Hot on the heals of new high-end headphones, Audio Technica is also releasing the triple driver ATH-CK100 earphones. Allegedly, these are the smallest such earphones on the market and are housed within a titanium case. Hopefully the 20Hz-18kHz at 23Ω specs justify the ¥56,700 ($561 USD) price though. Too rich for your blood? Me too. → Read More
This year the US beat Japan in patent application filing for the first time since 1963, but Nippon is prepared to bounce back. In fear of falling back in international competitiveness in the future, the Japan Patent Office introduced a new system to accelerate examinations of patents on a trial basis October 1 (“to become the world’s most advanced IP-based nation”). → Read More
China’s 001 Group, based in Zhejiang province, has produced a solar-powered car that costs some $5,500—more than reasonable for any car, let alone one that’s partially fueld by our own local star. The company has actually made more than 10 of them, which shows the difficulty (or expense) of producing them; if they were cheap to make, why wouldn’t they be rolling off the… → Read More
Music-streaming service Pandora joins the growing list of startups laying off employees to survive in a worsening economy. The company let go 20 people yesterday, or 14 percent of its staff. Founder Tim Westergren broke the news in a blog post:
This is a very sad day for Pandora, and for me personally. Today we reduced our staff from 140 to 120 employees. Like virtually every company, Pandora… → Read More
As we all probably know, putting any sort of faith in hard drives is a fool’s errand. As soon as you finish that one important download or save that Word document for the last time, the drive fails and you contemplate your own humanity. Something to that effect. Well, LG hears you. That’s why it attached a Blu-ray drive to its N4BA network attached storage—NAS to you and me. (You… → Read More
Denon Japan announced it will start selling a turntable [JP] that features a USB port to transfer music from analog records to USB memory sticks as digital music files at the beginning of next month. The DP-200USB will be available in black and silver (price: $300). Denon says all that users have to do in order to save music as MP3 (in 192kbps quality) is to play their 30cm or 17cm records and… → Read More
The blurry photo gods have smiled upon us this morning. Or, more accurately, their Photoshop-using cousins have smiled. I don’t know, someone’s happy Up There. Word on the street is that RIM will announce a Storm-like device at Wireless Enterprise 2009, known by the cool kids as WES 2009. Neat. There’s also musings that RIM will take it to Palm by releasing a Bold-like device… → Read More
http://www.viddler.com/player/2fc4df23/ Now this is what I’m talking about. An iPhone sunk into a pumpkin for the ultimate geeky pumpkin. The iPhone is running an app appropriately called Crazy Pumpkin that allows you to customize your iPhone’s face on the fly. The only cravat is that you probably aren’t going to leave this out for the entire neighborhood to see and steal… → Read More
A financial nuclear winter may be upon us, but many startups will still survive and even thrive in this environment. Y Combinator’s Paul Graham argues that, in fact, now may be the best time to launch a startup. In an essay titled “Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy,” he notes that “what matters is who you are, not when you do it.”
The economy might be going down the tubes and investors… → Read More
The latest from NVIDIA isn’t designed with Crysis in mind, but rather graphic pros that rely heavily on Adobe Creative Suite 4 software. With an MSRP of $1,999, your Photoshop dabbling isn’t the market NVIDIA is after here with this optimized card. The Quadro CX card enables snappier responses and encoding in not only Photoshop, but also Premiere Pro CS4 and After Effects CS4. The… → Read More
Audio Technica is dropping a pair of high-end headphones aimed at audiophiles critical ears. The ATH-A1000X (left) sports a 53mm driver with a frequency response of 5Hz-42kHz at an impedance of 42Ω. The slightly high-end ATH-A2000X (right) share a similar aluminum housing and a 53mm driver, but carries not only a higher price tag, but also a frequency response range of 5Hz-45kHz. The high… → Read More
Right after each Presidential Debate both sides and all the big news organizations immediately conduct polls to determine how each candidate did and which issues resonated the most with voters. It is an expensive process that keeps an entire cottage industry of pollsters in business. But one of the best forms of instant voter feedback might be Google.
The most popular search terms during the… → Read More
Below are the latest jobs and classfied ads on CrunchBoard. Every Friday we showcase the top ads from the board to TechCrunch UK readers. Here’s the CrunchBoard UK RSS feed and you can subscribe to the email newsletter here. Post your ad up today for the limited special offer of £20 per ad. Contract or Perm .Net C# Web Developer Required (No Agencies), South London Technology Consulting… → Read More
World’s biggest atlas weighs 70 pounds, costs $3500 Review: Penguin Home Soda Maker Japanese alarm clock wakes up heavy sleepers with helicopter engine sound Battle Titan: Meet Elekit’s awesome model tank There’s a remote ‘kill switch’ for applications on Android phones, too Contest: Beg and plead, ladies → Read More
http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1274171289 Hey, I know that guy. Didn’t he used to sell street dogs down the block from that three-story gay bar on Pine Street? No, wait. He was a blogger for CrunchSomething. What’s he doing reviewing guitars? That aren’t right! Looks like a pretty sweet piece of gear, though &mdash until he reveals the price. I… → Read More
A reader, Darrin (from ReverseMortgageGuides), who says he spends about $100,000/month on Google adwords received a voicemail from a Cleary Gottlieb lawyer named Donald Burke. Burke says he’s representing Google in the Yahoo advertising deal.
The message, linked below (with part of the phone number toned out), says: “Hi Darren my name is Donald Burke. I’m calling on behalf of Google to talk with… → Read More
Pending the passage of this amendment, you may be able to use that celly at 30,000ft if you’re flying Down Under. The pico cell technology has been in testing for 18 months and there have been no complaints by the airborne or landside portions of the system, so there aren’t any technical barriers. The plan is to only allow SMS and GPRS, which is awesome and neatly wraps up the problem… → Read More
Brightkite, a geo-aware social network from the TechStars class of 2007, has given us a peek at the site’s upcoming iPhone application, due to appear in the App Store in the next few weeks (pending Apple’s approval process).
Brightkite’s featureset will be familiar to users of similar applications like Loopt. The app allows users to syndicate their current location to their friends, meet nearby… → Read More
You probably don’t need an entire review to help you decide whether or not you want a soda-making machine, but if you’re at all interested in making your own carbonated beverages then the Penguin Home Soda Maker is a good bet. → Read More
Is there nothing Steve Jobs can’t do? After warning that a full recall or update would be required to get the IP3G to fighting trim, I’m pleased to note that this bastard now holds a charge like a champ. Before the latest update, my phone would literally be dead ten hours after being taken off the charger. I would wake up at 8am, pull it off the charger, and at about 6pm it would be… → Read More
Let me preface this by saying that I have a first generation MacBook Pro that has endured like a champ, going around the entire world with me, twice. It’s survived heat, cold, humidity, and when I left my bag in a bush somewhere in the hills of Luxembourg during a rainstorm, it shook off the wetness like a Portuguese water dog. So this isn’t about the durability of Macs in general. But… → Read More
Zivity, the adult social network and media site that describes itself as a “community-powered showcase of female beauty”, has laid off 1/3 of its staff, cutting back from 22 employees to 14. (Again, 1/3 seems to be the magic number – Jive and Seesmic have both laid off about a third of their staff in the last week).
Zivity is in a unique position as one of the only venture capital backed sites… → Read More
We just got an e-mail from Verizon Wireless asking us to pass along this message regarding that McCain cellphone tower story. Turns out it has a problem with the Washington Post’s reportage. The Washington Post story regarding Verizon providing a cell tower to the McCain Ranch is wrong. Verizon received a request from Mrs. McCain, but declined. Subsequent to that, the Secret Service made a… → Read More
Is the highlight of your day the time you spend at the water cooler? Maybe you should start looking for new opportunities. Check out the latest job listings on CrunchBoard. → Read More
There are a bunch of live video streaming apps for mobiles now: Qik, Flixwagon, Kyte and more. But till now the BlackBerry has been the unloved guy in the grey sit, sitting in the corner, unable to join the party. Qik is on Symbian S60, Windows Mobile and jailbroken iPhones. The others tend to be Symbian apps. But now the business guys can join the fun as UK-startup Next2Friends now has an app… → Read More
Oh. My. Gawd. I love this Dyson vacuum. It works so damn well and looks great doing it. Some people aren’t going to like this analogy, but it reminds me of the first time I used my PowerMac G4: it simply works and feels like it’s going to last forever. I’m not the one that vacuums in my house so with the hope of not sounding misogynistic, I handed the Dyson over to my wife and… → Read More
Blame Rare for starting anew the age-old Killer Instinct 3 rumors. This time around, several Killer Instinct characters (well, their names) can be found in the recently released Viva Piñata Trouble in Paradise. B.Orchid, Uncle Tusk and Fulgore can been seen scampering around well-kempt gardens. The Piñatas appear only after scanning in vision cards, of which Maxconsole has a photo. My guess is… → Read More
Microsoft isn’t exactly known for championing open source projects. So it’s rather surprising (in a good way) to see the company release something called the Microsoft Web Platform Installer, which makes it possible to batch install a set of open source projects on Windows Vista or Server 2008. → Read More
The recent black silicon hubbub was interesting because it provided a concrete improvement over current technology, capable of being implemented with known materials and by known processes. This idea of molecular storage — as opposed to magnetic, or quantum, or what have you — is interesting because of its ambition. Its premise is that molecule-sized switches could increase data… → Read More
In an interview with Irish tech site Silicon Republic, Christian Sejersen, mobile director of engineering for Mozilla, has stated something which may crush the hopes and dreams of many: Firefox Mobile is not headed to the iPhone or the Android platform anytime in the foreseeable future. The first part isn’t too surprising; it has been said by other members of the Mozilla team that it was a… → Read More
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