Remember the sock monkey? I mean, everyone had one of these right? Normally made by your grandma, if was a monkey made from grey and white socks, and stuffed with cotton batting. Usually had buttons for eyes, and the red material was positioned to form the mouth and butt of the monkey. Well, sock art has evolved over the years, and now people are being even more creative. → Read More
This may be the the plain jane Logitech Harmony, but it’s still a killer remote solution for those plagued with multiple remotes. Everything is consolidated into one unit that’s easy to program thanks to the online setup. It’s a basic model but totally worth $50. → Read More
“Not I” said the Windows user
“I liked Ultimate but I’m no loser
I paid for a Vista upgrade
but when my 3D shader failed to shade
I decided XP was the right call
You can’t blame me at all.” → Read More
A quick trip to Wikipedia identifies Ginza as the Fifth Avenue of Tokyo. (That I went there in 2007 is neither here nor there.) Very interesting, yes. So imagine the gang’s surprise when we discovered this Bandai-branded speaker, in the form of a diorama. It’s Ginza, just like it was in 1955. → Read More
Chewk, and apparently hundreds of other Flickr users, have been creating Lego mecha for for the edification of the world for a while now and BBG found this cute example complete with mad-eyed Marine. → Read More
Awwww, they’re adorable little video game cabinets! Choose from seven styles: Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Centipede, Zaxxon, Phoenix, and Defender – all for $7.49 each. → Read More
Following on the heels of Sprint and Verizon, AT&T is set to launch its own femtocell - 3G MicroCell – giving its customers (who pay for a 3G MicroCell plan) unlimited minutes while connected to any MicroCell at home, business, or otherwise. MicroCell is essentially a personal miniature cell tower that connects to AT&T’s network via your existing broadband connection in order to boost and expand weak network coverage. It has an advertised range of up to 5000 square feet, works with any AT&T 3G device, provides a secure connection, allows for seamless call hand-over (i.e. uninterrupted transition from MicroCell to AT&T cellular network), and can handle up to 4 simultaneous voice or data users at a given time. As usual, we don’t have any pricing or release information, yet. [via PhoneNews] → Read More
This week’s TechCrunch Europe Job of the Week is for a developer for Theiplatform.com advertising startup. They are in London (though I think the description “Farming, Fishing, and Forestry” was entered incorrectly). Remember, it costs only £20 to post *any* kind of advert on the CrunchBoard related to your startup/business, whether it be jobs, searches for office space or requests for new projects. Every week we publish the Job of the Week here (8,000+ on RSS) and Twitter it to about 7,000+ more people. To apply to have Job of the Week featured, put up a job on CrunchBoard and contact editorial. → Read More
RIM’s BlackBerry Storm, the biggest lump of crap to come out of Canada since Celine Dion, sold 500,000 units in its first month. Everyone who was everyone basically told RIM that this was a heap but did they listen? Nope.
“I found myself wanting to throw it in the ocean due to my frustration with its overall usability,” said Steven Golub, a longtime Verizon customer from Morristown, N.J., who bought the Storm the day it was released, but returned it a few weeks later.
The Simpsons has been a staple in many homes for nearly 20 years and finally, finally, the show will be broadcast in glorious high definition. Season 20 debuts on February 15 which is when the switch will be flipped and we’ll see Homer and Co. in HD. Plus, the show is going to have a new main title for the first time in 20 seasons. Oh, and for the record, The Simpsons is going HD before the earlier announced South Park high-def debut. Natch. So what cartoon is next? Family Guy? King of the Hill? I vote King of the Hill. → Read More
Sometimes the easiest way to convey an argument is with a diagram. UK-startup Team Rubber has come out with a nifty embeddable widget called aMap that lets you make a diagram of any argument with supporting logic in an interactive mindmap. The widget lets you flit from one point to another.
For instance, in the aMap below an argument is made that Apple will flourish without Steve Jobs (because he “turned his personality traits into business processes” and Pixar does fine without him). You can argue anything. Blog or Twitter? Cat or Dog? (see below). → Read More
Netbooks, netbooks, netbooks! The Lenovo S10e can be had for the low, low price of $299 with free shipping from Buy.com if you’re interested. → Read More
Do you have balls of steel? If you answered “YES!” or “SORT OF!” then you might have what it takes to flash the firmware on your T-Mobile G1 in order to get this multi-touch hack up and running, courtesy of developer Luke Hutchison. → Read More
Mobile World Congress spins up in a couple of weeks time but like any good event, the real action takes place “Off Broadway” at the fringe events. And that’s not just because TechCrunch is running a meetup event: TechCrunchTalk Mobile 2.0. In addition one of the other ones this year is The Mobile Peer Awards from the Mobile Monday global non-profit network. They have picked their finalists for the awards from a list which started at 162, went to 42 and is now down to the final 20. It’s necessarily from a wide cross-section of countries because each MM chapter picks ‘their’ winner. Hence why there is only one finalist from Silicon Valley – Soonr – but that means you also get to hear about Aradiom from a place like Istanbul, among others. Some of the trends are clear: location-based services, events, social networking, producivity apps, app stores, enterprise and VOIP. The full list of finalists appears after the jump. → Read More
A pen and a piece of paper. That’s what a British study has concluded, saying that the $40 Nintendo DS game is no better at keeping your brain “in shape” than doing a crossword puzzle, playing Sudoku or watching a documentary. (I recommend The Ascent of Money—it saves you from having to read the piece-of-junk book.) Now your children can’t pull this ol’ “but it’s educational!” gag on you, parents. → Read More
Well, consider me surprised. Even with pics of the hardware making their way out last week, my brain had haphazardly decided that the Versa was still a good number of moons away. Not so, according to BoyGenius‘ Best Buy spies. If the date in the inventory system is more than a best guess by a random blue polo jockey, we can expect the Versa to hit the shelves in all of its detachable gamepad/keyboard/speaker glory on February 22nd. It also re-re-re-confirms that it’s for Verizon, if the leading “VX” in the model number didn’t do it for you. (Dear Versa: Please don’t suck. Love, Everyone who likes the idea of modular components) → Read More
Calcalist is reporting (Hebrew only) that Modu has brought in another $7M in funding courtesy of Qualcomm which as part of the agreement will also manufacture the Modu “core”.
Modu has had a whirlwind of a year, first debuting to much fanfare at last year’s Mobile World Congress, where we had a chance to sit with the company’s CEO, Dov Moran, for a 1-on-1 for a demo. The company then went on to raise a whopping $100M round. Then in November Modu announced a 33%, 88-employee downsizing in November. → Read More
HDMI cables have long been the bane of custom AV installers mainly because they previously could not be made to length. It seems that audioquest has solved the problem with a system that splits the HDMI wire into two wire groups for termination and crimping. That way, you are avoiding crimping all 19 wires at once. Most installers can crimp CAT-5′s eight wires in their sleep so doing groups of nine and ten is not that much of a stretch. → Read More
Word on the Interstreets today is that Android Market app – MemoryUp – is giving users much more than they bargained for. Instead of optimizing users’ G1 memory (as advertised), the now suspected malware app is doing the exact opposite – causing lots of Android headaches in the form of memory wipes, contact disappearances, OS crashes, adware, and spam galore. In other words, unless you enjoy punishing your G1, we highly recommend that users avoid MemoryUp all together. [via phoneArena] → Read More
We’ve got three crazy comments from Andy Gowen touting the magic of Clear dot com’s fascination USB modem package which, for $50 a month, offers you a WiMAX connection (??) wherever you go and may or may not cause infertility in rats. Andy, please stop. We’re sure your service is amazing but we’re moderating you and I’ve taken the liberty of changing your comments to reflect our opinions more closely. → Read More
