As a dilettante musician I enjoy the concept – if not the process – of recording my reedy, whiny voice to digital files. Until recently, that process was fraught with trouble and high quality recording equipment was difficult to obtain and expensive. Now anyone with a six-string and a dream can record fairly acceptable audio with something like the Belkin GoStudio. → Read More
Circuit City latest financial struggles come in the form of a letter sent from the NYSE. Because CC stock averaged a $1 or less closing price over the 30 days, the fund is falling short of the exchange’s requirement. The company has 10 days to specify how the company is going to remedy the situation and maintain an average trading price of $1 or higher within six months. The fund will receive a “.BC” indicator to notify others of the situation in the meantime. As of writing, the company carries a $0.27 stock price and a bleak future. → Read More
Sigh… Above, please reference what girls between the ages of 10 and 30 think is cool. Also, as it happens, the same reason MTV will be blocked from every TV in the Aamoth household if I ever have a daughter. Transcription to follow for those of you who can’t access YouTube at work… → Read More
After we posted our first Android speed review, we got a handful of e-mails asking us how we managed to take screenshots directly off of the device. We looked around at a handful of other blogs – sure enough, the vast majority of them had fallen back to pointing a camera at the device’s screen and snapping away. While that’s slightly better than drawing the image on paper and scanning that in, we’ve got a better solution. What you need: An Android device. At the time this was published, that probably means a T-Mobile G1 USB Data cable for the device (For the G1 at least, it’s included in the box) Any computer which has USB and is compatible with the Android SDK (Windows, OS X, or Linux) → Read More
Tesla Motors has been hit hard with credit crunch of late, but the billionaire founder of Telsa and PayPal has personally guaranteed that all of the 1,200 battery-powered Tesla Roadster pre-orders will be filled. So far, only 60 of the 1,200 cars have been delivered and the company seems to be consolidating after shutting down and laying off 90% of the Detroit, MI office. However, with this latest round of financing of $20 million and $200 million from a U.S. Department of Energy loan, the company hopes to be continue operations. Hopefully, operations will continue enough to not only build all the Roadster pre-orders but also the sexy BMW 5 series, sports-sedan Model S. recently announced. (Pictured above) → Read More
Two weeks after laying off 30 percent of his employees, Jaxtr CEO Konstantin Guericke finds himself out of a job. He is being replaced by vice president of engineering Bahman Koohestani (former CTO at Cyworld and Orbitz), who will be acting as “interim” CEO.
Jaxtr offers VoIP calls to both your regular and mobile phone. Its last round was a $10 million Series B in June. Investors include Lehman Brothers Venture Capital (yup, they are still around), August Capital, Mangrove, Mayfield, DFJ, and angels Ron Conway and Reid Hoffman. (Guericke was part of the founding team at LinkedIn).
The company is obviously going through a rough time, but Koohestani still spins it as a “very healthy” business. He offers the following partial stats: → Read More
There is no escape from the advertising recession. Not even for hotshot TV advertising startup Spot Runner. Despite having raised more than $111 million, half of that as recently as last May, the LA-based company may be in for a major round of layoffs next week following the election (and the associated last-minute media blitz).
As many as 25 percent of its more than 300 employees may find themselves without a job come next Thursday. While the exact number has not yet been determined, I have been able to confirm that the company is currently going through a cost-reduction planning process and is looking at all options in light of the deteriorating advertising environment. → Read More
It’s Halloween and, as such, here’s a handful of gadgets to get you started in the exciting world of ghost hunting, plus a couple of tips and tricks. Enjoy… → Read More
http://qik.com/swfs/qik_player.swf?streamname=63fbce42ead343288d04f6bc07d59d51&vid=470493&playback=false&polling=false&user=SteveGillmor&displayname=SteveGillmor&safelink=SteveGillmor&userlock=true&islive=&username=anonymous David Treadwell moves up the stack as Microsoft releases Live Framework to the developer community. With Mesh now clear as a fundamental glue and signaling layer within Azure services, Treadwell, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Live Platform Services, tells TechCrunchIT that though Microsoft is focusing on developers at its Professional Developers event, the next big phase is to integrate the next version of Windows Live with Mesh infrastructure. This is a classic old guard meets new guard moment, where Microsoft officials try and compartmentalize a massive disruptive wave along traditional group lines. As we hear from Office Enterprise’s Chris Bryant in another PDC video, the company is readying a technology preview of lightweight Office online applications. http://www.kyte.tv/flash.swf?v=2&uri=channels/87522&embedId=49354514http://media01.kyte.tv/images/updatenotice.swf Watch as Bryant tiptoes through the minefield between the old Office jargon and the new talking points of the Azure direction: “We’re recognizing the company strategy of basically enabling connected productivity across the PC, the phone, and the browser. In order for customers to participate with each other in connected productivity scenarios, we have to reach out to the endpoints that they use on a regular basis.” It’s the classic What Customers Are Asking Us For mantra. “We don’t look at it as feature parity between the Web applications and the desktop applications, because the scenarios that people will use the Web for are different scenarios. It isn’t about taking the entire feature set of Word and putting them on the Web.” The tension barely beneath the surface is between providing advanced features of Office on demand and the impact on Office’s revenue stream of a cannibalized Silverlight version. Both officials say it’s very early, with Treadwell describing Mesh and Office integration as being in an experimental phase. But with the Office invite only preview coming later this year (it’s November, guys) and Mesh now opening up to third party developers through the Live Framework, reading between the lines has already started to be productive, especially if you’re on one of the one in four machines running Silverlight. → Read More
Why is it that the BlackBerry Storm doesn’t have Wi-Fi? If you believe BoyGenius—and how could you not!—it’s because Verizon Wireless doesn’t want it to have Wi-Fi. That’s a fine conspiracy theory, yes, but consider the following: • Name one CDMA BlackBerry with built-in Wi-Fi. You can’t. • Doesn’t VZW require you to have a BlackBerry data plan? So it’s not like having built-in Wi-Fi prevents VZW from making money Now, whether or not VZW was concerned with battery life and/or performance is another matter, but to imply that VZW is some James Bond villain hoarding all the Wi-Fi is silly, I think. → Read More
I’d imagine things are a bit awkward at the Sprint/Nextel camp today. After spending the last few months fielding offers for Nextel, Sprint has announced that they’ve decided to hang on to it. Not only are they no longer planning on offloading it, but they’re also reupping their commitment to the iDEN network by promising all around improvements. Beyond expanding the iDEN network by way of more towers, they’ll be tag-teaming with Motorola over the next year, with plans to bring at least 8 handsets to market by the end of 2009. [Via MobileBurn] → Read More
The PSP-3000 screen has earned both criticism and praise. It’s brighter, crisper but has interlacing issues that display horizontal lines when viewed closely. When the PSP screen is viewed extremely closely though, say under a 40x microscope, the issue’s source is apparent. The new screen has lays out the pixels horizontally, verses the old screens vertical design. Additionally, the new screens blue cells are brighter and more vibrant which accounts for the both the better colors and interlace lines. The chaps who conducted the test, Logic-Sunrise, suggest you purchase an older PSP, but unless you hold the PSP 6-inches from your eyes, you probably will not see the interlacing issues so try out one of the new models before you buy an old one. → Read More
Australia looks set to join China as a state-mandated Internet censor. The measure is primarily aimed at combating online child pornography, but an open-ended statement from the government’s communications minister sounds ominous: …we are talking about mandatory blocking, where possible, of illegal material. “Where possible”? That seems pretty capricious. The government must have recognized the nature of the proposal, as early drafts included ISP-level opt-out clauses. Say you wanted unrestricted access to the Internet. You’d contact your ISP and they’d put you on a “don’t censor this connection” list. That scenario is no longer possible; the whole country will be subject to the “virtual curtain.” The thing about this, which is similar to the war on Usenet here in the U.S., is that it’s damn near impossible to come out against measures that, to the letter, have anything to do with eliminating child pornography. Nothing like appearing to be soft on child porn to completely ruin your reputation, right? → Read More
In case you didn’t know, today is Halloween and Amazon is celebrating the holiday with the complete Addams Family series for $26.99 shipped. You get 9 discs, a total of 1638 minutes of Addams family bliss for that price. To bad the collection isn’t available on Blu-ray though. → Read More
Enter now for your chance to win a Penguin United Quad charger for the Wii. Contest details and a review of the PU charging station can be found here. E-mail your entries to contest at crunchgear dot com or you will not be qualified to win. → Read More
Asus plans to release a $200 Eee PC sometime in 2009, according to Jerry Shen, the company’s president. That’s on top of the company’s plans to release a touchscreen Eee PC in 2009. Might we be looking at, finally, the year of the netbook? One can only dream. While I’m quick to discount netbooks as hallow attempts to bilk you good people out of your money, thereby shoring up these companies’ bottom lines in otherwise dismal economic times, the thought of a $200 almost-laptop is pretty impressive. Who knows, maybe in two years’ time we’ll be looking at a $50-$100 netbook? Doug “netbook” Aamoth will be excited. → Read More
Just a heads up that there are a handful of potentially dangerous laptop batteries floating around out there. These ones are made by Sony but are found in certain models of HP, Toshiba, and Dell notebooks. The HP notebooks are the most at risk with about 32,000 affected batteries. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, “There have been 19 reports of the batteries overheating, including 17 reports of flames/fire (10 resulting in minor property damage). Two consumers experienced minor burns.” PC Notebook Computer Batteries Recalled Due to Fire and Burn Hazard [CPSC] → Read More
The latest video market share figures for September from Nielsen Online’s VideoCensus have been leaked to Beet.TV, and they show a huge 56 percent jump from Yahoo to 264 million videos streamed during the month. Yahoo’s share still pales next to YouTube’s 5.3 billion streams. But it pumped out 95 million more streams than in August, when Yahoo was trailing Fox (i.e., MySpace), MSN, and Nickelodeon, according to Nielsen Online. (Compare to comScore’s Video Metrix numbers from July, which had Yahoo in the fourth spot).
People still watch twenty times more videos on YouTube than on Yahoo. And just the number of streams YouTube added in September alone (592 million) was more than twice as many as Yahoo’s total stream count. But the percentage of videos that Yahoo can put ads up against is much higher than YouTube’s. One estimate that was thrown around at a recent online video panel that I co-moderated earlier this week was that YouTube only monetizes four percent of its videos, which would be 214 million streams. So depending on what percentage of Yahoo’s videos are shown with ads, it might catch up to YouTube on revenues faster than the raw numbers would indicate. → Read More
A quick recap for those who haven’t been following the mobile browser scene for a while: Skyfire, currently available for Windows Mobile 5/6 and S60, is the only mobile browser supporting full Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Quicktime, and other processor intensive multimedia formats. It pulls this off where others fail through a bit of proxy voodoo; rather than forcing your handset to do all the legwork, a remote computer crunches as much as it can before sending it your way. Skyfire had remained in private beta until recently, just opening its doors last month. With the announcement that the beta was now public, a number of folks around the globe were disappointed to realize that it was only open to US residents. When we asked Skyfire for an international ETA, they responded that it would be coming “in weeks, not months.” While it’s still limited to North America, Skyfire announced this morning that they’ve expanded their turf to include Canada. Starting today, Leslie Nielsen and Celine Dion can enjoy Skyfire in all of its splendor. The rest of Canada can use it too, of course – but come on, share your health care system or something in return. If you’re north of the border and itchin’ to dig into some Hulu on the go, go grab Skyfire here. → Read More
