for nine hours of talk time and apparently has a less than one-percent error rate for voice dialing (however that’s been calculated). It’s around $80 US, shipping from the UK. RoadRunner Bluetooth Communicator [Pro-Idee UK] via Gadget Review → Read More
As largely expected, the Apple iPhone will arrive in Ireland courtesy of UK-based carrier O2, which has the exclusive contract – from March 14th costing €399 (8GB) and €499 (16GB). Tariffs will range from a €45 to a €100 monthly charge. And it now looks like March 6th will be when Apple unveils the Software Development Kit for the device, which will allow outside developers to write native applications for the handset. It will be interesting to see what Irish mobile startups make of development for the platform. Personally I am starting to think that any soical network worth its salt should really concentrate on iPhone development because the browser is so good and the kind of demographic that buys the iPhone is often interested in mobile apps. → Read More
CAV has some video from the upcoming Ubisoft Lost game, which I suspect will be a stinker on the level of TMNT for the NES. However, they do offer up some plot details including a secret “Hot Coffee” cut scene involving Jack, Ben Linus, the Smoke Monster, and Charlotte. It gets weird but near the end but not nearly as freaky as the Desmond/Crazy Jungle Dinosaur love scene near the end. Check it out! Incidentally, wasn’t yesterday’s episode really good? They finally figured out that they can reveal information to us. We won’t tell anybody. Exclusive Lost movies [CAV] → Read More
[photopress:fbm.jpg,full,right] Facebook added a music service yesterday. Musicians can upload their songs, users can play them using the Facebook Music Player and later buy them using the provided iTunes link. It’s almost like Zuckerberg & Co. saw what a cluttered useless mess MySpace turned into and said, “Yeah, let’s emulate that.” Call me cynical, crazy, uninformed, whatever the case may be, but I’m thinking Facebook is getting close to jumping the shark. The site suffers from feature creep. All these stupid little features and insecure applications—I was changing Biggs’ mood left and right the other day. Me changing his mood. Real secure site.—make the site look more and more amateurish every day. I may have to ask Zuckerberg at SXSW why he’s riding his little site into the ground. Any other question ideas, leave a comment. Facebook boosts musicians [Hollywood Reporter] → Read More
[photopress:IMG00063.jpg,full,pp_image] I was at Best Buy last night looking for some cheap Xbox 360 titles and stumbled upon the pre-order for Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. I haven’t seen anything that tells me when it’s coming out and this tells us June. So mark your calendars, folks. (It’s too early to find an appropriate lyric to make this amusing for us all.) → Read More
After reading this article from The Register, it’s become blatantly apparent to me that leap year babies are A) mad as hell and B) not going to take it any more. I was born on the first day of February and would like to express my admiration for those of you out there who were born on a day in this great month so callously overlooked by many a web-based form. Case in point, the automated birthday greeting sent out by Toys ‘R Us mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe. The long-necked jerk won’t send any well-wishes to those of you born on February the 29th, a day he considers “invalid.” → Read More
Microsoft is lowering the price of Vista for all you good people out there. Ultimate drops to $219 from $299 and Home Premium drops to $129 from $159, leading analyst to gasp and gape in awe. Why is Microsoft doing this? Are they madmen, so drunk on their own power that they will turn down a twenty spot just because they can? No. Apparently Home Premium and Ultimate were “new products” for the company, meaning they’d never created a software product aimed at such a slim demographic. My own belief is that folks are simply upgrading PCs rather than buy boxed copies of Vista. With all the talk of incompatibility with old hardware, folks like my neighbor Carmine — a former Hell’s Angel and big fan of Unreal Tournament — don’t want to be bothered with dealing with patches and drivers. Anyway, if you’ve been putting it off, you’d better get cracking. I’m sure they’ll sell 100 million more copies on the news. Microsoft chops Vista retail prices [News.com] → Read More
Ah, the return of the MP3-playing watch. This time, without the ridiculous headphone cord running up your arm. The GoldLantern Bluex Bluetooth MP3 Watch comes with 1GB of storage and a pair of Bluetooth 2.0 headphones. The watch is good for 12 hours per charge of its lithium-ion battery and will play either MP3 or WMA files. I’m not much of a watch man myself, so I asked our resident watch fanatic John D. Biggs what he thought of this doodad. I’ll give you the first part of the quote and then you can finish it off in the comments section. → Read More
Courtesy of TechCrunch UK, starting from this week I’ll be giving you a run-down of what’s been happening in the UK, Ireland and – where possible – a little of what’s going on in the rest of the European startup scene. Hopefully you’ll find this useful. Last.fm, the UK startup CBS bought, said it was getting a lot of traffic from its widgets. On March 14 Ireland finally gets the iPhone about three months after the UK, courtesy of UK-based carrier O2, which has the exclusive contract. Meanwhile Ireland-based voice apps startup VoiceSage closed a €3m round. The UK’s Squa.re launched a so-so video portal, but at least it had great video of Keira Knightley. The etsy-like ShopWindoz launched a strike into the UK from its Berlin base. TwitPlus arrived as another file-sharing service for Twitter users. Hot startup Dopplr continued to add new features. Fav.or.it, the RSS reader with integrated commenting (a story TCUK broke), launched its beta to an invite-only crowd. Mobile outfit 3Bill acquired ProfileHeaven. Behavioural targeting company Phorm launched its service with a bunch of UK ISPs and publishers (this is quite a new field for the UK). The number of German start-ups tripled in 2007. UK startups tried to figure out if we had the equivalent of Bucks of Woodside, and fretted about the price of office space, their exit strategy and VCs leaving early stage. Ireland-based reviews aggregator LouderVoice prepped a new version. Badoo, the international social network, hit 13 million users. Kublax, which syncs bank accounts, utilities, and loyalty schemes, won funding, as did Bragster. Buzzspotr, which mashes Twitter users with Google maps, launched a beta. UK broadcasters leant on startups steaming video of their shows. We reviewed the Pixenate image editor, MyMapTracks, FreewireTV, Tipped and FreeAgentCentral. → Read More
The international CTIA WIRELESS 2008 trade show announced that Virgin founder and chairman Sir Richard Branson will deliver a keynote address on the show’s opening day, April 1 at 9:oo a.m. Keynote speeches will take place in the Barron Room at the Los Vegas Hilton. CTIA WIRELESS will take place April 1-3 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Conceived in 1970 by Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Group has gone on to grow very successful businesses in sectors ranging from mobile telephony to transportation, travel, financial services, leisure, music, holidays, publishing and retailing. Branson and Virgin have created more than 200 branded companies worldwide, employing approximately 50,000 people in 29 countries. “From mega brand to emerging brand, wireless is a key component of building, running and growing any business; today all brands are wireless,” said Robert Mesirow, CTIA vice president and show director. “CTIA has aggregated leaders from all wireless industry segments to convey their visions to our global audience. This year’s keynotes should not be missed.” Slated to speak on the first day of the show, Tuesday, April 1 at 9:00 a.m. are Lowell McAdam, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless and CTIA chairman; Sir Richard Branson, founder and chairman of Virgin Group; Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft; and Dan Hesse, president and CEO of Sprint Nextel. On Wednesday, April 2 at 9:00 a.m., Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone Group and Marco Boerries, president of Yahoo! Mobile will deliver keynote speeches. An Infrastructure Roundtable will conclude the session, discussing real-world plans and technology developments hastening the availability of 4G services for mobile subscribers. Panelists will include Simon Beresford-Wylie, CEO of Nokia Siemens Networks; Patricia Russo, CEO of Alcatel Lucent; Carl-Henric Svanberg, president and CEO of Ericsson; and Mike Zafirovski, CEO of Nortel. Additional information about the April 3 keynote session will be released shortly. To register for the conference, or to get more information on keynotes, see links below. Registration Keynotes → Read More
T-Mobile USA reported good numbers for the fourth-quarter of 2007. The company added 951,000 new customers and generated $4.4 billion in revenue. These numbers are up from 2006’s fourth-quarter, when T-Mobil USA added 901,000 customers and had $3.81 billion in revenue. By the end of 2007, T-Mobile was the fourth largest cell phone service provider in the United States with 28.7 million customers. “In 2007, we increased growth to more than 3.6 million net new customers,” said Robert Dotson, T-Mobile USA’s CEO and president, in a statement. “MyFaves was a major contributor with 5 million customers at year end using the service.” T-Mobile has introduced some innovative features and services, including Talk Forever Home Phone, which is being tested in Dallas and Seattle. It has also launched HotSpot@Home, a service that allows users to make unlimited nationwide Wi-Fi calls in their homes. → Read More
Unreasonable Stance: Why travel when you can just Google? Android amazes stuffy BBC: “I say, jolly good!” says reporter Garsh n’ Begorrah, my wee bairns! Ireland’s O2 gets the iPhone Great moments in trademark trolling Think you’re a big man? Prove it and get an EYEBALL TATTOO → Read More
Comments are the greasy oil that keeps the blog machine running. Here are three great (and 100% unedited) comments recently posted by your fellow readers. Neil on Han Solo Carbonite Desk: Exactly what it sounds like, as cool as it sounds I would imagine Jabba didn’t use Han in Carbonite as a desk because his hands were barely functional enough to grab Leias ass, much less hold a pencil. Samantha on What does Sprint’s new unlimited plan mean for MVNO Helio? If you are looking for an unlimited plan. I would not get any of the large providers until I check out http://www.heliounlimited.com. That is where you get a fair shake on what is truly unlimited versus just hype. If you look at the fine print of any large carrier plans they do not include everything that you would see in the Helio All In Unlimited plan which is just $99 right now. Big Dave on Help Key: How to download off Usenet like a champ Can we kick this Nicholas Deleon off the internets? This is the same guy who posted about oink then subsequently killed it. Seriously I think this might be a job for Anonymous! I know they are not my personal army but it think its time something is done. → Read More
MyBlogLog, a blogger social network acquired by Yahoo about a year ago, launched v.2 of their service tonight, with a significant new feature. You can see the MyBlogLog widget in the right sidebar of this site – it shows pictures and names of recent visitors. The new feature is an activity stream of recent activities by all users on various social networks – blog posts, new photos, bookmarks on Delicious, Facebook updates, Twitter updates, etc. The image shows the new profile page – mine is here, and I’ve added a summary widget below. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the startup feature du jour. Facebook first popularized the news feed in late 2006. Later others took the idea and opened it up, creating a news feed around activities on a variety of social networks. FriendFeed is the most popular, and recently raised a $5 million round of financing. Plaxo, Soup.io, Iminta, Spokeo, ProfileLinker, MyLifeBrand, Fuser, 30Boxes, Mugshot, Readr and Second Brain all have variations. Party planning site MyPunchbowl recently released its version. And now, Facebook is planning to open up their NewsFeed and allow users to add other services as well. Yeah, I know. That’s way too many similar services to test out. If you’re a casual observer and just want to try out one service, go with FriendFeed (my account is here). People are flocking there, and starting to use it as a hub to leave comments and other content. If you’re already a Plaxo user, their Pulse product is just as good. Facebook isn’t open enough yet to really be called a competitor. The new MyBlogLog features are a great addition to the product, but it’s not innovative enough to make a big impact. They do have a large community of loyal bloggers using their service, however (including me), and I’ll certainly keep an eye on the activity streams of the people I follow there. → Read More
http://www.viddler.com/player/b914691e/114.447/ First rumored in January, YouTube is definitely doing live video, and it’s happening this year. Sarah Meyers got the scoop (video above), transcript as follows care of NewTeeVee: Meyers: “When are you guys gonna do live video on YouTube?” Chen: “2008. We’ll do it this year. “Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do, we’ve never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually do it this year.” Now for the guessing game: which live video startup will fold first once YouTube dominates the market? YouTube will be last to market, but the same momentum that has seen YouTube dominate video will now be applied to live video. Like video, content creators want to be on the service that gives them the most exposure, no matter how good the alternatives area (after all, YouTube doesn’t offer the best quality video). YouTube already has the user base; live video streamers will flock to YouTube like a moth to a flame. CrunchBase Information YouTube Ustream blogTV Mogulus Justin.TV LiveUniverse Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
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