Famous director Michael Moore released his latest movie, Slacker Uprising, on that there Internet a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, for would-be viewers outside the U.S. and Canada, trying to download the movie results in a great big fail whale. And then the movie appeared on The Pirate Bay, where anyone can download it. Is this Mr. Moore’s doing, or the work of some busybody fan who wants to… → Read More
Mr. Pitiful really likes his Roomba. So much so that he wrote a song about it… and made a music video for it. It’s actually from about a year ago but sometimes songs about robotic vacuum cleaners take time to develop a following. I haven’t written a song about my Roomba yet, but that’s mostly because it constantly gets tangled up in the ends of my area rug and I’m pretty sure the battery… → Read More
If you’ll recall, zzzPhone is offering “customized cellphones” straight from China with touchscreens and dual facing cameras. In short, these are bargain basement phones with some capacity for upgrade – the base model has been circulating in Asia and Africa for a few years now – and it was running some sort of mad Linux hybrid when we last left off. Now, however, that… → Read More
Anybody who is considered the “geek” amongst their less tech-minded peers best look out. The BlackBerry Storm has made its way to the moving picture box, and they decided to go all Coen Brothers with the ending. For the next week or two, you get to deal with a constant stream of “Hey! Hey! You like computers! What’s on the other side of the Storm?!” from anyone who… → Read More
A new set of EU Directives could force Apple to re-design its iPod and iPhone in Europe. And if it did that, it might as well re-design them for every market, right? The Directives would force manufacturers to design their products so that batteries are easily replaces—unscrew one or two screws, flip a tab, etc. Seems the EU wants to make it easier for people to dispose of their old… → Read More
It’s FREE ADS ON TECHCRUNCH UK THIS WEEK. Here’s how to get yours in. Here’s the CrunchBoard UK RSS feed and you can subscribe to the email newsletter here. Today’s crop of jobs on The CrunchBoard are…. Web Developer Nudge London Internet Senior Web Developer iFoods.tv Dublin User Experience, Interaction, and Interface Designer Director Enterprise Ventures UK wide… → Read More
ZoomProspector, the free site that allows businesses to search nationwide for the best places to relocate, has launched to the public. When we first introduced the site in April, we likened it to a Zillow for businesses.
ZoomProspector rates cities across the country by a number of relevant criteria, including proximity to airports, commute times, demographics, or the availability of venture… → Read More
While this little robot girl looks quite creepy—quite creepy—she actual has a noble purpose. She’s the handiwork of a group of Japanese engineers, and the big “wow” factor here is that the skin is made from flexible silicon. Combine that with her more than 50 motors and sensors and you have one reasonably realistic looking robot. Now, as to why I called it noble, it’s… → Read More
Time for an upgrade, wouldn’t you say? Fry’s has a 4GB memory kit for $68.99 with a $40 mail-in rebate. I hate mail-in rebates as much as you do but, hey, cheap RAM is good. The kit consists of two sticks of 240-pin DDR2 PC2-6400 memory and the rebate’s good until this Thursday, so get while the gettin’ is good. [Fry’s via dealnews] → Read More
Wherever I go to Continental Europe, the locals always say that the Brits are great fun – but they drink too much. As far away as Dubai, hotel waiters are regularly fishing people out of the swimming pool late at night. They are invariably British ex-pats. We have a strange relationship with booze, which goes back to Gin-soaked “Mother’s Ruin” era of the 18th Century and… → Read More
Instead of dwelling on whether an economic apocalypse is about to loom upon us, some startups are plugging away at improving their products. Israeli Kampyle is a case-in-point. Today the company is extending its feedback analytics platform from websites to client software—with a specific focus on the installation process, a major pain point for client applications. → Read More
Details of the much-discussed Oyster card hack have been published and released at a security conference that’s being held in Spain right now. What a long, awkward sentence. The hack takes advantage of a security flaw in the Mifare Classic RFID chip. This chip is used in, among other locales, the Oyster card that’s used in the London public transportation system. The researchers have… → Read More
You hear that crashing sound? Those are my hopes and dreams, shattering. Yesterday on Twitter, HTC announced that they have no plans to bring the Touch HD to US soil: sad news, US. we looked into it- by the time we could bring Touch HD to the states, it would be old news. we do have other cool stuff coming That’s really too bad. This was a really, really nice looking handset. After pawing at… → Read More
Tech stocks continue to get creamed this morning, led by Google, whose stock is now officially a dropping knife (i.e., good luck catching it). Shares are down 5 percent so far today to about $353 (at one point they dipped as low as $350. That’s more than a $50 drop since Friday and the lowest the stock has traded since March, 2006. The question on investor’s minds: How low can it go?
Even… → Read More
A recent update to the net-connected Chumby device adds Pandora Radio as an option under the Music menu. Check out the above video for a quick demonstration of everything. It’s pretty straightforward – you’ll need to reboot your Chumby to get it to show up initially but once that’s done, you’ll find the Pandora option amongst the other available music sources. Then, simply enter your… → Read More
It seems that Microsoft’s SLPS, a programming suite for adding licensing and demo functionality to your .NET based software, is closed, adding a whiff of mystery to the down-turn. Could they have taken it out back and shot it?
The service is currently not accepting new orders – at least as of last night – so either there is an upgrade afoot or Microsoft is paring back some of their less popular… → Read More
We really ought to applaud Time Warner, I think. A company that owns the rights to broadcast some of the major networks in certain markets, LIN TV, has been playing hardball with the cable operator, demanding more money for access to the channels. Time Warner is all, “But, you can get these channels for free over the air, and many times online, why should we pay you (and raise our… → Read More
I looked at the blog post and then I looked at the date. No, it’s not April Fools and yes Google did just release a new product, created by Jon Perlow, called Mail Goggles. The new feature, which is a play on the term Beer Goggles (which refers to being so drunk that unattractive people look attractive) has the goal of helping you unsend those crazy drunken emails that sometimes go out late at… → Read More
Spotify, the Swedish startup with a Bittorrent-meets-Last.fm service streaming music service, has launched into open public beta. The startup is understood to have raised a massive €15.3m from VCs Northzone Venture Partners and Creandum. Spotify is a lightweight iTunes-like application streams songs via encrypted P2P technology. The service is ad-financed, hence the comparison with Last.fm. → Read More
MyPunchBowl, an eVite competitor that opened its doors early last year, has launched a ’2.0′ version of its site that features a revamped interface and a very impressive custom invitation creator.
MyPunchBowl CEO Matt Douglas says that his team has integrated improvements throughout the site for the new release, including an enhanced address book, the ability to send test invites (to make sure… → Read More
In Reggie we trust, right? Hope so, but he just killed quite the rumor in a recent interview. The president and COO of Nintendo told VentureBeat that the rumored Wii HD, “penned” for 2011, is a joke. Calling it “pure rumor and speculation,” Reggie says that Nintendo isn’t about to show developers prototype version and ask, coyly, “What do you guys think?” That’s not how… → Read More
KDDI au is not only Japan’s second biggest cell phone carrier but also famous for its KDDI Design Project. And while their exhibition in the KDDI Design Studio in Tokyo was disappointing, the company made a strong showing at this year’s CEATEC. See the coolest cell phone designs below. KDDI has been running this design project for years now and actually started mass-producing some… → Read More
So CNN has this quick little piece on innovations involving holographic television. You know, something along the lines of “don’t look now, but in just a few years you could be watching ESPN and get an elbow in the face from Kevin Garnet.” The catalyst for the piece is new research coming from the University of Arizona that make it easier to create displays with some sort of built-in… → Read More
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1683367&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1 Tokyo Jogging is the name of a cool idea Ryo Katsuma, a renowned Japanese software engineer, single-handedly turned into reality in his spare time. Katsuma-san’s project is a mashup of Wii technology and Google Street View. Users can… → Read More
Japan’s biggest cell phone carrier NTT Docomo had one of the coolest booths at this year’s CEATEC (which ended last Saturday), showcasing a lot of spectacular new stuff. These are their cell phone concepts, some of which even might make it to the mass market one day. Watch a video of their microprojector cell-phone hybrid here and a see this post for more information on their cell… → Read More
What does the downturn mean for gadget freaks? Review: True Enough by Farhad Manjoo CEATEC 2008: The two coolest robots of the show besides Little Seiko (2 videos) Clever promotions company fills USB drive with beer, other liquids declared the best thing on earth Canon zoom lens in pieces — many, many pieces → Read More
appssavvy, a company that aims to help pair developers on social media platforms with advertisers and brands, has closed a $3.1 million Series A funding round led by TRUE Ventures. Also joining the round is About.com founder Scott Kurnit.
appssavvy reports that it has worked with 100 developers on the Facebook platform who account for 500 applications, as well as developers working on… → Read More
Back at the end of July, Microsoftee Dare Obasanjo attacked the Open Web Foundation for being a bunch of kids fresh out of college who hadn’t heard of IETF or other standards bodies. I dashed off a post calling on Dare to revert to his previously ecumenical ways of supporting bottom-up standards development, and to stop his partisan attacks on these Animal House attempts and their predatory… → Read More
For those of you predisposed to paranoia, you may want to move along. However, if you’re not going to freak on me feel free to head over to Instructables to create this unique USB drive using a standard phone jack and a USB key. By assigning a pin and wire to each of the pins on a USB cable, you can create a “secure” system for storing data that you can hide in plain sight. While… → Read More
Netvibes, the site that lets users customize their homepages with a variety of widgets, has partnered with Rambler.ru to bring its widgets to the massive Russian web portal. Rambler is the Yahoo of Russia, with an estimated 40 million users and 3 billion monthly pageviews. The deal is being described as “multi-year” and worth “multi-millions”, but further details haven’t been disclosed. … → Read More
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