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
Talk about a case of the Mondays. Sprint and Philips are the latest to announce layoffs with Sprint cutting 8,000 and Philips 6,000 employees. You know the drone. It’s cause we can’t borrow against our overinflated home’s equity to buy these companies latest crap anymore. We’re too busy dumping all of our cash into organic foodstuff now. The Sprint layoffs are expected to be completed by March 31st and Philips’ are on top of the recently announced 3,000 cuts. Alright, back to work before you get cut reading this in your cube. Unless you wanna collect unemployment, in which case, onto the next post, buddy boy. → Read More
TripIt, the helpful travel site that lets you generate an itinerary by simply forwarding the service your Email confirmations from hotels and airlines, has opened up an API for outside developers. The API will give third party applications access to TripIt’s itinerary sysytem, which now accepts data from 350 travel sites. Developers can find all the details for joining the program here.
A number of applications have already used the API to implement new features. Expensd, an online service that helps business travelers manage their expenses, will use TripIt to automatically import your transit and hotel expenses. Popular iPhone application FlightTrack will use TripIt to automatically look up your flights to see if they’re on time. And Where I’ve Been, a social network application that plots your travels on a map for your friends to see, will use the API to automatically look up your destinations. Other potential uses for the API include an ‘Add To TripIt’ button that would allow travel sites to transmit your booking data to TripIt so you won’t have to forward your confirmation Email. → Read More
Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research in Motion, has admitted that they just barely got the Blackberry Storm out by Black Friday. The mad rush to release a product before a major shopping day cramps the normal development and testing cycles, which lead to more and more bugs being included in the shipped product. Balsillie says this is the “new reality”, basically telling consumers to suck it up. → Read More
The next incarnation of WinMob might be Microsoft’s last gasp as Apple, Blackberry, and now Palm reach for an even bigger market share with killer platforms. Microsoft does have the stuff to make a killer OS – look at the Zune – but those folks might be on their way out due to jobs cuts leaving the old farts that designed WinMob user interface a half a decade ago. These screenshots (after the break) on a Compulab exeda smartphone of 6.5 alpha does show promise with an interface similar to earlier spy shots. → Read More
Are cell phones no longer a growth business? At least in the fourth quarter, cell phone shipments actually declined. According to Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff, shipments from the top five cell phone manufacturers (Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola) dropped 13 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2008. Unit shipments decelerated from 14 percent growth in the second quarter to 2 percent growth in the third quarter, and then finally went into negative territory in the fourth quarter. Shipments for the top five started decelerating sequentially (quarter-over-quarter) in the third quarter, when they were down 2 percent, and then were down 4 percent sequentially in the fourth quarter. The deceleration is likely to continue through 2009. Even Apple saw a 36 percent quarterly decline in sales of iPhones (4.4 million in the December quarter versus 6.9 million in the September quarter). And RIM’s Blackberry Storm sold only 500,000 units its first month, despite a $100 million marketing campaign. As a result, Apple and RIM have about 3 percent market share between them, down from 4 percent in the third quarter, estimates Modoff. Still, that’s half of Motorola’s 6 percent share. → Read More
I don’t know when and if mankind will ever get robotic postmen but I am sure that if, they will come from Japan, just like this mini robot recently presented by Tokyo-based company Kyosho [JP]. → Read More
Verizon’s solution for improving your wireless coverage indoors is this network extender. The $250 device works like a mini cell phone tower with a 5,000 feet range. It seems all you need to do is plug the device into a high speed connection and place it by the window for GPS reasons. → Read More
YouTube has always been infamous for the amount of useless comments that videos hosted on the site tend to generate (which is not unusual when it comes to user-generated services that appeal to a massive audience). But those with comment remorse now at least have the option of deleting their dumb and irrelevant responses in just a heartbeat.
YouTube users can now go back and delete any comment they have published in the past by clicking a new button that appears in the “Text Comments” section below the video.
To all YouTube users who are reading: please schedule a couple of hours to do this. It will make the world a better place, just a little. → Read More
