I guess Versa stands for versatility since the latest LG phone has an attachable QWERTY keyboard. So clever Verizon and LG are. Today, VZW announced that the touchscreen LG Versa would be available on March 1. This, too, has the fancy new 3D interface, but the most exciting feature is the detachable keyboard. The 3-inch screen is nice, I guess. But is it plastic or glass? Probably plastic. It also comes with a 2-megapixel AF camera with flash, a music player, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, visual voice mail, microSD, 2.5mm jack and a slew of other whatever features. → Read More
Google has integrated Friend Connect with its weblog publishing service Blogger. Essentially, this enables people to start following (i.e. subscribing to) blogs using their Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID accounts and turns Blogger more into a social network than a straightforward blog publishing service.
Blogs that you follow will be listed in your Blogger profile and the integration will also leverage existing relationships, meaning you’ll be able to quickly see if your friends are also following those blogs. → Read More
Recession got you down? Have no fear, because now you can spend your way to happiness thanks to a potential 40 percent drop in the price of Blu-Ray players, thereby making them about $200 as opposed to $5 million. Oh, wait a minute. This is only on Blu-Ray licensing, so manufacturers will have to only pay $9.50 for a read-only BR player and 11 cents for disks. Sorry. You’ll basically be saving pennies. → Read More
Sony’s foray into the growing netbook market with the Vaio P (which Sony itself doesn’t call a netbook) caused considerable interest in the blogosphere, especially in Japan. And it’s the best netbook in that country. This is at least what a report by Japan’s biggest business newspaper, The Nikkei, suggests. → Read More
With a comic message on its website saying that the service has gone away to enter the 36 Shaolin Chambers of Software Kung Fu but will return stronger, music discovery application Songbeat lets its visitors know that it has received a first blow in court after Warner Music (and other music labels) sued the German startup for enabling users to stream and download music without permission.
Songbeat essentially allowed you to scour the web for MP3s using integrated search for Seeqpod, Project Playlist, SpoolFM, iASK and more, stream tracks and even download them from a neat and fast desktop application.
This comes fresh off the heels of the news that Warner Music is suing Seeqpod and even a developer that was using the application’s API, which prompted us to write that they’ve reached a new low. It’s not getting any better today. → Read More
When we reviewed file-sharing service DivShare way back in October 2007, we were mildly impressed with its one-stop solution for storing, managing and sharing files. A month later, the service was put up for sale on an auction site which prompted us to deadpool it.
Fast-forward to January 2009, when the small startup behind DivShare was finally picked up by a group of internet veterans who started a new company called 3Sixty and aim to not only continue the service but also add some bells and whistles to it in the near future. The reason it took so long for DivShare to be acquired, so I was told, was because the service was doing well and making money and the owners just wanted to make sure it fell into the right hands and not sell it off to quickly and see it fade. → Read More
One fan of the Mac Pro tower decided to build his own hackintosh case, from aluminum sheeting and mesh. The best part is, it’s about the size of a mac mini. I like the idea. It’s a good look. → Read More
We’re ’bout to see a bunch of Samuel L. Jackson. Remember how he briefly appeared after the Iron Man credits as Nick Furry hinting at Marvel’s future? Well, he just signed a huge deal that will place him in nine upcoming Marvel films, effectively creating a huge Marvel universe. Tight. → Read More
After the world held its breath over the fate of President Obama’s beloved Blackberry (and we imagined a replacement), you could be forgiven for thinking that the primary crisis of his term had passed. Not so! No sooner does he retain his Blackberry than he is beset by another problem: the replacement of the Presidential helicopter. → Read More
This Friday Erick Schonfeld and I are moderating the TechCrunch Cloud Computing Roundtable at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus. Several participants have asked us what questions we’re going to ask. Of course, the whole idea of events like this one is to bring together as many of the movers and shakers as we can fit onto the stage, and then let the dynamics of the group shape the discussion. Besides, there’s nothing worse than journalists asked canned questions and getting back prepared answers. So we won’t be sharing our questions until show time. But they’re really not that hard to suss, if we pause and consider what cloud computing represents today, tomorrow, and in the future when we drop the cloud and just call it what we do. The vision of cloud computing has been around for a long time, going by a succession of names that reflects the emergence of the massive uber computer that the Net has engendered. With all the hype about cloud computing, you’d think we’re in the early stages of this revolution, with many years to go before the technology is mature enough for prime time. But in fact, the first instantiation of a working cloud application (and by implication a supporting platform) came with the beta launch of Gmail in 2005. My first email on the platform (which is still available to me by clicking the Oldest link) was May 2, 2005. Gmail was launched with a social media strategy that foreshadowed the current wave of cloud evolution, with a core group of influencers and insiders each given a handful of invites with which to “friend” people. The on-demand service also featured a scalable storage model where the available size automagically grew whenever you approached the apparent limit. And the initial inability to delete items encouraged a new usage model that was continually reinforced by feature additions that took advantage of the disruptive model. The dynamic threading of conversations pushed items of timely interest to the top of the stack. The merging of chat threads into the common archive made searching all the more authoritative and valuable, and all the harder to switch away from. The elasticity and just in time scalability of cloud computing became a staple for those who stopped by for a taste and ended up staying the night. Behind the scenes, Google was leveraging the cloud they’d built to support search → Read More
Xbox Live revealed the rumored red Xbox 360 just the other day and Major Nelson managed to get his hands on one. Probably ’cause he’s on Microsoft’s payroll and it’s his job; just saying. Video after the break. → Read More
Apparently several video game developers, including id, consider the iPhone a proper gaming platform, one they can bend to their will in order to create compelling gameplay experiences. Or, in reality, in order to create games that are fun for seven minutes at a clip while you’re in the subway. ANYWAY! It seems id is pretty bullish on the system, having already committed to two games for the platform, a typical mobile game (Wolfenstein RPG) and a “graphical tour-de-force.” Could this “tour-de-force” be a version of Quake III Maybe! → Read More
Well, we got official word from John at Bathys today, the Benthic Ti that we told you about back in July is finally coming out. → Read More
When people think of games on demand, Steam is usually the first thing that comes to mind, since so many of us have it by default, after having bought Half-Life 2 and whatnot. But there are services that have been around for just as long and which offer the same huge variety of games, like GamersGate, which we’re highlighting because of CrunchGear’s ongoing war with accepting the tech status quo (see Zune).
Online game distribution is becoming as standard as ordering books and electronics online — so why should you tether yourself to a single store? It’s no different than checking prices on both Newegg and TigerDirect — just open an extra tab. You may find GamersGate’s clientless format more or less convenient, or maybe the game you’re looking for is on sale at one but not the other. There’s no reason you shouldn’t put your search into more than one box if it means a chance to save a couple bucks. → Read More
The University of Minnesota’s James Kakalios was a consultant for the upcoming movie and in this video he discusses the quantum mechanics of Dr. Manhattan and…just watch it. → Read More
Trying to improve on their existing hybrid tech, Toyota is looking at what materials actually go into that hybrid you’ve been looking at. One of the more esoteric materials that they are considering is bioplastics. → Read More
In response to its extended Gmail outage yesterday, Google has just launched the Google Apps Status Dashboard. The dashboard offers an at-a-glance look at the system health of most popular Google services, including Gmail, Google Calendar, and the company’s suite of web-based document editors. Google has been pretty good about responding to down time with blog posts alerting users with status updates, but having a dedicated page seems like a much better solution (especially for users who don’t follow Google’s blogs).
The news is in line with recent trends seen by other popular web services, like Twitter, which now offers its own dedicated Status Update. Given that users (especially business customers) are becoming increasingly reliant on Google’s cloud based services, this is a welcome move, though I’m hoping we won’t have to use it too often. → Read More
For a full grown man, Michael Jackson sure has a lot of arcade games. Weird, huh? If you’ve got some money burning a hole in your pocket, why not head out to Las Vegas in late April to see if you can pick up some of these machines at deep, deep discounts. → Read More
It’s no secret that the record industry hates Seeqpod, a music site that lets users stream songs for free. Last year the company was sued by Warner Music Group (the outcome of the suit is still pending). Now, the company has just been slapped with a complaint from EMI. But the new complaint goes one step further, personally naming some of the Seeqpod executives, and in a move that may well raise the ire of countless developers, a developer named Ryan Sit who happened to tap into the Seeqpod API.
The legality of Seeqpod is murky. The company says that it doesn’t store any songs, but instead streams them from countless music files littering sites across the web. In effect, it acts as a powerful music search engine with a media player built in. The record industry claims that this is still illegal, and the new EMI complaint goes as far as to say that Seeqpod actually does host some of these music files, at least temporarily (which would strike a major blow to Seeqpod’s defense if proven true). In any case, Seeqpod is clearly on some shaky legal ground, so the new lawsuit doesn’t come as a surprise.
What is surprising, and potentially very alarming, is the fact that Ryan Sit was named in the suit for running the one-man startup Favtape, which leverages the Seeqpod API to stream music. Sit has created a number of sites, including Swurl and FavThumbs. In short, he’s a prolific developer who takes advantage of the APIs offered by many popular websites. → Read More
