In a wide-ranging interview, CNet talks with Research in Motion about all things Blackberry. Trailing only Nokia in terms of sales volume, RIM has a lot reasons to feel good. According to Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO “[t]he cell phone market in the US declined by 5 percent compounded per annum in the past five years, but the smart phone market grew 58 percent.”
Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO, also declares that “[Blackberry Storms] are Netbooks. They are just smaller.” Do you buy that, dear reader? Do you think the Storm offers all the computing conveniences of something like an MSI Wind, or is this some new use of the term “netbook” of which we were previously ignorant? → Read More
It will cost £12 billion, be run by private companies and track every move you make on the internet, every call, text message and every transaction. Yes, this is the UK government proposal to manage and run a communications database that will make Chinese attempts to control and monitor its citizens look like “light touch” regulation. The only difference with one-party states like China (ok, so apart from the summary trials and executions) is that the government claims that it will not look at the content on our every electronic interaction, but merely at the points of entry. The “pings”, if you like, to use a geek term. Of course, this is incorrect. By building up a database about our movements – our morning rituals of checking emails, visiting web sites, buying online – this will build up a pattern. This in itself is “content”. This will create a pattern of recognition about our movements. Plus how long would it be before they start to argue that they need to see the content as well? Curiously, because so few people in China – relatively speaking – are online and/or using credit cards, China will look pretty free compared to our electronically driven society. I could write a 1,000 more words more on this subject. For now the scale of the project beggars belief. From a government which has presided over countless numbers of security breaches, including a missing CD containing every child’s name and address in the UK, it is an amazing act of hubris. Plus, it comes in the wake proposals by the Ministry of Truth (Ok, so the Department of Culture, Media and Sport) to regulate content. So now we are watched as we go online, and the content we view is to be rated and standardised. Welcome to Britain in the 21st Century. The more salient point to note for TechCrunch readers is that the impact on British online business will be significant. At a time when one of the few areas of growth in the economy is the digital sector, the UK government wants to look over the shoulder of the consumer when they go online. Will this make them feel safer, or preyed upon? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below. → Read More
Want to work as the community manager of a fully-funded company that hasn’t launched yet? Or an “Information Repository Specialist“? Maybe work as a managing editor at CBS Interactive?
(Here at TechCrunch, we’re still looking for a Rails Developer.)
Other CrunchBoard jobs after the jump. → Read More
SpatialView has announced the Wazabee 3DeeShell, a protective casing that includes a removable lens to displays 3D stereoscopic images on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch without those dorky glasses. SpatialView also offers software to create your own 3D images using the iPod camera! → Read More
The biggest surprise fro me in the social media rankings that I posted earlier today was the appearance of document sharing service Scribd in the top 20. According to the comScore numbers, it has more unique visitors worldwide than imeem and almost as many as Bebo, with 23.5 million visitors in November, 2008. (In the U.S., it had about 4 million visitors). This is a serious accomplishment for a startup that launched less than two years ago with $300,000 in seed capital. → Read More
Time to throw away your old Mac Minis, friends, because new ones are coming next week. TUAW has on good authority (read “some guy told them”) that the new minis will have SATA optical drives that can be replaced with hard drives and that they will look more like the MacBooks with sexier styling and black and aluminum accents. → Read More
So Apple is facing opposition to putting up one of its gigantic glass-everywhere stores in one of Washington D.C.’s historic neighborhoods, the complaint being that it’d be too big and too modern to fit in with all the other quaint, cute buildings in the area (see our artist’s rendition above).
I propose, however, that the complaint is a cover-up for a much more massive and sinister conspiracy involving Apple, Satan, and the White House. → Read More
Watch out LG, looks like you’re not the only touch screen watch phone maker with an announcement this week. Phenom Communications has released an entire line of timepieces-turned-mobiles, (creatively named) the Phenom Watch Phone(s). These unlocked GSM, MP3/MP4 playin’ watch phones sport a 1.3 TFT touchscreen display, Bluetooth, a USB port, speakerphone, digital still/video camera, and a MicroSD card slot (maxing out at 2gb). Although the press release refers to a singular device, the Phenom Watch Phone, it is actually available in a number of different styles: → Read More
Okay. We have all lost a beer. It happens. You set it down for a moment, only to lose it seconds later. It’s frustrating early in the night, but infuriating around 2:00AM. Enter the Remote Control Beer Pager. → Read More
Update: The Dev Team has released an image with further confirms our original suspicion. Check it out after the jump. On the eve of the iPhone 3G software unlock, the following text just went up on the iPhone Dev Team blog: 01110110 01110100 01100001 01100010 01100101 01110010 00100000 00110110 00110001 00110000 00110110 00110000 00110001 00110111 00110100 00100000 Now, any self-respecting geek should immediately recognize this as binary. If we take that block of binary and convert each 8-number chunk into it’s respective ASCII representation, we get the following: → Read More
Research In Motion’s founder and co-CEO, Mike Lazaridis, has cleared up some non-existent confusion about his company’s first touch screen device, the Storm — it’s a netbook. Wait, what? Sorry, can you repeat that? I must have misheard you Mr. co-CEO. In a recent interview, when asked “Would you consider Netbooks as your competitors?,” Mr. Lazaridis responded: No, I think I can put Netbooks in here [referring to the BlackBerry Storm]. These are Netbooks. They are just smaller. → Read More
Babies controlling our fragile world! Scary babies! Fear!
Actually, this Japanese commercial for Bioshock (click through to view it) is quite compelling. Sadly, we all know what the game is about by now so it kind of spoils the fun but I guess if you’re Japanese and don’t read the popular gaming press you’d be excited to believe that the game is something akin to Japanese horror films but, sadly, isn’t at all like them. → Read More
In a wide-ranging interview, Research in Motion talked today about all things Blackberry. Trailing only Nokia in terms of sales volume, RIM has a lot reasons to feel good. According to Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO “[t]he cell phone market in the US declined by 5 percent compounded per annum in the past five years, but the smart phone market grew 58 percent.” Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO, also declares that “[Blackberry Storms] are Netbooks. They are just smaller.” Do you buy that, dear reader? Do you think the Storm offers all the computing conveniences of something like an MSI Wind, or is this some new use of the term “netbook” of which we were previously ignorant? → Read More
SSDs are slowing becoming available to geeks on a budget and the latest from RunCore carry attractive prices. → Read More
SpatialView has announced the Wazabee 3DeeShell, a protective casing that includes a removable lens to displays 3D stereoscopic images on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch without those dorky glasses. SpatialView also offers software to create your own 3D images using the iPod camera! → Read More
What were the top social media sites of 2008? ComScore came out with its worldwide traffic stats for November a few days ago (so these don’t include December). They are a mix of social networks and blogging platforms. Blogger, the orange line in the chart above, still rules the roost with an estimated 222 million unique worldwide visitors in November (up 44 percent from November, 2007). Facebook, the blue line, is on pace to pass it soon with 200 million unique visitors (up 116 percent). (Note, though, that this is more than the 140 million active users Facebook itself reports—go figure). MySpace is pretty steady at 126 million uniques. Wordpress is a close fourth and gaining with 114 million (up 68 percent). And Windows Live Spaces is down 22 percent to 87 million uniques.
ComScore keeps a list of what it calls “social networking” sites, but these include blogging platforms and other social media sites as well. While the audience for blogs is still showing healthy growth overall, Facebook stands out as the social gorilla taking share from not only other social networks but blogs and other social media as well. Below are the top 20 sites on comScore’s social networking list. → Read More
We are aware that customers with the Zune 30GB are experiencing issues with their Zune device. We are actively working now to isolate the issue and develop a solution to address it. We will keep customers informed on next steps via the support page on zune.net (zune.net/support).” – Zune spokesperson
The “issues” 30 GB Zune owners are experiencing is a mass failing, all overnight, that is yet to be resolved. From Gizmodo: “Apparently, around 2:00 AM today, the Zune models either reset, or were already off. Upon when turning on, the thing loads up and… freezes with a full loading bar (as pictured above). I thought my brother was the only one with it, but then it happened to my Zune. Then I checked out the forums and it seems everyone with a 30GB HDD model has had this happen to them.”
Just a couple of months ago I wrote that the Zune was something of an anti-iPod, attractive to people who think Apple fandom has gone a little overboard.
But a massive, synchronized operating system failure on a Microsoft product is a fact-is-stranger-than-fiction story that’s too good to pass up on a slow news day. And it also lets people dust off blue screen of death jokes, which will forever send chills down the spine of Windows users. → Read More
Nokia, the world’s most ubiquitous cell phone company, is showing off the new 6208c phone in China, which sports a pen for easy input of Chinese characters. → Read More
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