Despite Blu-ray’s victory over HD, Toshiba does not seem to be accepting defeat and quietly adopting Blu-ray. The folks over at TG Daily speculate that instead Toshiba is working to enhance the image scaling capabilities of its DVD players and possibly launching an Internet-enabled players. Though no specifics have been nailed down, TG Daily based its report on the Toshiba-chaired DVD Steering… → Read More
Today’s Top Posts: Blizzard Authenticator helps secure your World of Warcraft account VUDU continues to infiltrate Best Buy Windows Vista: Not that bad, really, try it Azeroth in World of Warcraft is the size of Newcastle, planet is flat MSI Wind mini-desktop confirmed in Asia and Europe RIM releasing iDEN BlackBerry Curve WALL-E: interstellar copyright scofflaw iPhone ranked No. 1 in… → Read More
In case the charms of the Drobo aren’t enough for you, Data Robotics has started up a development community for creating apps and extensions for everyone’s favorite RAID-bot. There are already a few things up there, including: UPnP capability for streaming to your 360, media center, or whatever, and a couple utilities to make Drobo more usable on Linux or tweak its behavior in Windows… → Read More
It turns out the battle for control of Twitter rests almost exclusively in the unique value proposition of XMPP-served track. As Twitter strips away various features of its service to rebuild a scalable fail-whale -proof version, the one remaining hurdle is restoration of a fully-functional Track over IM. For the last two weeks, a one-way IM service via Gchat inside Gmail or Gtalk standalone has… → Read More
http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcftech%2Eblip%2Etv%2Frss&file=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Frss%2Fflash%2F1049555%3Freferrer%3Dblip%2Etv%26source%3D1&showplayerpath=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Fscripts%2Fflash%2Fshowplayer%2Eswf Mr. Asahi hangs out in the Asahi Beer Brewery where he dispenses beer to the wonderment of all and sundry. Sadly… → Read More
Supposedly there was a leak about LG developing a touchscreen camera phone named KC910 and has the potential to put competitors to shame. This will be the first LG phone to feature an 8 megapixel camera, decent flash, and image stabilization. On top of that, if the rumor is true you should be able to take 720×480 video. The phone will also feature a “new” interface and… → Read More
Yelp, a user-generated database of customer reviews of local businesses, first launched in October 2004. Users rate and leave reviews for local businesses, participate in forums, and can generally get social around local businesses. Yelp almost immediately caught on organically in San Francisco, but founders Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons ran into some early criticism. Rumors circulated that… → Read More
After the debacle that is firmware v2.4 for the PS3, Sony has pulled the firmware upgrade from their servers and are looking into issues that have affected some with a bricked console. Some Playstation forum members are reporting that bricked consoles from the upgrade can simply remove the hard drive and reformat via PC. → Read More
Stunning! Imaginative! Practical! Never to be mass produced! All words and phrases you can use to describe Shiu Yuk Yuen‘s concept umbrella, the Eco Brolly, which looks a lot less douchey than that other umbrella concept from a while back. It’s a plastic sleeve that you slide newspapers, shreds of cardboard and other assorted doodads to protect you from the cold hard rain. Speaking of… → Read More
It turns out the battle for control of Twitter rests almost exclusively in the unique value proposition of XMPP-served track. As Twitter strips away various features of its service to rebuild a scalable fail-whale -proof version, the one remaining hurdle is restoration of a fully-functional Track over IM. For the last two weeks, a one-way IM service via Gchat inside Gmail or Gtalk standalone has… → Read More
Taking another step towards using our trash for fuel, Plasco Energy Group is putting up a large-scale plant in Ottowa that will use plasma torches to essentially vaporize trash into usable “syngas.” If it sounds too good to be true, that’s kind of the case because it’s quite expensive to run. But the technology works: the trash goes in and is reduced to simple gases by 2000… → Read More
If you know me you know I love me some watches. I especially like Bell & Ross, the aviation-themed, pie-plate-sized watches that gave new meaning to “Wow, that’s a big watch.” Now, however, B&R has added a ring of beautiful jewels around the rim and made these things out of ceramic, officially tugging the brand out of the realm of “cool and utilitarian” into… → Read More
We’re one week away from the debut of the 3G iPhone, and the question on everyone’s mind seems to be, “What’s going to happen to the six million first-gen iPhones that are on the fast track to obsolescence?” The iPhone – the ultimate in “cool” for the last twelve months – is about to board the lametrain, and the race is on to unload them before… → Read More
And it’s worth every penny. Robot-Models appears to make all manner of welded-steel (wrought iron?) models from Gundams to Gremlins. There is also an insane number of Star Wars models. This selection of Transformers includes quite a large Optimus Prime. Put it up outside to keep naughty Decepticons out of your garden! → Read More
The Sprint Airave is ready to launch July 15. If you’re not sure what the Airave is, think of it as a mini cell tower in your house. It routes all your cell, data, and text messages over the Internet to give you better coverage. This seems like the perfect answer for people that have Sprint but live in “dead zones”. This service will cost $30 for families and $15 for individuals. → Read More
Steve Gillmor chats with Chris Messina about GNIP and the politics of micro-objects with Doc Searls and Robert W. Anderson. Listen to the podcast over at the Gillmor Gang site >> → Read More
Dutch readers rejoice! T-Mobile.nl has released their tariff info for the iPhone 3G. I’m going to have you look above at the screen grab or head over to T-Mo.nl because my understanding of Dutch is fairly limited and “Houd mij op de hoogte” is what I said to a charming young lady in Amsterdam last year and she showed me that she was really a man. Needless to say I didn’t… → Read More
Junction Networks has announced that their OnSIP PBX is now available as a white label solution to channel partners. OnSIP in an on-demand telephony service for small to medium sized businesses that allows a customer to offload all their phone requirements to a hosted solution. It is a virtual PBX, that uses VoIP to integrate web and phone services without expensive PBX hardware. This technology… → Read More
Just because the Internet makes it possible to offer a near-infinite inventory of goods for sale does not mean that consumers will start wanting more obscure items in any great numbers. That is the conclusion Harvard Business School associate professor Anita Elberse comes to in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review that takes on some of the sacred cows of the Long Tail theory. The Long… → Read More
So… Chrono Trigger for the Nintendo DS, anyone? Right now, all that’s there is the clock from the game’s title sequence alongside the Nintendo DS logo, but that’s enough to get folks like Devin and I fairly excited. Remake or port, though? Given Square’s habit of re-releasing the Final Fantasy in DS-3D, my guess is re-make. The game was good, to say the least. via… → Read More
First off, if you love Baseball, skip this post for a minute and go claim one of the 1,000 beta accounts we have for Baseball Boss – click “register” on the top left and use the code “techcrunch” to get in. Then come back here and see why you’ll be glad you did. Baseball Boss is the second game title from Texas-based Challenge Games, which launched Duels.com in… → Read More
The N96 – which is similar to the N95 but is one more better – has finally gotten its own special Flash-based web-tour. It goes into all the dirty details regarding GPS, music playback, and Internet browsing but sadly leaves out the cool bloopy music we’re used to when we see these sorts of tours. Nothing amazingly exciting but if you’re a Nokiard you might get a kick out… → Read More
Alternative storage stuff is always interesting. In this case it’s also nanotech, so that makes it a double-whammy. Some researchers have made a two-layer nanowire out of germanium, antimony, and tellurium that can be made to store information in the form of its physical state. They can alter the crystalline structure in the tiny wires by an electrical pulse and it’ll stay that way… → Read More
The last movie that needed to be released (other than Gladiator) on Blu-ray now has a date. The Godfather Collection, which contains all three movies, will be released on September 23 for $120. There’s plenty of extras. Director Francis Ford Coppola provides commentary on all three films; perhaps he’ll explain why The Godfather Part III ever saw the light of day. Then there’s… → Read More
Looks like the eponymous bot in Pixar’s acclaimed new movie “WALL-E” is a dirty, dirty pirate. Apparently the robot code doesn’t prohibit you from harming an artist’s livelihood. One astute Canadian watcher notes (names have been X’ed out for plot-protection): 1. WALL-E records audio from his favorite movie, XXXXXXXXXXX, putting in onto his own digital recorder… → Read More
The iPhone will debut in Japan, one of the world’s biggest telecommunications markets, on July 11th and people here seem to be pretty excited about it already. In a recent survey on the popularity of smartphones in Japan, 57.9% of all respondents replied they are interested in the Apple model the most. The Blackberry ranked 6th (and last) with just 8.8%. Details can be found here (in… → Read More
Another example of the Internet’s vital role in our society. A very fine gentleman of high moral standing has concluded that Azeroth, the world in World of Warcraft, has an area of 113 square kilometers, or about the size of English city Newcastle, home of Joey Barton. That, and the planet (or planetoid; it’s quite small, you see) has a density that’s 500 times greater than lead. → Read More
Bill Veghte from the Windows group at Microsoft sent out a nice big memo to those who still haven’t installed Vista in their enterprises and are waiting for some real improvement before they even consider it. His advice? Windows Vista offers significant advances in security and productivity and we recommend that enterprises that have not yet deployed it should absolutely evaluate its… → Read More
MSI’s Wind desktops will launch in Asia and Europe this summer – expect them in about two months – and there are no current plans to launch it in the US. The desktop will run Atom. It will not, however, get you women like the one pictured. In fact, purchasing a pink Wind mini-desktop is as far from sexy as you can get without becoming a eunuch. Not much info right now, but it… → Read More
I’ve been using Vudu for a few months now and it’s a pretty snazzy service. The remote is surprisingly ergonomic and the Vudu UI is put together quite well. You can read Doug’s review over yonder if you like. Today, Vudu announced that they’ve continued their expansion in Best Buy stores throughout California, Arizona and Illinois. A full listing of stores along with… → Read More
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